Most Recent Posts
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...
Introducing The Woman Effect!
Originally written in 2012 to announce The Woman Effect, I still stand by this and will be updating it in 2024. Stay tuned! Have you noticed the steady drumbeat of research studies coming out over the last 15 years - I mean real, serious research - that find that when...
Career Coaching Tip: The Limits of Empathy
Early in my career, empathy was my ace-in-the-hole management technique. I was all business when it came to helping my team on technical, process and performance issues, but if they had an emotional reaction or issue, I reverted to empathy because it was the easy...
Activating The Woman Effect
First written and posted in 2012, I still stand by this philosophy, and am updating it in 2024. Stay tuned! This last year blogging here on Reclaiming Leadership has been fun and fascinating. Along the way I found myself speaking to and with wonderful, powerful women....
Daydream Stress Reduction
To kick off Stress Awareness Month, Dana let her mind wander and this is what came out. – InPower Editors I’ve been working hard lately and last week I hit a wall. My brain couldn’t take another step and it took me 20 minutes to write a two paragraph email simply...
Popular Posts
How to Overcome the Imposter Syndrome: Make it Your Best Friend
Mary finally received her promotion! After years of positioning herself and working on her personal brand she finally achieved her goal and had been put in charge of a product division for a major manufacturer. Predictably, our first executive coaching call in her new...
Executive Mindset: Advice for Women Leaders to Navigate the Glass Ceiling
Discussions of the “glass ceiling,” an invisible barrier to the progression of women (and other underrepresented leaders) from management to the executive ranks, has traditionally focused on discriminatory dynamics. But there’s more to the glass ceiling than...
6 Steps to Authentic Self Confidence for Women
Why would anyone follow a leader with no self-confidence? They wouldn’t.Do women struggle with self-confidence more than men? Yes.Then why are we surprised when there aren’t as many female leaders as male leaders in our businesses and society? We shouldn’t be. Now,...
Leadership
3 Ways to Give Yourself Permission to Succeed
Many times the voice in our head holds us back. So it is quite often the voice in our head that needs to give us permission to move forward. Whether you're an entrepreneur or not, Elizabeth's advice will give you permission to do this more often! - InPower Editors...
The Role of Dialogue in Performance Reviews
Working in low-income communities, I’ve learned that leadership and management are not only skills that increase productivity, they can and should be empowerment skills as well. Dialogue, in particular, has become my go-to strategy for empowering the people who work...
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...
Mentoring
Mentee vs. Protégé: Is there a Difference?
When you’re mentoring someone, what do you call the person to whom you’re imparting all your wisdom? Mentee seems the easy, opposite of mentor, but I don’t like the term. Putting an “ee” on something makes it sound like something you’re “doing to” someone else. Key...
Five Steps to Start A Mentoring Circle
Did you know that according to this 2011 Linked In survey of 1,000 women professionals, while 80% said having a mentor was important, only 20% actually had a mentor? In my work as an executive coach and speaker, I notice how easy it is for many women to second-guess...
How to Coach Women to Greatness
https://youtu.be/EUF_um3yTzc Women in the workplace are struggling against burnout and career interruption as they recover from extra burdens placed on them from the pandemic. (See comments for details.)As a woman, this feels like an uphill climb and to the mentors...
Interviews
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Career Advice
3 Ways To Thrive During Life Changes
Have you ever lost your job? Cute quotes about making lemonade out of lemonade don't quite cut it when you get the news, do they? Dealing with change is tough, even for those of us who've practiced a lot. We really like Andria's simple rules for handling the...
Dear Dana Workplace Advice: Lots of Interviews, But No Job Offer!
Welcome to “Dear Dana”, our weekly 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! – Dana Theus Dear Dana, I have been on a number of interviews and they all...
How to Prepare for a Performance Review or Job Interview
One thing I love most about the InPower Community and other forums where I take part as an expert is answering people's questions. One of the most popular topics on people's minds is how to prepare for a performance review, followed closely by queries about how to...
Women in Leadership
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...
What’s Wrong With Women’s Empowerment?
What’s wrong with women’s empowerment? Nothing and everything. - Click To Tweet At its best, women’s empowerment programs are an organizational (or social) recognition that cultural barriers diminish women’s chances to succeed and make an attempt to counteract those...
Does Work-life Balance & Success Have a Point of Diminishing Return?
There are many ways to become overwhelmed in this world, and finding work-life balance and greater success are two of them. Dana shows us a mind trick to managing our energy and reducing our sense of overwhelm. - InPower Editors It's summer! Which for many of us means...
Diversity & Inclusion
The Game Is Rigged: Strategies for Overcoming Unconscious Bias
When it comes to unconscious bias, the bad news is that the game is rigged–against women, people of color, introverts and others that don’t fit a certain “success” stereotype that is often male, white and extroverted. But the good news is, it’s not really a game so...
Leadership Perspective: Are Traditional Measures of Workforce Diversity Outdated?
Despite being the #1 recruiting trend for 2018 for businesses, and despite decades of trying to improve workforce diversity demographics in the workplace, the commercial sector has made little progress. I believe this supports the theory that homogeneous workplaces...
Women Have Always Been Great Leaders. Why Do We Need to Prove It?
Women have always been great leaders. We just don’t talk or hear about them. Sometimes I’ll read articles about why women should be leaders, as if we need an argument upon argument to support women’s leadership. I have noticed that some of these articles focus on...