How do successful leaders get more done and manage to complete important work? How do they keep their priorities straight, vision clear, as well as have a personal life?
Through some casual research collecting information from my coaching clients, business and personal networking; reading blogs and articles, I have found some frequently applied practices or behaviors. [Read more…]
Helen Russell was “living the life” by many people’s standards — successful in her career as an editor, happily married, and living in a dynamic city — London. She was happy at work and happy at home.
When her husband was offered a transfer to a rural part of Denmark they found a need to radically change their lives. Did she know she was moving to a country whose citizens often report being some of the happiest people on the planet? No. [Read more…]
If you are a regular reader of mine (thank you!), you know I spend most of my time and words talking about the value of goals, hitting and stretching targets, building that resume and career. This is my professional side; an aspect of me but far from a complete picture and surely not the only way I want to be perceived. [Read more…]
Work doesn’t provide just the means of acquiring the basic necessities of life, though that is critical. It enhances the soul and the brain.
When I refer to work, I include all types of employment — salaried, commissioned, hourly, permanent, temporary, and freelance. I also add volunteering; military service, and last but not least, children. For play is the work of children. [Read more…]
Brainstorming, bullpens, open door policies, team white boarding, group think — behaviors and beliefs held in high esteem and ever-present in today’s workplace. However, are they effective in generating great ideas? Two, eight, twenty people with hundreds of ideas are better than one. Right? Maybe not. Do introverts know something extroverts don’t? [Read more…]
Because I am an executive coach with clients in a large metropolitan area, who also has coaching clients throughout the United States and abroad, I have the opportunity to meet and work with a variety of very creative people.
When I use the term “creative people,” I am not only referring to adults in the arts but also individuals in high tech, finance, education, not-for-profit, and many other sectors and professions. [Read more…]
I recently read an article in The New York Times where the author quoted an article from Science about findings from a recent research project. The purpose of the study was to see what people would do to avoid introspection. The scientists believed many people have become so wedded to the idea that busy, too busy, is good. They would do almost anything not to have the quiet isolation that introspection requires. In some cases, subjects were willing to endure shocks just to be able to have something to distract them from being completely still. [Read more…]
In past issues of the Competitive Edge Report I discussed some of the aspects of leadership. Recently a number of my coaching clients have been faced with extraordinary challenges—layoffs, downsizing, natural disasters or unexplained illnesses. Helping them deal and address these life and career-changing events has made me appreciate the power of personal leadership. [Read more…]
All of us make mistakes, say things we didn’t mean, forget, or are rude when we may not have intended to be. Experience has taught me most people don’t intentionally harm others but once they do, they’re reluctant, or find it difficult, to take responsibility for the damage. [Read more…]
I was working with an executive coaching client the other day developing a strategy for the next steps in her career. For reasons unclear to me, I thought our discussion was off course. Was I not asking the right questions? Not hearing the underlying comments or insights? Influencing her answers by showing some form of judgment or perspective? All were possible. The challenge was how to get to the meat of the issues. It dawned on me to make the problem visual. [Read more…]