Gender
The Power of the Infinite Pie: a Legacy Love Story
Leadership is first and foremost about developing others. I wrote this post to our fabulous and diverse and talented participants in our NEW Train-the-Trainer program (we held the training at the beautiful Omega Institute in May) to share why my core workshop is so necessary for women NOW—how their role as certified “Take The Leaders”…
Read MoreQuick! What’s Happening August 26, Really?
If you said “Women’s Equality Day,” you’d be right. And if you said it’s the 95th anniversary of the date in 1920 when women’s right to vote officially entered the U.S. Constitution, you’d be spot on. But the greater significance of this day is not about looking backward at quaint sepia photo of suffragists picketing…
Read MoreHow “Play Like a Girl” Went From Epithet to Compliment
I’ve never been to a professional hockey game nor wanted to. I stay far away from sports bars. But I do resonate with hockey legend Wayne Gretzky whose pithy leadership advice is, “Don’t skate to where the hockey puck is. Skate to where the hockey puck is going.” I love the direction the hockey puck is going…
Read MoreHow to Keep Women from Leadership Parity
I led a women’s executive leadership workshop on “Women, Power, and Authentic Leadership” recently. A business school professor presented just before me, so I arrived early to observe her segment. She’s a highly skilled communicator who presented terrific content. Her elegant attire and direct but modulated self-presentation perfectly mirror how women are advised to look and…
Read MoreAre Leadership Messes Women’s Opportunity?
Female leadership firsts are trending. Especially when an organization is in big trouble, it seems. Often the choice of a woman appears to be an act of desperation. Fix us, clean up the mess and make it all work. Call mommy to doctor a skinned knee, soothe the troubled waters.
Jill Abramson and Gender Bilingual Communication
With hindsight, this 2013 article all but predicted Jill Abramson’s unceremonious fall. Though according to the New Yorker rendition, her demise was precipitated when Abramson, the New York Times’ first female executive editor, confronted her boss, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., after learning her pay was significantly less than her predecessor, I point the finger of firing fate much toward implicit cultural biases that influence behavior much more than any of us want to believe.
“Born Leader” Betsy Rafael Is GoDaddy’s First Female Board Member
When GM’s new, and first female, CEO Mary Barra moved quickly and publicly to recall cars with the company’s potentially lethal ignition switch problems her predecessors had known but failed to address for a decade, you could feel the fresh air. It would be foolhardy to say her gender made her act in this ethical manner, or to assume a man would not. Still, you can’t help but notice that Barra straight-up owned the problem in a way startlingly distant from the public relations posturing typical of Fortune 500’s protecting their fortunes.
Bikinis and Bongos: GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving Beats the Drums of Change
When you speak with GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving, it’s easy to conjure the teenage percussionist he once was, asserting his high energy drive with his drumsticks, and quite possibly driving his mother crazy by beating bongos while doing the split in the kitchen like Jean-Claude Van Damme in this classically weird GoDaddy ad.
I had a chance to interview the leader of the world’s largest and most controversial domain name registrar, not long after his first anniversary there.
Read MoreMary Barra, First Female GM CEO, Takes The Lead
Does it seem odd for Mary Barra, the newly appointed CEO of General Motors—the first woman to hold that top position in the male-dominated automobile industry–to be profiled as a “woman like you” by the nonprofit organization Take The Lead I cofounded in late 2012?
Boston Leads the Metropolis Charge to Erase Gender Wage Gap
I was so excited to learn about Boston’s new initiative, designed to do something different to close the wage gap…The Women’s Workforce Council has created a compact to which businesses and companies of Boston are asked to pledge to pay their employees equal wages.