When you meet Microsoft’s Chief Security Officer for the first time – a man who spent over two decades in super secret intelligence and law enforcement before taking on one of the most challenging commercial assignments on the planet – you don’t get what you expect. You don’t get a tough, paranoid, bark-and-shout commander. You get a nice guy, who’s very smart and very interested in leadership.
As a busy woman who works with busy professionals, I often hear this question: “How can I get more time in my day?” With busyness and disconnection at an all time high, these five questions will help you assess what changes you can make to create more time in your day and reconnect with what matters.
Women are good for business. Studies have made it clear that women are excellent leaders, creating “The Woman Effect” to produce meaningful, measurable and often dramatically improved results for companies that sustain a relative gender balance in their leadership team.
But it’s important to recognize that this dynamic isn’t (only) about women. Companies with a leadership presence of women that goes beyond the token (30% or more) create conditions in which women and men react and interact differently — and productively. Women are catalysts for this new, more productive leadership culture as they integrate into the default male-oriented leadership culture, but results are jointly produced. (more…)
Recently, I have written several articles about our need for more women in key leadership roles. I assert that our companies and organizational cultures could benefit from women’s great strengths, e.g., their willingness to ask questions, to listen to understand and learn, to be inclusive in decision making, and to have meaningful conversations and relationships. Even though this is just a partial list, each is so important to highly effective leadership that companies and organizations lacking leaders with these qualities will not perform as well as they could.
Over the last two weeks, I have written about mentoring and how important it is for us to help those coming up behind us. I like to think of it as taking a person(s) under our wing and helping her or him learn how to do their best work and advance, to earn the success they deserve. (more…)
I’ve been on a conscious, 15 year quest for work-life balance and have actually achieved a great deal of it (throws confetti). Recently I’ve been documenting a lot of my learning’s about what’s worked and what hasn’t during this time, and integrating it into my coaching practice, but it wasn’t until last week that I had a really important ah-ha! that I wanted to share.
You see, I’ve always thought of work-life balance as “work-life baloney”, meaning that balance was less the objective than a life that integrated work in ways that meets your needs and desires, even if they’re “unbalanced” through the eyes of others. (more…)
I’ve been delving deeply into the subject of authenticity lately as I launch my eSeminar on the power of your Authentic Leadership Style, and I’m beginning to see even more power in authenticity than I’d previously really focused on – including the way in which it can help you create space in your life and attract what you want in your career.
The deepest dimension of authenticity just hit me this week, however, when I had client work and the eSeminar collide on me at the same time, threatening to take my work-lifeness way out of balance. (more…)
After spending over a decade in the legal profession, much of it as a practicing attorney, I spent a great deal of time observing the career paths of talented women. Frustrated by the lack of inclusion of women in the partnership ranks, I often felt that those who led organizations were disconnected from the world women live in today. I now understand that what I thought was specific to one industry is happening throughout Corporate America. Women simply are not being advanced to high-level executive positions and partnerships at the rate they should be, and it’s having a negative bottom-line impact on businesses in this country; in fact, several studies have each concluded that companies with the best records of promoting women have a substantially higher return on equity, revenue, assets, and total return to shareholders (Shipman & Kay, 2009).
With that in mind, here are seven ways companies can retain and advance their talented women (written purposely from the collective “we”): (more…)
I’ve been on a conscious, 15 year quest for work-life balance and have actually achieved a great deal of it (throws confetti). Recently I’ve been documenting a lot of my learning’s about what’s worked and what hasn’t during this time, and integrating it into my coaching practice, but it wasn’t until last week that I had a really important ah-ha! that I wanted to share.
You see, I’ve always thought of work-life balance as “work-life baloney”, meaning that balance was less the objective than a life that integrated work in ways that meets your needs and desires, even if they’re “unbalanced” through the eyes of others. (more…)
Study: Recession and It’s Aftermath Create More Mr. Moms (Wall Street Journal, 2011)
Finding: Working Dad’s are transitioning into Mr. Moms in the aftermath of recent recessions, and are allowing their working wives to carry the economic burden.
InPower Insight: Embrace the shift of women working and men taking on household responsibilities to form new work-life partnerships that ease everyone’s burden.
Summary:
Here’s some uplifting data for moms who struggle with achieving work-life balance. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as more women enter the workforce more men are stepping up to the plate to take a more involved role in household responsibilities. At the time of this research approximately 32% of Dad’s with working wives took on the responsibility of child-care on a regular bases. This number was up 26% from 2002. (more…)
A few weeks ago I witnessed some of the most powerful women I’d ever seen on stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Along with 350 others, I had the honor to watch souls heal in front of my eyes, all through the personal power of their voice.
The event was sparked by an unusual collaboration of arts and social service nonprofits creating the opportunity for fifteen women recovering from abuse, addiction and poverty that so many of us can’t even imagine. Clients of N Street Village, the Theater Lab and the Kennedy Center came together to produce 90 minutes of soul-wrenching monologues woven together with short plays that, together, told the hopeful story of recovery and strength. (more…)
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