Gratitude Post: Dr. La Tondra Murray
To me, gratitude is all about recognizing the good things in life, including the role that others have played in making them a reality. Like many of us, I have adopted a gratitude practice in recent years, which both centers and inspires me each time I engage in it. It is centering because it reminds me that I’m not alone, that I am lifted by a community of people near and far who support me and my goals all the time. It is inspiring because gratitude often signals growth - it comes to us as a result of a problem solved through collaboration or a new insight gleaned from another’s perspective.
One of my goals for 2024 is to put more content out there in service to my clients and community. So, every once in a while, I will share a Gratitude Post with you, with deep appreciation for someone who has greatly impacted my life.
Today, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. La Tondra Murray. She is a strengths-based leadership coach whom I have had the pleasure of working with for the past year. She is insightful, funny, attentive, empathetic, wise…I could go on. As a Certified Gallup coach, she is incredibly skilled at understanding her clients through the Strengthsfinder lens and seamlessly connecting their strengths profile to the challenges and opportunities that are coming up each day. She does it with ease, with care, and with grounded clarity. And once she blows your mind with a profound insight, she helps you figure out what to do with it. I have had six sessions with her, and I can truly say that each one offered me breakthroughs. Here are a few highlights:
Achiever is one of my top strengths, and it has served me well as a coach and entrepreneur. I am naturally driven to do all the things, to serve people, to achieve all the results. La Tondra helped me identify the ways in which my Achiever side was holding me back by offering this little nugget: “Achievers anchor around complexity.” In other words, the harder they have to work, the more “gold stars” they earn. WHAT? Who doesn’t want a gold star, or many of them?! But doing so comes at a cost, or many of them, including:
burn out (been there)
saying all the things instead of focusing on the most important things you need your audience to know (yes, I was known to create embarrassingly long pre-reads for nonprofit boards that were a ton of work but served little purpose)
limited strategic progress (because your attention is everywhere instead of on the most important tasks), and
limited growth of those around you (because you are over-owning and not making space for their leadership).
Complexity comes easily to me, but that doesn’t mean it belongs in most of what I do. Thanks to La Tondra, I now regularly ask myself: What is the simplest next step I can take to move (this initiative) forward or test (a new idea) out?
And sometimes, the answer to that question lands on another person’s plate, which brings me to another top strength we discussed - Responsibility. When I say I am going to do something, I deliver, often above and beyond. I am incredibly invested in my clients and our work together. I believe they know and feel this, which is why so many of my clients renew and extend their engagements with me. But Responsibility has a dark side, which for me looks like over-ownership when things don’t go according to plan. The inner critic takes over in these moments, and I am - momentarily - devastated. Thanks to La Tondra, I now put a timer on my pity party! When I process the rough spots, I let all the thoughts come up and then ask myself, “What is true about this situation? What other narratives are sneaking in and don’t belong here?”
Finally, La Tondra is a business coach, and she helped me find ways to build my mindset and business offerings around my strengths. She helped me name that my approach to coaching is focused on traveling shoulder to shoulder with my clients, guiding when helpful, nudging when necessary, celebrating throughout, and always believing in their potential to get to whatever goal or next level they are aiming for. This is exactly what she did for me over the past year and why I am so grateful for her. If you are interested in learning more about Dr. La Tondra Murray, please visit her website here: https://www.latondramurray.com/
