Four Lessons on Career and Life from the Corner Office

You may have already done all the right things. You went to college. You studied hard. You even have a postgraduate degree. You have a nice family. You are dedicated to everything you do. But you may not be where you thought you’d be in your career or life right now.

Someone else got the promotion. Someone else has direct reports who compete to be on their team. Someone else seems happier. Someone else’s kids call them all the time. Someone else’s spouse is crazy about them. Someone else has a spouse.

As a 19+ year CEO of organizations worth up to $33 million as well as an executive coach there are repeating themes I observe in people who are destined for greatness that I'll share here.

I’ve not only walked a mile in your shoes, I’ve broken a few heels and changed shoes dozens of times, thinking that if I tried just one more thing, I’d be happier and more successful. I’m talking business books, self-help books, conferences, groups, courses, time management tools, changing friends, changing relationships, counseling, networking, retreats, informational interviews, to-do lists. The harder I tried, the more stuck I became.

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Know Your Grit Story

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Leaders hire, promote, and position colleagues to advance based on their ability to do one thing more than any other—adapt. If you can demonstrate how you have been resilient and tenacious, you are likely to achieve. That’s why I urge—know your grit story. You certainly don’t want to share all the intimate details of it with prospective hiring managers but defining what makes you unique in the area of persistence builds your confidence for when you are asked to talk about yourself. A grit story demonstrates how you addressed a challenge, your strategic thinking ability, and your execution skills.

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At the age of 35, I was a stay-at-home mother of four children under seven-years-old, living what looked on the outside to be the country club life, but behind closed doors was in an unpalatable marriage. Every day I used to weigh the merit of my children growing up with mom and dad together in dysfunction against the meaning of life with us separate. My biggest fear was that my girls would grow up and find themselves in a similar circumstance or my son would replicate the same. And I would be responsible. After all, it was okay for mom.

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When I noticed that a piece of my soul was dying and was completely void of hope, I finally filed for divorce as a leap of faith. However, I was not at all prepared for the avalanche that befell me. Within six months, my husband filed his businesses into bankruptcy on loans I had cosigned. He re-opened the business under a new name yet in the meantime, he canceled the children’s health insurance, shortly after which the children and I were homeless, on welfare, food stamps, medical assistance, and without a car. The children had to change schools midyear and were on the free lunch program.

I never saw this despair coming. Yet, the children managed it with grace. They made new friends with an open mind. They handled not having a dad at events with innocence. They treated poverty with humility. It was remarkable.

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I remember the day I took my two-year-old son with me to the gas company to plead for utility assistance and realized how grateful I was for these programs. I made a commitment right there, looking into my son’s sweet eyes as he played with an action figure in the chair beside me, that living on public assistance was not a way of life for us. It would be a bridge to freedom, not a boat circling the shore dependent on the weather to stay afloat.

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Being a child in a divorced family is difficult enough. Then to be a casualty of the war of divorce is way more than anyone can imagine until you live it. Today, my children are warm, caring, thoughtful, successful, well-adjusted young adults. Maria, Brianna, AJ, and Max survived this period in their lives and thrive today because they learned the most important skill of life early—how to cope and adapt. It amazes me how many people in the workforce do not have this skill or know how to develop it.

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What I will share with you is what I’ve learned by experience. These are not hypothetical theories but strategies that I’ve implemented, observed in my children, and seen the benefit of over years with my executive coaching clients.

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If you are to thrive, you must learn specific skills to cope with disappointment, realize hope for a vision you believe in, keep your childlike innocence, have front-sight focus to stay on track and thrive, and earn and influence the way happy people do. You can absolutely have your dream career and dream life.

But first, some things must be released, learned, and accepted.

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Recognize the Treadmill to Nowhere

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While I was DO-ing everything I could think of to improve my sense of accomplishment and happiness, I was getting farther and farther away from noticing the toll it took on my peace, my leadership, my relationships, and my family. I played to my strengths, had a dedicated work ethic, and always measured my successes that communicated my value. I became the CEO of a $26 million organization in a very short time. But I was working long hours, was detached from my children, and never really felt that I deserved to be happy. I was exhausted from continually having to prove myself on the treadmill to nowhere.

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I was living for the perception of others—my children, my boss, my board, the community, my parents, my friends, my colleagues. I wasn’t living for myself. I had lost “me” in the process of shame. I thought my success would earn me favor. I used it to cover up my depleted sense of self-worth. Deep down I was embarrassed that my marriage had failed, that my life had ended up in anguish, that my children had to live in poverty, and that I hadn’t been good enough to make it all work.

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Confidence is being competent and effective. I was, indeed, career confident. I secured jobs I was never qualified for on paper because I knew what to measure and had a reputation for exceeding any goal set before me. It wasn’t long before recruiters were calling me. I turned down prospective positions twice where counteroffers were made to secure me in place.

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By all accounts I was triumphant over tragedy. I bought a home half a mile from the one we’d lost in the most affluent suburb of our town. We went on vacations. The children were in sports and activities. They went to camps. We got a dog. We got another dog. We got two cats. I had finally arrived at the destination of what seemed like success. But it didn’t feel that way because I didn’t feel worthy to be happy.

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Why should I be comfortable with happiness because surely another challenge would rise-up and swipe it away? Of course, I didn’t deserve happiness, or all this would never have happened. Survival at all costs was my mantra.

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The corporations valued my results. But results came at a price. I saw my staff as soldiers and my family as my primary responsibility. I had difficulty seeing people as people—as individuals with fears, intimacy, needs, wants, and souls.

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I had difficulty seeing myself and my children that way too. Everybody was a path to survival. I remember one afternoon at the local swimming pool when my 8-yearold daughter, Brianna, came up to my chair and said, “Come on, Mom,” as she pulled my hand. “Get in and have some fun with us.” I couldn’t move. I didn’t know how to have fun. And worse, I didn’t think I had earned fun, so I didn’t know how to accept it when it was inviting me in.

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That’s when I began to understand the power that life messages hold on us.

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Stretch Your Safety Barometer.

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We are born into this world having come from the safe, protective, and soothing environment of our mother’s womb. We are thrust without choice into a cold and unfamiliar world where every moment holds a new experience. To survive we learn very early to trust our parents or primary caregivers. With our parents we belong—we are safe. Our parents teach us how to stay away from harm. We mirror their responses. And we begin to make sense of the world.

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What we don’t learn in childhood is that our experiences are one facet of life. Our interpretation of those experiences is another. Our early ancestors understood the role of safety for survival. They knew that in order to withstand the elements and feed themselves, men needed to hunt in a pack with women tending to children and home. Your existence hinged on belonging to a tribe. Your distinct role contributed to the survival of the tribe. If you were exiled from the tribe because you did not live by the tribe values, you were subject to carnivores, weather, the aggression of competing tribes, lack of safe shelter, and starvation. If you had to live alone, likely you would die. Just as at birth, a sense of belonging led to safety.

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We are programmed to fit in with others because historically that is where we are safe. As humans we are not calibrated to do it alone. And as we coexist with people we trust, sometimes we adopt philosophies from them that may not feel true to our core, leaving us with a sense of unrest. Conversely, as we coexist or work with people we don’t trust, we can interpret their wrath as an assault on us personally, leaving us feeling as if we don’t belong—an unsafe and unsettling feeling for sure. Either way, throughout our lives we have interpreted experiences through the filter of our safety barometer because self-preservation is our innate instinct. Am I safe or not? Those with a high safety threshold are risk-takers. Those with a low safety ceiling are more risk averse.

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Whether you want to skydive is not what’s important, though physical challenge is a sound way to build confidence and resilience. What is important is that you recognize how your safety barometer shows up in your career and relationships. When you feel threatened, defeated, dismissed, undervalued, personally attacked, or any number of negative emotions, and can’t self-regulate false assumptions in order to release them, you will likely do something you regret. The result of this can lead to doubt, worry, self-criticism, lashing out, anger, immaturity, judgment, self-judgment, inaction, or overcompensation. These thoughts and behaviors kill careers and relationships. They rob you of peace and executive presence. And the worst part is, once you’ve been stereotyped for these (not executive material, hothead, not a leader, not strong, too emotional), it is very difficult to undo the stereotype without a noticed behavior change.

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Lasso the Need to Be Right

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The need to be right is at the root of every argument, conflict, and war that ever existed. It’s a product of the ego needing validation. People who are difficult are also needy. If you work or live with someone who is difficult, they’re likely to be more amenable when they know you have their back or at least respect them.

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During my divorce and for years after, I needed validation that I was a good person, good wife, and good mother because I had adopted insurmountable shame about my situation. Though my ego needed external validation, I never asked for it because subconsciously I didn’t feel I deserved it. This resulted in a continual longing for legal justice that never came, for validation from my children who were then teenagers and hated their mom on a good day, and for romantic love that was fleeting for a single mother with four children. I wanted to belong somewhere. So, I spent many hours at work because I was good at that. Corporate America is a welcome recipient of your time and energy.

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As an executive coach, I counsel my clients dealing with colleagues who have big egos to find something about the difficult person they can authentically respect. It might be their dedication to the organization, their work ethic, their education. I suggest that my clients win trust by communicating their respect. The needy ego will appreciate the validation. This makes it easier to work together and to get what you want. But you must swallow pride and manage your own ego in the process. Keep your eyes on the ultimate goal. Not your need to have your own ego validated by them.

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I learned the art of patience by letting my children have their opinions of me without defending myself or needing them to validate me. They couldn’t possibly know what it was like to be in my shoes. Nobody could. We grew closer as a result of no expectations.

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I was learning to trade the treadmill to nowhere for the freedom of self-acceptance. I had to shed the need to be deemed “right” by external forces in my divorce, parenting, and life. Outside parties can judge you. Your children can judge you. Your colleagues and the community can judge you. It is you that must be true to your character and draw a boundary between what you will and will not allow.

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Permit them to be right about their judgment. It is incredibly liberating. You need not waste time, energy, or resources defending yourself only to feel defeated and exhausted when you can’t change their minds. You cannot convince fools of their foolishness. You can leave them to it.

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In this space you must feel as if you are safe and belong in the comfort of your own humanity and humility. Your job is not to win them over to convince your needy ego that you are right. Your job is to be safe in your own conviction that you need not be number one at anything but being yourself. Here you win respect.

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I remember another day at the local swimming pool where the parent of a classmate of one of my children asked me, “If your marriage was so bad, why did you have four children?”

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Recognize judgment for what it is—an offshoot of unhappiness. People who judge others judge themselves far worse. Happy people do not hurt one another.

I paused and thought about her question. In that space I had to lasso my ego because at first, I wanted to reach out and drown her. Once I set that thought aside with humor, I replied logically without emotion from a servant leader perspective, “Probably for the same reason you have two children. Nobody goes into a marriage thinking it will end. My children are the best part of my life. I would never resent my children. Would you?”

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This thing called life is a complicated engagement. Add into the mix your career and relationships, and you have a real menagerie of emotions, behaviors, and results. The happiest and most progressive people are the ones who can shake off self-doubt, know they belong anywhere they go, and accept joy as a part of their soul, not a condition.

If you want to be more valued at work, get Mary Lee' free Get Valued, Promoted and Hired Checklist at www.MaryLeeGannon.com

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About the Author

Mary Lee Gannon, ACC, CAE has a unique perspective as an award-winning certified executive coach, author, and 19-year corporate CEO who helps leaders have more effective careers, happier lives, and better relationships while it still matters. She is the founder of MaryLeeGannon.com , a coaching and consulting firm that helps leaders position their mindful impact—the same impact that took her from welfare to CEO of organizations worth up to $26 million. Mary Lee is an International Coach Federation Associate Certified Coach (ACC), An American Society of Association Executives Certified Association Executive (CAE), a Duquesne University Certified Professional Coach Graduate (CPC), a scholarship recipient of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute at Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership originated at Google, an alumnus of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Practices Program and the Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital Coaching in Medicine & Leadership Conference. She is the author of two books: Reinvent You—From Welfare to CEO and Starting Over.

Mary Lee’s personal turnaround came as a stay-at-home mother with four children under seven-years-old who endured a divorce that took her and her children from the country club life to public assistance from where she re-invented her life to support her family. Get her free Get Valued, Promoted and Hired Checklist at www.MaryLeeGannon.com . Contact Mary Lee at [email protected]