The Latest Insights from Leading NOW

We recently asked our cracker-jack researcher Lara Feghaly to decode the 10 most substantive articles on confidence that she could find. And to do the same with the book The Confidence Code. What she discovered is startling and crucial for women's career advancement. And we've turned it into an infographic for you.

We get mail...and love to share it in the hopes that it inspires you, as it does us:

We love McKinsey's research. Their recent article, Decoding Leadership: What Really Matters identifies 4 key leadership behaviors that correlate most strongly with leadership effectiveness. Here are the 4 and our commentary about the connection to The Missing 33%® and our definition of leadership (Leadership is using the greatness in you to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes by engaging the greatness in others):

Millions of Views

Keep your eyes open for our colorful "white" paper on women's advancement. In the meantime, did you see these?

Spotting (and Developing) Leaders! Thanks to Nneka C. who last month pointed us to the HBR article on 21st Century Talent Spotting because of the alignment between the model in one of the sidebars and Leading Women's definition of leadership. For over 14 years, we've been defining leadership as "using the greatness in you to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes by engaging the greatness in others."

Susan Colantuono, is the former CEO of Leading Women, a consulting firm acquired by Leading NOW. Colantuono spoke with Diversity Executive magazine. Below are edited excerpts from the interview.

In Dan Rockwell's recent blog revealing Peter Drucker's 9 Functions of a Mentor, Rockwell lists 9 things a mentor should do. I wondered if he and, by extension, famed leadership theorist Drucker, were offering up CAKE or PIE Mentoring™ ideas.

The first time I heard the term elevator speech was in the middle of the dot-com bubble. I had been hired to design a three-day new employee orientation program for webMethods and the CEO was laying out the specifications. Among them he said this, "Everyone at webMethods must understand that they're salespeople. They must know our elevator speech and be able to pre-qualify potential customers anywhere they meet someone -- on the plane, at a cocktail party, at a conference."