Practicing What We Preach

By Shannon Bayer

Did you know that Susan Brady, our SVP and Lead Strategist for the Advancing Women Leaders Practice, was recently honored in Profiles in Diversity Journals as one of the annual Women Worth Watching^®? This year’s featured honorees were all nominated by their organizational peers. What’s most interesting about the issue is the personal essay that each of the women executives prepared, acknowledging who and what contributed to their success and influenced their universal attitude of helping other women.

I thought Susan’s essay effectively summarized her philosophy on women leaders. She holds a core belief that women leaders can find more inspiration by being vulnerable and curious instead of pursuing perfection and trying to know everything. Susan also believes, as I do, that while gender bias exists in business, it doesn’t necessarily mean an impediment to success – success only happens when you focus on results.

If you happen to be building or preparing for a career, you might consider the advice that Susan put forth in her essay:

• Know your strengths and desires
• Understand how to negotiate and ask for what you need
• Get comfortable with being agile
• Become comfortable being uncomfortable
• Be aware that by making definite choices, you are choosing not to do something else
• Recognize that it’s acceptable if others are disappointed occasionally
• Be gentle with yourself

What do you think of this advice? Obviously it takes effort to put it all in practice – do you believe it’s achievable?

While we were very pleased to hear about Susan’s honor, we were not at all surprised. Susan has been a key inspiration to all of us at Linkage and is a driving force behind our leading edge Advancing Women Leaders Practice. We certainly value the unique skills, experience and insight that she brings to the practice.