Most Recent Posts
You Are What You Think: The Significance of Your Word Choices
Key Takeaways: Word choices shape more than just conversations—they influence your reality, your relationships, and the path your life takes. Every word you say holds weight. Workplace jargon can subtly shift perception and behavior, often reinforcing exclusion or...
How Emotional Intelligence in Leadership is a Strength, Not a Weakness
Key Takeaways: Emotional intelligence isn’t a trait you either have or don’t—it’s something you can lose and reclaim. For me, rediscovering it after burnout completely changed my leadership, motherhood, and happiness. Self-awareness is the first step toward...
Advice for Girls About Happiness
Key Takeaways: Advice for girls: Your happiness isn’t found in checking all the boxes. It’s found in tuning into what you want, defining success on your own terms, and refusing to burn out trying to be everything to everyone. Experiences—not stuff—are where lasting...
Being Bold at Work
Key Takeaways: Being bold at work means owning your voice, taking up space, and acting with purpose—even when it’s uncomfortable. Boldness isn’t arrogance; it’s alignment with your values and belief in your own worth. Playing it safe might keep you liked, but it won’t...
The Top 5 Mistakes Women Make Receiving Feedback
Key Takeaways: Receiving feedback as a woman often means managing style critiques, not just performance issues: Women are disproportionately given feedback about how they behave—not just what they achieve. This makes receiving feedback more personal and often more...
Gaining Power In Your Career: A Guide to Getting Promoted at Every Level
Key Takeaways Getting promoted is not just about hard work: While dedication is important, getting promoted requires a deeper understanding of how the system works. You need to be strategic and play the game effectively. Toot your own horn: Don't be shy...
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
3 Ways Powerful Leaders Can Practice the Art of Saying No
Make your YES mean more by saying NO more often. Saying “No” is hard because we don’t just say the word, we burden it with other – unsaid – baggage on both the sayer’s and receiver’s part. But it doesn’t have to be that way and powerful leaders know how to use the Art of No in ways that leave the listener feeling useful, appreciated and inspired. Learn to practice the Art of No. Your team will thank you for it.
5 Leadership Lessons From The Worst Bosses I’ve Ever Had
Key Takeaways: Learn from the Bad to Lead Better: Some of the most powerful leadership lessons come from watching what not to do. Pay attention to how poor leadership feels—then commit to doing the opposite with intention and integrity. Respect Your People: Employees...
Reclaiming Leadership: A Manifesto
Key Takeaways: Leadership isn’t reserved for the C-suite—it’s a daily, personal choice to stand in your power and be a force for positive change, wherever you are. We've let go of our dreams and power too easily—traded in our passion for the illusion of security, and...
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
What If The Glass Ceiling Isn’t What We Think It Is?
Key Takeaways: The traditional view of the glass ceiling as a boys’ club barrier still holds truth, but it’s not the whole story—gender bias exists, yet it’s no longer just about women being excluded. Simply getting more women to the top won’t automatically change...
Blend, Don’t Balance Work and Life
Key Takeaways: Work-life “balance” is outdated—embrace the blend. Life isn’t a neat 50/50 split; it’s a constantly shifting mix of priorities, and it’s okay if the ratios change day to day (or hour to hour). Guilt doesn’t serve you—cut it out. Women often carry a...
How to be Feminine, Ambitious and Successful: Navigating the Gender Gap in Workplace Ambition
A common theme among the women I coach–at all levels–is a clear awareness of the gender gap in workplace ambition and confusion about how to navigate it. Key Takeaways Understanding Gendered Ambition Norms: Many women feel pressured to choose between achievement and...
Women in Leadership
Women Getting to the Top: Change Culture vs Change Behavior
Key Takeaways: Cultural shift requires both top-down and bottom-up momentum: True change happens when organizations address bias at the systemic level and when ambitious women step up as visible examples of leadership. One mid-level manager can’t do it alone, but many...
If You Have to Fight, Shoot Like a Girl
Key Takeaways: “Shoot like a girl” means lead with grit, heart, and skill. MJ Hegar’s story redefines what it means to be tough—not by acting like the guys, but by showing up fully as a woman who can fly, fight, and stand her ground under fire, both in combat and in...
Why The Woman Effect? Men are Helping Us
Key Takeaways: Work-life balance is evolving into work-life partnership. Many successful women are thriving not because they’ve mastered a solo juggle, but because they’ve built supportive partnerships—especially at home—with men who share the load, often in ways that...
Diversity & Inclusion
Are You Doing The Office Housework? 3 Ways to Manage This Subtle Discrimination In The Workplace
Key Takeaways: Subtle discrimination in the workplace often shows up as “office housework,” where women are expected to handle tedious, low-visibility tasks that don’t advance their careers—it's time to name it and challenge it. “Office housework” is real—and women...
Do You Confuse Emotions with Emotional Intelligence (EQ?)
Key Takeaways: Emotional intelligence isn’t about suppressing feelings—it’s about understanding them. EQ isn’t the absence of emotion; it’s the skill of recognizing emotions (yours and others’) and responding to them in a way that’s constructive, not reactive. Strong...
4 Reasons The Western Woman Can Save The World
The Dali Lama said “The Western Woman will come to the rescue of the world.” Never mind that Hilary Clinton didn’t get elected president of the United States. The trend she is a part of is well underway, and I’m not talking about feminism.
Just because no one I know got raptured last weekend doesn’t mean the apocalypse isn’t upon us; it just means we get to change the world before everything goes to hell. The world is in a pretty nasty state, based on the daily headlines, and it’s easy to feel powerless to save it. Yet I know so many people determined to do just that, many of them women. What I’d like to see is more people – men and women – stepping into their world-saving powers, more consciously, more assertively and more effectively.
Note to Men: Don’t stop reading now (if you got this far – kudos to you!) The stuff we ladies are naturally good at – and that the world needs – you are pretty good at too. Mostly you just need to ALLOW yourself to be good at it!
