What Leadership Legacy Is Victoria’s Secret Leaving For Our Children?
On today’s TV news Victoria’s Secret was showcased with their upcoming world-celebrated parade of angels. Admittedly the show they will put on in London in a few days is spectacular. No other fashion parade in the world creates as much expectation and interest. Servers and entire networks are said to have gone down as global […]
The Yin and Yang of Leadership
I had an intensely brief debate on Twitter about leadership last week. The fact that we’re limited to 140 characters makes articulate expression that much more challenging, doesn’t it? And then there’s an audience to think about. We can’t really bore followers with endless replies. Still, a few tweets containing two opposing views of how […]
Fantastic Power or Powerful Fantasy?
Haven’t you heard? The media is having a ball with a very unlikely story that has questioned every authority in Spain. A mysterious twenty-year-old we’ve called “little Nicolas” claims to have been involved in critical State affairs under orders from the CNI — The National Center of Intelligence — and the Spanish Vice-President herself. What’s […]
How To Recycle Your Leadership
I’ve been working on my new company’s vision and mission these last few weeks. No other strategic exercise takes you deeper into unexpected soul searching than this one, right? Funnily enough, I’ve learned that what I’m doing with my life is all about recycling. Recycling leadership worldwide, to be more exact. I’m even more amazed […]
“Lean in” To Your Leadership
Sheryl Sandberg popularized this expression recently when talking about women in business. It was such a simple and powerful way to put career wisdom into words that the expression grew into a bestselling book worldwide. Well, I’m going to borrow Sheryl’s expression today to write about how women AND men fail to lean in to […]
How Endings Teach Us To Lead Heroically
Last Sunday I got up early and looked out the window at the weather to see whether horse riding would be possible. A clear sky and lots of puddles from the night’s rainstorm invited me to try. But I never did get on the horse. A bigger lesson was meant for me that day. When […]
Why Business Is Like Surfing
“I’ve decided business is like surfing. There needs to be a wave underneath us. We can’t do all the pedaling!” I joked over Skype to one of our partners in Holland last week. The hardest part of building new business models may be exactly this: knowing which waves to surf and which ones to stay […]
Women Leaders: Learn To Run With Wolves
Over the years I have trained and coached hundreds of women to help them advance their careers in corporations, foundations and start-ups. From the smart engineers of ArcelorMittal who had braved their way through remote mining assignments in places where women are at serious risk, to posh strategy consultants at Boston Consulting Group who avoided […]
Leaders: Stop Kicking & Slow Down
Speed is the hallmark of our time. It’s funny to hear how many industries and professions regard it as essential to survival and leadership. Reporters want to be the first ones to tell a story, brands try to plant their flags on a new market before anybody else, and well, don’t even get me started […]
Leaders Don’t “Have To” Anything!
Many are now coming back to routine these days with heavy hearts. Summer prepares to leave our gardens in search of southern destinations, while we lazily wake up to find all the stressors we’d happily left behind a few weeks ago. As it turns out, however, the worst stressor of all is our own excessive […]
