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Your Reputation Is Being Built in Meetings Communications Rarely Attends

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A decision gets made in a conference room. Finance is there. Legal is there. HR is there. Operations is there. Maybe the CEO is there too. The numbers are reviewed. The risks are weighed. The tradeoffs are discussed. Questions are raised, concerns are debated, and eventually a decision is made. Then someone says, “We should probably bring Communications in.” That sentence usually comes too late. Because by the time Communications is brought in, the team may know what was decided but not fully understand the discussion that led to it. What alternatives were considered? What concerns were raised? What tradeoffs were accepted? Why did leadership ultimately land where it did? That context matters. A final decision rarely captures the debate that produced it, and those details often reveal where employees, customers, reporters, or the public are most likely to have questions. It is difficult to explain the last page of the story if you were never given the first ten chapters. And yet Commun...
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When the Bots Start Talking to Each Other, Where Do the Humans Go?

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Last year, it took my husband telling me to stop for me to realize just how much the job search had changed. I had spent the day staring at yet another job portal. Same questions. Same boxes. Upload the resume. Then manually enter everything that was already on the resume. I finally closed my laptop and walked into the kitchen. I was burnt out. Done. Jeff listened to my frustrations as he topped off his coffee, then said something I did not particularly want to hear. “The way you’re going about this doesn’t work anymore. Stop it. Just stop it.” “What?!” I asked. Then he explained why. “The applications aren’t working. They’re not getting through. Everyone is using AI now. Candidates are using bots to apply, employers are using bots to screen, and companies are drowning in resumes. You’re trying to get through a system where the bots are talking to the bots before a person ever sees you.” He wasn’t rude. He was just being honest. This conversation became an A-HA moment for me and...
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Your Reputation Walks Into the Room Before You Do

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The best opportunities often begin with the conversation you're not a part of. Getting Ready for a TV Segment on Hurricane Preparedness Long before someone interviews you, hires you, promotes you, or recommends you for an opportunity, they've likely already formed an opinion about you. Not because they've worked with you directly. Because someone else has.  That's your reputation.  It's your personal brand.  It's the story people tell about you when you're not in the room. I think we often underestimate just how much those conversations shape our careers. The opportunities that change our lives rarely begin with a job posting or an application. More often, they begin with a recommendation. Someone remembers working with you. Someone trusts your judgment. Someone believes you'll represent their organization well. Those conversations happen every day, and most of us never know they're taking place. In my last blog, I wrote that extraordinary careers ar...
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The Power of Daily Deposits

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We live in a world that celebrates breakthroughs.  The promotion. The new job. The marathon. The book. The transformation. What we rarely celebrate are the thousands of small decisions that made those moments possible. A few weeks ago, my doctor told me my ferritin was low. It wasn't alarming, but it was low enough that it was time to start taking ferrous sulfate. Like most people, my first thought was, "How long before this makes a difference?" The answer wasn't exactly motivating. Weeks. Maybe months. Then I realized I was asking the wrong question. Every time I take that little tablet, something is happening inside my body. My bone marrow receives another shipment of iron. My ferritin stores get another deposit. I don't feel it today, and I probably won't notice it tomorrow. But my future self will. That simple realization made me think about so many other parts of life. Every time I finish a run, I've given my heart another reason to become stronger. E...
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Why Every Leader Is a Chief Communications Officer

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You don't need "Chief Communications Officer" in your title to shape how people think, feel, and act. If you lead people, projects, or organizations, communication isn't a supporting skill. It is leadership. Every meeting you facilitate, every email you send, every difficult conversation you avoid, every decision you explain, or fail to explain, sends a message. Even silence communicates. One of the biggest leadership mistakes I see is treating communication as something that happens after the strategy is developed. The plan is finalized, the PowerPoint is polished, and then someone from communications is asked to "get the word out." But that's backwards. Communication isn't something you do after the strategy. It is part of the strategy. In the 20 years of working in healthcare, disaster response, and corporate communications, I've had a front-row seat to leadership at its best and, occasionally, at its worst. I've worked alongside leaders d...
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Your Personal Brand Is Built by Design or by Default. Which One Are You Choosing?

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When I wrote Redefined , I spent a lot of time talking about reinvention. Not because I believe we should constantly reinvent ourselves, but because our careers evolve. Our experiences change us. We grow. We learn. We discover new strengths and, sometimes, entirely new purpose. The question is whether our reputation evolves with us.  One of the biggest misconceptions about personal branding is that it's about self-promotion. It isn't. It's about intention. Whether you realize it or not, you're building your personal brand every single day. The only question is whether you're doing it intentionally. Your brand isn't your LinkedIn headline. It isn't your resume. It isn't the photo you carefully selected for your profile. Your personal brand is your reputation. It's what people say after you've left the meeting. It's what comes to mind when someone asks, "Who would be great for this opportunity?" It's the confidence people have in ...
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Judgment: The Competitive Advantage AI Can't Replace

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The more we automate hiring, the more valuable human judgment becomes. It sounds counterintuitive, but that's exactly what we're beginning to see. This week, I read Jessica Grose's opinion piece in The New York Times , which describes today's hiring process as an escalating "Spy vs. Spy" showdown. Employers are investing in artificial intelligence to identify the best candidates, while applicants are using many of the same technologies to improve their chances of getting noticed. As each side adapts, the other responds with new tools, creating an endless cycle of detection and circumvention. Her article resonated with me because it captures something many professionals have been experiencing firsthand. Yet as I read it, I couldn't help but think we're asking the wrong question. The real issue isn't whether AI belongs in hiring. It's whether we've mistaken automation for better decision-making. The article highlights a troubling reality. Des...
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