I am a woman, a coach and a writer, preaching the gospel of compassion for thyself. And yet, as an entrepreneur in the client service business, I secretly hold myself to a higher standard. Especially when it comes to time and reliability.
I confirm all appointments a day or two in advance.
I arrive early, even when it’s uncool.
I’m the one at the party cutting the lemons and limes as the other guests file in.
I live and breathe by my Google calendar/s.
And in my less gracious moments, I’m the rigid one laying into my inner circle people for lateness and last-minute cancellations. You know who you are, and this piece is one part empathetic ode to you.
It’s within this stranglehold on perfectionist professionalism that I found myself in a failure of my own doing.
After two full days of onsite coaching for a corporate client, I was at home, in shorts and a t-shirt, resting and refueling, preparing for a corporate workshop the next day. All of the workshop materials had been sent more than a week in advance. I had time for a couple of calls and a walk in the park. Time to visualize and organize my thoughts, and to get a manicure to make sure I was polished for my topic of Personal Branding.
I was about to join a video call when my phone rang. It was the client. The workshop was not the next day, but that very day—beginning in 30 minutes. And it was nearly an hour away from my home.
I was in shock. Stunned. I could barely form a sentence. It had been on my calendar for the following day for months. I was sure of it. But I didn’t have time to backtrack on emails. And I had a sneaking suspicion it was my mistake. I wanted to vomit or just say I couldn’t do it.
But instead, I put on a dress, some heels, ignored my chipped nails, grabbed my makeup bag for the subway ride, apologized from my deepest depths and said, "I’ll be there in an hour."
I texted the client to get everyone started on the worksheets during my subway ride, offered an additional webinar or extra session to make up for what I knew was my fault. And I made it. 36 minutes late—but with a self-pep talk in the elevator and a joke to state the obvious in my intro—I jumped right in.
That phone call will surely replace my, "showing up for final exams after missing half the year of Spanish class" track, as the new number one spot on my stress dreams playlist. There’s no getting around it. It was bad: truly my worst professional mistake to date.
The shame ran deep. Mostly because I made this blunder around a value I hold dear: Integrity. In talking myself through it over the past weeks, looking for the lesson and most importantly—forgiving—I recalled the things I often say to clients when they are reminded of their imperfections.
"You are doing your best. You’re human. As much as you hate to admit it, you too make stupid mistakes. It’s how you show up after the mistakes that make you who you are."
And what pulled me from my shame is how in the face of that moment, I rose to be who I know I am. A woman with both integrity and flaws, with expectations of excellence and compassion for myself. And most of all, human.
For the past few months, I’ve been working on an experiment: a new networking membership that would supplement my corporate workshops and 1:1 coaching.
I fell in love with the idea. The name. The impact it could have on women’s lives.
And I did as I tend to do. I talked about it with my people. I inspired them to believe in its importance. And they cheered me on, as they always do.
Then, without warning, I felt stuck. I chose to file my papers, label my expenses, log my coaching hours—anything to avoid moving forward on my membership.
I judged myself for:
Allowing fear to paralyze me.
Letting my people down.
Being the kind of person who gets stuck.
I skipped my weekly writing time one week because I knew this would be the only post I could write. My writing is my joy, my escape and the place I find my answers. Denying myself that time was a wake up call. I knew I had to put the weapons down.
I gave myself permission to pause and received it like a gift.
Relief and renewed trust in my intuition washed over me.
In quiet, compassionate non-judgment, I looked at the membership with new eyes. It wasn’t fear holding me back.
I was energized by the mission, but not the work—and this is a critical element in a career of my design. This is why I commit to experimenting—to see if the work is energizing and worth pursuing.
This time, in this moment, it wasn’t. It isn’t. And that’s part of the process. The membership is one of hundreds of ways I can fulfill my mission of getting more women into positions of power. My commitment is to the mission, not to the specific tactics that get me there. I know for the work to be top quality and make the broadest possible impact, it must be something that taps into my unique gifts—driven by my curiosity and energy.
I often talk to my clients about something I call The Inspired No. It’s a strategy to say No to a friend, colleague or potential partner so that you authentically acknowledge the exciting work he or she is doing AND offer a “no for now.” That’s the perspective I’m bringing to my membership and everyone I enrolled in moving forward with me on it. I know it’s not right for me, right now. I feel sure of this. And I’m leaving the door wide open to potentially discover a way for it to energize me somewhere down the line.
One humbling lesson I’m learning one more time is that I will always be the kind of person to get stuck. Because I’m a person and it’s in our DNA. But it’s how I respond to my stuckness that reminds me of the choices I continue to make. I am learning in the face of mistakes, building my resilience muscles and using these moments as points of connection with the flawed and beautiful humans I serve.
The nature of work is changing. Flexibility is gaining acceptance. Remote and virtual roles are growing in popularity. Organizations are catching on to the increased employee engagement that can come from remote work in addition to the organizational cost-savings and reduced environmental impact.
All that said, sometimes when you’re in a virtual or remote role, it’s easy to get lost in the background, to be forgotten or overlooked. How does one navigate a career, become visible in an organization, build deep relationships and reach for desirable projects and assignments when the rules of the game have changed?
When I work with clients who come to me in this situation, we focus on these 5 ways to build up their personal brands to help them continue to connect with their work, their colleagues and their leadership.
1. Be you
Take the time to get clear on your strengths and also what makes you different from your colleagues. Do you come from a different industry or discipline than most of your peers? Leverage those differences as a way to add a new slice of value to projects and teams instead of trying to fit into the pack. If you’re struggling to figure out your gifts, do one of my favorite self-esteem boosting exercises: ask 5 people in your life what they see as your strengths. (You’re welcome!).
2. Look like you’re at work
Love it or hate it, video conferencing is here to stay. Even though you’re at home and your dog may be lying on your feet, when you have video calls you should look professional (at least from the waist up!). Wear a nice shirt, do something with your hair and make sure the part of your office that’s on camera is neat-ish. This is an opportunity to remind people who you are and let some elements of your brand shine through. Do you have a bookshelf behind you with some favorite books? Photos of your family? Your meditation pillow? Whatever it is, this is an opportunity to share a piece of you without leaving your home.
3. Choose action and participation, early and often
There’s no sitting on the sidelines in meetings or on teams when you’re a remote worker. You must participate. You must share points of view. You must be visible. For some, this takes practice. If you’re struggling to get a word in with a vocal crew—I get it. Phone and video calls can often be awkward with timing. Talk to a colleague who will be in the room ahead of time and set him or her up to ask you for your POV in the meeting or to back you up after you’ve made a good point.
4. Volunteer in meaningful ways
Note some areas to help the organization that are not part of your job description AND are also things that are important to you. If you’re committed to environmental causes perhaps you can help your organization with a recycling policy or set up a service day with your team where you can contribute time to an environmental non-profit. If you want to bring together a women’s leadership group or plan a speaker series—these are great ways to experiment with new skills and projects—and be known for the causes and work that’s meaningful to you.
5. Prioritize relationships
No matter whether you’re in the office or remote—building and maintaining deep professional relationships is critical to effectively navigating your career. When you’re in a virtual role, you can do this by setting up virtual coffee meetings with colleagues to connect, staying in touch with your manager regularly and setting up occasional days of meetings on-site so that you have in-person time with your team and beyond. Make an effort to remember the names of partners and kids and dogs. These details go a long way in building trust and showing that you care about the lives of your coworkers.
While the benefits of remote work for employees are clear—flexibility, reduced stress from a commute, and the ability to get solitary work done—if your goal is to be promoted and known within your organization, it takes some extra effort to step onto that path. It also takes a level of self-motivation, energy management and the ability to know when you need to step away from your laptop and talk to a person. Knowing all of this can help you decide whether or not a remote role is for you and whether you can tweak your approach to make it work. As someone sitting on a couch writing this, I’m relaxed and grateful for the direction work is taking. And I’m also ready for my moment to go talk to a person. Right. Now.
In conversations with friends, colleagues and clients in the midst of dealing with a toxic corporate culture, I often ask, "Why are choosing to stay?" And the near-unanimous answer is, "The people." Camaraderie, community and loyalty are built in the face of adversity. Guilt can strike as the clarity sets in that leaving may be the best personal option.
As painful as it can be to begin setting the stage for a change while your people appear to be stuck in an untenable situation, if you want to help them at all—you must prioritize your mental health. You must make the right choice for your life and your wellbeing. In doing so, your leadership and your momentum can inspire them to believe in their own agency to get un-stuck.
While you’re in the process of navigating your transition, you can make a powerful impact on your colleagues, lifting them up alongside you on your journey. Here are three concrete ways to support your people:
1. Contain the pain
While it may feel like allowing your colleagues to vent to you ad nauseum is helpful and supportive, I assure you it’s not. The more time they spend talking about the issues in question, the more they extend the pain and reinforce that stuck, hopeless feeling. If they’re desperate to vent, give them five or ten minutes and then agree that you will use the remainder of your time together to think about productive actions they can take to either deal with their situation or remove themselves from it.
2. Observe and celebrate wins
Toxic workplaces eat away at self-esteem. Even those who are mentally tough and well supported by family and friends do not walk away unscathed. To combat this as an ally, turn on your hyper vigilant wins-meter. Look for things your colleagues are doing well and make sure you tell them in private moments, in front of other colleagues and even better— in earshot to leadership. Be authentic. Be specific. Be generous. Every win is a reminder that there are multiple perspectives to every narrative and you get to choose which one you believe.
3. Be an advocate
Where you see unfair treatment, bias, overlooked ideas, misattributed credit or any other gift of a toxic workplace, say something. Do something. Send unsolicited notes to leadership when you see your colleagues succeed in a tough situation or skillfully navigate a client relationship. Reiterate the true author of an idea or a thought in a meeting. Offer to be a reference for potential new opportunities and make intro’s to your contacts to help ignite momentum in their searches. Your offer to help may be the push someone needs to believe—this is possible.
In showing up for your colleagues, you can be their daily reminder that—1) They’re not failing, rather this is a bad fit and 2) It’s temporary. These simple and effective mindset shifts can release some of the pressure, build resilience and be the energy to fuel a change.
There’s a cautionary piece of advice floating around HR circles that says, "Employees don’t leave organizations, they leave managers." In my work with women in corporate roles across levels, I find this to be true—and yet I would take it one step further. The behavior of managers is simply a symptom of an organizational culture that enables it.
Employees don’t leave managers. They leave corporate cultures that protect unkind, unaccepting and unsupportive behavior.
Thankfully, I work with many thoughtful and empathetic organizations that spend time and money to shape their cultures so that they acknowledge their employees as whole people with long careers. So, I know it’s possible to do right by your most important asset: your people.
That’s why when I hear the code words describing an organization as having a "tough culture", it’s clear to me—they’re not going to be able to compete in this talent market for much longer operating as they are.
"Tough Cultures" often include:
Untenable hours where you’re always on and expected to respond to emails 24/7.
Rigid face time expectations that make participating in essential life needs outside of work near impossible.
Unproductive feedback with harsh undertones or no feedback at all.
Gender and racial inequities when it comes to pay, visibility, opportunities and credit where it’s due.
When I’m working with clients in career transitions and job searches after experiencing a tough culture, they focus in on these culture needs for their target organizations:
Respect for boundaries and a life outside of work.
Kindness and compassion in communication and action.
Safety to bring forward different points of view and challenge assumptions about how things have always been.
Commitment to shifting gender and racial inequities and bias.
Courage to have difficult and uncomfortable conversations.
Openness to and encouragement of employee growth and evolving careers.
New organizations can begin their culture development with these or similar principles in mind. It is simpler to start fresh and define the context for how each of these ideals will play out in a specific company. Existing organizations wading in the mud of a tough culture must first want to make a change and understand the gravity of a culture shift. It’s not just about doing the right thing, it’s also good for business. The work is in taking an honest look at where they’re not measuring up to these needs, gaining buy-in from the very top on the importance of a plan to transform the organization, and then—the hardest part—sticking with it when it’s so much easier to roll with the siren song of the status quo.
Last week I had the honor of attending my great aunt’s surprise 90th birthday party. The good news was that she handled the surprise like a 30-year-old and the even better news was that we had a beautiful afternoon connecting with family from all over the country.
For the past several years now, I’ve leveraged these family gatherings as a way to gather nuggets of wisdom from my older, more experienced family members. Three years ago, I recall asking my then 87-year-old aunt, "What’s the secret to a lasting marriage?" She took a beat, and with deadpan face she laid it on me.
"Tolerance."
And there you have it. I’m still unpacking the meaning within this answer that was left to all of our respective interpretations.
Towards the end of the party, my two daughters were milling about with family members they rarely see. One of our older cousins was weaving his woes about his new iPhone and the features he was struggling to figure out. My 11-year-old, Jane, jumped in with an explanation and a solve. Note that she doesn’t even have her own phone yet. Relieved and content, our cousin was about to move on when my girl jumped in with, "Is there anything else you want to know?"
She asked to use my phone as a "sample" and she sat down with her student to walk him through the ways of 2019 technology with patience and a smile. It was one of my favorite moments of the day. The image of them laughing and connecting; of Jane’s hunger to teach and our cousin’s openness to learn from a rising 6th grader.
In that moment, I was reminded:
We are all students and we are all teachers.
This is important for me to remember as both a parent and in my work with clients at all stages in their careers.
As a parent, I’m the one who lays down the rules and structure for my kids, but when I’m being my best self, I’m open to learning the lessons they have to teach me—even when they get in the way of moving from point A to point B at the desired time. I never realized how many different kinds of birds we could see on the walk from our apartment to camp!
In my work with senior leaders in organizations, we tease out frustrations with younger generations to home in on what we can learn from junior employees. We note how sometimes our frustrations can draw targets around our blind spots, shine a light on what we’re resisting and be the very thing we need to learn.
As with my approach to growth in leadership and humanity, awareness and mindset are the keys to inviting wisdom to show up anywhere and everywhere. If you cultivate a growth mindset—knowing that you don’t need to be right, you don’t know it all, nor do you need to—you can be open to unlikely teachers who can share another perspective with you. And in return, those who step up to be teachers can build confidence in knowing they have something of value to share that will touch your life in some small way or transform you—if you let it.
Many of my clients decide they want to leave corporate life.
They dream of driving their careers on their own terms.
They want to dictate their own schedules.
Choose their clients and collaborators.
But they fear making this move for a few main reasons…
The hustle
The constant selling, of sounding fake or putting yourself out there. All. The. Time. And the possibility that you may be bad at it. Talk about a one-two punch.Loneliness
Losing the camaraderie and energizing social interaction that’s baked into a corporate gig where you’re all focused on a common goal.Infrastructure
It’s all on you: the scheduling, the invoicing, the customer service, the marketing, the IT support—on top of the doing the actual thing you left your corporate job to do.
If you’ve already drawn definitive conclusions that these variables are not something you can figure out, you absolutely should stick with your corporate gig or find another one that’s better suited to you. There’s no reason to make a move to the solopreneur/freelance world only to continue to prove yourself wrong. Some self-awareness and self-acceptance goes a long way in making this choice.
On the other hand, if this is something you feel you’re meant to do—you’ve done the math as to how to make it possible and you’re open to being uncomfortable and making mistakes in the name of progress—I got you.
Here are a few ways to address each of these fears head on so you can create the career and the business that’s calling you:
The hustle
When you’re selling something you believe with all your heart, something you’re proud to offer—I can tell you firsthand—it doesn’t feel like selling. That said, I recommend that anyone who doesn’t feel comfortable about their sales and marketing skills get some support. Choose a few books you will commit to reading from this list of 50 incredible books. Read anything Seth Godin including his blog. Know that sales need not be a skill you’re born with, but rather a muscle you can build. You’ll learn that when you pour over Carol Dweck’s Mindset. If you can be kind to yourself, acknowledge where you need to grow and make friends with the experts—this is all possible for you.Loneliness
This was a tough one for me as it is for many of my extroverted clients. If you get energy from connecting and collaborating with others, you must build this into your days to stay afloat. I do this by working at co-working spaces via companies like Croissant, Spacious or Deskpass. Also, I work with affiliates—larger coaching organizations where I can find communities of other coaches to refer, to collaborate with on projects or to go out for happy hours. If you work from home, make sure you leave at least once to go for a walk or grab lunch with a friend. Instead of getting in that extra hour of emails, prioritize an energizing gathering that will leave you more productive for the rest of your day.Infrastructure
Here’s the good news: there’s never been a better time to start a business. Even if you’re a company of one employee, you don’t need to do everything yourself! There are apps and tools to get you up and running quickly for scheduling, accounting, email marketing—whatever you need. You can see my favorites here. Also, there are other entrepreneurs whose expertise matches squarely with the things you DO NOT want to do. Whether it’s technical support, social media marketing, copyediting or design—there are people who can help you by either bartering services or providing affordable packages for solopreneurs like you. You can find them on Upwork, Fiverr and by asking other entrepreneurs who already get the importance of delegation. This must all feel quite meta to my copyeditor of 2.5 years (thank you!).The truth is, while starting my own business was the best decision I ever made and the right choice for me, it absolutely can be tough. That’s why the answer I come back to over and over again as challenges arise is my mission, my reason for doing the work that I do. Above all of the logistical solves I offer here to address the "how" of running a business; the "why" is what pulls my clients and me through the plateaus and through the depths. The possibility of gender equity and gender parity is my fuel. This isn’t just about me, it’s about the increasing number of lives I can impact if I keep going, so I always find a way to do so.
June for working parents. Need I say more? It’s laughable what we’re trying to pull off. White-boarding and logistics planning can make you feel prepared for that one moment, until the next picnic or recital is announced for…tomorrow.
This year, I’ve been swept up in the swirl of end of year busyness as I always am, and yet this time, there’s a dull ache just beneath the surface. While my go-to approach is to stuff it down further with more details to wrangle, it body checks me. Leaves me raw.
I become "that parent" sobbing during the class slide show, hanging on every handwritten note in the yearbook and searing the image of my two daughters walking to school together holding hands in my mind as if it’s already gone. Because it nearly is gone.
This week, my daughter’s six-year journey from Kindergarten to 5th grade comes to a close and while I want to shove it into that category of, "I’m not that special. Millions of parents have gone through this milestone before us." With respect and compassion, I also acknowledge that while I may not be special or unique on this front, I am human. And for humans, a change and a passage of time of this magnitude hurts. A lot.
All at once, there’s gratitude for teachers who guided and inspired, appreciation for a community of parents that I didn’t always know well, but made my mornings and field trips even more fun and interesting—and at the heart of it—there’s my kid who went from a curious, all-in little one to a still curious, capable person. Her growth has been dramatic and yet the qualities that we celebrated in her the first day she entered that school are alive and well.
Parenting—and childhood—for that matter is messy. Success only comes when we choose to honor our wins and acknowledge the gravity of goodbye. To do this I know I must:
Hang up my whiteboard marker.
Be there, be present for my daughter each time she asks, even if it’s to look at her final math project, one last time.
Look right at her, smiling and ugly crying during graduation even if it embarrasses the shit out of her.
A proper goodbye for me in this moment is a contract that says, this time and who you’ve become is the most important thing to me right now. It says that every exciting change has a loss attached to it—and feeling the grief right now is the only bridge to get to the other side.
