Leading With Grit & Grace

I usually steer away from philosophy in this blog, focusing more on practical leadership topics. But from time to time, I think it's important to step back from the 'how to' of leading with grit & grace and look more deeply at the 'why.'  On behalf of what does this work exist? The underlying purpose of Leading With Grit & Grace™ is to help individuals and institutions address what I call the 'tyranny of success.' On one hand, it is critically important to establish what we're good at. This forms the very foundation of our effectiveness. For example, a leader discovers that she gets...


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I've noticed that leaders often have very interesting notions of what constitutes 'leadership.'  Some managers view leadership as something that exists outside and apart from them. They think of leaders as only those who make the grand speeches and set sweeping agendas. So, often, when my clients' jobs don't require this sort of large-scale thought and action, they dismiss the reality of their role and squander their potential for impact. If you asked them, they'd say that they are being appropriately modest. But I'd say they are missing the boat. On the other hand, some of my clients are the speech-makers...


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This is a very informative video summarizing McKinsey's research on the bottom line impact of women in senior leadership.  I appreciate McKinsey's initial research question: Does it actually matter to have women at the top?  Do women leaders make a difference to organizational effectiveness?  Their findings: yes. Women Matter | McKinsey & Company


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As an advocate for the underserved in her community, Gloria is recognized as a true leader. She's smart, resourceful and has a commanding presence. She is unafraid to challenge injustice wherever she sees it, standing up to any person or process that she feels is harming others. Because of her courage, others have come to rely on her to take the difficult stands that they themselves are afraid to take. Tough and courageous, Gloria is a shining example of the grit-based leadership style at its best. And yet... Gloria was starting to experience the limitations of her style. When she was forceful,...


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Last year, a company hired me to present "Leading With Grit & Grace" to its senior women executives. When the sponsor asked me to describe the content of the presentation, I said, "It's about how women can wield their power and influence more effectively."  Their response?  "Whatever you do, don't mention the word power in your presentation!" This client was giving voice to a common discomfort with the notion of power in our culture.  Women seem especially wary of it, as if power is something that we shouldn't claim or own. I think the reason we resist owning - or even talking about...


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"The minute I express my opinion clearly, I get labeled as aggressive."  This may be the most recurrent refrain I hear from the women leaders I coach.  They report that if they hold back or are soft-spoken, they get run over in conversations.  Yet if they come forward with strength, they get tattooed with what I call the "Scarlet B:" the reputation as a bitch (excuse the French). There's no doubt that organizations tolerate more forcefulness from men than from women, so women often have to operate in a much narrower stylistic swath.  At the same time, something has nagged at me about these...


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Apparently, I grew up in Corporate America.  I was one of two children. My older brother received most of the parenting - he got much more guidance than I did on who to be and how to succeed. He received much more corrective feedback (for better and worse) than I did. I think my parents saw him as having greater potential than I and thus invested more heavily in him. Naturally, I wanted to be successful in my parents' eyes. So I adopted the only guidance available - that which they gave my brother. I became all the things they wanted him to be: driven, achievement-oriented, competitive, sports-oriented...


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Like most of us, I love the new year.   It's a great opportunity: a blank slate on which to write a promising imagined future.  But what do we tend to write on this promising blankness? Resolutions.  Yuk.  More goals for me to be 'resolute' about. More stuff I have to martial my willpower to accomplish or improve. More deficiencies that I'm going to try to "re-solve" for the umpteenth time again this year. If you're like a lot of us, there's something about resolutions that can cause us to channel our inner schoolmarm: heavy, grim, and headed for certain disappointment. And I don't know...


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Most leaders would agree that one of their main tasks is to develop their people.  Yet many would also agree that a) they don't do enough of it and b) they don't feel confident that they do it well.  As a result, there's often an unfortunate lack of attention paid to this critical aspect of leadership. The results? Leaders find themselves stuck in the 'doing trap.'  Their people can't seem to get the job done without them, so they can't extract themselves from the tasks of day- to-day delivery.  But this is a vicious cycle - as the leader stays involved in task execution, her people don't...


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I recently read an article in the Washington Post called “What Men Can Learn From Women About Leadership.”  Its central premise is that male leaders could stand to learn a thing or two from their female counterparts.  While this premise seems true to me, I’m wondering how useful it is. Here’s the problem I keep encountering.  Once we put issues of leadership style into the gender frame, the conversation goes awry.  The conversation about male and female leadership might be productive if we knew how to have it in a productive way. But from what I can tell, focusing on the differences...


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