I am living my authentic purpose!

How many of you save old documents?

I was not aware of a very dated document that I had saved; I recently uncovered my performance review from the first company I worked for out of college, a Fortune 500 company, where I was quickly promoted into a leadership role with what I recalled as little experience to lead a team.

I was responsible for two departments, an Inside Sales team and a Marketing team. As you may see on my website, I was thrown into a “sink or swim” situation in that I had to figure out how to be an effective leader with little to no support in how to do this.

What made me smile when I recently reviewed the document was that the work I do today with leaders and teams, was also very important to me 2 years out of college. In my performance review, I provided feedback to my direct manager including:

• “Communication between us is constantly improving.”
• “You take the time to listen to what I have to say and support my ideas.”
• “You offer a great deal of freedom; you trust me.”
• “You don’t always give me enough constructive criticism – probably because we don’t work together on a daily basis.”

My self-evaluation included:

• “I am looking for new responsibilities to continue learning and growing.”
• “I always look forward to new challenges and opportunities.”
• “I would like more decision-making power.”

A bit about my purpose

Though I re-discovered, nearly 15 years ago when I decided to get my MS, Mediation and Applied Conflict Studies and get certified as a professional coach, that communication – including listening, effective feedback, clarity, and more, was an essential skill I wanted to help others with, it’s over the same timeframe, working with leaders, that I started to focus on working with individuals, teams and organizations, to build cultures of trust and psychological safety, and create opportunities to challenge my clients and help them to continue to learn and grow.

When I decided to make my career pivot nearly 15 years ago, it was at that time that I embraced that healthy communication is something that was always important to me, since very early in childhood, where I acted as the family mediator, trying to help my family communicate with one another in healthy and meaningful ways. Now, doing the work that I do, I’m living my authentic purpose every day and am honored to support my clients in ways that serve them best.

What has helped shape who you are today? What is one thing that you notice has “followed you” along your journey.

Looking for support to communicate more effectively, whether through active and deep listening, providing effective feedback, engaging in difficult conversations, or something else? Challenged creating a culture of trust and psychological safety on your team, or don’t feel you are safe to be able to ask questions or take risks? Let’s connect.

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” – Carl Jung