Posts By Kathleen Schafer

The Courage to Trust

Courage: the ability to do something that frightens one. Trust: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, and strength of someone or something. One need only turn on the news for a few moments to be overwhelmed with the human drama playing out in the world right now. Revolutionary movements attempting to topple dictatorships, naturalRead… Read more »

Facing the Truth

During the past few weeks, I have found it increasingly difficult to watch, listen to or read the news. While the budget battles continue, unemployment, health care and education are debated, and crisis in the Middle East continued, I took a moment to reflect on my reluctance to consume the litany of current events. TheRead… Read more »

Achieving Goals Only Comes From Working with Others

So many people think about leadership as a solitary effort that we often loose sight of the importance and need for the engagement of a variety of people in the leadership process. Leadership implies relationship by denoting the presence of both leader and follower. While these terms have become pejorative, the essence behind the conceptRead… Read more »

The Most Difficult Person to Get to Know

Each day we come into contact with many different people. We start with those with whom we live and before too many hours of the day have passed we have crossed paths with friends, co-workers, store clerks, etc. These people may or may not be regular fixtures and regardless of their status in our life—howRead… Read more »

Everyone Deserves to Have Their Needs Met

Everyday I see it with my clients, colleagues, friends and in myself—there is “something” in our lives that we want, that we are not getting and it doesn’t feel good. It always has to do with a relationship, it may be a boss that doesn’t pay us what we feel we deserve, it may beRead… Read more »

What Obesity Tells Us About Our Leadership and Our Lives

With First Lady Michelle Obama’s spotlight honed on the issues of childhood obesity, access to healthy food choices and exercise as an issue of “national security,” perhaps we should ask why this continues to be an issue plaguing Americans. Not only is the United States home to the greatest number of obese people, the secondRead… Read more »

Looking Like the Leader You Are

Working with all types of leadersfor the past 20 years, I find that certain leadership lessons are timeless. How to effectively present oneself as a leader is a question I am asked repeatedly. As time marches on, some of the nuisances may shift and the fundamentals of looking professional remain the same. No one canRead… Read more »

Our Choices Shape The World

When discussing leadership, I am passionate about creating a robust and complete definition that allows everyone to lead, anytime, anywhere. In other words, leadership is about the choice to live the best of one’s talents and abilities and to put them to use in the world. Implicit in this definition is our responsibility to oneRead… Read more »

Who Wants a Leadership Coach?

In a conversation with a colleague recently, we discussed the difference between needing and wanting. Needs are those things that are essential and important and, in truth, our needs are quite simple—food, shelter, water. With those basics met, we have everything we “need” to survive. Wants, on the other hand, are desires or wishes forRead… Read more »