Top athletes and prominent politicians do not drop out. When they do, it’s big news. That’s because stepping back can be seen as a sign of weakness that leaders must avoid at all costs—a sign that they’ve failed. But knowing when and how to step back is actually a sign of maturity and effective leadership. It’s a leadership skill that we need to see modeled more frequently. Here are three lessons we can learn from Biles and Biden...

Last Friday night at bedtime, I was reading a chapter book about Eva the owl with my seven year old daughter, Avery. Eva’s owl class was having a show and tell about their hobbies, and each student brought in something to share about what they like to do for fun. After all the owls shared, they talked about their parents’ hobbies. But while other kids could easily say what their parent enjoyed doing, Eva wasn’t quite so sure.

I turned to Avery before flipping the page and asked: “What do you think Daddy and my hobbies are?”

She thought for a quiet moment and then said: “Ummm…lying down and working??”

That hit me in the gut. This is why…

Late last summer, I received one of the most lovely emails I've ever gotten—and it was from someone I didn't even know. Jessica didn't expect a reply. But she wrote so wholeheartedly that I knew I needed to meet her. Now, I'm so proud and excited to introduce you to her as the newest member of the Penney Leadership team. That's right—Penney Leadership is shifting from a "me" to a "we"—a coaching practice with two Certified Professional Coaches.

What's your unique leadership style?

There are hundreds of (often expensive) assessments available to “discover” your leadership style. But my approach is built on the belief that YOU are the expert on you.

I believe that taking the time to capture how you uniquely show up as a leader should be a generative process.

I heard somewhere that there is an equation for confidence:

Confidence = Time + Experience

Like Whyte's piece of paper metaphor, there is no shortcut or blast to get there—instead, it's about steadily building the work, one piece of paper at a time, until one day you look and it's a solid stack with heft and weight.
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I can point to it now and say: I've built a track record with my audience, but I've also built a track record with myself.
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Here's what I've realized about professional confidence:
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​1) There is an element missing from the equation.
​I propose a change:

Confidence = (Time + Experience) + Permission

Today I'm spilling on why I'm obsessed with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.

A lot of it boils down to this: I was inspired by her at first, but once she fell from grace, I realized there was a lot to learn from her and similar "unicorn leaders" like Adam Neumann of WeWork.

I believe there is an important lesson to be learned about visionary leadership here:

Visionary leaders invite us into a picture of possibility—what the future could be if we work together to make it real. Visionary leadership is literally about something that doesn't yet exist. It's essential to any cause worth fighting for—a sense of what we're moving towards that is inspirational and motivating.

So where is the line between welcoming others into a vision for the future and outright fraud?

As we reflect on Dr. King's legacy today, I'm thinking about his role as a visionary leader.

It reminds me of a simple but powerful concept called Creative Tension, which was formed by Peter Senge, a professor of organizational learning at MIT's Sloan School of Management.

One of my clients is in the process of earning her graduate degree in organizational leadership and learning.

She’s taking a course this summer on leadership development, and she shared with me that the course materials included a list of 45 must-have core skills for leaders. She wondered about my take on the topic.

My eyes bugged out of my head for a second.

I definitely have a take: 45 core skills for leaders is an impossible standard. It sets all leaders up for failure. It’s unwieldy and overwhelming. And it puts leadership in a place where it will always be just out of reach.

My own leadership philosophy took a while to crystallize, but it's quite simple…

Resource Friday 5/14/21…

We are living in a time when careers aren't just work—they are an opportunity for self-expression.

We want more from our jobs than a steady paycheck and stability; we're looking for meaning, an opportunity to make a difference.

This might sound like the type of statement that would make the higher ups start rolling their eyes and lament about those darn high-maintenance millennials. But I believe that it's not just a millennial trait. Our larger American work culture is changing, and the age of purpose is a part of that shift...

When you develop your ability to “manage up,” you become a strategic leader—no matter your job title or where you sit in an organization.

Here’s the problem: most people have a vague understanding of what it means and why it's important.

When you manage up, you lead through influence—to impact decisions made by those with formal authority.

And in the future—when you have a position with formal authority—you won't be someone who just tells people what to do, you'll be someone that people want to follow.

Like so many leaders this year, Alex has been through the wringer. He’s the director of a small museum in northern Vermont, and even before the COVID crisis led to the closures of cultural heritage organizations, he was charged with inspiring a small team to do more with less.

When he joined a Leadership Lab session back in March, he shared some of the challenges he was facing, as well as how pandemic added layer upon layer of complexity and urgency to an already stretched role. Through his little Zoom box on the screen, I could see the heaviness of this charge weighing on his shoulders.

In that session, Alex realized: “I was ignoring the classic signs of burnout. I knew that my exhaustion ran deeper than simply shifting my schedule or delegating a project. I needed to look at my own priorities, to set new boundaries, and to redefine my purpose in order to serve my career and my community.”

As mission-driven leaders, we are taught to be martyrs to the mission—to put ourselves last, to give and give and give. But what happens when you give everything you have to the cause? You are all used up.

If we shift how we relate to our work, we can show up with energy that naturally refuels itself. We can cultivate sustainable leadership practices.

Everyone has a mean voice in their head—a voice that tells you things like:
- You're not ready—don't try.
- You'll embarrass yourself and be a complete failure.
- Who do you think you are?
- No one will care what you have to say.

At first glance, it may appear that this voice—sometimes referred to as the inner critic or gremlin—is a jerk trying to keep you down. But actually, your gremlin is just misunderstood.

He or she showed up in your head sometime when you were young. Maybe you read a poem to the class and someone laughed at you, or you got new glasses that you thought were snazzy but the other kids teased you about. And this voice appeared to protect you, telling you to play it small—stay safe, don't stand out, don't take chances, don't put yourself out there—at every turn…

In these first months of 2019, I'm adding a new piece to my work: the role of Interim Executive Director of Youth in Action, a youth development nonprofit in Providence.

I'm excited—taking the helm of an organization is a new challenge for me, and the specific needs of an interim role feel suited to my skillset.

Between this new role, developing Penney Leadership, working with coaching and consulting clients, board service, motherhood, homeownership, and all of my other roles—I have a lot of responsibilities.

That's what it is to be a leader, right? Over the years of growing as a professional, climbing the ladder through successive job titles and taking on increasingly more and more responsibilities.

Early in my career, I looked at the leaders around me and wondered how they could juggle so much responsibility (and why would they want to?). 

I've learned that there's a whole different way of approaching responsibility and leadership—a mindset that's not anxious and draining but instead sustainable and whole. 

Here's the secret…

A friend of mine recently started a nursing job at a new hospital. As part of the standard orientation plan, she was assigned a preceptor to show her the ropes and acclimate her to the hospital's policies.

But instead of being a supportive and encouraging leader, the trainer was constantly looming over my friend's shoulder, speaking over her during report-outs, and making unnecessary stylistic corrections to her written reports.

Instead of feeling confident and at home at the new hospital, my friend—an experienced and wonderful nurse—felt distrusted, incompetent, and frustrated. After just two shifts, she was going out of her mind. And the training period was six weeks long!

Each time I saw her, she was pulling her hair out, venting, and counting down the days. As we sipped gin and tonics on the porch after one particularly rough shift, I asked her:

What if, instead of seeing this as a frustrating and demoralizing situation, there was another way of looking at it?

A client asked me in our session this week: "How do I become a manager? Do I find workshops and trainings that teach me about the skills, or do I get promoted and then start learning how to be a leader? It's a chicken and egg thing, I think."

My client was visualizing herself as the egg, just starting out. But she had just gotten finished telling me that she had supervised interns in the past, served as the project lead on her team, and was given the responsibility of overseeing a relationship with an outside consultant. She also chaired a national professional committee! This gal was no egg.

In today's working world, instability is the norm. Gone are the days of wrapping your identity and your life around one company and one career path. Phrases like "the gig economy" and "job-hopping" are part of our vernacular, and changing not just jobs but careers every four or so years is common.

Some would say that this is disorienting and overwhelming. I say it is an opportunity to define and lead our own career paths in new and exciting ways. But we need to be prepared.