Career Leaps of Faith

By | Executive Coaching | One Comment

Changing careers at any age requires a leap of faith. Sometimes we do it because we are bored or frustrated or reaching for a dream. Sometimes we do it because we have to – industries are fluid, technological changes happen rapidly, not allowing for anyone to ably predict their career path very far ahead. Our careers, our very selves, have to shuffle and dance and change all the time and few of us do that easily. Why is change so hard? How do we overcome our fear and inertia and make the changes necessary for reinvention at every stage of our lives? So many potential clients come to me saying that they want to change their careers but don’t know what…

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“Gee, Lt. Columbo, That’s the First Time Anybody Has Liked Me For My Body Instead of My Mind.”

By | Executive Coaching, Gender issues in work, Leadership, Management | 2 Comments

That line was uttered by the14-year old genius Caroline in the 1977 Columbo episode Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder. Lt. Columbo had just told Caroline that she was not only the smartest young girl he had ever met, but she was pretty too. Caroline was the youngest member of the Sigma Society, a club for geniuses and she helped solve the murder. Of course, 1977 was the early days of “our” wave of feminism and those of us who were just barely adults then laughed at the irony of that line. We were two years past the International Women’s Year (1975) and we knew there was much work to be done but we were confident in our success. Fast-forward forty years….

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“I Hate Working for Women,” She Said.

By | Executive Coaching, Gender issues in work, Leadership, Management | One Comment

The woman sat across from me over breakfast in a local diner. I had asked her to meet me before work to discuss what had happened at a corporate event last week: she drank too much and told a client that I was ruining the company. I thought about this conversation the entire weekend. I wanted to be firm but caring. If this woman had a drinking problem, the company would provide the support she needed. However, I would be clear that her behavior was inappropriate and could not, would not be tolerated! I started my well-practiced speech when she interrupted me with, “I hate working for women. At least with men you know where you stand. I’ve never had a…

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The Incredible Disappearing Woman

By | Gender issues in work | One Comment

My husband and I recently had dinner with my freshman year college roommate and her husband. It was one of those conversations that combines walking down memory lane balanced with catching up. Seemingly out of nowhere my husband asked my roommate if she had changed her name when she got married. She did. I didn’t. He then said, “I’m always interested in why someone would change their name. When women do so it’s almost like they disappear.” I was speechless with his willingness to express his feminism and equal rights support until he went on to say, “Doing genealogy research is made so much harder when women change their names. I’m able to get much deeper into my family’s history using…

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The Bad Daughter and Work

By | Executive Coaching, Gender issues in work, Leadership, Management | 2 Comments

It was Saturday and thus my day to be at the nursing home.  My mother was thrilled, eager to spend the morning watching “Press Your Luck” with me and telling me about her week so I struggled to hide my impatience, all the while thinking about how much I had to do at home and the board meeting the following week, scheduled to deliver my year end projections.  I should be ashamed of myself.  Glenn, my husband, visits her every day as the nursing staff never fail to remind me. I am not the caregiver in her life because I have an important job.  I am a bad daughter. Women are the caregivers.  My husband and I talked long and hard…

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Confidence and the Mirrors in Others’ Eyes

By | Executive Coaching, Gender issues in work, Leadership, Management | One Comment

I’ve been doing some reading on unconscious gender bias and a few paragraphs leaped out at me from an article entitled,  “The Confidence Gap,” by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman; The Atlantic, May 2014. Even as our understanding of confidence expanded, however, we found that our original suspicion was dead-on: there is a particular crisis for women—a vast confidence gap that separates the sexes. Compared with men, women don’t consider themselves as ready for promotions, they predict they’ll do worse on tests, and they generally underestimate their abilities. This disparity stems from factors ranging from upbringing to biology. A growing body of evidence shows just how devastating this lack of confidence can be. Success, it turns out, correlates just as closely with confidence…

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Pregnancy, the Corporate Climb and Acts of Mercy

By | Executive Coaching, Gender issues in work, Leadership, Management | 2 Comments

I am a mother (and, yes, I do know that some employees over the years have used a hybrid of that term to describe me less than flatteringly).  I’m talking about literal mother.  I have two sons, who are now grown men and have their own careers to worry about.  I have loved every moment of being a mother and I strongly feel that the skills I learned in that role led me to more success in the corporate world. The world has changed dramatically for working mothers over the past decades.  There are more of us but that hasn’t translated into strength in numbers or changed the stereotypes around a pregnant colleague.  Research from the Pew Research Center indicates that…

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Advice to the Millennial Newbie Who Should Be Planning for the Coup

By | Executive Coaching, Leadership, Management | No Comments

I had the occasion recently to talk with a young woman who had just started a new job. The money was great and the commute was ideal but she wasn’t happy. She wasn’t busy enough. Her new manager was literally a new manager and didn’t know how to manage. The other women in the small department were set in their ways, resistant to the digital tools that had recently been introduced (with which she was familiar and loved) and just friendly enough to keep them from being described as rude. As we talked, she described the slights and bad communication she had endured in the past month and I could only hear all the opportunities that would allow her to flex…

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The Curmudgeonly Crone Offers You a List: The 10 Most Important Reasons I Don’t Usually Include a List

By | Executive Coaching, Leadership, Management | One Comment

I’ve been writing these essays for nine months now and, over that time, my audience has slowly and steadily built.  I emphasize slowly.  It is not without pangs of jealousy and waves of self-doubt that I have extended my sincere congratulations to Millennial friends who, after a few blogs posts were picked up by the Huffington Post, parlayed that into a million+ followers and from there signed a book deal.  I am happy for them.  I am. People who love me and wish me well have suggested kindly and in a truly helpful manner that I should include a list in my essays, a way to turn my thoughts into easy action for my readers.  Just as kindly I have thanked…

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Why Do Hamsters Eat Their Young?

By | Executive Coaching, Leadership, Management | No Comments

I’ve been writing for the past few months about the need for leaders and aspiring leaders to look inward and develop a self-understanding of our own strengths, weakness and the psychological places where we are stuck.  Until we do so I don’t believe we can utilize the full potential of our own agency in our organizations or in the world.  For me this is a core value.  I have power, I make decisions and those decisions have consequences. This appreciation and the concomitant humility that accompanies it came from a life-shaping experience that happened when I was in the sixth grade. The Christmas holidays were approaching. (And in my town we did call it the Christmas holidays). I was a good…

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