Mar 12, 2019
Heather is the founder and facilitator of Ascent Solutions. A
fun fact about Heather is that she turns
everything into a song in her head while people are talking. In the
early 90’s Heather was working for
Blue Shield/Blue Cross where a position as a trainer became
available. She struggled with believing in
herself but with her family’s belief in her, she applied and was
offered the position. Throughout the
years she has climbed the latter to bigger positions and attributes
her success to other people’s belief in
her.
While working at Charles Schwab, she went from a training position
that was full of fun dinners,
networking, and personality tests to being a Broker Trainer in a
small room with lots of applications and
technical components. It was not at all where she wanted to be, but
she knew that she had to challenge
herself if she wanted to get to that senior management position.
She brought her knowledge to the
table and combined emotional intelligence with these processes she
was training--it took her to the next
level. She then advanced to the senior management position. In her
difficult times in the broker position
when she felt she was hitting a wall, becoming a disengaged
employee, she dug deep and brought who
she was to the position which resulted in bringing her back to
life.
A previous employer at Discount Tire, Pat Klein, taught Heather how
to establish who she was when
walking into a room. An example is when she would walk into Pat’s
office to talk, Pat would ask her,
“What role do you need me to be for you right now? An advisor, a
sounding board or just a listener?” In
doing this, all expectations are clear.
Heather admits that she is full of energy and tends to be a
squirrel! So, to manage herself and time most
efficiently she uses music to ground her, and she puts her day into
manageable chunks of time. By doing
this she can move through her work more quickly.
Having clear expectations of herself and of everyone else around
her helps her manage her
work/personal life balance. She believes having a personal mission
statement is very important. It helps
her stay in alignment with her core values. To create your personal
mission statement, she suggests
writing down all your values, condense them down, take your top 5
and create your mission statement.
We have 4 very strong generations in the workplace who need to
learn how to “play” together. By
learning tolerance and personalities, the generations can leverage
each other’s strengths. This has been
her biggest struggle.
If you are wanting to develop your team but don’t know where to
start, Heather shares about “Data
Dumping.” This is where she and colleagues would share images,
documents and ideas into a drop box.
In doing this all the data she needs to develop training is right
there for her. From there she suggests
categorizing into topics. What brings her the most joy about being
a trainer is when she looks at the
individuals and sees the a-ha moment in their eyes.
She believes giving back to the community is essential. She has
spent time at the Mission more recently
putting beds together. When she worked for Charles Schwab, they had
a whole week dedicated to
volunteerism. There is so much power and purpose in serving our
community.
Heather is a huge believer in networking. She encourages
everyone to reach out in authenticity. One of
her favorite Tri-City influencers is Ken Marsh with P2 Promotions.
He is the guy that knows the guy you
may need!