Welcome to Energy Leadership Advisors: a new kind of executive coaching and business advisory service that helps create unique self-awareness to accelerate leadership growth.
For those that know me, you may be familiar with my career in the Navy and the Energy Industry. What you may not know is how unfulfilling many years of my life were because I didn’t have a healthy perspective on leadership. After chasing goals and achievements, I received some wise words that helped me not only re-frame my own life, but develop the principles that would shape my work with Energy Leadership Advisors.
The advice? You may achieve success along the way, but it won’t mean anything if you don’t enjoy the journey.
Once I realized I could achieve personal satisfaction from leadership, and not just achieving the next goal, my life changed. I was still the high-performing problem-solver I’d always been, but my life had a new sense of balance and peace. Now, I’m supporting leaders as a business advisor and executive coach, helping high-achievers and teams solve problems, grow their skills, achieve measurable results, and of course, derive deep personal satisfaction from their work.
What Does a Business Advisor Do? What Does an Executive Coach Do?
A business advisor can help you make strategic business decisions, improve operations, and solve problems. An executive coach can help senior leaders improve their individual performance, enhance their leadership skills, and achieve professional growth. Typically, business advisors and executive coaches are separate functions, performed by different people. But all too often, leadership challenges go hand-in-hand with business challenges since it all gets down to people. There’s much truth to the saying that culture eats strategy for lunch every time.
What makes Energy Leadership Advisors different is that you get both services at once. I’ve spent the majority of my career in high-pressure, leadership positions. I know how to solve complex business problems in tremendously stressful environments. I also know how to coach high-performing people and teams, supporting them in achieving measurable and lasting results.
In my experience, the key to lifelong satisfaction is to root your work in values and principles. My personal leadership principles are:
- Person of character
- Puts people first
- Skilled communicator
- Compassionate collaborator
- Big picture thinker with foresight
Each of these headings contains additional and actionable characteristics of effective leadership behavior and I enjoy sharing my perspective and unique stories supporting these principles. Of course, there are many other leadership concepts that compliment these core ideas. But I’ve found that when you start with a personal articulation of your leadership principles, all other leadership challenges and opportunities can be approached in a manner consistent with your values.
When you work with Energy Leadership Advisors, you’re not getting just a business advisor or just an executive coach. You’re getting both from a principled person who’s been in the arena time and time again—and that’s what makes the work of Energy Leadership Advisors so impactful.
What Leadership Means at Energy Leadership Advisors
When I was at Consumers Energy in 2019, the worst possible thing went wrong: a fire at a facility responsible for supplying natural gas to help heat half the homes in Michigan. On the coldest day of the year, five million people would be without heat—unless I, and the team relying on me, acted quickly and decisively to find a solution.
This scenario was one of those situations we all hoped would never happen—we knew the facility becoming completely unavailable would be potentially catastrophic, but for various economic and practical reasons, didn’t have a plan to provide a complete backup. I remember getting the call about the fire, and I just felt that sinking feeling in my gut. I momentarily felt a deep sense of paralysis until my boss shared some impactful advice: “This situation isn’t a disaster, it’s a time to lead.” And I realized that I could either show up or I could not. Everything I’d worked for was leading up to that moment. And even though I still didn’t have all the answers, I decided to show up.
I eventually found myself on the phone with a freshly-elected Governor, who soon made an emergency plea to the entire State, asking people to turn their heat down to make sure we had enough gas for everyone to stay warm, while repairs and backup plans were put into place.. And it worked. No one went without heat that night.
I founded Energy Leadership Advisors for moments like these. Moments when it’s worse than your wildest imagination, a moment in truth, we hope never comes. But when they do, you’ll be ready for it. And in preparing for the unimaginable, you’ll become a better leader every day along the way.
Energy Leadership Advisors: Developing Personal Leadership Skills for any Scenario
Challenges like the one I faced in my energy career happen to people all the time. Whether it’s because of an unexpected incident at a facility or simply the chaos and uncertainty of the modern age, it’s normal to have moments of panic and indecision. What sets leaders apart is their ability to push through and lead.
Leaders deserve the safety and confidentiality of a coaching relationship to help them identify and process what they need to be successful. They also deserve to have an objective resource who can help them solve complex problems when they need it. Together, we help leaders develop the tools they need to prepare for the unimaginable while improving their everyday leadership skills and achieving measurable goals.
Contact Energy Leadership Advisors for a Free Coaching Conversation
If you’d like more information about how I support leaders, or what I can do for your company or your talent development, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. I offer everyone a free 30-minute consultation to determine if I’m the right fit for your needs, as well as a free coaching conversation so you can “get a taste” of what working together will entail. You can fill out the form on my website to get started. I look forward to hearing from you!