"When you work with someone long enough and form a relationship, they become curious: they want to learn more about you. This is not meant to be an invasion of privacy or a hunt for information to use against you later. It is a desire to connect and establish common ground." Click HERE to purchase [...]
"The inexperience of youth gives us the freedom to ask the hard questions even when the answers are harder to hear. Over time, our concerns about what people will think overshadows the freedom of our youth. We become hesitant to share our truth or ask the hard questions. Our concern produces fear, which causes us to [...]
Meditate and exercise. When pressure mounts, leaders often focus their priority on achievement and neglect their well-being. Meditation and exercise boost stress tolerance and optimism, both of which help you to refocus attention and manage competing priorities. Ensure proper rest and community engagement. Use flexibility to ensure you receive proper sleep to help re-frame challenging situations. Leverage [...]
Prioritize responsibilities. Prioritize tasks according to importance, and tackle obligations in order of impact on organizational goals. Address the most significant issues objectively and implement fact-based solutions. Change your mindset. When you feel compelled to shoulder the responsibility for achieving the strategic vision of the organization, use problem solving to reduce the strain, and leverage optimism [...]
Set boundaries and leave work at the office. When work continually intrudes on your personal life, quality of life suffers at the expense of your happiness. Activate your assertiveness skills to address unreasonable workloads (as much as appropriate) and demonstrate flexibility by taking breaks, breaking for lunch, and signing off in the evenings and weekends. Delegate. Harness [...]
Increased collaboration creates buzz throughout the organization about you. Over time, people will be talking about you in a good way when you are not around. With whom should you be collaborating? If you were to create a list of thought partners, who would be included? Click here to purchase the book.
A lot of people do not realize that many organizations consider resilience a core competency of leadership. You cannot demonstrate resilience without experiencing failure. The courage to fail grows out of your willingness to be vulnerable.
When it comes to your career, it is about "who knows you." Take advantage of opportunities to cultivate relationships with peers, colleagues and senior leaders. You can learn a lot (and share a lot) about someone (and yourself) in the time it takes to walk to the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee and [...]
The more exposure people have to different aspects of your personality, the more they will understand you. In the absence of information, people will create their own stories. It is hard as hell to deconstruct an inaccurate perception. Manage perceptions by freely sharing who you are... with boundaries.
The day my leader informed me that her boss thought I was incompetent felt like a gut punch. My heart leaped from my chest to my throat and anguish flooded my body. I do not remember anything beyond her comment. As I walked out of the meeting room, flashbacks of my 27-year career...washed over me [...]