For many of the busy professionals I work with, it’s easy to fall into the trap of transactional leadership. We focus on the work that needs to be done—the performance reviews to be written this week, the decisions that need to be made in this meeting, or the deadlines that must be hit to meet our quarterly goals. The days are split into 30 or 60 minute meeting chunks, leaving little space for connection in between all the tasks that must be done.

One secret to mitigating this transactional leadership is to work with your best friends. You may not…

My journey to leadership as an Asian female has had a long and meandering path to this present time when I am 44.

I grew up with a tiger mom who I believe is an undiagnosed manic-depressive. She loved me deeply. She gave up her career to follow my father’s job with Thai Airways, taking on the role of home holder to move our family every 3–4 years to a different country. She gave up her own aspirations and fiercely passed them on to my sister and I in the form of sky-high expectations.

I was a good girl. Culturally…

I am a life-long skeptic. My typical pattern is to listen and value my intellect and reason above all else. For decades, I would dismiss anything that didn’t follow rational thinking as being too “woo-woo.” But I was in a conundrum. Because, as a designer, I also know the value of my gut. There’s sometimes decisions or designs that I can’t rationally explain why and yet I intuitively know will work. I’ve written about how to follow your curiosity and express intuition at work. Deep down, I’ve always known that there was a subconscious mind that helps with creativity. It’s…

Adventure and freedom are two of my core values. Yet I’ve learned that I can most honor those values when I come from a place of feeling safe and secure. The paradox is that safety provides the space for adventure. Safety is the low guardrails on a windy mountain road that provides the security to let you drive faster and accelerate out of the tight curves in a car that hugs the road.

If this resonates and you’re feeling the adventure, take stock of what’s safe and supportive in your life that’s allowing the risk to happen. And if you’re…

I have a tendency to look for what’s wrong, to play devil’s advocate, and to contingency plan all the possible ways things can go wrong. Sometimes this can be a good trait for a planner, and it’s fantastic in a crisis-management situation. However, as a leader, only looking for what’s wrong can be hugely deflating to your teams.

Through most of my career, when I heard someone else’s idea, my first instinct was to put on the skeptical hat and ask many detailed questions. I sought to understand, and perhaps also to shoot it down and find out why the…

This week I’ve had the pleasure of supporting three female leaders, two of them women of color, through the final hurdle of their interview process—the dreaded offer negotiation.

I spent many of my formative years in Asia where bartering—either at the market for cute bangles or with the police officer to let you off with a warning and a small ”tip”—was simply a fact of life. I took these skills into the corporate world, and embodying an authoritative, masculine style of leadership, have always negotiated my job offers. I’ve been lucky enough to work in technology; I fully recognize that…

Do you remember the last time you interviewed for a job? Most people put this off as long as possible. It takes a lot of work to put together a resume, start looking around for opportunities, and then going through the actual process. Most people wait until it’s absolutely necessary. When the situation means that you MUST now start looking for and move into a new job. Perhaps you got passed over for that promotion or raise. Perhaps you’ve moving to a different location. Perhaps your boss has broken your trust one too many times. Perhaps you’ve just been given…

In tech companies and startups, we’ve heard about and practice modern leadership with radical candor, transparency, and vulnerability. We want to bring our whole selves to work and be an authentic leader. We want to do this while delivering on impact and performance to the company.

But does being transparent and vulnerable work all the time? How much is too much? What if the company isn’t set up with the right performance incentives to enable authenticity? What if the company has set up a system of cross-org competition that rewards aggressive behavior? …