79: Tara Mohr- Playing Big: Practical Wisdom to Speak Up, Create, and Lead

For Life on Purpose Episode #79, my guest is author and women’s leadership expert Tara Mohr, who gives women (and the men in her audience/community) the practical skills to voice and implement the changes they want to see—in themselves and in the world.

Tara joined me for a great conversation on her new book Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead, which was named a best book of the year by Apple’s iBooks. It provides real, practical tools to help women quiet self-doubt, identify their callings, “unhook” from praise and criticism, unlearn counterproductive "good girl" habits, and begin taking bold action.

“How did Playing Big come to be? I felt like all around me, I saw women playing small. Brilliant women with fabulous ideas, provocative questions, visions for how the world could be different and better. But those ideas and visions and questions weren't being voiced. And I was very attuned to that because I was struggling with that myself.

I sent out a survey and asked my readers and asked them, 'What's the biggest challenge in your life?' and I listed a bunch of the challenges that we typically think loom so large in women's lives. But because of what I'd seen again and again, I added one more challenge to the list, 'I'm playing small.' When the survey responses came back, 'I'm playing small' was what the most women deemed the biggest challenge in their lives."

About: Tara Mohr is an expert on women’s leadership and well-being. She helps women play bigger in sharing their voices and bringing forward their ideas in work and in life.

Tara is the author of Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead, named a best book of the year by Apple’s iBooks and now in paperback. In the book, she shares her pioneering model for making the journey from playing small–being held back by fear and self-doubt–to playing big, taking bold action to pursue what you see as your callings.

Tara is the creator of the Playing Big leadership program for women, which now has more than 1,500 graduates from around the world, and creator of the global Playing Big Facilitators Training for coaches, therapists, leadership development professionals and other practitioners supporting women in their personal and professional growth.

A Coaches Training Institute-certified coach with an MBA from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree in English literature from Yale, Tara takes a unique approach that blends inner work and practical skills training.

Her work has been featured on national media from the New York Times to Today Show to Harvard Business Review, and has captivated women from all walks of life.

To learn more about Tara's work, visit: http://www.taramohr.com/.