Mark had been on my team for about a year before he got word his position in Nashville was being eliminated. Mark was initially offered a similar position in Chicago, which would put him in a great city, but would remove him from my team. Mark resisted. For weeks, he came up with different scenarios…
I recently worked with a coaching client who wanted the courage to break up with perfectionism — a drive toward flawlessness that has increased among young adults by 32% over the last three decades. Throughout her career, perfectionism led her to pull long hours, second guess her judgement, work through vacations and say yes to…
I can almost recite word for word a familiar question I get during Q&A sessions after I present. “How do I get my team to come out of their shells to be more courageous at work?” There’s no doubt that professionals want to take worthwhile risks in the workplace. Part one of this series explored…
The cat’s out of the bag. Employees are not working … … to their full potential. They’re not challenging half-baked ideas that they know won’t deliver anticipated results. They’re not raising concerns about gender or racial exclusion in the newest campaign. And, they’re not asking for help, giving critical feedback or raising their hand to…
I meet professionals from all over who want to know, “how do I build up my confidence … to become a better speaker, negotiate my salary, advocate for my ideas …?” Their curiosity is good, but they’re often a bit surprised when I politely tell them that there’s a better question to ask about confidence.…
I recently chatted with my friend Heather Hansen on her podcast, Elegant Warrior. Midway through our conversation, she asked if there was a common challenge I observed among coaching clients that kept them from flexing their courage muscle to own and demonstrate their brilliance at work. After a brief pause, I answered, in so many…
There are several reasonable workplace goals you could set to fuel professional progress. You could focus your ambition on managing a new project, expanding your influence or improving time management. The goals that deserve critical attention, though, are the ones that will help you consistently develop into a courageous leader — a leader who effectively…
One day in 2018, I walked the streets of Kuala Lumpur and stumbled upon a vendor with a sign on his cart. It read, “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better you are.” He was selling create-your-own snow cones and may or may not have offered me one. I can’t…
“You are brilliant.” I uttered that phrase to an audience of HR professionals in higher education as part of a challenge for them to own their brilliance at work and in the world. Almost as soon as I asserted the last word, I noticed what seemed like bewilderment and intimidation in some of their expressions…
When it comes to courage, we cannot separate possibility from risk. A listener called into The Courage Hotline podcast and asked me how stand in her courage — how to stand firm in saying how she wanted to represent herself in the world — without coming across to others as cocky. The last part of…