The Latest Insights from Leading NOW

Wondering how you can navigate to the “new normal” when you’re not even sure what the new normal is? Although you may not realize it, change is constant, and acknowledging this means you have actually taken the first step to the path forward. Leading Women, named a 2020 Top 10 Leadership Development Training/Coaching Company by HR Tech Outlook, put together the following list to help you navigate and emerge successfully as your organization transitions out of quarantine.

Today's blog post comes from our friend Meredith Wood over at Fundera. Read ON!

In advertising, it's the transition from managing the client to managing the business. In construction, it's the transition from managing the project to managing the business. In professional services firms it's the transition from delivering client services to advancing the business by revenue generation. In your company, it is likely the transition from managing managers to running a business.

Happy Australia Day to all of our friends down under! Leading Women and Lighthouse have teamed up once again in conjunction with AMCHAM to run a training program for women leaders on 20 & 21 February in Melbourne. The Purpose, Power, Presence for Middle Managers™ program is based on 40 years of Susan Colantuono and Leading Women's proprietary research into women's career de-railers. Susan is internationally known as an expert in women's leadership development, gender dynamics and hidden gender bias. Susan’s TED talk on Closing the Leadership Gender Gap has been viewed by over 3.5 million, translated into 23 languages and reviewed by Fortune, The Washington Post and The Guardian as one of the five videos that will change the way you work.

January is National Mentoring Month (#NaMeMo) in the United States, and while the month originally focused on mentoring youth, it has now grown to include all forms of mentoring. For us at Leading Women, our research has found that mentoring women is not only good for the women being mentored, but other women in the pipeline and their company's bottom line.

"Feedback is a gift." You've undoubtedly heard this many times over. Feedback is so valuable that many organizations develop and use 180º and 360º assessments as part of their talent development activities. Often based on their own leadership models and/or performance systems, we have found many of them to be less than helpful to women's advancement. The most worrisome problem is that these assessments often overemphasize the importance of engagement skills. This is also true of many assessments developed by leadership development firms. To counter these problems, Leading Women developed our own assessments that provide women the feedback they need to hear in proportions that are relevant to the level at which they are leading and to which they aspire. We use these proprietary 180° and 360° assessments with the women participating in our programs. One of the most common questions they ask is how to discuss the feedback with their managers.

There are many things that women haven't been told about leadership from career-start to the corporate boardroom. Here are 9 fundamental things about leadership that women haven't been told and need to know. They are these. Leadership is simple, but it's not easy. It's simple if you have a definition of leadership that is useful and prescriptive. This is the first of 9 things that every woman should know about leadership: 1. "Leadership is using the greatness in you to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes by engaging the greatness in others." This definition is one you can use to make plans at the start of each day or evaluate actions at the end of each day. Acts of leadership involve standing on the foundation of personal greatness, focusing on achieving key outcomes and engaging others in achieving those outcomes.

Learn what women haven't been told about leadership from career-start to the corporate boardroom. Conventional wisdom about leadership will take you only so far! With the right leadership skills, the highest levels of career success are well within a your reach. But much that you've been told about leadership is outdated, incomplete and ineffective. If you rely on conventional wisdom about the career success equation it will fail you because of The Missing 33%® No Ceiling, No Walls takes a fresh, unblinking look at leadership. It identifies the vital missing piece of the leadership equation, and offers specific, actionable information not found anywhere else, including:

To prepare our presentation for the National Association of Women Lawyers General Counsel Institute, we interviewed GCs, CEOs and directors on corporate boards asking the question: "What are the most important selection and success criteria for General Counsels?" In all but one case the very first words out of their mouths emphasized the importance of being seen as a "partner in the business;" 50 percent answered with comments such as:

"Acquaintances... represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have, the more powerful you are." Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point "Leaders who are good networkers... are the connectors... They master what sociologist Mark Granovetter calls the 'weak tie', a friendly yet casual social connection." Robin Gerber in Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way