Author Archive
Leadership Skills: You and $$$$$$$
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For the love of money!
One of the best leadership teachers in any era comes in the form of paper or metal.
We love it, hate it, covet it, or disdain it.
Our romance with money belongs in every leadership development program on the planet.
Ever hear the expression “You can never be too thin or too rich”? First, too thin is called anorexia and you can die from that. Too rich, question is what does the word really mean?
Rich in cold, hard cash, rich in love, rich in friends, rich in _________. You fill in the blank.
Money is so much more than a means of exchange for goods and services. It determines how we relate to family, friends, colleagues. Money can cause dissonance or harmony, it can make us serape or angry, and it can be a dream fulfiller or a dream destroyer.
New research, especially the work of Dan Ariely, whose book “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions”, delves into the behavioral aspects of why we buy, or hoard, or share; how we decide what we prefer and how money shapes relationships. This is eye opening information as we continue to learn in this time of economically induced stress (at least for so many of us).
Women, Leadership, Self-Care, and BLUE MONDAY
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You wake up Monday morning, pour yourself a glass of orange juice, and get breakfast ready for your clan.
Off to the office, you battle the traffic, thinking about how to tell your rebel employee that there have been complaints about his behavior.
You dread the meeting and yet know it can’t wait.
Pulling into the parking lot you feel a wave of frustration, seeing that someone has parked in your reserved spot and the rain is now coming down in buckets. Glad there is an umbrella on the back seat, you make a run for it hugging folders from last night’s homework close to your chest.
The demands for your time never stop.
By noon, it feels like this Monday has been a month long and you start to wonder what it’s all about, why you work so hard and why there are so many demands on you that just don’t stop. Then you take a deep breath and realize,
“Ah, this is called BLUE MONDAY”.
This Monday, at the end of January, has been dubbed the most depressing day of the year, and you’re in the thick of it!
When Being GUTSY Starts Young
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I recently spoke at a women’s networking group and asked the bright and creative professionals to think about the earliest time they could remember when they spoke out for themselves.
To jog their memories, I told a story about unfairness when a boy in my elementary school class was yelled at when I was the one “sneaking” in front of him in line. (You can read the whole story on the “About Sylvia” page of www.sylvialafair.com.)
Another great example. This gal was an assistant in an after school gymnastics class. The teacher was absent for three weeks due to illness and she led the class alone. At some point, she felt she should be paid, assistant or not, she was the one doing all the work.
She was encouraged to go to the head of the program and state her case. She did. And they agreed to pay her.
She was twelve years old!
This is a perfect example of GUTSY at a young age.
Think about the messages of success or failure you were given when you stood up to say what you wanted and needed. Were you, like this extremely vibrant woman, heard and acknowledged? Or, like some of the other stories, were you told to lower your head and be quiet?
You Never Know What Impacts
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I was having an amazing conversation with my grown daughter who is a free spirit. She is a film maker and raw food chef who has a ton of friends and opinions about, well, just about everything.
Here’s what was fascinating.
When she was little, way before You Tube, she loved to listen to songs and stories by Marlo Thomas from the album “Free to Be You and Me”. She went on to talk about other parts of her life, looking at what it means to be a woman, a leader, a creative human who yearned for adventure and depth.
Back to Marlo and songs from a revolution to give children the freedom to choose what their lives would include. My daughter, Mikayla, told me how she would listen to the story of Princess Atalanta and how hearing this well over one hundred times, informed her to be free to be.
The story in a nutshell: a king thought it was time for his daughter to marry. He decided to have a race where all the males in town could compete and the winner would have the princess for his wife. EXCEPT…Atalanta was no ordinary princess of her times, she was from the new breed, a GUTSY GAL who would make her own choices.
What Do Women Want?
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It’s really simple.
What women want is to be heard!
We do not need to have the problems solved for us. However, before we can make change happen we require dialogue, discussion, debate.
In my book “GUTSY: How Women Leaders Make Change”, I did some digging to consider basic things that have been handed to us that have become part of who we are, part of our culture. I was fascinated by the “pink and blue” thing. Where did it come from, what does it represent.
Did you know that before the 20th Century pink was for boys? It is a watered down version of red, and red is the color for bravery. The thinking was, red was too bold for little boys, so they had the mantle of pink.
Now, it belongs to the girls. So, let’s not forget it is a variation on the theme of being bold and brave.
Sounds like today’s women to me!
Women and Responsibility
Posted by: | CommentsTimes, they are a changing, always. However, changing times seem to happen in the blink of an eye. I do believe we women leaders need to stop and take a deep look at what we are doing and the profound consequences of our actions.
In days of yore, we were to be kept “barefoot and pregnant” and now we have “freedom of choice”.
The big question is, what are we choosing and why?
The following
post is one that should make all of us stop and think. What does it mean to have a child and why do we decide to do what we do? We really need more training in how systems thinking works rather than just the individual concept of “what we want”.
I’d love to hear from women who are looking at the issues of bearing and raising a child and what really matters, what we want and desire, and the best interests of the child. I don’t want to be shouting out like a moralist. I do know from my background as a family therapist and executive coach that there is more to being a mother than procreating.
Let me hear your thoughts.
The Intricacies of How We Learn
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The following is a validation that we still have a long way to go to make change happen when it comes to beliefs and perceptions about little girls and education. When I did research for my GUTSY book (due out in January) I was both frustrated and delighted with the studies that show how our own adult anxieties are picked up by little learners.
The more we can bring these fears and concerns to consciousness, the more we can alleviate their impact.
In my work, I am dedicated to target and transform behavior patterns to spark success. The ingrained patterns of past generations are often merely myths we are now popping to explode and make way for new ways of thinking and relating.
Click the link below to read:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-brenoff/girls-good-at-math-study_b_1146191.html
Girls Are Good At Math, New Study Claims
Ann Brenoff
Senior Writer, The Huffington Post
The Real Richness of the Holidays
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The following TED talk on regret sparked some interesting emotions in me. I had a flash of remembering writing a freshman college paper on regret. My hypothesis was that if I paid attention to EVERYTHING I did and said I would live a life free of regret.
Hummmm…
I got an “A” for the quality of writing and research on that paper. I also had a comment by my professor that annoyed me terribly. He wished me well and asked me if I would be willing to rewrite the paper in 20 years and we could have a cup of coffee and note if I lived up to what I had written.
Of course I could now write a major thesis on all my life regrets, as a wife, mother, professional woman, and human being with hair that would be gray if I let it.
I know this is not the season for regrets, however, it is a season for love and clearing of the old as we soon ring in the new.
So, as a gift to yourself and those you love, take the time to write a few of your regrets and then share, as the Rumi poem below suggests:
Women, Food, and Being GUTSY
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ct time of year, when food is front and center in our minds, to honor a woman who has been in the food services industry for several decades. Yet, it’s not about her relationship with food that we’ll discuss; it’s about her relationship with women.
Victoria Vega is the National Director of Business Development, Corporate Dining for CulinArt Managed Dining Services. Her career has always been in management and many years ago, when she was fresh from college and a leader of men twice her age, she learned an important lesson “stay less emotional and more forthright”.
Her male colleagues would say to her “Honey, I’ve seen them come and go” and she knew they were waiting for her to break under the stress of this very male dominated industry.
An observer of people, she watched other women in business set up their own mine fields without realizing it. And she was super vigilant about the double bind at the time where assertive women were called aggressive (or much worse) and to be thoughtful and wait, to speak up was seen as weak.
A Gutsy Woman Leader Occupies Wall Street
Posted by: | CommentsThere she was, tufts of purple hair framing her face as she stood daring the policeman to arrest her. “What if I punch you in the eye?” she queried. “What if I knee’ d you in the groin?” she challenged.
She was told she would not be arrested if she stayed with the protestors and that made the day much brighter.
Think about i
t.
What do you do when you feel the passion to be a change agent? Will you go and march? Will you paint a sign that says “I’m 87 (or whatever age) and I’m mad as hell”? When you get older will you wear purple?
Meet Frances Goldin, a petite well-respected literary agent in New York, and in her own words, “a feminist, a socialist, a radical woman.”
She is a model of a GUTSY Leader. The authors she represents are those who dare, dare to speak out and use the power of words to make us think, feel, and see a better way. Anyone of you ever read “Goodnight Moon” to a child or grandchild? Goldin is the agent who brought this children’s classic by Margaret Wise Brown to the world. They were simpatico, Brown wanting to make “children think harder” and Goldin, believing that a better world is possible has a goal to publish books to speed the process of positive change.
