Blog

I’ve had an earworm in my head again this week. This time its’s the song From A Distance that in 1987 the late Nanci Griffith, first recorded and in 1990 was a major hit for Bette Midler.

Lately it feels as if the turmoil and chaos around the world is too much. The latest Covid variant is spiking, wildfires in California, horrific floods in Kentucky, and heat, hot weather making everyone edgy. Then the song pops in…From a Distance:

From a distance the world looks blue and green,
and the snow-capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream,
and the eagle takes to flight.

Watching the news often increases my stress level. Then I’m reminded: the sun came up this morning! Gravity is still working! I am still breathing, and my heart is beating without doing anything! We are on a planet that has been around for 4 ½ billion years and it’s still spinning in space with us attached! And very importantly…my...

ARE YOU THE LEADER YOU NEED?

For the past 18 months, the Covid19 pandemic has revealed many things about ourselves and our organizations. As someone who’s been an executive, a management consultant, and a leadership coach, I know that there are all kinds of effective leaders out there.  Some styles are more effective in certain situations than others. Great leaders share some important traits, like resilience, courage, openness to opposing ideas and staying grounded by listening to their workforce’s point of view, and a good dose of humility. Great leaders must be self-aware because without understanding your own strengths and prejudices, and your leadership style, you literally don’t know what you’re missing.

The same organization will need different kinds of leaders at different points in its life cycle. A startup company or in these times of crisis a Risk Taker is needed.  A leader whose tolerance for risk is high; someone daring,...

From A Distance

I’ve had an earworm in my head again this week. This time its’s the song From A Distance first recorded by the late Nanci Griffith and was a major hit for Bette Midler.

Lately, it feels as if the turmoil and chaos around the world are overwhelming. The Covid Delta variant is spiking, earthquakes in Haiti, wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and Afghanistan. I find myself becoming discouraged and stressed. Then the song pops in my head…From a Distance...

From a distance the world looks blue and green,
and the snow-capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream,
and the eagle takes to flight.

Watching the news often results in an increase in my stress level. But then, I pause, take a breath, step back and I’m reminded the sun still came up this morning! Gravity is still working! I am still breathing, and my heart is beating without me doing anything!

We are on a planet that has been around for 4 ½...

We All Just Want to be Liked…

My summer Collaborative Group Coaching program has just finished with an amazing group of women leaders. The group was brave enough to open their hearts to the challenges I presented. As a result, they discovered more brilliance about themselves and each other.

The group grappled with this question: “what is one limiting thought that you have thought or focused on about yourself for way too long?”.

Topics came up like: “I’m not good enough”, “I’m afraid I won’t be liked”, “I too often compare myself to others” or the ever-present imposter syndrome, “someone is going to discover I’m not supposed to be in this job”.

Most of us want to be accepted and liked. Somehow, we go from toddlers filled with joy and speaking our minds without regard to anyone’s opinions. To adulthood jumping through hoops to be what we think others want us to...

Olympic Leadership Lessons

The XXXII Summer Olympics are upon us…and like everything else in the past 16 months, these Games are unlike any other. I love the Olympics when the world‘s greatest athletes come together to compete for the highest honor in armature sports.

I had the good fortune to attend the 1976 Summer Olympic Games in Montreal Canada and the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Two decades apart and many lessons learned from both.

In 1976 I had never been more than 600 miles from my hometown in Florida. There I was in Montreal, where the primary language was French!  People from around the globe were gathered wearing their national colors, speaking their native languages. I remember meeting people from Mongolia, Singapore, Russia, and Turkey. What an experience! The universal language was a smile. My eyes were opened that the world is a big place with so many different points of view, yet the common denominator can be a smile and...

SHARED VULNERABILITY

Why do certain groups add up to be greater than the sum of their parts while others add up to be less?I have worked with organizations around the country of different sizes and shapes. I marvel at the success of some groups and the challenges of others.

Team culture is one of the most powerful forces on the planet and one of the most difficult things to put together and maintain. A Harvard study of more than 200 companies over 11 years revealed that a strong team culture increased the net income of those companies by 750%!

I LOVE Teams which is in part why I love hospice. We were the first to require interdisciplinary teams where everyone’s voice is valued. 

Think about the most well-functioning teams in your organization and see if they have these components:

• Safety
• Belonging
• Shared vulnerability
• Shared purpose

A shared exchange of openness and vulnerability is the most basic building block of cooperation and...

PERSPECTIVE

The Notorious RBG is being laid to rest today. Regardless of politics, her spirit was/is luminous. She said her legacy was “to make life a little better for people less fortunate” than she.

What she did for my generation of women and future generations of us all was monumental. About 10 years ago, I was in the Delta sky club at Kennedy International airport, tired and looking forward to going home, I had found a distant and quiet place from the crowd to sit alone. I noticed several secret service-type people coming to my corner looking around and I thought “somebody important is going to show up soon”. Then, this tiny woman slowly walks in as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders and stands by the window with 2-3 other younger women. 

I recognized Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg right away and was star struck. Throwing caution to the wind, I got the nerve to ask one of the women if I could speak with her, and to...

We the People…

"Don't judge people for the choices they make when you don't know the options they had to choose from"

Each July 4th I think of our founding fathers who risked their lives to create a new country pledging their honor to claim their independence from England. Declaring freedoms that no other nation enjoyed at the time: freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly, and petition.

The 56 courageous and dedicated men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 knew they were committing treason when the ink was dry on their signature. And still, they accepted that risk to ensure “…certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

In the 244 years since that monumental day, many of ‘We the People’ are still searching for complete freedom. People who are of a different race, gender and/or ethnicity than those 56 white men want the same freedoms.  We expect freedom...

Have you noticed all of the “noise” in your life lately?  The constant chatter on emails, texting, Face Book, Twitter, political debates, talk radio and talking head news, it is endless.  It seems everyone is talking but is anyone really listening?  Social media offers so many options to “connect” with anyone, anywhere, anytime that a conversation now consists of emojis or single letters vs words.

While it’s wonderful to instantly send off a text or email to a friend or colleague for quick interactions, yet at the end of the day, how meaningful are those exchanges?  Are you reminiscing about the beautiful text you received and how it made you feel as you’re falling asleep at night?  Or are you feeling frustrated because your in-box is overflowing, and you don’t have time or energy to respond to everyone who wants something from you?

Many of my clients have the problem of staff “over-sharing” emails. ...