Episode 25: Pamela Potts | Breaking the Leadership Ceiling

Wow. I am so excited for you all to hear our next guest, Pamela Pott. She's got over thirty years experience developing leaders and teams. She's an entrepreneur herself, and she really can help guide you with clarity, confidence, and purpose.

Her mission is to empower leaders to show up as their authentic, energized self so that they can build healthier teams, create cultures of trust, and achieve sustainable purpose driven results. She's a sought after speaker, coach, and the author of Every Leader is a Coach.

So without further ado, here's Pamela. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Power Up Your Life podcast brought to you by GoBundance Women. I'm Kelly Resendez. And I'm Mandy McAllister. And I'm so excited to introduce Pamela Potts today. We are so thrilled to have you. So go ahead and just introduce yourself just briefly. Give us a little bit of your background.

Yes. Thank you. Well, I'm excited to be here today, and, I am an author and a speaker and an executive coach. I have been in the training and development industry for a lot of my career and, have had the opportunity to be around a lot of technical I've I've got into technical training in my early days, and started actually, with a larger company and then went out on my own and have kind of had this serial entrepreneurship, that I've been involved with, several different businesses that have started, a couple that I've sold and exited and a couple that I've had to close.

So I've been through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship and, but I know that leadership to me is everything. And that is that is really the focus of what I talk about is leadership and helping people find their best when they're at their best and how to then incorporate that and and unlock their own potential and the potential in others.

Yeah. What would you I'm gonna dig into that a little bit. Because, like, there's so much information on who we need to be. What do you see are the top ways that leaders are actually sabotaging their own success today?

That's a great question. I I really do believe that comparison is the biggest thief. Mhmm. When we compare ourselves at the stage that we're at with somebody that is successful that we see, we don't always see all the work and how they got to that place, but we see the results, and we compare our story of our journey to their results, and that steals our greatness.

That's a big one. Absolutely.

Love that. I've got to imagine that is a pattern that you see across all of your clients. Are are there maybe two or three more patterns of, you know, things that put a ceiling on growth that you see in these executives that you could tell us about?

Yeah. I you know, we get in our own way. I think that's the biggest thing we get in our way own way. We have set expectations that we think are really important and we hustle and we grind. And when we don't know ourselves deep enough to really know where's our sweet spot, what do we want? Where are we? What is, what is worth it to me?

The energy that I'm gonna give and the focus that I'm going to give? Those are the important questions that we have to ask, and we have to know what that is because we put a ceiling in ourselves because we get past our own. What, as John Maxwell talks about our own leadership lid, we don't even realize how we're holding ourselves back, but we have to decide what is it that we're wanting? What's worth it for me to push through and to be able to like, what does success actually look like?

And am I, am I really defining success as things or what is it that I want for legacy? What's my legacy? What how do I wanna be remembered? Whether it's remembered, you know, long term. Right? Or, like, when I walk in the room, what do I want people to feel? How do I wanna be remembered for that every

day? Yeah. That's so important. I'm gonna give you a really tough one right now because I think this is I think you probably see a lot of it, especially as people are, I wanna say, becoming vintage leaders like myself. You know, productivity and and responsibility drives so much of us in the early half of our lives. Right? Mhmm. We've it just says, like, we have to do these things because we've got kids or this. And then you get to this point where you're like, oh my gosh. Like, now that I don't have that, like, where do I where do I really find that inner drive, you know, that comes from? How do you how do you help people find that?

That's such a good question. I see that happen all the time, and don't we all, like, really want to be successful? And don't we want to strive? And so we well, maybe not strive, but we really do want, we want to be at our best. Well, I think truly we do wanna do that.

And that productivity responsibility, here's the big difference, is that we often do what we're really, really good at, And we think that's what deserves our time and attention. And what we're good at, if it doesn't give us energy and joy, we miss out. And I know that I've been there because I know I was really good at things. And so I was pushing, pushing, pushing, and I realized actually, you know what? This is not my energy. This is draining me.

And when I could stop away, what is draining me from what gives me energy, that was a game changer. It became different than a strength and a weakness. It became the energy conversation was different. It didn't make me feel insecure when I said, oh, that's actually draining for me. So how let me let me give you a little story about that.

I was teaching, I was teaching a junior college and doing consulting. Those are the two things that I was doing, for a while, for many years actually. And my teaching was very technical. I got into come, lot of coding and and database development and things like that. So I here I am teaching people these difficult things and trying to really encourage them, give them step by steps, and I could pick out if you miss a bracket or miss one little letter, your code is not good. It's it doesn't work. So I could go by and look at people's code and help them, and it was great. Love that part of it.

And then I of course, when when you're good at something, people, if you have that know you, like you, trust you, they want you to do your work. So then I did a lot of consulting, a lot of database development, a lot of coding, and got myself into web development and doing front end development. And I was really good at it, but I did not I realized I didn't enjoy it. I kept procrastinating when I had these big projects to do, I kept procrastinating, and I would think, oh my gosh, I've got to have better time management. I need to do this differently. What is my problem? Why, you know, why am I doing it this way? And I I would get so frustrated with myself.

And I realized that just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should give the time and energy to it. So when I realized, oh, okay. I'm really good at this, but I don't like the coding part of it. I like the teaching part of it. The teaching, the people part of it gave me the energy. The other things I've been doing would have drained me. Me and the computer for hours and hours and hours drained me. It did no no longer did it deserve my time.

Oh.

And I shifted gears. It gave me clarity clarity on shifting gears and going into another career path, that could use my skills and not train all of my energy and just leave me frustrated and burned out.

Wow. What an important distinction of that fill you with energy versus deplete you. You know, we have lots of members of of GoBundance Women who have made big changes. Right? You know, I left a w two in medical sales to lean into real estate investment. Kelly is now leaving her, you know, executive role at a company that she's worked with, and there's an identity associated with that. You know?

I am curious about the the clients that you work for. There's this, you know, visualization that I have of you're holding on to this branch, this this identity of where you've been, and you gotta let go of that branch to see if you're gonna fly. Talk me through that change of identity or the need to let go of something so that you can move on to what's next and better for you.

That's such a good question, Mandy. I have had a couple of really tough decisions in the past. And sometimes, I was with the corporation and end up getting reorganized, which is a gift because I was already feeling the pull of my heart. Like, I know there's changes coming. I know I need to make shift, but it's so hard to let go of that comfort and that check. So good for you. Both of you guys, I'm, like, making that big step.

When we can make that big step and I've often thought, do I need to have somebody else, like make that decision for me? Am I too, am I too scared to step into what's next? That's the biggest challenge. So letting go of comfort is hard. And when you have that identity of being this person to somebody else, I think that is really where, what I find to be true.

And I, you know, I talk to women, especially women all of the time that are just in this place of what's next for me. And what I wanna always go in and first do is like, who are you? It's one thing to read an assessment. It's another thing to actually activate it and feel it. So that energy discussion is the first thing first.

Okay. So I have what I call my Omo method, which is observe, map and optimize. So the first thing we have to do is we've got to slow down, down long enough to actually observe ourselves and pay attention to the energy, the energy enjoyment. If we don't really know how to, how, what is it that brings us joy, then how, how can we decide what is fulfilling for us? Is it just gonna be another JOB? Are we creating another job? Are we creating something that's gonna give us that fulfillment and that long term goal?

So that sometimes we make those changes just because we cannot stay where we're at. We we can't stand it. Why is that? Oftentimes, it's because we have a terrible boss. We haven't been modeled a good boss. And now we leave that, create something different for ourselves. And now we're trying to define what we're doing, but we have a bad model. And we that's a that's maybe a whole another conversation about that. Yeah. For sure.

But I think one of the things that we have to do is first of all, observe. Like, literally just observe. Don't judge it. I I ask people, do this with me, first of all. Promise me this, put your fingers up like you put it got boy Scouts or girl Scouts, right? Probably do this. First of all, be curious, stay curious. Don't judge. Just look at it, observe it. And if you can hold it with open hands, with an open mindset and, and just look at it, then we can map it.

Then we can start to see, okay, where are our energies? What is it? The patterns that we start seeing coming up over and over again, How can we do more of certain things and less of other things? How can I do more of what are the things that energize me Mhmm? That give me joy, and how I how can I do less of what journey that's the end of the day, that's really where we can find our most fulfillment?

But what specifically is what I like to call your formula for flow? When are you in that zone? That work feels so easy and effortless? That's the very thing that most people struggle with because they don't it's so easy. It doesn't feel like any big deal.

Yeah. Well, and it's it goes against superpower. It goes against, like, what we've actually been shown. Like, the grind you know, you gotta grind it out. You've gotta be resilient. You've gotta do all these other things, and that is a way. Right? You can become successful, worldly, taking that path.

But there's also this other path of, like, really just being in flow where you're magnetized and you're you're really just attracting what you desire. So thanks for sharing that.

What would you say is, like, an unconventional way that, like, if you get stuck or you're you're going through, like, a challenge, like, what's an unconventional way of of dealing with that for you?

Slow down. Slow down to speed up is what I'd like to say. Mhmm. So when we can slow down and observe and actually pay attention to what's really happening and define it and name it, then we can do something about it.

But it what we do is we just keep going, going, going. We hustle, we grind, we get it done, we focus, we finish, and then we're so exhausted and we're burned out that we don't have we don't have any mental capacity to be able to actually think about things. We're just like that. And now we're in a free mode.

Whereas, if we slow down, pay attention, stay curious, don't judge it, actually look at it, name it, get clarity, then we can learn how to do something different about it that's gonna give us a more of a long game instead of the short game. That's why we slow down so we can speed up.

Yeah. Oh, I I think that's so incredibly important. And in this, like, hustle culture,

like, the it seems that that's the only way in many cases, and it's such like a masculine energy. I think that the, you know, women especially need to lean in and slow down. You know?

Tell me about like, I I really think the opportunity to slow down is something that could be a daily ritual or something that is a recipe for moving things forward. Talk to me about your recipes or rituals that you do for yourself or that you help clients with.

Yes. So when it comes to rituals, I think it's so important that we create really good habits and new habits. So when I talk about slowdown, I'm gonna let's take a minute for that because I think the thing that we have to do is instead of saying, okay. I'm gonna and I love I love the journaling and been doing that for a long time. I think it's a good reflection time, but what about every day after every meeting, after this conversation, after what like, just take a moment with the okay. What went well? What energy did I feel? What was the struggle? Where did I feel like that little nudges or, or like, Oh, you know, whatever.

Don't judge it. Like literally don't judge it. Just stay curious about it so that we can get in a habit of reflection. We need a habit of reflection, not just at the end of the day, but take the moments that we might miss throughout the day. That would be my that's always my biggest recommendation is in just literally like I have people take a piece of paper.

Now this is really bright. I mean, it's not gonna be this, but take a piece of paper and literally on the piece of paper, go, what energized me? What drained me? Hey. What did I enjoy? What did I not enjoy? Mhmm. Hey. Literally just start making your list. Don't judge it. Just stay curious about it Yeah. and get in a habit of observing yourself. I love that. Do that, then you can do something about it, but you can't change what you don't see.

Yeah. Well, I just came up with a new term because as you were saying that, and I look back at what my life was was like, I was Zoom stacking. That's all I did. I had one Zoom on top of another Zoom, and I didn't even have time to go to the bathroom between most of them for the majority of my career. Right?

Especially when Zoom came in because we could become so efficient. We didn't have to drive. We didn't have to do any of these other things. So I'd find myself with nine to 12 Zoom meetings a day. You know?

So really being able to take a little bit of a moment to breathe and audit. You know, I kinda call it an abundance audit, in my world, but it is to it's to track that energy. Yeah. What mentors or how important is community to you to really strengthen where you are? You know, we're a part of GoBundance Women, which is a mastermind. How how important are is your environment to you?

You know, who you have around you is so important. First of all, we know that we become the average of what, who is around us, right? The five people that are around us. So it's really important that we pick wisely on that.

I also really believe that we're always maybe a little step ahead of somebody that we've, you know, we're a step ahead and we need to grab a hold of their hand. And also somebody else's a step ahead for us. And when we can have that idea of like, I want to be mentored and I want to mentor others, then what we do as women, especially is we lock arms. And when somebody trips, you're not gonna fall down because we now have a hand. Right? We've got some. And I that is so valuable to me is that we can be around other people that can listen and not judge us, but listen to us and just ask questions, like, coach us.

It's almost like having that pure coaching. I I think that's one of the things, like, you know, we've talked a little bit about, like, observing and things. I put it in this category of you need to self coach. You need to learn how to be a coach to people, which to me only means this. I mean, my book is called Every Leader is a Coach, so I'm pretty big into coaching.

But sometimes people realize, oh, okay. What does that actually mean? If I'm a leader, I'm you you want me to be a coach? I I don't have the credentials to do that. I don't whatever. Here's the question that I ask. All you have to do is listen, ask the questions and listen, don't listen to respond. And you're thinking already, like you're checked out because you, you heard something and you're trying to formulate your response. What you wanna do is listen to ask questions. Never come into this conversation with never having an answer. You're just listening to ask questions.

I love that. If we can surround ourselves with people that will ask us those questions and that we can ask them questions, we're not trying to problem solve. We're not trying to be the smartest person in the room. We are just literally linking arms with other people that might be a step ahead that we can learn from, or maybe they need to learn a little nugget from us because they're just

I will say you get two arms for a reason. One to pull yourself up and one to pull other people up along with you. And just because you're a step ahead in something doesn't mean that the same person that you're a step ahead of isn't a step ahead in some other part of life.

Right? Like, at GoBundance Women, we have our our pillars, the many different pillars of a really great life, and optimizing for all of them is so incredibly important. We set goals around them.

I'm curious about, the worst leadership advice that you hear out there. What is the worst piece of advice that is kind of common lore that you, are against in terms of what you lead on. Yeah.

I think whether it's the advice or my mind immediately went to the biggest leadership myth is that we have to know everything to lead. So I when I look at this, okay, we hire people to do a job, they do really great at their job, we get we promote them. K? And then we think that they're gonna be a leader, a great leader, just because they were so great as a high performer. Totally different skill set.

And here's the here's the deal. When we are our entrepreneurs and we have this idea for something awesome that we wanna create, most of the time, we can't do it alone because we don't have, we can learn everything, but is it worth my energy to learn everything? Is it worth my time and energy to push through every space? I mean, really, you've got to find you've got to find out this place where where what's mine to do and what's mine to find somebody else to do.

Now as entrepreneurs, we want to make sure that we get it done, so we have to sometimes we have to grind a little bit. K? But where I think that we have to shift our mindset from doing everything to instead of doing everything and doing it well, what are the things that are mine to do, and what do I have to do right now? But what is really mine to do is my end game, and then how can I actually work myself out of the job? I love it. Give away other things.

And what I found when I really got into this conversation about twelve years ago is when I really started understanding, like, this energy and draining that was such a life changing thing for me. It just gave me so much freedom to, like, really step into who I am when I realized, like, again, I can do it all. I just can't give the energy to it and really love it. And it I love that. That was a a big separation for me.

But when one of the things that is, a mindset that I had is if it's draining for me, I don't want to give it to somebody else. Cause I felt bad that I'm going to give them work that I don't like to do. And that is the biggest shift that we've got to have in our mind is like, when I don't love it, somebody else is going to love it. So if I don't give it to them, I'm giving away their joy and doing their best work potentially.

Yeah. Well, Pamela, you've been absolutely awesome today, and I'm just gonna share a couple things that really hit for me. I'm a big energy person as well, and I think giving yourself permission for anyone listening to really start to look at your energy. And maybe it's gonna take you time to be able to make a shift or leave your w two and go into entrepreneurship or find something new, but really just being able to know there's a different way. You know, that really is what what landed most.

And then, you know, just this idea that, you know, as leaders, we really do need to work on our leadership coaching skills and being a really good listener is so important to that. So, Mandy, what you got?

I loved the start by observing and the lead with curiosity. That's the thing Kelly and I talk about a lot, and I I need to I need that reminder. Thank you. And the idea that comparison is the biggest thief, oh, I see that too. I I so resonate with that. Thank you for that gift, Pamela.

Yeah. Thank you.

So I think it's also important. You've given so much to us. You give so much to your clients. We would love to know what is an introduction or a resource that would change the ball game for you so that our listeners can give back to you. Yes. Thank you. Well, I first of all, I have my book that I'd love to share with people,

And every leader is a coach, and it gets into some of these details about knowing yourself to lead first. So we get we have to do that first, and then how do you actually be a coach and lead your team? You know, to this place of a high performing team, not just a high performing individual, but a high performing team. So that's really what I love to do in in doing that work.

And I'm happy to share a link with you so people can download a book for free.

Amazing. Thank you. What's that link? Just share it now so we make sure we get it out there. Okay. I I will give it to you. It's a

long link. So

fifty years of coach.com, slash ebook.

Okay. And I'll make sure that that link goes to where it needs to go. Okay. Perfect. Well, Pamela, you've been an amazing guest, and thank you guys all for joining the Power Up Your Life podcast. If you know of someone out there that really wants to feel supported, have them check out Pamela's work, share, like this, or check out coabundancewomen.com.

We'd love to see you there. Great mentorship community for anybody really looking to scale where they're going without sacrifice. So thank you again, Pamela, and have an amazing day. Thank you. And thank you for all the great you work you guys have done too. Thank you. See you too.