Archive for category InPower Leadership
Why Leaders Should Mentor
Posted by Dana Theus in InPower Leadership, Inspiration on March 14, 2012
Someone once gave me the greatest complement. She said, “Since you’re my mentor I think you can help me with this.” Until that moment I had no idea I was her mentor! From that day forward, I started paying more attention to my interactions with her, being more clear explaining my thinking, being more conscious of giving her explicit feedback. And something else happened in the process – I became more conscious of my own leadership style and began to improve it. Read the rest of this entry »
Want to Attract Talent? Be Talent!
Posted by Dana Theus in InPower Leadership, Inspiration on March 7, 2012
Someone recently asked me for my secret to making a good hire and attracting talented employees. I had to admit that I’ve never considered myself particularly skilled at hiring, even though I’ve made some stellar hires – if I do say so myself – so I had to dig deep for some executive coaching advice. But it came pretty quickly.
If you want to hire very talented people, BE talented. If you want to hire go-getters and innovators, BE go-getting and innovative. If you want people to think outside the box, don’t sit in your box.
Entrepreneurial Grass IS Greener (and Innovative!)
Posted by Dana Theus in Innovation, InPower Leadership on February 29, 2012
A while back I read a blog post by a soon-to-be-entrepreneur who sounded so excited about his new adventure that I didn’t have the heart to write this post in response until after he’d launched. Who was I to burst his bubble?
And the last thing I wanted to do was burst his bubble. After a decade on my own, I’ve learned that this optimism is a critical personal power and key to entrepreneurial business success, but it’s much more than that. It’s the secret to any leader’s mastery of innovation.
Measuring Leadership
Posted by Dana Theus in InPower Leadership on February 15, 2012
How do you measure leadership? It’s an odd question, isn’t it? Leadership is inherently challenging to even describe because it’s a quality of being human. Psychologists and Change Management Consultants find ways to measure everything and I’m sure they have some metrics for this. However, my Google research on this subject reinforced my experience that most people’s take on measuring leadership is really one of two things: 1) measuring management metrics (e.g., did revenue go up?) Or 2) measuring behaviors, absent their impact. Read the rest of this entry »
Activating The Woman Effect
Posted by Dana Theus in InPower Leadership, Reclaimed!, Women In Leadership on February 1, 2012
Follow The Woman Effect online - www.TheWomanEffect.com.
This last year blogging here on Reclaiming Leadership has been fun and fascinating. Along the way I found myself speaking to and with wonderful, powerful women. And I’ve also been having fun blogging on women’s web sites, like Blogher, The Glass Hammer, Success in the City and Owning Pink. But I wanted to have a place of my own to speak to women about the trends I see from reading the leadership research that many women – heads down in their career – don’t get a chance to see. So I’m starting a new leadership and professional development blog and website for powerful, high-achieving women.
Here’s my opening play: The Woman Effect (1:48 min video).
Thanks for all of you who have friended, followed, commented, discussed and debated with me over the last year. I’ve never had so much professional fun in my life and it’s only getting better!
The Antidote for Toxic Corporate Culture
Posted by Dana Theus in Corporate Culture, InPower Leadership, The PRIMES on January 25, 2012
In a recent leadership development workshop I ran, one woman bravely spoke her truth about the reality of the toxic corporate culture they all worked in. It was dysfunctional. Managers were petty and their pettiness was only overshadowed by the pettiness of the leaders above them. All these great ideas we were generating in the training – all this great energy – how could they keep it alive when everyone went back to their regularly scheduled work life the next day?
Enter, Reality Read the rest of this entry »
What if Self-promotion is a Gender-Neutral Leadership Skill?
Posted by Dana Theus in InPower Leadership, Women In Leadership on January 11, 2012
Follow The Woman Effect online - www.TheWomanEffect.com.
Sometimes true wisdom hides behind sensational headlines. I often think this when I read gender wars articles; you know, the ones that toss the sexes in the ring?
Here’s my latest beef: Women need to self-promote to make more money. (Forbes Woman , Catalyst Inc.)
So apparently women suck at self-promotion. Is that the deepest wisdom here?
I’m not arguing the data, but rather the interpretation.
True Leadership is Gender Neutral Read the rest of this entry »
Work-Life Baloney
Posted by Dana Theus in InPower Leadership, Women In Leadership on November 10, 2011
Follow The Woman Effect online - www.TheWomanEffect.com.
A constant discussion topic among every professional woman I know – and no small number of men – used to be work-life balance. We judged ourselves and each other harshly when it came to our skill in balancing. In our 20’s it was secondary; in our 30’s it was a conundrum; and in our 40’s we made whatever adjustments were necessary and lived with the consequences as our careers developed and families expanded.
Most of us took on the leadership, entrepreneurial and volunteer challenges our choices left us with and succeeded. Somehow, most of us are still married and no one’s kids have gone to the dark side (though I suppose there is still time left;)
We survived and so did our families. This discussion is now old news. Read the rest of this entry »
Success is Messy
Posted by Dana Theus in InPower Leadership, The PRIMES on October 27, 2011
Buddhists and psychologists alike tell us that non-attachment to outcomes is the key to success. There is tremendous value in thinking this way – and it’s a key component of my executive coaching work on speaking truth and building your internal power. Non-attachment from the culture around you is critical to establishing your InPower – your personal power base (first becoming aware of the distinction between “you” and “culture” and then learning to use and change the culture intentionally.)
BUT, being a human being fundamentally works against this principle. Why? Because humans are wired to care. Read the rest of this entry »
The Ironies of Failure
Posted by Dana Theus in InPower Leadership on October 20, 2011
If we’ve read one “fail fast” article lately, we’ve read a million. Failure is an option! You can’t succeed until you fail! The Lean Startup goes so far as to encourage experimentation on your customer base, with the goal of failure, so you can turn it around into success quickly.
There’s merit to this approach, of course, and I happen to believe in the value of failure in the leader’s repertoire of success tools – in part because we simply can’t avoid it. But it’s no wonder the average leader does their best to avoid and ignore failure when it happens.
We all love a good failure
The business press loves nothing more than to haul out any public failing and shout it from the rooftops. Read the rest of this entry »
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