News

May 4, 2026

Identify and Leverage Your Child’s Strengths

What are my child’s strengths?

What are my child’s strengths? Sometimes we are so focused on what goes wrong in parenting, and the mistakes we make and our children make, that it is hard to focus on the good stuff! And yet a strengths-based approach is essential for growth and change!

When my children were younger, I remember my attention being drawn to the negative and the problematic. I would come home from work and immediately notice if the backpacks and shoes were yet again left in disarray at the door. This would lead me to comment to my kids: “Why did you leave your backpacks and shoes all over the hallway again?” A negative spiral of communication would ensue. It also led me to overlook that they were actually doing their homework and being productive at that moment.

Why should we focus on strengths?

April 9, 2026

Sustainable Leadership: Ego, Trust, Humility

How can leaders lead in a sustainable way?

Photo by feey on Unsplash

How can leaders lead sustainably? When leaders sit in despair and urgency, thinking they are the only person who can help, does that help? Is it sustainable to lead this way? Does it lead to burnout?

Recently, I watched an episode of Season 2 of The Pitt, a show that focuses on emergency room events in a hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I found myself struggling with Dr. Robby’s character this season. It all hit home in one conversation he had with Nurse Dana. Dr. Robby won’t leave for his sabbatical, and he tells Nurse Dana he is convinced the entire hospital and all the people he supervises will fall apart in his absence. Wow! I have experienced many leaders like this, and I have felt this way at some point or another. To me, this can be a dangerous place for leadership to live.

March 19, 2026

Leadership and Parent Coaching

Illustration by Boxicons on Unsplash

I am excited to share that I provide both leadership and parent coaching services from PRI Educational Consulting. I have been offering leadership and executive coaching services for many years now, and have added Parent Coaching to my services.

I completed a course through Cindy Goldrich on Coaching Parents who have kids with ADHD. I learned so much and I tapped into my background and experience as an educator and a parent. I find that at any age or stage in my career there is more learning and growing to be done.

I have come to realize that parenting in the home and leading in the workplace have much in common.

Both parents and executives/administrators are leaders of people. They set the tone for their team, colleagues, and family members.
Both leadership and parenting roles have demands outside of the home and the office.

February 25, 2026

Supporting Parents is Supporting Kids

Supporting yourself as a parent is the key to supporting growth in your child.

Photo by Aditi Gautam on Unsplash

Supporting yourself as a parent is the key to supporting growth in your child. As a parent, you can leverage change in your family in a way no one else can. For this reason, it is important to devote time and energy to developing your individual parenting skills. This is a realization I came to only later in my parenting journey. When my husband and I were parenting our children, we believed that we should pour all our resources, time, and energy into what our children needed from outside sources. We sent them to everything the school suggested, from therapy to tutors to allergists. Some of these supports helped, and some did not. I did not focus as much on my interactions with my children.

The Parent Role

It turns out parents and caregivers play an integral role in building our children’s brains and behaviors.

January 7, 2026

Enabling or Supporting Leadership

What does enabling versus supporting look like in the workplace as a leader?

Photo by Sierra Koder on Unsplash

Last month, I wrote about enabling and supporting as a parent. This month, I expand on the topic to the workplace. What does enabling versus supporting look like in the workplace as a leader?

Let’s start with a definition of each. Cindy Goldrich defines enabling as doing things for others with no plan for their future independence. Supporting is helping someone with a plan to help them build a specific skill towards autonomy. Leaders, how does this apply to your direct reports?

Supportive Leadership style is a leadership style in which the leader supports their subordinates with tools and resources until they have the skills to work autonomously.
Indeed Career Guide

Enabling in the Workplace

In the workplace, if a direct report came to me with an issue and I solved the problem for them, when would they learn to develop their own problem-solving and decision-making skills?

December 10, 2025

Enabling Or Supporting?

Photo by Sierra Koder on Unsplash

Enabling holds people down, and supporting lifts people.

Enabling holds people down, and supporting lifts people. When we lean into enabling rather than supporting as parents, there is no path to independence. When we lean into supporting instead of enabling, we are creating a path to independence. The teacher of my parent coaching course made a clear distinction between enabling and supporting. She defined enabling as doing things for others with no plan for their future independence. Supporting is helping someone with a plan to help them build a specific skill towards independence.

Enabling is the shadow side of being supportive. If we just repeatedly do things for others with no long-term plan for them to learn or do for themselves, then we are enabling. Supporting is showing, helping, guiding folks towards developing a skill, and eventually doing this skill independently. Supporting is at the core of being a coach.

November 18, 2025

Poetry and Plumbing

Photo by kevin laminto on Unsplash

Essential Elements of an Effective Leader: The Vision and the Execution

Effective leadership requires both poetry and plumbing. According to The Hidden Brain Podcast with host Shankar Vedantan, who speaks to Stanford University’s Huggy Rao about leadership, to discuss how leadership needs both ‘poetry’ and ‘plumbing’ to be successful. Rao states that the poetry in leadership is the vision, and the plumbing is essentially the execution that brings the vision to life.

The Balance: Vision and Execution

In my leadership journey, I have learned that these two elements, poetry and plumbing, vision and execution, must be joined together to be led effectively. In the episode, Rao and Vedantam discuss the infamous Fyre Festival as an example of failed leadership. It was a highly publicized, visionary event that completely collapsed into disaster due to a lack of execution and attention to detail. There was plenty of poetry and vision and a sheer lack of plumbing and execution.

November 3, 2025

Stillness Leads to Opportunities

I see choices and possibilities when I slow down.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez ???????? on Unsplash

I have learned that there is a strong connection between having a stillness practice and the ability to see opportunities and choices before me. When I was new to leadership and to parenting, I felt that I had to have all the answers and fix all the problems. I was always on the move, putting out fires at work and at home. I only stopped when I slept. I would fall into a deep sleep each night as my head hit the pillow and awake each morning to my alarm as thinking I just went to bed. Those of you of a certain age may remember the phrase for the Dunkin’ Donut commercials that the weary donut baker said each dark morning as he started baking day after day: “It’s time to make the donuts.”

October 8, 2025

Parent Coaching: What’s that?

Photo by Suzi Kim on Unsplash

As parents, we are given this enormous responsibility and privilege of caring for other human beings who are constantly changing and growing. How do we develop the skills and strategies to respond to the baby, the toddler, the teen, and the young adult in front of us in this ever-changing landscape? Parent coaching is a vital support!

When my children were younger and I was juggling full-time work and parenting, I often felt overwhelmed and lonely. My kids and work were consistently at the top of the priority list. Exercising was somewhere at the bottom. Developing my skills as a parent was not even on the list! I read numerous parenting books and, as an educator myself, was well-versed in child development; yet, when it came to my own children, the skills and strategies felt less accessible. My husband, also in education, and I often engaged the expertise of tutors, therapists, and any resource the school recommended.

September 18, 2025

Equanimity and Empathy: A Powerful Pairing

A lotus flower sitting above the mud below.

Photo by Alfonso Betancourt on Unsplash

As a leader and a parent, staying steady in the face of chaos, while also understanding how others feel, is a superpower that I strive to cultivate. This is practicing the powerful pairing of equanimity and empathy. It’s about bringing a steady and stable presence even when the world around you is swirling, while trying to understand what others are going through. Sometimes I am more successful than others.

Equanimity

Equanimity is characterized by the ability to remain calm, composed, open, and non-reactive in the face of challenging or distressing situations.
Positive Psychology

This image of the lotus flower helps me think of equanimity. The lotus flower sits in glorious beauty and yet underneath is mud and roots. It needs all those things to exist. It looks steady and calm above the muddy and murky waters.

Equanimity is not about ignoring the chaos.