Let’s talk about money. Oh no, not that!

None of the women I coach ever feel particularly comfortable talking about money. Some of my clients tell me they don’t even talk to their partners about how much they earn. Money, it seems, is one of the most difficult conversations for people to have. 

I remember the first time I went to therapy in my 20s and my therapist offered a sliding scale for people like me. I told her that I didn’t want the discount even though I knew I...

A few years ago, I read Brené Brown’s book Braving the Wilderness. Like so much of her work, it’s reflective, accessible and eminently actionable. Her acronym BRAVING (which stands for boundaries, reliability, accountability, vault, integrity, non-judgment and generosity) has been my guide for the 2020s.

I was so ready to close the books on the few years that preceded this decade. I was finally seeing the light at the end of a dark three-year tunnel that included my...

Giving women career advice isn’t blaming women. It isn’t telling women to act more like men. It isn't saying that fixing things is the woman’s job. It isn’t ignoring the fact that the system needs fixing.

It is simply helping women get ahead.  

Honestly, if I sound exasperated, it’s because I am.  For months now I have read too many headlines (aka clickbait) explaining all the reasons why a career program for women is wrong. The most recent...

I’ve been reflecting on something I’ve been hearing a lot during the pandemic from the women I coach and that is, “I should just be grateful that I have a job.”  This feeling of being beholden to your employer and, moreso, obliged to put your head down and just get on with it actually hurts you and the organization.  It can lead to stress, burnout, isolation and a complete lack of motivation or engagement.  And it can prevent you from asking for what you...

They say hindsight is 2020 and never has that expression mattered more than it does now.  I’ve been reflecting on what 2020 has taught me.  Here are my biggest takeaways from a year that I won’t miss.  

Set intentions not goals.

I coached leaders in enough businesses in 2020 to watch them pivot, iterate, set new goals and scrap OKRs altogether.  There was too much uncertainty, unpredictability, and ever shifting sand to find firm footing.  The...

It is time for organizations to double down on creating workplaces of belonging and inclusion, or risk losing their women.

According to the McKinsey and LeanIn.org 2020 Women in the Workplace study, two million women are estimated to consider taking a leave of absence or leaving the workplace altogether due to Covid-19.  Close to one million women have already left the workplace.  This is the first time in six-years that women have left work at a pace far greater than men and this...

Women build relationships naturally by getting to know people, offering to help, listening to problems and giving advice, but do we optimize these relationships? When it comes to advancing our careers, we have to consider who can help us the most in achieving our personal vision. And we have to get strategic about who and how we ask for that help. It’s necessary to get really good at what we do, but careers are not built on talent, expertise or even hard work alone, they are the result...

Sometimes the women I coach ask, “are you saying fake it till I make it?”  Absolutely not!  For one, I never coach people to lie.  That just creates anxiety.  And two, it doesn't actually change the way we feel about ourselves.  In fact, it keeps us stuck in the false belief system that we can’t say we can do something until we’ve actually done it.  Instead, we must learn to look for and acknowledge every bit of confirming evidence that we...

Among the best all time opening lines of a novel is Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  Our careers, it turns out, are no different.  If we are unhappy at work, we have to discover why.  And the best way to do that is to create a personal career vision.  Looking at our careers through the lens of what has meaning and purpose to us helps us get where we want to go, and recognize it as the...