Today is the 25th anniversary of Sleepless in Seattle, and my husband, Gary Foster, was the driving creative force behind the film. Of all the people I’ve learned from in my life, I’ve learned more from him than anyone else about the ability to collaborate, be tactfully assertive, and build a great team in order to realize a common goal and vision. Read his piece on what it took to turn a good script from a then-unknown writer into a…
News quiz: Who is publicly advocating for private investors to balance their investment returns with “the prosperity and security of their fellow citizens”? If you answered BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, the head of one of Wall Street’s flagship firms, you were right. But if you didn’t know, you might be tempted to answer Bernie Sanders or someone from Occupy Wall Street. As head of one of Wall Street’s flagship firms, Larry Fink made more than one headline by focusing his…
Only twice in my life I’ve said to my husband: “I will never have dinner with those people again.” The first time was years ago. Two rising stars in my husband’s industry, a husband and wife team, invited us and two other couples to their house for a dinner party. I was seven months pregnant and still teaching, which made me the odd one out on both counts. They talked shop all night until one terrifying moment over the main…
“Planking is a powerful pose.” This is the sort of thing my yoga teacher proclaims to exhort me to sweat out another minute. Surely there is some power involved here, but who knew it was the same kind of power that you might witness in a persuasive meeting, a TED talk, or a board meeting? I trust my yoga teacher implicitly, and as it turns out, it happens that she knows a thing or two about what it takes to…
An astounding number of managers and business leaders, 67% of them, report being uncomfortable communicating with their employees. That discomfort is about half attributable to the difficulty of delivering tough messages to employees, from feedback to company initiatives. It also includes a fair share of people who find it difficult to communicate even good news to employees. It’s difficult for many bosses to even deliver positive feedback like crediting others with good ideas (16%) or praising employees for their achievements…