Jenni Catron | The Grit and Grace Project

Stuck in a Toxic Work Culture? 6 Ways to Make it Better

By Jenni Catron / Work & Money, Life & Culture

Several years ago I left a job I loved with a team of people that I adored to pursue an opportunity that looked like an amazing next step for me. The new role would stretch me and I was certain I would grow from the challenge. While I learned a lot, it was not the exciting endeavor that I had dreamed of. It turned out to be one of the most difficult seasons of my career. The work itself wasn’t the issue. The fact that my husband and I had relocated and were adjusting to a new community, while challenging, wasn’t the worst. The agony was that I had catapulted myself into a toxic work culture that was draining the life out […]

Stuck in a Toxic Work Culture? 6 Ways to Make it Better Read More »

The 6 Qualities That Make a Female Leader Strong

By Jenni Catron / Work & Money, Life & Culture

It is no surprise that “strong” is a word we use to describe women who have risen to positions of leadership. Males and females alike recognize that women in positions of power must be strong in order to survive the pressure cooker, which results in only 6.4% of women in Fortune 500 CEO positions.1 A stat, by the way, is up over 50% from 2016 and has tripled since 2008. The number of women holding these upper-echelon positions of power is troubling, considering that nearly 40% of MBA students are female.2 We start strong, but where do we get squeezed out? I won’t begin to explain (or try to understand) all the reasons why the numbers thin so dramatically the closer we get

The 6 Qualities That Make a Female Leader Strong Read More »

5 Steps for Setting Goals, Changing Dreams into Done

By Jenni Catron / Purpose, Work & Money

I absolutely love the start of each new year! A fresh start… a clean slate… wide open horizons… Pick your choice metaphor and embrace the new year’s energy with me for a minute. Fast forward to late January, and my motivation is waning. My guess is the same thing happens to you. In fact, statistics tell us that only 8% of us actually achieve the New Year resolutions we set! Our resolutions break down because we fail to create a plan to achieve them. In fact, rather than creating resolutions, I create goals that are important to me for the coming year. Goals vs. Resolutions It might seem like semantics to set goals versus resolutions, but here is the subtle difference between

5 Steps for Setting Goals, Changing Dreams into Done Read More »

3 Keys to Successful Leadership in the Midst of Chaos

By Jenni Catron / Work & Money, Life & Culture

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where the answer just wasn’t clear? Maybe it was a decision to take a new job in a different city. Maybe it was a really confusing or inconsistent relationship. Maybe it was taking a risk that didn’t seem to have a clear reward. We face tough decisions every single day. And as a woman, you’re not only facing your own decisions but also navigating the decision making for your family, your team at work, and for some of you, your entire organization. Living Within the Tension Leaders live in a constant state of tension. We live between what is and what could be. We straddle the known and the unknown. We wrestle the probable

3 Keys to Successful Leadership in the Midst of Chaos Read More »

3 Keys to Successful Leadership in the Midst of Chaos

By Jenni Catron / Life & Culture, Work & Money

3 Keys to Successful Leadership in the Midst of Chaos Read More »

Being a Successful Leader Starts With You

How to Be a Leader You Can Be Proud Of

By Jenni Catron / Purpose, Work & Money

“It’s just a busy season. I promise I’ll be home more when I finish this project.” I apologized to my husband as I raced out the door for an early-morning meeting that would be followed by a full day and a late-night event. When I snuck into bed later that evening hoping I wouldn’t wake him, he sighed and quietly said, “It’s not just a season, Jen. It’s you. There’s always another project. There’s always more you need to do. It doesn’t matter what the job is or who your boss is; you always run yourself ragged. You have to make choices that will sustain you.” As I’m sure you can imagine, I didn’t receive his comments well. And it wasn’t just

How to Be a Leader You Can Be Proud Of Read More »

Unsure of Your Purpose? Discover It With These 5 Steps

By Jenni Catron / Purpose

“He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” – Nietzsche The beginning of a new year. New hopes. New dreams. New goals. New resolutions. We start with so much hope, and yet I’ve rung in the New Year enough times now to approach it with a bit more hesitancy. Will my hopes and dreams really become reality? Is it possible to accomplish my goals? How quickly will I flounder in my resolutions? In recent years, I have shifted from writing audacious goals and declaring new resolutions, to reorienting myself around a sense of purpose and meaning. In fact, I recently re-read Victor Frankl’s seminal work Man’s Search for Meaning to help me reconnect with a sense of

Unsure of Your Purpose? Discover It With These 5 Steps Read More »

How Self-Awareness Will Make You Successful

By Jenni Catron / Purpose, Work & Money

“What do you want, Jen?” I thought it was a dumb question. I didn’t have time to think about what I wanted. I was leading a rapidly growing organization, overseeing a multi-million dollar building project, and writing my first book. There was no time to think about what I wanted. There was barely time to do everything I needed to do! My husband’s question triggered an avalanche of emotions that took me months of counseling to crawl out of. What emerged was a realization of how disconnected I had become from myself. I was lacking self-awareness and it was impacting every area of my life. Emotional intelligence expert and psychologist, Daniel Goleman, defines self-awareness as, “having a deep understanding of one’s emotions,

How Self-Awareness Will Make You Successful Read More »

2 Simple Secrets to Long-Term Success

By Jenni Catron / Life & Culture, Work & Money

Success is harder than it’s ever been and actually easier than it’s ever been. I’m not sure I’ve met a person who doesn’t want to succeed. We might want to succeed at different things but whatever your standard of success may be, you’re desperate to achieve it. And yet many of us live with a gnawing ache of feeling unfulfilled… angst just below our carefully crafted exterior that torments us with fear of not succeeding. This is compounded by social media’s wonderful ability (insert sarcasm) to point out the success of every other human. It’s for this reason that I think success may be more difficult to achieve than ever before. We cannot focus on our own priorities and purpose because we’re

2 Simple Secrets to Long-Term Success Read More »