Mastering the S-Curve of High-Powered Careers 5 Ideas for Keeping Your Composure
Keeping your composure when you feel safe is easy. The question is how to regain and retain it when you are no longer in your comfort zone, when you feel out of your element. Add pressure to any situation (speed it up, raise the stakes, increase the competition) and at some point, performance drops. Most [...]
Winning, Losing and the Case for Composure
Sports tournaments make for some interesting lessons on leadership and performance, and these apply equally to business and life overall. Last week, I had the chance to observe first hand the dynamics of winning and losing at the Women’s U18 European Championship Basketball tournament in Romania. Whereas the early rounds of competition were about separating [...]
My Role in The World
Sometimes it is by doing small things well and with care that they become bigger things than we ever imagined.
Life Lesson from Top Chef
I was watching Top Chef just to “hang out” with my daughter (she’s 13, so you grab those opportunities when you can), and it turned out to be an unexpectedly great learning experience. What’s more, it was my daughter who pointed out this particular life lesson. This was the season finale episode, and it was [...]
Are we creating unhappy women?
A friend of mine is terribly worried that our next generation of high-achieving women may be destined for unhappiness because they will have difficulty in finding husbands. Are our self-affirming messages to today’s smart, capable young women setting them up for future misery? This well-intentioned concern raises some interesting points. First, it assumes that a [...]
The Tricky Business of Managing to Stay on Top
I am fascinated by the unravelling of General Stanley McChrystal. Not having met the man personally, I have only the media reports to go by. Based on this, three lessons occurred me, all of which apply to business leaders and managers. It can turn on a dime General McChrystal went from being heralded as a [...]
She’s Inspiring at 69
Have you heard about Mamyrock, the new British DJ who is taking Europe by storm? (TimesOnline: http://bit.ly/bY7XBm) She happens to be a 69-year old grandmother and former “trailing spouse” who started this new career just a handful of years ago. How cool is that? Simply knowing that she exists inspires and reassures at the same [...]
Are you still waiting for someone to choose you?
Why wait around? Sandra Bullock sets a great example, forming a company to pursue her own movie projects rather than waiting for others to offer her scripts. Why couldn’t we do the equivalent in our lives?
What goes around comes around
Does it make a difference if we choose to unleash anger vs. engage in random acts of kindness?
Is it okay to say “that’s so gay”?
Chatting with friends yesterday evening, one fellow parent related that her 15-year old son (let’s call him Jack, which is not his real name) had been reprimanded by his teacher for saying, “you’re so gay” to a classmate. As a straight-A student and generally all-around “good kid,” Jack was genuinely surprised to be called to [...]
