We have all heard it a thousand times: “take the emotion out of it.” We have heard it from our bosses, our friends, and certainly from our financial advisors.

Yet as far as investments go, analysts now give “conviction” ratings along with their buy and sell ratings. What’s with that? If conviction doesn’t imply an emotion – surety or confidence – what does it imply? Think about it: is confidence a feeling or a thought? It is a feeling, right? It may be based on thought, but when it emerges, it is a feeling – something we experience physically, like all feelings.

The fact of the decision-making matter is that no one, no matter what he or she claims, can make any sort of decision without emotion. There is no disputing the research on this matter. A top game theorist and neuroeconomist said, “it is not enough to know what should be done, one must also feel it.”

In Defense of Emotion

The ostensible wisdom of removing emotion arises out of mistaking a feeling for an automatic action. Clearly they aren’t identical psychological events. It is entirely possible to feel something, to analyze it and choose an action after parsing the meaning of the emotion.

In fact, when it comes to optimizing your own psychology around any risk decision – market, job or life – this welcoming of the feelings, versus attempting to set them aside, turns out to be a particularly useful strategy.

With anything uncertain, our brains search for context, and a large share of that context is the pre-existing internal one – better known as our beliefs and emotions. Harry Markowitz, the father of asset allocation, said step one is knowing what you believe. (Again, a feeling of confidence is part of a belief, is it not?) Step two is the allocation. He reiterated many times that his prize-winning paper started with step two!

In practicality, be on the lookout for two ends of the fear spectrum: The fear of being wrong or losing money and the fear of missing out or what really equates to the desire to avoid regret in the future. Pay particular attention to the fear of being wrong – now or in the future – as, first, there will always be some fear and second, beneath the superficial experience you can find a part of your psyche that is fractal, and therefore typically irrelevant to the decision at hand. It is the part where the feelings in your memories get projected on what you anticipate will happen in the future. Freud called it transference, but today the neuroscience of emotion and memory is revealing how the patterns that began early in life are infused into our perceptions in totally unrelated questions later in life.

When our brains search for context, some context is external, but most is internal. Research shows that 95% of what goes on in our heads happens below our awareness level. The trick to making better decisions involves bringing as much of that 95% as possible to the conscious and analyzable level. In fact, you can go a step further, by getting systematic about analyzing the reasons for your emotions in any risk decision and then walking away before making a decision. Give the question back to your unconscious and allow the answer to come to you – even with a stock investment.

Neuroeconomics of Women

As is said in neuroeconomics, “complex decisions are best made non-deliberately,” and the aforementioned itemizes the series of steps for doing that. In fact, with investment decisions, this strategy logically leads to your brain tapping into “theory of mind” or the ability to predict others’ behavior. No one stops to think about it, but this is the purest question of investing – predicting that others are going to value something at a higher price in the future than they value it now.

And again, new research shows that investors or traders who are tapping into their people-reading skills are better at predicting markets.

The science on whether women are technically better at theory of mind than men has not actually been established, but it stands to reason from other things we know about women (their tendency to collaborate for example) that women make a deliberate attempt to solicit others’ perceptions. Thus, one can logically infer that as our unconsciousness’ work on questions, we interject some data about what to expect from others.

The final question then becomes how you tell the difference between feelings that are intuitive – or what is really unconscious pattern recognition – and ones that are impulsive or driven by the fractal patterns of self-perception and expectation created early in life. The easiest way is to look at the urgency. The events or data that make us want to react immediately are probably impulsive. The much more serene feelings of “just knowing” are more likely to be intuitive.  The two can also be merged together, but taking the “emotions as data” and proceeding through the analytics of them untangles that problem.

It takes practice to successfully get the hang of using this qualitative approach to risk decision-making. It isn’t the curriculum of an MBA. It is however, the missing ingredient in effective risk-management – for your own portfolio or for the ones you manage for others.

More and more corporate boards are seeking to diversify their ranks. Yet, in the US only 15.7% of board seats are held by women. The data published by Catalyst, shows companies with three or more women board directors in four of five years outperformed companies with zero women board directors ― by 84% return on sales, 60% return on invested capital, and 46% return on equity.

And corporate boards are one of the best part-time jobs around. Median pay in 2010 was $212,500, up a projected +10% in 2011. That is a pretty good hourly salary for an average of 4.3 hours of work per week according to a survey by NACD.  In addition to a great salary, 96% of board members according to a survey by WCD [PDF] are satisfied with their job. Great salary. Short hours. Great job satisfaction. Does this sound like a job you would like to have?

Here’s the challenge. Many women don’t understand the steps to take early in their careers to best position and prepare themselves to get on boards and miss the boat. Another challenge according to a Heidrick & Struggles 2011 Survey done with the Women Corp Directors group, is that it takes women 6 months longer than men (an average of 2.3 yrs vs. 1.7 yrs) to get on a Board. According to the research [PDF], women feel that the primary reasons why there are fewer women on boards is because of the closed networks that decide who gets on what boards. Men on the other hand believe that fewer women on boards is attributable to the fact that there are fewer women in executive roles to choose from.

Here are 5 practical steps to take to increase your chances of getting on a public company board.

1. Excel at What You Do. Get great experience where you are in your corporate career. Ensure that you have business and financial decision-making experience. Getting P&L responsibility is critical. Boards also look for people who have strong emotional intelligence and can work well with others. According to Mary Madden, Executive Director of WCD and NACD in Atlanta, if you happen to be in a Senior Executive position in a corporation, make sure you understand what restrictions may exist related to you being on a corporate board. On the positive side, it is a huge advantage to have your company’s CEO support your candidacy within his or her networks (see point #4 below).

2. Develop A Clear Articulation of Your Brand/Value Proposition. Start with getting clarity on why you would like to be on a corporate board and what kind of corporate board you want to be on. What is your unique value proposition or personal brand for a prospective board? Why should a board hire you? What unique skill sets and strengths, experiences do you bring? Create a Board resume that highlights your experiences, strengths and skill sets.

3. Get some Non-Profit Board Experience. According to Carol Tomei, CFO of the Home Depot, who sits on the Boards of UPS and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, non-profit boards are an excellent way to start getting Board experience. Make sure that these boards are not rubber-stamp boards but have tough issues to address, where you will learn board governance. If you’re in a large organization, connect with the community relations person and get their advice on a good non-profit board to be on. Make sure you are passionate about the cause, as it requires discretionary time for which you are not getting paid. According to Donna James, CEO of Lardon Associates, being on the board of a powerful non-profit is what gave her exposure to the people and relationships that would eventually result in getting her on the board of the Limited Brands. She also sits on the Boards of Time Warner Cable and Coca Cola Enterprises.

Another option to get experience is to start with smaller company or start-up boards. They often do not pay or pay a whole lot less but you get a feel for the issues and learn to have a voice at the table, learning the difference between being a leader running a company and being on the board of one.

Once on a board, make sure you contribute. According to Martha Brooks who is on the boards of Harley Davidson and Bombardier, your contributions will get noticed and will allow you to be known for other possible Board opportunities.

4. Build a Powerful Network of Relationships. Relationships count. Who to build relationships with? People who are on boards themselves. Connect with recruiters who do Board searches.  Make sure you have your Board pitch and resume ready as you connect with people. You can join organizations such as the NACD to connect with others who are already on boards.

5. Get Educated/Trained on Governance Issues. Some of the major universities have Directors’ colleges. The NACD has chapters and programs across the US some of which are open to non-Directors. The WCD also has programs that are available.

I hope this has been thought-provoking for you to create an action plan for yourself. I welcome connecting with you to help you create a powerful action plan to get on a corporate board.

Henna Inam is a CEO Coach focused helping women become transformational leaders. A Wharton MBA, and former C-Suite executive with Novartis and P&G, her passion is to engage, empower, and energize women leaders to transform themselves and their businesses. Sign up for her blog at www.transformleaders.tv.

Have you often wondered why so many are updating, posting, reading and retweeting?  It could be a full time job if you think about all the information created daily.  For some it is – and for some of us it is a way to stay aware of the trends, reports, and news worthy details while highlighting our area of expertise.

Is there a way to leverage what you read to enhance your professional brand?

Many women, already over committed, initially see social media as a waste of time, and let’s face it, do we really need to be posting our whereabouts and food consumption habits? I agree – I am sure many are not really interested in my every move but there are many interested in a slice of my thoughts and it just so happens it is the same slice that provides me many of my career opportunities.

I stumbled across this easy, yet effective, way to keep my knowledge and expertise front and center.  Here’s how I did it.

Building Expertise

Previously, I sporadically posted events of social media sites as a way to highlight activities and encourage others to attend.  One day just about a year ago, I aspired to move into a cloud computing role.  I was unsure if I could land this highly desired role in my current company or if I would have to move outside my company but either way I realized that I must learn as much as I can about the topic to surpass my peers.

On a mission, I created a few Google Alerts and CompTIA SmartBrief requests and day after day I would read the latest cloud computing information.  After a few months, I had a solid foundation of knowledge and started to have some opinions about the materials and curious what others thought.  I started posting the related articles on Linkedin with my comments and questions.

Day after day, I would read and post at least one article that reposted on my Twitter account.  In just three months, I was being contacted from around the world for various reasons, all surrounding my cloud computing postings.  I landed a related job at my current employer, asked to be on a few industry focused groups and now travel throughout America and Canada speaking to IT executives on their cloud computing goals.

My network is stronger than ever and many come to me when looking for advice, resources and connections.  I did not realize how powerful a social network could be now and in the future as I move through my career trajectory.

I should mention that the posting on the social media sites were not my only activities, I had to champion myself to the right people within my company while making a habit of posting required me to read every day which directly impacted my level of knowledge and eventually a level of expertise that came in very handy during related conversations and eventually interviews.

In addition to these activities a few years earlier, I also started a Tech Savvy Women’s group and Blog for Working Women searching for a common voice, these are other initiatives that did not initially start off as social media activities but over the years social media has become a crucial piece to group communications.

Set Goals

I am a big believer in going where people already go and finding a way to make your presence known with elegance, style and purpose.

I find Linkedin a business savvy site and easy site to start and then you can branch to other social media sites and connect them so when you post to one it populates others.  For example, 140 characters of my Linkedin post can also be viewed on Twitter.   (This assumes your profile is active and current.)

Start with an initial goal of just one post a week; find something relevant and interesting to read and then post with a comment, suggestion or excerpt from the piece. Then you can eventually add a few groups to your network to follow their posting and then potentially connect a few people that may benefit one another.  There are many ways to leverage your existing connections while benefiting them through the process.

It is possible to leverage social media as one of the tools to advance your career.  Like any tool, it requires some form of training and some level of commitment.  So for every woman who thinks they do not have enough time to add another level of commitment to their already over-committed schedule, think of this as an investment in your knowledge with potential bonuses to advance your professional brand, network, and knowledge.

JJ DiGeronimo is a technologist, entrepreneur, mother, wife and now author of The Working Woman’s GPS, When the Plan to Have it All Led You Astray.  JJ knows first-hand that every choice is a trade-off and time is precious.

The United States and United Kingdom share many common bonds and approaches to business. However, in the area of maternity leave and support for working mothers we have widely differing views.

I recently spent time in New York to assess how US enterprises approach the business of executive coaching – specifically in the support of women preparing for maternity leave, during their leave and through the process of returning to work. I was expecting to find more similarities than differences, but what I found was interestingly the reverse. I should make it clear that I’m not criticising either approach. But I do feel that we can learn from each other. A quick look at the small number of women on the boards of major companies on both sides of the Atlantic (approximately 15% in the US and 13% in the UK) is enough to prove that both systems have a long way to go yet to achieve their goals. My other caveat is that whilst I’ll talk here in generalities, women are of course all different, with differing circumstances, approaches and ambitions, and so solutions in each case have to be tailored.

The most obvious difference is that in the US, there is no federal law regarding paid maternity leave. In the UK, legislation enables women to take up to a year off and still have the right to come back to a similar or equivalent job. Those wishing to return sooner can come back to the same job after six months. Women in the UK are eligible for statutory maternity pay up to nine months. In the US, if you want to stay out longer than three months, application can be made under the Disability Leave policy.

Maternity in the UK and the US

In the UK, maternity coaching has become almost a standard benefit among leading firms due to the high proportion of women leaving and resulting low levels of representation at board or partner level. However, with board statistics in the US and the UK more or less even, the UK focus on maternity coaching is yet to show a direct impact at the highest levels. It is though a long-term investment, with pay off expected in the long run. We are certainly seeing improved retention rates resulting in the UK.

In the US, diversity is clearly a major consideration for businesses, but schemes that target women specifically are not encouraged. The notion of maternity coaching is instead wrapped up in a wider transition coaching concept. That said, the majority of people in such programmes are going through maternity transition. My impression is that high-achieving American women are having children and getting back to work as soon as possible, so that their work is as uninterrupted as possible. Indeed the achievement of gender parity rather than diversity seems more appealing to them. I think that in the UK, businesses are more willing to acknowledge characteristic gender differences, and to see value in those differences. In my experience, women need, and benefit from, different types of support than men.

The American approach to maternity seems to be facilitated by a much better supply of childcare provision than in the UK, where there are widespread concerns about the availability and prohibitive cost of adequate childcare.

Another key area of difference is attitude to flexible working. Around half of our UK maternity coachees go back to work on some kind of flexible basis. Half of this is via informal arrangements but an increasing number of women are applying formally for flexible work. Flexible working seems much less acceptable in the US where reluctance to request it stems from general concern about being seen to be taking advantage of family-friendly benefits, as this might indicate a lack of commitment. One executive I spoke with talked about women in her organisation being nervous of even accessing the page on the intranet which outlines the company policy to flexible working lest it be tracked back to them.

Working toward Retention

I was struck by a level of frustration in New York, certainly among banking organisations, that their diversity policies weren’t working and that ‘diversity fatigue’ had set in. Women with limited available time were opting to drop out of all-female networking events in favour of mixed ones as the networking opportunities were deemed more fruitful. All-female events seem to appeal to younger female executives while more experienced women adopt a more cynical approach to them.

There is real interest in the Returnship® program concept being pioneered by Goldman Sachs, designed to attract back female employees who may have previously left to have children. I think this idea has great potential to attract back skilled former employees rather than having to train up new talent, and Goldman Sachs has certainly claimed considerable success with it.

Recognising the full value of female employees matches the general move from command and control to matrix management in business. This move to more empathy, more collaboration and less ego definitely favours women. Mastery of craft and connectivity, rather than personal drive, ambition and competition will denote success in the future. Women tend to be naturally good at being supportive, collaborating and communicating with others, and sharing credit for success. These are all qualities that will be needed in highly networked future organisations.

There is much still to be done in both of our countries to improve the opportunities for women to fulfill both work and family ambitions. I believe the emphasis should be on policies to attract and retain women, rather than to try and ‘fix’ them or conform to more male parameters. Companies that do not adequately address how best to retain and support their female talent are putting themselves at a clear disadvantage. Tailored executive coaching can play a central role in addressing this.

This is not news to anyone who frequents this site: women are still not proportionally represented at the upper levels of business. Women represent about half of entry-level employees and lower level management positions. But at each level up the corporate hierarchy, the percentage of women is lower.

According to Catalyst, in 2011 in the Fortune 500 women represented only 14.1% of executive officers, 7.5% of top earners and 3.2% of CEO’s. In law firms in 2010, Catalyst reports, women made up 45% of associates but only 19% of partners. These declining percentages form a pyramid: the “pyramid problem.”

As I climbed the corporate hierarchy to the C-level, I read a stack of books (many very good) designed to help women navigate the “male dominated” business world. From those books I learned, for example, that women don’t (and must in order to succeed) speak up, ask for what they want, toot their own horn, take risks, speak more confidently and take things less personally. In other words, they need to conform to masculine norms. A recent research report by Catalyst, sadly, concludes that, even when women do all these things, they still lag behind men.

I also learned (from those books and my personal experience) that women face the double bind: If women act too feminine, they aren’t seen as leaders; if they act too masculine, they aren’t likeable (and may be called the “B” word). To succeed, women must get it just right.

All this leads one to think of the pyramid problem as a woman’s problem that is theirs to fix.

That hasn’t worked.

This is more than a problem for women. It is a problem for business. The pyramid problem results in substantial, unnecessary costs for business and it prevents business from realizing the documented upsides of gender diversity. It’s time to shift the focus from how women need to change in order to succeed to how corporate culture can change in order to achieve gender diversity in leadership. That takes framing and talking about the issue differently.

Women can’t fix this problem alone. And yet interesting men in fixing it isn’t easy. Many men just don’t seem to see what’s in it for them to address this issue. Or they hear women talking about the issue as a complaint. How can women climbing the corporate ladder talk about the pyramid problem and enroll men in wanting to fix it? I suggest three things:

1. Present the business case for fixing the pyramid problem
2. Bring attention to the strengths of both masculine and feminine approaches to work without stereotyping
3. Find a few male allies who see and will speak up on the issue.

The Business Case

The pyramid problem is a serious business issue. Leaders are not likely to get behind fixing it because it is the “right thing to do.” They may pay attention when they see real costs and real upsides. Women need to articulate the business case, which includes:

• Inclusive cultures have higher customer satisfaction productivity, profitability and retention. (See Business Case for Diversity and Inclusion).
• Decisions made by diverse groups are better. (See study by Kellogg School of Management).
• Diverse businesses are better able to tap diverse marketplaces, including the vast women’s market. (See Report by She-conomy).
• To hire the best talent, businesses need to attract and retain women as well as men. Women make up close to half of the hiring pool. The educated hiring pool is more than half women (women earn more undergraduate and graduate degrees than men).
• And the most important point: Gender diversity in leadership is correlated with higher returns. (See a series of Catalyst studies entitled “The Bottom Line.”)

Leveraging the Strengths of Masculine and Feminine Ways of Working

Both men and women embody masculine and feminine aspects—and both have strengths and limitations. Having women do all the adapting and conforming (a) deprives businesses of the strengths of feminine forms of working and leading and (b) means businesses fail to get the higher returns associated with gender diversity–not to mention that is lowers engagement of women and contributes to the pyramid problem. Women and men need to understand and appreciate feminine as well as masculine approaches to getting results, to model and leverage them and to point out their contribution to the bottom line. Those books that help women succeed in business can help us articulate what women bring to the table.

Finding Male Allies

If women alone champion the cause of eliminating the pyramid problem, it will remain for longer than if men and women combine their voices. Men’s voices will carry weight because (a) there are more of them in the upper ranks, and (b) they have no perceived personal agenda (only a business agenda). If you can’t find men who “get it,” use the business case to convert a few.

Women have done well navigating the business world and adapting to environments where masculine ways of working are modeled and valued. This hasn’t solved the pyramid problem, which will remain until leaders know the importance of creating cultures that engage and leverage the skills of both men and women. Women still need to do things like speak up, toot their own horns and avoid the double bind. But they must also find a new and compelling way to talk about the pyramid problem and the business value of gender diversity.

You’ve set your New Year goals. You’re highly motivated to achieve them. And then something happens and you lose steam. Meet the culprit. It’s called resistance. And it lies in each of us. The fact is the #1 factor standing between us and achieving our goals is ourselves. We often search for the culprit outside. It’s the economy. It’s my mom’s chocolate cake. The gym doesn’t have the right equipment. Sound familiar? Here are 5 steps you can take to manage your resistance so there can be greater flow in meeting your goals.

1. Make Resistance Your Friend.

Acknowledging that there is resistance inside of you and it is what keeps you from meeting your goals is the first and most important step. You stop looking on the outside and start looking on the inside. A corollary to this step is to not beat yourself up for having resistance. It’s like tooth plaque – somewhat undesirable but we all have it. When you beat yourself up for having that chocolate cake that sabotages your diet, what happens? You feel guilty, and then go for that second piece of chocolate cake. So fighting resistance creates more resistance.

2. Re-Evaluate Your Goals.

Take a step back. If you are losing steam on a goal you have, ask yourself a series of questions: “How important is this goal really to me?” “Why is this goal important to me?” “How does this goal inspire me?” “Is this a goal that I really WANT to achieve or something that I think I SHOULD achieve?” “SHOULD” goals are usually driven by external expectations rather than internal motivations. One great way to distinguish this is to take a deep breath, close your eyes and feel into the goal. Does it make you feel excited or is there a feeling of dread or confusion? If the answer to that question is the latter, you may want to determine if the goal is truly authentic. Finding a way to connect the goal to something that is intrinsically important to you will create more energy to overcome the resistance. It’s hard to achieve a goal we truly don’t want.

3. Use Resistance to Look Inside.

Resistance is a great tool for us to increase our self-awareness, which will eventually get us to a more effective way to meeting our goals. Once we’ve determined that a goal is important we look inside to determine what are the beliefs or habits that are causing us to undermine our goals. For example, I know a leader who is an extremely talented individual. Her goal is to get to the next level but she feels uncomfortable asking others for help or promoting her own work. She will need to do both of these in order to get to the next level. She has a belief system that in order to “earn her promotion” she has to get there on her own and anything less would be “unfair.” Examining our resistance without any judgment or blaming ourselves allows us to become aware of limiting beliefs, and to work with these limiting beliefs and reframe them.

4. Use Your Strengths and Energizers.

Each of us brings great and unique strengths to our goals. We are often unaware of our signature strengths or don’t proactively use them in meeting our goals. Utilizing our strengths also brings us great joy in accomplishing our tasks and creates positive energy. When we are fully energized, that energy is contagious and makes us more optimistic and able to overcome barriers and habits that don’t serve us. Use the resources here to determine your signature strengths and energizers.

5. Take Baby Steps & Focus on Positive Progress.

When you initially face a goal that is daunting, breaking it up into baby steps can make it easier. You may have limiting beliefs about your ability to accomplish a goal. Worse, you may have even failed at that goal before. Breaking it down into baby steps you KNOW you can accomplish creates positive energy and momentum. For example, your goal is to get more mentors at work and you are terrified of asking someone to mentor you. Start by just making a list of people and reward yourself for doing that. Then ask one of these people to lunch. That’s all. Then reward yourself for doing that. Constantly ask yourself “What is working well in meeting this goal?” When we focus on the negative, we beat ourselves up. When we focus on the positive it creates tremendous energy.

I hope you can use these five strategies to help you meet your goals and I wish you much success. Do comment and let me know which of these strategies worked for you or if you have any strategies that you’d like to share with others.

Henna Inam is a CEO Coach focused helping women become transformational leaders. A Wharton MBA, and former C-Suite executive with Novartis and P&G, her passion is to engage, empower, and energize women leaders to transform themselves and their businesses. Sign up for her blog at www.transformleaders.tv.

Opening up your eyes to see the bigger picture of the global marketplace is one of the most important steps leaders in the 21st century can do to help their businesses succeed.

Unfortunately, it is also one of the easiest and most devastating actions they can fail to take. For those who spent their whole life looking at the world through a keyhole, throwing the door wide open can be overwhelming. There’s so much to take in that it is easy to miss opportunities that could be right in front of your nose.

Engaging in international business may require reaching beyond your comfort zone while developing the spirit of adventure. In many cases, people are too conservative, too afraid of change and of the unfamiliar, and therefore, they resist global opportunities out of fear. The key to growth is to let go of fear and focus on 5 main points for success and growth globally.

1. Be Curious. Dare To Expand Your Horizons.

The new frontier is that there is no frontier, and how one responds to this reality may have a significant impact on the economy as a whole.

Throughout my life, I’ve fostered a love for intellectual curiosity and ongoing learning. With each new experience on my journey, whether good or bad, positive or negative, I add another dimension to my understanding of people, cultures, and how to best penetrate the global marketplace. I use these experiences and knowledge to impart insight and wisdom for the benefit of my clients, my students, and my work.

For example, when I started a manufacturing business, I learned how to negotiate across borders to deliver the best possible product for markets in both North America and Asia. I maximized the value of a global supply chain by sourcing abroad and working collaboratively with other business people from around the world.

Today, as a global expansion expert, I combine my acquired business skills with my unique global perspective to help clients navigate through the global expansion process. Throughout my years in business, I have discovered that the business deals themselves are seldom the problem. Business leaders today have the skills and finesse to identify and execute great deals. It’s the soft issues that surface on the international stage which cause unanticipated and disastrous problems.

2. Cultural Sensitivity

Be sensitive to cultural nuances. I’ve witnessed many business transactions that come to a screeching halt and fall apart due to cultural misunderstandings and cultural ignorance. Don’t assume anything, and do your homework. Business people in an international business environment must not only be sensitive to differences in culture and language, but they must also learn to adopt the appropriate policies and strategies for coping with these differences.

My first client, a major German company, could have hired anyone or any company from around the globe, but they hired me. We had a relationship that originated in cultural fluency that developed into trust and mutual understanding. This is when I truly learned the value of relationships and cultural fluency in the international marketplace. Knowing the target market’s language is helpful, but cultural fluency at the level of strategy is what separates the good business deals from the great ones. For example, the CEO of a U.S. company doesn’t have to learn Portuguese if he or she wants to do business in Brazil, but he or she needs to know what will work and what will not. And this is best accomplished through commitment, a global mind-set and the establishment of local relationships.

3. The Value of Relationships

Recognize that a solid foundation of trusting relationships in the target market and around the globe will ease the difficulties of going global. Personally, I have benefited on numerous occasions because I took the time to cultivate long-term relationships based on trust and mutual respect. By definition, relationships in the United States are different from relationships in other parts of the world. In the United States, people tend to be very open to casual friendships, and the word friend is used frequently. But these friendships often lack the depth necessary to offer real value in times of crisis. Internationally, relationships can take years to build, but the result is loyalty that lasts a lifetime. For visual effects, I use to compare the first as a peach (a soft exterior that stops at a hard core) and the latter as a coconut (a hard exterior that may be tough to break, but when done, it is as smooth as can be).

To build relationships, keep in mind that people want to be heard, understood, and respected, not judged, benchmarked, or ridiculed. This is universal.

4. What You Don’t Know May Throw You Dead In The Waters

Going global is similar to embarking on a new adventure, a bold mission, and you are the commander. As such, it’s important to learn not just from the successes of others but also from the failures of others.

For example, consider the Titanic’s tragic encounter with an iceberg on the Northern Atlantic waters in 1912. On a clear night, in a calm sea, under the command of a seasoned captain, disaster struck. Even after warnings of iceberg sightings, disaster struck! However, damage to the ship wasn’t caused by the iceberg’s tip, which rose visibly above the water’s surface. Rather, the fatal damage was caused by the massive section of iceberg, hidden from view, beneath the surface of the water.

What’s under the surface in international business? A lot! The culture, social norms, values, customs, reasoning, thinking patterns, decision making, negotiations, and body language are just a few of the minefields businesses encounter as they attempt to navigate the global marketplace. While the legal system, tax issues, and the political situation all seem visible, in many regions they are not always as they appear. For example, in some countries the lack of transparency functions just like an added tax. And the implications of these unknown “taxes” are not easy to calculate. How can you deal with these issues? What should you know? Where do you start? Right here. Right now. By educating yourself and getting out of your comfort zone.

5. Mastering the “Dance”

Ultimately, a successful global expansion is dependent on an organization’s ability to view the world in a new way. After all, the global economic tsunami of this century is reshaping the world’s economy, creating new players, new rules, and new challenges. In response, U.S. businesses must view the future through a new filter focused on global opportunities with a willingness to learn new ways of conducting business. It’s like learning to dance, which, for many of us, requires professional instruction and an expert. You also need to practice regularly, especially if you want to “dance with the stars”—or even be the star—and succeed in this global economy.

If you are embarking on your first global expansion effort, you will have to learn new rhythms, new rules, and new steps, different from the ones you have employed domestically. But after your first experience, you will be better equipped to make sound choices about who, what, where, and when to engage abroad.

Now It’s Your Turn

With 95 percent of the world’s population living outside the boundaries of the United States, the potential for business leaders who can apply these lessons and skills to their unique circumstances is beyond measure. With a world population of six billion people, it only takes approximately 5 percent of that market to equal the entire U.S. population. Whatever the size of your business, the global market has much to offer you and, although you may not realize it, you have a lot to offer, too.

Mona Pearl is a global strategic business development expert as well as the founder and COO of Beyond A Strategy, Inc., a company providing expertise to plan and implement cost effective and sustainable global growth that improves a company’s bottom line and helps realize seamless international operations. In addition to Beyond A Strategy, Inc., she has also founded and operated 2 additional businesses and sits on the board of several organizations. Past clients include Deutsche Telekom, Michelin, American Airlines, Philip Morris and Bacardi.

She is the author of Grow Globally: Opportunities for Your Middle-Market Company Around the World, has been quoted as an expert by CNBC, The Globe and Mail, Oracle, Chicago Tribune, NPR/WBEZ, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Entrepreneur.com, and Crain’s Chicago and regularly publishes columns on global competitiveness in industry magazines, including Manufacturing Today and Management Today. For more information, please visit www.monapearl.com.

Does this situation sound familiar? You have worked hard to climb the corporate ladder. You’ve had to burn the candle on both ends to get there. When you get to the corner office or the next rung in the ladder, after the initial euphoria of meeting your goal wears off, the grind remains. The rewards can seem a bit empty relative to the sacrifices made and the energy expended to get there. At various points in your career it is easy to burn-out. Or you decide to opt out by physically leaving or disengaging. According to a Gallup survey, 71% of US employees are disengaged. Your disengagement is not just linked to your productivity but also your health and wellbeing.

It’s easy for us to disengage either by leaving our work or leaving our full passionate selves at the door when we enter our workplaces. We ask ourselves, “Is the effort worth it to continue to climb the corporate stair master?” The answer to the latter question is very personal. However, one thing is pretty clear. As women leaders, our passion for what we do is a big part of our success and fulfillment, as well as our power. So how do we reignite that passion when it’s beginning to fade?

Here are five steps to reignite the passion and fall in love again with what you do. Remember the five P’s to reigniting the passion in your work.

1. Peak Experiences.

Get a journal and start to write about the jobs or experiences in your career that you absolutely loved or aspects of your current job that put a spring in your step. Look for the common themes. For me it was always situations where I had opportunities to coach and mentor my team, challenging and entrepreneurial assignments, and my time spent with my customers understanding how we could make their business better. What is it for you?

2. Personal Brand

A big part of our engagement in our jobs is whether we have the ability to fully express our talents and strengths in the job and connect the impact we are making to what is personally important to us. Take the time to articulate your personal brand. Reflect upon your purpose, strengths and core values. Here is a great talk by Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi about the importance of connecting with our purpose. The peak experiences exercise will help you articulate your personal brand by helping you identify not just how you create value in your job but also what brings you great joy.

3. Position Alignment

Connect the position or job assignment you are in proactively to your articulation of your personal brand. How can you bring more of your personal brand to be successful and fulfilled in your work? One of Gallup’s 12 statements they use to measure employee engagement deals directly with this topic. The statement is “At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.” Do you fully capitalize on this opportunity? If your work is not fully aligned with your personal brand, find ways to transition into work that is more congruent.

4. People

This is one of the most important areas of reigniting your passion and engagement. Several of the 12 Gallup statements have to do with whether your direct supervisor and others around you recognize your contributions, encourage your development, care about you as a person, and whether there is a “best friend” you have at work. Ask yourself, who are the people that I work with and know who fulfill these roles for me and who I fulfill these roles for. Proactively seek out mentors and sponsors and play that role for others. Relationships are an important part of our fulfillment and engagement at work.

5. Past-times.

Find time for what energizes you. When you are fully energized you are better able to be engaged and engage others. Do the Energy Audit to see how energized you are. The energy that you generate from pursuing personal passions is contagious to what you bring to work. It lifts your spirits and it is essential for engaging, motivating and leading people around you.

I wish you great luck in re-igniting your own fire as it is an essential ingredient for your success, fulfillment and personal power. Do comment and let me know how you are utilizing these five P’s to bring more of your passion to your work and to your life.

Henna Inam is a CEO Coach focused helping women become transformational leaders. A Wharton MBA, and former C-Suite executive with Novartis and P&G, her passion is to engage, empower, and energize women leaders to transform themselves and their businesses. Sign up for her blog at www.transformleaders.tv.

I was worried after my most recent coaching session with “Rina.” We had been prepping for her performance review as a top-level financial advisor, and I didn’t have much time to make a few key points. Rina was talking about her hard work and hurt feelings rather than about her accomplishments and comparative salaries, so in order to shock her into a productive mindset, I chose to use some untempered bluntness. Afterward I wondered, had I been a tad too blunt?

And then I received this update from Rina:

“Hi Ann,

Just a quick note to let you know I had my review. It went very, very well. I am happy. My salary has been increased 11%, which is substantially above the stated 7.5% cap for the firm.

I spent a good amount of time preparing for the conversation, thanks to our talk together. You helped me get clear about what my goal was going into the meeting. I had a little speech written out for myself and rehearsed it well. I was ready with all sorts of numbers and facts on the firm’s growth and how I didn’t get to participate in it last year, although I had strongly contributed to it. I didn’t find real comparative numbers, but I did have relative internal numbers that I could have used, if necessary.

Also, importantly, I managed to have a relaxed and interesting conversation with my CEO. I was worried I was going to let myself babble uncontrollably. Instead, I forced myself to stop at the end of each point.

I came out of the review with much more confidence in my career strategy. We explicitly talked about the fact that I am involved in so many different initiatives and whether this might be perceived as a lack of focus. He reassured me that this “portfolio attitude” was actually the right way to go at this time of high uncertainty and volatility.

Tonight is the office Christmas party, and I am now ready to really celebrate. Thank you again so much!”

The only reason I went for the blunt tool was that I knew Rina to be a really smart cookie and a quick study, to boot. She doesn’t get stuck in ego, and she is serious about her career. Let me break down the tools and techniques she used to get that 11% pay bump, so you can go get your own raise!

1. Walk into the performance review with a clear goal.

As with any meeting, you share responsibility for driving the outcomes. What do you want to get out of the review? Literally, what do you want to walk away with? It might be a raise, which was Rina’s goal. It might be a cross-functional training opportunity. It might be P&L experience. It might be leadership development. Don’t squander this rare opportunity to focus your boss on how you see your performance, your value, and your future. Then suggest how she can help make it happen.

2. Document your case.

A performance review is no place for feelings (i.e., what I “deserve”). Feelings, however strong, do not argue for the quality and merit of your performance. Facts and figures, on the other hand, do make for a convincing argument. It was a challenge for Rina to find industry numbers, but she came up with internal figures she could use. Research has shown that, in workplaces where career advancement is left to subjective criteria, women are consistently disadvantaged. So make your language as objective as possible. Organize all the information you have been gathering throughout the year (you’ve been doing that, right?) to demonstrate your accomplishments in terms of what is important to your organization. Not what you think is important, but what you know is valued and rewarded by your organization. You’ll want to provide documentation in two categories, depending on your goal: 1) your contributions to the company, and 2) comparable salaries.

3. Rehearse.

A performance review is an inherently nerve-wracking situation, even for the seasoned exec. But what the seasoned exec knows is how to look cool, calm, and collected. That comes from practice. Rina knew from experience that her boss is quiet and awkward in one-on-ones, so she practiced how to deal with what was, for her, an uncomfortable interpersonal situation. So she did two things to prepare. First, she rehearsed saying out loud what she wanted. It gets easier and more natural every time you say it out loud, even if it’s to the mirror when you’re getting ready in the morning. Second, she trained herself to restrain from rushing in to fill up the blank spots in the conversation. Make your point, take a breath, and give your boss the time and space to respond. (BTW, speaking strategically is a great power tool in any situation.)

4. Ask for feedback.

Women tend not to get plentiful or comprehensive feedback. And that’s a significant impediment to advancement. The performance review is your ideal venue to get your boss’s feedback in as much specificity as depth as you desire. If the feedback is too vague to be useful, then ask clarifying questions. Ask for examples. Ask for more. One exec I know sat down with her boss and asked him point-blank to do a side-by-side comparison between her and each of her colleagues! She was not going to get left behind because she didn’t know where she stood in the pack. For Rina, getting explicit feedback on her “portfolio attitude” permits her to stop second-guessing its strategic value.

Give it a try. Turn your annual performance review from a necessary evil into a secret weapon. You have nothing to lose, and 11% to gain—at least, Rina did.

(Do you have a career question you’d like Dr. Daly to answer? Email her with your question.)

Ann Daly PhD (anndaly.com) is an executive coach, consultant, and speaker devoted to the success and advancement of women. She is the award-winning author of six books, including Clarity: How to Accomplish What Matters Most and Do-Over! How Women Are Reinventing Their Lives. For more career development advice, sign up for her free eletter.

It’s the end of the year. You’re scrambling to make the numbers, completing performance reviews for your people, finalizing business reviews so plans for next year can be fine-tuned. Sound familiar? For each of the last 20 years of my corporate career, as each year drew toward a close it was a mad scramble to year end. This year as an entrepreneur, I followed some of the familiar steps.  Then I had a bit of an epiphany. I was leaving out perhaps one of the most important measures of my future success and fulfillment – how did I do as a leader this year?

So this year I am planning to give myself the gift of reflection during the week between the Christmas and New Year. I hope that each of us takes some quiet time, a journal, and the inspiration to do a “Personal Leadership Review”. Most leadership is fairly unconscious, based on habits and behavior patterns we’ve learned over time.  A “Personal Leadership Review” helps us become more conscious of ourselves as leaders and over time we can choose to adopt leadership practices that will help us grow as leaders. According to Emotional Intelligence 2.0, the traits of knowing and managing ourselves and knowing and managing others are highly correlated with our success and fulfillment. On average, those who score higher on Emotional Intelligence earn $34,000 more that those who don’t.

Here are some questions I am planning to ask myself during my “Personal Leadership Review.” What will you ask yourself?

How Did I Lead Myself?

A big aspect of growth as a leader is in self-awareness of our strengths, our energizers, and our potential derailers. Here are some questions I am planning to ask myself.

1. What did I learn about my leadership strengths? Were there any new strengths that I discovered?
2. How well did I leverage my leadership strengths?
3. What were the peak experiences this year where I found both success and fulfillment? What were some common themes among these peak experiences?
4. How well did I take care of my personal energy? What have I discovered about my personal energizers? What demotivates or de-energizes me and what can I do about that?
5. What were some areas where I did not meet my objectives? What would I do differently in order to have greater success in the future?
6. How much did I get myself out of my comfort zone this year? In what areas did I grow this year?
7. How well did I integrate my personal and professional priorities? What needs to be put in greater focus?
8. Who are the people I can count on to give me honest feedback?

How Did I Lead Others?

I remember one of my biggest surprises was discovering what people truly remember about my impact in one of my corporate assignments. When I was running our company’s business in Mexico, we experienced great share gains, significant increases in innovation, and very good improvements in profit – the stuff great resumes are made of. Yet, what I hear from the people in the business – those who still keep in touch with me five years later – is more about the impact I had on the culture. What people remember is how a leader makes them feel. What they remember is the kind of environment for success the leader creates.

So here are some questions for reflection:

1. What do my direct reports, superiors and peers believe about my impact on them?
2. How well do I recognize and leverage the strengths of people on my team?
3. How clearly am I communicating and engaging others in the vision/strategy?
4. How engaged is my direct report team and the team under them?
5. What did I do well in engaging others, what can I improve?
6. What is the culture I am creating through my actions? Culture is simply the behavior we exhibit as leaders, not something we put on a fancy power point presentation.
7. How do I leave people feeling when I meet with them? I had a boss who used to say that the mark of a good leader is not how people feel about the leader after they meet with them, but how the leader leaves them feeling about themselves.
8. Who are the people that I mentored and sponsored this year? How well did I do as a mentor or sponsor to them? How well are they succeeding?

I hope these questions provide some starting food for thought for your own “Personal Leadership Review”. Do comment and share some of the questions you chose to ask yourself. Was this a helpful exercise for you? What did you discover?

Henna Inam is a CEO Coach focused helping women become transformational leaders. A Wharton MBA, and former C-Suite executive with Novartis and P&G, her passion is to engage, empower, and energize women leaders to transform themselves and their businesses. Sign up for her blog at www.transformleaders.tv.