Earlier this year, the Supreme Court rejected affirmative action in college admissions, leading business leaders to ask whether their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts could be interpreted as unlawful.

Following the ruling, at least one US senator sent threatening letters to hundreds of private employers warning them that certain diversity practices could subject them costly litigation.

And other companies are already being sued over policies they have enacted on social issues...

I was all set to take my first vacation in nearly a year - a trip to South America that had been planned for months. Then I got Covid (again).

With the trip canceled, I spent the next two days under the duvet watching two seasons of the
toxic masculinity that is Succession. As I emerged from the fog of Covid (and that show), I decided to create the restoration I needed with the rest of my time. Even if it was from home.

And it got me thinking about the importance of staycations. We would do...

It’s that time of year again where many of us engage in some reflection, and we coaches have many exercises to choose from in helping us think about who we are and who we want to become. One I’ve been thinking about this week is reframing your story. Because as the novelist John Barth said, “the story of your life is not your life, it’s your story.”

In this exercise we think of a challenge or a challenging period in our lives that we survived. We consider what...

As companies around the globe make the difficult decision to lay off a percentage of their workforce, they are faced with another challenge: how to help the remaining employees feel safe in their jobs. The problem becomes even more acute when senior leaders find themselves with less time to spend with their employees as they hustle to fill the gaps created by layoffs, revise strategy, protect their existing customer base, and double down on their solid revenue streams.

Employees who have...

If you’re working in tech, there is a chance that you or someone you know has been hit by the recent reductions in force. More than 45,000 U.S. tech employees were let go from their jobs in November 2022, according to data published on the website Layoffs. Twitter, Meta and Amazon accounted for nearly 25,000 of those jobs lost, and Forbes reports that layoffs at Google could surpass 10,000 employees by early 2023.

This is not good news for tech employees, and even worse news for women...

Over the past fifteen years, I’ve been coaching women at some of the best professional services firms and the most exciting tech companies.  I’m privileged to hear women’s stories about their ambition for their careers and their organizations; yet, I remain challenged by the lack of female leadership at the top and their struggles to navigate the path to promotion.  

The first thing I tell them is this.  

“It’s not your...

As HR managers and a member of the leadership team of an organization, you do your best to support your employees. You work hard to create a company culture with high moral, low turnover, and engaged employees who are dedicated to their work. Yet, no matter what you try and how much you do to support your staff, your company morale is low, engagement and productivity are down, and your employees are leaving. 

With no clear cause you’re left wondering what you’re missing and...

One can no longer deny that stress in the workplace is it’s own epidemic.

In fact, 96% of the American workforce report experiencing stress in the workplace and research from the CDC shows that 25% of all employees state that their work is the number one source of stress in their life. On top of that, 63% of Americans are ready to quit their job due to the stress it causes.

The problem is, we weren’t designed for modern day stress. 

Our stress response...

Year after year, the case for promoting women gets stronger.  In 2019 a study by Zegner Folkman published in the Harvard Business Review found that women outperform men in 17 of 19 leadership competencies, including, among many others, initiative, resilience, and integrity.  

In 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic, the world watched as those countries that were led by women (New Zealand, Germany, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Taiwan) experienced far fewer deaths...

I did not expect to be writing about what Covid taught me. My teenage daughter and I made it 18-months without getting Covid. We took every precaution and were vaccinated when, two-days after a Thanksgiving trip to Boston, we tested positive for Covid-19. Given this may be true for so many others, I thought I would share four tips that helped us cope with Covid – or that may be useful in any other unpredictable, anxiety producing event.

1. Cultivate calm

I’m super big on self-care...