In honor of Mother’s Day, I want to take a moment to write a letter to one of the most inspirational people in my life; my mom. The bond my mom and I share is incredible. She has always been there when I need her and on this Mother’s Day, I’ll be sure to thank her for it.
Read MoreI read an article in The Atlantic last week about the vast “confidence gap” that separates the sexes, and it made me ponder why I haven’t suffered from the same self-doubts that afflict so many women. The article’s authors, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, point to several studies showing that women not only lack confidence about their performance and careers but often under-estimate their abilities—in contrast to men, who generally have few doubts about their competence or capacities. This lack of self-assurance holds women back because, it turns out, confidence matters as much as competence in achieving professional success.
Read MoreHow often do you hear about the dearth of women in technology, especially leading start ups? And then comes the litany of complaints about how awful it is to be a woman CEO in the testosterone-driven tech culture. That’s why it was so refreshing to read Yunha Kim’s smart take on her experience, concluding that it either sucks or is awesome depending on how you frame your own perspective. Take The Lead thinks its time we change the narrative to the awesome part. Read on for Yunha’s insights.
Read MoreThe minute I saw this post about storytelling as a leadership skill, by Joanne Tombrakos, I asked her if we could share it with Take The Lead readers. As she says, “When we own our stories we become a magnet. People want to know who we are. Read our stuff. Buy our products. Hire us. Maybe even take us on a date.” Our story is the root of our authenticity, the topic of Lex Schroeder’s June 26 webcast – sign up here to learn her authentic leadership tools. And read on for Joanne’s explanation of why sharing our story benefits us and the listener.
Read MoreHere’s the truth: women need to help other women and in order to do that confidence is a factor we need to focus on. The lack of confidence that women have in their abilities is by no means the entire reason for gender inequality, but it is certainly a factor in the equation.
I am sure by now most of you have heard of “The Confidence Gap” piece that showed up in The Atlantic on April 14th and then subsequently all of the backlash from that article.
Read More“Know your audience.”
We hear this all the time, but how often do we practice it? Even if we think we know our audience, most of us spend a heck of a lot of time talking to ourselves. It’s only human, but it doesn’t serve us well.
Read MorePeople have often asked me what “career path” I took to becoming a management consultant to social justice organizations. Sometimes I give them my revisionist history, which makes it seem as though I consciously chose all my earlier jobs as building blocks toward this career. But more often I tell them the truth, which is that I simply took jobs that interested me, and where I ended up was mostly a function of serendipity.
Read More“Authenticity” is an overused word for a pretty interesting and important idea. For most of us, it only starts to feel exciting when we see it in practice. Authenticity isn’t just an idea then. It’s something we do. And it’s something we better understand if we want to follow through on our goals for ourselves or our organizations or those ideas we have for the world (often that the world needs badly).
Read MoreKaitlin Rattigan and I recently led a Circle Chat on networking in the Take the Lead Circle, and we had a dynamic discussion that I’d love to share. We posed four different question on networking throughout the chat and elaborated on each as a group.
Read MoreThis fall, an estimated 12 million women will enroll in college. The number of women students surpassed men in 1980, and the gap has been widening ever since.
Since 2011, more working women have held college degrees than working men. Women now hold more advanced degrees than men. They are the majority consumer group of an educational system that treats them like newcomers or afterthoughts in many ways.
Read MoreHappy Equal Pay Day!
Seriously, there is such a thing as equal pay day, and it’s today, April 8.
What’s going on with equal pay anyway? Isn’t it a thing of the past since women have achieved relative parity in the workforce?
Read MoreWomen make up nearly half of the U.S. labor force, but on average they still only earn about three-quarters as much as men do. Why?
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