You don’t need therapy to appreciate that your childhood has impacted who you are today. What you may not appreciate is how some behaviors you learned as a child may be holding you back in your career!

In my work as an executive coach and now as a Mother Whisperer working with women,* I’ve found that our relationship with our parents – especially our mothers has a powerful long lasting affect on all our relationships as adults – including how we interact with others at work. I call these childhood hangovers. We may not even be aware of them at first, but they sure do give us – and often those around us – some headaches! For many of us, recognizing them for what they are, and shifting our thinking can become just the aspirin we need!

Childhood hangovers are usually hidden behind our professional image … Read the rest of the post

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2. 9 Steps to Convincing Your Customers “Be the Brand”

I have my ideas about leadership, having worked for good and bad leaders. I’ll open with what I consider a leader’s primary duty – to communicate his or her vision for the company. Some experts would say this is the second step in being a leader; first comes the vision. But without communications across, up and down organizations, the leader’s vision will never be realized.

John Kotter is perhaps the most articulate and brilliant theorist on what makes for leadership in an organization.  He says it better than I can, so I’m going to reference his words of wisdom here.  Then, we’ll see how his theories apply to three leaders, or visionaries, of today — Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, and Reed Hastings, the chief executive and co-founder of Netflix.

Kotter, a retired professor of organizational behavior at Harvard, has written countless books and articles.  I still have an article that he wrote in the May/June 1990 issue of the Harvard Business Review entitled “What Leaders Really Do.”  I … Read the rest of the post

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2. The 5 Productivity Secrets of Successful Business Leaders
3. The 7 Critical Mistakes Most Leaders Make When Leading Knowledge Workers—And How You Can Avoid Them
4. 5 Ways to Identify Your Next Generation Leaders and How to Train Them Up
5. Hey Leaders, Trust Your Gut – You’re Smarter Than You Think by Eric Cook

Or Is It?

This is the eye grabbing title of a recent article in Harvard Business Review.

The article immediately grabbed my eye, because I have always felt that gossip at work is something that should never be tolerated, yet this article has opened me up a bit on the subject.

In life and in the world of leadership coaching, I have never  been a fan of a great deal of gossip at work (or in social circles), because I believe that:

1. About 99% of the time, gossip is delivered by a third party.  I don’t really want to believe much that does not come straight out of the horse’s mouth.
2. By the time I hear gossip, I wonder how much the story has been changed, watered down or embellished
3. I always wonder about the source…gossip always seems to come to me from the same people, so it makes me wonder about their motives.
4. I have seen gossip at work destroy families and businesses.

The recent HBR article suggests that managers and leaders often try to squelch gossip at work without addressing the deep rooted problem that is generating it…that gossip is a … Read the rest of the post

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2. The Top 3 Reasons Motivation Does Not Work
3. Survey: What is Robbing You of Your Time? 15 Very Busy Professionals Weigh In
4. NEW VIDEOS: Is The Media Ignoring Ron Paul? Piers Morgan and Jon Stewart Weigh In
5. O Stands for Overcoming the Oscillating Fan Syndrome Podcast

1. They always seem to know every answer…

2. They never listen to others’ opinions…

3. They send you e-mails with all caps in certain sentences to let you know how right they really are…

4.  They want to argue or make you look foolish in front of a group, and as you look closer, you realize they are multi-tasking, answering text messages or just not paying attention…why should they have to pay attention?  They know it all…

Yes…the above description lays out in spades just 4 of the signs of someone who is what we call a “know it all”…which is actually a syndrome used to describe people who have a need to always look right, be right, make the teacher or boss look bad, and so forth.

We all have people like this in our lives.  I have had a few of these ” know it alls” in my training programs over the last few years.  In the early days of their “wisdom sharing”, I am all ears…I am excited to hear about what they know and how … Read the rest of the post

1. M Stands for Moving On: 10 Signs It’s Time for a New Leader
2. J Stands for Justification
3. L Stands for Lucidity
4. N Stands for Never Say Never
5. S Stands for Strategy: Do You Have a Leadership Strategy for 2011?

The excerpt is below, and you can read the full post here.

At the end of the day, your company will either sink or swim based on how well you communicate.

I am sure you have heard this 1,000 times…”Great communication is necessary for great leadership” or “We must communicate better if we want to be successful” , womp, womp, womp.   The topic of communication has been beaten to death, so we have become numb to its importance.  We go about our day not returning phone calls to customers, sending out curt, hurtful e-mails, turning a deaf ear to our employees and just basically shutting people out or cutting them off at the knees.

In this day and age, I have a prediction…and I am not a futurist.  I believe that those companies who will succeed in the future will be those companies who learn to not only communicate better with their customers but who take the time to actually learn how to communicate across generational and cultural barriers.  I believe those companies and businesses who choose to ignore this … Read the rest of the post

1. Are You A Leader Who Truly Wants to Inspire Others? Embody Your Vision through the Power of Story
2. Upcoming Teleclass: Brain Power: 2011
3. Is it Unprofessional to Gossip at Work? Weigh In!
4. The Top 3 Reasons Motivation Does Not Work
5. 5 Effective Leadership Skills You Can Use to Quickly Settle a Dispute at Work