Catherine Finger

Turn The Great Resignation Into Your Great Reframing

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I am delighted to share my first official article published today after being named an Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine!

Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.

The compelling question of whether to join the masses and jump off the cliff of commitment into the Great Resignation has been cropping up in coaching sessions quite a bit lately. I understand the allure—and I am a big fan of challenge and change in general, so my clients find a strong ally in me when grappling with this question. Today I offer you five questions and perspectives my clients and I consider when addressing the issue of whether it is time to resign—or reframe.
A beautiful photo of blue sea and a cliff.

1. It’s never too late to quit.

Do you have to quit today? Many work-related problems fade rather quickly. Give yourself time to manage the event that might be tempting you to cash it in. Dropping the mic and walking away can be tempting—but what’s the rush? You don’t need to decide whether you’re going to stay or walk away today. Give yourself the luxury of time and perspective.

2. Make sure your choice to leave is your choice to leave.

Sometimes catastrophic work-related events color our vision, squeezing out all that is right and wonderful with our worlds at work until the only option we can see clearly is an exit sign. While there are certainly times when we may need to leave—sometimes our emotions run wild and prevent us from seeing our own distorted thinking. Is there a habit, practice, or initiative that you need to start or stop doing that could make a big difference in your world of work right now? Maybe personal growth in your current workplace is what your brain is trying to push you toward. And that ‘stay and grow’ door sits right next to that ‘exit sign’ in our minds. Make sure you don’t mistake the call to stay and grow in the glare of a pulsing exit sign.

3. Clarity is your friend.

Walk yourself through the questions you would ask your best friend struggling with the ‘should I stay or should I go’ decision. What’s driving your desire to resign? Do you want to leave—or do you need to change something in your current setting right now? Do you need to go—or is there something that no longer serves you in the way you are seeing and experiencing yourself at work?

4. Is the grass really all that green on the other side of the proverbial fence?

While there certainly are many benefits to embracing change professionally and personally, we often underestimate the impact of transitions. How will shifting into a new job impact you, your family, and your career? What if your shiny new job turns out to be a pit of vipers wrapped in a “grass is always greener” veneer? What is your game plan for addressing the unintended consequences of the challenges and changes that transitioning into a new job—or no job—brings?

5. What if you could be happy/happier/happy enough where you are?

What would it take for you to become content with your current circumstances? What are the three best things about your current workplace—and how can you capitalize on them? What are the three worst things about staying in your current workplace—and how can you orchestrate improvements? Perhaps advocating for yourself financially and asking for additional compensation is in order. How can you contribute to your own personal and professional growth while remaining where you are for the time being? Perhaps joining or starting professional development opportunities could help you stay refreshed. Engaging in a life-affirming hobby can do wonders for your energy and perspective both on the job and at home. Another great way to expand connections and broaden your perspective while staying at the same job is to become actively engaged in professional organizations at the state, national, or international levels.

You’ve got my permission to stay. What will it take to permit yourself to stay in your current role? Here’s to the courage to dig deeper, listen to the desires of your heart, and allow yourself time and space to reframe instead of joining the great resignation.

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Award-winning author Catherine Finger contributes to the well-being of others by offering executive, personal, and author coaching services. Throughout her career as a public-school leader, mentoring current and emerging leaders was one of her greatest joys. This experience, coupled with her passion to instill hope for leadership, love, and life led her to launch Loving the Leading, an executive coaching and consulting business in 2020. Her years of successful experience as an educational leader, board member, adjunct professor, award-winning author, law enforcement chaplain and community leader equip her with unique insights and deep intuition on both organizations and individuals.

Executive Coach Catherine Finger Named to 2022 Top 15 Coaches List by Influence Digest!

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I was delighted to be included on the Influence Digest 2022 Top 15 Coaches list for the greater metropolitan Detroit area–and so grateful for my Detroit area clients! This award was made public on August 30, 2022 and included a profile and bio in the Influence Digest edition available at this link: https://influencedigest.com/coaching/top-coaches-detroit-2022/

What Would You Do if You Knew You Could Not Fail?

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Being the cool, growth-oriented professionals that we are, I’m pretty sure most of you engage your clients and colleagues with a question of this sort now and then. When’s the last time you asked this question of yourself? What would YOU do if you knew you could not fail? In your leadership practice? In your relationships? In your personal and professional growth?

Today is a great day to open your heart to the possibilities of challenge and change that may be incubating deep within. While we want to always maintain a personal posture of loving self-acceptance and contentment, personal and professional growth are key contributors to well-being. How are you doing in terms of your own personal and professional growth?

What are some of your Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (BHAGs?) Jim Collins coined that phrase way back in 2001 in his renowned corporate strategy book Good to Great. I can tell you I am at my best professionally and personally when working to realize a BHAG or two in my own life. This year one of my very challenging goals has been to further develop my coaching practice by expanding my advertising, writing, and networking platforms. Doing the work is at once energizing and terrifying—and it is leading to connection, community, and great growth.

Becoming more involved in professional coaching communities is another goal that leads to great growth and connection in my life. This year I am delighted to be able to engage that goal to a new level by actively participating in the Midwest Coaches Conference. This will be my very first in-person professional coaching conference and I am already committed to serving in the ICF WI booth and to attending the Progressive Ethnic Meal with other ICF Wi colleagues. Additionally, I am delighted to be able to attend the International Fellowship of Chaplains national conference in a few weeks.

How about you? Would generating your own BHAG spur you to greater connection and challenge you to deeper personal and professional growth? I’d love to hear about it—and support you along the way. You’re welcome to share your journey with me here: catherine@catherinefinger.com

Executive Coaching for Educational Leaders

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What attracted you into the field of education in the first place? Educational leaders cite deeply held beliefs about the critical importance of a quality education to “level the playing field” and provide and equip students with opportunities and options throughout their K-12 journey and beyond. Many of us were drawn to education because we love children—and we love watching the discovery process through their precious minds and hearts. We have had the privilege of tending to the first embers of a student’s life-long enchantment with the arts. We have walked amongst struggling students and shared their joy as they first found meaning in texts, signs, symbols and found their voice through the power of the written word.  We witnessed the powerful transformation that only education can bring, empowering students to leap into new ways of thinking, seeing, and believing as their words became worlds.

Loving the Leading is a call back to what drew you into education in the first place. What values and beliefs do you hold that fuel your commitment to your work as an educational leader? How could engaging a certified, professional coach support you professionally and personally as you begin another challenging school year?

Engaging with an executive coach supports you as you shoulder the burden of leadership in today’s complex environment.  The coaching process provides a confidential thought partnership designed to guide you through research-backed information, practices, assessments, and conversations emerging from your unique areas of interest.  Together we will generate professional and personal growth goals and develop action plans to achieve those goals while providing accountability and support.

Ready to Learn More? Schedule a 30-Minute Free Consultation

 

Beat Those Back-to-School Blues!

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Do you have a recurring back-to-school dream (i.e., nightmare!) that signals the beginning of another school year? I used to have teacher nightmares before school started—in which I would show up late and unburdened by clothing to my Spanish class in a large urban high school…after having gotten lost and locked in a few stairwells. When I moved into my first central office position, I started dreaming I was on a beach in a swimsuit, soaking up the sun a half block away from colorful cabanas. Said cabanas would suddenly spring to life and I would find myself dragged through them, car wash style. I’d quickly emerge wearing a skirt suit, carrying a briefcase, and walking down a tiled school hallway between two suit-clad men. Yikes!

As you start putting the finishing touches on your annual back-to-school celebrations and rituals, let’s unearth those nightmares and kick those back-to-school blues to the curb.

I’d like to invite you to begin your new school year by reflecting on who you are, what you do best, and how leaning into your strengths can lead you into more powerful and positive leadership behaviors.

One of my favorite executive coaching exercises is called the Peak Experience. This exercise emerged from the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) movement and is designed to help clients focus on past successes to identify strengths, positive core beliefs and generate positive feelings—leading to more powerful action in their current settings. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a collaborative and strengths-based change management model pioneered by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastava in the 1980’s at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.

Here’s how I typically invite clients into this practice during in coaching session:

• Please tell me about a peak experience you’ve had in your professional or personal life. It may be a time when you felt most alive, most involved, or most excited about what you were involved in. What made it an exciting experienced? Who was involved? What images come to mind as you recall this experience? What made it so wonderful, so powerful?
• What feelings bubble up for you as you recall this experience? List them. What feelings did you have? What impressions do you recall as you think back to this positive experience? What feelings did you experience?
• What strengths were present for you as you recall this experience? What strengths were demonstrated in this initiative, this success, this memory?
• What other strengths, talents or character traits come show up for you as you remember this peak experience?

Once you have developed a clear picture of your peak experience, accompanying feelings, strengths, and character traits, and you are noticing how you feel when you recall this experience—this forms the nucleus of a powerful place you can return to when you want to shift your thinking into a more positive frame of mind. By repeating this practice a few times a day, you can learn to call up your peak experience, review your strengths and generate the accompanying positive emotions in as little as three to five minutes.

Learning to center ourselves and draw from our inner power in practical ways is a ninja-level leadership move that can serve to quiet our minds and help prepare for difficult meetings, projects, or events. Imagine the more peaceful frame of mind you could l be in to give that back-to-school welcome on opening day—or the more centered frame of mind you could be in to discuss complex issues during a late-night board meeting.

And with a little practice, you might just be able to turn your back-to-school nightmare into a dream.

A Dizzying Proposition

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One of my least favorite and most disruptive life experiences is the unexpected visit and subsequent long-term relationship with Meniere’s Disease. When first given this French-sounding diagnosis I thought it sounder cuter than it actually is. Five years, permanent hearing loss, daily tinnitus, and numerous bouts of vertigo later—let me tell you it ain’t exactly awesome.

For the blissfully unaware, suffice it to say that bouts of vertigo can range from the mildly annoying—when I move too fast, I get dizzy—to the incapacitating bouts that restrict most movement and don’t even allow me to look at a screen. Which means reading is out, writing is definitely not happening, and if I even move, I toss my cookies. These days are really long, really lonely, and really not so swell.

As a woman of faith, I have come to accept my own vertigo as a thorn in the flesh experience. Sure, I’m praying about it, but I also know my God is bigger than my vertigo and if He chooses to leave it unabated, He must have reasons of His own. Fine. What if one of those reasons involves me writing about vertigo?

Having recently moved through a moderate episode and the emotional hangover that followed, I found myself wondering what an aging serial killer would do if he/she suffered from such inopportune bouts of vertigo. How much fun would it be to write about a killer in the throes of their mission-of-the-moment only to be thwarted not by the authorities, but by incapacitating nausea?

While a better woman would start some sort of compassionate blog designed to encourage others sharing this ridiculous malady, my mind goes straight to my favorite fiction genres of thrillers, suspense, and murder mysteries. The odds are strong that one of my bad guys—or girls—is going to encounter a French-seeming visitor who might just take up a lot more space than originally intended. I’m pretty sure that’s going to make for some fun writing which should translate into an entertaining read.

Here’s to putting our pencils where our struggles lie—and creating stronger stories as a result of our respective journeys.

Coaching Affirmations from a Trail Rider

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One of my greatest passions is competing in an equestrian event called Trail. This is a sport that requires connection, forward motion, staying present, and focusing on one footfall at a time.  The partnership between horse and rider is essential in creating the elegance and poise characteristic of a winning ride in the Trail pen.

Clara—my ten-year-old quarter horse mare—has been my trail partner since January 2017. I know her well enough to know the difference between her asking for guidance and trying to take the reins herself. She knows me well enough to know when I’m asking her to round her back and lengthen her stride or when my arthritic left leg simply stops working for the day.

Together, we navigate a series of obstacles that require us to find a precise take off point for her (that’s my job) and an athletic surge of power and elegance as we maneuver over the poles (that’s her job.) An obstacle typically contains a series of wooden poles placed on the ground at varying heights and in differing formations, often surrounded by vibrant and distracting décor. The distance between each pole and the path you choose to take as a team determines the number of strides needed in-between each pole. In order to get to the correct take-off point, I need to focus on each pole and find a six-inch spot in the dirt to fix my eyes upon—signaling to Clara where to put her feet before clearing each pole with each foot.

Working with clients also requires teamwork, goal setting, and forward motion. As a coach, I strive to create an arena of safety and wisdom with each client. People come to the coaching experience seeking a thoughtful partnership that empowers them to navigate their own set of obstacles. Together we talk it out—riding every stride and letting each pole come to us instead of rushing the process and missing importance pieces of the pattern before us.

Tech Talk

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I have a confession to make: I may have a slight tech addiction. And I’m not just talking about killing zombies or expanding my online Township empire. I’m talking the rabbit holes I jump down on a regular basis that more often than not find their way into my fiction writing. My current novel features a sixty-year-old protagonist living in the year 2061with a limited vision for life after retirement. Sound familiar?

In an effort to illustrate what addiction looks and feels like in a novel world, I have her growing overly dependent on her A.I. companion, Carver. As the story opens, she prefers his company and their private world to “real” people. What will it take to lure her out of her head and into the real world? What lures us into living in our own “real world” today?

Meaningful relationships, the beauty of nature as represented in my awesome mare Clara, my fabulous canine companion Christie, and the beauty of the Wisconsin world around me—even in winter—all lure me into living robustly on a daily basis. Weaving these basic concepts into a future fictional world are forming the basic structure of my newest story world.

A tech addiction in the year 2021 may not look all that different from a tech addiction in the year 2061—sure, the toys will be cooler, but the basic human drivers remain the same. Our need for connection, intimacy, safety and knowing and being known by others can help us build more satisfying relationships and communities in real life—or online.

What if the relationships we build in the future are with artificial intelligence (A.I.) entities? Will they still count? More to the point, will our minds, hearts and souls make distinctions between humans and A.I. entities in our online relationships? And if you build relationships online—what unique factors exist to differentiate between an A.I. friend and a human friend?

These questions bubbled up as I noticed the changes in my own behavior as a result of COVID19. I have developed deep friendships with people in my coaching and writing communities online—and I “see” many of them on a weekly basis. I haven’t seen most of my “real” friends in my “real” life that often as a result of quarantines and social distancing over the past year.  Integrating these concepts into my writing has led to a story world that keeps me coming back to the keyboard.

Dreamy Ideas

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Where do you get your ideas?

We writers know, love, and sometimes hate this age-old question. 

My Jo Oliver thriller series started with a desire to write compelling stories of triumph, choice, and the power of emergent faith and community. Each story was fueled by a strong character, a plot idea, or an idea of what justice might look like via a twisty series of events. And while I am playing around with my next installment, I find myself distracted by new dreams.

For the past year or so, I’ve been toying with a new story that I finally had to start writing. This idea came to me in my sleep. Literally. I dreamt of my protagonist and how she meets her man— a paunchy insurance salesman with a deep alternative history steeped in international espionage. I loved the scene that first appeared to me in that memorable dream and ignored it soundly for about a year.

Yet the dreams returned. At night. While napping on planes. And once, while driving, an idea presented itself so strongly, I had to pull off the road into a highway oasis and furiously stab it all down on fast-food restaurant napkins. That chapter involved a kitchen island sex scene, with my 60-something arthritic protagonist secretly desiring to be ravished by her man on her granite counter—while fearing the possibility of breaking a hip with equal ferocity.


I’m thoroughly enjoying creating a life of unexpected purpose and adventure for two recently retired individuals who find themselves at the same banquet table at a hotel facing the New York Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. Stuff happens—and it is stirring my writer’s heart to share their story, giving me that excited I can’t wait to get to my keyboard to see what happens next kind of feeling. 

Rest assured, as the story reveals itself, I’ll share more with you!

Enjoy today,

Catherine