Iron Sharpens Iron Series: Kathleen Booth, Mentor

If you are new to the Iron Sharpens Iron Series, I urge you to check out the inaugural post to learn more about what the series is all about.

Iron sharpens iron, and the people in my life sharpen me. They make me better. They make me more than I can be alone. And this series is about interactions I’ve had that make me better, that change my perspective, and that challenge me to grow. 

This is all about interactions that have left a lasting impression on me. No matter how small, or short the interaction, if it leaves an impression worth sharing, it will live in this series.

Kathleen Booth

Kathleen is the VP of Marketing for clean.io, and the person I’ve spent my entire marketing career following around.

The Sharpening of Iron

This is the hardest one of these I’ve written so far. I’ve followed Kathleen around to no less than four different companies as either an employee or an outsourced service provider. 

To quote another woman I admire (who I guarantee will get her own one of these articles very soon), I love working with her so much that I would work with her at Burger King if she asked me to.

So for a person who has meant so much in my career, how could I possibly select one interaction to talk about. I’ve spent the last couple months, since I started this series, trying to figure out what “one thing” to write about.

And then last week when I posted Matt Gillis’s entry in this series as I was thinking about leadership qualities I admire, it finally came to me. While Kathleen has so many different qualities as a leader that I could point out, there is one that stands out to me on a very personal level, so here we go.

My favorite conversations with Kathleen are the ones where she starts with, “I’m going to challenge you to…”

Now this phrase is an artform. I know some people who have so much PTSD around this phrase that just saying these words shut them down. So many managers use this phrase when they are looking to try and get you to work harder or put in longer hours to serve their own purposes. So many managers use this phrase to essentially tell you: “I’m not going to help you solve this problem you’ve brought to me. Deal with it, or fix it yourself.”

So to find someone who uses this phrase well is very unique. And Kathleen uses it better than anyone I’ve ever met.

Somehow (I still don’t know how), Kathleen always knows what I’m capable of far before I do. She uses this phrase when she’s going to ask me to do something that I think I can’t do. But she knows better. And I love her for it.

She also uses this phrase to call me out when I need to be called out. When we get a little overwhelmed, we can start to look at some of our responsibilities as tasks that need to be moved to the “done” column rather than opportunities to do amazing things. And if she catches me doing that, this phrase helps whip my head right back around where it should be.

So much of what I am today, I am because of her leadership. So much of what I do today, I might never know I was capable of doing without her saying those 6 perfect words to me.

So thank you Kathleen, for helping to make me everything that I am today, and for knowing what I’m worth (even when I don’t).