Happy New Year! I hope 2012 brings you everything you hope for yourself.

For me, the New Year begins with the release of my new book! Friday, January 6^th! At last!  The title is “I Love You – Now Get Over Yourself: 7 Secrets for Professional Success from The Jewish Mother Executive Coach” (phew)!

For the last 3 years, working on writing this book, I changed topics several times trying to find the most useful thing to write about. I went through the agonies of self-doubt, crises of confidence, and just plain laziness. In the end, it was crystal clear that whatever I was to write had to be about and for others. It was one of the greatest challenges and most difficult tasks I’ve ever undertaken. However, I won’t lie, when I actually saw and held the physical copy of the book in my hand, it was thrilling. I had actually accomplished something I never thought I could.

Make no mistake though. “I Love You-Now Get Over Yourself” is about you. It is about the issues you deal with in your professional lives and how to handle them successfully. It details how others have faced the same issues and beat them and how you can do it too

My greatest hope for this book is that it will serve as a valuable tool for solving some of the problems you’re facing.  Just as in my coaching, it is direct, to the point, with dashes of humor.

There are client stories to illustrate each of the 7 problems and then, step by step coaching enabling you to successfully handle the situation.

The book will be available in soft-cover and e-versions for however you prefer to read.  Also, I will be putting chapters or parts of chapters on line here from time to time, perhaps with a different client story illustrating the issue.  So check back here to see if there’s something more I can give you.

I hope you buy the book, use it, and love it. But however you feel about it please let me know. I learn from every reaction, suggestion, and comment and I can help others by using your feedback.   If you are so inclined, please feel free to write a review on the amazon site.

Buy the book here!!!!

Once again, best wishes for a wonderful new year and I look forward to hearing from you in 2012.  ♦Ruth

Often, the people who call a coach are already successful. They call because they are likely facing a situation and they want to be sure they get it right.

The notion that somehow one is weak or inadequate is simply wrong. It isn’t because he feels inadequate that Roger Federer has a coach; or the best actors have coaches. It’s because they know they are the best and they are facing something they either haven’t dealt with before or that they want to perfect.

Let’s take a successful actor – if a male has to play a female, he needs to be coached on how to be, act, and think like a female. He needs a coach – maybe more than one. Or if a winning runner is about to race on terrain they haven’t tried before in a place they’ve never been, they need a coach to advise them as to the best strategies.

A successful CEO may be looking to change her direction. To help make a smart decision she will hire a coach to be her trusted advisor. Someone who will challenge her thinking, help strategize, devise new tactics, teach a new skill, and polish what is already there.

And here’s one that surprised even me – a successful surgeon! Coaching a Surgeon: What Makes Top Performers Better? How admirable! He does end the article with a bit of humor (dark humor maybe) – read the last line.

Executive coaching is for the courageous and the successful. It is not for those who are afraid, who think if they call a coach they are showing weakness to themselves and others. Employing a coach to advise and help you get to the next level, make the difficult decisions, or help ratchet up the ante for your next big thing, is smart and shows a level of individuality shared by the strong.

No matter how well trained people are, few can sustain their best performance on their own. That’s where coaching comes in. – Atul Gawande

“The most important decisions you make are not the things you do, but the things you decide not to do.” Steve Jobs

Jobs decided to keep his OS to himself (only in Apple) and not license it out as Microsoft did with windows; he decided to focus on individual users and not companies as IBM and HP did; and of course, he decided not to get the surgery that may have saved his life. So in the end, the thing he decided not to do resulted in his own end.

The things you decide not to do need to have your best thoughts around them. Just as you can say I decided to do such-and-such and here’s why, you need to do the same thing for what you decide not to do.

I’m not talking here about the usual I’m doing this so I’m not doing that routine. I mean when you are seriously faced with a choice, you need to have some way, some guide, as to why you are deciding not to do something.

Your best guide is your hope for yourself; for your life. It is in fact the only guide you can use that will help you toward what the best thing to do is, and the reasons you reject other options.

Most times you will be right. Sometimes you will make the wrong choice, but you will always do it for the right reason. ♦Ruth

You may have seen this; it has been making the rounds this week on the internet:

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. …. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; Why the early bird gets the worm; Life isn’t always fair; And maybe it was my fault. He was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife Discretion, his daughter Responsibility, and his son, Reason. He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I’m A Victim.”

A very sad take on who we are as a society. However, there are bright spots here and there. In some businesses, there are those who still believe. http://buswk.co/qrJcf1 Here’s a CEO employing the tried and true common sense of Peter Drucker. I know it’s only one in many thousands, but at least it shows that common sense may not be dead. Thriving? No – but he’s up and taking nourishment!

Let’s not glue the back of our hands to our foreheads with the “woe is me” mantra. It really does sully the memory of Common Sense – he deserves to live and we are the ones responsible for seeing to it that he rises from the ashes.

What do you think? Is Common Sense dead and gone? ♦ Ruth

(BTW, there are situations where 2 of the stepbrothers are good boys. For example, “I know my rights” – a good thing to have when falsely accused of something (which happens more frequently than you think). “I Want it Now” – is the right thing when the QB says I play to win and I want it now. However, “Someone Else is to Blame”, and “I’m a victim” are definitely the evil twins.)

Like it or not, women do need coaching if they want to rise to senior leadership levels in mid to large organizations. The McKinsey report is quite clear about this – http://on.wsj.com/fldB8j .

Also necessary, is coaching to a new mind-set for the male-dominated leaders who are responsible for promoting women. According to the report, many organizations have consciously made efforts to promote women. That is true, however there still remains the bias that women are the “weaker sex” and therefore would not make good leaders. .

Strategic thinking, multi-tasking, conflict resolution, coaching and developing staff, as well as the many other parameters for promotion may be the same for men and women, but they need to be broadened to mine the depth of women’s business and personal acumen.

Certainly, coaching women to the C-Suite will help considerably. But the barriers- spoken and unspoken – will remain unless men are also coached about how to think about women inside their organization.

The report recommends that top managers be judged partly on their ability to groom and promote female talent. A strong reason for coaching the men.

That operational focus must be more than an organizational objective. It requires a commitment to the belief that it’s a positive thing to “groom and promote” women, not only for its own sake, but because it serves the organization well. As the report eloquently states: “A diversity program by itself, no matter how comprehensive, is no match for entrenched beliefs that prevail.” This is why women may need coaching to be promotable, and men need coaching to know how to promote them.