Working to Be a Leader

“How did you get so smart?”  A client asked me that question during her coaching session.  She wasn’t the first to wonder how someone with a master’s degree in early childhood education got so wise that she’s advising Cs-to-Be and other leaders as they navigate their ways through corporate environments.  (Read more about Cs-to-Be.)

Many factors contributed to me gaining workplace intelligence while working to be a leader.

A main factor is my willingness to be open to growth.  To learn about the world around me.  To understand organizational behavior when I was just a temporary secretary at the investment bank Lazard Freres & Co. and Hertz Rent-A-Car Company.

Carol Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University in California, spent three decades studying “how people think about intlligence and talent,” Janet Rae-Dupree wrote in, “If You’re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow” (New York Times, July 6, 2008).

“People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes.  But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.”

Ms. Dweck’s quote above summarizes the efforts I see by leaders, like the client above, who want to take on new challenges.  They want to continue to draw on their own resources and experiences to challenge themselves throughout their careers.

When temping, I had to put my ego aside and focus on what I wanted to learn.  It worked.  I can translate what I learned to my coaching clients so that they can be more effective leaders.

Are you open to growth?  Try it.  It will help make you smarter.

In early February, I had the pleasure to meet Joe Pantoliano, an actor best known for his role as Ralph Cifaretto on the Sopranos.  I remember him most as Eddie Moscone, the bail bondsman in the movie Midnight Run starring Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin.

Like me, Joe attended a seminar on “Executives at Risk and Addiction in the Workplace” sponsored by Lee Hecht Harrison featuring Joseph A. Califano, Jr., Founding Chair and President of The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.  (More on what I learned in another post.) 

At the end of the program, Joey Pants (as some call him) announced a new initiative he’s started, No Kidding, MeToo!

The mission posted on his website is, “No Kidding, Me Too! is an organization whose purpose is to remove the stigma attached to brain dis-ease through education and the breaking down of societal barriers.  Our goal is to empower those with brain dis-ease to admit their illness, seek treatment, and become even greater members of society.”

When I went to the NKM2 website, I looked at the list of brain dis-eses and noticed one was missing:  borderline personality disorder.  I’m very familiar with that disorder.

My company’s mission is to help leaders level the playing field of obstacles blocking optimum workplace performance and career advancement.

The mission evolved from my own battle to remove a significant hindrance while working to be a leader:  borderline personality disorder (BPD).  BPD is a serioius mental illness that is diagnosed more often than schizophrenia or bipolar (manic-depressive illness) combined.

Recent research shows a prevalence of BPD in nearly six percent of adult Americans—which translates to 18 million who experience poor self-image, impulsivity, rage, bodily self-harm, recurrent suicidal behavior, unstable relationships, and frequent career changes.

Among other approaches to my recovery, I read books about others who suffered and recovered from mental illness.  Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison writes about her history of manic-depressive illness in An Unquiet Mind:  A Memoir of Mood and Madness.  She states, “As the years went by I became more and more determined to pull out some good from all of the pain, to try and put my illness to some use.”  The author continues to say that tenure as a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine was, “a symbol of stability I craved and the ultimate recognition I sought for having competed and survived in the normal world.”

One prominent symbol of my stability is my ”recognition” as an Adjunct Instructor teaching, “Employee Development and Training” to Human Resources majors within the Management Department at the Zicklin School of Business.  Zicklin, located in Manhattan, is part of Baruch College, the nation’s most ethnically diverse campus. 

Another is working with leaders who trust their careers to me.  It’s a trust I take very seriously.  It’s a trust I’ve earned working to be a leader and gaining workplace intelligence.

I’m making the decision to go public with my disorder to pull out some good from all the pain and put it to some use.  There is hope for those who have BPD.  There is hope for your talent and leadership effectiveness to emerge from behind the cloud of mental illness.  There is hope that your talent that can take you to places—and into leadership positions—you never thought possible.  There is hope for you to make valuable contributions to others.

Like Joey Pants, do not let the stigma of a mental illness or a fear of psychotherapy deter you from seeking help.   Help is out there.

One way you can find help about BPD is to visit National Education Alliance for Borderline Personliaty Disorder.  There you will find information and resources on this serious mental illness. 

In August 2008, I wrote a couple of posts here that included the name Rusty Kanokogi, a member of the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame of the Women’s Sports Foundation. 

The year before that, I had interviewed Rusty for an article I wrote to mark the 35th anniversary of Title IX mandating equality in educational activities and opening the door for girls and young women to receive equal funding for sports activities.

Rusty is a coach who demonstrates how sports can transform a life and the power of commitment to equality on the playing field—er judo mat.

“Fighter for her Sport Has Own Battle,” read the headline in the Sports section of The New York Times on Tuesday, February 17, 2009.  Rusty, Joshua Robinson reported, has kidney failure and multiple myeloma, a rare cancer of the blood.

“I’ll always fight for what I think is fair,” Rusty is quoted by Robinson.

The article takes an in-depth look at Rusty’s life fighting for fairness in judo.  It’s a good story.  One I hope has a happy ending for Rusty.  She deserves it.  She’s a great leader and role model.

Has your dream job dissolved?

Has your dream of finding a new job in your field become fainter with each passing day?

Has your resiliency to live your dream been weakened by the economic crisis?

It’s time to design new dreams.  To envision how you can take what you do have—skills, talents, commitment—and take advantage of new opportunities.

The first step in doing that is to mourn your loss of dreams.  I recently picked up a book I read a few years ago, Ted Bowman’s, Loss of Dreams:  A Special Kind of Grief, because it articulates what I’ve been feeling.  What I thought was there simply isn’t.  Something intangible has been taken away.  The dream of the future I had constructed for myself is gone.

Have you experienced a loss of dreams?

Think about it:  job loss.  That’s a loss not just of income.  It’s a loss of a place to go each day, to continue relationships with colleagues you’ve grown to know—and hopefully—enjoy being with during the work day.  It’s a loss of self-esteem.  Now when you are asked what you do for a living, do you say, “In transition,” and feel a loss of identification with an employer or location where you worked.  It’s loss of the potential you may have dreamed about at the company, that move up to a leadership role that gave you more responsibility but also a bigger title and lots of challenging projects you knew you could manage.

Loss of dreams is real.  Acknowledge your loss, mourn your loss, grieve for the loss of what you had.

Now it’s time for the second step:  to design new dreams.  Don’t give up hope or faith in realizing your dreams.  Just put them in perspective, rearrange priorities, or readjust your attitude.  That’s right.  An attitude adjustment.  What you said you would never do again, just might be your solution to success.

My ego told me that I didn’t want to be a secretary or even a temporary secretary.  I had a master’s degree and didn’t want to sit at a desk answering phones for someone else.  Yet, many times when my financial situation told me I had to get a job, being a temporary secretary was a successful way to earn income—and more!

Temping helped me survive recessions and tough financial times, learn about business, and understand the nuances of leadership.  The longest I ever temped—or worked for one company—was from 1989 to 1994.  That’s when I sat at the right hands of the gods of Wall Street within the quiet giant of global finance, Lazard Freres & Co.

My hourly rate paid the bills, overtime helped pay my mortgage, and a bonus the last two years I was there validated the extra effort I put into each assignment at the firm.

The flexibility of temping also worked to give me time to design new dreams.  “Temp by day, professor at night!” a permanent secretary called me.  And I was.

During one long-term assignment at Lazard, I took every Tuesday off to teach a college course at the School of New Resources in the South Bronx.  Two evenings a week, I taught “Public Relations,” and “Business Math,” at New York City Technical College, and also writing for Continuing and Professional Studies at Baruch College.  Both schools are part of the City University of New York (CUNY).

It was a few months after I started temping at Lazard that I formulated part of my dream career:  to train leaders how to be more effective.  Like a student at the business school I could afford, I made lists of effective and ineffective behaviors that leaders demonstrated, devised my own 360 assessments of how partners performed, and, by moving around from department to department, achieved an understanding of organizational behavior.

Today, I’m an Adjunct Instructor teaching “Employee Development and Training,” for Human Resources majors in the Management Department at the Zicklin School of Business, part of Baruch College.   My company, Leadership Training Room, helps leaders level their playing fields of obstacles blocking optimum performance and career advancement with coaching and consulting services.  And I write level playing field special reports to educate professionals with ways to enhance their competencies.

I love what I do.  I can’t say that I loved every day of temping.  What I can say is that my attitude adjustment that led to and kept me temping, helped me survive so that today I can thrive.

When designing your new dreams, make certain that your attitude toward what you won’t do doesn’t keep you from doing something that will foster your career development.