I have been an Executive Coach for 15 years. Before that, I was a vice president in the business. So I understand both sides of the equation. If you are a CEO, HR leader, or someone else tasked with managing leadership development, this article is an important read for you.

The difference between an ultra-successful development strategy untilizing executive coaching and an okay one is the systemic coaching approach. This requires a little bit of effort on the part of the coach and the organization, but the extra steps are well worth it!

I am no stranger to overwhelm. As a sole parent who is trying her best to raise her children to live their lives to the fullest (and still take part in activities at the same level as if two parents were supporting this), plus work, and my own life, it can feel like a lot. Add in some perimenopausal hormones and it may seem like the perfect storm of overwhelm.

Lately, I have been doing a lot of reflection and reading about overwhelm. In my line of work as an Executive Coach, overwhelm is something I see often in my clients. It robs us of our quality of life and our peace of mind. When we feel overwhelmed, it can lead us to feel we are in too deep, doing too much, out of control, with a lot of pressure.

We are never going to live our best lives or do our best work from this place. But, overwhelm isn’t all bad. Let me explain

For my entire adult life, I have been a Type A personality. I am driven, ambitious, and goal-oriented. If you are like me, you know the pros around this way of being is that you tend to achieve.

But the downside of wiring yourself to lead and live like this is there is little peace in your mind. You are always thinking, strategizing, and planning. Eventually, this can lead to a feeling of never being in the moment because your brain is always swirling around. And before you know it, this becomes the way our lives are conducted as days roll into years and even though we are achieving, we are really not fully living.

How does Mindfulness do all of this?

As leaders, we are familiar with discussing people issues with our Executive team. We want to retain top talent and keep them engaged. But, what if the trend now is the actual leaders themselves are feeling a lack of engagement and motivation? As an Executive Coach, I am seeing that trend with some top leaders. If you or others in your organization are feeling this way, here are some things I want you to know.

After I suffered a severe concussion 12 years ago when I fainted and smashed my head off the concrete floor, I was told the only form of treatment was to go home and lie in the dark until at least some of the brain pain subsided.

I lay in my darkened bedroom for 11 days. There was no stimulation of any kind allowed - no music, podcasts, cell phones, TV, even conversations with my husband. And, my baby girls had to be sent to my parents’ house. I didn’t see the sky, or anything outside of my room, other than the ensuite bathroom for 11 full days.

One of the first things I remember when coming out of the darkened room is the details of everything. The bright blue sky. The vibrant green of the trees. The way the wind felt as it caressed my skin in the sunlight

We all have moments. Moments to live. Moments to die. To get that big promotion and to have our hearts broken. As I sat with my daughters at an arena on Sunday watching a championship ringette game, we saw an overtime-winning goal being scored. There was cheering, hugging, and joy for many in that building. At the same time, in a hospital room 6 hours away, my 65-year-old Aunt Gail took her final breath on this Earth. She passed away at 1:15 p.m. And there was tremendous sorrow for her children and siblings who were there at the hospital.

I would not consider myself the most patient of people. I know that a lot of my Type A, hard-driving Executive Coaching clients find themselves in the same boat. Over the years, I have moved the dial in my level of patience but I still have room to grow.

On a recent retreat, I found myself standing outside this Labyrinth. I have walked Labryths before. Normally, I focus on walking mindfully. I am aware of the feel of my body, my feet crackling on the dried fallen cedar branches crushing against small pebbles embedded within the soil. But, this time I found my intention to be different. As I started the walk, I tried to shut off thoughts from my brain and just trust my body to find its way through this winding path.

As an Executive Coach, I work with a lot of leaders to prepare them for entering into and then succeeding within C-level roles. What is important for people interested in entering into the top tier of leadership to develop and know to set themselves up for success? Here is a summary of my top tips…

Feminine energy is when you relax into who you are more deep in your core and take the time to really connect with people. It is not about hard drive or competition. It is looking at opportunities and challenges with an open heart and asking yourself what is possible and using your gut instinct to take steps towards that, being patient with yourself and others along the way. It is caring. Kind. But, also honest.

If a project isn’t going as planned, someone leaning into their feminine energy wouldn’t ignore the issue. They would pause and ask themselves, as much with their intuition as their head, what is going on here? They would then communicate openly with the team from a place of vulnerability (and of not having all the answers) to work together to rally the troops and take steps to get to the goal. The process is just as important to the goal from a feminine perspective. People in this realm feel they are doing the right thing every step of the way and if not, they listen to themselves and others until it is resolved openly.

Resilience is something we develop when we go through tough experiences. I think of my Dad when I describe this. Growing up, we had a lovely,well-manicured yard. My Dad wouldn’t have ever thought about hiring a maintenance crew. He did it all himself with the help of my Mom for planting and watering Other than that, it was all Dad. He would shovel and hoe almost every day. When I looked at the inside of his hands, they had callouses on them from the use of these gardening tools over time. These callouses emerged because tough work had required them to grow to help my Dad’s hands to be able to do everything that his life was telling them through experience he needed to do. The callouses helped him to carry through. To handle the tough stuff better.

And that is exactly how we grow our resilience. We develop this inner strength over time because we have to. This growth does not feel so comfortable at the time and often can feel like pain, but it forces us to shift and change to be able to carry the heavier load more efficiently.

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: