Category: Office Hours
Office Hours: How to Self-Promote Without Feeling Like a Show-off
Talking yourself up when it’s expected, say, during a job interview, is one thing. But doing it during a team meeting or one-on-one with your boss can feel silly, phony, even slimy. As a result, many women don’t do it—and hold back their careers.
So how do you take credit for your work and feel authentic to yourself? Here, three executive women offer their advice: Read More
Office Hours: How to Own Up to a Mistake at Work
Admitting to a work screw-up is like knowing CPR. You want to be good at it, but not because you’ve had a lot of real-life practice. It’s also like CPR in the sense that the slower you are to act, the worse the outcome is likely to be.
To help you know what to do on the spot, we asked two senior executives—both have seen and heard it all—for their advice on the best way to own up to a mistake. Read More
Office Hours: What to Do When You Get a New Boss
Changes in management can be unsettling, whether they’re part of a major restructuring or due to just one person’s departure. We asked Suzanne Quigley, director of community and corporate responsibility at QVC and PA Conference for Women board member, for her advice on what to do when you get a new boss. Read More
3 Things You Need to Know About Failure
If the thought of your biggest mistakes or failures makes you want to throw up, you’re certainly not alone. That’s how school teacher Jessica Lahey still feels when talking about the first draft of her New York Times best-selling book.
“My editor said it was unpublishable and wanted to bring in a ghost writer,” says Lahey, who wangled a second chance, and after a lot of hard work, redeemed herself—and her writing. Read More
Office Hours: Candid Answers to Your Pressing Career Questions
Two of the most accomplished executives you’ll ever meet, Marian Heard and Margaret McKenna aren’t just founts of business and management wisdom. As female trailblazers who were often the only woman in the room, they are also experts at handling workplace-culture and gender-bias issues. Over the years they’ve shared their experience and advice as mentors to women, and at the most recent Conferences, they fielded questions from attendees in breakout sessions that really got people buzzing.
What attendees especially appreciated were the candor as well as the humor of Heard, former president and CEO of United Way of Massachusetts Bay and CEO of United Ways of New England, and McKenna, former president of Walmart Foundation and president emeritus of Lesley University.Listen for yourself to the podcasts from Philadelphia, Austin and Boston, or read a sampling of their answers, edited for clarity and brevity, below. Afterward, please submit your burning career questions to story@conferenceforwomen.org. We’ll be publishing answers from Heard, McKenna and other women leaders in future newsletters. Read More