Leadership Therapy with Anna Rowley

For 14 years, Dr. Anna Rowley consulted as a psychologist for Microsoft. You can imagine the pressure Microsoft's employees are under. Anna helped employees overcome stumbling blocks and build their leadership skills. In her book Leadership Therapy, she introduces readers to the common run-ins associated with leadership and helps people become their own therapist through self-knowledge. This podcast is a piece of the introduction. Here's how it starts.

"So, tell me about your childhood." This may seem an odd question to ask a manager--any employee, really--within the confines of company walls. But it's a commonplace one at Microsoft. Not that people walk around carrying boxes of Kleenex and confessing their innermost thoughts to their cube mates. Yet it is often one of the first things I ask when I walk into my clients' offices. I'm not your typical therapist. I don't run a private practice catering to a wide range of patients struggling with eating disorders or ruined marriages or agoraphobia. In fact, my patients are some of the most successful, powerful, put-together, take-charge people in the corporate world. So what are they doing in therapy? And why are we having our sessions right in the middle of the workday, at the office?

[podcast]http://www.800ceoread.com/blog/audio/leadership_therapy.mp3[/podcast]