Laura Gassner Otting

I few weeks ago I got a lot of responses from an email where I talked about how we are different today than we were when we set Jan 1 goals. And perhaps at this midpoint of the year, we should revisit why that is. As we approach June 30 -- if you are anything like me -- you are either quietly proud of January’s list, or quietly panicking about it. Or, both. (Ahem, me.) Here’s one thing I know to be true this week: both reactions are running the wrong diagnostic. The halfway point isn’t a...

It’s early June, and that means one thing in my house: It’s Birthday Week. My husband and both of my sons have birthdays this week. So does my 84-year-old father who, along with my mother, is still healthy and active enough to travel into the city and spend the weekend with us. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s four birthdays in one week... which means we’re up to our eyeballs in celebration. Dinners. Cakes. Shows. Drinks. Parties. My brain expands. My heart expands. My waistline...

What do legendary talent spotters see that the rest of us miss?How do some people so naturally spot the "IT FACTOR" in others?Why is talent so obvious in hindsight, but often opaque before proven? These are the questions I have been thinking about for almost 30 years -- in executive search, advising leaders from the corner office to the Oval Office on the most important talent decisions, and as an author and keynote speaker, teaching audiences and coaching clients how they can invest in...

I’m writing today from 35,000ft, flying back from Cape Town, South Africa where I ran my 9th(!) marathon two days ago. (Or was it just yesterday? I don’t know. I’m in that liminal space where I don’t even know if home city of Boston is even a place that exists or if I died and I’m in purgatory and I just live in this tin can where I’ve spent the past 18 hours.) All I know is that it’s TRUESDAY. So it must be Tuesday. A bit of backstory: I ran this marathon because it’s part of my slow-moving,...

Each year around this time, I sit at my desk and look out the window at the pretty sunshine that’s finally peeking out. I scramble to make summer vacation plans. I refresh the weather app. I think, "ugh, Monday." And here’s the thing: I love my job. Like, LOVE love it. Still every May, like clockwork, I get that nagging case of the malaise we all knew as senioritis in school. That heavy-eyelid, brain-elsewhere, who-cares feeling of… "meh." If you’re nodding along, welcome to the club. Roll...

Q1 ended a month ago. Did you notice? If you're like most of the high-achievers I work with, you spent the first week of April toggling between two voices in your head: the one tallying what you crushed, and the one cataloging what you didn't. A scorecard. Hit. Miss. Hit. Miss. Pass. Fail. Here's what I know to be true this week: that scorecard is the wrong tool for the job. Goals aren't a test. They're a hypothesis. And every good hypothesis delivers data. Loads and loads of data. You set...

You don't run Boston to prove you can. You run it to find out who you are when it gets hard. I was out there yesterday. Not running this time, but cheering. Watching. Remembering 2012, when I crossed that finish line myself for the first time. Back then, race organizers offered deferrals to anyone concerned about the risk of death. It was 92 degrees. Halfway through, my husband stuffed bags of ice into my sports bra. A mile later, a woman on the sidewalk pointed at them and yelled, "What a...

Everybody wants the moonshot. The moment you can point to and say, there—that’s when my life meant something. But nobody tells you what comes with you when you get there. That’s why this moment on Artemis stopped me cold. One of the astronauts looked out at a crater on the moon and asked to name it after his late wife, Carroll. In the middle of all that vastness… he reached for her. Not because he forgot where he was.Because he remembered who she was. And somehow, in all that distance, it...

Have you ever asked for feedback and been left worse than before? Maybe some of the feedback puffed up your ego.Maybe some of the feedback bruised your ego.Most likely, most of the feedback dropped you into a crisis of confidence trumped only by the accompanying crisis of identity. Why does this happen? And how can we avoid it in the future? The answer isn't to stop asking for feedback.The answer is to start asking for it better. And yes, this is pure Wonderhell territory. You’re not at the...

Everybody loves talking about luck on St. Patrick’s Day. Green beer. Four-leaf clovers. “Some people are just born lucky.” Yeah… no. When I started researching Wonderhell, I thought “making your own luck” was total BS, right up there with vision boards and manifesting your dream yacht. And then I actually dug into the science and had to eat my words (and not in the fun sheet-cake way). Psychologist Richard Wiseman studied people who described themselves as lucky, and the pattern wasn’t magic....