It seems that someone is always keeping score. Conversations about projects focus on outcomes, deliverables, and take-aways. We're asked "can you beat yesterday’s numbers? Or last week’s time? Or last year’s results?" Incentive programs encourage us to do more, go faster, be better. We say we’re tracking progress but we are really constantly measuring … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2010
Show Your Colleagues Some Love
Women have the reputation of being great nurturers. After all, we have always been the primary caregivers for our family and children. It's our history. It's in our DNA. Here's my question this week for professional women: Why doesn't that love and nurturing carry over more into the workplace? What happens to women in a work environment that holds them back from nurturing … [Read more...]
Why Critical Mass is Important
Post by Jane K. Stimmler, contributing Women On Business writer I was meeting with the top decision-makers at a client organization recently to plan out an important event for 2010. As we began to discuss the speakers they had invited to participate, and the ones they planned to recruit, I realized there wasn’t a single woman – or minority – among them. Though, in fairness, … [Read more...]
Leadership Lessons: I’d Rather Be a Whale
Part 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 … [Read more...]
Permission to Fail
As a child I remember asking for permission to speak. I’ve asked for permission to pee, permission to be excused, permission to paint an apartment in college and permission to borrow the family car. As a performer in the USO I remember asking a ships’ captain for permission to come aboard his vessel. I’ve asked permission of employers to take exotic vacations for longer than … [Read more...]
You were asked to write a Linkedin.com recommendation…Now What?
Social media is all the rage and certainly a powerful medium at that! Linkedin.com career profile marketing is the cornerstone for gaining immediate visibility worldwide. Fantastic! Each day, the numbers increase with new users, broadened network connections, and information to easily boost your knowledge base. Perhaps one of the most frequently discussed topics pertains … [Read more...]
Women as Business Owners
In Georgia, where I live and write, women have always owned businesses. Even our fictional heroine Scarlett O’Hara was a business owner, as the proprietress of a sawmill. Georgia women have historically been entrepreneurial – from the rural housewife, whose hens laid more eggs than the family would consume and sold the surplus to her neighbors to Juliette Gordon Low, … [Read more...]
It’s a wide world of Business and Industry
They say to have the most enjoyment in deriving income is to either do what you love or do what you do best. In this difficult economy, however, that's easier said than done. Sometimes to make ends meet people are starting home businesses by finding a need and filling it. Some people are using what innate skills they have and building a small business out of that. I'm … [Read more...]
Working as Part of a Team
None of us can go it alone. We all work in an interconnected community of people. After reading a recent WSJ article on "How to Succeed in the Age of Going Solo" (link: http://on.wsj.com/d87Gv7), I was reminded once more of the power and importance of finding a network of people. Employment trends are showing more and more people taking on self-employment, with more and … [Read more...]
How Sweet It Is
You may recall a few months back I wrote an entry discussing sugar - friend or foe? Well, as I hoped to point out, it is not your friend! I could write numerous addendums to that topic and probably never fully be able to emphasize that fact enough. Today is one of those occasions. Time Magazine recently published a health special, A to Z Health Guide, which covers most … [Read more...]