Dedra Pritchard

I definitely attribute my success to having a growth mindset and commitment to self-development. I believe in slowing down to do the work on yourself so that when you face obstacles and challenges, you have the confidence to persevere and push through versus creating excuses about why something happened. This allows for ownership and being more solution-minded than problem-focused. There will always be problems, but we need more solution-oriented people, and even if you don't have the full solution, just creating a way to move forward past situations, hopefully quicker and quicker. I also attribute my success to the different coaches and mentors I've sought out who have taken time to sit side-saddle with me and pour into me as much as I hoped I was pouring back into them. I've been really careful about the people I surround myself with, creating teams where we all elevate one another and are there for each other.

One of the most impactful pieces of career advice came when I sought out feedback from one of my leaders. They told me I was great at certain things, but there were areas for opportunity, and one of the main areas was my comfort around executive-level leadership. That was a blind spot for me at the time - I didn't know it was visible. But because I had the courage to seek out that feedback and actually received it, I sought out mentorship from an executive-level person. That relationship and getting comfortable with that individual really opened me up to being able to feel confident and authentic in having conversations with other people at the executive level. It helped me find my leadership voice and get comfortable around different levels of leadership that carry different psychological sides.

I would definitely say that with a lot of different external headwinds, the biggest challenge is focusing on the things that you can control versus the ones that you can't. Within the things that are in your control are the way that you personally move through obstacles. So once again, it comes back to that self-work, and the more comfortable you can get with yourself, the more authentically you can show up. I truly believe that only good things come through when you're able to get into that space, but it does require doing a little bit of the behind-the-scenes work to do so.

Teamwork is definitely a really strong value of mine. I have a sports background, but even outside of that, it has always come more natural for me to think team first than self first. I always try to surround myself with people who not only think similarly but know we're better together than we are apart, and are great team players. I fully support my team, whether that's my home team, my family, my friends, or my coworkers, and I look for people who mutually give that back to me as well. My other core value is integrity. When I talk about integrity, a lot of people can confuse that with trust. Trust is very important to me, but integrity means being truthful to yourself first so you can be truthful with other people. Sometimes when there's a disconnect with you being able to be honest with yourself, it's very hard to communicate your own wants and needs that build trust over time with individuals. I also believe we all give and receive trust differently and need to know what to do to repair trust when it's inevitably broken in relationships. I encourage myself and the people I work with to be honest with themselves first, and I slow them down to make sure they have enough time for self-reflection to get good with what they want and need so they can properly communicate that out. When we're all doing that and being authentic to ourselves first, then you can really put yourself in a place to feel valued and seen. My third big value is self-worth. The way that I carry myself, not only externally but internally, and the way that I talk to myself is very important because that inner critic is always listening. You want to make sure that the way you talk to yourself is what you want to be represented externally too. There's enough going on out in the world that can bring you down, so just making sure that you have that relationship right with the person in the mirror first. If you put that focus there, then all the other pieces will come into place too. How that translates to my leadership style is I don't allow people around me to talk negatively about themselves. I catch them in the moment if I hear things, and vice versa, if I'm doing it out of habit or something, just creating an environment where we can all challenge each other in that space.