Workplace
What Leadership Lesson Are You Most Thankful For? Bonus Gift Edition
Wow! Thanks, for sharing so many fabulous, and fabulously helpful, leadership lessons that you are thankful for! With the season of giving in full swing, here are more great gifts of wisdom shared by women leaders.
Want to give a gift to others? Post your leadership lesson in the comments section below.
And while you’re at it, post YOUR most burning leadership question for the New Year too…
Read MoreWhat Leadership Lesson Are You Most Thankful For?
This is an advice column where I’m supposed to answer your questions. But this Thanksgiving, I’m shaking things up in my life, so I turned the tables and asked some fabulous women leaders this question:
What leadership lesson are you most thankful for?
The outpouring of responses made me exceedingly grateful. Not a turkey among them.
Here with a Thanksgiving feast of delicious wisdom you can savor calorie-free—and use all year.
Saying grace (and listening to it)
Anita Sands last year at age 34 became COO of UBS Wealth Management Americas, and is one of the smartest and best grounded leaders I know. She credits her father with her most important leadership lesson: “common sense is not the common.” Not surprisingly, she then resonated with this advice:
My first boss when I was a young academic really trained me in how to “think”. The first thing he told me was that people who can find the answers are a dime a dozen but people who know what are the right questions to ask are really valuable. So I’ve always tried to employ that skill as a leader – am I asking the right questions, what question is not being asked in the room.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=372kTyy3ELs&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Read MoreFriday Round Up: The Revolution Must Be Funded Edition
While there was plenty of political intrigue and sex scandal dominating the news this past
[caption id="attachment_6847" align="alignright" width="237" caption="Courtney Martin"]
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week, the most provocative article I read was Courtney Martin’s “’You Are the NOW of Now!’ The Future of (Online) Feminism.”
Courtney, a leading young feminist writer and an editor of Feministing.com, last year
Read MoreShe's Doing It: Tiffany Dufu Leads the White House Project Forward
This week’s “She’s Doing It” features a first person account of how a woman I very much admire came into leadership and stepped into her power as naturally as rivers flow from their source, despite some negative messages she received as a girl. Tiffany Dufu is a role model and example of how younger women are moving the leadership needle forward for themselves and others. Read on. And if you’re one of the over 13,000 who has had an experience with The White House Project thus far, won’t you share it here?
It all started when I got the Girl of the Year Award.
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest as the daughter of a homemaker and minister, I remember adults around me insisting: “little girls can’t lead.” Yet taking the award into my hands that day, I realized how eager I was to make a profound impact. I had a deep desire to not only affect change, but also be public about it so that other girls would see that they could be leaders, too…
Read MoreFriday Round Up : As Pink Headlines Declare End of Feminism (Again), World’s Women Leaders Keep Moving Forward
Want to have a little cognitive dissonance?
First watch this video of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a keynote address at the first-ever Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Women and the Economy Summit 9/16/11 in San Francisco CA, essentially saying that women are the key to the world’s economic future.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jbLUHIveIQ[/youtube]
And for good measure, take a gander at the latest
Read MoreUnsought Leadership: How Anita Hill Called Out Workplace Harassment and Changed Everything
“Was there ever any domination that did not appear natural to those who possessed it?” John Stuart Mill, 18th century economist
If you’re a woman over 40, you’ve probably had an Anita Hill Moment. That aha when you realized those suggestive comments, undesired gropes, and surreptitious ass-pats you’d long endured in the male-dominated workplace had a name: sexual harassment.
If you’re under age 40, you probably grew up knowing not only about sexual harassment as a concept, but also that it is a prosecutable offense you shouldn’t put up with it for one minute. You’ve probably had training about it in your workplace, and know how to report it safely if it rears its ugly head. So whether or not you realized it, you’ve had your Anita Hill moment too.
All because of unsought leadership.
She’s Doing It: Joanne Tombrakos Taking the Non-Traditional Route
I can’t wait to read Joanne Tombrakos’s new and first novel, The Secrets They Kept and you are going to see why below. After reading Joanne’s story, I think you’ll join me in running out to buy her book. At least I hope so.
Joanne and I met at an 85 Broads breakfast a couple of years ago when we shared our stories of making purposeful life transitions. I’ve admired her writing on her blog ever since. And just look at how she’s applied the 9 Ways Power Tools!
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When Gloria Feldt extended the invitation for me to be profiled in this column I quickly accepted. And who wouldn’t? After all this was Gloria Feldt. Best selling author and activist for whom I hold such high esteem.
I was honored. I was excited. Until the waves of nausea washed over me. What was I doing that was worthy of a profile in this column? Certainly not curing cancer or feeding the starving in Africa.
Not a particularly commanding statement when invited to write on a blog whose subject matter is about women and power.
But forced, as I have been to think about it, the truth is I am doing it. My way…
Friday Round Up on Monday: What Was Your Anita Hill Moment?
It’s the 20th anniversary of Anita Hill’s truth-to-power moment (I’ll dub it Hill’s personal “power to” moment) confronting then U.S. Supreme Court Nominee, now Justice Clarence Thomas, that changed the culture’s understanding about sexual harassment forever. I delayed the Friday Round Up in order to share two important events that I participated in last week, along with a selection of related news reports and commentary…
How Do I Lead When I'm Not in Charge?
I get a little nostalgic in October remembering my late parents whose birthdays were this month. So when Bonnie McEwan, president of the public interest communications firm Make Waves, suggested I write about how people in middle management can be leaders, I chuckled to think of one of my father’s favorite sayings:
“Everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time.”
That conjures up amusing pictures that equalize people regardless of their stature in the formal organization chart.
But the question of how to be a leader whether or not you have the formal authority isn’t about cutting others down to size. That famous scene from the 1980 movie 9 to 5 where the secretaries, played to the comedic hilt by Dolly Parton, Lilly Tomlin, and Jane Fonda, tie up their boss and make him beg for mercy. It’s sweet revenge in fantasy, but in reality comes from a place of feeling powerless to influence or lead in any other way…
Read MoreFriday Round Up: When Will We See a Female Steve Jobs?
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” –Steve Jobs (1955–2011, rest in peace)
Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech 2005
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
If you, like me and millions of others were moved by the too-young death of Apple creator Steve Jobs this week, and in mourning happened upon the video of his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, you saw someone who exuded authenticity, a man who had clearly learned to trust his own inner voice…
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