I hate this expression but it truly sums up how I feel. I am exhausted, burned out and ready for this to be OVER and done with. It’s been 11 months of no travel and in my role as Chief Marketing Officer for a travel company, it’s been 11 months of “pivoting” and reforecasting and staying hopeful and optimistic as we swing through ups and downs by state, by country, by border.

And yet, I am one of the very lucky ones. I live in a beautiful place with access to the outdoors right from my front door. Our home is large enough to welcome back my adult children and still have space for everyone to work remotely and live comfortably. We have a small but well equipped home gym that keeps us active on the days when the weather isn’t ideal outside. And we have access to entertainment with numerous channels and streaming sites.

So I practice gratitude for the little things. The joy of having my children at the dinner table every night. The joy of taking a walk together. The joy of playing a fun game together. In short, the joy of being together in the same house for more than a week which hasn’t happened since they graduated from high school, over a decade ago. Some onlookers are highly critical of me for being so happy to have my grown children at home. At the risk of sounding patronizing, this is a very “American” view. I grew up in Europe where adult children rarely leave home until they get married. Multi-gen households are the norm, not the exception. And while I don’t expect my son or daughter to stay here for an extended period, I will not ever be ashamed to have my children home, no matter how old they are. It is a gift that I will treasure as I know, like life itself, this moment of all four of us being together is very short.

I will share that it’s not all roses and daffodils. We have big personalities. We don’t agree on many things, but there is love and respect and learning patience, “the pause”, not to take things personally, and to enjoy the diversity of thought that is so engaging for me. I think about my mother all the time, how she used to call me a card carrying communist with my liberal views when I was in my 20’s, a stereotypical Berkeley grad of the 70’s. Of course, with age my views have changed quite a bit. I call myself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. And now it’s my turn to listen to my children talk about the world, share their political views, their view of what’s important and the future of the planet. And I find it fascinating and stimulating. How they find their information, how they communicate with their peers, how they use the internet with so much agility and far more depth than I have mastered. It’s just such a gift to learn from them.

I am what you would call a natural born leader. It’s in my genes. I have been that person who just steps up and handles whatever has to be done when the time comes. I am not afraid to try new things, stretch beyond my known skill set and take calculated risks. I tend to think BIG and as a result, outperform expectations.  I am lucky to have had some extraordinary role models and supporters who gave me wings and encouraged me to fly. They also were standing there to pick me up when I fell.

Both of my children have inherited this leadership gene from me and my husband and it is such a joy to watch them flourish. I feel so blessed to be able to watch them go and grow.  There are times when it’s just exhausting to be number one, when all I want to do is delegate and be taken care of myself, but the reality is, I enjoy making decisions and paving the way for others whether at work or at home.

I have been so lucky to work with some truly extraordinary talented people in my career and for really terrific brands. I was lucky enough to be part of the C-suite early in my career, despite being a woman, and worked alongside some very mighty men who taught me some great life lessons and encouraged and supported me as a valuable contributor to the team.  Among the many things I’ve learned in my career is that there are always self-promoters who have no qualms about throwing their colleagues under the bus for their own benefit. Years ago one of my colleagues shared this expression: You don’t get taller by stepping on other people. I fell in love with it as it truly represents my views on how we should treat each other in and out of work and I live by it.

What makes working with these immoral souls so challenging is they often don’t reveal themselves until it’s too late. I’ve had a few of these bad experiences over the course of my career and I’ve learned that patience prevails. They may win that day, but eventually, bad behavior is a pattern and there are often multiple victims until the leadership recognizes the bad apple.  The key is not to try to “match” them or descend to their level. At the same time, it’s so so hard not to react when you realize you’ve been a victim of their tactics to undermine your credibility and success.

Whether it’s an outside consultant trying to make a name for herself and ingratiate herself with your CEO, or an internal over-zealous colleague who suffers from lack of recognition, these villains can do a lot of damage to people and companies until they’re uncovered for who they are.

I have never been good at dealing with these people. They are like schoolyard bullies but often more sly and thus invisible until their actions become public. They tend to have lovely smiles on their faces while they’re stabbing you in the back. They are very calculating and push boundaries inch by inch until one day they’ve actually succeeded in pushing a colleague out or hijacking a piece of another person’s area of responsibility. I’ve been lucky enough to work for some really smart CEO’s who see this behavior and cut it off quickly. But others are blinded by the false smile, fake “teamwork” talk track and opportunistic self-promotion. I am currently experiencing this in my workplace and it’s so disappointing. The only good news is this trio of players, an outside consultant and two of my colleagues, have made their intentions so clear that I at least am aware of their true motivations. Whether or not I can steer clear of being a victim of their bad behavior remains to be seen. Navigating among sharks is so exhausting and such a waste of time, but that’s what I am doing right now. Such a shame to be distracted from doing good work  and instead playing defense for my reputation, turf and team. These are the days that I long for those past CEO’s who shut these people down before they ever had any momentum. Wish me luck in navigating the shark-infested waters!! What I do know is that good work always triumphs and I have confidence in myself and my team to shine on!

 

 

Every year we take a family trip over the holidays. This tradition began when our oldest child went off to university and it became clear that the only time we could all count on being together for at least one week was over Christmas. The down side of this of course is that everything is more expensive at Christmas in almost any destination. But searching for another time that would work for all four of us is immensely challenging given four adults and our busy lives and schedules. There are only so many vacation days for working adults and so we have come to the conclusion that despite higher costs, it’s so worth it.

The process of planning is hard as we are all well traveled and have very high expectations for how we want to spend our precious time together. We want to go to new places each year and discover new cultures, new beaches, new food, maybe even new lifelong friends. We are very active as a family and thus need interesting activities mixed with time to relax and recover.  Our best trip ever was to the Galapagos with Celebrity Xpedition, a 90-person cruise ship that took us on two excursions each day to various locations within the Galapagos. It was truly magical and hit all the desires of a perfect vacation: comfortable accommodations, great food, great service, great guides, great destinations and activities, and sharing experiences with others who became lifelong friends. We all talk about that vacation as the benchmark for all others to be compared to.

Other trips have included beaches and jungles in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Windstar cruises in the Caribbean to various islands, Windstar cruise through the Panama Canal and Costa Rica, and a Windstar cruise in Tahiti. We also spent one Xmas in NYC and one in Miami. But of all our trips, it was the Galapagos that we all want to go back to.

We are now working on our 2018 family trip and thinking jungle/beach combination in Belize. We all have our diving certifications now and want to go dive on the world-famous reef.  There are so many choices that need to be narrowed down to determine where we will ultimately go, and time is of the essence as a number of places we’ve already discovered are sold out for the Xmas/New Year’s dates. Whenever I start planning any kind of a trip, I become easily overwhelmed with information overload and just wish I could truly trust a travel agent or tour operator familiar with the destination to help me narrow down the choices. Even the searches for those qualified people are hard as there are so many who present themselves as qualified, but aren’t. I like to find people IN the destination who live there every day and  know all the ins and outs so they can help us select the right choice for our family and avoid staying in a place that just doesn’t work. So far we’ve been very lucky to find super accommodations, great guides and really experience the destination. And here’s where I feel so lucky to have two kids who really contribute to this exploration. They are amazing at finding houses to rent, terrific restaurants and advice from locals.

So wish me luck. I will be back with where we landed once we’re booked.

Update:  We did go to Belize, Placencia, and then up to the Jungle, Maia River Lodge. Fantastic vacation and the diving was great. And now we are working on our holiday trip for 2019 and have decided to go back to Nicaragua. We will return to Playa Colorados and experience something new on Little Corn Island. It’s been a lot of fun pulling it together as a family. My children have been instrumental in finding the right spots and I have been the family member booking all the flights. That is such a chore but we’re done and I am already starting to dream of our days together.

 

We all postpone difficult conversations, mostly out of fear that we will say the wrong thing or the outcome will be different than what we want. So we ponder, and replay it over and over in our heads. I was recently coaching a young woman on my team on how to deal with a personnel issue with the President of the company. She inherited this individual when she took the role as head of marketing for the brand. He has proven to be a challenge for every one of his former bosses, and the issues are always the same. So we talked through the actual issues, but then I offered up some unsolicited advice on setting the tone of the meeting.

1. Recruit allies if you can. Go to a peer who’s been working with the President for a long time and knows the history and the best way to work with him/her. This step helps avoid a pitfall as well as helps build a relationship with one of your peers who has the most influence with the President.
2. Look professional. Dress the part. Look smart with the right clothing choices.
3. Be prepared. Sounds so simple, and so important to success. This means knowing your points, having your data, and practicing your presentation out loud so you can be succinct and fluid.
4. Be calm and monotone. Women in particular need to focus on the monotone, matter of fact voice. No emotion.
5. Sit on your hands or clasp them. Just be sure you are not waving them about.
6. Don’t start out by apologizing, i.e. “I’m sorry to bring this up….” or “You may not like what I am about to say”…and any and all versions of that talk track. Have you ever, ever, ever heard a guy utter those words?
7. Be confident but not aggressive or confrontational or defensive. This is part of the preparation and practice before you have the conversation. If you practice what you’re going to say out loud enough times, it will become automatic and thus you’ll achieve a calm and unemotional presentation of your facts.
8. Listen and do NOT interrupt when he/she responds. You can take notes when they speak in order to be sure you address whatever issue is raised.

Good luck. Follow these simple steps and you are very likely to succeed.

Every year it happens on the second Sunday in the month of May, a Hallmark holiday perhaps, but as a mom, a day I look forward to and hold on to for weeks afterwards. As it’s on this one day a year that everyone has permission, maybe even an obligation, to acknowledge their mothers, the birth mothers and the “adopted” mothers and mentors who make such an important difference in our lives. I was really lucky to have an amazing mother who was intrepid, independent, a positive life force, beautiful inside and out, oozing with style and substance. Had she been born in a different era, she certainly would have been a CEO!  Her closest friends became my second, third and fourth moms, all wonderful engaging fabulous women who, like my birth mother, were smart, beautiful, independent and interesting women. I was so blessed to develop my own relationships as an adult with each of  her closest friends in addition to having her advice and support to fall on for so many years.

And now I am that generation..my mother has been gone more than a decade now and two of her closest friends are also gone, and two remain. I try my best to stay in touch with those two as I truly love them and enjoy their company as well as their stories.  For me, I love that my husband makes such an effort to recognize me in my role as a mother for our two incredible children, and of course, I love that my daughter and my son make a point of sending me a card/an email/ some sort of communication expressing their gratitude and appreciation to me. I have saved every one of their notes and I reread them frequently as there simply is no better joy than knowing that my family believes in me.  We all know that being a parent is hard and can be exhausting. My mom used to say “little kids have little problems; big kids have big problems. You are always a mother regardless of their age.”  So true…as is the adage, the days are long the years are short, when the children are little.  I still remember being so exhausted and yet always so so happy that I was lucky enough to be a mother, let alone a mother with a supportive husband and two truly amazing kids.

I know I am lucky and blessed and so full of gratitude to my husband, daughter and son for all their love and support year round, and thank you Hallmark for creating a day to celebrate all the moms!

Denver, Colorado is a thriving community with a plethora of attractions from the natural beauty of the Rockies to the new trendy bars and restaurants in downtown and Lodo and LoHi, to the many parks, gardens and museums found here. What makes Denver one of the most desirable places to live, work or visit? The WEATHER. Those of you who do not live here only see Denver in the media when it’s snowing. Our secret is that usually within a few hours, that snow melts as the sun comes back and shines it’s sweet light upon us.

Our 320 days of sunshine drives a number of outdoor activities from cycling to running to mountain climbing to golf and yes, even water skiing and sailing. The city boast so many parks and bike paths that it’s nearly impossible to live anywhere without great access to outdoor space. Whether it’s a pick-up volleyball or football game at Washington Park or Frisbee competition at Cheesman Park.