Difficult situations

I was Harassed at Work 14 years ago

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Every year I take the workplace harassment training.   It didn’t dawn on me until this year that what happened to me at work 14 years ago was actually workplace harassment.   What happened to me didn’t have to do with my race, gender,  sexual orientation, nor religious beliefs.

Here was the first shock

14 years ago, I joined a marketing agency just next door to my house as a Vice President.   In my first business trip to LA, a senior female partner (let’s call her Meredith) suggested to a bunch of us to play a game – Fxxx, Marry, or Kill.   Meredith said, for every client we meet, let’s chat afterwards if we would  fxxx them, marry them or kill them assuming we had only one choice. ...  read more

Didn’t Get that Job Offer – What Should You Do Next?

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We had an incredible coaching call this month on How to Turn Any Difficult Situation into a Gift. Thank you for those of you who made it to share your questions and insights. I love hosting these coaching calls as we can go deep into one topic for almost an hour. Just by showing up and contributing to the conversation, you are improving your soft skills and helping others ...  read more

3 Common Traits of Incompetent Leaders & How to Work with Them

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Unfortunately most of us spend at least 50-75% of our life working for incompetent leaders! Why? Four reasons:

  1. The working world in general continues to promote the wrong kind of people to leadership positions.
  2. It sometimes take us awhile to realize we are working for incompetent leaders.
  3. Finding a new job is hard work. Sometimes it’s just easier to stay working for a crappy leader vs find time to find a better job.
  4. There is no guarantee the next job we find doesn’t have an incompetent leader. It’s not easy to tell if your future manager is any good.

3 Common Traits of Incompetent Leaders

There are 3 common traits of incompetent leaders. Your leader could have one of these traits or worse all three.

Trait 1: Absentee leader – this leader “lets” the team do all the work and doesn’t really set strategy, lead, or coach others. Their style is often to outsource any or all efforts that a leader usually need to do to one of his or her team members. ...  read more

Why and How to Manage Stress to Work and Live Better

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Two months ago, I was super stressed. Both my well-being and my work performance took a toll. I couldn’t rest well and kept waking up with headaches. Day and night, I found myself fretting about things I couldn’t control. I discovered many things at my new job that were suboptimal and outside my influence to change it. In life, we were anxious to move to a large space as we were busting at the seams in our 2 bedroom 1 bath with two growing girls. Working at home all day made the situation worse.  ...  read more

What Did You Learn from 2020 – 3 Tough Lessons I Learned

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Happy New Year! Everyone wants to forget 2020; however I think it’s a year to remember. This has been the most memorable year in almost a century. Despite all the difficulties, I feel fortunate to have my family, health, and a better appreciation for the simple things in life.

While we all hope 2021 will be a better year, it is still unclear how long we will be in our current state or if we would ever go back to the way we were prior to March 2020. While I miss seeing my parents in person, traveling, and gathering with friends, I also gained much more time with my family and loved living a much simpler life with my husband and kids.  ...  read more

Everything Happens for a Reason – Do you Believe it?

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No matter what happens in our lives, they happen for a reason – for us to learn, grow, and have a better path than the one we envisioned. My belief in fate is especially powerful and helpful when something unexpected and seemly negative happens.

Fate is defined as forces outside of your control that make things happen. An example of fate is when you miss your bus and meet the person who will turn out to be your spouse while you are standing on the platform waiting on the next bus. ...  read more

Focus on What I Want Instead of What I Don’t Want

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stressful work

Work has been stressful. At a macro level, there are massive organizational changes in motion and definitive news of layoffs coming this year. At the micro level, my leader resigned last week and I have to deal with lots of politics, ineffective processes, and incompetence.  I guess “work” is not called “play” for a reason.  🙂 ...  read more