Posts Tagged success
Change Leadership: Maximizing your ROL (Return on Luck)
Posted by Dana Theus in Change Management, Innovation on February 8, 2012
Sure, sometimes you’re the lucky recipient of spontaneous innovation, but according to business gurus, consistently good innovators actually have strategies for leveraging luck (the good and the bad) when it trips across their paths.
In “Great by Choice” Jim Collins and Morten Hansen have unearthed a fabulous idea they’re calling Return on Luck, and we all have something to learn from this concept. 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
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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
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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 »
3 Skills To Vault You Into Leadership (And Help You Stay There)
Posted by Dana Theus in eCoaching on November 3, 2011
Meg* and I were lunch-brainstorming how to help one of her direct reports who is struggling to “fit” into her recent Director-level promotion. Meg noted that this woman – we’ll call her Kathy* – found it hard to see the forest for the trees. Meg thought Kathy had tons of potential but was frustrated and wanted to grab her by the collar and elevate her perspective every time she gave Kathy a new project, and she wanted my business coaching suggestions on what skills she could help Kathy acquire to help her be more successful.
We listed out the challenges Kathy was having and tried to decide if these were issues more challenging to women than men. We concluded that they really weren’t women’s issues but were more related to the “Leadership Stretch” that requires us to take on a broader perspective when we are ready to – or just have – jumped up a major level in management responsibility. We also agreed that it was possible men received help with these issues more regularly through mentoring than women did.
Here is what we identified Kathy was struggling with, and how Meg could help her. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Ways to Advance Amid Dysfunction
Posted by Dana Theus in eCoaching on October 25, 2011
Old boss – mentoring and advancement opportunities. New boss – frustration, competition, neglect, stupidity and powerlessness.
What’s your strategy for getting ahead now?
In the last week, I’ve talked to three people in situation “new boss” – at all levels including a CXO (no, my friends, powerlessness is not limited to the minion ranks). So the topic seems ripe for an executive coaching post. 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 »
Goals vs. Intentions – A New Way to Focus
Posted by Dana Theus in eCoaching on August 30, 2011
I did a radio interview recently (see below) where the host asked me to distinguish between goals and intentions, and to explain why I believed intentions were so much more powerful. In short, it’s because to be effective goals must also be so narrow that – while they do help direct our energies – they provide lousy guidance when life intervenes with our plans (as it inevitably does).
Intentions, by contrast, are a broad and holistic statement of what success in any given situation looks, feels and acts like. Good intention statements inform both our left and right lobes on the end goals. That way, when life throws us the curve ball we all know is coming, we know how to instinctively bob, weave or otherwise deal with the play that is unfolding instead of the one we expected. In other words, a good intention statement gives us guidance on how to react to what IS – including resetting or adjusting our goals if necessary. Read the rest of this entry »
Declaring Independence
Posted by Dana Theus in InPower Leadership, Inspiration on June 30, 2011
As we stand on the brink of July 4th here in the states, I am writing my next InPower Insight Newsletter to help us each write our personal Declaration of Independence. Why? Because independence isn’t just for nations suffering under a repressive regime – it’s for InPower leaders too. We must all free ourselves from “the King” inside us to stand IN our own power. To be successful and truly powerful we must be free to achieve our own definitions of success.
The archetype of the repressive King is alive and well in Western society, having insidiously crept into our subconscious to embody our personal definitions of success, and to a large extent leadership. The King represents our cultural definition of success:
- authoritarian power to tell the world what to do and have it be done;
- physical power to enforce our will and protect what is ours (if necessary causing harm to others); and
- unlimited economic power to spend on a whim.
Face it. We all want to be King Read the rest of this entry »
Dana Theus
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