At last Sunday’s open floor dance, Andrea invited us to focus on opening space around ourselves as we danced rather than on occupying space. I found it a not so subtle shift from my usual mindset, which was to enjoy dancing among and with other people, but also to be cautious about being surrounded by people who are mostly younger and taller than I am. It turned out to be easier to dance with a sense of opening and sharing space than with a sense of needing to defend space.

Whenever I hear or say the word “leadership,” somewhere in my brain an image of Napoleon Bonaparte pops up. It doesn’t stay long, because he is absolutely not a model of leadership I want to follow, but it’s still interesting that somewhere I acquired the notion that he was a notable leader.

I find that clients often have similarly irrelevant or even objectionable images of leadership hidden away in their brains which make it hard for them to recognize their own leadership style.  My goal is to guide them to identify their own potential as leaders

A common complaint I hear from clients is that they don’t have enough time to do their work and that their managers don’t understand why they can’t just buckle down and get it done. Sometimes I hear that the immediate manager has the same problem and has tried to persuade upper management that the department needs more resources, but has been told they will just have to make do with what they have.

New technology has always produced changes in how people work, from the Iron Age to the Industrial Revolution to automated factories. We don’t know yet how GAI will change our lives, but the odds are that we will find ways to adapt as job titles and roles change or disappear. In fact, we’ve been adapting to disruption all along, sometimes easily, sometimes with great difficulty.

Networking: a word that can incite excitement in some and anxiety in others. Even in the age of online networking platforms like LinkedIn, the topic of finding and creating connections can be a nail-biting one.

Many people who work with me yearn to shift gears and switch up their careers or positions, but they’re afraid it will be too difficult or mean a major financial setback. It can certainly feel daunting to set out on a new course.

I hear a lot about “Work/Life Balance,” mostly in the negative: Clients tell me they dream of feeling balanced and whole, they complain about stress and anxiety, and they ask me how to attain and maintain balance.

There is an abundance of opinions on the future of work, ranging from one extreme to the next. The pandemic caused a lot of unpredictability and it should come as no surprise that some people are desperate for definitive answers after experiencing wishy-washy decision-making on multiple levels over the past few years. The pandemic may have taken away our regular social and work routines, but it did allow some space for many people to begin reflecting on what was best for them and their families, with some coming to the conclusion that the old 9-5 wasn’t for them anymore, remote or not.

In my conversations with clients, one word often spoken with a tone of fear or distaste is “politics,” meaning the jockeying for attention and significance that happens in all human groups, from families to nations. In particular, my clients are referring to “office politics” and are seeking advice on how to relate to their supervisors and coworkers. Common concerns are whether to speak up or wait and see, how to ask for guidance or feedback, when to worry that a boss is incompetent or hostile.

“I don’t write well.” “I’m not detail-oriented enough.” “I don’t really understand strategic planning/accounting/marketing.”
When I was first working in career development, I was startled by how often people apologized about their experience, their skills, their education.

We live in terrifying times, for many of us the most terrifying in our lives. Climate change is accelerating, we don’t know when the global pandemic will end, political grandstanding has almost paralyzed our government, and there’s a war in Europe that reminds us how many nuclear weapons are still poised for use.

I was in first grade when I lined up with most of the children in my school as part of mass testing of Jonas Salk’s new polio vaccine. My parents had explained the big word “placebo” to me, meaning that I would be getting a shot but it might not be the real vaccine.

I once had a client who had always dreamed of being a veterinary technician. She had pursued the schooling, the hours of practical experience, the necessary certification, and she had achieved her dream. As often happens, however, after a number of years the dream had faded.

We expect summer fog in San Francisco, but this year has been particularly foggy. It’s disorienting to see no landmarks, to have a nearby street or the entire Bay invisible in the mist. Of course, if one keeps going, the streets and hills do come into view. You find your bearings, choose your direction, and move forward.

When the San Francisco Bay Area shut down in mid-March of 2020, I was almost relieved. The previous few weeks had involved way too many unaccustomed choices: Should we be eating in a restaurant? How close should we get to other people in the grocery store? Were we really going to that concert, or was it going to be cancelled?