Leadership Companion Blog

It’s summer and sometimes it means that our schedules have changed and our kids are home and pulling us in a million different directions. GET MY GOAL COMPANION You’re looking at your to-do list at home and at work and thinking there aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done! Here are some ideas to effectively manage your time during these summer months. 1. Clarify your goals and strategy Be very clear about your aims and ambitions, both short and long term. Write them down. Maybe a sit-down family dinner is a goal two or three times

These are the women who inspire me! I’ve studied them, and I’ve noticed they have the following traits in common: GET MY VISION COMPANION 1. They work hard! Yes, they play hard, too! They get up early; they rarely complain; they expect performance from others and expect extraordinary performance from themselves. Repeated, high-level success starts with a recognition that hard work pays off. 2. They are incredibly curious and eager to learn. They study, ask questions and read – constantly! While most of them did well in school, they never stop learning and applying what they learn to their present

I was coaching a woman the other day who told me that when summer comes, she likes to tap into her creative side. GET MY VISION COMPANION It’s like her creativity hibernates for the winter and finally emerges in the summer. I thought it was funny and decided to follow her in the conversation and it was probably one of the most enlightening coaching sessions I’ve had in a while. Here are some of the things that emerged from our conversation that might be worth giving a try if you need to level-up your creativity right now. 1. Change your

When asking the majority of people before a contest, whether it is a basketball game or a spelling bee, what they want, they will inevitably say, “I want to WIN.” Who doesn’t? I have yet to meet anyone who competes that says they don’t care if they win as long as they have fun. That was fine when we were six but it isn’t going to cut it now. So, how do we do it, how do we win? The answer that you are looking for may be found in goal setting. Too often as leaders, we overlook this factor

The other day, I couldn’t take it anymore. My daughter’s room was a catastrophe. She no longer folded her clothes nor did she use her closet to store her clothes. Instead, her clothes were unfolded, wrinkled and heaped high in three laundry baskets. The baskets actually could no longer contain their contents and I often found myself tripping over pant legs and socks that were hanging over the sides of the baskets. She told me that her closet was too full.  Instead of cleaning it out, her solution was just to keep the clothes she was wearing at the ready

Now that I’ve shared with you about my stroke, I want to share some ways I’ve made life better for myself. You see, I didn’t want to return to the hustle culture that defined my life for so long and wanted to intentionally design a better life for myself. I actually didn’t realize how far I had come until I was around a table with some friends recently and two of them seemed to be engaged in trying to one-up each other as to who was busier. One friend said, “oh, I start responding to clients the minute I wake

Have you ever failed – no, I mean like really failed at something big like your career or your marriage or a friendship? J. K. Rowling, whose failure in marriage and business left her a single parent living off unemployment benefits, says, “Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.” Rowling didn’t let those failures define her. She picked herself up and penned the “Harry Potter” series, which has sold over 450

A lot of women I coach who aren’t yet in the c-suite struggle with executive presence. They want to be seen as a competent, polished executive, yet they don’t know how to get there. Below are tips that I’ve gathered from the many coaching sessions I’ve had on this topic. GET MY VISION COMPANION Before we get to those, though, I want to be sure we’re on the same page about what executive presence is. It’s actually probably different than you think it is. A lot of times, when I ask what it is, women will say that it is

One of the most surprising effects of procrastination is the fact that it makes you feel out of control. GET MY VISION COMPANION Procrastination is like an ‘invisible force’ that keeps you from doing the very things you know you must do. With the increasing demands on our time and attention there seems to be an increase in procrastination as a chronic problem, especially among those people who want to succeed the most. Procrastination usually sets in when you feel overwhelmed by all the ‘have to’s’ in life and instead of making steady progress you take on too much without

On the surface it seems an odd idea that you could actually be anything other than who you really are. GET MY GOAL COMPANION However, from the time, we find that we are being programmed to “fit in”. Sometimes we don’t even know it’s happening. We find ourselves conforming in order to please those around us because we think that’s what we’re supposed to do. This conformity comes at a cost and often means that you have to suppress what you know is your authentic self. Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you’ll ever have. Without a

A year ago today I was laying on an operating room table and my doctor didn’t know if I would survive. GET MY GOAL COMPANION I had suffered a massive stroke that morning and while Dr. Grobelny was in my brain removing the clot, a large saddle clot formed in my lungs and I couldn’t breathe. He quickly removed the clots; however, because of a drug they started to reverse the stroke effects in my brain, they couldn’t do anything further. The MRI of my brain showed extensive brain damage and Dr. Grobelny saved pictures of my clots because they

One year sober. It feels funny to write those words. GET MY GOAL COMPANION My therapist asked me the other day when I last had a drink and I told her April 15, 2021. She told me how proud she was of me. It caught me off guard, because my sobriety journey this year has been a solo and sometimes isolating one, so I wasn’t expecting anyone to comment on it. In fact, if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have even thought about sharing my story. I wasn’t an alcoholic and never went to a 12-step program, yet I

As we finish the first quarter of 2022, it’s time to check our vision again. I coach a lot of women who don’t love what they’re doing and they come to me to help them figure out how to find their sweet spot.  However, I have one client who absolutely loves what she’s doing.  Her parents longed for her to perform, so she spent her childhood on stage in leotards, tutus and ballet slippers dancing so her parents could be happy.  She never felt like this was a natural fit for her, though.  She’s actually quite shy and much prefers

As we finish the first quarter of 2022, it’s time to check our vision again. Have you had trouble achieving a specific goal you set for yourself at the start of the year? Are you allowing other less important things to get in the way of accomplishing what you really want? Then, it’s time to do a VISION check. Just as it is important to get our eyes checked regularly to assure that we can see clearly; it is equally important to do a VISION check to be certain that our goal is on track. GET MY VISION COMPANION V-vivid

Life consistently presents us with challenges and changes and, at times, this can lead to us feeling stressed. GET MY GOAL COMPANION I was coaching a woman the other day who is from Eastern Europe and current world events are top of mind for her. I noticed she wasn’t her usual energetic self when she came into the room. I asked her how she was and she said she was struggling with how to stay focused on her workload when she felt so stressed for friends and relatives in other parts of the world. By the end of our discussion,

In this day and age we are so inundated with choice and opportunity that you might even say we are spoiled by choice. GET MY GOAL COMPANION Yet, somehow all the choices end up paralyzing us. I was talking to a friend recently and she’s ready to return to the workforce after spending time at home raising her kids. She’s been overwhelmed by all the possibilities for her future and didn’t know where to turn. Instead, she found herself stuck and procrastinating in moving forward. In a world where there is so many options, it is becoming ever more difficult

I had lunch with former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. My agency invited Justice Ginsburg to speak at a celebration, which was to be followed by lunch. My position as the Deputy General Counsel not only oversaw the legal department, it was also responsible for managing the event planners, who were responsible for ensuring every aspect of the event ran smoothly. All of the invitations went out like clockwork without any issue.  The invitations included a return card so that the recipient could indicate whether they preferred the chicken or vegetarian entrée for lunch.  GET MY VISION COMPANION One

“And while more White employees see themselves as allies to women of color, they are no more likely than last year to speak out against discrimination, mentor or sponsor women of color, or take other actions to advocate for them.” “Women in the Workplace 2021” GET MY VISION COMPANION This quote from McKinsey & Company’s article “Women in the Workplace 2021” really struck me.  I think that most of us want to see ourselves in a favorable light and wear the label of “Ally” for women of color.  The true test comes, though, when we need to take action.  What

The first Friday in March is National Employee Appreciation Day. GET MY VISION COMPANION I was reading ideas here on how to show appreciation to celebrate the day, and as I read, I was reminded of a time when my client gave me three choices of how to thank my husband, who supported me on the home front while I burned the midnight oil at work. I was in private practice and had spent days, nights and weekends pulling together a motion for summary judgment that would hopefully end the case without going to trial. A couple days after I

Is it possible that the world’s greatest achievers think completely differently from the majority? Do you think the Wright brothers could ever have achieved what they did if they hadn’t believed it could be done? Was Sarah Blakely’s Spanx success a result of I can’t do this? I heard an interview with Blakely recently. She shared that when she was 16, her dad gave her a cassette series called “How to be a No-Limit person” by Wayne Dyer. He wished he had discovered those tapes when he was 16, instead of 40. Blakely listened to those tapes and transformed her

Do you ever catch yourself saying, “My job isn’t so bad” or “I’m being ungrateful”? I read the list of  9 Warning Signs You’re Settling For Less In Your Career in the Forbes article and I’m pretty sure I have said every single one of them during my career.  What can we do when we are settling for less and want more in our career?  I have three steps you can take when you’re ready to stop settling in your career. GET MY GOAL COMPANION I was coaching a client recently who had outgrown her toxic workplace.  She spent two