If you’re like most of us, you see people get promoted over your head that are less talented and less capable. This is particularly frustrating when you’re trying to make the tough leap from a management to a leadership position. What have the folks getting promoted over you learned that maybe you...
Moving from managing to leading is a challenge because the skills that make you a good manager aren’t enough to help you excel in leadership positions. Men and women alike sometimes perceive the gap between managing and leading to be a glass ceiling when, in many cases, it’s not necessarily that...
In a recent survey of working adults conducted by Accenture, 68 percent of the women thought it took hard work and long hours to advance in a company. The result often leaves women feeling burned out and resentful for the lack of appreciation for their efforts. In reality, people don't advance...
Sure, sometimes you’re the lucky recipient of spontaneous innovation, but according to business gurus, consistently good innovators actually have strategies for leveraging luck (the good and the bad) when it trips across their paths. In “Great by Choice” Jim Collins and Morten Hansen have...
Fortunately, humans love happiness. Who doesn’t want to be happy? Unfortunately, it turns out that plenty of us don’t seem to, based on the way we stick our noses to the grindstone and assume that if we work harder we’ll achieve success and happiness. Fortunately, the relatively new science of...
Have you ever been in an airplane when it stalls? I was twelve when dad tipped us straight up into the solid blue expanse of sky - allowing gravity to grip our chests - and gunned our little single prop Cessna vertical. We chugged forward briefly until the lift over the wings dissipated, the...
Nancy and I bonded in the late '90's workaholic days of an internet startup when our kids were little. More than a decade has passed and she's VP of a growing company and I'm consulting and coaching, both of us busy as can be. We don't see each other enough now, and the reason I know that is that...
I ran a survey last month asking people about their experiences with Speaking Truth to Power. One hundred and fifty five professionals – mostly women – responded and said loud and clear that: Almost half of them withheld their truth from their bosses a good deal of the time; 82% had been penalized...
I’ve written a lot about how we’re leaving plentiful resources untapped by failing to adjust our business culture to invite more women into leadership roles and how we need to transform The System to take advantage of our talents. In recognition of the fact that a company with women in roughly 30%...
Meg* and I were lunch-brainstorming how to help one of her direct reports who is struggling to “fit” into her recent Director-level promotion. Meg noted that this woman – we’ll call her Kathy* – found it hard to see the forest for the trees. Meg thought Kathy had tons of potential but was...
