YOUR PATH TO THE NEXT LEVEL:

REDEFINING C-SUITE SUCCESS:

Why I became a leadership coach.

As someone in the C-suite, I am passionate about being a leadership coach because I have seen so many brilliant leaders of color and leaders who are LGBTQ+ struggle with self doubt and burnout in their first high-level roles. And I have struggled with it, too. 

As a queer black woman who grew up in a working class community in Detroit, I hustled hard to land my first entry- level roles. By putting my head down and “working twice as hard”, advice I got growing up, I got pretty far. After I became a manager and eventually decided I wanted to be in the C Suite, because I had big ideas and I wanted to have more impact. But as the first person in my immediate family to land a really senior- level corporate role, there was a lot of information I didn’t know.

I was encouraged by mentors, friends, and my supervisors to be a leader, but much of the typical leadership advice that I got along the way – like “fake it until you make it” and “work twice as hard” as straight, white people  – did not work for me. Also the coping strategies I had as a lower level manager, like  working endless hours so everything went perfectly, were unsustainable for higher level jobs.

I made all the mistakes: I was obsessed with getting stuff done, when I was being asked to be more strategic. I didn’t know how to delegate, thinking I had to do everything myself to avoid any criticism. I was teetering on burnout, and I wasn’t enjoying the “dream jobs” I had chased so hard.  I was exhausted. I felt like I was being watched. I felt like I was falling behind. I worried I wasn’t “doing enough” to support the other LBGTQ+ and people of color at the organizations where I worked. 

Also. some of my mentors and other senior leaders I talked to seemed to be on the same breakneck treadmill. They were working weekends, burning the midnight oil, and managing unsustainable workloads. I knew that wasn’t a sustainable path for me. 

Thankfully, through coaching, I transformed my relationship with work. Through coaching I learned that I had set impossibly high standards for myself because my critical inner voice was in the driver’s seat. After a lot of work to heal my relationship with myself, now I enjoy the exciting challenge of my executive roles, I have more time for rest, game nights with my chosen family,  and vacations, and I have gradually learned how to empower and train other managers on the teams I work with.