As HR managers and a member of the leadership team of an organization, you do your best to support your employees. You work hard to create a company culture with high moral, low turnover, and engaged employees who are dedicated to their work. Yet, no matter what you try and how much you do to support your staff, your company morale is low, engagement and productivity are down, and your employees are leaving. 

With no clear cause you’re left wondering what you’re missing and how you can create p...

One can no longer deny that stress in the workplace is it’s own epidemic.

In fact, 96% of the American workforce report experiencing stress in the workplace and research from the CDC shows that 25% of all employees state that their work is the number one source of stress in their life. On top of that, 63% of Americans are ready to quit their job due to the stress it causes.

The problem is, we weren’t designed for modern day stress. 

Our stress response was designed to help us run awa...

Year after year, the case for promoting women gets stronger.  In 2019 a study by Zegner Folkman published in the Harvard Business Review found that women outperform men in 17 of 19 leadership competencies, including, among many others, initiative, resilience, and integrity.  

In 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic, the world watched as those countries that were led by women (New Zealand, Germany, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Taiwan) experienced far fewer deaths than those led by m...

I did not expect to be writing about what Covid taught me. My teenage daughter and I made it 18-months without getting Covid. We took every precaution and were vaccinated when, two-days after a Thanksgiving trip to Boston, we tested positive for Covid-19. Given this may be true for so many others, I thought I would share four tips that helped us cope with Covid – or that may be useful in any other unpredictable, anxiety producing event.

1. Cultivate calm

I’m super big on self-care and doing ev...

It’s time for the end-of-year review and you are thinking about how to make sure that conversation serves you. You’re right to think about it because recent research in the Harvard Business Review finds, yet again, that women are 1.4 times more likely to receive subjective, critical feedback than men, and that women’s performances are more likely attributed to characteristics rather than skills and abilities. 

In this month’s blog, I’ve given you a few pointers on how to make your review work f...

This month I want to share with you tips for successfully negotiating your employment package. Unfortunately, too many women accept whatever is offered and do not negotiate. While initially, this may not seem like a big deal, over time it matters. 

Linda Babcock, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University and co-author of the book “Women Don’t Ask” tells her students that “by not negotiating their job at the beginning of their career, they're leaving anywhere between $1 million and $1.5 million...

Let’s talk about money. Oh no, not that!

None of the women I coach ever feel particularly comfortable talking about money. Some of my clients tell me they don’t even talk to their partners about how much they earn. Money, it seems, is one of the most difficult conversations for people to have. 

I remember the first time I went to therapy in my 20s and my therapist offered a sliding scale for people like me. I told her that I didn’t want the discount even though I knew I couldn’t afford the hou...

A few years ago, I read Brené Brown’s book Braving the Wilderness. Like so much of her work, it’s reflective, accessible and eminently actionable. Her acronym BRAVING (which stands for boundaries, reliability, accountability, vault, integrity, non-judgment and generosity) has been my guide for the 2020s.

I was so ready to close the books on the few years that preceded this decade. I was finally seeing the light at the end of a dark three-year tunnel that included my father’s death (the person t...

Giving women career advice isn’t blaming women. It isn’t telling women to act more like men. It isn't saying that fixing things is the woman’s job. It isn’t ignoring the fact that the system needs fixing.

It is simply helping women get ahead.  

Honestly, if I sound exasperated, it’s because I am.  For months now I have read too many headlines (aka clickbait) explaining all the reasons why a career program for women is wrong. The most recent headline that set me off was titled, “All career advi...

I’ve been reflecting on something I’ve been hearing a lot during the pandemic from the women I coach and that is, “I should just be grateful that I have a job.”  This feeling of being beholden to your employer and, moreso, obliged to put your head down and just get on with it actually hurts you and the organization.  It can lead to stress, burnout, isolation and a complete lack of motivation or engagement.  And it can prevent you from asking for what you need.

The truth, of course, is that your...