Let me first tell you that I don\’t like the term “networking.” For many boomer women, it conjures up negative memories of networking in the 80s, when you hurled business cards at 100 strangers, dumped the 100 cards you received in return into a drawer, and didn\’t truly connect with anyone. Networking has come a […]
“Treat everybody else as if they were you.” These words gave me pause. I wonder what it would be like if we each did what this “unknown author” is advocating? Would she still have abandoned her station at the airport fast food restaurant to get a fork and share a pastry with her friend while […]
There\’s a line in the movie Gracie that I love. Gracie is a teenager in the 70s who is competing for a spot on the boy\’s high school varsity soccer team. In one scene, dejected and on the verge of giving up, her mother, played by Elizabeth Shue, tells her, “If you want to limit […]
Booths featuring products and services related to employee engagement, web-based delivery, global performance, and talent management were overflowing with conference attendees as I walked the trade show at a national conference where I was speaking. Just a few years ago the magnets were initiatives like total quality management, six sigma, diversity, work-life-balance, and customer driven. […]
“I don\’t like to be kept waiting,” he responded when asked by the travel-study professor why he delayed the entire group for a third straight day. “Next time,” the professor warned, “we won\’t hold the bus.” The following day the bus left as scheduled, returning to the hotel late into the evening from a full […]
It started with a turkey. In the early days of a start-up company I once worked for, a plump turkey was a small thank you token given to employees around the holidays. The turkey-giving practice lasted maybe three years, until the growing size of the organization necessitated its change. And while enhanced benefits emerged to […]
Once upon a time, a prince and princess lived in stressful palace, surrounded by a stressful village, inside a stressful land. They knew it was stressful because everyone said it was. Their parents, the king and queen, worked from sunrise to sunset hearing issues from their kingdom, weighing the requests, and appropriating the collective harvest […]
The beauty of boomer women in business is their collective spirit of collaboration. Rather than being intimidated by a potential business competitor, boomer women will often seek out ways to cross-promote, pool resources, and support one another. They understand that there is enough business for all of us, and the more they work together, the […]
Watching a rerun of “What Not to Wear” on The Learning Channel, I was struck by the dialogue between the individual being transformed and the cast of experts. While agreeing to follow the advice and input from these style-masters, “Joyce” was closed to the ideas presented of what she should wear, how her hair should […]
It was a dimly lit restaurant. Still she was dressed in pink, and while I admit it\’s hard to tell the gender of three month old babies, clothing color is a reliable clue. So, it surprised me when the waitress began playing with my granddaughter, asking “How old is he?” Twenty minutes later, that same […]
