It's one thing to find yourself as the only woman at the leadership table, but it's another to thrive in your seat at the table. As more women have access to leadership opportunities previously unavailable to them, many women find themselves as the only woman at the table. Having spent much of my career here as well, I’ve developed practices along the way that have helped me thrive.

Female leaders have to have four things in order to succeed in their roles: confidence, influence, connections, and a vision. Arriving at this combination of strengths is mostly a matter of mindset.

Whether you are a pastor or leader, the process of finding the right person for a position is one that causes stress across the board. Many of my clients worry that they won’t be able to find the best person for a position.

Let me ask you a personal question: how involved are you in your team’s decision making? Does your team’s success hinge on you being involved in every single detail and decision? Now, be completely honest. IF your team’s success is more dependent on you than them, this tells me a few things about you and your team members.

Have you ever wished you were being intentionally developed more in your current position? Did you know that being developed by your boss is one of the most desired aspects of someone’s job that doesn’t happen? In fact, in his management research, Michael Losey found that the Number 2 reason people leave an organization is because of a lack of career development (the Number 1 reason being compensation and benefits). Whether or not your boss intentionally helps you with your development plan, know this: YOU ARE WORTH INVESTING IN. So, what can you do about it?

Finding the right people outside of your organization to partner with can be tiresome and confusing, if only it was as easy as picking your favorite ice cream flavor. Okay, so that isn’t really that easy either, how about your go-to shoes?!

With the expansion of globalization and rapid advancements in technology, cross-cultural interactions around the globe are at an all-time high. No longer are cultures bound by their geographic borders. Local developments be they technological, political, social, economic or environmental can now have instantaneous global impact. With news available 24-7 around the world, people are more aware than ever before of what is happening globally, and businesses and organizations are affected more quickly than ever before by events in far reaching places. Take the 2008 economic crisis in the United States for example, its impact was felt way beyond the United States’ geographical borders.

How it is that some organizations have diverse leadership teams while others seem to only have leaders who look, act, and talk the same? I once heard an executive leader of a 25,000-person organization located in a very diverse metro area in the U.S. say that while they believed in women in leadership, they couldn’t find any qualified enough in their organization. Somehow, I highly doubt that to be entirely true.

Without leadership development, visionaries can bulldoze the very people they have a heart for, as seen by the early lives of Joseph and Moses. Joseph is an excellent example of the visionary leader Baldoni writes about in his book Great Communications Secrets of Great Leaders. In their research, Taylor et al. found that with their ability to create and communicate their visions, visionary leaders can energize their organizations by "providing meaning and purpose to the work."