leadership « Pathfinders Enterprise

Tag: leadership

Are You Getting Women in the Door, but Not on the Elevator?

By Suresh Shah
June 19 2018
Comments Off on Are You Getting Women in the Door, but Not on the Elevator?

Tags: Elevator, leadership, Women in the Door

You hear the question all the time:

Why don’t we have more women in leadership positions?

What’s happening?

A quick look inside organizations struggling with the issue of developing women leaders can be instructive.

Why?

In the case of the client with the world-class diversity program, the organization missed two important connections.

the traditional career progression pathways that had worked well for a male-dominated workforce did not appeal to women.
the relatively young female talent they were bringing in the door could not progress quickly; a bulge of late-career employees holding middle management positions was delaying timely advancement. Since the company did not have a rotation program, talented women felt they were stagnating and left.

May be, women within the organization are being sent a message:

you cannot attain your full potential here…

It’s not about me…

By Suresh Shah
March 21 2017
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Tags: leadership, not about me

“It’s Not About Me.

It’s Me & You.”

You’ve been promoted to leadership. Congratulations!

But it’s nothing like your old job, is it? It’s time to flip your script.

We all have mental scripts that tell us how the world works.

Your old script was all about “me” — standing out as an individual. But as a new leader, you need to flip your script from “me” to “we” and help the group you lead succeed.

One of the biggest and most difficult changes for any leader is the one from an individual contributor or professional who does the work, to a manager who must continue to do the work and more importantly, leads others doing their work.

It’s important for a leader’s long-term career to make that transition as quickly and successfully as possible…

Women in Leadership

By Suresh Shah
May 03 2016
Comments Off on Women in Leadership

Tags: Expectation, expected to lead, leadership, Women

Do women have low expectations for us?

Expectation is not the same for men

Linda spends weeks on end negotiating properties and prospecting for land around the country, and every man she meets, asks her

“who do you work for?”

“What company are you representing?”

As she smiles and says, “My Own” with pride as a woman who has always been committed to defying the odds and creating wealth on her own terms.

But the expectation that a woman, is the managing partner and not the secretary continues to be the second question that greets her in every meeting.

Men, on the other hand, do not face the same challenges.

They are expected to lead. Without question, it is an expectation that does not require validation…

A Leadership Checklist

By Suresh Shah
June 02 2015
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Tags: Catastrophe, Checklist, leadership, team

Recovering from Catastrophe

Learn how Chilean President Sebastián Piñera Days before taking office in 2010, Chilean president-elect Sebastián Piñera was focused on his plans to revive the economy.

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“A captain’s mettle is not measured when the waters are calm. It is measured when the seas are stormy and today, without a doubt, we are living through tempestuous times.” — Chilean President Sebastián Piñera Days before taking office in 2010, Chilean president-elect Sebastián Piñera was focused on his plans to revive the economy.
He had committed to restoring the country to a 6 percent annual growth, creating a million jobs, increasing an investment rate of 20 percent of GNP to 28 percent, and reducing poverty…

Words that will transform your life and leadership

By Suresh Shah
May 06 2014
2 Comments »

Tags: leadership, life, responsibility and ownership

Steve leaned back, crossed his arms, and sighed.

“It’s not right! My VP expects me to hit these numbers, but customers want updates, and research is focused on new products and won’t give me the time of day.”

He shook head. “I guess I’ll go down to R&D and tell them they’ve got to change their attitude. This just sucks!”

“How do you think that will work?”

“It won’t! But what else can I do?”

When life isn’t fair

Does it sound familiar? You might have been in such a situation more than once.

You’re working hard, you take your work seriously, and then you’re confronted with obstacles. These are not your fault. You didn’t ask for them, but there they are, staring you in the face, keeping you from moving forward.

Every leader is faced with unfair, difficult circumstances at some point.

Many people will spend years or even their entire life stuck in the quicksand of “not-fair-despair.”

But it’s also the moment where leaders are born…

What do we learn from Obamacare?

By Suresh Shah
December 17 2013
Comments Off on What do we learn from Obamacare?

Tags: CEO, leadership, public accountability, technical failures

CEOs and other leaders, in the corporate world and beyond, should do more than follow the news on the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare).

You should ask what would you do if in President Obama’a shoes. After all, several generic parts of this drama add up to one of the most difficult and frustrating challenges that you as a leader can confront.

Indeed, abstracting from the specifics of the ACA, think of the case set up as follows:

A committed and visionary CEO pursues a strategic initiative that she/he believes is timely, important, urgent and durable;
Significant multi-year efforts are devoted to designing a comprehensive strategy, and to persuade others of its merit and beneficial impact;
Protracted and inevitably-tense negotiations lead to modifications and compromises; and
The end result doesn’t totally correspond to the initial ambition, but it still captures most of the key strategic elements and the visionary essence.

With all this behind the CEO, the time now comes for the much-anticipated roll out. But rather than go smoothly, the execution is – unexpectedly – a debacle…