Pivoting Careers To Find Your Most Scalable Impact With Amii Barnard-Bahn

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There is nothing wrong if we can't settle into one profession. We’re all just trying to look for that thing that brings us joy and find ways to create the most impact. Today, Tony Martignetti talks to Amii Barnard-Bahn about her journey to finding where she can make the most impact. Amii is now the CEO and Founder of Barnard-Bahn Coaching & Consulting. But before that, she was a lawyer and worked for HR and corporate. Tune in to know why you should always check in with yourself once in a while. Also, learn more about the Promotability Index and her book, The PI Guidebook.

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Listen to the podcast here


Pivoting Careers To Find Your Most Scalable Impact With Amii Barnard-Bahn

It is my honor to introduce you to my guest, Amii Barnard-Bahn. She's a former Fortune Global 50 Executive and a consultant to the C-Suite Risk Management Professionals at global companies like Bank of the West, Adobe, and the Gap. She's recognized by Forbes as one of the top coaches for legal and compliance executives. A member of Marshall Goldsmith's 100 Coaches, AmiI’s guest lectures at Stanford and UC Berkeley.

She's a contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Compliance Week. She is a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Coaching, a creator of the Promotability Index, and an author of a companion book, which is the PI Guidebook. I have a copy here. Amii earned her Law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and her BA from Tufts. A lifelong diversity advocate, Amii testified for the successful passage of the first laws in the US requiring corporate boards to include women on board. You can receive her free Promotability Index Self-Assessment online. Amii is also a jazz and opera fan and she lives in Sacramento, California.

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It is my honor and pleasure to welcome you to the show, Amii.

Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

Me, too. I’m so thrilled to have this conversation and to uncover the journey you've taken to make a big impact in the world. Ever since the first time we met, I’ve always been impressed by the work you do.

Thank you.

What we do in the show is we take this moment to use flashpoint, these moments that have ignited your gifts into the world to see how these people who are making a big impact like yourself. How they arrived there and what is the journey that got them there? In these flashpoints, I’d love you to share some of the moments along your journey that have revealed who you are, and along the way, we'll pause and see what's showing up. With that, Amii, I’m going to pass it on to you and share what you're called to share.

I grew up in a small town in Connecticut to fairly conservative Southern parents. I was born in Texas and we transplanted pretty early on because my dad was in sales. Like a lot of marriages at that time, my mom was a stay-at-home mom and my father worked full time. It was very traditional. For some reason, I came out into the world feeling and seeing that a lot of things didn't seem the way they should be. There were a lot of opportunities for a lot of people that weren't open. At a pretty young age, I started noticing that, first for women, since I could identify with that most readily and it lit a fire in me that I’ve had all my life.

I started in college by working at disability relief centers outside of Boston. I worked with many disabled populations and learned a lot about the challenges there and then decided to go to Law school because I wanted to be better equipped to help change things. Having a Law degree seemed to be a good way to step into my own power because I wasn't super confident yet about what I could do and educate myself about the laws and the systems that we live in.

I went to Georgetown and then I had the great fortune to be a law clerk between my 1st and 2nd year at the ACLU. I got to help lobby through the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was one of the most meaningful times of my life. It was the summer of 1990. I worked for a brilliant woman who later become an EEOC Commissioner, the first openly gay and disabled EEOC commissioner high-field woman.

She's terrific. I learned a lot from her then the reality of law school loans set in and I realized I need to make money as my dad had been telling me all along but I’d been ignoring him as teenagers do. I wanted to move to California. I always had this desire to live near San Francisco. I’m a big opera fan. I often chose where I wanted to be based on the opera. Chicago seemed too cold. I’d already been all over the East Coast and I had family in the South. I thought, “The only place I haven't been is West Coast.” I went out, didn't know anybody, and worked for a litigation firm that did plaintiff and defense work, which was terrific.

It was a nonprestige firm, which wound up being a blessing in disguise because I got to do both plaintiff and defense work and I focused on labor and employment. I got to see both sides of the litigation, both employees who had potentially been wrong by their employer and then defending employers who were potentially being taken advantage of. It's nice because it keeps you honest. The attorneys who do one side or the other, and that's the way the system works, unfortunately. You can get stuck with one template way of thinking about the world that either all employers are terrible or all employees are terrible and I like to keep an open mind. That wasn't going to be it for me.

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After about three and a half years, I got some jury trial experience and other fun stuff law in motion, which helps me with my speaking now and thinking on my feet because you never know what the judge is going to want. I then decided I wasn't happy with the billable hour as the measure of worth. Money is not my number one motivator. It was a real values crisis for me. I was pretty lost for about a year. My husband was terrific and said, “Take a break.” I had never taken a break. I’m a type A and a straight-A student. It was scary. We didn't have kids, a house, or a mortgage. It was a perfect time to take that.

I would tell that to anyone at that time. I’m so glad I did it. I was lost and wandering for about a year. I did the most random jobs temping and all kinds of funky stuff for a year, and I found my way to HR. I realized that what I didn't like about litigation was that it felt like such a waste of money, huge emotions, lots of drama, and no one's ever happy either you're suing someone or you're being sued. Most of the time I found that the issues could have been resolved on the front end in the company by either treating people with more respect, documenting better, having a more honest and open conversation, a more direct, hopefully still kind, but direct conversation if someone wasn't performing. It's because people will make up their own reasons if you don't tell them why.

At least in my litigation, a lot of people weren't told why then they said, “It was because of my age or this.” I’d then look behind the curtain and it's like, “There's no evidence for that. Why didn't you tell this person?” or in other cases, people had been treated badly. I wanted to make the facts. I was tired of being stuck with the facts. I went into HR and people thought I was nuts because it was a big pay cut. It was big for the way the world treats certain job titles. It was a perceived downgrade. That was also, I would say, good to go through early in my career.

Even though it was my choice, I had not realized how much of my ego was caught up in being an attorney. There's nothing like being at a bar and saying, “What do you do?” “I’m in HR.” You get a different reaction than, “I’m an attorney.” I’ll tell you. It was interesting to be like, “That's okay.” I have to go through that and be that early self-ego experience. It was humbling in a good way for all the other changes and pivots that I’ve made over the years. It’s a good reminder that we're not our job title. It's easy to use your job as a proxy for who you are and how you value your self-worth.

That was a good lesson for me. From there, I wound up working in corporate and working my way up to different executive roles. I wound up going into ethics and compliance for a while and that was fun. I brought the HR practices with me. I’ve been a chief compliance officer and a chief administrative officer. It's been a lot of fun to pivot between HR and legal because, for me, they're the canaries in the coal mine of culture and having a healthy workplace. You have to have both the infrastructure that the law provides, but then you have to have an understanding of how people behave in the real world to put the flesh around the bones of the policies, procedures, and commitments that you make.

There's always an exception to a rule as well. It can get gray, so you have to have thoughtful governance around that. Another area that I work in is corporate board governance and trying to help companies prevent ethical, cultural, or reputation risk issues because there are a few elements that you need in order for that not to happen. We see so many tragedies of companies and that hurts so many people investors, employees, and communities that rely on the tax base. It's a big deal when companies implode. Part of my goal is to help them and then individual executives and leaders as well.

I want to pause for a moment here and say that what you shared has been powerful. There are a couple of things that come to mind even with what you shared. It seems like you moved upstream instead of dealing with the things after they happen. You're trying to get ahead of it like upstream to the problems before they start. You’re trying to create these, get with the board, and get with people to make sure there are policies in place. That allows people to know, “How do we ensure that this problem is not going to happen in the first place instead of being reactionary and dealing with it at the end when we're trying to litigate or create these issues where people have been treated poorly?”

That was my responsibility. I can get three different global companies. I’ve implemented anonymous helpline and whistle-blowing systems, and then I’ve overseen thousands of investigations. I’ve pretty much seen it all on both sides. Coming to fair and consistent decisions around that is one of the most important things a company can do to demonstrate to employees that they treat people fairly, no matter who they are in the company.

One of the other insights that I’m thinking about is how values show up so strongly for you. I’m almost inclined to ask what are your values, but they're almost evident from the way they've driven you through your career by being so focused on making an impact on people. That's often what happens when people get into law in the first place. Some people are driven by the title or the money you can make, but from the get-go, it sounds like that's not what was attracting you to this position. It was all about the impact that you could make and the fairness. I can imagine that might be a value of yours, fairness.

It is. Justice is up there. Justice, love, community affiliation, and altruism.

It's very easy to use your job as a proxy for who you are and how you value your self-worth. You are not your job title.

It's a powerful driver. I think about that as being the flashpoint to continue to move from the first instinct of using law as a way to move yourself but also to take that as a shift and pivot into a way that how can I use it in a different fashion. Why do I have to accept what is, but then I can use this tool in a different fashion which was HR, other things, and see it in a differently light?

It's a creative profession, which was nice. I was a Creative Writing Poetry major. I wasn't a likely candidate for Law school, but I’d done a lot of work in battered women's shelters in my sorority at Tufts. That led me and I wound up getting temporary restraining orders in Washington, DC for people who needed them. That was a very impactful experience as well as negotiating some child custody stuff. There are so many people in need. It's bottomless.

I have to ask, out of curiosity, have there been situations where you feel like you've put yourself at risk personally in the work you do? I’m not sure if that's something where you have had to protect somebody else, but also feel like your own life was at risk.

I did have one pretty pivotal experience while I was doing the clinic. As law students, we were unable to practice law temporarily under a special license for clinics that helped relieve the burden of a lot of different types of representation in DC. One of these was the domestic violence clinic. That one appealed to me the most. We were naïve, my partner and I, and we were serving my client’s boyfriend. We had a colleague with us to do that because we couldn't technically serve him, but it was in a violent area of Southeast DC. We were three White kids sticking out sore thumbs in Southeast DC and the apartment buildings were right next to each other.

We thought that because we're pretty busy, you get lots of work in law school. We served him the papers and then our friend left who served him. We then went next door to start preparing our client for the upcoming temporary restraining order hearing, which was dumb, because he got angry when he got the papers and realized what was going on and walked next door to our client. We should have predicted that was possible. Maybe she shouldn't have been there either. We were already up in the apartment and our client heard her boyfriend start ringing the bells. Her door had been kicked in by her sister's boyfriend the prior weekend, so there was an open door in the apartment. She said, “That's him.” He's ringing the bell because he is going to threaten everybody and make them open the buzzer.

We knew there was only one neighbor, one buzz between us and him coming up. She said he probably had a gun. I had to think quickly and I got on the intercom. I’ll never know if this is why it all turned out okay, but I fibbed. I said in a calm voice, “I’m so-and-so's attorney and we're meeting with her right now. We've called the police. I know you already have a record. The best thing you can do for yourself is to go back to your apartment and count to ten. This is moving forward and it's going to be worse if you come up here. I highly recommend you go back.” It was then a dead silent and I’ll never know, but that was a moment I was sweating bullets.

I appreciate you sharing that. It goes to show that, first of all, there's a lot of anxiety and stress that goes into a job like that, but you handled it with grace. It sounds like it, at least, maybe not at the moment.

My mother would've killed me if she’d known. I never told her that one.

I can also see that's the weighing of, “What path is right for me? Maybe I want to deal with things at a different level where I can make an impact without putting myself into the line of fire and danger.”

It was sobering and I have tremendous respect. I work as support with nonprofits for many agencies like St. John's here which provides shelter and job retraining for women. They guarantee housing if you get accepted into the program for eighteen months. Once you're clean, they reunite women with their children, which is amazing. I found that there are other ways to serve and still make a living because I have to balance all of that, but that's important to me.

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Having that awareness is what makes a big difference. It's not that you turn a blind eye to those experiences and say, “I don't want to do that anymore because it's dangerous.” It's more about knowing that those things are going on and you still want to make an impact, but you're choosing to make an impact in your own way. Would you agree?

Yes. You find your space. For me, a lot of it was experimentation. Seeing what has the most scalable impact and I still don't know what I’m going to do in the future. I feel like it's always evolving in terms of ways to help and always learning.

Let's get back in the story because I want to hear as you continued to shape your career into working more in the risk space, what happened next as you moved along your journey?

I did some teaching. I was an adjunct professor in the mission in San Francisco, which turned out to be my second plan sabbatical. I told you about the first one when I quit my law firm job without any plan of what I was going to do. I had finished up at McKesson. I’d built the ethics and compliance program for a $90 billion organization there. It was terrific, but I had two young daughters at that time and I’d missed a lot of birthdays. I was on the executive team. I was traveling 40% of the time. I had some international fifteen lines of business. It was a high-stress, high-stakes, exciting job. I am sensitive to when momentum is building and when it ends.

I had put my job first and there were good reasons for that at that time, but I always knew that was temporary and that I would know it when I felt it. My youngest daughter has ADHD. She was in second grade when she had been diagnosed. I felt like I need to focus on that. I took a parenting course on that. I educated myself about that and what accommodations she might need. I taught at law school to have something to help out with and intellectually to do with an identity. I was debating whether to start my own business or not.

I got headhunted out to Sacramento, which is why I’m here now, to be the Chief Administrative Officer of the California Dental Association. That was too good to turn down, both from a family standpoint. It seemed like a nice place to raise kids. It has been, unfortunately, with the pandemic and the way it hit San Francisco. It's a slower pace and a little more old-school neighborly. The people are nice and the traffic is not as bad. We go back to the Bay Area frequently for the arts. I’m on a couple of advisory boards and stuff and have wonderful friends back there. I have clients and things there, but for now, it's been good.

I did that for a few years and I was a CHR at a bank and that was fun. I started my own consulting business. I realized I could do a lot more creatively. I felt like I’d, after many years, done a lot of what I wanted to do in large organizations and I wanted to explore writing and speaking. As you know, when you're on an executive team, you are limited in what you can write and talk about because you are the corporation when you're an executive and you have to take that seriously. Having been someone who managed conflicts of interest and all of that, I take it very seriously. It's been nice to be able to write and express that.

I’ve loved taking what I’ve learned from promoting, hiring, firing, downsizing, and upsizing with my experience both as a lawyer, an HR head, an executive, someone who's been a recruiter, and building a team. I bring all that to my coaching with executives that are working to get promoted or that are stuck and they don't know why, and they're trying to figure it out or they don't quite know if they're where they want to be. It's been fun. I’m doing some speaking on topics that will help companies make better decisions, be more innovative, and accelerate their progress faster. That's what I’ve been doing.

When I think about what you described in the progression, there's this amazing range that you've unlocked when you started to open yourself up to more and more, and you don't have to limit yourself to any one particular path. A lot of people get stuck in this myopic view of the world where they say, “If I commit to being a lawyer, I have to be a lawyer and that's the path that I’m on.”

When you realize, “I can open up and pivot into HR,” you can go back and forth and all around. In fact, you can do a lot of these things all at once if you're willing to create this portfolio of options around you. The most important thing, and maybe you can speak to this a little more, is that it connects with the things that light you up. It has to be things that have to be meaningful to you.

If you're not feeling motivated, you're out of alignment with your values.

I agree. When we get off, feel depressed, sad, or a little melancholy, if there's no other obvious cause such as a health issue or finances, people have been put under tremendous financial strain over the past few years with the pandemic, now the war, and the supply chain. Many of my clients have lost their jobs even at large companies. It's challenging right now. Uncertainty can be stressful for people, but separate from those types of things. If you're not feeling motivated, it's usually because you're out of alignment with your values. It's like boiling a frog. It happens slowly and then suddenly.

It's important to check in with yourself every 2 to 3 years around, “What am I doing? Does it fill my cup?” By the way, filling your cup can mean supporting your family. I don't mean to be high and mighty here. That's a noble thing. Not everyone has the luxury of always doing what they want to do. I’ve stayed in jobs longer than I wanted to because I needed the paycheck. It's a luxury to be able to always go with your values. I understand that.

When you can or if you're wondering why you feel out of sync, you can map out hopefully the restrictions temporarily, or I can tell I stayed in jobs sometimes because I was gaining valuable skills that I knew would help me later. Even if I wasn't happy, I didn't like my boss, or I was assigned to a project that was meh on my fire scale, I know it would be temporary. Everything is temporary.

I want to come back to what you said earlier, which was about letting go of the ego. It's important that along this path, the ego is not driving the ship and you instead allow yourself to say, “What is aligned with who I want to be right now? What is my definition of success at this moment because it changes all the time?”

Having little chats with your ego can be helpful. I’ve had to do that at times because I had a solid recognition early on with that. That's helped me a lot because I can feel it coming now more. It's like a muscle that comes up like a trigger. Is this important right now? What's happening here and how do you want to be? I try to take it with a huge dose of humor.

It only comes with having the experience that you've gone through, the rollercoaster of life, and seen all the ups and downs.

It’s about a relationship you care about. Being married for almost 30 years, your ego needs to be instructed sometimes if you want to stay happily married. Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? My husband and I were talking and laughing about each other's where we are to dance because you always get into a dance in a relationship, whether it's a boss or coworker. Thinking about, “Is this a great dance? As we are getting somewhere, is this fun? Is it like the lindy hop? Is it off or something or is it torturous?” We're stepping on each other's toes, one person is leading, or the other person is not following. That's always good to check in, and I do that with my daughters as well.

I love that you shared that. The imagery is so great. I can fill into that really well. I want to ask about the work you're doing now, especially around the Promotability Index. Tell us more about that. I’d love to hear, for the audience, especially, but I’ve got a little bit of a sense of what is going on here. Why is it important?

Promotability, to be clear, is broader than the title implies. It doesn't necessarily mean you're gunning for a pay raise or job title, although it's perfectly great if you are. It can also mean you want to stay employable, relevant, always growing, “growth mindset” to quote Carol Dweck, and that you're aware that you're increasing your self-awareness.

I worked with my experience backward and reverse-engineered promotions from my knowledge and broke promotability down into five categories, which are self-awareness and external awareness. Are you aware of how people perceive you and how you come off and the impact of your behavior on people? Strategic thinking becomes more and more important to demonstrate when you come up the food chain. Many people have strategic thinking, but they don't know how to share it in ways that people with power can see it.

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I work a lot with that and getting noticed in the right way is important as you move up and then executive presence, which I define as presentation skills, gravitas, grace under pressure, and having a presence. Only a tiny part is physical presence and grooming that everybody can access. I break it down because this executive presence is thrown around a lot as a very amorphous term. It can be used as a cover for a lot of bad behavior in terms of not being open to people who don't look like you in leadership. I’ve wanted to break that down as well. The last fifth element is thought leadership. Again, in order of how you need them as you grow your career from your 20s to your 60s.

I created an 82-question assessment. I made it free as part of my commitment to leveling the playing field and giving access to everyone to what I think isn't always obvious. That's the feedback I’ve gotten from people who've used it. I’ve had thousands of people take it now, which is wonderful. I’ve gotten notes from people who say, “I followed this, and I got promoted,” from the people I don't know.

That's amazing. That's what I hoped it would do for people who can't afford a coach. Not everyone can afford a coach like you or me. I get that. There are companies that don't necessarily always pay for every level. That's been great. I do masterclasses on it. I’m going out to New York to do one for the nonprofit alliance young leadership forum in a couple of weeks that I’m excited about and I’ve done it for large companies as well, and then I wrote the book.

People wanted more. I hadn't planned to write a book about it, but I had a lot of people saying, “What else do you have? I’ve taken the test. Now I know what I don't know. I want to work on it.” I’m like, “Work on it. There are tons of books out there. If it's executive presence, go find an executive presence book.” They're like, “No. You should write something,” and then the pandemic hit. I’m like, “It might be nice to have a creative project because I can't see anyone or travel right now.” I wrote a guidebook that combines journaling. If I was going to write a book, I wanted to write a book that didn't exist.

I don't want to be pointless. There are plenty of great books out there. I created a journaling self-guide to an action plan and it's flexible. Companies have adopted it as their career development. It’s a piece of their performance management process. I’ve got a case study on my website about that. It results in everyone getting a development discussion, which is wonderful, and then companies can know. Some people say right out, “I don't want to be promoted. I’m happy doing what I’m doing.” They know that. That's great knowledge for companies and they can say, “What would keep you interested? What lateral assignments?” It's a different discussion.

“I want to get promoted in a few years. What do I need to do to get there?” You can then have that conversation. A lot of CEOs have told me that they used the 82 questions as feedback that you would need to improve here and here before we would consider a promotion. It gives them an objective language that is easier for them to say, because again, as you and I both know, not everyone gets the feedback they need to get ahead. There have been studies done particularly that there's been a backlash after MeToo and The Black Lives Matter Movement that women and people of color do not get the tough feedback they need to get forward. That's disturbing to me and I want to help support managers in making that easier and taking the fear factor out of that.

That's fantastic. This is exactly what we need at the right time. I’m glad that you had the time to put together a guidebook.

It was fun and great.

The initial part of it is like, “Can I do this?” You then start doing it and then you're done.

It's been great. Chicago Booth is using it with their MBA students. A lot of people who started reading it has been like, “I didn't know that was important.” It's like, “That's important.” They talk about it at discussion planning meetings. I wanted to open the kimono on the things that shouldn't be a secret. There's no reason.

Not everyone gets the feedback they need to get ahead.

We've covered a lot of ground, but I have another question to ask you about you and your journey. What are some things you've learned about yourself that you haven't shared that you want to share? Any lessons that you've learned about yourself that you want to share with others?

I’ve learned that I work for the worst boss in the world. They’re hard-driving, demanding, never-satisfied person. I’ve tried to have conversations with them about that, even not working every weekend and evening. Being your own boss is a thing and being an entrepreneur. I’ve worked hard in all my other jobs. Believe me, I was on call 24/7 with investigations and things going on, but it's been setting boundaries.

I’ve learned that I love having a variety of work. I used to think there was something wrong with me because I didn't settle into one profession. I realized that, and I still look for things that are interesting. I learned that I love change. In addition to my values, that's what characterizes me. I need to feel like I’m helping people or organizations or, in the case of when I’ve had the privilege to work on laws, I try to work it at a macro level, an organizational level, and then on a one-to-one level. I like that balance. Those are two things I’ve learned.

First of all, I can resonate with a lot of those things you've shared, but also, knowing we're all wired differently and some people get into a field and they say, “I want to do this in this way for the rest of my life. This is going to make me so happy and fulfilled. That's it.” There are some of us who love the eclectics of doing a myriad of different things that create impact in their own unique ways. That's what drives us. There's something about that, which we have to recognize in ourselves and don't judge ourselves for like, “Why am I looking at the next shot.”

I did when I was younger. That's where, hopefully, the wisdom comes in as we get older. It’s the gift of age and experience. When I was in my twenties, I was like, “I have all these student loans. Why did I do this? What was I thinking? Was I thinking?” For anyone out there who's wondering, keep moving forward. Keep experimenting with little experiments. I love Herminia Ibarra’s book, Working Identity.

When I read that in part of my coaching certification at Hudson Institute, that hit home. That big professional change can take five years and it's very normal to dissemble yourself and feel like you don't even know who you are, but that's a shift and it's a part of like, “You have to do that dissemble,” which is uncomfortable. It's not fun, but it's this growth process and then you reassemble. It's like a cocoon and a butterfly, then you can emerge. That was validating for me. I wish I’d read it sooner.

That was all books. Oftentimes, you read the book, and you're like, “Why didn't I read this one?” Now that we're on the topic of books, it comes to my last question, which is what are 1 or 2 books that have had an impact on you and why?

I’ll have to do some fun ones, too. I’ll do a fun one and then an intellectual one. As a child, the books that I voraciously devoured and read, again and again, would be The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis. I loved it. I loved Lucy. This may resonate with being the hero and trying to defeat evil. It was remarkable as a young girl. There weren't that many books out there that I’ll say now that I think about it.

I see my kids and what they get to watch, and I’m like, “This is amazing. I never had anything like this.” I always identified with the boy character because who wouldn't? Unless it was a cartoon with eyelashes on it and a bow, you didn't know it was a girl. I loved The Chronicles of Narnia and then, I would say Jeff Pfeffer’s 7 Rules To Power has been provocative and interesting.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article I wrote abound navigating peer relationships as you climb the ladder, he did a podcast with Harvard IFC. He has some important validated lessons around power and how it works. They're not necessarily what we've always been taught. I’ve been working that into my practice and it definitely resonates with me, however, from my executive experience. That's been an interesting read.

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I love that you shared that because I was on the fence about whether I’m going to pick up that book. I’ve always loved his stuff, but now I’m like, “Sold. It's going on my list.” I can't tell you how amazing this conversation has been for me. I appreciate all that you've shared in this conversation. Thank you so much, Amii.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

Before I let you leave, I want to make sure that you share where can people find out more about you What's the best place to get in touch?

They can go to my website, BarnardBahn.com or you can search Amii, and luckily, since my name is uniquely spelled, it comes up pretty quickly. I have hundreds of free resources on my website. I got information for my book. I’ve got a YouTube and I’m very open to connecting with people on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Thank you again. Thanks to the readers for coming on the journey. I know you're leaving with a lot of great insights. Go and consume all of Amii’s amazing stuff. Go grab her book and take the Promotability Index. It's going to be helpful for you. Get out there and take some action. Thank you so much, Amii.

Thank you.

 

Important Links


About Amii Barnard-Bahn

Graphics - Amii Barnard-Bahn Headshot - VCP 185 Amii Barnard-BahnAre you a C-suite executive who wants to accelerate performance for you or your team?

With 20+ years of experience working with executives in Global Fortune 50 companies, I know what it takes to run an effective, high-performance team and to succeed in a high-stakes, exciting career.

I learned early on that the key to career and team success requires a proactive and strategic approach to cultivating trust and achieving goals.

In fact, I wrote a book on getting promoted and the qualities you need to achieve your career goals and increase personal satisfaction. My clients include FedEx, Adobe, Gap and Bank of the West. Forbes recognized me as one of the top coaches for legal and compliance professionals, and called my Promotability Index® assessment “a SWOT analysis for your career.” I’m also a contributor to Harvard Business Review and Fast Company.

Over the years, I’ve helped thousands of companies and professionals be more effective leaders, managers and colleagues, leading to higher growth and profits, employee retention, and reduction of unnecessary stress and politics. I have helped multiple executives get promoted, amplify their strengths and remove bad habits, reduce stress and increase personal and professional satisfaction.

My experience has shown me that the essence of good coaching and leadership consulting is clearly communicating your value, putting that value in front of your prospective clients, and then demonstrating exactly how you can help them get the outcomes they want.

The primary service I offer is an intensive executive team coaching and team building program, Team Alignment Transformation. This doesn’t just measure how your current team is performing, but gets you into action, providing a shared language and opportunity to identify gaps and goals, establish accountability, and follow-up measurement, so that you grow more profitably as a company. Oh, and by the way, your team experiences less stress and more fun!

Ideal program participants are Fortune 500 and executive teams who have a passion for achievement and suboptimal relationships that get in the way. We establish clear action steps to address these performance obstacles.

I'm also available for paid presentations, virtual keynotes, podcasts, and media interviews on the following topics:

* The Art and Skill of Delivering Risk and Bad News
* The Five Elements of Promotability (and How to Perfect Them)
* Transformation! How to Achieve Lasting Culture Change

 

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