Category Archives: Career

NEVER HAVE I EVER

This week, I am featuring her direct quotes and thoughts on managing people (dictated in 1997).  Her slightly controversial opinion on the difference between men and women will make you laugh and yet the differences do exist.  It seems ironic that all these years later, I would find a similar passion in management and mentoring.  As a junior in college, I could not have ever known that our personal and career paths would end up being very similar.  For anyone in management, her brutal honesty will ring true.  Time has not changed the struggle or the rewards.

I HAVE SACRIFICED

Last week’s post was an introduction to the “herstory” of the first ever female Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Hershey Entertainment and Resort Company from 1997.  Her honest and vulnerable stories changed my life forever, many of them still all ring true to today.  I hope her experiences and expertise that I will share over the next few weeks will pull at your heart strings and inspire you as well. 

This week, she shares an incredibly vulnerable side.  As I was retyping her words from the only copy I have of the direct dictation, I became teary eyed as I typed.  When I was a Junior in college and interviewed this woman, I had such a different perspective than I do now.   I took her words for very matter of fact.  I now read these words 24 years later as a working mom of 2 boys and I am amazed by how incredibly vulnerable she was with me at the time.  I was not in a place in 1997 to appreciate or even receive that vulnerability, but now in 2022, I am emotionally enthralled.  I believe we will all find a part of ourselves in her words, you will feel her emotional struggle and will recognize that even today, the struggle continues.

24 YEARS HAS COME AND GONE

“Sometimes it takes an overwhelming breakdown to have an undeniable breakthrough” Unknown I am spending this week vacationing at our family cabin in Northern Minnesota on the Canadian border.  It is a place that you cannot access without a boat and the loons sing me to sleep as the sun sets each evening.  My greatContinue reading “24 YEARS HAS COME AND GONE”

SAY YES…. MAYBE

Brene Brown said “Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up.”  I understand where she was coming from with this quote, I can easily relate to it within my career and life.  There are many opportunities I would have never been able to take advantage of if I had not “shown up”.  That could be just showing up to a meeting where I met someone that taught me something, or signing up for a program that would allow me to find some of my greatest passions I never knew I had.

BACK TO THE BASICS

I have recently noticed a trend.  It is a trend that is consuming my calendar and filling my email in box.  I also have to admit that the trend has become so consuming in my work life that I have been sucked into it at times.  It is the trend of copying everyone in the organization on an email and including everyone (and their brother) on conference calls just for the purpose of CC’ing and covering tracks.  I will be the first to call out the trend so that I can also be the one that tries to do my part to stop it.

FAILURE IS A BUMP IN THE ROAD, NEVER THE END OF THE ROAD

At the completion of my senior year of college, my father was asked by my sorority to describe his daughter in a “tribute” letter for my graduation, my dad wrote the following:

“No does not mean no to Melanie, it is an opportunity for negotiation.”

I AM TIRED

I am tired.  I have had three cups of coffee on this Saturday morning and I am still tired. The amazing team of sales managers and sales directors that I have the pleasure of working with are all tired too.  To be honest, I think the whole working world is exhausted.  After 2 years of living through a pandemic, fighting for our health and our emotional wellbeing.  We now find ourselves struggling to survive in a world of non-stop supply challenges, employee shortages, cost cutting and inflation pressures.  I have been on many emotional phone calls recently.  Colleagues and employees exhausted by their inability to control an outcome, frustrated by what they see as a lack of effort on others behalf to get things done.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE

A reader recently submitted a question that I promised to address in an upcoming post:

“What are strategies to move up the middle management ladder within an organization?”

This question is a BIG one.  So much to unpack here and the strategies that would be effective in one organization could honestly be ineffective in another.  I will not claim to be an expert in this area; however, I can pull from my own experiences and those that I have witnessed with colleagues and friends.  The strategies I can share are broad, perhaps general but can be effective both in corporate organizations and in life.

I WISH I COULD SHUT DOWN MY BRAIN LIKE I SHUT DOWN MY COMPUTER

I have worked for years with a colleague that has a superpower.  I know it is a superpower because I would give nearly anything to also find a way to have this superpower AND there is no one I have ever met that also has this same innate ability.  It is the power to shut down everything that happened during the workday in his brain and just move on with enjoying his evening and most importantly his sleep!