Ten years into my career with oilfield services giant Schlumberger, I had a series of pivotal moments that were to change my life.
One of these moments was a trip to the continent of Africa that completely changed the way I viewed myself, my responsibilities, and my capabilities. Combined with other significant events in my life in 2005 – including achieving my PMP certification and the confidence that came with the credential – it was clear I had found my catalyst.
It wasn’t the trip itself that was my catalyst, it was the feelings the trip gave me. It was the sense of purpose I connected with, it was the passions I discovered, and the priorities I established. Your catalyst will either reinforce your purpose or reshape it. As a result, I was driven to expand my career ownership to entrepreneurship and created my business 2Hill Consulting.
Everyone has a different path, a different journey, and I’ve been blessed to walk alongside some amazing clients in 15 years. My work with individuals involves helping them discover their purpose, passions, and priorities, and using that to reinforce their personal and professional goals. I help them to be strategic-minded, compassionate leaders at work and at home. And as a result of the work I do, I get to impact entire communities – taking me full circle, aligned with my purpose and the experiences of that fateful trip to Africa.
Fluff-Free Transformation
As passionate as I am about helping individuals, I get to inspire transformation in teams and organizations with the strategies I introduce. I recently helped a small energy company execute on their vision of being anti-racist, anti-discrimination champions. After the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, they didn’t want fluff (good, because I don’t do fluff). They wanted to do the hard work of challenging their beliefs to better leverage their positions to make a change in their community and industry. They lived out my mantra that your purpose and position go hand-in-hand. So through training, coaching, and advising I helped them create an inclusive talent development strategy and implement supplier diversity practices.
The work that I do is incredibly rewarding, but it can also be very demanding. I remember learning early in my business formation that I needed to take care of me, so that I could better serve my clients. This lesson (like many others) came the hard way, while at the brink of burnout. The irony is that I started my own business to avoid feeling overwhelmed, but there I was. The action that I took from that situation was to set office hours and to help my clients understand the value of that consistent schedule. It is a personal contract that I have to revisit and revise regularly as seasons change in my life, but the prime objective remains the same – to sustain the change I created in my life, I have to maintain balance and focus.
What’s your personal contract and how do you fulfill it?
To celebrate 15 years of 2Hill Consulting I’m giving away 15 copies of my book What’s Your Catalyst? Subscribe to enter the draw and get insights into how to connect with and grow your purpose!
