That last 20% of any project, endeavor, or campaign is the most difficult part. Most people can get through the first 80% of a project. But what about those finishing touches that add the final "polish" to the product? What about spellcheck and correct grammar? How about making sure things are numbered and bulleted correctly? Is it fact-checked? Is the address … [Read more...]
Mother’s Day and Great Gifts
In this column I talked about what a fiasco it was when I did not send flowers to my mother. It had become an iconic story in the family. On Saturday a gorgeous bouquet arrived in a fabulous vase. Of course it was from my daughters and their families. We are in the Pennsylvania, they in California so the gift and sentiment worked. However, I also received an amazing gift … [Read more...]
Is your business Opaque or Transparent?
News of yet another possible meltdown on Wall Street in the U.S. is enough to make me yell 'oh my gosh!' And ask the question: why can't businesses realize that transparency is the preferred dressing and not opacity? In the art world, where I live some of my time, there is an easy test for transparency that I've used in teaching beginning painting students...it works for … [Read more...]
Why Can’t We Just Be Ourselves?
Sometimes I think we can make things much more complicated than they really are. We analyze and dissect and re-analyze our behavior and the implications of our behavior until we forget our original intention. I could be wrong here, but I think we, as women, especially professional women, expend a great deal of energy second guessing ourselves. Do you find that’s true for … [Read more...]
Leadership Work vs. “Women’s Work”
The balance score card to measures a society is graded by how its leaders set policy for caring; for children, the sick, the elderly, and the poor. If I were asked to grade our country I’m saddened to say the marks would not get us into Harvard. What is missing? For me it boils down to the relationship aspect of how we care for each other. Remember the name of Hilary … [Read more...]
Bold Leadership
There are so many words to describe leadership and almost all point to action; leaders, the best leaders, act. This sounds so right, so intuitively right; yet, my question is about what is the right action? How do we know, how do we ever know if what we do when we act is going to be of benefit, going to move our lives, personally and professionally in the direction of … [Read more...]
Complexity of Women Leaders
Women in power in this century are, for the most part, dismissing the old notions of the vast dichotomy between their skills and those of their male counterparts. This has been an on-going debate for decades and essentially, leads nowhere. We are all complex, multi-layered human beings and we need to embrace that concept, female and male. A graduate of the Total Leadership … [Read more...]
My Advice, in Twenty Instructions
1) Educate yourself. Learning is a pleasure. Learning something new every day is a true pleasure and a gift. Free your mind from "little thinking" and give yourself an opportunity to contemplate the magnificence of being alive. 2) Follow your passions. You are the only one of you in the world. Your unique spirit is special. Use your life to fulfill your stated purpose. … [Read more...]
The New Generation Leader
A recent report, Tearing Up the Rule Book: A New Generation of Leaders for 2010, from Aspire and Customer Interpreter measures Leadership Intelligence. This measurement assesses what is important today for leadership success. The results of the research are impressive. What has been traditionally classified as more "feminine" traits emerged as the preferable leadership … [Read more...]
Altruism at Work
During the 1940’s, Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin argued that industrial societies needed to transform themselves by developing a more integrated, holistic, and systemic approach to the world – what he called creative altruism. He discussed the idea that there is a part of the brain that is programmed for altruism. He discussed this way before we had any of the … [Read more...]