Leadership Companion Blog

Have you ever considered that the paths to our goals are like obstacle courses? Around each turn on the path is another obstacle that we must figure out how to overcome in order to make it to the goal at the end. While it may not feel this way, it’s actually normal to encounter obstacles in the pursuit of our goals. Sometimes, however, those obstacles leave us so perplexed that we don’t know how to move forward. These obstacles can range from an annoying distraction that we can put out of our mind as we keep moving forward, or worse,

Today is International Day of the Girl. Today we champion the empowerment of women and girls around the world because empowered girls grow up to be empowered women. While we have a long way to go when it comes to gender equality, we can also celebrate the fact that a new generation of women are rising up with amplified voices and sharing their voices with the next generation. Today, I want to share how I’m celebrating two women in my life who have risen up to be strong women. The Empowered Voice of a Filipina in My Life My older

Lately, I’ve been coaching women who are overwhelmed with life. They can’t seem to transition between work and personal life and, when they do, they still find their minds filled with work. As a result, they are carrying work concerns into every part of their lives. An accumulation of carrying these burdens will almost always end up in a high stress level. Therefore, we must be able to “dump” all of our concerns from the workday or days and concentrate wholly on our present. Here are 3 stress busting tips. Stress Busting Tip #1 Resolve right now to release every

As a child, I swam on a competitive swim team. We trained at a facility with a diving pool. This wasn’t your usual diving pool with a six or eight-foot-tall diving board. This was a deep pool with concrete diving platforms that were between 16 and 32 feet up in the air, like in the Olympics. During each practice, we would finish our laps and watch the divers walk to the end of the platform and dive in without hesitation. It all looked so simple and easy. After one practice, we were given the opportunity to jump off the shortest,

“But mama, what if no one sits with me at lunch and I’m all alone,” my daughter tearfully asked the night before her first day of 8th grade at a new school. Suddenly, all the memories of my own feelings of loneliness from new starts came flooding back. And then, as I worked to look for the good in those memories, I remembered a time when that lonely feeling gripped me, too, in a very public way. After my first year of law school at University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, I signed up to study abroad under

One of the reasons we do not face our goals is because we shut down when we are faced with an unexpected barrier that we’re unsure how to handle. We become discouraged; we start making excuses; and we allow ourselves to back off of our original plan. While this is a human and natural tendency, it’s not conducive to success. An important step that you can take to avoid this barrier blunder is by carefully planning your goal to include backup plans for all those little “what ifs.” “What if I don’t pass the prerequisite course?” “What if I don’t

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty “ –Winston Churchill An optimist, when faced with a problem, tends to find the upside to the situation and starts figuring out ways to solve that problem, or ways to turn it around. A pessimist, however, immediately throws up his hands, and yells, “That’s it; it’s all over. I can’t handle this anymore.” Or he will distance himself from the problem, pretending it doesn’t matter. This is denial, and it never works. According to the world’s foremost expert on optimism, Dr. Martin Seligman, everyone is

You have to give some to get some. The old adage is usually applied to money but it is also true of time. We are always pressed for time or seem to owe time to others — from our bosses to our families. Time is such a valuable commodity and we need to make sure that we use it carefully. Careful use of our time means one thing — time management. The sad truth is that most of us who are really in need of time management rarely utilize it. However, spending time on this simple four-step plan named “TIME”

I was leading a group coaching session a couple months ago with eight powerful, diverse women executives. The topic of discussion was how overwhelmed, beat, tired, and burned-out many of them are feeling due to the “too much to do / can’t stop now” syndrome. Are you one of those people who can’t seem to stop “doing?” I have yet to meet anyone who hasn’t felt overwhelmed from time to time. Since it tends to feel uncomfortable, if not downright unpleasant, we often view it as negative and as a weakness. We don’t dare to admit we are overwhelmed or

Mary was at the pinnacle of her career. She had worked her way up in the cosmetic industry, building strong teams and learning all there was about marketing along the way. As a result of her dedication to growing as a leader, she became a marketing director in a prominent cosmetic company. The pressure of both that position and being a mom to two young children began to mount and Mary found alcohol as a great stress release. She started turning to wine the minute she got home and could easily consume a bottle a night. Soon, there was a

Learning to advocate for ourselves and ask for a promotion can be intimidating. The following is a story about Claire who shares how she asked for a very big promotion. The Feedback Loop Claire rose through the ranks of a male-dominated tech industry to land a position four years ago as Chief Information Officer for a prominent housewares line. She is warm and welcoming, asking those around her for input in a continuous feedback loop that she keeps open. This means that she touches base with every employee in IT nearly every day. Some days and even some weeks, she

Shannon is a woman who is small in stature and big in personality. Sometimes being a woman has been the biggest challenge she has faced in moving forward in her career. She’s worked in male-dominated industries, like construction and engineering, where the executives and board members were always male.  Being mindful about how she is showing up and relating to others is one of the superpowers she has leveraged to move forward in her career. Mindful about Opportunities Shannon was one of the longest tenured employees with her last employer. She watched as members of the “good old boys’ network”

A few months ago I received a call from a woman in a prominent leadership position who was looking for help navigating a career transition. To protect her, let’s call her Amy. She recently left her high-paying position on the cusp of being terminated. Her workplace had become so toxic that it was taking a toll on her health. She described the men as “machismo” and the women as “opportunistic, arrogant and stepping on others to get ahead”. Sadly, this isn’t the first time Amy found herself in such a workplace, yet it was the first time that her body

My 55-year-old mom was standing in the open-air market when she started to have a breakdown. My mom is not someone to have a breakdown. She’s always been a woman who speaks from a place of strength and self-assurance. I remember when Hillary Clinton was running for president in the 2008 Democratic primaries, the mom of one of my friends commented that my mom would give Hillary a run for her money. How could my mom reach the point of a breakdown? Pursuing a doctorate degree at 50 In 1996, when I was a sophomore in college and law school

We have had the honor of listening to over 50 remarkable women leaders this last year, who have faced giant obstacles and persevered with all the might and courage they could muster. To celebrate Women’s History Month, we want to honor them by sharing their stories in the women’s leadership space. These women have inspired us in our journeys, not because they had an easy life handed to them, but because they faced giant obstacles and didn’t run away. They persevered with all the might and courage they could muster. This month, we honor them. A “People First” Leader We

We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone…and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something. Sandra Day O’Connor Today, I completed my research to become a certified women’s leadership coach. I listened to vulnerable stories from amazing women who are leaders who make things happen, see possibilities, have positive attitudes, and keep learning and getting better – all while building positive relationships. I started imagining how these ladies carry themselves – the facial expressions, posture, voice tone, gestures – and how

Assumptions are made and most assumptions are wrong. Albert Einstein Do you ever find yourself going straight to negative assumptions about something? When we do this again and again about a person or situation, we risk not seeing things accurately. One of my coaching clients was struggling with the false assumption that her boss no longer liked her and had cut her off from important communication. As we began our coaching journey, my client would say, “I know he doesn’t like me, because he used to come by my office every Tuesday after his weekly meeting with his colleagues and