How Tragedy Made Me Work Harder
As a lifelong New Yorker, I have always had a great love for my city and its iconic skyline. Growing up on Staten Island I had the best of both worlds – a safe, quiet suburban environment juxtaposed with the excitement of the big city. It was a satisfying blend of chaos and calm. As a teenager I would take the Staten Island Ferry into Manhattan and bop around Greenwich Village going to the record and vintage clothing shops. The Ferry was the best tour, a free trip past the Statue of Liberty and a dramatic approach to the buildings that made up downtown Manhattan. No building was more awe inspiring to me than the World Trade Center. Even as a young girl, making that approach by boat, I knew then that I would make Manhattan my home and that I would someday “make it there”.
After earning my MBA, I moved into Manhattan and began to build my adult life. A life that included a significant other who was a stereotypical Wall Street Warrior. Working hard and playing hard was an understatement. We had a lot of highs and lows during our relationship. We led a life that was very pretty looking from the outside but from the inside it could be very dark. While my personal life was fraught with chaos, I had my rock – my job. My one companion that was stable and true. I was again living a life of contrasts – one part was very secure and the other was the opposite.
Work for me had always been a great escape because it was a place that was, for the most part, emotion free. Throwing myself into work brought good things. I gained recognition and was rewarded for my hard work. The more I put into it the more I got out of it. Personal unrest led to greater professional achievement. My chaos and calm paradigm came to the forefront in September 2001. That time in my life is one about which I speak very little. I had a full view of the events from three blocks away and my significant other worked and died on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center. The details of that day are burned in my memory from the time he left our apartment to his final goodbye on my work phone to walking home through rubble, dust and despair. Like for so many that day, my world had been turned upside down. The events of 9/11 and their aftermath shaped my career in significant and meaningful ways that still resonate with me today.
Post-9/11 I had to regroup and learn to live in my new reality. In the months that followed I learned three powerful lessons:
When in Doubt, Go With What You Know – I dove more deeply into my safe space, which was at this stage my job. Around the office my colleagues treated me as if nothing had happened. Being in that environment helped me heal. It helped me get back to being me, not the me who lost someone in 9/11. Me, the competent woman who could lead teams and get stuff done. It was no one’s job to baby me or feel sorry for me. It was a place where everything was “normal”. There was a job to do and there were expectations on me that needed to be met. I had no choice but to step up.
Moving Forward is the Only Option – With a traumatic event getting caught up in the “what ifs” and the “what could have beens” is inevitable. I rewrote the scenarios of 9/11 in my mind over and over. In a way, I felt that I had to because it was my way of never forgetting. I had to do a lot of work to accept that letting go didn’t mean I didn’t love or didn’t hurt or didn’t care. It simply meant that I had to live. Part of living for me was accomplishing things. What better place to accomplish than on the job? Simply driving toward finishing job tasks pulled me back to a place where I could look ahead to what was next rather than staying stuck in what could no longer be.
Count on Yourself – I can’t say this enough. Unfortunately, it’s a concept that many women discount. No spouse, company or family member will take as good care of you as you will of yourself. Financial dependence is not something to aspire to. Be capable, do the work, make a difference and you’ll reap the greatest benefit – independence.
Life is a series of tests, both personal and professional. We truly don’t know what we’re capable of until we’re pushed to our limits. For me, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross sums it up best…“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss and have found their way out of those depths.”
This blog appeared on The Huffington Post August 5, 2016. http://huff.to/2bsPa2Y
Valiant Mind
Many people have asked me about the origin of the Valiant Mind name. Rather than leave the mystery out there, I thought I’d take to my blog to explain. I grew up in Staten Island, NY. Anyone who’s familiar with the 5 Boroughs of New York City knows that Staten Island has a small-town feel in a quasi-urban environment. To this day, Staten Island remains the only borough without a subway and the only without an inter-borough rail system. The only ways off the island are the Staten Island Ferry, buses or cars.
And speaking of cars, my first car memory is of a brown Plymouth Valiant that my parents owned. As a young girl, I thought it was really exciting that the car and I had the same first 3 letters of our names. Valiant and Valerie, it was serendipitous to a 7 year old! When it was time to scrap the car, my father took the logo off the side for me. I’m sure that classic, silver Valiant logo is tucked away in a box somewhere only to be uncovered when it’s time for an attic overhaul.
It wasn’t until I was in the early stages of forming my business that the Valiant name popped into my head. I was trying iteration after iteration of my first and last name with the word “consulting” attached. Nothing felt right. After a day or two of naming struggles, a trusted mentor and marketing expert suggested I forgo something literal and use a word that had special meaning. I started playing word games with myself. Still nothing felt right. One night while trying to get to sleep an image of the Valiant popped into my head. That was it! Valiant! The next morning, I scrambled to look up the meaning of the word Valiant. It’s defined as possessing or showing courage or determination. Valiant felt right. It was in the few moments after where Valiant Mind came to life. What resonates most to me is the tie-in to my company name and my brand promise: dependability, authenticity and empathy. Giving my clients the peace of mind to know that when something is in my hands the job will get done. Just like that trusty brown Valiant got us wherever we needed to go.
The Art of the Process
Last fall I was chosen to lead a component of my child’s school auction. The auction is the largest fundraiser the school holds each year. Making the auction happen requires partnership among parent volunteers, vendors, artists, businesses within the community, teachers, school administrators, maintenance staff, and a host of others. My piece of this intricate puzzle was to manage the art auction inventory. When I was first asked, I wondered why someone with a financial services background would be needed for anything closely related to art and the art world. The auction chairs’ vote of confidence stemmed from two things: my organizational skills, and my ability to work with anybody and everybody. Sound like project management put to work in a non-work setting? You bet!
My job for six months was to manage the art inventory, which amounted to 100 plus pieces of art valued in total at close to $300,000. Breaking this down into process, there were three main components to my role: art intake, documentation and delivery. Get the donations cataloged, get the artwork in the door, get it ready for installation. This simple breakdown is something that comes easily for process-oriented, left-brained thinkers. The trick was applying this in the right-brained artistic realm. In previous posts I’ve written about the combination of left and right-brained thinking into a comprehensive approach. My consulting business, Valiant Mind, is based on this very premise. The winning combination in the auction scenario was appreciation and respect for the artistic process and by extension the artists themselves coupled with the most fundamental of tools, the Excel Spreadsheet. A very simple spreadsheet outlining the artwork, its donor, its value became the main communication and tracking vehicle for all involved. It was art in it’s own uncomplicated right. This was a case where the logical side (process, spreadsheet) and the creative side (empathy, curiosity, appreciation) worked together perfectly.
Once my job ended, the sum of my efforts was turned over to a team in charge of installing the artwork for the big event. This team was made up of professional artists, gallery owners and art experts. Watching this team in action was a great learning experience for a process geek like me. Even in a creative environment there is inherent logical process. For example, placement of artwork based on size, value and the buzz around the artist. The process was carefully thought through and executed upon seamlessly. What's more, the creative work was supported by the very same Excel Spreadsheet that bolstered the inventory piece. It was interesting to see fundamental tools and interpersonal skills come alive in a non-traditional working environment. When armed with Excel and empathy you're ready for anything!
Empathy: The Project Management X Factor
What’s the difference between a good product manager and a great one? Project Management at its core is about planning, managing and closing a work effort. It’s all about the execution. Can I get from Point A to Point B on time and within budget? I’ve worked with Project Managers throughout the years that took their role literally. The drive and desire to get to the finish line was paramount. The colleagues or related tasks left in the PM’s wake were not given a second thought. Anecdotally, these driven and task-oriented employees were praised as “good PM’s” with a “but”. They were good BUT no one wanted to work with them. When these highly functioning PMs were assigned to big projects that involved multiple cross-functional stakeholders the announcements were met with silent groans and eye rolls. Observing “good PMs” helped hone my own personal management style. Very early on I learned to value how I got the job done over just getting it done.
The great PM looks beyond the individual tasks and execution components of the project. He or she manages not only the project but also the community involved in delivery. The stressed manager, the overworked technologist, the business analyst who is spread too thinly. Dealing with and respecting the personalities and emotions involved separate the great PMs from the pack. Empathy, simply defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, is key. Empathy, an element of Emotional Intelligence, is often dismissed because it is confused with sympathy. And who isn’t sympathetic? That is a basic perception we all have as human beings. However, feeling bad for Joe who just got chewed out by his boss is not the same as understanding Joe’s upset.
Practically and tactically speaking, the information we ingest through empathetic interaction makes PM’s better listeners and ultimately more successful. This is so for two main reasons:
The empathetic ear can garner more support from stakeholders and the individuals required to complete project tasks. A PM without internal support and buy-in from the doers has greater difficulty closing individual tasks per plan.
The likability of the empathetic PM boosts the morale of the project team and rallies the doers to get their tasks completed.
Throughout my career I've seen PM's attempt to bring soft skills into their projects with mixed results. In my view, those who believed in the value of relating to their project teams were far more accomplished than those who never looked up from their project plans and opened their ears.