AI, the inspiration behind the title of this article, fascinates and terrifies me. As a child, I harbored a secret fear that machines would one day dominate the world. Perhaps it was The Terminator, Minority Report, or The Matrix that sparked this fear. Or it may have begun with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Soylent Green, or the Borg in Star Trek. Regardless of the source, I am both amazed and not amazed enough by the fact that we now live in a world where a machine can convincingly mimic a friend in a video.

Lion King I really enjoyed the Lion King performance when it came to Chicago again. I first got to experience dancing and singing on Broadway with my husband. This time we took our kids. The singing and dancing still move me.   But I couldn’t help but watch the story being told with a little more skepticism than the first time. The king of the jungle raising the prince, protecting the ladies? Hmmmm…sounds eerily close to the Cinderella fairytales we grew up on…pretty to watch, doesn’t match reality.

Should I feel confident? Scores of companies rank confidence as an essential leadership trait. Countless women's leadership workshops offer participants the prospect of career advancement as they learn to embody confidence. I do enjoy a certain kind of confidence when I see it…not the puffed-up kind, but the authentic, genuine, grounded…. "I've seen some shit, and I'm okay with myself" kind of confidence. 

Impostor Syndrome: Alive and Thriving Impostor syndrome still thrives in our corporate halls, even if many of those halls are online. I almost didn't write about imposter syndrome. Thousands of people have written about it. Articles, blogs, and videos on the topic fill our channels. But I talked to too many people recently not to bring it up AGAIN.

I remember Darwin from school. Here is what I remember...

Are you looking to other people to show you how to be? In a coaching session with a female executive who had tremendous success and was at the top of their organization, they were trying to reason the “right” way to do something at their company.

Have you failed at something? Maybe your belly still churns when you think about an error you made or something you could have handled better.