Success/Promotion

Is ‘Imposter Syndrome’ Just Another Way Of Blaming Women?

Posted by on Nov 9, 2021 | 0 comments

This post first appeared on Forbes.com “Can coaching help me with my imposter syndrome?” asks Sue-Lin, a new client who was recently promoted to director of customer success in a growing tech company. She is not alone among my women clients in making this self-diagnosis. Over the years I have worked with many highly skilled and talented women of different ages, backgrounds and experiences. Despite great qualifications, many cite imposter syndrome as one of their toughest inner struggles. However, a recent article in the Harvard Business Review by Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey questions...

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Details, Details…..Confession of a Former Associate

Posted by on Nov 9, 2012 | 0 comments

It’s really hard to excel at something that you don’t like. At my first law job after my clerkship, I was one of forty lawyers to join a prestigious 450-lawyer firm. As our training ground, we newbies were distributed throughout the firm and assigned to help more senior associates on big cases and deals. My first rotation was Securities, where we most often represented the underwriters of huge equity or debt offerings. I tagged along with the senior associate, listened on conference calls, and helped with the massive papering of a deal. There were underwriting agreements and SEC...

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Re-Defining Having It All

Posted by on Jul 2, 2012 | 2 comments

I feel the need to explain myself. My last two posts on the topic of Having It All — both which might be interpreted as discouraging — are probably not very good marketing for someone in my profession. After all, my job as a coach is to help people dream big and achieve their goals. So where do I get off telling women and men that they can’t have it all and asserting that the very notion of “having it all” is not even desirable? What happened to following your dreams, overcoming obstacles, not settling for less? To clarify: my critique of having it all is not...

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Having It All Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be

Posted by on Jun 28, 2012 | 0 comments

What do we mean by “having it all,” anyway? What ever happened to “enough”? Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Atlantic Monthly article, which I already blogged about earlier this week, asserts that we are lying to young women when we tell them that they can have it all. Instead of blaming women’s lack of ambition, Slaughter, former Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, recommends sensible and forward-thinking changes in workplace policy and culture that would improve the potential for women (and men) to achieve professional success without sacrificing family. I...

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Men Don’t Have It All, Either

Posted by on Jun 25, 2012 | 1 comment

Anne-Marie Slaughter’s heavily Tweeted cover story in the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” publicly and very personally acknowledges what most women in the corporate trenches already know: it is incredibly difficult to climb the professional ladder and be a hands-on mother.  I agree. What I take issue with is not her contention that women can’t have it all, but the implication that men can. Yes, women are wildly under-represented in the corridors of power and over-represented on the carpool circuit. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that the men...

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No More Mister Nice Guy?

Posted by on Aug 22, 2011 | 0 comments

Nice guys earn significantly lower salaries than less agreeable men (though still more than women, regardless of their agreeableness) reports a new study by Timothy A. Judge, Beth A. Livingston, and Charlice Hurst in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Whether you are surprised or unsurprised, dismayed or vindicated, you may be wondering whether this information should lead you to try to change your workplace behavior or persona. Bottom line: if you want to get a raise, should you act like a jerk? No. Instead, the authors of the study recommend that we adopt a “flexible...

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