Mar 19, 2015 | coaching, critical thinking, gender roles in business, leadership, personal development, women
Earlier this month, I read an article entitled, “Breaking the Glass Ceiling by Ignoring It.” It was a fabulous title and a decent article, but it left a lot still left unsaid. You can read it for yourself here Following are my comments on the topic of “Ignoring The Glass Ceiling”: The numbers are clear about the dearth of women in top leadership spots and the discussion on this can get quite complex from a policy point of view (e.g. to quota or not to quota) but what’s also clear is that there’s much women can do ON THEIR OWN to improve career progression and management. The problem with interviewing women who have ‘made it’ is that they’ve often been impervious to the metaphoric slings and arrows that side-track many many more women who don’t have the same innate resilience. (I prefer resilience to toughness, as resilience allows women to endure without impact while also retaining the ‘soft’ skills that make us so perfect for leadership in a complex global 21st Century marketplace.) So, for the majority of women, it’s true we don’t ask, have difficulty being heard, struggle with being recognized and in the end, haven’t deliberately gone about the essential practice of building influence. In response, I’ve created a program called “Picking Up Where ‘Lean In’ Leaves Off,” designed to help the atrophying pipeline of women to equip themselves for ANY obstacle, glass ceiling, sticky floor, whatever. I do this by focusing on 3 tentpole skills essential for career success: 1. Effective communication (replete with how to avoid ‘girl traps’ that make us less than effective – or respected – communicators) 2. Developing...
Jan 28, 2015 | coaching, confidence, critical thinking, gender roles in business, leadership, personal development, women
Recently, I received a thank you note from an executive in response to the professional development series she invited me to deliver to women in her industry. The note excitedly championed the “dtkMindset” I imparted to the group — a dtkSignature and a perfect term which I thank her for coining. What did she mean by the “dtkMindSet,” especially as it pertains to professional women? In a nutshell, it’s decidedly NOT a palliative fix, road map, template or formula — there are plenty of those around for the undiscriminating consumer — but rather it’s a way of thinking that deploys the power of and desirability of women’s innate brain wiring. ‘Getting’ the MindSet was already exciting but what was exciting to me was witnessing participants’ making the leap from MindSet to MindShift. And it’s that shift in women’s thinking that is so critical to improving women’s professional experience as well as their progress. The fact is the number of women in leadership positions — 17% — is dismal and the needle has been stuck there since I started tracking this in 2005. Between 2005 and 2015, smart people have tried to crack this but the problem is that sadly, their institutional or male-reliant remedies only address the externalities. Instead, it’s the shifting to a dtkMindset that’s critical especially for professional women interested in advancing through the ranks and into leadership positions. In addition to women’s more actively managing their own careers, the dtkMindset shows women that it’s the inside-out work that will ultimately make the difference. Women and confidence Confidence is a recurrent theme with women and with those...
Dec 27, 2014 | critical thinking, Gen Y, personal development
According to US Government studies, 45 to 50 percent of Americans make New Year resolutions. But 25 percent of these have been broken by the end of the FIRST week; 46 percent will be broken by the end of the first month and by the six-month mark, forget about it. So, with these odds, why do we continue, year after year, to make them? Where did this exercise in futility come from? Why don’t they stick? And, what’s a reasonable person to do? Why do we make them? Vestiges of Puritanism — of striving for improvement through self-examination and self-discipline — reside deep within the American psyche. Layer onto that the also profoundly American tenet of being the shining example, the “city on the hill” and we arrive at a self-involved national ethos that values perfection, self-control and moral superiority. Last I checked, though, we’re human and perfection is a moving target. Making resolutions gives us a false sense of control over our innately human natures and feeds into our need for big gestures. Whose idea was this anyway? While making New Year’s resolutions seems uniquely American, it seems we have the Babylonians to thank for initiating this now quaint custom. Back in the day (600-500 BCE), the ancients set aside the advent of the new year to wipe the slate clean. And because their cultural contributions often came from their need to delineate property, they used the day to settle accounts and return borrowed farm equipment. Ironically, the Puritan-esque ritual of self-improvement was, for the Babylonians, infused with some pagan superstition: they believed that as the first day...
Sep 30, 2014 | critical thinking, leadership
In a recent Ceo2ceos.com forum, the CEO of a small company sought advice on how to delegate tasks to his team in a way that increased their buy-in, generated predictable (and favorable) results and demonstrated (or created) a renewed sense of urgency among his employees. CEOs must, of course, focus on execution and immediate results but they must also understand how best to challenge and develop their workforce not just for maximum engagement but for retention too. In working with CEOs on leadership and management effectiveness, I see this issue often — in any size firm — as the race is on to not only attract but more importantly, to retain talent that can solve the problems of today while also anticipating and innovating ahead of tomorrow. Retention comes from engagement but engagement comes from being invested in the work. Delegation is one tactic but delegating without clear expectations and without also cultivating critical thinking and problem solving skills will likely result in incomplete or misguided results. In a complex, fast-paced, ever-changing, uber competitive global marketplace, misfires are costly in terms of time, resources, morale and then engagement. So, just telling others what to do is not going to get it done. Instead — and this is a dtkDistinction — I always ask clients to take a more systemic view which gives us a three dimensional look at not only the issue but the context, the current reality, the alternatives and the eventual options. Okay, then what? As a CEO coach and professional development expert, it’s imperative that leaders challenge their employees on two levels: first, from the boots on...
Jul 23, 2014 | critical thinking, personal development
Over the last decade the quest for “work / life balance” — thought to be the antidote to our modern condition — has taken on mythic proportions, spawning an entire industry (books, seminars, treatises, etc) dedicated to discovering and maintaining the precise tipping point that allows us to feel like our lives are our own. This quest, now an end in itself, saps a lot of our energy, focus and resources, which seriously defeats the purpose and can leave us feeling powerless and despondent when we either can’t get it right or can’t sustain it. How is this at all productive? The answer is simple: Wrong quest. Let’s start with the notion of “balance,” which suggests to me an image of an old fashioned scale with two trays suspended at either end from a horizontal beam. For that beam to remain horizontal, we need an exact amount of this (work) on one side and an exact amount of that (life) on the other. Add more of this or take away some of that and… no more balance. This is an exacting experiment, requiring controlled, predictable and static conditions. Realistic for a lab maybe, but not for us in a time of ambiguity, complexity and all but certain change. Prior to the Great Recession we had already entered an era of “extreme jobs,” requiring us to log an unprecedented number of working hours, resulting in sky high stress levels and great unhappiness. Since the Recession, we find ourselves in a time that insists fewer people do more with less. Combine that with increased family and personal responsibilities and we can see...
Jul 7, 2014 | critical thinking, entreprenuers, leadership
I posted this on a previous July 4th and I’m happy to report that it remains relevant today. Sure, circumstances change and context shifts but the essence of the conversation — the central truths — still pertain. As far as the shifts go, I’m very encouraged that the cross-pollination I advocate at the end of the original post has started to happen, with established businesses — and even corporations — coming to value a more entrepreneurial, innovative and questioning mindset. Similarly, entrepreneurship is attracting many former corporate types who are tired of toiling in someone else’s mine but who can bring some structure and a bit of process to the often unruly state of early entrepreneurship. Our culture highly values independence and self-reliance and it’s taken the economic reverses to remind people that companies are no longer the secure, paternalistic guarantees of yesteryear. The caution now is that nothing is a magic bullet so it’s critical that those who abandon one for the other must understand the realities of both. Neither is a haven, both require hard work and in the end, it’s about the choices we make … and the freedom we have to make them. That’s independence! Independent Day Everywhere you turned this past week, there was some article or other discussing the significance of and reverence for July 4. And rightly so, as it’s been said that the collaborative work product of our Founding Fathers formed the basis of a most compelling political system. Plus, it’s an inclusive celebration – definitely not a contrived Hallmark event — shared by all Americans. So, we again celebrated our...
Dani Ticktin Koplik —
Leadership consultant, executive coach, change agent and passionate professional development expert and speaker. You can learn more about Dani and her clients by visiting dtkBio page. 