Growing up, most of us likely faced bullies on our school playgrounds. It is an awful feeling to be relentlessly teased or ridiculed by another person(s). It can erode our confidence, lead to a feeling of isolation, and reduce our performance.

When I was a child, I equated bullying to immaturity and expected that once I became an adult that this behaviour I witnessed happening around me would stop. But, the reality is that bullying still happens at workplaces. We may not see it from our leadership positions but don’t be too quick to dismiss that it isn’t happening at your organization.

So, how do we know if there is bullying in our organizations, and if so, how do we deal with bullies?

Recently, my daughters and I had the great privilege of handing out two Jr. C Hockey Awards named in honor of my late husband/the girls' Dad, Jeff, who played for the team in his teens to early 20s.When I received the call that the Club had chosen Jeff for this award out of all the great guys who have played for this team over the years, I was very touched as I know Jeff would be.

This leads me to ask the question, what do I want my legacy to be? What do you want your legacy to be? A legacy is not created at the end of our lives, it is what we do and who we are leading up to our final moment. If you are not unsure about the answer to this big question, allow me to help you put some thought into it.

After my husband Jeff died in 2019, I felt such raw and agonizing grief. I grieved for my kids who were 8 and 10 years old when their Dad died after a 2-year battle with esophageal cancer. I grieved for myself. And, I grieved for Jeff because he didn’t get the chance to live out the life he so desperately wanted, to grow old with me and watch our daughters at the different stages of their lives.

Now that I have had the experience of intimately knowing grief, I don’t believe it is something we can move through. There is no end destination to get to here. Grief does not end. But, it changes.

Full disclosure: I am a goalie Momma. My 12-year-old daughter plays on a provincial-level team, and I have recently learned the intense pressure a goalie deals with. This daughter is also an avid NHL hockey fan, with the Leafs being her number one team. She has succeeded in doing what no man before her in our family has ever done…got me to be a regular viewer of Leafs games! She comes from a long line of hockey-obsessed relatives from Great-Grandfathers, Grandfathers, her Dad when he was alive, Uncles, Cousins, and even my Mom!

And because of her interest in hockey and particularly in goalies, I have had the opportunity to watch the drama with Toronto Maple Leafs Goalie Ilya Samsonov go down.

One of the top 5 issues leaders and aspiring leaders come to me as an Executive Coach to work on is improving their executive presence.

I believe everyone can 100 percent have an executive presence. To me, it is the ability to own who you are as a person/leader and display that authentically and confidentially in the workplace.

How does your Executive Presence stack up? Take my quiz!

Have you been feeling you’re not getting the traction you want in your work or life? Does it feel like the harder you try, the more things aren’t working out? Or, maybe you’re just feeling a lack of motivation.

Even for a high-achiever, these feelings can be very normal and they can be a natural part of ‘wintering.’

How do you know if working with an Executive Coach is right for you, or executives or high potentials at your organization?

I have learned that when it comes to ROI of working with a coach, the best return for your dollars is pairing a leader/high potential with a coach when the leader is showing great promise but needs to help work out a couple of issues or wants to reach for more.

Measurement in coaching is key. I work with assessment tools to help the leader learn where there could be hidden strengths and areas of improvement. We formulate three goals in the beginning which sets the focus for the coaching relationship. The client’s leader or mentor then is included in the conversation to ensure all goals align with strategic development plans. Action plans are developed and then measurement occurs throughout to ensure the client is on track to get exactly what they signed up for

I have worked with a lot of people over my years as an Executive Coach and seen them make amazing transformations. How are most of them doing it? Baby steps!

I know there can be the appeal of waiting for that one life-changing moment to turn things around and propel you to where you want to be. But, the reality is that it often doesn’t happen like that.

Sustainable change happens when we take small steps every single day, which alters our habits and rewires our brains so that over time, a real shift can take place.

Earlier on in my adult life, I seemed to thrive on adventure. I was always going here and there, pushing myself physically and loving the challenges. But, after having kids and more senior roles at work, adventure became about doing the best I could each day to keep all the balls up in the air! And, if I am being honest here, my carefree attitude in life became more about being a responsible adult.

Priorities change throughout the different stages of our lives. But, when I was recently talking to one of my clients about his adventures in Patagonia, Argentina, it lit a spark within me.

When you think about adventure, what comes to mind for you? How can you fit more of that into your life now?

I suffered a severe concussion 12 years ago when I fainted during a stand-up X-ray, smashing my head off the concrete floor of a medical facility.

My symptoms of headaches (made increasingly worse with any sort of noise, movement around me, or thinking), blurry vision that was extremely sensitive to light with a bunch of floaters (black squiggly lines) in my line of vision, physical fatigue, dizziness, short term memory issues (I could remember things from years ago but couldn’t remember the conversation I’d just have with my husband), and a really challenging time multitasking

My continued healing journey has been a long one. But, I have moved mountains in terms of where I am now compared to where I was. My experience has taught me:

Do you feel you are on the right path now? The path I am on is definitely not the path I thought I would be on at this stage in my life. I envisioned things looking very differently. I never thought my spouse would die so young and that I would be raising our children by myself and with a brain injury myself. And let’s not forget about COVID. That has made everyone’s paths veer off a bit from where they likely thought they were going to be.

But regardless if this is the path you saw for yourself or not, this is indeed the path you are on. How do you make the most of it?

This picture was taken recently on the 4th anniversary of my husband’s death. The rough waves and dark sky parallels the emotions I was feeling the day my beautiful 46 year old husband died in my arms after a 23-month battle with esophageal cancer.

To see this man I loved with my whole heart slip away breath after breath was excruciating. Knowing how badly he wanted to stay. And then to have to call our 8 and 10-year-old daughters to come in to see us, them unaware that this would be the moment they would learn their Daddy had died.

I have also faced intense physical pain. So how can we befriend pain and use it as a tool to help us be our best in work and in life?

I think this is a question we all ask ourselves at least once in our lives. For me, I seem to ask this question every few years. Just when I think I have the answer, something in my life shifts, and my life experiences evolve me into a different version of myself.

It can be fun experiences that allow us to grow, but I find change often comes when we have to dig deep within ourselves to get through a period of sadness, change, disappointment, or fear. Not dissimilar to the caterpillar in the cocoon, when we face struggle and challenge, we grow into something else.

Many of the leaders I coach have to sell as part of their roles, even if they are not in a direct sales position. Being able to sell your product, business or even your own ideas is a crucial part of creating success. But, it is not easy for a lot of people to do.

Why? Well, it can feel vulnerable. What if that person doesn’t buy what I am selling? What does that say about me? Or, “I don’t want to bug people.”I get it. But, changing your perspective to one of helping and serving others can help change everything for you.

Very few people I know have received any formalized mentorship training/coaching. Yet, most people have a strong component of mentoring others as part of their job.

Mentoring others isn’t just a nice to do, it is a need to do. If you want to be competitive in the marketplace, you need to have strong people. One of the best ways to create strong people is for them to have mentors. Either everyone struggles themselves along their career journey, or they have people to help teach them.

Tips to continue to grow to be a strong mentor?

“It comes in waves,” is often how I’ve heard grief described. For me, there have been many days when it has felt like a tsunami after losing both my Husband and Dad to cancer. I have envisioned myself as a surfer, clinging to my board in these conditions, just trying to survive.

So when I connected with Dan Fischer, an avid surfer, who has taken that notion quite literally with his One Last Wave Project that connects grief, honouring our passed loved ones, and surfing, my interest was peaked.

No doubt you have worked hard to climb your way up the corporate ladder. Probably at times throughout your career, you wished there would be two of you to accomplish what you needed to do.

And then, you made it to the leadership ranks, and voila…an Executive Assistant appears! This is a dream come true. An extension of yourself. Someone to help you free up more time to be strategic and coach your people. But in the work I do as an Executive Coach, I can tell you that this Executive Assistant Fairy Tale sometimes ends up being just that, and the time of the leader and the EA is not utilized as well as it could be. As such, I’d like to share some tips for working with your executive Assistant for the best results!

In September 2012, shortly after I suffered a brain injury, I was featured as part of a news story in The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business section entitled ‘Is Being Superbusy so Bad?’ by Leah Eichler.

At the time, I was a few months out from my brain injury. I knew I was not back to normal yet, but I had no idea that my healing journey would still be going on almost 11 years later…

This month was supposed to be my husband Jeff’s 50th birthday. It is also around the time that would mark 5 years since his cancer treatment for stage 3 esophageal cancer wrapped up. For anyone who knows about cancer, you know that five years without cancer rearing its ugly head again after treatment is a major milestone. It means you are officially in remission and cancer-free. So this month was going to be something really big to celebrate at our house!

But the cancer came back and on August 7, 2019, Jeff died in my arms. For those still getting to know me, I want you to know that so much of who I am today is because of Jeff Oestreicher.

We all have so many things to do and so much responsibility. I reached a point earlier on in my life when I knew that something needed to shift for me. Doing it all was no longer an option. This led me to create a two-question filter system I use now whenever I am presented with a new work project or a social event. I have found this filter system works so well that I now share it with my clients and they are finding it beneficial too. The good part? It is so easy. It feels like common sense, yet pausing to ask yourself these two questions can completely change the way you work.