Grow and lead for all of us

Women's leadership

Episode 19: Wendy Wallbridge On Spiraling Upward And Women’s Cocreative Powers [The Amiel Show]

Episode 19: Wendy Wallbridge On Spiraling Upward And Women’s Cocreative Powers [The Amiel Show]

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Great interview with Wendy Wallbridge, founder of TEDx SandHillRdWomen and author of the new book Spiraling Upward: The 5 Co-Creative Powers for Women on the Rise. We discuss:

  • 9:00 A life-threatening disease that changed Wendy’s life in her 20s
  • 13:36 What is feminine leadership?
  • 24:45 Bringing women into the workforce after motherhood
  • 32:26 When two women executives vie for a CEO’s attention
  • 40:00 Asking your body, “Is it a Yes or a No?”
  • 42:30 The cocreative power of speech
  • 45:45 How to make a counteroffer to your boss
  • 55:00 What Wendy is deliberately practicing to grow as a person

Wendy-Wallbridge

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Episode 17: Teri Woodland on China, leadership, and cross-cultural complexity [The Amiel Show]

Episode 17: Teri Woodland on China, leadership, and cross-cultural complexity [The Amiel Show]

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A fascinating interview with Teri Woodland about developing leaders in China over the past three decades. Teri helped build McKinsey’s China practice, led the first ever business climate survey in China, served on the Board of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, and sees the complexity there as an incredible opportunity for leadership growth.

I learned so much from my hour with Teri and know that you will, too.

Teri-Woodland

 

Episode Highlights

8:15  “The State Department thinks you should come home” (after Tiananmen Square)
11:45  McKinsey’s China practice—the early years
18:00 The challenge of recruiting Chinese nationals from U.S. back to China
21:15 Doing the first business climate survey in China
30:15 A place where Chinese leaders could speak up
36:45 A time Teri missed cultural signals
42:15 How a complex environment helps people develop
50:15 “Moving jobs to China”
53:15 Women in leadership in China

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Episode 16: Julie Daley on creativity in leadership [The Amiel Show]

Episode 16: Julie Daley on creativity in leadership [The Amiel Show]

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Imagine that:

  • Creativity isn’t something “other” people have
  • Creativity is much broader than art–or even new ideas and products
  • Creativity isn’t just about you. It’s about what you create with other people
  • Creativity isn’t even just about creativity. It’s about being skilled in emotions, difficult conversations, and leadership

Many people consider these a stretch. Not Julie Daley, who teaches Creativity in Leadership at Stanford and helps women become a force of nature through her company, Unabashedly Female. Julie sees these as starting points for guiding people to access their creativity in leadership and the rest of life.

Julie-Daley

 

Episode Highlights

  • 6:00 Julie guides me to access my own creativity–live
  • 15:00 The man who used Julie’s class to decide whether to propose marriage
  • 23:00 How judging others keeps their ideas from coming forth fully
  • 28:00 What you can do to work with your inner critic
  • 32:00 How to see with your heart…or your toe
  • 35:00 How a single conversation can ignite you to feel more alive
  • 37:00 What creativity teaches us about difficult conversations
  • 51:30 What leadership from a place of love is like
  • 55:00 What Julie is personally practicing to grow as a human being

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Episode 10: Jeannie Coyle on Lou Gerstner, AmEx, and Developing Leaders through Experience [The Amiel Show]

Episode 10: Jeannie Coyle on Lou Gerstner, AmEx, and Developing Leaders through Experience [The Amiel Show]

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What happens when CEOs of large organizations make leadership development a central part of their business strategy? What becomes possible when they personally spearhead this pivotal work rather than delegating it to HR or ignoring it entirely?

In episode 10 of The Amiel Show, talent strategist Jeannie Coyle and I talk about her experience at American Express in the early 1980s, helping Lou Gerstner (who later “saved IBM”) build a powerful pipeline for developing leaders internally. We discuss:

  • The unusual approach that Americal Express took of developing leaders through focused experiences rather than training and complex tools
  • Jeannie’s big risk that paid off: giving Gerstner a one-page summary of high potential leaders instead of the customary big binders
  • How Gerstner created a new culture involving honest, transparent conversations that had never happened before
  • How Gerstner took personal responsibility for developing leaders at the company
  • What it was like to be a woman in leadership at American Express in the early 1980s

Jeannie-Coyle

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Episode 8: Kerrie Halmi on Women’s Leadership And Strategic Networking [The Amiel Show]

Episode 8: Kerrie Halmi on Women’s Leadership And Strategic Networking [The Amiel Show]

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There’s something special about women’s leadership–and it’s not what you think.

If you’re a woman, women’s leadership can feel like my world–or, perhaps, our world. It’s the planet you inhabit 24/7. If you’re a man, women’s leadership can feel like their world. It’s a distant planet you occasionally visit.

So, which is it?

Both. Women’s leadership is all of our world. When women lead skillfully, our organizations prosper, and all of us within them experience greater engagement. When women lead poorly–or aren’t matched well to opportunities–we all lose.

Kerrie-Hamlin

In Episode 8 of The Amiel Show, Kerrie Halmi and I discuss:

  • 8:15 Why it’s useful for women to build their leadership skills together with other women
  • 13:30 How to advocate for yourself and get sponsors to do the same
  • 23:00 How everyone benefits from women in positions of leadership
  • 26:00 Men supporting women’s success in corporate America
  • 30:30 Why and how to strategically network
  • 42:00 The power of “superconnectors”
  • 49:30 What Kerrie is deliberately practicing in her life

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Episode 1: Janet Crawford on Leaders’ Brains, Emotional Literacy, and Power [The Amiel Show]

Episode 1: Janet Crawford on Leaders’ Brains, Emotional Literacy, and Power [The Amiel Show]

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It all starts with those 3.3 pounds of living tissue called the brain. “It” means people’s behaviors, leadership in organizations…and The Amiel Show.

In episode 1 of this podcast, Janet Crawford and I speak about

  • Why neuroscience is the modern day equivalent of the decoder ring
  • How much of people’s behaviors comes from unconscious patterns
  • What it takes to become emotionally literate
  • How to produce more strategic thinking by keeping our prefrontal cortex online
  • The role of GABA Goo in calming down the amygdala
  • Unconscious bias in organizations and what this tells us about why some people become more powerful than others.

Janet-Crawford

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Before You Lean In, Own Your Space

Before You Lean In, Own Your Space

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Fifteen months ago, Sheryl Sandberg‘s book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead came out and took the country by storm. Grounded in research and filled with personal anecdotes, the book sparked a national conversation about power, privilege, and the distribution of responsibilities between women and men in the workplace and at home. I’ve spoken with many people (mostly women but also a few men) who were inspired by the book and just as many who felt it contained useful insights but fell short in important ways. In this post, I’d like to share the very first reaction I had to the book and why I think it’s relevant to all of us.

Women exec upright on table

My reaction to the book began with the title. What does it mean to “lean in?” Sandberg recommends this to women as an alternative to leaning back—in the Board room and around conference tables where important decisions are made. Leaning in means speaking up, stepping forward, and being willing to take on jobs with loftier titles and bigger responsibilities. To me, this is valuable advice to women who aim for larger impact and recognition. It’s also useful for the smaller but still significant percentage of men who hold back and remain quiet when the stakes are high. [Read more…] about Before You Lean In, Own Your Space