Author Archive
When We Become Leaders: Happy Ever After??
Posted by: | CommentsThere is a great image I once saw of someone climbing the ladder of success only to find it was attached to the wrong building; at the top were broken windows and a roof that needed replacing. It’s not always the way we think it will be.
I was reminded of that when I was telling my five year-old grand-daughter a new rendition of Cinderella. Life is not always as we expect it to be. Arielle requested a story that would be about her heroine, Cinderella, after she had married the prince.
I looked down at the pair of UGG boots I had just taken off, sitting near the door and the story just flowed. Cinderella was bored with her position, all pomp and no power. She decided she wanted to go hiking in the cold winter and came back from shopping with a new pair of UGG’s.
The prince shrugged, he was too busy with the state of the state to bother with fashion. However, the queen was furious that Cinderella wanted to wear such cumbersome shoes. I was just about to have Cinderella succumb to the queen’s demands to return the UGG’s. I was curious to see how my granddaughter would react, when she chirped up with “its okay grand mom, she should keep the shoes, after all it’s her body and she can wear whatever she wants!”
I really did see that a new generation of young girls is growing up to have internal strength and not buy into the fairy tales as easily as I know I did as a kid. I also gave kudos to my daughter for helping keep a balance between fairy tale beliefs and emerging leadership that begins with internal conviction.
We are all learning to be authentic, true to ourselves. If we can see that we are all works of art in process and that change comes each time we say “Yes” when we mean yes and “No” when we mean no, we are on the route of authenticity and integrity. I think this path may be a bit easier for younger generations. Just know we are paving the way.
Leadership and Meryl Streep
Posted by: | CommentsI must admit, that while Sandra Bullock is a super actress, I was so sad and unhappy that Meryl Streep did not win the “Best Actress” Oscar at the Academy Awards Ceremony last night.
I’ll go on the assumption that both films are worthy. I’ll go on the assumption that both actresses are wonderful. And yet, maybe it’s my own sentimentality, maybe even a bit of loyalty. Meryl has been a “bridesmaid so often” it was time for her to walk down that aisle of accomplishment and claim the prize.
I began to wonder if she is not the cool, elegant woman and performer she appears to be. I thought about the fact that there may have been some jealously that made people vote for young, sweet Sandra. I wished I could have cast my vote, actually many, many votes.
And then I thought “What if I was Meryl Streep, what would I do now?”
First, my thoughts went to a very basic human emotion: revenge. I would snub Sandra and maybe even stomp my foot on the hem of her dress! Then I got real and spent time thinking about what to do and how to handle a public situation where no matter how you word it, you were rejected…..again.
I will offer my personal ideas next week. For now I would love to hear from you. The best answer will get my new book “KaChing: Family Patterns and Finances” hot off the press as a gift; also, a free coaching session on any topic, professional or personal.
So, let me hear from you. In the meantime, I am sending an email to Meryl telling her how much I respect her. I’m sure it will be one of millions.
Women Leaders and Male Partnership
Posted by: | CommentsIn any learning process, there is a tendency to go to extremes before finding middle ground. Take driving, for example. Most teens start by driving very, very slowly, learning when to accelerate and when to put the brakes on. Then there is a time when we all want to experiment with speed, until either fender hits fender, or a ticket is handed by an unsmiling policeman.
Most of us then find the safe space of the middle ground where fast and slow are dependent on the territory.
So it is with all relationships. Sometimes a hug is perfectly timed, in other situations a metaphorical “right to the jaw” is called for. In all partnerships, all life happenings, it is all in the timing.
Margaret Thatcher was a woman leader who had a great sense of timing. She was strong and gracious. She entered the territory of male domination early on and set the stage for women to follow, to learn the art of push and pull.
I am reminded of a Margaret Thatcher story: she was disappointed with her cabinet, one she felt was weak and unwilling to take stands. Her frustration came out at a dinner, so it has been told, when the waiter taking meal orders asked her “Chicken or Steak” to which she replied “Steak please”. Next question was “And what about the vegetables”. She looked up and said “Oh, they will have steak also”.
We are now in an era where the fine art of timing is even more important because the world is moving so fast. There is not the luxury to ponder, to hesitate. As women, we need to become experts in timing, when to hug and when to hit.
Patterns of behavior handed from generation to generation have kept many women in the “hug” category. Often, the extreme of “hit” has been indiscriminate. This is a major learning process for men as well as women, and what we can learn from leaders like Margaret Thatcher is not so much about policy perspectives as about the push and pull of power.
The most important learning for leaders is how to find that magic balance.
Women Leadership and Mad Men
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Some revolutions are bloody, and some are flash-in-the-pan moments.
The women’s movement began quietly with a book “The Feminine Mystique”, moved to bra burning, and gained traction with consciousness raising groups.
All of that seems like it was centuries ago.
We now head large organizations, are in key positions in government, and have a say in just about everything. Yet some of the pleaser and martyr behavior patterns that were handed from generation to generation are still dying a slow death.
Just watch “Mad Men” and remember how it was. You worked if you typed and delivered. No not ideas – merely the coffee to the men. While much has changed, there is more work to be done.
This is a year of both celebrating change and dialoguing about what still needs to change. CELEBRATION: in the next few months women will cross the threshold and become the majority workers in America. CELEBRATION: women professionals are in the majority in this country. CELEBRATION: women have become economically powerful in their own right.
What is the next phase of the revolution toward equality, and even beyond that, toward partnership?
Perhaps we need to regroup and create consciousness-raising groups that mirror the 60’s. Maybe this time it needs to include both men and women. While we need to celebrate the successes, we really need to ask the hard questions that remain unanswered for ourselves, our children, and even our grandchildren.
My daughters are grown, and I am now watching the dilemmas and concerns about what it means to raise children in a world that is going at warp-speed. What does it mean to run a business, run a household, and still have time for the kids?
I believe the dialogues of today are around the unfinished business of the past. The issues are around motherhood, and fatherhood. The issues at the deepest level are about the children. If we have them, then who raises them? What kind of support is needed to bring out the best in the next generation?
This is where the pleaser and martyr patterns of the past, so deep in the neuropsychology of most women, kick in. Women still appear to be the ones who make the plans for the youngsters, take off the time if they are sick, and worry about grades, friends and drugs. Sure, dads are included, yet it still seems that mothers are carrying the heaviest part of the load. That has not really changed.
I am not suggesting we demand that our men vacuum and make the oatmeal. That discussion belongs to each couple to sort out. I am thinking way bigger than that. I am wondering if we can look at the countries that have offered families more help, looking especially at Norway and Sweden.
What do we need to do to change, so the next generations grow to be the best they can be? When do we as women take the pleaser and martyr parts of our personalities and transform them into their positive opposites – the truth teller and the integrator? What are the questions that need to be asked to sort out the dilemma of what we can do, what our businesses can do, and what government can do?
I’d love to hear from you with ideas about creating life-enhancing programs that can deter so many of the social problems connected with the new world of work we have helped create, and the burdens of parenting at every level of our society.
Let’s start a 21st Century rendition of consciousness-raising, and keep the revolution for healthy and balanced evolution at the forefront of our lives.
Leadership Lessons: I’d Rather Be a Whale
Posted by: | CommentsPart of leadership, especially women, is to be a voice for separating the wheat from the chaff. It is time for all of us as women leaders to put a halt to the binding messages we are bombarded with about image. No, I don’t mean we should all state that overweight is better, I mean we need to begin to question what is being fed to us (sorry for the pun) about what is the standard for the acceptable and attractive woman. It is a legacy issue that if addressed now will have a vast impact on our daughters (and they are all our daughters regardless of who birthed them) of the future.
Nancy Pennebaker, a senior consultant with our organization, Creative Energy Options, Inc. (CEO) sent this to me for both the humor and the depth of the message. Our company motto, “we are all connected and no one wins unless we all do”, is embedded in the following short article. It shows that this issue of image is one that is a world issue.
Notice that the sign in the window of an exercise studio and the answer are from France, where the image of gorgeous models in clothes by Yves St. Laurent, Chanel et a.l became the standard of beauty.
This is a time for us to say what really matters and stand for changes, so that the future is not trapped in the girdles of the past.
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“This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?” A middle-aged woman, To Whom It May Concern, Mermaids don’t exist. The choice is perfectly clear to me: P.S. We are in an age |
Maybe We Really Have Changed
Posted by: | CommentsI
was very conscious of role changes yesterday. First, my husband and I needed to get some basics for our new home in Sonoma County California. We were running late and made a last stop at the closest Costco. The Super Bowl had started about ten minutes before and as Saints fans, we wanted to get home to cheer this special team to success.
I stopped at the bank of televisions and became engrossed with the game and stood there with a few guys who had pulled up chairs and obviously planned to make an afternoon of it.
My husband, a macho kind of male, said he would get the items we needed including an ironing board and dish drainer for the kitchen. He suggested I pull up a chair. I did. And the men, without blinking an eye, included me in their conversation about strategy.
I must admit, I am a superficial fan of the game and it only peaks my attention when there is a story like the New Orleans team that has captured the imagination of the whole country. I was in the French Quarter several weeks ago when the Saints won the right to be in the Super Bowl and it was, so I heard, even better than Mardi Gras.
We returned home in time for the end of the game, and that is when I thought maybe, just maybe, the balance between men and women is really changing.
For me, the best part of the post game hoopla was watching the Saints quarterback, Drew Brees holding his year old son. That was not so unusual.
What really impacted me was the way he was holding and kissing him. In the midst of the tumult, in the midst of his major success, it was obvious he was so focused on his son with the overtly expressed love usually reserved for a mother and a child.
I will take the images of today, a husband who changed places and bought the dish drainer while his wife was engrossed in football, a group of men, strangers, who included that woman in their discussion, and a football hero kissing his son with a gentle delight.
And coupled with my memories of being in New Orleans three weeks after hurricane Katrina to help with the recovery efforts, seeing the scenes of the fun and liveliness back in that city, it feels like change is in the air everywhere.
