Stop Fear-Mongering Women
This past weekend I received a fear laced text about COVID-19 and climate change from a political party. My response was: “OMG!!!! I’m going to die!!!” After a short exchange I ended my text saying: “Get freaking real! Stop fear-mongering me and stop...
Are You the Last One to Return to the Office?
Women are conditioned to defer to others. In school we were praised for raising our hand before we were called on to speak. We won favoritism and were rewarded with special privileges for being “good girls.” We also watched boys speak out of turn,...
Why Women Say “I Can’t”
The contrast between the two commercials was stark.
The women said “We can’t, we can’t” accompanied by signs that read “I don’t want to die.”
The men, who work in an inherently dangerous job said, “We can and we will.”
Empowered Women Think and Ask Questions About Coronavirus Spread
As we all tune into the Coronavirus spread around the world, have you noticed what is happening – or not happening – in China? The virus isn’t spreading. The virus spread from Wuhan as people traveled from Wuhan to other parts of the world…including other parts of...
Turn The Knob
Too many women still allow closed doors to deter them. They expect men to tear down the doors so they don’t have to do anything to advance themselves. All through my career I faced closed doors. On the other side of the doors were the All-Boys...
College Degrees Aren’t Enough
Women are told to go to college because a college degree is essential to a higher paying job and career success. We are told that people with college degrees will earn significantly more than people without. So, we go to college. We get the degree. We acquire...
How To Control Toxic Men
Toxic Masculinity makes women concerned about working with men. Since I spent my career in environments where women expect to find lots of toxic men and rampant toxic masculinity, I want to share what I learned about toxic behavior and how I controlled it. Watch this...
Assert Your Female Perspective
As women we often hear things that don’t represent our female perspective. We recognize them because they don’t sound quite right to us. But, instead of speaking up and questioning it, we let it go. We do this because we believe that the other person...
From Little Girl to Leader
I’ve been anticipating it and it finally happened. Someone (Ed Rollins) called Alexandria Ocasio Cortez “little girl.” Of course, AOC thought the comment was pure misogyny. And her response probably caused lots of old guys to chuckle and shake their heads saying,...
Empowered Women Have the Confidence to Problem Solve
Confidence is a quality that seems to distinguish men from women. Men seem to naturally have it. But after working with so many men I know this isn’t true. The truth is men are just better at covering up their lack of confidence. The male-dominated workplace expects...
Women Are More Than Emotions
As women we like to distinguish ourselves from men based on our emotions – women are more empathetic, nurturing and compassionate. But have to ask ourselves: How does that benefit us in the workplace? Years ago, when women tried to assert the value of our emotions Men...
A Lack Of Privilege, Or An Opportunity?
www.123rf.com – 33186415 We often hear about White Privilege and Male Privilege where being white and/or male gives you an advantage or opportunity others who don’t have those characteristics don’t have. And, if you follow intersectional feminism you...
Working with Men? Expect to Be TESTED
During my career the first issue I dealt with in every workplace was that my male colleagues never worked with a woman as a peer or manager and didn’t know what to expect. Their concerns hit the stereotypes – Is she competent and can she function in her role as...
Why Some Women Are Horrible Bosses
The question I am most frequently asked isn’t about working with men, its about working with women: Why are so many women such horrible bosses? Even though I’ve never had a female boss, I’ve supervised and worked with female bosses whose direct reports were women. ...
Empowered Women Know Their Action Matters
Today we frequently hear, “Words matter.” It is typically followed by the response “Action speaks louder than words.” This debate leaves us confused. Which is it? And why does it matter to women? Initially women we may be drawn to the side of the debate that says...
Empowered Women Don’t Let Ego Get in the Way of Teamwork
All of our workplaces have goals and objectives they want to achieve. The standard approach is to ask the best and brightest employees to generate ideas, work through the planning process and develop a plan to achieve the objective. But, no matter how “well-planned,” our workplaces still experience problems achieving the objective.
Why is that?
Empowered Women Can Negotiate and Succeed With Bad Faith Actors
We like to think of negotiating as two sides coming together, sharing ideas and compromising on their interests in order to achieve a larger common objective. That is how negotiations work in an ideal world. All too often we wind up in negotiations where one or both...
Empowered Women Change the Toxic Male Workplace
My first boss died of a heart attack 4 months after I began working. A year later a male co-worker died of complications following quadruple by-pass surgery. Six months later a man I frequently worked out with died of a massive heart attack following a run. One month...
Empowered Women Seek and Assert Informal Power
In spite of all of the workplace advice women are given I’ve noticed there is one topic that is seldom discussed – the importance of Informal Power. Instead we focus our attention on women achieving Formal Power. I presume this is because Formal Power is an easy...