(Edited for length and clarity)

Intro

We're going to talk about what you can do to nurture your relationship with greatness because here's what I believe; I believe that you cannot be your best and achieve your best, all the things that you want to achieve, you cannot do that unless you start first from the inside. What I also want to share with you, is that I believe that showing your greatness, feeling your greatness first, allows you the opportunity to make impact not only within your companies, within your roles, but certainly within your families, your communities, and everywhere.

Greatness radiates outside of you. We're going to be checking in to see what the health of your greatness barometer is? If you took your temperature around greatness, where would it be? We're going to be talking about how you can help cultivate it no matter where you are in that continuum, how to cultivate your greatness to be the best you can be and to believe and live all the dreams that you would like to live.

I believe in “buffet”. This is my approach to training or anything that I do; it's a buffet approach. I'm going to share with you some things that I've garnered over my years on this earth and in many, many roles. I want you to treat it like a buffet. And what's good about a buffet? You don't have to take everything on it. You don't have to like it. You don't have to eat it. You don't have to pretend to like it. You pick what you like and then leave the rest for somebody else. But here's what my goal is: at least one thing, I hope that there's one thing, one relationship, one conversation that you can take and try to cultivate your greatness beyond this session.

My name's Judith Rowe and I'm a strength-based coach, trainer, facilitator but that is where I am now. This has been towards the later years of my career and what I want you to know is that my career has been multifaceted and that's why I use the word “quilted” approach, because if you looked at all my experience, in terms of what I've had to do, it would look like a wonderful quilt.

I've done everything, started off as an engineer. I'm not a mining engineer but I have two engineering degrees. I'm a civil engineer and also an industrial engineer and I've worked for municipalities, non-profits, I've worked for Fortune 500 companies. I spent most of my time, 27 years at Corning Incorporated in Corning, New York and I did everything there from product engineer, sales engineer, customer service, supervisor. I went off and trained for supervisor effectiveness, went back to school at the ripe age of 40, with two kids, small kids and a husband, and got my degree at Cornell University in Industrial Labor Relations. And so, that quilt just kept growing and growing with experiences at Corning. And I reached the end of that at 55. I no longer fit in my male-dominated organization. I wish I had WIMDI back when I was starting off, where many of you are with your careers because I was absolutely in a male-dominated industry. And that camaraderie, the camaraderie that you are creating here is amazingly wonderful, supportive, and everything that you could want.

I hope that you all are taking full advantage of this. Now, one fun fact about me, by the way, after retirement I started my coaching business; I'm training, coaching, and facilitating, doing all those things, which has been phenomenal. I've learned a lot and I've been able to take advantage of all that I've learned in my career. One fun thing that I like to do now is I'm thinking about doing my first upcycle project. I declared in my latest class (much to my fear), that I want to take dryer sheets that are used and make an evening gown out of them. Yes, you heard it –an evening gown made out of dryer sheets. So that's what I'm working on. I promise you once that happens I'll be glad to share it with Holly, to share with all of you.

I Feel Greatness

When I say the word “greatness, I feel the greatness”. What do you think about? What word? What one thing comes to mind? What comes up for you when I say the word greatness?

Here's the next thing that I want you to think about doing. I want us to talk about what is greatness for the purpose of this presentation. I'm going to give you a formal definition of that and then we're going to talk about what this means to all of us.

Greatness, in this context, is the quality or state of being important, powerful. Distinguished. All those things matter when we're talking about greatness and I want you to believe it and know it that everyone has greatness. Every single one of us, and here's how I know that: you might be saying, “yeah, you don't know me”, but here's what I know. You're here today, right? And I want to get just a little bit granular. You know how babies are made, right? Everybody knows how babies are made, right? I'm going to go there. You out-swam all those millions of sperm to connect with that egg, to be born. How cool is that? How great is that? You won the very first race of your life and if there's nothing else that you could claim that's great, that is, in itself. You would not be here if you didn't do that. So that's what I want us to focus on is that feeling of like "Tada!" I'm here, I've been born and I am here.

Where’s the Data to Back up this Greatness?

You may ask, being the engineers that you are, "Where's the data, Judy? Seriously, what's all this fluffy like greatness talk and you're pumping us up." Yeah, I'm pumping you up because you are great. But I want you to really think about the data. Since we're all data-driven, I want you to just take a second, close your eyes if you want to and think about the last time that you felt "Ha!", great. Like "Tada!", great. And I'm using my jazz hands. I used to do Jazzercise many moons ago. Really think about that and think about what is it about that situation that made you feel greatness or made you feel awesome?

The last time I felt greatness was when I was working with a group of students and I thought that I wasn't getting through to them. I was working with them on leadership skills and finally, somebody made a comment that made me feel like, wow, they were listening, not only listening, but that it resonated with them. And so, that presentation meant the world to me.
I felt like I had something to give. I want you to think about that case when you felt greatness, but not just when did you feel it but why did you feel it? What was it about that particular situation that made you feel great in that moment? Because here's what I believe, I think that when you feel greatness, it can tell you something about how you feel at work or what really jazzes you up and that's really what I want to focus on. Does that make sense?

What you felt greatness about can really be an indicator of what your desires are, what you want. It could be some things that you'll need to pay attention to. I want you to think back to that.

Why Greatness can Feel Uncomfortable

The reason why it feels uncomfortable to talk about greatness is because there is this whole phenomenon, and it's human, by the way, domesticated humans which we have everything to do with - how we relate and compare to each other and how we feel about the world and what's in it, in terms of greatness. So here are pairings that I want you to think about, and these are the things that can deter people from the greatness. If you have a comparison mentality, always looking to the left or right, or behind you to see what everyone else is doing, that can absolutely erode confidence. It erodes your greatness and it erodes your impact that you can have on others in your world.

Instead of comparing yourself to other people which we do all the time, me included, think about sharing your greatness. Seeing and demonstrating your greatness can be an inspiration to other people. I want you to sit on that one - really focus. Your comparison is not how it shows up for other people. Instead let it be an inspiration to other people. When you share your greatness out, it's not about bragging or comparison, it's about creating an opportunity to feel good about yourself and to inspire others.

I hit on this when I'm coaching people and training people, scarcity versus abundance mentality. This is so true. I'll tell you for me, it showed up when I first became an engineer at Corning. I was one of maybe 10 women out of hundreds of engineers that worked for Corning and I felt like I was always competing with other women to be the best, to be the first. By the way - news flash - there's enough to go around for everyone. I didn't need to have that comparison factor. I needed to feel like there was enough for everyone and I didn’t need to look to my left and right. I needed to run my race and think, “What I'm going to get is meant for me”.

Nothing is wasted, even the failures. And that last one is super important too in terms of comparison, scarcity, competition, they all work together to create this image that we can't brag about ourselves, we can't feel good about ourselves. We have to clamour to get it and that competition is a killer. Dead ringer killer. It can keep you from collaborating with other people and keep you from sharing your gifts and being inspirations to others, and to come up with something better when working with others.

I want you to think about those barriers to that, the great impact of having the feeling of greatness and that collaboration, and that confidence that we’re talking about. I want you to know, there's a whole host of relationships that are unique to your experiences in this industry as women. There are people that are super comfortable, “woohoo, greatness. Here I am”. To people saying, “Oh my gosh, where is the exit?” In fact, Holly even noted some people like “I’m outta here. I can't talk about it. I just can't”. And that's totally understandable and it's damaging.

What’s our Relationship with Greatness

Can I tell you it's damaging because you've got to be able to feel it before you can become it. If it's not here, it's going to be much harder, and that imposter syndrome follows you everywhere you go. We have to decide, “What's our relationship with greatness?” And here are some things I want you to get rid of, as women specifically - I was just looking at statistics, the statistics around women in male-dominated industries or in industries in general, it's even more dismal than it was before with this COVID pandemic. I really need for people to understand that all these things that you see listed here are things that we do on the regular. And I want you to ask, “How often do I do any of the things on this list?”

That you're flexible, bending over backwards for others. When somebody gives you a compliment, you pull in the team. It's like, oh, it was the team, it wasn't me. Well, don't look at me, look at everyone. Stop talking too early in meetings or in Zoom rooms and taking up as little space. I talk to my sister about making yourself small in situations rather than stepping into who you are and actually sharing your information, or not saying anything at all sometimes. I've done that even, it's like, "Oh, I don't know how they're going to receive what I'm going to say." I want you to put that stuff in that toxic waste bin, put your hazmat suit on, and get rid of it because these things stop us from being our greatest.

Apologizing: “Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry, sorry. Oops. I apologize. Sorry”. If you can, stop yourself from saying sorry. If you’re finding yourself saying it too much, pay attention to the words in your head - what are you thinking? And pay attention to the words out of your mouth because all of these things can minimize the impact that you have in your organizations, in your families, in your communities, in the world.

We talked about relationships running the gamut here and I want us to get to a point where those toxic things that we're thinking and saying and doing that erode our greatness, I want them to be moved out to make room. You make room for being the best cheerleader of your life. I used to be a high school cheerleader many, many moons ago.

I want you to think about that raw spirit that you're going to have, not for anybody else but yourself. And by the way, the best cheerleader is you. You don't need to depend on other people to demonstrate or to acknowledge your greatness. You can do self-acknowledgement. You can validate yourself. You don't need to look outside. First validate yourself and then if anybody else notices like, “Yeah, you see my greatness, so do I”.

Nurturing Your Relationship with Greatness – Create, Repair, Grow

Here are three steps that I want to share with you about greatness. They are to create, repair, and grow. It's nurturing a relationship so that you can step into that greatness that we've been talking about; we want to make sure that we all work in tandem to step into our greatness.

I like to think of this as create, repair, grow, meaning it's full body. Remember I mentioned that earlier. It starts with your head then moves into your heart and then from that, you can grow. Head, heart, hands. Growth.

As I describe these, where are you? Which one would you like to work on? Let me give you a little, kind of a clue too; I want you to think about where you would like to focus.