Here she is…  Fall is starting to blow in.  Don’t know about where you are, but mornings are starting to be crisp up here in the Sierras and my early morning paddling forays now require some serious fleece.

The end of the year seems shockingly close and it is a really good time to turn back to your goals list and make one more push to finish the year out right. In the “Plan” section of my Powerful Performance Formula, we talk a lot about the different ways of strategic planning.

Since the dark ages, the assumption has been that the most important leadership traits are confidence, courage and being fearless, and that those are characteristics mostly attributed to men.

There’s been a ton of research on the subject, and it turns out, that women hold 52% of all jobs, but only 14.6% are executives, 8.1 % are top earners, and 4.6 % are Fortune 500 CEOs. (CNNMoney)

HBR lists some fun reasons for this clear under-representation of women in management, namely:

I got fired.  Yep, I really did.  Has that ever happened to you?

You gave it your all, felt like you were doing a really good job, did your very best work and yet, you got fired anyway.  When the day came that you were escorted out with your one plant, your books and your pictures in a box, you were still confused about what happened.

Sometimes it’s really not you, it’s them.

Of course, what it takes not to be in that situation, is being clear about your 5 win elements: