Laura Gassner Otting

Here's the thing nobody tells you about negotiation: by the time you're in the room, most of the outcome has already been decided. Not by them. By you. For fifteen years, I ran an executive search firm, which means I spent fifteen years sitting squarely in the middle of other people's negotiations. Watching candidates decide what they'd accept. Watching clients decide what they'd offer. Watching both sides talk past each other about money when money was almost never the actual issue. I got...

Back to school is upon us, and that means that kids around the world are walking into classrooms (or starting to think about walking into classrooms) to learn something new. But, not just something new.Something they specifically don't already know.Which means... something they would currently fail. That's not a bug. That's the entire design of education. Our kids figure out algebra, and then it's time for geometry. They figure out geometry, and then it's trigonometry. They figure out...

On Wednesday night in Glasgow, Melanie Woods crossed the line first in the T54 1500m at the Commonwealth Games with a record-breaking time of 3:33.39. Home crowd. Scotland's own. Done. Except it wasn't. A collision on the opening bend had taken down four of the finalists. Two never finished. The appeals came in, and by the next day the jury had voided the result entirely. The race Woods had won — the one with her name on the record board — no longer existed. She would have to do it all over...

Alan Mulally is considered by many to be one of the best leaders of the past century. But that wasn't always the case. Before Alan Mulally saved Ford Motor Company — and, with it, arguably the American auto industry — he lost his best engineer. This was decades earlier, at Boeing. Alan had risen to young-star status the way many of us do: alone, and fast. So the team handed him someone to manage. And manage, he did. Alan managed the way he thought managers were supposed to — feedback, then...

When Dorie Clark walked into one of the best musical theater writing programs in the country, the student to her left had a master’s degree in musical theater. The student to her right had scored an entire show. Dorie had... three songs. And she’d only gotten in on her second try — the first application was rejected flat out. She could have read that as the finale. Instead, she read it as the intermission. Not an impostor unfit for the program. Just not ready... yet. So she sat down between...

Last week I stood in front of a room of corporate leaders, nonprofit changemakers, and civic innovators at the Points of Light conference and made a confession. I love service for selfish reasons. Here’s what I told them, and here’s what I want to tell you. We’ve been sold a story about generosity. It goes like this: first you achieve, then you arrive, then — once your own oxygen mask is secured — you turn around and give back. Contribution is the dessert you earn after the broccoli of...

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,...