Latest Posts
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You Know How To Communicate, Right? You’re Good At It, Right?
Most People Aren’t Great At Communication My experience is that not very many people are genuinely good at communication–in all the ways that they need to be. You may be good at it with your kids or with your employees… Continue reading
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Reflections on Being a Mother, Working and “Leaning In”
Mother’s Day Mother’s Day is a great day to reflect on being a mother. And on being a mother who works. And on the controversy over Sharon Sandberg’s new book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead. I… Continue reading
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New Manager? New Team? How To Find the Balance.
Congratulations, New Manager! You just became a new manager. You just got a new team. You have lots of ideas of what needs to change. You point out things that are wrong. You tell them what needs to be different. … Continue reading
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Who Are You And How Did You Get That Way?
Understand Yourself One of the most important tasks of becoming a great leader and a successful Executive (and those things are not necessarily the same thing) is to REALLY understand yourself. You need to understand what makes you tick–what motivates… Continue reading
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Does Aggressive Leadership Work?
The Rutgers Coach I had breakfast with a group of friends this morning, evenly divided male/female. The topic of the Rutgers coach who got fired came up. I don’t think anyone in the discussion had seen more than a brief… Continue reading
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Why Is It So Hard to Build A Team?
Teams Are Easy, Right? In theory it should be easy to create a team. Each stakeholder part of the organization sends their best and brightest, outside expertise is brought in, the goal is explained and the “team” gets to… Continue reading
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Are You Stuck?
Have you noticed that you’re not moving up in your organization any more? Have your last couple of job changes been laterals? Have your last couple of reviews been ho-hum? Are you starting to get the message that you’re stuck… Continue reading
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Learning From Goodbye
Goodbyes Come With The Territory I’m a consultant. That means I change jobs a lot. I am in and out of organizations. I meet a lot of people, work with a lot of people and say goodbye to a lot… Continue reading
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Reflections on Failure
We Hate To Fail There are all kinds of failures. Business failures. Job failures. Life failures. Design failures. Project failures. School failures. Sports failures. Relationship failures. When you look at the books on Amazon about failure (more than 6,000 paperbacks),… Continue reading
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Small Decisions, Big Life
Learning From Friends I have a friend in his eighties who insists that he is here because his grandfather broke his leg when he was a child. I know, I know, that’s hard to follow. I don’t know why he… Continue reading
Jo McDermott 