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The following situation (or something substantially similar) actually exists in real life. How close is this to your dream job, or is it pretty much the opposite? The Job: Congratulations. You have been chosen to start work at our organization. You get to pretty much design your own job; it just has to fit within…
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Life is complicated. Things don’t always go the way we expect, much less the way we want. Yet, it is often adversity that brings out our best leadership qualities. For Steve, that moment came in early October when his wife Ann had a serious accident resulting in a brain injury. As she drifted into unconsciousness…
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Keeping your composure when you feel safe is easy. The question is how to regain and retain it when you are no longer in your comfort zone, when you feel out of your element. Add pressure to any situation (speed it up, raise the stakes, increase the competition) and at some point, performance drops. Most…
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Sports tournaments make for some interesting lessons on leadership and performance, and these apply equally to business and life overall. Last week, I had the chance to observe first hand the dynamics of winning and losing at the Women’s U18 European Championship Basketball tournament in Romania. Whereas the early rounds of competition were about separating…
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Recently, I have become fixated on what my role in the world should be. I find myself grappling with questions along the lines of: What is my next era of meaningful work? What is my best and highest use to society? Where can I make a real difference? The longer it takes to figure this…
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I was watching Top Chef just to “hang out” with my daughter (she’s 13, so you grab those opportunities when you can), and it turned out to be an unexpectedly great learning experience. What’s more, it was my daughter who pointed out this particular life lesson. This was the season finale episode, and it was…
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A friend of mine is terribly worried that our next generation of high-achieving women may be destined for unhappiness because they will have difficulty in finding husbands. Are our self-affirming messages to today’s smart, capable young women setting them up for future misery? This well-intentioned concern raises some interesting points. First, it assumes that a…
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I am fascinated by the unravelling of General Stanley McChrystal. Not having met the man personally, I have only the media reports to go by. Based on this, three lessons on how to stay on top occurred me, all of which apply to business leaders and managers. It can turn on a dime General McChrystal…
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Have you heard about Mamyrock, the new British DJ who is taking Europe by storm? (TimesOnline: http://bit.ly/bY7XBm) She happens to be a 69-year old grandmother and former “trailing spouse” who started this new career just a handful of years ago. How cool is that? Simply knowing that she exists inspires and reassures at the same…
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Those of us who have ever waited for someone else to select us — whether for a team, a job, or even a relationship — will know that it is not a happy state of being. My most recent waiting game (for a publisher to choose to publish my book) only serves to reinforce what…
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Yesterday morning, someone lashed out at me verbally, including some unkind statements and a veiled threat. He was upset because something I inadvertently had done while helping a third person was causing him delay on his journey. Without getting into the details of the situation much less who was right or wrong, because that isn’t…
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There is no single “right” answer to this question, at least not in a generic sense. It really depends: on what the applicant has to say, how the organization likes to receive the information, and what they may view as “standing out from the crowd” in a positive way, among other things. And even then,…
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Chatting with friends yesterday evening, one fellow parent related that her 15-year old son (let’s call him Jack, which is not his real name) had been reprimanded by his teacher for saying, “you’re so gay” to a classmate. As a straight-A student and generally all-around “good kid,” Jack was genuinely surprised to be called to…
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Changing one’s career path takes initiative, and often it’s not straightforward. However, the end result is worth the effort – it’s just a matter of getting from here to there. Based on my own recent experience in changing careers, the following may be useful to consider: Reach out to and extend the fringes of your…
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I was having lunch with friends last week and the topic of New Year resolutions came up. I defiantly (or more accurately, defensively) stated that I hadn’t “bothered” to come up with any: I never seem to make any worth sticking to or else end up forgetting them, so what’s the point? (As an aside,…
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France is joining Norway by adopting the quota approach for achieving gender parity on Boards. ForbesWoman/Forbes.com has asked for views on whether the US should follow suit, and heated debate has ensued — and keep in mind this is a LinkedIn group with a female membership. Here is what I have added to the debate:…
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Highly educated young women are reportedly intending to opt out of the career achievement cycle. Is this next generation of women taking too much for granted, or are they wiser than we think? It was not that long ago that women finally won the right to vote in the US, and it was just within…
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We are often told that the first thing is to “do no harm”. What if doing nothing turns out to be harmful? I have often been afraid of doing something wrong, making a wrong move, committing an error. There are times when I have felt literally frozen in my tracks or, worse yet, headed straight…
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