In her seventh year as mayor of Crestline, Linda Pitt has learned the importance of her role as the people’s servant.
Her job entails listening to and fielding questions not only from the entire community, but also from council members and the employees around her — all while providing a clear vision of where she wants to take Crestline in the next five to 20 years.
“I try to be the people’s servant and while I might be in charge, I certainly am not in control of the legislature, that is Council’s responsibility,” Pitt said.
A few years ago, Pitt realized Crestline’s department heads needed to grow into a cohesive team if the village was going to meet its long-term goals.
“I am a firm believer in working with a team and making sure we communicate openly. In order to be successful in obtaining our 20-year goal, our people would have to change and grow as leaders,” Pitt said.
“We needed to overcome rivalries and miscommunications between departments.”
About 6 miles away in Galion, Carrie Cottrell was learning a version of the same lesson while managing her growing business, Cleaning By Carrie.
Cottrell started Cleaning By Carrie in 2010 as a stay-at-home mom looking for a little more control over her schedule. She picked up one cleaning client a week, and over time, the business snowballed.
For seven years, it was just her — until a large contract cleaning vacant units for an apartment complex meant her business had grown enough to need employees.
“I never, never in a million years would have dreamed it would have become what it is today,” Cottrell said.
However, the growth exposed a gap in Cottrell’s own leadership skills. As more employees came on — the team now totals 18 — she struggled to manage a larger group of people.
“The people pleaser in me just wasn’t cutting it anymore. So I knew I needed something,” Cottrell said.
That something, for both Cottrell and Pitt, turned out to be Josh Cole.
Finding a voice as a leader
Cole, a Crestline-based leadership coach with ties to Mansfield, works with leaders on communication, decision-making and team alignment.
“What I really like about Josh is that he doesn’t come in with a one-size-fits-all approach,” Cottrell said.
For Pitt, the work centered on leading in her own style rather than someone else’s. She describes her one-on-one coaching sessions as “a godsend.”
“Josh and I worked on my confidence to lead the team without worrying about if I was doing it right or if someone’s feelings were going to be hurt. He helped me to be more clear, more consistent while taking ownership of being the boss,” Pitt said.
“I had space to process what we were learning, how to apply it to the team, and to be able to voice all the pressures of the job in order to make concise plans to push new ideas, to save citizens money, so that we can take Crestline to the next level,” Pitt said.
Cottrell describes the same shift in almost identical terms. She said most of what she used to treat as performance problems were really communication problems.
Coaching with Cole led her team to coin a phrase that now shapes how she runs her company: “to be unclear is to be unkind.” Cottrell said she used to think she was being kind by withholding feedback from employees, until she realized she wasn’t doing them any favors.
That clarity has changed how she sees herself as a leader.
“I am the leader. I am the boss. I am Carrie. Therefore, I need to step up. I’ve got 18 families relying on me. I have to do the hard stuff that makes me uncomfortable, because it is what is best. And every day that gets a little easier,” Cottrell said.
In Crestline, the ripple effects reached beyond Pitt’s own office. Department heads, once skeptical of leadership training, started handling problems themselves instead of letting them fester into what Pitt describes as “watercooler gossip.”
“My team now talks with each other consistently and if they have issues among themselves, they talk it out. We have become a well-oiled, cohesive machine working toward common goals and visions,” Pitt said.
Cottrell’s team went through a similar transformation, in her case built around DiSC assessments that changed how her leadership team communicates.
Now, she said, she knows how to better communicate with her leadership team — and, down the line, that team communicates better with employees. For Cleaning By Carrie, it’s turned leadership into something the company practices, rather than just a word it uses.
Both leaders describe Cole’s coaching as something that reaches past their work lives.
“One of the things I appreciate the most about coaching is the growth. It just didn’t impact my business, it impacts every area of my life — my marriage, my parenting style, all my volunteer activities, all of it,” Cottrell said.
Pitt said Cole invests personally in the people he coaches.
“He truly cares about you and will help you get results. It is all about you and that is what sets Josh apart from others. He is quite good at drawing out your issues and making you face them,” Pitt said.
For a small-town mayor and a small-business owner working in very different worlds, the lesson from coaching landed in the same place: leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about the confidence and clarity to lead anyway.
Ready to lead with more confidence and clarity?
Josh Cole works with business owners, executives and public leaders across North Central Ohio to build stronger, more communicative teams. Learn more and get in touch at https://www.joshcolecoaching.com/
