Category: Uncategorized

During the pandemic, women were hit hard. According to the Labor Department, women lost twelve million jobs from February to April 2020, about two million jobs more than men during the same period because of the disproportionate levels of women in certain industries like healthcare, hospitality, and retail. However, women recently ticked up to the highest level of employment ever, for women 25-54 in June 2023, to 77.8%.

This article from Forbes incorporates three different things to consider:

1. Women are re-entering the workforce in new industries and new roles – new roles such as project management, finance managers, and operations specialists.
2. Women are taking on more leadership positions – the proof is in the numbers: “More women are demonstrating their ability to be effective leaders, and the proof is in the overall success rate of companies with more women leaders. Organizations that have at least 30% women in leadership positions are 12 times more likely to be in the top 20% for financial performance, according to a Conference Board study.”
3. Hybrid work offers women much greater flexibility – “As of (last) October, 12% of full-time U.S. employees worked remotely and 30% worked in a hybrid arrangement. As the workforce continues to evolve, remote and hybrid work will continue to play a significant role in bringing women into the workforce.”

Women are slowly making progress, but there is a way to go. Change is happening, and that is good for women in the workforce and the workforce in general because women lead differently than men. Diversity makes a positive impact.

To learn more, read: Three Reasons Women are Re-entering the Workforce at a Record Pace.

A different client recently shared this blog post from Sahil Bloom. In it, he talks about meeting legendary entrepreneur, creator, and investor Gary Vaynerchuk … known as Gary V.

As Sahil writes, during their conversation about longevity, Gary V. “casually dropped a single, incredibly powerful line: “You’ve gotta love the dirt.”’

This statement about loving the dirt is so powerful because most of us want to climb the ladder to leave the dirt. We strive to delegate and swoop in to solve the big, meaty problems. We want the respect, the power, the big office, the stress, and a robust compensation package.

You gotta love the dirt. Really? It’s brilliant.

Sahil goes on to say: “The dirt is where you start. It’s where you’re built. It’s where you find your initial success. We all start in the dirt on the journey to success, but few are willing to remain there. Few fall in love with the dirt. The day you leave the dirt is the day the clock starts ticking down on your run.”

Too many leaders care about the wrong things and lose sight of building something brick by brick, pivoting as needed, and building it again. To learn more, check out One Powerful Lesson from a Legend.

This article uses a common project management framework to develop a personal brand. Written by Dorie Clark and Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, their clear, pragmatic approach will help you create something so that you will stand out in your career.

Here are their five steps:

1. Identify your purpose – do you want to be an expert? Understand your purpose and why it matters to you
2. Decide on your investment – is it time to expand your network, build your social profile or create content?
3. Get clear on the benefits, and how you’ll track them – building your brand will take time. How will you monitor your success, stay on track and stay motivated throughout?
4. Identify your stakeholders – both internal and external stakeholders. Where do you want your brand to take five to ten years from now?
5. Lay out your resources and deliverables – make sure you are not spreading yourself too thin, and determine how your out of work activities support your brand or not. An example they give is to teach at a local university to build your brand.

If you want to learn more about their process, check out Approach Your Personal Brand Like a Project Manager and start building it.

Being an introspective leader has its place. In this article from Psychology Today, the author, Te Wu, talks about introverts and how they are often over-looked for leadership roles. He quotes that 96% of business leaders identify as extroverts (which he goes on to disprove) and states that we have a bias towards extroverts in our Western culture. While Te specifically talks about project managers in this article, I would challenge that introverts, who are generally thoughtful leaders with strong listening skills, can be strong leaders in a whole host of roles within any organization.

Why Introverted Personalities Make Great Project Managers highlights five areas that introverts can excel at, including:

Decision Making – being more reflective and thoughtful, weighing various factors
Active Listening – listening deeply versus framing a response in their heads
Empowerment – co-creating, sharing the spotlight, and including collaborators
Adaptability – working with others behind the scenes and finding new solutions
Lead by Example – over time, being seen as dependable, saying less and doing more

If you would like to learn more about introverts, you can find the article here.

Talking about new leadership frameworks, Hitendra Wadhwa’s article, in the current issue of Harvard Business Review, does just that. Most of us learn about how to become a stronger leader by doing things like taking workshops, reading books, or doing online courses. Hitendra states that if you can “shift the emphasis from learning from the sidelines to leading in the moment, executives can achieve real breakthroughs”.

After extensive research and consulting work, he validated his approach of dynamic leadership that he calls leadership-in-flow, encouraging leaders to take as little as 10-15 minutes of preparation before a big event. Get yourself centered and be fully present so that you can appropriately respond in real time, and tap into the core energies as referenced below.

Built on “five types of energy, based on ancient wisdom and contemporary science”, they are:

1. Purpose – committed to a noble cause
2. Wisdom – calm and receptive to the truth
3. Growth – curious and open to learning
4. Love – connected to those you work with and serve
5. Self-realization – centered in a joyful spirit

Read the article, Leading in the Flow of Work from HBR, or pick up the book “Inner Mastery, Outer Impact: How your five core energies hold the key to success”

There is an art to effective time management. Taking breaks during the day has an impressive ROI according to this Workforce Index done by Qualtrics of over 10,000 desk workers around the globe. Workers who regularly take breaks have 13% higher productivity, have 62% better work-life balance, are 43% better able to manage stress, and have 43% higher job satisfaction.

The research reported that 70% of desk worker’s time at work was productive, with times of day when they were most productive varying widely. Three in four reported that end of day, between 3-6pm, is unproductive. “This goes to show that productivity isn’t linear. Productivity happens in bursts, on and off throughout a day, not necessarily in prescribed windows of time, and definitely not for eight consecutive hours. The  ‘afternoon slump’ shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing; for many workers this could be an ideal time to take that break that will boost their overall productivity for the day” said Christina Janzer, SVP of Research and Analytics at Slack. It goes on to say that if you can optimize your focus time, collaboration time, and the time you spend connecting with others and taking breaks, you will be able to function at your best. What is the right mix for you?

We all know that employee engagement at work is a problem. As a leader, if you can work with your team leads and team members to give careful consideration to what they can do to better maximize their time, there will be a myriad of benefits. Check out “The surprising connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity” to learn more.

During the holiday break, I listened to compelling podcast from the Next Big Idea Club, with the author David Brooks whose book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen was published last October.

He talks about connection and his own personal journey to become a more empathetic and caring person. In a interview on PBS he said: “People feel invisible and unheard… and for society’s sake, it’s important we get a lot better at the skills of building relationships and understanding other people.”

In the podcast, he goes on to say that we vary widely in our skill to read each other accurately, quoting research from William Ickes that strangers in their first conversation when meeting someone read each other accurately only about 20% of the time, and for close friends and family members, that only jumps to 35% of the time where we read each other accurately, on average. David Brooks explains that the reason these percentages are so low is because of our own natural egotism, that sometimes it’s anxiety and/ or  that we’re locked into our own viewpoint and can’t see the other person’s point of view. “We are naturally a bit self-centered”.

Since I so often work in communication, I found this work quite compelling. To learn more, check out the podcast or get a copy of the book.

As you know, I really enjoy the content from Harvard Business Review and today’s article is no exception. This recent piece is brilliant in its simplicity. It draws a parallel between the strategic planning process many of use in business with creating a plan for our life. Use Strategic Thinking to Create the Life You Want outlines a seven-step process that can be easily adapted to an individual:

1. How do I define a great life?
2. What is my life purpose?
3. What is my life vision?
4. How do I assess my life portfolio?
5. What can I learn from benchmarks?
6. What portfolio choices can I make?
7. How can I ensure a successful, sustained life change?

Read the full article to learn how you can create a strategic plan for your life. The holiday season may be a great time to start.

From my work in change management, I know that changing the culture of a company is quite difficult, but when I read this article by Gallup, I was pretty surprised. The article, “What Leaders are Asking” focuses on the questions that leaders should be asking and what those questions really mean.

Consider these stats from Gallup, the comments are mine:

• Globally, one in four employees strongly agree their opinions count at work (Is anyone listening?)
• About two in 10 U.S. employees strongly agree that the leaders of their organization has clear direction for the organization (Yikes!)
• Fewer than two in 10 American workers indicate their company is agile. (What year are we living in?)
• Fewer than one in four U.S. employees strongly agree that they can apply their organization’s values to their work every day. (Where is the gap?)
• On average, a third of employees strongly agree that their associates are committed to doing quality work. (Where is the standard of excellence?)

Read the full article to uncover some ideas and strategies to make a positive impact on your company’s culture.

When you tell someone a story, you can light up six or seven parts of their brain, but when you tell them a fact, you light up one or two parts of their brain. In Your Brain On Stories from Psychology Today, you will learn about why this occurs.

When you read something that is fact based, two parts of your brain light up – Wernicke’s area (where words are processed) and your visual cortex. If you hear something, Wernicke’s area would light up as well as your auditory cortex.

But, if you are told a compelling story – many areas of your brain would light up, the three mentioned above (Wernicke’s area, auditory and visual cortex) AND maybe your motor cortex, olfactory sensory area and the empathy areas of the brain. The author, Susan Weinschenk Ph.D., summed it up this way. “You are literally using more of your brain when you are listening to a story. And because you are having a richer brain event, you enjoy the experience more, you understand the information more deeply, and retain it longer.”

Plus, when you add tension to a story, it will sustain the attention of the listener, ultimately releasing Oxytocin which enhances social bonding.

And the bottom line is that stories make a big impact on RETENTION! People connect with stories and remember them. Read Your Brain on Stories to learn more details.