I asked my eight year old for the name of the diagram that has two overlapping circles. She was hanging on some climbing structure in flip-flops and a bathing suit. I should have been alarmed. Instead I was trying to think of an interesting angle to use to tell you about this week’s book while my two children enjoyed a few moments of their own.
She quickly chirped “Venn diagram” while still scaling the loosely joined swinging steps. My read this week was really a Venn-test. Continue reading
Last night I happened to catch the tail end of “Invictus,” a 2009 movie starring Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar, a real-life member of South Africa’s rugby team who’s summoned by Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) to rally support in the country and unite the racial divide. At one point Mandela is speaking about inspiration with Matt Damon’s character and says (and I’m paraphrasing), “how do you get people to be better than they think they can be?” In the movie Mandela was seeking to inspire folks to simply forgive after decades of horrid, tortuous behavior that divided South Africa. Decades earlier a first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, penned “It’s Up To The Women,” daring to inspire the ladies of our country at a particularly horrid time for our nation; the Great Depression. Both leaders relied on inspiration to get folks to accomplish more than they thought possible. My summary is the same for transition; we simply need a bit of inspiration. Continue reading
Have you ever had an obscure fact stick with you for a long time? Here is one that has followed me… In my late twenties I read Golda Meir’s autobiography, My Life. Golda Meir, the Prime Minister of Israel from 1969-1974, was a school teacher until the age of 43 (or thereabouts). There it is. Isn’t that incredible? At the time she was only the 3rd woman on the planet to serve as a Prime Minister. Her mid-life transition has always stuck with me. Now, I am even more fascinated by it after reading Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, by William Bridges. Continue reading
Celebrating Women’s Transitions!? What are “women’s transitions” anyway? Before getting into today’s post…please look for our RSS Feed link on our site. I keep tweaking…all feedback is welcome!
I have to tell you a story before getting underway — it guides how I approach today’s challenge. It starts with a guy, whose name I’ll change to Stewart. Stewart is an executive at Iron Mountain, an S&P 500 corporation. For the past four years I had the great pleasure of serving as Iron Mountain’s head of Human Resources and Administration. Stewart was a super, über “corporate guy.” I was usually entertained by his calculated moves. He was a corporate chess player “extraordinaire” – Ever met anyone like this?
Anyway Stewart got me one day. I didn’t even see it coming. He agreed with me in a private very-critical “pre-meeting” on a topic. Then he set me up in front of the CEO in a more public meeting by changing his position 180 degrees. I should have seen it coming — I was just too exhausted to see it that day.
In spite of this craziness Stewart used a positioning on occasion which I thought was masterful. It went simply…”let’s start with where we agree.”
So, on transitions, let’s start with where we agree: Continue reading
This post will clearly be grouped in the quirky “observations” from my transition category. But first, heartfelt thanks to all of you for the wonderful outpouring of comments and ideas around this launch. The volume of emails that I’ve received has been enormous. You’ve given me incredible ideas on how to take Novofemina forward. More on that in the weeks ahead. For now, I thought I’d share a chuckle…and an observation. Continue reading
“Please pull out a piece of paper,” so started my facilitation of a career event sponsored by the Emerging Leaders Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I asked each participant to write down what their professional aspirations were – using a 5 year time frame. We spent the next twenty minutes discussing what folks had jotted down. What happened next amazed me. Continue reading
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