Articles

How many times do you leave a one-on-one meeting or conversation with your boss or coworker feeling unsure about just what their motivations were, or what kind of impact you made? “What did they really think about what I had to say?” you might ask yourself. “I wish they weren't so hard to read.” How often do you go over the meeting in your mind, creating a “what if?” scenario, or coming up with stories of what just happened, before deciding to just move on and hope for the best?Situations like this are common at organizations and they are also avoidable, when leaders practice and encourage transparency by being clear, honest and forthright. Transparency in business means sharing information with others, including sharing the impact of others’ words and actions. It can be difficult to…

I recently attended a talk for human resource leaders that brought in Hitendra Wadhwa, a very popular professor at Columbia Business School and founder of the Institute for Personal Leadership (IPL). Wadhwa is a mathematician who has made a study of what makes a great leader. It didn’t surprise me that this scholar found that great leadership comes from the person you are inside, rather than being imposed from the outside, but I was excited to learn that his research offers some quantifying evidence to back up that philosophy, which I share. Letting your inner self be your "guiding light," as Wadhwa eloquently put it, is easy to say, but it's not always clear to each of us how we can bring that about. Wadhwa proposed paying attention to five key aspects of self. I'll…

Reading books is good for you. Even Oprah says so.(Writing books is, too, even if while you're doing it you're not sure if you'll ever finish. Ahem.)Late last summer I finished writing my first book. Among other benefits, that experience gave me even more respect for book authors than I had before. Writing is hard work. Putting your ideas and words out into the world for others to read—and perhaps criticize—is also a challenge. So one of my goals in the New Year, now that I'm done writing my first book, is to read more of other people's books. It’s sometimes hard to carve out time for book reading but I notice that when I do, what I get from a good book reverberates in my life far beyond the time…

A recent study offered an interesting twist on what makes for effective listening. According to research, listeners who hear a speaker by phone, or with eyes closed, tend to more accurately gauge the speaker’s emotions than listeners who are also looking at the speaker by video conference or in person. According to an article in the journal Yale Insights, “The research suggests that simple phone calls might be sufficient for bringing together far-flung colleagues.” This might be good news for businesses that want to cut back on travel for face-to-face meetings. It’s also somewhat of an affirmation of what I’ve noticed in my own work. I do phone as well as in-person coaching, and while I feel confident that I’m gleaning a person’s emotions face-to-face, I have also felt that the phone coaching…

We all sometimes show up in the world in a way we didn’t intend. Sometimes it's a moment we learn from and move on, but at other times we get stuck showing up repeatedly in ways that go against who we really want to be. To fix that, we need both clearer intentions, and also a sharper awareness of how we come across to others.Take a leader I worked with whom I’ll call Alex. He knew he wanted to be a strong, empathetic leader. He is very talented, and had risen quickly in his field. Yet he was unhappy and uninspired when I met him, while working at a job he should have loved. He was stressed by his boss, John, who was unsupportive and demanding, and Alex was handling…

“He knows how to push my buttons.” “She just gets under my skin.” Is there a person, place or situation that always seems to trigger a dramatic emotional response from you? There are many common behavioral and situational triggers. These include not feeling heard, encountering a person who needs to be right all the time, being in a situation that makes you feel excluded, feeling inequity, others talking too much, others not talking enough, and observing arrogance or entitlement. Yes, many people respond with frustration or irritation at these situations. But only some people will have a response that is quick and deeply emotional, a feeling of button-pushing that likely comes from past experiences, and perhaps a conflict with our deepest-held values and beliefs. Sometimes the triggers are related to blind spots we…