Do You Work For A Corporate Bully?
We hear a lot these days about bullying, mostly with teenagers. There seems to be a news story every week with some tragic incident due to cyber bullying. As parents, this is very upsetting and of course, no one wants their children to be subject to this type of behavior, but how many of us are also the target of bullying at work? Do you work for a corporate bully?
According to Susan Annunzio, CEO of the Center for High Performance in Chicago, here are the warning signs:
- If you disagree with him/her, you are labeled “incompetent”, “risk-averse”, a “naysayer”.
- They fall in love with an idea, position or deal and won’t listen to anyone else’s point of view.
- In your meetings, there is little room for disagreement or debate. It’s their way or the highway.
- Your accomplishments are never recognized.
- You are afraid to let him/her know any bad news, so you don’t say anything.
- You must always acknowledge their being right.
- They have a sense of superiority.
- You are always blamed when things go wrong. They never take any credit for their part.
- They never admit mistakes or apologize.
- You always seem to be in this game of “gotcha” and under a microscope.
We are often outraged when we hear about children being bullied, so I am curious how many of you subject yourselves to this every day in the workplace?
Experts will tell you to not get caught up in the emotions of these toxic relationships and make sure that you take care of yourself first and foremost and focus on your work and have gratitude for the other wonderful things in your life, but how do you do that? We spend so much of our time at work; so much of our identity and self-esteem is related to our performance, so it is easy to see how working with a bully can have a damaging effect to our health and well-being and also our careers. If you feel stuck in a bad situation, one that you don’t have a lot of control to change, you can literally “quit” giving your best, speaking your opinions, bringing any creativity and enthusiasm to your work. This is toxic to your career and your future.
So what do you do? How do you work around bullies at work? Well, if detaching emotionally is still not helping you and you find this is affecting your health, sleep, and happiness, I would initiate an exit plan and begin to look for other opportunities either in the company or with another organization. It’s a shame. Maybe this company is great and you have a pension and you don’t want to really leave. You feel like a victim. Sometimes you need to make a move. It may not be what you wanted, but you have only one life and one career. Find a place where your unique value and talent is appreciated and you will thrive professionally and personally.
Do you work for a corporate bully? Are you doing anything about it?
Tune in this Wednesday at noon EDT to GPS Your Career: A Woman’s Guide to Success, when I discuss executive bullying with my guest, Susan Annunzio.
The Challenges Facing Business Leaders Today
Leading an organization presents many challenges in today’s business environment. There is an atmosphere of continual change and economic pressure to survive and to be on top of the curve in terms of marketing and delivering exceptional service. So how do senior executives lead successfully in this environment? On Wednesday’s show, May 2nd, I’m going to discuss the challenges facing executives in business today and what leaders and managers need to know to create a culture that embraces the flexibility required for today’s environment and supports inclusion and high performance.
Featured Guest
My guest is Susan Annunzio, CEO of the Center for High Performance in Chicago. Susan is a strategic advisor to CEOs of leading global companies on strategy attainment and business transformation. Susan partners with senior executives to increase their ability to simplify complex strategic decisions through enhanced collaboration and creativity. She is a globally recognized speaker and thought leader on shaping and maintaining high-performance business environments. She has a strong track record helping leaders maximize returns on strategic, financial and human-capital investments. A former Adjunct Professor of Management at the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business, Susan still teaches the most popular Executive Education Program, High Performance Leadership. She is the author of Contagious Success (Portfolio, 2004), a dynamic management book that revealed a global standard for high performance. Contagious Success was voted Fast Company’s Readers’ Choice. selection in January 2005. Additionally, Susan authored two more prominent business books: Communicoding and Evolutionary Leadership. Susan has been a guest on numerous local and national television and radio news programs and has been quoted extensively in the business press, including The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, BBC, USA Today and Bloomberg.
Listen to the May 2nd show or download the podcast.
Celebrating Women’s Friendship!
The show today is about the power of women’s friendship. My two guests, Janina Serden Sebesky and Kitt Moran, are friends. Both are extremely talented, amazing women in their own right. They met, became great friends, and together created something very special, a musical called Chick Soup, which celebrates women’s friendships across generations. There is great power in friendship and collaboration, and when women work together harmoniously something very very special happens. That how Chick Soup was created!
Featured Guests
Janina Serden Sebesky is a Grammy and Emmy nominated artist and producer who loves to nurture and inspire people through music. The Velveteen Rabbit: Love Can Make You Real 2008 Grammy nominee Best Musical Album for Children features her narration and vocals. She was music director for the Emmy nominated children’s television series Allegra’s Window on Nickelodeon and has sung on many radio and television commercials such as G.E.,Kraft, Pepsi, and DHL. She has recorded an album of original songs titled “Small Inspirations” and created a unique greeting card line called “With a Card and a Song”.
Kitt Moran is a jazz vocalist and recording artist whose CDs include duets with Rosemary Clooney, John Pizzarelli, Jack Sheldon, Merv Griffin and more. Kitt was ranked as the premiere chanteuse of Atlantic City for 10 years and always seems to find her way to friendship and connection with people through music. She is also a stage and film actress, a radio personality, and an award-winning painter. Kitt currently resides and works with her husband, composer, lyricist and pianist Mike Moran in the Sarasota area of Florida.
Listen to the April 25th show or download the podcast.
Do Your Feelings About Money Hold You Back From Making Money?
Our feelings about money can be a very complicated issue. Most of us want to make enough money to maintain our lifestyle and pay our bills. Some of us look at our income as validation of our success and continually strive to make more money. Many of us shy away from the subject of money and don’t want to embrace the fact that money can be a positive force in their lives. 
Whatever your attitude about money is, it’s important to understand how it plays into your business and career success. In fact, your “money mindset” can help you be successful and live in abundance or it can continually sabotage your efforts to make a decent living.
I grew up in an upper middle class family in a wealthy suburb of New York City. We lived in a beautiful home, belonged to a country club, and my parents traveled all over the world. I didn’t lack any thing. I had dance lessons, music lessons, went to camp, went to the best schools. However, I thought we were poor. Honestly, I always thought we were on the verge of poverty. Why? Because my father, a child of the depression, instilled in my mother, my brother, and myself the belief that there was never enough money in our household. That was not true. It was his attitude and it became my attitude. The belief that there would never be enough money started in my childhood.
Years later, I realized where my belief system originated and how it was sabotaging me in my business and worked vigorously to change my mindset (and continue to work on it every day). One great resource who helped me change my mindset about money is David Neagle and I have adopted his mantra that “making money is part of my spiritual path”. There are many resources available and I strongly suggest you find a coach or mentor to help you through this because negative feelings about money can literally hold you back from a successful business or career.
Money means a lot of different things to different people, but to me it represents freedom, the freedom from worrying about paying my bills and to live my life the way I choose to live. I realize now that I have much to offer and that my talent is a gift that I offer others to help them be successful. Yes, money is the end result but because I understand my value and how I can help others, I no longer focus all my energy on the lack of money. Money is no longer a mental roadblock for me. I know that by helping professional women achieve their goals, feel self-confident and empowered by their unique value, I will be successful. Their success is my success.
What are your feelings about money? Are they working for you?
Multi-Generations in the Workplace: How They Can Thrive and Be Happy
Today’s topic is about multi-generations in the workplace. For the first time, we now have three highly influential generations working together. All three generations, X, Y, and Boomers, have the opportunity to make a major impact in business. But these generations are very different. They have different perspectives, opinions, values, habits, and goals based on their demographic. What are these generations looking for from their employers today? What do they need? What is the key to having them all work together harmoniously? What can today’s business leaders do to keep them happy?
Featured Guest
Today, I have a fabulous guest who will help us understand the challenges of having these generations working together. Cheryl Cran is a sought after consultant and speaker on trends in the workplace and a leadership and generations expert. Her research on generations led her to write a book, “101 Ways to Make Generations X, Y, and Zoomers Happy at Work”. Other books include, The Control Freak Revolution , 50 Ways to Lead & Love It ,Say What You Mean – Mean What You Say For more information on Cheryl and her books and services, her website is cherylcran.com. A sought after expert on workplace trends, Cheryl has been a guest commentator on Fox’s The Mike and Juliet Show and The Fanny Kiefer Show. She has been interviewed and written articles for a wide range of publications including Forbes Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Profit Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Metro NY, The Globe, Selling Power, and many more.
Listen to the April 18th show, 12 noon to 1pm live or listen to the podcast recording. Call in with your questions: 248 545 7685.
Are You A Disappearing Woman?
I got married right after college. I had never lived on my own. I had no idea who I was. I knew that I wanted a career. I wanted a family. I wanted it all. 
Well, the family came quickly and I had two children, but then I began to feel very unfulfilled. I loved being a mom, but knew that I needed more in my life in terms of my “own thing”. I was lost and unfortunately, because I lost myself in this marriage, I ended up divorcing my husband.
I can’t be too hard on myself. After all, I saw my mom give up much of her identity in her marriage to my father. It was my role model. She built her life around him, his family, his friends and it worked fairly well. I think they had a good enough marriage, but I wanted more in my life and I had no idea where to begin to find myself.
In her Huffington Post article, author, Vicki Larsen addresses this. She quotes Psychoanalyst Beverly Engel, author of Loving Him Without Losing Yourself, who calls this the Disappearing Woman — what happens when women lose track of what they believe in, what they stand for, what’s important to them and what makes them happy just because they happen to be in a relationship.
No matter how successful, assertive, or powerful some women are, the moment they become involved with a man they begin to give up part of themselves — their social life, their time alone, their spiritual practice, their beliefs and values. In time, these women find they have merged their lives with their partners’ to the point where they have no life to go back to when and if the relationship ends.
Why can’t we stay true to ourselves in a relationship? Engel says that we want to be nice because we’ve learned that being nice is important in order to sustain a relationship. Engel says,
She’ll pretend to agree when she doesn’t really agree, she’ll go along with things she doesn’t really believe in, and if she does that long enough, she’ll no longer know what she feels.
Author Larsen says,
How many women do you know who will break plans or give up a favorite activity for a guy? Not that it’s not OK to do that from time to time or for certain situations; it’s just that somehow in the togetherness of coupledom too many of us forget to have a life of our own. Instead, we look to our partner to fulfill all our needs — and get frustrated and resentful when he doesn’t. Then we see the problem as something wrong with him, and not us.
What are your thoughts? Are we just fulfilling the nice girl syndrome or is it that we don’t have a clear picture of our identity and core essence as a woman before we enter a relationship?
The Key to Success is Knowing Who You Are
When you look in the mirror, who is looking back at you? I’m not talking about your appearance. I’m talking about who you really are. Do you know? 
Many of us are distracted by external factors that we let define us; our job, our looks. We allow these things to become our identity and the way we present ourselves to the world. Sometimes we hide behind them so we don’t have to really do the work to discover our essence.
But, to get outside results, you need to do the inside work. (I just wrote that down from a podcast I listened to yesterday by Suzanne Evans.) It’s so true!
Last week the New York Times published an interview with Charlotte Beers, former CEO and Chairwoman of Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide. In this article, The Best Scorecard Is The One You Keep For Yourself, Charlotte talks about the importance of doing a self-assessment and soliciting feedback from trusted colleagues to help you discover who you are. Sometimes painful, the feedback she received helped her become a better manager and leader.
Charlotte says, “it’s a mistake to just let the quality of our work speak for itself because sooner or later the quality of your relationships will prevail over the work.”
Charlotte talks about moments of crisis. “ When those moments come along and you need to draw on resources that are internal and your personal belief system, if you don’t know what they are, others will tell you what they are.”
Self-knowledge is so obvious-sounding that I hate to use it like that, but in fact you can be masterful at doing the work and you can be good in team relationships, but one day you will be called on to have difficult, complex relationships and a different part of you has to be used for that.
Do you know what your internal resources are? Can you see beyond your reflection in the mirror to connect with your core essence?
This is the stuff that makes you unique; your unique fingerprint. This is the stuff you call on to be successful and here’s the KEY: When you know this, you can not only draw from this resource to be successful, but you can let people know who you really are and what differentiates you from others who may hold the same position or sell similar products and services.
Charlotte’s new book is I’d Rather Be in Charge and I am thrilled that she will be on my new radio show June 13th. You will be able to call in live with your questions for Charlotte! Stay tuned for more details.
If you are interested in taking this journey of self-discovery for yourself so that you can better position yourself for success, please sign up for my next four week GPS Your Career Coaching Group or come to the live full day workshop in Boston, May 5th, GPS Your Way to Success Boot Camp.
Is Thinking BIG About Your Business or Career Like Bragging?
It’s common knowledge that many people have issues with boastful people. We have a bias against those who seem “full of themselves” and constantly let everyone know how wonderful they are. If the person happens to be a woman, there is even more of a negative reaction to her lack of humility.
If you follow my work and my blog, you know that I help professional women identify and connect with their value and talent and thereby gain
the confidence to promote themselves. (This isn’t bragging or boasting, by the way, but authentically talking about your accomplishments and value proposition.) There is much evidence that communicating your value helps you to advance your career and get more clients.
If you understand your value proposition, what plan do you have to offer your gifts and talent to the world? I mean, what is your BIG plan for your business or career? Do you dare to go there?
I believe that we think small because we are afraid that if we let others know the dreams we have for ourselves, people will think we are “full of ourselves”. We may get the skeptical looks, the rolling eyes, the “are you kidding me?” look. Who do you think you are that you could achieve that?
Well, guess what? If we think small, we stay small. If we keep our ordinary story, we stay ordinary. (I am borrowing that from Suzanne Evans. I just spent three amazing days at her Be The Change Event where I heard this over and over again.) If we want to be extraordinary, then we need to ditch our ordinary story for a bigger one, and we need to be able to articulate that new big story with the same confidence we do our value proposition.
Everything changes when you understand your value. This includes your story and your plans for your career and business. Don’t be afraid to dream big. Don’t be ashamed to create a new big story that expands the way you offer your unique value to the world. It’s not bragging. It’s simply you acknowledging that you have these gifts. It’s simply you understanding your value and believing that you can achieve great success because of it.
What’s your extraordinary story?
Join me Thursday, April 26th for a FREE teleseminar on The 3 Insider Secrets to Marketing Yourself for Success in Business Today.
Learn everything you need to know to position yourself in business today in 3 simple steps!
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