L. Bonita Patterson
Founder and CEO of Polaris Consulting Group.biz, L. Bonita Patterson, specializes in Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, Culture Change, and Employee Engagement. She partners with a broad array of corporate, government, and non-profit clients to improve bottom-line results by aligning culture and behaviors with strategic business intent. Her success as a coach, consultant, and advisor lies in her understanding of human behavior, organizational complexities, and sustainable change.
She is the author of Communication Under Fire: How To Talk When Things Heat Up; and co-author of the first edition of Emotional Intelligence in Action: Training and Coaching Activities for Leaders and Managers.
She has facilitated strategic organizational change, provided executive coaching and workshops in numerous organizations including U.S. Office of Personnel Management, University of Denver, City and County of Denver, Cummins Rocky Mountain, Colgate University, Colorado Department of Transportation, Centurylink, Coors Brewing Company, eBay, Eberl Claims Service, Fox Rothschild, Guaranty Bank & Trust, Hewlett Packard, Hospital Corporation of America, Johns Manville, TIAA, National Conference of State Legislatures, 9News, The Medical Center of Aurora, and Charles Schwab.
Her Executive Coaching and Culture Change transformations include:
- Executive Coaching – “In six months of work with Bonita, she helped accelerate my personal and professional growth by at least five years.”
- Establishing a strategic planning process and launching behavior change initiatives that contributed to in the client achieving their ideal merger and acquisition scenario.
- Revitalizing a diminishing organization; facilitating a post-merger transition to a new operating model
- Developing an executive leadership program leveraging world-class executives, educators, and researchers to enhance the leadership capabilities of senior management in global organizations.
Bonita’s ability to transform leaders and organizations to optimize engagement and heighten results was honed during her years in corporate leadership and senior management with IBM, a leadership development company, and U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons plant closure project at Rocky Flats.
She is a Harvard / Wharton Executive Management Program graduate, and holds an MS in Organizational Leadership & Management, and a BA in Communications. Bonita is a Certified Coach & Master of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Emotional Intelligence, and Conversational Intelligence.
In addition to being a Leadership Assessor in Executive Assessment Centers, she was a longtime facilitator and coach with the international award-winning Leadership Ascent, she has been a facilitator in the Colorado State University College of Business Certificate Program, and past president of the Board of Directors of Mile High Society for Human Resource Management.
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Certifications
Audio
Podcast: Communicating When Things Heat Up ft. L Bonita on Ep 3 of 97% Effective w Michael Wenderoth
Bonita shares how to manage your emotions and effectively communicate in heated situations – perhaps the hardest and most important skill to master. We discuss how to balance tasks and relationships, and she provides practical approaches and phrases when things get emotional. Working with or through others -- many of whom we may not see eye-to-eye with -- is critical to our success in organizations, particularly the higher we rise.
- How communications get tricky when things heat up
- Where people have the biggest challenge
- The first step and question to ask yourself so you can get to a position of “emotional neutrality”
- Ways to bide time and turn the heat down, without feeling like you are entering a prolonged awkward silence
- Practical tips and phrases when engaging someone you really detest
- “Tailor” your message by knowing your audience, the context, and the power dynamic
- The secret sauce: first connect with people’s emotions (“Meet them where they are”)
- Being intentional but balancing the tension: instead of “Task vs Relationship”, the power of “Task AND Relationship”
- Being clear and direct -- while leaving people whole
- Navigating a very sensitive conversation – Bonita shares how to handle a real situation, when colleague “Sally” dropped an insensitive racial remark
- On vulnerability without looking weak: using more “emotionally neutral” words and phrases, being specific and direct, and pointing out the impact others may not realize they are having
- How humor lightens things up, and can help people learn
- Neuroscience findings that support her recommendations -- and what she would add in a second edition of her book
- How the pandemic has surfaced our “Line of sight” leadership deficiency – highlighting why we need to get much better at connecting to people, which starts with becoming a better listener
