Jo McDermott

Personal Change

  • Keeping Up

    Why Should I Care? I talk to people who want to get promoted.  I talk to people who just lost their job.  I talk to people who want to go work for a cool company they know about.  I talk… Continue reading

  • Lead from where you are

    Tops, Middles, Bottoms Are you the same kind of leader at work that you are at home? at church? with your friends?  If you’re like most people, probably not.  Why is that?  Most people have a picture of the “power… Continue reading

  • Fail. Fail. Fail.

    Failing Isn’t Fun. I really, really to hate to fail.  In fact, I hate it so much that I rarely admit that I failed when I do–it’s not that I lie about it–I just don’t even admit to myself.  So… Continue reading

  • Leadership Lessons From MLK

    His Name Always Comes Up In my leadership classes, I always asked my students for the names of great leaders.  I’ve never had a class where Martin Luther King’s name didn’t come up.  This week is the 44th anniversary of… Continue reading

  • It’s the End of First Quarter. How Are Your Resolutions?

    Most of Us Make Resolutions The website, The Statistical Brain, says that 45% of us make New Year’s Resolutions and 8% of us succeed with them.  Thirty nine percent of folks in their twenties succeed, compared to fourteen percent of… Continue reading

  • My Generation Is Best, The Other . . . Not So Much

    That OTHER Generation is IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!!!! One of my favorite team building exercises is to put people of the same generation together and have them describe the other generations.  I have them make a list of the characteristics of the other… Continue reading

  • I Hate My Boss!

    Unless you’re independently wealthy, you probably have to figure out how to deal with a boss you hate–at least for a while.  Pretty much everyone has this problem at some point in their career.  The good news is that you… Continue reading

  • What If . . .?

    You’re 18 and Can Do It All Again What if when you were 18 years old, you were given a list of all the major things that you would accomplish between the age of 18 and your age now.  All… Continue reading

  • You Only Need 3 Things for a Successful Career

    What if I told you that you only need three things to have a successful career.  Only three.  Would you believe me?  Probably not.  Let’s try it anyway.  You need to be able to adapt; you need to be a… Continue reading

  • Genericize Yourself, Increase Your Options

    Broaden Your Opportunities For the first ten years of my career, I did product development and operations at an electronic publisher.  Before the Internet.  Explaining what I did was very hard.  (It would be a lot easier now).   When I… Continue reading