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Maria was the CEO of a rapidly growing tech startup in the genomics space. She was curious, confident, open to new ideas, and comfortable being challenged by her teamall qualities that had helped her build the company from nothing into a 30-person organization with millions of dollars in venture capital funding and a consumer-facing product about to be released. And yet, even as things seemed to be going exceptionally well, key leaders were starting to leaveand the board brought me, a clinical psychologist-turned-entrepreneur-turned business coach, in to figure out why. What you sometimes find in situations like these is a leader with a difficult personalityrigid, cold, and just plain unpleasant to work for. Not here. Maria was warm, engaging, and personable. Her team loved talking to her. They just didnt love working for her. As it turned out, her confidencea critical quality for an entrepreneur to possess when breaking new ground and coming up against scores of obstacles and critics insisting something couldnt be donewas playing out in a way that was hurting the business. Shes curious until she isnt, one high-ranking team member told me. Everyone else might still have more questions, but she shuts down the conversation and insists we move on. Shes open to discussion right up until the point when she feels like shes made a decision, and then shes dismissive, arrogant, and impossible. She makes the rest of us feel stupid if we dont see things as quickly or as clearly as she does, and thats not an environment I want to work in. Shes brilliant, but I dread every meeting. I dont know what hes talking about, Maria told me when I presented her with the feedback. My ability to make decisions is a strength. And theyre good decisions! I dont see the point of going around in circles once I know the answer! When superstrengths become supernovas Maria was a classic example of an entrepreneur with a blindspot. She didnt see how her superstrengthconfidencehad tipped over to become arrogance, and that arrogance was holding her back. When I began as a coach and first started to hear people talk about strengths and weaknesses, I took the information at face value. If an executive was praised for their persistence, Id make a note of it, and look for other areas that might need to be addressed. After all, strengths are good, I reasoned. Its the weaknesses that we need to worry about. But after a little while, I started to notice a surprising pattern. The calm, unflappable CEOa huge strengthnever signaled when he was upset, causing people to have to guess what bothered him. The curious, out-of-the-box thinker seemed to always get easily distracted by something shiny and new. The friendly, sociable extrovert wasnt leaving people alone to do their work. Every strength had its corresponding weakness, and the challenge was to keep things balanced, not to tip too far in one direction or the other. Strengths are not unqualified positives. Instead, our difficulties often emerge from investing too heavily in our strengthsour superstrengths become supernovas, and transform into the qualities that most frustrate the people around us and get in the way of our success. And because our strengths are often the qualities we are most proud of, the things we like best in ourselves and have heard positive feedback about over the course of our lives, the idea that they can become our biggest weaknesses is a common blindspot. Most of us simply wont be able to see when its happening. How to keep yourself from tipping into disaster We cant change our traits. But once we become aware of our extreme qualities, we can adopt behaviors to keep them in check. First, we have to find the blindspots. What I tell my clients to do is ask themselves the top adjectives others use to describe them, and then reflect on what happens if you modify them with the word too. Are they too smart, too energetic, too selfless? And how might that be playing out in the workplace? For Maria, she acknowledged that perhaps she could be too confident sometimes, and was eventually able to see how that might make her team feel sidelined or ignored. She was never going to be able to slow down her decision-making, but what she could do is recognize when she had decided she had the answer, and stopped asking questions. That was her awareness trigger for when she was at-risk of appearing arrogant and dismissive. She could then change her behavior and communicate that she was nearing a decision but was still open to discussion. I think I know the answer, she could tell her team, but lets keep talking until were all on the same page. She might not think her mind was going to be changed, but more communication could uncover angles she was ignoring, and ensure her team feels heard and respected. Recognizing when our superstrength has tipped over the edge and we have gone too far is the new skill to develop. It starts with accepting that a strength will at times become a liability. With that awareness we will naturally think about tapping the breaks a bit when we spot we are expressing that strength. Next, we can become aware of other behaviors that accompany our over-indexed strength. For Maria, it was feelings of having the answer, being done, wanting to move on, and feeling irritated that others want to discuss some more. When those feelings appeared, she would then know she had moved into problem territory. In turn, following up with the actual behavior change to correct the situation was a rather small adjustment. The changes we need to make arent dramatic, just little tweaks to how we approach the world, informed by greater self-awareness. Yet these tweaks can have huge effects. The more deliberate we are about how we show up, the more strategic and effective we can be at keeping our superstrengths in check and avoiding deeper problems.
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E-Commerce
Pride Month is here, and theres no question weve come a long way since the first Pride events, which advocated for collective solidarity, individual identity, and resistance to discrimination and violence. Yet we still have much further to go. According to one recent report from the University of California at Los Angeles, nearly half of LGBTQ workers have experienced workplace discrimination or harassment at some point in their professional lives. Add in microaggressions, or the everyday slights that happen in plain sight in front of colleagues and managers, and the number is even higher. Heres where allies can make a differenceand there are plenty of them. One PRRI public opinion report indicates that three-quarters of Americans support policies that protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodation. But being an ally to any minority is hard, especially when its not always obvious when someone identifies as LBGTQIA+. So how can you be a better ally and bolster inclusion at work? Here are three ways (plus a bonus!) to be a more effective ally to the LGBTQIA+ community, from a business leader who also happens to be a lesbian. 1. Educate yourself Allyship isnt a passive thing that shows up without effort. Take it upon yourself to understand the struggles of your LGBTQIA+ colleagues and actively try to create change in your workplace. The LGBTQIA+ label is a huge catchall (and a long acronym by any measure). Learning about the everyday experiences of even part of this community is a great starting point to better understanding the struggles we face. In turn, you can take steps to become a more effective ally and drive informed change. At the very least, itll help you recognize when you have the opportunity to stand up for, or against, something on our behalf. Checking unconscious biases is also part of this narrative. Being self-aware to identify behaviors were not usually conscious of is the first step in learning how to avoid unintentionally acting on them. 2. Recognize your privilege and use it for good You dont have to apologize for it, you dont have to hide it, but you do need to understand your privilege and the power it bestows. Being a heterosexual person in the workplaceand in the worldgives you the chance to make a difference. It allows you to challenge bias, tackle unfairness, and effect change. And for a heteronormative individual, you can often do those things with far lesser risk. So be vocal. This doesnt have to be in a big, highly visible wayit can be as simple as respecting someones chosen name or pronouns, and encouraging or gently correcting other people if they defer to the traditional he/she binaries.You have the armor of privilege. Embrace it and then use it to open doors for those who dont have that same protection. Incidentally, having these conversations outside of the workplace with family and friends educates them on what being an effective ally can look like and what they can do to help. The more people we can bring to a place of understanding and support, the deeper the change. 3. Change the culture Consistency is a major win when it comes to good allyship. Its essential to building trust and driving lasting change, so model inclusive behaviors. How? Good allies share opportunities with others: they cut out (and call out) microaggressions thinly disguised as banter; they use inclusive language with intention and sincerity; they listen to a member of the community over coffee and welcome someone into their space. It can be as simple as being the voice against presumptions in the workplace. Ive seen this myself when colleagues default to gendered generalities. For example, theres using he/him pronouns when referring to generic or hypothetical humans (Whoever we bring onboard, he should be highly skilled). Or assuming someones gender on the basis of their name when you dont actually know the person or how they identify (I havent met Ryan, but I hope hes top-notch). By gently correcting (Whoever we bring onboard, they should be highly skilled or I havent met Ryan, but I hope theyre top-notch), you remind others that gender isnt always what it seemsand that not everyone fits neatly into a gender normative box. It can also be about consciously changing patterned social behaviors. For example, if a coworker mentions that theyre married, dont assume they have a husband or wife of a different gender. I cant count the number of times colleagues and clients have asked me What does your husband do? over the years. Ive had to come out again and again over the span of my career. Instead, consider asking about who they most enjoy spending time with outside of work or who the important people are in their life. Its an open question that, when asked in an authentic and respectful way, invites the other person to share within their own level of comfort. Continue to challenge the microaggressions. Culture change doesnt come solely from the top. It comes from repetition, from small corrections, and from people like you choosing to do the right thing consistently. The bonus: Dont beat yourself up The ever-evolving language of inclusion means we all trip up occasionally, even with the best of intentions. No one expects you to get it right every time. Dont sweat it. Even we trip up within our own community, be it over chosen names, pronouns, or how we support our loved ones who are transitioning. Give yourself some grace. If you make a mistake, apologize, learn, and keep going. Dont let a slip-up stop you from showing up. Allyship isnt about being perfect. Its rarely about big gestures. Its about showing up, paying attention, and doing what you can consistently. Sometimes it means speaking up. Sometimes it means stepping forward on someone elses behalf. And sometimes it just means being someone others know they can count on. The small, everyday actions add up. And when enough people do them, thats when real change happens.
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E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. This years spring selling season didnt meet expectations, Toll Brothers CEO Douglas Yearley told a group of institutional investors gathered at Bank of Americas 2025 Housing Symposium earlier this month. The spring selling season, which is really a winter selling season, is when most new homes are sold in this country, Yearley said. This was not a good spring . . . it still was, overall, a soft spring season. Yearley said February marked the spring season low point, with some improvement in March and Aprilbut not enough to call it a rebound. Regionally, Yearley painted a picture of a highly bifurcated market. The best-performing areas for Toll Brothers include Boston and Northern Virginia, where land is scarce, resale inventory is tight, and competition from large public builders is limited. Through the COVID years, you know, the Northeast and Atlantic, all across and down through Northern Virginia, did not fare well, as everybody could go remote and leavethey were chasing the sunshine and chasing a lower cost of living. And so home price appreciation through COVID wasn’t as much in Boston and Northern Virginia because demand wasn’t as strong. Now that has completely flipped, and our strongest corridor is Boston, Yearley said. Yearley added: There’s less competition [in the Northeast]. The big public builders aren’t here. There’s very little land. So when you get the land, it’s gold, and the resale markets are much tighter. I live on the Main Line of Philadelphia, in the suburbs of Philly. There’s no inventory [here]. That’s not true in Texas and Florida and other places where you have a lot of big public builders and a lot of land. So there’s much more supply [in Texas and Florida]. But in the Boston and Northern Virginia corridor, it’s very supply-constrained, and we [Toll Brothers] are doing really well [in the Northeast]. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}(); On the flip side, Toll Brothersa publicly traded luxury homebuilder with an $11 billion market capitalizationis seeing the most softness in pandemic-era boomtowns across the Sun Belt, where unsold completed spec inventory has surged. Spec homesshort for speculative homesare built without a buyer lined up, with the builder betting the home will sell once finished. On the softer side, you know, Florida inventories are up . . . parts of Texas inventories are up. Phoenix is still adjusting a bit with high inventories. A lot of that inventory for existing homes is builder spec, because all those markets have a lot of big builders there who are committed to a spec strategy, Yearley said. Yearley doesnt think this spec overhang in boomtown areas in Arizona, Florida, and Texas will last forever. Hes already starting to see some homebuilders pull back. As many as a third of the overhang on the resale market right now is actually new unsold spec. That’ll clean up [over time] because the builders are starting fewer spec homes in the softer market, and I think that will naturally work its way out, Yearley said. Despite near-term softness, Yearley remains bullish on the long-term fundamentals driving housing demand. We have 4 to 6 million too few homes in this country. We havent built enough homes in the last 15 years to come close to satisfying demand,” he said. “The tailwinds for the industry are great, but short-term pressure is real.
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E-Commerce
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