Suggestions
Cara Shortsleeve
Inspiring Leaders, Empowering Teams | CEO of The Leadership Consortium | Googler | HBS
Cara Shortsleeve is an accomplished general manager and sales leader with a passion for accelerating new businesses and managing businesses at scale, shaping product strategy, developing go-to-market plans, building organizational processes, managing aggressive revenue plans, and inspiring teams across various geographies and levels.
Her professional strengths include building strong, effective, and hard-working teams, stellar execution with a bias for action and efficiency, being a highly effective partner with strong communication and relationship-building skills, bringing energy, enthusiasm, and fun to her surroundings, and advocating for diversity.
Cara's specialties encompass general management, strategy, business development, sales and operational leadership; product development, management, and marketing; leadership, team management, and change management with a focus on launching and scaling alongside product growth; and domain expertise in digital media, social media, video, advertising, diversity & inclusion, and STEM for girls.
She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a BA from Williams College, and has studied at Buckingham Browne & Nichols School.
Throughout her career, Cara has been affiliated with prestigious organizations. She served as a Board of Advisors at Mount Auburn Hospital, Founding CEO at The Leadership Consortium (TLC), Director of Global Brand Solutions at Google & YouTube, Head of Global Commercialization, Social at Google & YouTube, Sales Lead for New Advertising Products in Travel at Google & YouTube, Americas Online Sales Group: Head of Industry for Financial Services, Healthcare, Agency at Google & YouTube, Product Manager for Running at New Balance, Director of National Accounts (Hind) at Saucony, and Financial Analyst at Morgan Stanley.
Highlights
There are way too many bad meetings.
Bad meetings waste time, burn goodwill, drain energy.
There are a ton of things you cannot control as a leader.
But you know what you CAN control?
You can run GREAT meetings.
➡ Set an agenda. ➡ Name the desired outcome (seeking input? making a decision? conveying information?). ➡ Share the agenda and desired outcomes in advance. ➡ Time bound each topic. ➡ Take notes. ➡ Track the action items. ➡ Follow up.
In other words, be a zoom show your team wants to watch.
(Quote/photo credit: awesome coaster in the window at Joy Street Gifts in Concord, MA. Great shop! Stop by if in you are in the area).
Starting the week with a fun share. I was recently interviewed by Dave Bookbinder on Behind The Numbers. You can check it out wherever you listen to content – or – for fun! – you can watch the show on YouTube or your preferred video site.
Dave and I riffed on all things leadership, covering great questions in rapid succession:
➡ Can empathy be taught? (Spoiler alert: yes!).
➡ What do you do if your boss doesn’t model leadership that resonates with you? (Spoiler alert: before you exit stage right, remember that there is power in difference).
➡ What does excellent team building look like? (Spoiler alert: “heading to the bar for drinks” is not the answer).
➡ And some of my other favorite topics, like the intersection of sports and leadership, leading through transformational change, trends facing leaders today, etc.
It was a super fun jam session; listen in and let me know what you think.
#Leadership #Teambuilding #Sports
