International Women’s Day feature with Anastasia Bottos, My Alarm Center
As a women-owned business, we are honored to highlight women who are incredible leaders in marketing and communications across a wide variety of industries. Each year on International Women’s Day we share an interview series celebrating these women and sharing their stories.
This interview is with Anastasia Bottos, President and COO of My Alarm Center.
How do you define your leadership?
My leadership style has evolved, but in the last 10 years, the only word that can categorize it is adaptive—shifting from leading by example, to visionary, to pacesetting, to transformational, to servant leadership depending on the needs of our team and the needs of our organization. Driving vision & organizational transformation is where I get my energy, and servant leadership is more taxing but extremely rewarding and critical in certain situations.
How has your leadership changed in the past year?
Prioritizing communication and engagement. It’s been something that has evolved over the last five years, but COVID and the shift to work from home highlighted the need from our team and the organization for more proactive communication and engagement. The unintended but very positive consequence is the improved awareness of transparency. Prior, there was no intent not to be transparent but the formal publication of operational strategic plans/visions, open discussions with team members around these goals, working collaboratively to align goals with the organizational vision, etc. I believe it gives everyone a better understanding of what we are all working towards.
Can you share a story that demonstrates a key learning for you in your leadership journey?
Very early in my career (early 20’s), I sat in one leadership mode – pacesetting. It was great for the growing organization but onerous on my team. I’m very fortunate that almost all of them stuck with me for well over a decade, despite this… but I recall one project we were all working on and sitting in a conference room, and I was about to start pushing for the next steps so we could get to the finish line and looked around the room, and every one of them looked like they were on the brink of burnout. I’m glad I noticed it and solicited some feedback (that they were afraid to give because they didn’t want to disappoint)… It really shifted my mindset to the importance of balancing team/organizational needs and how ultimately, you can get to the same level of results. This is certainly not to say pacesetting is a mode to avoid – It served us well when we had to shift our entire team at corporate headquarters to a work-from-home structure in 1 day, but it’s all about balance.
