Grit, Grace, & Gravitas: The Three Keys to Transforming Leadership, Presence and Impact
Presented by Jane Firth and Andrea Zintz
We are living and working in unprecedented times – where exemplary leadership is needed more than ever. Beginning with the onset of Covid19, we’ve encountered many unexpected challenges that have impacted our work and home environments and have had an emotional impact on all of our lives. Hundreds of articles attempt to describe the complexities involved, complexities that now have us standing together at the beginning of a new era in which exemplary leadership and teamwork is needed now, more than ever. It is an era calling for more harmony and a different type of precision and rigor that is less command and control; where leaders have the skills that allow them to foster cultures of collaboration, inspiration, and innovation.
What skills are needed that help us effectively shape the exemplary leadership required for this new era? Through our work and research, we’ve found that while every leader is unique, exemplary leaders possess and lead through a combination of three critical, non-negotiable factors:
1) they have grit—an uncompromising commitment to performance excellence and strategic focus, and
2) they have gravitas—a depth of professional knowledge and competence that contributes to excellence in performance, and most importantly
3) they have grace – with the two pillars of grace, which are reaction management and relationship intelligence Grace becomes their game-changer.
As leaders integrate the social-emotional skills of grace into their leadership, they will simultaneously increase the value of their grit (persistence and perseverance), and their gravitas (a depth of know-how and experience) that are critical to achieving success in this new era. Exemplary leaders will generate cultures in which people thrive and excel, and will be, as Kathryn Dill writes in the Wall Street Journal, “prized for being social-emotional experts.”
We’ll provide a short abstract of our book ahead of time, and will walk through our framework, in preparation for our conversation. Together, we will discuss how the tools and stories from our book enhance development of one’s leadership presence and how it transforms the impact of one’s leadership.
Andrea Zintz, Ph.D. specializes in executive and high potential leadership strategy, succession and development. She has over 45 years of experience in Leadership Development, Change Management, Human Resources Development and Training. In her work in these areas, she designed and executed landmark work in the development of executives for their advancement, executive teams for strategic alignment and high performance, and with HR leaders and their role as internal coaches within their organizations.
Andrea cultivated her experiences as a consultant, trainer; executive coach; the development of executives and hi-potential leaders; and in talent optimization and change management, working primarily within the diversified healthcare and pharmaceutical, defense, and retail industries. As Vice President of Human Resources and Management Board member of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) subsidiary, Ortho Biotech, Inc., Andrea helped lead the growth of the company from $40 million to $500 million in a 6-year period and participated in launching 2 breakthrough biotech products that led the market.
Currently, Andrea is an executive coach, working primarily with senior and high-potential leaders in business units of Fortune 500 corporations and mid-sized companies in a variety of business sectors. She has provided consulting services to companies in consumer products, pharmaceuticals, electronics, consumer health care, commercial real estate, energy, advertising, medical device, defense, manufacturing and financial services. Andrea’s strategic focus is the development of a strong leadership pipeline. She has deep expertise in raising self-awareness and creating high performance teams through coaching and mentoring.
Andrea co-authored her first book, Orchestrating Sustainable Innovation: A Symphony in Sound Bites with Marilyn Blocker and Megan Mitchell. In addition to Andrea's section of the book regarding how to lead innovation, the book includes advice by best-selling authors, leading business consultants, educators from highly regarded academic institutions, and executives and practitioners at innovation-leading companies.
Andrea and Jane Firth co-authored the book, Grit, Grace and Gravitas: The Three Keys for Transforming Leadership, Presence and impact. It offers fresh ideas, stories, and tools that help leaders to become exemplary. Readers learn how grace, and the way it enhances the impact of their grit and gravitas, is the game-changing strength of exemplary leadership and executive presence. Here is the link to their website: http://www.gritgracegravitas.com.
Andrea received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Fielding Graduate University and is a member of the National OD Network. To learn more about Andrea’s background and work, go to http://www.strategicleadershipresources.com or http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-zintz.
Jane Firth advises executives and their teams, and provides deep expertise in the areas of leadership, performance, and executive presence. For her outstanding work Jane was awarded the Philadelphia Business Journal’s Women of Distinction Award.
As an industry innovator, Jane has created state of the art leadership development programs and tools. Her studies in human behavior, executive performance, and organizational culture combined with her expertise as an executive coach led to the development of concepts and models now revealed in Grit, Grace and Gravitas, the Three Keys to Transforming Leadership, Presence and Impact, co-written with Andrea Zintz. Jane’s other programs include The Inspiritor Generative Leadership Program, Mastering the Complexities of Change Leadership, The Executive Empowerment Program: Leadership, Identity and Executive Presence.
In addition to her work with executives, professionals, entrepreneurs, consultants and philanthropists, Jane has been a champion for women executives and advancing women’s roles on executive teams and corporate boards.
A member of the Forum of Executive Women, Jane chaired the Women in Executive Leadership and Governance Committee of the Forum of Executive Women dedicated to increasing women’s participation on public, private, and not for profit Boards, and in the executive suites of regional companies. She has been a strategic partner in developing the Forum’s ‘Within the Boardroom’ program series and Women in Leadership A Status Report: Women in Boardrooms, Executive Suites and Elected Offices.
Jane has an M.S. in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania and has completed extensive studies in Leadership, the Psychology of Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Human Potential, Human Behavior and Development, Educational Psychology, Art Therapy, Psychoanalytic Theory, and Eastern Philosophies.
Jane is a co-founding partner of Globalislocal, a collaborative funding partnership investing in solutions to poverty in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Also a founder of the Beyond Our Differences Foundation, Jane was a strategic advisor in the creation of the award-winning documentary film of the same name, which premiered on PBS on Bill Moyers Journal. Jane served on the Board of Advisors of the National Disease Research Interchange and the Board of the Forum of Executive Women. She currently serves on the Board of Governors of The Pyramid Club. Jane is a Founder of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Organizational Dynamics and a Founder of the Psychoanalytic Coaches Association.
https://www.firthleadershippartners.com
http://www.gritgracegravitas.com
Jane@FirthLeadershipPartners.co
