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5 Common Mistakes That Can Kill Your Promotion
You work hard for a promotion and give it your best shot. But what if your hard work isn’t enough? What if you’re not doing the right things? Worse yet, could you be making these mistakes without knowing it and killing your chances?
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How to Build Your Network in 5 Minutes a Day
Your network is one of your most important assets. But how can you fit networking activities into your already overstretched day? Use this simple strategy. It has generated the most “quick wins” for me and it will for you, too.
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9 Capabilities to Achieve Career Success
At any given point in your career, people will be forming opinions on whether you’ve “got what it takes” to make it to the next level. Which of these capabilities would make the biggest difference for you if you worked on it now?
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Why not to ask “why”
I’m a big fan of Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” TEDTalk and agree that understanding the purpose is crucial to success. Yet when we’re conversing in the course of everyday life, there are definitely situations when the word “why” at the start of a question is not your friend.
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Life begins beyond your comfort zone
Over time, I’m extending my comfort zone… and discovering that there’s joy out there beyond one standard deviation! How about you? Can you do more and be more, and have more fun while you’re at it?
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Showing up as yourself when it really counts
My niece called me for advice before her interview at Harvard Business School (HBS) as part of the MBA application process. I remembered the following three experiences and realized that what we were really talking about was being able to show up as yourself when it really counts (i.e., under stress).
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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – Behind the scenes of the Career Mastery Challenge
Have you ever said something out loud without realizing what you were doing? And then the “wrong” person hears you and it’s too late to take it back? Well, that’s how the Career Mastery Challenge happened.
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Introducing The Career Mastery Challenge
Looking back over my 24-year investment banking career, most recently as COO of Morgan Stanley Europe, I’ve come to realize that it was great preparation for what I am doing now: sharing what I’ve learned to help smart people succeed in their careers (as...
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Leadership: Making Plays vs. Running Plays
A successful basketball coach was telling me about the difference between making plays and running plays, and how the best players do both. Sports teams have set plays – we’ve all heard the term “playbook” – and they practice them. These are about scoring. For the play to work during a game…
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The Problem With Trying
I grew up thinking of trying hard as being “a good thing”. Now, I realize that trying has a substantial dark side, and can be downright negative as a mindset. As a result, I am in favor of ceasing to “try” and starting to “do”. Here’s my thinking.
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Make “Normal” The New Normal
Reading about Gabby Douglas’ gold medal performance in the UT San Diego paper, I was struck by the Olympic team coach’s comment that she was originally seen as a “good average gymnast” and not an obvious pick for being the gold medalist. And that what they didn’t know was how well she would “handle nerves” and…
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Bloom Where You’re Planted
A highly successful CEO recently shared with me his mother’s advice that has stood him in good stead from humble beginnings all the way to the executive suite: "bloom where you’re planted". This phrase has stuck in my mind because it raised a...
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Leaders: False and True
A basketball coach recently described one of the girls on her team as a “False Leader”. As it was a new term to me, I asked the coach what she meant. She described how Didi (not her real name) initially came across to the coaches as the...
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Entertainers in Society
My daughter’s class is learning about medieval history, and as we chatted about what life was like in those times, it struck me that the value society places on entertainers has been turned on its head. Back then, they had gladiators who were...
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Playing To Your Strengths At Work
Do you get to play to your best strengths at work? For two-thirds of us, the answer is “no” (see the last few paragraphs of the Gallup webpage). But imagine what innovation and energy we could unleash if most of us could answer “yes”. Now...
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