I've always been a real fan of women, and not just because I happen to be one. There's just so much to admire and respect about women--and the incredibly diverse talents that women possess are high on the list. There simply isn't anything that women cannot do--when we feel like it. (Being capricious, and getting away with it, is one of the female traits that I particularly admire.) Women can swap roles in a heartbeat to play whatever part they need to. When the rest of the world needs a partner, a warrior, a wife, a leader, a mother, a team player, a negotiator, a student, a handyman, a lover, an artist, a teacher, a caretaker--the same woman can fill all these roles. And she can do it all in the same day. Because of the diversity of roles that we assume by choice or by need, we have tremendous (and fearsome) power over just about anything and anyone--when we choose to exercise it. What's not to admire about women?
I wrote Pink Leadership to give back to all the women who have been there for me and to support them in their desire to "be all that they can be."
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I've always been (and still am) challenged with deciding what to be when I grow up--so I've taken many career paths and enjoyed most of them.
I have been a Strategist for CIBER, Inc., a large consulting firm, for several years now. On the path to my current role, I acquired 20+ years of international experience in leadership development, business strategy, professional management, and leading change in people and in business processes and organizations.
Although Strategist is a great title--and a great job--my understanding of people, processes, and companies comes from my varied careers as mother, founder and owner of five different businesses, executive coach, professional skills trainer, public speaker, teacher, school director, and occasional antiques dealer. (This is a partial list. There's not enough room here to name all of my various career paths!)
I've watched, listened to, taught, and learned from both the best and the worst What I'm bringing to you are lessons, stories, and examples from the people who I've been privileged to know and work with. They are "real people" like you and me; people we relate to and learn the most from.
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Why Be the Horse or the Jockey?
My husband and I attended a Belmont Stakes party in Las Vegas where we expected to watch Big Brown win the race and capture the Triple Crown. But he finished dead last and no one could understand why!
Most of the race-watchers mused about why he lost (and why they had bet so much on him!), but my thoughts went in a very different direction.
I had lots of questions:
Who is the horse and who is the jockey: leader and follower, or follower and leader?
What is the definition of a follower? Someone who is not a leader.or is a follower more complicated than simply "the absence of leadership"?
What good comes from being a follower: what do followers get out of it?
Are leadership and followership roles interchangeable? Is it true that, "To be able to lead well, you must be able to follow well"?
What exactly do followers do? Do we simply find ourselves being followers one day, or should followership be a specific and strategic decision in the way we want to live our lives-something that we call out and work toward?
After all my years of helping to develop leaders, I realized at the Big Brown party that I had not previously recognized the incredible power of followership.
Well, that needed to change! And that's why I wrote Be the Horse or the Jockey.
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