Karen Pelot, Founder and Lead PractitionerThe PERSPECTIVES, LLC professionals utilize their unparalleled experience, education, and expertise to help executives and high-potential leaders achieve individual and organizational goals. Through their proprietary the Perspective AdvantageTM 3-step program, they enable leaders to move from assumptions, frustration, and missing targets to clarity, leveraging strengths, and unstoppable leadership.
In an interview with Manage HR Magazine, Karen Pelot, Owner and Lead Practitioner of PERSPECTIVES, LLC, sheds light on the mission and vision of the company.
Could you talk a bit about the company’s genesis?
I started the company as a mediation practice in 2007, after a 20-year career as a corporate leader in the financial services industry. Upon client request, in 2012 we started providing workshops for organizational leaders and their teams on interpersonal conflict resolution and communicating effectively with different personalities. By 2015, we were providing leadership coaching, and shared learning experiences around emotional intelligence, mindset awareness, and interpersonal conflict resolution. Ultimately we realized our sweet spot is working with executives and high potential leaders— those who have the greatest impact on an organization’s success.
What makes us unique is the fact that we don’t look at our services as a one-off deal. We truly partner with our clients to identify and eliminate the gaps between their vision and strategic, goal-achieving action. My mission is to help leaders, and subsequently their teams, to be outstanding. Through clarity, effective planning, and accountability, our clients end damaging workplace conflict, create world-class 360-degree communication, and smash their goals. We help corporate executives, non-profits, and government agencies to “communicate, collaborate, commit, and succeed.”
In light of your experience, what are some of the most pressing challenges clients face today?
There are three significant and persistent challenges plaguing organizations today:
First and foremost is the absence of a culture of accountability. One with clear roles, responsibilities, expectations, and measures of success. In a culture of accountability, everyone understands the corporate mission and feels connected to it. From the top executive to the individual contributor, there is a direct connection between day-to-day activities, and the organization’s mission, vision, and values. Everyone understands how their role contributes to organizational success and why it is important. Over the eighteen months, I’ve spent most of my professional time helping clients strategically build those connections.
This brings me to the second issue clients face today: A lack of cross-functional collaboration. Open, transparent, communication across departmental lines may be more important now than ever before. Silos don’t work! Territorial information hoarding creates inefficiencies and mistakes. I see too many Sr. leaders who believe they have to be THE ONE with all answers and information. Leaders become influential and accomplish goals through effective interaction with others, knowing who the SME’s are for whatever issue, and encouraging them to employ their strengths to solve problems and generate new ideas.
Our mission is to elicit and support leadership transformation, from being stuck between frustrating gaps to satisfying, goal-smashing, leadership
Though each division within an organization exists to support the corporate mission, I’m seeing a preponderance of top executives frustrated and blindsided by issues that have been missed and even created by silos. These problems are remedied by establishing clarity (the first issue) followed by a true environment of collaboration.
Finally, talent retention and recruitment is a major concern for many organizations today. Through the abrupt changes necessitated by the pandemic, much of the workforce has experienced a complete mindset shift around what their worklife balance can look like. We see it on the news everyday, and my clients are feeling it too – there is a workforce shortage. As a result, the ability to recruit and retain the best talent has become a top priority.
Would you please elaborate on how you help clients in addressing these issues?
Our true value to our clients lies in helping them develop astute self awareness and clarity personally, as leaders, and then for their teams, as the experts who bring organizational vision to life. After years of research and development, in 2020 we launched The Perspectives AdvantageTM program, which is a very strategic, three-step process we follow with every client, regardless of industry or depth of services being sought.
Our team begins by gaining an objective perspective from a completely neutral vantage point. Through data, we help our clients move from in the dark, to in the know. We identify the gaps and potential derailers between their vision, action, and success. In this phase we prioritize goals, determine experiential learning needs, and the provide the tools necessary to bridge those gaps.
Once objective perspective is established, we move to the planning phase. Here we strategically tie the individual or organizational mission, vision, values, and goals to the established priorities and daily operations. In this phase we get tactical: establishing specific action, timelines, accountability, and measures of success. By the end of step two, clients shift from reactive patterns to intentional mission-focused action.
The final step of our program is “performance”. At this point our client has clarity, strategic goals, and tactical plans for accomplishing them. As they begin to execute, we support follow-through and ultimate goal achievement with coaching and facilitation. During this final stage of engagement, our client moves from theory to proven results.
Could you share a case study?
For the past 15 months, my colleague and I have been working with the U.S. Chiropractic profession to establish a strategic plan rooted in common goals, identified across incredibly diverse beliefs, philosophies and practice styles. Historically there has been a great deal of animosity between differing perspectives within the profession. To us, this was the ultimate test of our program, as there was no one organizational hierarchy in charge. We gathered data from nearly 4,000 volunteer participants, then gleaned context through specific cohort focus groups, which uncovered common ground in mission, values, and profession-wide goals. We identified four primary priorities, and established diverse workgroups to turn those pillars into a visionary strategic plan, with tactical plans and accountability. We are currently in stage three – performance – and supporting a newly formed philosophy-bridging coalition through leadership and workgroup facilitation. As a profession, unified under commonalities, they are already hitting targets – something previously considered impossible.
On a smaller scale, this year we also worked with a global CPA firm that had reached a fork in the road. They have grown, are diversifying, and realized “what got them here won’t get them there.” They needed to establish clarity with roles and expectations, and foster a culture of collaborative communication and accountability. They have successfully moved through gaining perspective and planning, and are fully prepared to perform as they expand their brand.
What does the future hold for the company?
For fifteen years our work has been traditionally “hands-on” and live, as we partner with clients through transformation. We are starting to explore options for making some of our learning experiences available on-demand.
