How My Clients Skyrocket Into Leadership
I help leaders realize both their value and their valueS. My clients usually surpass their professional goals, and what surprises them even more is the enhanced personal fulfillment, happiness and “inner calm” they feel. (Yes, I’m talking about lawyers…) Their results inspire others, creating a ripple effect throughout their organization.
My customized approach exceeds the ROI of a one-size-fits-all engagement. My clients report better-trained and better-mentored talent in their leadership pipelines, and loyal people with a greater sense of community, emotional investment and trust in each other.
I offer the above with diplomacy and humor. To help you get comfortable with hard conversations, we use the many negotiation and mediation skills I honed in business school and as a litigator. I also offer to share my own hard-won wisdom: the mistakes I’ve made could fill a book… and they more or less do! (I share my learnings freely in my Fully Human Lawyer™ columns and in my other writings and speaking engagements.)
My clients say they
value my:
- Razor-sharp focus on their desired results
- Creative interplay of coaching, mentoring, and consulting techniques
- Trust in them, and in myself
- Leadership and personal risk taking
- Directness softened by diplomacy
- Sales (influencing/BD) experience
- Discretion and fierce integrity
- Humor, candor, authenticity, and warmth
Finally, my clients tell me one reason they trust me so much is that I’m a leader myself. I’ve “bet on myself” (many times) and have (after lots of self-work) trained myself to push through fear to take smart strategic risks. My clients say my no-BS style (“yup, I know it’s scary, and now let’s consider what might happen if you decide to go for it”) helps them envision and stay focused on potential upsides, not just the risks of leaving their comfort zones.
Put simply: my track record of betting on myself, plus my sharing my own vulnerabilities and fears, normalizes YOUR fears. That makes you more willing to trust yourself. And that is what gives you the confidence to make the hard or unprecedented decisions that are the hallmark of all excellent leadership.
I’m grateful for each of my professional experiences, including…:
My leadership philosophy
I’ve spent untold hours analyzing the leaders who inspired ME to go the extra mile: what they did (or didn’t do) and how that made me feel. I’ve also taken a hard look at the leaders who made me want to just “dial it in.” Here are my takeaways:
Assume positive intent
Most people want to do “the right thing.” As a coach, I often get to hear the innermost thoughts and feelings of people who seek my counsel. As a result, I firmly believe most people operate from a desire to do something positive, even if it may not always appear that way. We are better able to understand each other if we recognize that the root cause of bad behavior is usually a disconnect between method and objective.
Be Fully Human™
All of us, from the head honcho to the new person on their first day, have emotions, imperfections, a personal life, and a professional life. The most effective leaders understand that we can never – nor should we – segregate our professional lives from the rest of who we are. Those leaders weave that informed judgment into the fabric of their organizations.
“I am because we are”
Whether they realize it or not, the most effective organizations operate on the principle of “I am because we are.” This is a South African philosophy called Ubuntu that the best leaders understand intuitively. They know that leveraging each individuals’ highest and best qualities engages each person fully and inspires them to give their maximum contribution.
Own your value
Each of us has a unique combination of personality, temperament, talents, and skills. Owning Your Power means identifying what those attributes are, and then deploying them to benefit an organization that needs and values those particular attributes. Like an orchestra conductor who brings out the best in each player, a great leader understands how to bring out the best in each individual in the organization. That way, every individual can own their value.
How I got here
It’s an absolute privilege to be an executive coach and consultant to law firm and corporate senior legal leaders, and The American Lawyer’s Fully Human Lawyer™ columnist. Here’s how I got here:
- Lawdragon list of 2024 and 2023’s top Global 100 Leaders in Legal Strategy & Consulting
- International Coaching Federation (ICF) Board member and DEI Committee (CT Chapter)
- ADHD coach training (plus lived experience)
- Nuanced understanding of “Big Law” business, culture, and leadership
- Trainer, career counselor, and coach at Volta Talent Strategies
- Top-producing legal recruiter with a respected national search firm
- Law practice in NYC for many years with leading firms and practices
- Federal district court clerkship in Philadelphia
- University of Michigan Law School
- Wharton (University of Pennsylvania’s business school)
A native of Warwick, Rhode Island, I now live in West Hartford, Connecticut, with my husband, our two teenagers, and Ozzie, our slipper-stealing Labradoodle.
< Ozzie has become one of my top leadership muses.
Coaching saved me, so I'm paying it forward
Here’s the story of how coaching dramatically changed my life for the better. More importantly, it’s the story of why and how YOU might want to consider letting coaching do the same for you.
In late 2018, not long after I became a coach, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I’m better and healthy now. But I endured months of psychological trauma, stemming not just from cancer but also from various mind-bending encounters with “the health care system.”
I didn’t sleep for days, I stopped eating, and I found myself staring into space talking to myself for hours on end. I’d never experienced trauma before, and I didn’t know if or when it would end. It was terrifying to me and my family.
My coach training had equipped me with skills to understand and manage human emotions and behaviors. Those tools allowed me to make sense of the incomprehensible things that had happened to me, and take back my own power.
I became my own coaching client; I used coaching techniques to identify what exactly I needed, and from whom, to restore my trust.
I became a Trust Expert. My coachees loved my insights and used them to rise quickly in their organizations. Now my coachees inspire others to become leaders. I confess I’m still stunned by the leadership explosion my traumatic health care ordeal has ignited.
