There are coaches all around the world.  In this episode, we examine executive coaching and career development from the point of view of someone who practices in a different hemisphere.  Michael speaks with Ana Pliopas, Ph.D, a coach in Brazil who trained at the Hudson Institute, where Michael also did his coach training.  They discuss how the pandemic affected the way people see their careers, the differences and similarities in how pandemic stress showed up in Brazil vs. the United States,...

Career progress isn't just about how competent or hard-working you are.  It can require the ability to attain and exert power within organizations.  This is a scary thing because power tends to have a bad rap.  You might think you can't attain it, or you might not want to attain it.  As our guest Michael Chang Wenderoth explains, power is simply the ability to get your way in the face of opposition, and it's something that you can understand, unlock and use for your own benefit.  Wenderoth is...

In this episode, we speak Lara Sullivan, the CEO of Pyxis Oncology, and a friend of Michael's of many years.  Lara has served as CEO since 2019 after roles at Pfizer, McKinsey & Co. and in private equity.  No slacker, she also has both MD and MBA degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.  In this episode, we discuss the role of curiosity in career success, how mentoring works differently from the way people assume, and the role of relationships in "de-risking" career moves.  We also...

And we're baaaaaaaaack.  Michael took a break to write a manuscript and manage some other life and career things, but here we are.  We're kicking off this new season with an exciting Coaching Realness episode.  Jennie Nash, America's favorite book coach and writing entrepreneur, last seen in Episode 31, returns to the pod, only this time as a client.  Jennie's business is doing great but she's facing a big issue:  namely, that to take things up to the next level she's going to have to let go...

What is really goes on inside a mentoring relationship?  How do these unique relationships start, evolve, manage bumps along the road, and be useful to both parties?  In this episode, Michael is joined by Lauren Laitin, the founder of Parachute Coaching who is -- spoiler alert -- Michael's mentee.  They review the random way that they met, what initially kicked off their connection, when it turned into a mentoring relationship, and what they've learned along the way. This episode has some...

In 2018, Lauren Baer ran for Congress from Florida's 18th District.  She won the Democratic primary handily and came close to unseating her rival in a deep-red district.  While she had a stellar professional background, including stints working directly for two Secretaries of State and for the Ambassador to the United Nations, she was a first-time candidate and her district had never had an out, lesbian mom candidate running for the seat.  She now runs Arena.run, an organization that prepares...

It's time for another real coaching session.  Michael's client-for-the-day is Meghan Daum, host of The Unspeakable podcast and author of many bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including The Problem With Everything.  Meghan is a writer who hit all the marks of literary success early in her career.  She published her first collection of essays at 30, and since then has written several additional books of essays plus a comic novel.  But in recent years she's made a big pivot and this...

We often plan our lives assuming best-case scenarios:  the fastest commute, the home that will always rise in value, the jump to a new exciting job.  But sometimes we have to deal with things that are not on our wish lists.  One of these is disability.  Disabilities can be temporary or permanent, hidden or visible, predictable or a total surprise.  At least 15 percent of the workforce deals with disability.  What can you do to manage this?  And what should your company be doing?  In this...

What if you end up achieving a big dream, but discover that it's someone else's dream, not your own?  What do you do then?   This week, we are joined by Executive Coach Jennifer Chow Bevan.  Jenn and Michael talk about how putting your head down and working hard isn't always the best strategy for career happiness, and how true insight is difficult but can come over time.  We talk about imposter syndrome, pivotal feedback moments that shake up our thinking, the pluses and minuses of the...

This week we go DEEP and ask:  If you were really present in your life, as opposed to being stuck in your head most of the time, what might you experience?  Michael is joined by executive coach Duncan Drechsel, who walks us through the subtleties of this thing called awareness:  what is it, why it is important, and how we can develop it.  We learn how cultivating awareness fits into leadership – and how our busy, task-oriented work lives seemed almost designed to prevent any actual...

You have a brain and, guess what, it has an impact on how you function.  What can you do to make sure it functions well?  In this week's episode, we speak with executive coach Deb Elbaum about what we can learn from modern brain science.  Deb trained as a physician before going into coaching, so she's a great source for distinguishing evidence-based realness vs. wishful thinking.  Among other things, we learn about the continued plasticity of the brain, why breathing and movement are so...

Michael Roberts is the Executive Director of Comprehensive Youth Development (CYD) in NYC.  CYD partners with three public high schools to give support to students from disadvantaged backgrounds so that they can complete high school and start adult life successfully.  (Michael M has been on the Board of Directors of this org for more than a decade.). Michael R is best known for his leadership and experience in the philanthropic and not-for-profit worlds, but he actually started out as a...

In this week's episode, we have a special guest, NPR host Ailsa Chang, who shares her own career story.  Ailsa grew up as a high achiever, which led to a career in corporate law that she discovered she had no interest in. In her 30s, she enrolled in a Master's program in journalism and decided to pursue the much rockier road of radio journalism.  And look at her now!  Ailsa shares how likely success seemed when she started (spoiler alert: not very), why the radio is a more visual medium than...

In our Pride Month special, Michael interviews bestselling author and general cool person, Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You, Stand Out, Entrepreneurial You and, forthcoming in September, The Long Game.  Dorie explores how to reorient ourselves to see the big picture so we can tap into the power of small changes that, made today, will have an enormous and disproportionate impact on our future success.  We also talk about how careers have changed in the past 30-50 years, and how to...

Sometimes career stewardship involves writing a whole entire book!  This is not a task for the meek but it is doable – and maybe it's doable with less pain than is normally associated with the process.  In this week's episode, we speak with author, publisher and book coach extraordinaire Jennie Nash, who is the CEO of Author Accelerator and happens to be Michael Melcher's very own and highly valued book coach.  Michael and Jennie talk about what would-be authors do wrong, why writing a book...

Networking is a necessary part of career stewardship.  It can be hard to find the time, know what to say, and overcome discomfort.  But it's even harder if you don't have preexisting relationships, grew up speaking a different language, and are trying to make a career change.  Yet, it's still possible to triumph.  In this episode, Michael takes a deep dive with a former client of his, "Emily."  Emily was born and raised in another country, grew up speaking a non-European language, came to the...

No matter how you slice it, work involves getting things done.  "Getting Things Done" is the name of a bestselling book published nearly 20 years ago by David Allen, and it's spawned a community of ardent practitioners.  In this week's episode, Michael Melcher is joined by Michael Dolan, a coaching colleague who also has deep knowledge of how this program works.  We learn why the worst thing for our brain is an open loop, why most to-do lists are of limited utility, and how even though this...

Just because you've spent years of effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars on your education doesn't mean you are prepared for your big career.  Crazy, but true.  The world of work is different in many ways from school; just because you've been successful in one doesn't mean you'll hit the ground running in the other.  So, what can you do?  Today we're joined by Niki Khoshzamir, the CEO of PracticePro, a social enterprise that helps new grads set themselves up for success in their new...

Career stewardship includes knowing how to navigate problems like bias, prejudice, and bullying, as well as doing our part to create workplaces that don't have those problems.  Currently, there is a lot of talk about these kinds of problems, but what can you actually do?  In today's episode, we speak with Kim Scott and Trier Bryant and get some specific, practical tools for dealing with unfairness in the workplace.  Kim Scott is the author of the best-seller, "Radical Candor," and recently...

Politics is one of those careers that is featured frequently in television and movies, but how much do we really know about it?  In this week's episode, we examine ways you can get into politics and what it's like when you're there.  Our guest is Maria Robles Meier, a political staffer and inclusion expert who grew up in a working-class family in Nebraska and built a career working on Capitol Hill, ultimately running the Senate Diversity Initiative under former Senator Harry Reid.  Maria and...

In this episode, we interview Soraya Darabi, general partner and co-founder of the venture-capital firm, TMV.  We learn about how one ends up as a VC when you're from a family that never read the business section of the New York Times, the value of doing a ton of internships when young, and what it's like to work in an industry that has a lot of people born on third base who think they hit a triple.  We reflect on how important relationships are for success in the tech-investment world, and...

How many bad, boring or ineffectual meetings have you attended this week?  How many bad meetings do you expect to attend in your lifetime?  It doesn't have to be this way.  It's possible to have good meetings and if you know how to make them happen, your career will benefit.  The question is:  Do you have the courage to make this happen? In this episode, we speak with coach and organizational psychologist Dennis Adsit about how to triumph over bad-meeting culture.  We start with the...

Age doesn't mean what it used to.  The current workplace contains as many as five generations. It's not uncommon to work alongside people who may be the age of your grandparents – or the age of your grandchildren.  It used to be that you would move from being middle-aged to old, but now we have a whole new stage of life called "Middle Adulthood" – the period of life from 50 to 70+ when people are still very much engaged in the workplace and in living.  In this episode, we speak with Marci...

Do you feel uncomfortable with self-promotion?  Join the club.  Lots of people have hesitations, discomforts, or hang-ups about American-style career self-promotion.  Yet talking about yourself, your capabilities, and your interests are not optional.  It’s a requirement of career stewardship.  In this episode, Michael is joined again by his colleague, Leslie Hom.  They talk about the particular cultural choices of “American-style self-promotion” (and how shows up quite distinctly in the...