Laura Balsamo, ACC

I attribute all of my success to the fact that people are willing to ask for help. I wouldn't know what I was good at if people never expressed the need - it's like you may not know that you're an amazing chef if no one ever tells you that they're hungry. Maybe that's just the way I see my strengths and abilities and talents, based on reflection. For me, I haven't really discovered or realized that I'm really talented at something until someone else needs it. As far as my individual talent, I would say my ability to show up with vulnerability. One of my clients wrote a LinkedIn post about me coaching, and he said that my ability to wear all of my colors on my sleeve and show vulnerability invites my clients to do the same, and he said that is the crux of her power. The ability to do that is like, hey, nice to meet you, here's what's confidential, I'm kind of a mess, do you want to share? And that moves things, because we usually don't allow adults the grace to be messy or insecure or afraid. I think I have the ability to create a space that says, yeah, you can be a disaster, but we gotta work on that disaster, but we'll do it together.

The best advice I've ever received is to never assume ill intent. When we assume ill intent, we can tell ourselves one hell of a story, and in that story, we're never empowered, we're never strong. When we assume ill intent, the narrative is that we're not the narrator in our own story - we're like a victim of our circumstance. But if you don't even have to assume positive intent, you can just not attach intent to it at all. Very few people do things with malice. Sometimes we hurt people or we make mistakes, but that was never our intent. My leader taught me this, and she would never interrupt me and never dismiss me. She would ask me, how do you know that she doesn't respect you? And I would say, well, because she didn't have me on the meeting invite. And she'd say, how do you know that was connected to the level of respect for you? Is there a possibility that they could have just overlooked typing your name? I don't get to be a victim in that circumstance.

Don't apologize for caring, and don't apologize for trying. Caring, or nurturing, or emotion can be seen as weaknesses for women in the workplace and can get easily minimized, but when you combine that ability to care with bravery and confidence, it's a superpower. I work with some amazing men who know how to harness our ability to care - strong male leaders know how to respect and harness female leaders' ability to approach things from a space that they don't know how. When you're trying to break into this industry and you're told no, or you're turned down, or you're given pushback, don't apologize for caring, don't apologize for trying, and assume that they're wrong. If someone minimizes your impact or your talent, assume that they don't understand, and just push the button again. My boss taught me early on that I would never make coffee for a man in the workplace. She said women like her had to make coffee for men so that women like me don't have to, and she told me to never go backward.

The biggest challenges in my field as a coach right now are twofold. First, there's the challenge in business and marketing - coaching can be so broad that you can call anyone a coach or anything a coach, and every once in a while it's kind of poked fun of, like 'oh yeah, you're a life coach.' So there's a challenge in communicating the value of what we can do for people when the coaching paintbrush is so broad. The second challenge is on an individual coach basis - really making sure that we compartmentalize our clients or our sessions, that we are able to wipe the slate clean and not carry everyone's everything. We hear hard stuff. We have clients tell us things that they have never told someone. I had a client who had been turned down for a job several times, and in his first session he finally said his dad told him when he was younger that he wouldn't amount to jack shit, and every time he applied for a job and they turned him down, he heard his dad's voice. That came out in a coaching session about interview skills. So the challenge is hearing these deeply personal things and not bringing them into our personal lives.

The values that are most important to me are understanding that everything is a big deal to people - whether I'm coaching an executive who lost funding for a million-dollar project or a frontline employee who lost thirty dollars in overtime, their situation is real to them, and I need to sit in the swamp with them for a minute. That's where life happens. I also value the power of silence - utilizing silence for quiet reflection, even for just ten seconds, can be incredibly powerful when you create a safe space for folks. I'm very optimistic, always believing there's a way forward, but I have to keep that in check to make sure I'm not being toxically positive and dismissing someone's experience. I need to make sure my optimism doesn't prevent me from sitting in the swamp with someone. Another core value is seeing people for people, knowing that people are complex, and that's okay. Even with my kids, who are teenagers living in this complicated world with social media and this social construct, things are a big deal to them, and I need to honor that.