As I focus more of my coaching and consulting work on helping women achieve their BIG dreams and visions, I've realized that the essential ingredients to this work are helping people understand with absolute, unabashed clarity what their dream is, distill it down to the "right" essence, then birth it...

As a leadership developer and trainer of professional women, I've spoken with hundreds of HR and senior executive leaders the past 10 years about women, growth, and paving the way for women's ascension to leadership. What remains so disappointing and, in fact, shocking, is that despite the irrefutable...

As a women's career and leadership coach, I work with hundreds of women each year helping them reclaim the direction of their lives and work, and find new ways to step up to their highest potential and most compelling visions. Usually, this work involves supporting my clients in doing something...

In honor of the exciting new year upon us, I've been thinking of my many clients this year -- my wonderful, reluctant, often overwhelmed but always resilient clients who've made enormous positive change in their lives and careers this year. It's been a heartwarming experience to watch their lives unfolding...

New Year's Resolutions are promises we make to ourselves about a future vision we wish to achieve, but more often than not, we lack the strategy, commitment, focus and accountability to make them a reality. An Anthony Robbins coach once said to me, "I don't care what my...

A while ago, I met a new colleague who is a renowned energy healer and muscular therapist in my area. We chatted about everything under the sun and moon, and also explored the commonly-held view that "money is a distraction from our soul's work." This view -- that money and...

Empowerment -- the act of investing oneself with more authority and control over one's path -- is a vitally important process that I teach and explore every day as a career transformation coach. I've personally witnessed the transformative effect it can have when an individual takes control of...

Last week, I had the great pleasure of speaking with Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke of "I Just Work Here," a workplace column that focuses on leading career issues and trends. We talked about numerous questions he's received recently around "How do I know if my career is...

As someone who works with thousands of professional women each year to transform their careers, I've been asked almost every question you can think of about professional life. I've also observed over these past nine years what holds women back most from having "knock-your-socks-off" success and fulfillment in...

I was speaking today with my friend Mary Lou Quinlan about the hateful responses I've received to some of my Forbes and Huffington Post pieces in the past year. Most often these furious responses come from readers of large websites such as

Last month, I had the deep pleasure of speaking with award-winning women's marketing expert and now playwright, author and actor Mary Lou Quinlan about her new book, play and programs called The God Box Project. I was blessed too to have a personal preview of the...

A significant number of my awesome coaching and consulting colleagues and friends across the country have shared with me in the past year that they've hired outside marketing, branding or business development help with disappointing (or disastrous) results. Despite finding "experts" who seem to have good reputations and produce solid...

Speaking with people every day who are in careers or jobs they dislike intensely, I've asked myself, "How did we get here? How has it happened that so many thousands of people are angry, despairing and disgruntled about what they do for a living?"

Clearly, there are many factors...

In my career and executive coaching, I work with hundreds of women each year going through major transitions. Recently, I was speaking with a fascinating client of mine -- let's call her "Carol" -- who shared with me her views about midlife BEFORE she had arrived there, and...

As a women's work-life expert and career coach, I work with hundreds of professionals each year, giving me a birds-eye view into what contributes to career and work-life misery. And as a Forbes and Huffington Post blogger on career issues and trends, the comments I receive...

As I deliver my coaching and professional development programs to women around the country, I continue to observe a fascinating phenomenon: an enormously large number of working women are in emotional pain about their lives and careers, but most will only make change when the pain...

I work with scores of top career professionals who've achieved truly great things in their careers. But more often than not, these same high achievers demonstrate one key trait that wreaks havoc on their lives and work -- their need to be perfect.

"Perfectionistic overfunctioners" as I call them, do...

I've been watching my clients -- and myself -- these past two years around the experience of charging fees, asking for payment, suggesting folks re-enroll in their programs, etc., and here's what I've found ...

Very few people like asking for money, and no one finds it easy -- we...

As a career and executive coach dedicated to the advancement of women, it's not often these days that I'm surprised by women's behavior. I know women -- especially those in midlife -- quite well, or so I thought. But I've been rocked recently by a finding that's emerging...