Featured Articles

The 5 Stages of Leadership (Full Article) 
“Everyone goes through the same stages of human development on the road to adulthood and maturity. Unfortunately, some of us get stuck in one stage or another, stunting our growth and rendering us dysfunctional.

We look just like ordinary adults, but we actually behave a lot more like children, acting out, throwing tantrums, and generally making life miserable for everyone around us.”
via CBS Money Watch



The Red Hot Heart of Leadership (Full Article) 
“All leaders share an absolute commitment to what they are doing, why they are doing it, and to the people helping them get there.”
via Forbes.com


An Amazing Lesson in Women’s Entrepreneurship: Ruth’s Chris Steak House
(Full Article)
In a recent interview with Cheryl Henry, Chief Branding Officer and Senior Vice President at Ruth’s Hospitality Group, Inc. we discussed the entrepreneurial founding, spirit and culture of Ruth’s Chris Steak House, the growing number of women holding leadership positions in American business, the story of her own professional journey, the restaurant’s recent partnership with Marie Clairemagazine on Women in Business, and much more.
via Forbes.com 

Featured Articles - Promotions, Chutzpah & Fortune 500

You may be asking yourself what the heck promotions & chutzpah have to do with career coaching & Crystal Clear Careers.  Career advice and inspiration can come from anywhere…you just have to be on the look out.  Here are a few great articles for anyone looking to take their career to the next level.  

Want a promotion? Make friends at work. (Full Article)
“Recent research finds that people who initiate office friendships, pick up slack for their co-workers, and organize workplace social activities are 40% more likely to get a promotion in the subsequent two years. “How much you give at work directly affects how much you get at work,” says Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work.”
Via Fortune.com

Why Chutzpah Is The New Charisma - And How To Use It To Get What You Want 
(Full Article)
“Old-fashioned charisma is no longer enough to get attention, get ahead, or get the job anymore. Now, it’s those with the fearlessness to go after what they want and the audacity to do it how they want who are making their mark and changing the world.”
Via Forbes.com

Career advice from Fortune 500’s women CEOs (Full Article)
“With plenty of glass in their hair, the female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies have doled out anecdotes and advice during their tenures. Here are some of their best practices.”
Via CNN.com


Leadership Tips: Articles to improve your leadership skills

Each week we post a couple of articles that are relevant to a specific topic. Part of Executive Coaching is helping others to develop their leadership skill. These are just a few great articles that can help anyone develop their skills as a leader. 

5 Steps to Becoming a More Interesting Leader
Source: SmartBlogs on Leadership, By Mike Myatt  

It’s a very noisy world, and with more and more people adding to the chatter each and every day, it has become quite difficult to stand above the noise and be heard — this is particularly true if you bore people. Here’s the thing — you can have all the answers, but if people don’t want to hear them what good is all your brilliance? Perhaps the main benefit of being interesting is when you interest people they’ll seek you out — you won’t have to chase them down. When you do engage, they’ll listen…
Read the Full Article Here


Moving from managing to leading - Taking on the Big Picture
Source: SmartBlog on Leadership, By Dana Theus

Moving from managing to leading is a challenge because the skills that make you a good manager aren’t enough to help you excel in leadership positions. Men and women alike sometimes perceive the gap between managing and leading to be a “glass ceiling” when, in many cases, it’s not necessarily that at all; it’s a subtle group of skills you must have to be considered for leadership. 
Read The Full Article Here


10 Tips to Appear More Authoritative At Work
Source: usnews.com/money by Alison Green

If you want to be taken more seriously at work, take a look at how authoritative you appear. Many people, especially newer managers, undermine their own authority without realizing it, and then wonder why they’re not more respected.
Read the Full Article Here



Matthew Chustz

The Shifting C-Suite

At C3, we help the C-Suite strategically navigate their careers! In this article, new research shows why top management teams have grown over the last two decades, and how firms can strategically navigate the trend. 

The C-suite is getting crowded, with top management teams doubling in size since the mid-1980s. And it’s not just the size that’s changed, says Professor Maria Guadalupe — the composition of top management has changed as well, with some important considerations for organizations to heed.

Working with Hongyi Li of MIT and Julie Wulf of Harvard, Guadalupe has shown that the growth of the C-suite is largely the result of a disproportionate move away from general managers and toward specialized functional managers.

…The new composition of the C-suite can present recruiting challenges for CEOs and staff alike. CEOs may increasingly need to convince talented rising stars to specialize. But ambitious professionals and MBAs entering the market often view general management as the path with the greatest career potential. “So there is a tension between general versus specialized skills,” Guadalupe notes. “Firms need to start thinking about how to convince talent to take a more specialized route to management.”

Read the Full Article


Making Investments In Your Career

This week I have the great opportunity to be in Dallas for the Women’s Foodservice Forum Annual Leadership Conference.  (#WFFCONF12)  This content rich conference is a buzz connecting over 2300 managers, directors and executives who all aspire higher in their careers and for their companies.

I am honored to be a Board Member of the WFF.  I am also proud to represent an organization that clearly aligns with my beliefs about careers, business and leadership development. 

The WFF’s vision is to be the Leading authority for delivering content, developing competence and building connections.

Think about that vision – content, competence and connections.  I can tell you with over 2300 leaders attending this conference the WFF is certainly delivering on their vision. 

My question is how are you delivering on your vision of career success? What does your vision look like?  Where are you investing your time, money and resources in to insure you accessing world calls content to build competitive competencies and strong connections?  All great careers require an investment in all three areas constantly and continually.  

If you are not at the WFF this week you can still follow the action via twitter hashtag #WWFConf12.  

Here is another quick way to make an investment in your career  - this terrific article from USA Today.  Mark Pincus shares great career insights for everyone from a college student to a CEO.  Start making an even greater investment in your career now – the returns can be amazing!  

 

Excerpt: CEO Forum: Zynga’s Pincus talks of passion

By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY

 

…While some billionaire tech CEOs may take victory laps or calculate their megariches, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus has become reflective….

Pincus talked with USA TODAY technology reporter Jon Swartz and took questions from students about his wild ride to dot-com success after a circuitous path through investment banking on Wall Street, because he “was very focused on financial independence,” to a stint at onetime cable giant TCI, where he got to view “every cool interactive opportunity in the world” to his “passion” at Zynga. The following excerpts from the conversation are edited for space and clarity…

 

Q:   What did you learn from the first couple of companies that you were involved with? What mistakes or successes made you decide to start something like Zynga, which redefined a pretty well established market?

A:   First, it’s important to know what your goal is, because if you don’t know what your goal is, you will definitely never achieve it. If you don’t have a clear goal, you will probably make so many compromises in your career or whatever it is you’re doing that you will wake up one day and forget why you chose to do what you are doing.

That was true with me. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I knew I wanted to create these break-through products. But I made so many compromises along the way, like with my company Support.com that went public. It became a company that I couldn’t be at anymore, and that was very strange. One of the things I say at Zynga is that we should all make sure we are building a house we want to live in.

On becoming an entrepreneur:

“I reached the point when I was 28 or 29 and I was in Washington, D.C., working for this VC firm, that I literally thought my career was washed up. I just thought I had made a series of wrong decisions, and I wasn’t on the blueprint I thought I was going to be on. A lot of times, I think, you become an entrepreneur when you feel like you have nothing else to lose. It started to crystallize for me that my passion was creating these break-through consumer services that would change people’s lives. It was later on that (venture capitalist) John Doerr and (former Electronic Arts executive) Bing Gordon, who have both been great inspirations to me, put a name on it. They called it an Internet treasure — products that people can’t remember life before, or they can’t imagine life without. That’s what the iPhone is. That’s the cellphone. That’s Google. I hope it’s Zynga.”

On being a ninja product maker:

“It’s good to make great products, at least financially. But be a ninja product maker. What that means is, develop this intuition about what people want and develop this skill set around — empathizing, be a student of the people around you. That’s what I love about consumers.”

 On leadership:

“There is so much ambition and hard work in the world, but there is so little leadership. Not many people really want to be leaders, because it is scary, it’s risky. … It means getting outside your job, raising your hand and saying, ‘Hey, I think we are going in the wrong direction.’ I would say leadership starts with complaining and dissatisfaction … but that’s half of it. The other half of leadership is, complain and then make it better…”

 To read more of this insightful and compelling interview: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-04-23/ceo-forum-mark-pincus/54475390/1


- Kathleen Wood