Yesterday was probably the worst day I’ve experienced at my new job so far. My boss wanted to share a chart with me that showed our process and, as he walked through where we (my group) fit in, my eyes stopped at two words written in bold. BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT. My mind shut down and my […]
Tag Archives | Patterns
The War Room (inside my head)
Sometimes I realize that my brain won’t turn off. I try to shut down, and especially during 2:00 a.m. AFTER one child or another has awoken and one of us (me or my husband) have gone in to sooth a child. It’s not the first time I turn the light out, after shutting my computer […]
Hiding Behind Your Title
I met with a friend over coffee and brought her by Company X to meet a few co-workers. Out of courtesy, she asked two of my colleagues what they each did at our company. Marci answered by saying, “I do day to day widget management”, describing what she was actually doing without giving out her […]
Covert Answers: When a Colleague is Failing in Client Meetings
Covert Leadership Agents respond to readers’ questions in the Covert Answers feature. Submit your question here. Dear Agents, There’s a person on my team who is terrible in front of clients. I’m not her supervisor, but I have to attend client meetings with her, which is pretty painful for me. I’ve talked to her boss about […]
Efficiency is Killing Me
I value my time a lot. Part of this may be due the fact that I run a business and I must be efficient to be profitable. But I believe most of it is just my nature. So, I was (to put it mildly) extremely annoyed the other day when I was standing in the […]
Have Baggage, Will Travel
Leaving is a process. I suppose it comes with about as much baggage as my collection of suitcases. First, there is the “leaving behind” of things. Client work. Unfinished proposals. Deals not yet closed. Unresolved feelings that, frankly, won’t be fixed any time soon. And then there are the people. They are family, really. It’s […]
Female Critics
As professionals, do you ever notice how women can be either our best friends or our biggest critics? I ran into a friend today at the doctor’s office. She was telling me about her conversation with a top-level female executive of a large product company. My friend is the current speech writer for several corporate […]
The Stay-At-Home CEO
This post is not about the full-time (no, more than full time!) job of being a stay-at-home parent. Nope, it’s about running and managing a business from your home — the positives, the negatives, the crazy things people will say to you, and the single hardest thing about it for me. First, as a stay-at-home CEO, I’ve […]
Covert Answers: Helping a Defensive Worker be a Team Player
[Note: We’re starting a new feature called Covert Answers where Covert Leadership Agents will answer reader questions. Submit yours here.] Dear Agents: One of the people I manage is very defensive and because of this she can’t work well with the rest of the team. What can I do to help her become more of […]
Thank you Sheryl Sandberg!
Is it just me? Or is it sort of ridiculous (in a sad, telling, sort of way) that when the COO of a well-know technology company says she goes home everyday at 5:30 it is BIG NEWS?! I’m talking, of course, about Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s video on Makers and subsequent articles on CNN and […]
