32. On Building Endurance for Work+Life & Effective Leadership with Katie Ceccarini

Overview

I’m thrilled to be joined in this episode by Katie Ceccarini, founder of Endurance Management Coaching. She is an executive coach and trainer who works with leaders to empower their vision and unleash their strengths. She is also an endurance athlete and mom.

In this conversation, we cover a lot of ground. Katie first shares her own career journey and her career transition to becoming a business owner, trainer, and coach. She shares what prompted her to leave Corporate, lean into what was drawing her next, and how a shift in life stage coupled with the pandemic led her to think differently about the work+life she wanted to craft for herself.

We delve into leadership and the work that Katie does as a coach. She shares tips on improving leader effectiveness and shares one of her pet peeves, the focus on “fake it till you make it.” She’d say it’s much more powerful to be vulnerable, be genuinely curious, and find footing in purpose and making it matter.

We close with some wise tips on how Katie leads a full life while staying in sync with her life vision and keeping herself sustained and whole.

Thanks so much for being on with me, Katie! SO many good, clear tenets you share in this episode for people to take forward and apply in their lives, careers, and as leaders.

More about Our Guest

Katie Ceccarini is the founder of Endurance Management Coaching. She is an executive coach and trainer who works with leaders to empower their vision and unleash their strengths. Her areas of expertise: coaching leaders to unleash their best selves and leading group trainings to increase management and leadership effectiveness. Katie brings to this work two decades of experience developing managers and leaders, facilitating thousands of hours of training sessions, and running her own high performing teams. Katie’s core principles as a people leader: care deeply, hold a high bar, and focus on strengths. In addition to her professional accomplishments, Katie is also a mom and triathlete.

Topics Covered

  • We start by having Katie share her career journey with us and what brought her to her current venture of running Endurance Boss. What I appreciate about Katie’s story, as you’ll hear, is how she paid attention (there it is again—pay attention!) to what she wanted to try next or what was lighting her up to inform her next career shift.

  • She also shares a simple but powerful guide—to pay attention to what energizes you and what drains you about your work and look to optimize what you are doing in your job around the learning to help you find more fulfillment.

  • What also informed Katie’s latest move? It’s something we talk about here at Sustainable Ambition, which is that life stage or what’s happening in one’s life can inform how you might want to craft your work-life structures to support the kind of life you want to live. For Katie, becoming a mom shifted her attention around how she was spending her time and how she wanted to shape her life going forward.

  • Katie gained comfort in taking the leap towards her own business and leaving corporate by first doing the internal work and recognizing that she’d never failed at anything, because her definition of failure is quitting. So, setting the right context was important for her.

  • Then, she also had the powerful conversation with her husband around the kind of life they wanted to lead, were willing to make choices to make it happen, and lowered their expectations around certain elements. Don’t let perceived barriers stop you from considering a change and working towards making it possible. What choices are you willing to make for the life you want to live?

  • What has Katie learned on the other side of this change? One that the stress is different, and actually better. Isn’t that interesting! And, that you can’t please everyone—focus on who you want to target and speak to—or if you’re still in a corporate setting, I might suggest, focus on your key stakeholders and be discerning of whose feedback you’ll listen to and act on.

  • What can leaders do to improve their effectiveness? Katie’s guidance—don’t over-complicate things, don’t get caught up in making assumptions, trust your instincts, give yourself permission, be generous with feedback and seeing and hearing your people coming from a space of caring, and demonstrate vulnerability. Another important, yet powerful construct—shift from telling to asking. Talk less and ask more questions; as a leader, be genuinely curious.

  • We delve into strengths and the need to both leverage them, but be careful about conflating specific skills or tasks you may like or not like doing with the actual strength you are leveraging. And pay attention to when you no longer want to be working with a particular strength or lean into a new one.

  • Katie is an endurance athlete, so she knows what it means to hit walls and push past barriers. I wanted to know her thoughts on working with limiting beliefs that might get in our way. She suggests that if you’re running into limiting beliefs, look towards purpose. Why do you want to do what you are doing? And, I love what Katie has to share, a new mantra—make it matter! As she said, “Make it matter, and when it matters, you make it happen.”

  • Katie shares some wise counsel in managing a full schedule: 1) on the mental side, let go of being awesome at everything at the same time, and 2) manage your calendar—for her, blocking her time first and the time that is sacred (e.g., picking up her son, training), and then fill things in around those elements.

  • How does she sustain herself? Taking care of herself first. Some say that’s selfish; she sees it as being selfless so that she shows up as her best self for others everyday.

  • Her final piece of advice—Life is short. If you aren’t satisfied with where you are now, make a change!

Resources Mentioned

Find Katie:

Other episodes mentioned:

Thanks for Listening!

  • I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Sustainable Ambition Listener Survey here

  • Submit a question or comment for future episodes here

  • Get my curated bi-weekly Sustainable Ambition Forum newsletter. Sign up here

32. On Building Endurance for Work+Life & Effective Leadership with Katie Ceccarini

Listen below or on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or Overcast.

Check out other episodes here. Be sure to subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or Overcast. If you enjoy the show, I would be very grateful for a rating and/or review! 

Sign-up for my Sustainable Ambition Forum newsletter to receive a bi-monthly round-up of content and the best tips, inspiration, resources, tools, books, podcasts, and more that we uncover to achieve Sustainable Ambition. We’re here to help you experience more fulfillment with more ease.

2021Kathy OnetoRight Aspiration, Right Effort, Right Success