In a class given at Stanford, the last lecture was on the mind-body connection–the relationship between stress and disease.  The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.  At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality “girlfriend time” helps us to create more serotonin–a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being.  Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going.  Jobs? Yes.   Sports? Yes.  Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf?  Yes.  But their feelings?–rarely.  Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters, and evidently that is very good for our health.  He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.

There’s a tendency to think that when we are “exercising” we are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged–not true.  In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking!  So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health!  We are indeed very, very lucky.   Sooooo, let’s toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. It’s very good for our health.

What are your thoughts? Do your girlfriends keep you healthy?

Recently I was in New York City to lead a Women on Fire® Tea Party and to meet with reporters, editors and producers.

It seemed everywhere I went someone said something to me about “reinventing” themselves.  Or, they commented that someone else has, should or is planning to.  I was even asked if my work leading the Women on Fire organization is a reinvention after my career in journalism, politics and television production.

Hmmmmmm?  It never occurred to me to think of it that way.

On my way out of the city, at the airport, I picked up More Magazine and what’s on the cover?  You guessed it!  A full-length article on “Reinvention—For the Risk- Averse.”  The article actually contained some good strategies for changing careers.

But. Ugh.  Something strikes me very wrong about the idea we have to “reinvent” ourselves every time we make a change toward what it is we truly want. “Reinvention” sounds like we aren’t good enough and we need to figure out something…anything…to become, and then try to be it.

The soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else’s. – Poet David Whyte

Instead, what if it’s simpler than that?  What if we made our life’s work to recognize our natural gifts, strengths and desires and create a plan to express them in the world?

That way, each mark forward (sometimes appearing as two steps backward) is the measure of getting us closer to what we were put on this earth to do.

Rather than the inevitable periodic “reinventions,” we would steadily refine what we want and love to do, and become more and more of who we authentically are.  Over time, rather than a start-stop-start, we would g-r-o-w into who we are becoming.

Mary Lynne Musgrove, a career counselor in Columbus, Ohio, described to me 20 years ago the progression of my career as  “stomping your parameter.”  The idea is that when we are in our 20s, 30s and 40s, we are collecting skills and knowledge and gaining experience, expertise and wisdom.  By the time we are in our 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond, we put all of that brilliance together and do the work we deeply desire.

Think Madeleine Albright.  She went from immigrant child to newspaper intern to mother to college to divorced wife to politics to the National Security Council to U.S. Ambassador to The United Nations to becoming our country’s first female Secretary of State. (With many stops in between!)

Today, at 72, she has grown into one of the most trusted international leaders and advisors in the world.

She didn’t have to reinvent anything. She “stomped her parameter.” She kept moving forward allowing one experience, hardship and success to build upon another.

Living from true passion is what propels us forward – every step of the way.

Debbie Phillips is the Founder of Women On Fire^® a national coaching organization to extend the outreach of inspiration, strategies and support for women to be successful.  She is the author of Women On Fire: 20 Inspiring Women Share Their Life Secrets (and Save You Years of Struggle!) and co-executive producer of the film Inspire Me!

Many theories have been tossed around; some related to the failure of feminism. These theories suggest that the more a woman’s sphere of existence expands and diversifies, the more she  has to be unhappy about. In other words, increased opportunities for women raise the level of expectations and these expectations are not fulfilled causing unhappiness. I don’t see how feminism has failed. What I do see is how society has fallen short of supporting women.

What has become apparent with the release of Maria Shriver’s report, “A Women’s Nation Changes Everything”, is that women have not made significant progress in many key areas. For instance, women still earn 73 cents to every man’s dollar. Women pay more for health insurance. Old gender stereotypes do still exist to some degree and this forces women into lower paying professions. And most importantly, no matter how many hours women work, we still do most of the care-taking and housekeeping at home.

Is this all changing? Yes. In fact, many more men are now sharing the load at home. But until there is more progress toward gender equality, I don’t think you will see many women jumping up and down with joy.

Please send me your comments. I would love to hear from you about this issue.

A heroine is a woman who is willing to stretch herself, who comes out of her “comfort zone” on a regular basis to try new things, risk, challenge herself, do what she has to do even if it scares her – even if it scares her a lot.

If this describes you then know you’re on a journey that has been undertaken by many women before you.  You might know it as The Hero’s Journey, the term coined by Joseph Campbell, the famous author and mythologist, and others to describe the pattern or storyline discovered in myths and legends down through the ages and in stories and film today.

The hero or heroine’s journey story goes like this.  The heroine is in “ordinary life”.  Things are running along as they usually do, until something happens…there’s a “call”. This can be an event, a person seeking her out, an inner urging…a call to leave “ordinary life” and to enter an “unknown world”, an “adventure”. The heroine crosses the “threshold” and is out of her comfort zone and into the new world – what ever that might be.

A “mentor” appears, – someone who guides her, helps her, gives her encouragement and she continues on.  Stuff happens – good and bad.  Campbell called this part the “belly of the whale.”  It’s tough.  The heroine is tempted to quit but she doesn’t.

The heroine has many tests and challenges on her journey.  These are tests of her courage, her resolve, her belief in her own ability.  Ultimately, she is confronting her fears (her dragons) and she has to make it through, slay her dragons in order to really grow, to be transformed, to develop into a more actualized human being. 

After the heroine has completed her tests, she returns home, back over the “return threshold” to her normal life, but she’s changed.  She’s wiser and has gained gifts that she can then share with others.  Her transformation will affect all those around her.

Do you recognize you in this storyline?  I hope so because all these stories, legends, movies, myths are written to emphasize the fact that this is, indeed, the story of human growth and development.  This is your life!  This is how we come into ourselves – by stretching and venturing out into the unknown.  It’s frightening to leave what we feel is safe but when we leave and test our abilities we learn that we are our own safety.

If you’re looking for empowerment, confidence, a boost to your self-esteem, then adopt the heroine’s journey as a lens through which to view your life.  Life isn’t a bunch of random moments, – it’s the time-honored heroine’s journey!  It all has a purpose – to get you to grow, to stretch those believe-in-yourself muscles and realize that you’re important, needed, a heroine who has gifts to share with the rest of us.  And if you share them, the world will be a better place.

Please wake up to your own “bigness”!  The world needs all the heroines it can get!

Please visit my web site Retreat Calendar for information on The Heroine’s Journey Retreat…Connect with Your Power.  Bonnie and I will be co-facilitating this retreat in October in beautiful Kennebunk, Maine.

To listen well is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well, and is as essential to all true conversation. ~Chinese proverb.

On May 21, more than 200 people attended the Sales 2.0 Conference hosted by Selling Power Magazine in Boston; unfortunately I was not one of them. However, a good friend of mine did attend and she came back from this meeting, brimming with enthusiasm. As we sat enjoying a delicious glass of chardonnay Saturday night, she explained her renewed gusto for selling–she was reborn. We talked about social networking and how this was the new way to generate leads. We both bemoaned the lead time for closing a sale and how businesses appear to be paralyzed by spending, any spending!

One of the more interesting observations that apparently came out of this conference for her was from Gerhard Gschwandtner, Founder and CEO of Personal Selling Power Inc. In his opening speech, “7 Key Trends in Selling,” he talks about ditching the pitch. (btw, Bonnie offers a program called Ditch the Pitch). She said, “You know, it’s more about having a conversation. It’s more important than ever before to talk with prospects, as opposed to at them.” Wow, I didn’t know this was a news flash. I was even more surprised to hear my friend, who I also saw at the hunter/sales person personified, say this straight faced—as if this was news to her! Quite frankly, I was more interested in drinking my wine and talking recipes from this month’s Food and Wine.

Curious as to what else happened at this conference, I went on the Sales 2.0’s web site for more information. I stumbled upon this, Barry Trailer, a Partner at CSO Insights, was quoted as saying, “The number one mistake I see in the area of “customer engagement” is that the Sales Reps think they should be doing all the talking”. Okay, maybe doing the stop, listen and listen is a news flash!

As a wholesaler for a large mutual fund company in the early 80’s, the sales approach was the same; product, product, product. Every quarter was devoted to hawking a particular sector. Jam it down their throats whether it fit our audience’s business model or not. It was a matter of shelf space for prospectuses at the Merrill Lynch office and points earned for fantastic due diligence trips.  Just pitch the fund du jour and move to the next office. It was an unfulfilling sales position to say the least and I felt, dare I say, whorish at times.

Taking a more customer focused/consultative sales approach to selling is all about listening, and then asking strategic and investigative questions (so you do get to talk!). It applies to every sales appointment, phone conversation, and meeting you have with a potential buyer. Nancy Martini, CEO of PI Worldwide, states, “In a selling situation, the real world is divided into two “worlds” – yours and the prospects/clients. Often, sales professionals only focus on the “world” they are familiar with, their own.” The key is you can’t ask strategic questions if you don’t start by listening to the client or prospects’ needs.

Listening provides you with the information you want to work effectively in the prospect’s world. Good listening means you can link your value proposition to the client’s specific needs. It also means you can have a meaningful, shared conversation, as Mr. Gschwandtner suggests.

Most of us love to talk and listening is pretty hard. Many of us in sales love to share and socially connect with a person; which means talking.

So here’s a question, how well do you listen? Listening does not mean nodding your head in agreement and waiting to say what you want (this is my big listening challenge). It truly means putting your agenda aside. Make a point to practice good listening skills. Good listening is a commanding skill, which can set you apart from other out there. Ditch the pitch, sit back and never stop listening.

With extensive expertise in organizational & leadership development, the Cornerstone Group helps clients to build more productive organizations by better leveraging their most important asset, people.

Their unique approach to assessing people, finding their core strengths, and leveraging those strengths in current and future roles helps their clients to hire smarter, manage more effectively, and develop stronger leaders. Their unique process of assessment, training, consulting and ongoing support allows them to partner with their clients and create a road map for organizational success. www.thecornerstonegroupinc.com

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/05/03/the_female_advantage/

The premise of the article is that companies with more female leadership in place at the Board and executive level are more profitable. From the article,

Measured as a percent of revenues, profits at Fortune 500 firms that most aggressively promoted women were 34 percent higher by industry means, a 2001 Pepperdine University study showed.

The call for women’s advancement in business has been primarily focused thus far on gender diversity and fairness. Equal representation. Equal pay. Now there is a new perspective to consider. There is a sound business reason to promote women. It is a proven advantage that companies with more female leadership have greater profits.

Why does the correlation exist between higher profits and female leadership representation? There are several theories presented in the article.

• women have a better understanding of the consumer market
• gender diversity leads to more vigorous discussions
• women have a different leadership style
• women are more risk adverse

Though I believe that all of the above factors contribute to the success of high performing companies, I also think that organizations that are sensitive to gender issues and actively support female managers in the pipeline are more  likely to be high performing companies (true meritocracies) to begin with.

As the author states about these companies,

They’re picking the best and the brightest and letting them bloom.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

Why do you think that companies with more female leadership are more profitable?

Please send me your comments.

It’s not easy being a mother. If it were easy, fathers would do it. ~ from the television show The Golden Girls

This post today is to honor all my clients, colleagues, friends, and family who are mothers. Words can barely express my admiration for all the wonderful talented women that I have the good fortune of knowing through business and pleasure.

Everyday, I speak with women who are balancing their roles as mother, wife, and business woman. They accomplish this with elegance and grace. Their daily routine of running a household, running a business, and running around to baseball practice and games, piano lessons, hockey, girl scouts, dance lessons etc. seems effortless. They are on auto pilot most of the time and manage to make it through their busy schedules and keep everyone happy. It is truly amazing to see. How do we as mothers manage to focus on our profession and family and do everything so well?

Of course, we are not perfect though we try so hard to achieve perfection. We expend a lot of energy attempting to keep the many different balls in the air and hope that nothing drops. Most of the time, we are as near to perfection as is humanly possible. Super heroines!

Each role that we take on as women whether it’s motherhood or career or relationship partner and spouse is a really a full time job and we are constantly under pressure (though most of it self-directed) to perform all these roles perfectly (or at least to the best of our abilities). We rarely let any one down.

So let’s take the time today to honor our mothers and also to acknowledge OURSELVES  as mothers and give OURSELVES credit for being the amazing women that we are!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Bonnie

Be aware that everything you do and everything you don’t do or choose not to do is all part of your personal brand. It all communicates your value and character. The way you answer your phone is part of your brand message. Your voice message, the way you respond to emails are all part of your brand so it’s important to be conscious of the way you are communicating to people.

Here are some tips on how to create visibility for yourself to enhance your profile at work:

• Sign up for a special project or committee that has visibility within your company which will introduce you to new colleagues and showcase your skills or teach you new skills.

• Become a SME (subject matter expert). Teach at a community college or an adult education course.

• Start a blog on the subject. Create buzz about you and your brand.

• Write a contributing article/column for your local newspaper or alumni magazine. You will have a track record of your work.

• Sign up to speak at a conference. Volunteer for a panel discussion.

• Be strategic about social media networking sites. Choose the sites that best suit your needs to promote your brand and carefully craft your promotional message and profile online.

• Nurture your network. The best way to market your brand is word of mouth marketing. Find conscious ways to communicate your message to your contacts. What they say about your contributes to the value of your brand.

Marketing your brand requires you to act selfishly to promote yourself and to grow yourself. This is a win-win situation for you and your company. Everything you do to promote your personal brand and grow professionally is gravy for them. When you are learning, growing, building relationships,and delivering great results, it’s good for you and good for the company where you work.

Here are some tips to help you prepare for the best possible interview.

1. Thoroughly research the company and the people who will be interviewing you. During the interview, refer to any pertinent information you learned in order to demonstrate your resourcefulness and interest in the company.
2. Go back and review your strengths and accomplishments. Focus on why you are the best person for this job.
3. Write down how your current boss would describe you and incorporate it into your interview.
4. Emphasize your strengths, but don’t stretch the truth.
5. Acknowledge your weak points if asked and be prepared to stress the positive side that outweighs any perceived weakness.
6. Do NOT just recite your resume. Face to face interviews give you so much more opportunity to convey your passion, drive, energy, personality and enthusiasm for the job.
7. Prepare yourself mentally and emotionally for the interview. Say to yourself, “I am thrilled to be here and I am so excited to tell you about my experiences. You will definitely want to hire me.”
8. Create memorable messages and stories about yourself to use in the conversation. Is what you’re saying about yourself compelling and interesting? If not, go back and add some passion to your message.
9. Practice a mock interview with a friend.
10. Smile!

Need practice with your positive self-talk?

Join the Friday Breakfast Brag Club

starts this Friday, May 1st at 8-8:30 am EDT

or

enroll in the May Group Teleclass

The Power of Positive Self-Talk.

For more information and to register online:

http://womenssuccesscoaching.com/services/group-coaching

There are many techniques that people use to re-frame the negative into positive affirmations and with consistent practice, these methods help us to create the positive life we desire.

Controlling our negative thoughts is not an easy task. One method I suggest is the use of language. When we use positive powerful words, these words can affect our subconscious mind and help to reprogram  our negative beliefs. Word choices such as “I will” instead of “I’ll try” for instance make a powerful statement of intent.

Positive self talk is an important vehicle to building self-esteem and self-confidence. Often we are more comfortable dismissing praise and putting ourselves down.  What do these negative statements do to our self-esteem? Why not practice positive self-talk instead?

Follow this routine for 30 days and I guarantee that you will begin to see the difference in your self-confidence.

1. Begin with journaling. Make daily entries about your accomplishments, big and small.
2. Answer these questions. “What makes me unique?”. “What are my strengths?”  “How have these strengths helped me in the past or in my current job?”
3. Review your journal entries of recent accomplishments to connect with your talent and value.  What can you truly brag about? What do these successes say about you?
4. Create a personal “bragging” statement. Be authentic and positive. Print out the statement and keep it visible so that you can refer to it often. Recite it out loud daily. “This is me.” “This is what makes me special.”

Positive self-talk is an important component to successful self-promotion.

Practice the above mentioned routine daily for 30 days and see the difference it will make in your self-esteem and self-confidence.

May Group Teleclass: The Power of Positive Self-Talk

In this fun and interactive group class series you will:

• Explore your limiting beliefs around positive self-talk. What holds you back?
• Connect with your own value and talent. What makes you unique?
• Practice positive self-talk to build self-esteem and self-confidence. It really works!

Classes will be held consecutive Tuesday evenings 7-8pm EDT starting May 5th.

$125 for three one hour sessions. Workbook included.

Register online: http://womenssuccesscoaching.com/services/group-coaching

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