This year’s word

Kathryn Crawford Saxer A Little Kindness

“I choose a single word every year,” a beloved coaching client told me. “Like a guiding principle for the year.” I looked at her in surprise. “I do that, too,” I said. (Apparently, lots of people do this.) “What’s your word this year?” “Connect,” she said. “I want to focus this year on connecting with friends and building community.” I hadn’t seen her in a while, and she was updating me on her extreme mountain climbing adventures around the world. This involved actually …

The quaver

Kathryn Crawford Saxer Career Management

A beloved coaching client told me she is nervous and awkward talking in groups. She hates presenting. She’s a senior manager at a large corporation. She’s ambitious and wants to move up in her organization. She has many years of presenting ahead of her. She needs to figure this out. “I was working on a deck with my vice president recently,” she told me. “He asked me whether I wanted to present it to the group. I’d had a hard …

Not qualified. Really?

Kathryn Crawford Saxer Career Management

A beloved client was considering a move. She had seen a VP role she was interested in. “But I’m not qualified,” this senior director said. “I haven’t done ________,” and she named some technical skill. So I told her a story. I had a client — a director at a large health-care organization — whose boss checks Google when he doesn’t know how to do something. He leads a large organization, he’s renowned as an expert authority and, yes, he’s …

Impostor syndrome

Kathryn Crawford Saxer Career Management

Impostor Syndrome is a common theme in my office. There’s no “cure,” but there’s no reason for it to hold you back. Here’s my Seattle Times column: The painfully funny thing about impostor syndrome. The Seattle Times, March 5, 2018 “I’m worried that I’m no good without my team,” a senior director told me. She was transitioning to a new role in a new organization, leaving behind the team she had built and developed over several years — a team that …