Most Recent Posts
Stop Worrying – Choose Trust
Key Takeaways: Worry depletes energy: Both conscious and unconscious worry drain energy. Often, we carry around anxiety without realizing it, which can be exhausting until we identify and address the specific source of our worry. The opposite of worry is trust: To...
Dear Dana Workplace Advice: How to Handle a Bully Who Stoops to Going Through Your Trash
Key Takeaways: Bullies thrive on negative emotions: Responding with anxiety or anger to a bully gives them more control. Learning to manage your emotional reactions through detriggering can make you less of a target and help you handle the situation calmly....
A Guide to Allyship: The Authenticity Paradox and How to Help Women in the Workplace Move Past It
Key Takeaways: Key Actions for a Guide to Allyship: Men and women can support women in leadership by assuming competence, mentoring and sponsoring them, calling out bias, and fostering visibility. Allies should also work to educate themselves about the unique...
Feedback Coaching: How to Get Results with “Tough Love”
Key Takeaways: Balance empathy with clarity: While empathy is crucial, over-empathizing can prevent leaders from delivering clear feedback. Leaders need to ensure their feedback is understood without being overly soft or accommodating. Effective leaders use a spectrum...
Why Collaboration is the Key to Success in Business
Key Takeaways: Collaboration boosts efficiency: Effective collaboration reduces duplicated efforts, clarifies roles, and streamlines workflows, leading to cost savings and quicker turnaround times. Empowerment through collaboration: When teams collaborate, employees...
The Leadership Upside of Getting Fired
Key Takeaways: Failure builds character: Being fired from a high-level job teaches humility and resilience. It reveals that self-confidence, without humility, can lead to missteps, and failure doesn’t define you as a person. Redefining leadership: Leadership is not...
Popular Posts
Unconscious Bias: The Key to Effective Gender Communication
In executive coaching (both women and men) I’ve often observed that two parallel stories about women and men in the workplace often coexist. First, “women and men communicate differently” is a truth that few bother to deny. Second, “men and women are treated equally...
Team Achievements Examples: Accomplishments When Applying for a Job
Welcome to “Dear Dana”, a column to give you career and workplace advice/coaching from executive coach, Dana Theus Dear Dana, I am updating my resume to apply for jobs. I read your article about "speaking accomplishments." I liked your advice and will apply it to how...
Middle Managers – The Critical (Weak) Link of Change Management
If you were in charge of your corporate culture and knew it needed fixing, would you fix it? Certainly anyone in charge of change management would want to say yes to this question, but as anyone who is actually in charge of corporate culture knows, it’s harder than it...
Leadership
The Leadership Upside of Getting Fired
Key Takeaways: Failure builds character: Being fired from a high-level job teaches humility and resilience. It reveals that self-confidence, without humility, can lead to missteps, and failure doesn’t define you as a person. Redefining leadership: Leadership is not...
Unlocking Potential: How the Right Coach for Executives Can Transform Your Leadership Skills
As an executive--or an executive-wannabe--enhancing your leadership effectiveness is pivotal to career success. After over a decade of executive coaching, I can confidently say that the right coach for executives can be the catalyst you need. Through personally...
The Psychology of Goal-Setting Success
I am a student of goal-setting success. Early in my career I began to notice that I was more likely to meet some of my goals than others. Being curious, I began to experiment and reflect on which goals led to fairly effortless success and which ones might predictably...
Mentoring
Why Mentorship Isn’t Enough To Help Women Get into Leadership
We hear a lot about how, in addition to mentors and mentorship, women need assistance to get into leadership. They need sponsors to help make it into the executive ranks. But how do you learn what a sponsor wants? Dana turns it around and invites you to start...
Unlocking the Benefits of Reverse Mentoring
Mentoring is often thought of to help younger employees develop by passing on the wisdom of more experienced leaders. And it is! But that model ignores all the wisdom that many people have to give those of us who sit in leadership positions. And there is a lot that...
What Does a Mentor Do? A Comprehensive Guide for Mentors and Mentees
If you sometimes struggle to navigate the complex world of personal and professional growth, you're not alone. And that's the point. Many others have walked the path you're on, and you can learn from their successes and mistakes. Don't go it alone. Get a mentor to...
Interviews
Servant Leadership for Women and Other Historically Under-represented Leaders
Podcast/Audio There is no question that servant leadership for women and other historically under-represented leaders is an effective way to manage teams and organizations. Servant leaders achieve results, not by using their own positional power (e.g., telling people...
Career Advice
The Impact of Poor Leadership on Burnout & Job Satisfaction
Burnout is a work-related process of chronic stress and disengagement and has been called the occupational hazard of the 21st century. The formula for job burnout is simple: too many job demands, too few job resources, and not enough recovery or time to re-charge...
Dear Dana Workplace Advice: Career Planning in the Age of Digital Disruption
Welcome to “Dear Dana”, our regular column to give you career and workplace advice/coaching. Please write in and tell me about a career challenge or frustration you’re facing at the office! Today's topic is career planning! – Dana Theus Dear Dana: You wrote a post...
How To Psyche Yourself Up For Difficult Conversations
By: Mary Schaefer What do you do when you’re really ticked off A client asked me for coaching to help deal with having difficult conversations a colleague. The colleague made false accusations, talked about him behind his back and micromanaged. Overall he made him...
Women in Leadership
Which Double Standard for Women Applies To You? All of Them?
Double standard for women in leadership is an age-old problem, but it turns out that it's not just a problem for leaders; it's a problem for all women in the workplace. Key Takeaways: Numerous Double Standards: The article highlights the plethora of double standards...
Are Women Better Leaders Than Men? Exploring the Leadership Gender Gap
Are women better leaders than men? The answer is a paradox: research says that women display more positive leadership characteristics than men but that most people believe that good leaders act more like men. Exploring these contradictions paints a fascinating picture...
Can you get to the top without playing office politics?
Office politics is as much a part of work as drawing a salary. And yet, I don’t know anyone who wants more of it. In fact, many clients come to me because they feel stymied in their career advancement goals because they perceive “office politics” to be getting in...
Diversity & Inclusion
Which Double Standard for Women Applies To You? All of Them?
Double standard for women in leadership is an age-old problem, but it turns out that it's not just a problem for leaders; it's a problem for all women in the workplace. Key Takeaways: Numerous Double Standards: The article highlights the plethora of double standards...
Cultural Change: An Update on Workforce Diversity
As I’ve begun to explore the interpersonal dynamics of workplace discrimination more closely, I have gone back to update my own understanding of workforce diversity data and what it tells us about the the demographic makeup of the modern workforce. I have been...
The Woman Effect: TEDx MassAveWomen Video & The Research Behind It
On December 3, 2012 I had the honor of speaking to a group of powerful women in Washington DC at a TEDx event, TEDxMassAveWomen. I’m very excited because I’ve long wanted to distill down what InPower Women's about, into a simple but powerful video, and this gave me...
