Melanie Parish, MCC

As a longtime business coach, I have been through downturns and recessions. The heart and soul of the business owner always emerge again. Wherever you are and whatever you are grappling with, I know it is hard and I believe in your ability to figure out the next step. Don’t forget that you are resilient and you can do this. Go experiment!... Read More

Everyone is already experimenting with the global pandemic right now. Many people are trying new things as they respond to working at home and having kids home. Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, is single parenting alone at home while his wife is quarantined in another part of their residence. He is experimenting with so many new things, as are all of us. What is important is to see them as experiments and to collect data to decide what is working and what is not. This helps to minimize overwhelm and helps us improve over time. Every time we try something new as leaders, we are experimenting. We need to remember our experiments are not permanent. We can collect data and make a decision about how our next experiment needs to be different.... Read More

Having an experimental mindset helps leaders and teams open a variety of possibilities and a free flow of ideas. Seeing the things you try as experiments orients you to collect data and evaluate whether the experiments or things you try are working or not. Sometimes a team will luck into things that work but many times they don’t. When things don’t go as hoped, we fail. An old friend of mine says, “Education is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.” And education can feel like a consolation prize in the race to innovate. It isn’t about whether it feels bad to fail (it does), but how to emerge resilient and ready to experiment again. To fail better, experiments need to be safe-to-fail, small enough to iterate often, and there needs to be a plan in place for data collection and decisions about the next steps.... Read More

Being a leader is lonely work. As an executive coach, I hear it from new leaders often—especially if they are promoted from within. They say, “I was doing a good job as an individual contributor, but now I’m not sure what I should be doing after my promotion. I feel really alone.” They find themselves in a leadership role without much guidance and they aren’t sure how they can “skill up.” Every leader has to find their own way of doing the work of leadership. They have had a variety of bosses in their career but they aren’t sure who to emulate, and they may feel like they aren’t providing any real value in the organization anymore. Some get sucked into a spiral of trying to do more and more work while missing the real work of leading.... Read More

Being a leader is lonely work. As an executive coach, I hear it from new leaders often—especially if they are promoted from within. They say, “I was doing a good job as an individual contributor, but now I’m not sure what I should be doing after my promotion. I feel really alone.” They find themselves in a leadership role without much guidance and they aren’t sure how they can “skill up.” Every leader has to find their own way of doing the work of leadership. They have had a variety of bosses in their career but they aren’t sure who to emulate, and they may feel like they aren’t providing any real value in the organization any more. Some get sucked into a spiral of trying to do more and more work, while missing the real work of leading.... Read More

These are crazy times we are living in. As a leader, it can be hard to find your feet and to feel confident in your path. You may feel inadequate, unsure and out of your depth. That is to be expected. This is leadership like we have never seen before.... Read More

Being a leader is lonely work, none more so than today. As an executive coach, I hear it from leaders often. They say, “I was doing a good job as an individual contributor, but now I’m not sure what I should be doing after my promotion. I feel really alone.” They find themselves in a leadership role, running a remote company, isolated from their team, without much guidance and they aren’t sure how they can “skill up.” Every leader has to find their own way of doing the work of leadership. They have had a variety of bosses in their career but they aren’t sure who to emulate, and they may feel like they aren’t providing any real value in the organization any more. Some get sucked into a spiral of trying to do more and more work, while missing the real work of leading. ... Read More

Being a leader is lonely work. As an executive coach, I hear it from new leaders often—especially if they are promoted from within. They say, “I was doing a good job as an individual contributor, but now I’m not sure what I should be doing after my promotion. I feel really alone.” They find themselves in a leadership role without much guidance and they aren’t sure how they can “skill up.” Every leader has to find their own way of doing the work of leadership. They have had a variety of bosses in their career but they aren’t sure who to emulate, and they may feel like they aren’t providing any real value in the organization anymore. Some get sucked into a spiral of trying to do more and more work while missing the real work of leading.... Read More

Being a leader is lonely work. As an executive coach, I hear it from new leaders often, especially those who were promoted from within. They’ll tell me, “I was doing a good job as an individual contributor, but I’m not sure what I should be doing now that I’m a leader. I feel really alone.” They find themselves in leadership roles without much guidance, and they don’t know how to skill up to effectively fulfill their new responsibilities.... Read More