Lisa Duncan,
President, Duncan & Duncan Enterprises

When Lisa Duncan walks into a room, you notice her. The 6-foot-1-inch in heels fashionista is striking in her stateliness and sophistication, bringing an aura of elegance into any room she enters. Combine the grace of Audrey Hepburn, the style of Sarah Jessica Parker and the contagious energy of Ellen Degeneres, and you get a glimpse of what she's like.

It comes as no surprise then that Duncan has found her life's calling in the retail and fashion industry. Through Duncan and Duncan Enterprises, the company she founded five years ago, she travels the world, teaching individual and corporate clients merchandising secrets, workplace dressing, and the lost art of customer service.

Fashion and retail have always been sources of passion for Duncan, who cites her grandparents as the inspiration behind her career path. Her grandfather's adage, "Don't open up a shop unless you know how to smile," instilled in her the importance of customer service, while high teas with her grandmother at Neiman Marcus showed her the timelessness of class and grace, both important lessons that have led to her current success as a fashion and merchandising consultant.

Her more than 25 years in the fashion and retail industry have spanned nearly all seven continents. From Paris to Milan, Denmark to Costa Rica, Switzerland to the Caribbean, Duncan has carved out an expert's niche in the luxury clothing market, working as a buyer of European and American collections for Nordstrom, the manager of U.S. sales for a Denmark firm specializing in accessories and vice president of North American merchandising for an Australian company. She has also owned three successful designer boutiques in her home state of Texas.

Nearly 10 years ago she channeled her wealth of experience into independent consulting to more directly serve a diverse clientele that includes resort towns, colleges, individuals, financial institutions, corporations and, at least for this issue, DENVER WOMAN, as she shared her secrets to what she's coined "Investment Dressing" – a how-to guide for professional dressing in the workplace.

According to Duncan, you've got only 10 seconds to make a first impression, and in the workplace – especially when interacting with customers and clients or interviewing for a job – there is nothing more important than making a good one. Like it or not, these first impressions have little to do with knowledge or experience and everything to do with appearance. Sight, smell, and sound all play a role: Is your perfume overwhelming? Can your bracelets be heard down the hall? Are your piercings distracting?

Luckily, it doesn't take much to make a favorable first impression, as long as you commit to creating a professional wardrobe. Duncan recommends setting aside a certain amount of money each month, just as you would for a car or house payment, and allocating it to your office wardrobe. She emphasizes that this is much more than just a purchase – it's an investment. And after all, what could be more important than investing in your career?

For a helpful guide, she has developed a point-based dressing system. For each item of clothing, she assigns one point to solids and two points to prints. Same goes for accessories – each solid is worth one point, each two-tone or print is two points. An outfit adding up to eight points makes for a simple and elegant look; between eight and 12 points is a good place to be at work; while 13 to 15 points is pushing it.

Duncan also advises staying away from trends and impulse buys. Instead, focus on classic items that will always be in style and in basic colors such as navy, cream/white, camel, charcoal and black. If you absolutely must have something trendy, buy it as an accessory, like a scarf or a belt, not an entire outfit.

Of course, you can't forget the little things that speak volumes – clean and pressed clothing, shiny shoes, groomed fingernails, soft makeup and kempt hair.

So where does this expert get her duds? Dillard's. She says the department store offers the best of what she calls "bridge sportswear" – clothing that bridges the gap between low-priced goods and designer ones, offering the best quality for the price. Particularly in this competitive job market, there is simply too much at stake to overlook the basic yet important concept of professional appearance. While you may have the right to adorn yourself as you see fit, the employer has the right to hire you. Thanks to Lisa Duncan, though, hundreds of her clients are now successfully negotiating that all-too-familiar tightrope.

For more helpful tips on Investment Dressing, you can visit the Web site at www.lisaduncan.com.

Kelly Dignan,
Independent business consultant,
coach and trainer; director, AWAREco

She's a fourth-generation Coloradan. She's worked at two Top 25 Fortune 500 companies. She's launched a successful startup that was named Small Business of the Year in 2000 by the South Denver Metro Chamber and was ranked among the top Colorado women-owned and privately held businesses for 10 and eight consecutive years, respectively. She's been recognized as one of Denver's Top 40 Under 40 Business Leaders (at the age of 35). She's the current volunteer of the year for the Denver Women's Foundation. She's raising two teenagers.

While she may not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, nearly every other aspect of Kelly Dignan's life smacks of superwoman qualities. This business and career consultant, coach and trainer hails from a long line of entrepreneurs, so her appetite for risk, high-energy persona and creative thinking come as no surprise – they must have been in the genetic coding.

After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1986 with a degree in marketing, Dignan went to work in the sales division of Procter & Gamble. It wasn't long, however, before the Rockies summoned her home, and she returned in 1998 to Denver to work for Computer Associates, her first entrée into the world of information and technology. Two years later it was off to another Fortune 500 company – this time General Electric, where she focused on IT consulting.

At GE, she met a friend, colleague, and future business partner in Maureen Clarry. Drawing upon their combined knowledge and experience in the IT world, in 1992 the two ambitious women launched CONNECT: The Knowledge Network, an IT consulting and recruiting firm. Dignan was 29. Over the next dozen years she would help build the company from the ground up, culminating in the thriving business it is today.

But at 41, the age when most women are entering "midlife crisis" territory (or, as Dignan optimistically refers to it, "midlife awakening"), she caught her breath, re-evaluated her priorities and decided to sell her stake in CONNECT and begin a journey as an independent business and career consultant. The transition was mostly seamless since she amassed a wealth of experience in organizational development consulting during her time leading CONNECT. "That [experience] really got me into helping people understand who they are, where they're going, how they can get there and how to be emotionally intelligent as they work inside of organizations," she explains.

That's when she founded AWAREco, an umbrella organization for her burgeoning consulting business. AWAREco refers to the multifaceted levels of awareness in our lives – awareness of our own strengths and weaknesses; awareness of what's going on inside our team and organization; awareness of our business strategy; awareness of the larger world. AWAREco targets women professionals from early career to executive levels and companies seeking help with strategy, including sales and marketing.

In the little spare time Dignan has away from her office, if she's not playing golf, reading, spending time with her family or skiing, she's likely helping women from the target audiences navigate their career paths in coaching sessions she offers through the Women's Vision Foundation. She compiled a special crash course in these sessions for our DENVER WOMAN readers by sharing her expertise on career development, particularly in this trying economy.

For starters, women need to be aware of how our intrinsic hard wiring affects the way we operate, in both good ways and bad. She says, "Our strengths are connectedness, helping and harmony. And so in response to stress, women connect. In these tough times, our natural inclination is to connect – to have community. It's important to understand what our natural wiring is and use it to the best of our advantage by finding support through venues like the Women's Vision Foundation."

Of course, our natural inclination to connect and help others does have its pitfalls, and Dignan says that it's equally important to be aware of them. Do "putting everyone else's needs first" and "harmony at all costs" ring a bell? As she advises, "In these times we have to have a voice, be intentional about our professional development and invest in ourselves because no one else is going to do it for us."

She also emphasizes self-evaluation. "You must understand who you are – your strengths, your values, your skills, your interests. We have to know ourselves." This is an ongoing process that may change through different phases of our lives, but it leads to developing a vision, purpose, and direction for ourselves consistent with our revealed values and priorities. That's where the mapping process comes in – creating the plan to achieve said vision and leveraging the resources around us.

The last, perhaps most important, tip? "Rinse and repeat."

Michelle Thompson
Director, leadership and professional development,
Janus Capital Group

In grade school, they're called teachers; in college, professors. But what do you call someone who solely teaches adults for a living? Leadership and professional development trainers. And that's exactly what Michelle Thompson is.

The concept of educating adults in the corporate world may seem odd or foreign to some people, but the fact remains that adults need to develop leadership and professional skills in the same way that children must learn to read and write and college students must learn to analyze and think critically. This is because, for many people, leadership is not an innate characteristic, according to Thompson, the director of leadership and professional development at Janus Capital Group. And this is why adult education and training in these areas is so critical – much of it must be learned.

Thompson joined Janus in 2005 with the hefty task of directing the company's training and development. It was a progressive move for an asset management firm and an indication of the company's forward-thinking faith in the value of human capital. Whereas many senior level executives might view leadership and training as a superfluous expense in challenging economic times, Janus seems to take a longer-term approach by recognizing the importance of building future company leaders from within and fostering a culture of learning and desire for improvement.

Thompson echoes this philosophy. In these challenging times, she says it is even more important to support your employees because many of them are under strain – they are being asked to do more with less – and leadership and development programs provide a simple way for an employer to show its support and commitment to its employees' personal and professional growth. "Maybe you can't give them [employees] the salary or the bonus they would like, but you can provide development opportunities. You need to be investing in them so they know they are appreciated and valued, " she says.

But what's a DENVER WOMAN reader to do if she isn't lucky enough to work for a company as generous as Janus? Not to worry. According to Thompson, there are still plenty of things you can do on your own to grow both personally and professionally. She believes in what's called the "70-20-10" development philosophy: 70 percent of development occurs on the job; 20 percent is relationship networking; 10 percent is in the classroom with formal training programs. If your company doesn't offer that last 10 percent of formal classroom training, you can still get your development fix by maximizing the 70 percent on-the-job and 20 percent networking opportunities.

That means taking initiative at work. Asking to lead a special project. Getting involved. Lunching with an executive, peer or colleague from another department. Getting to know other people in your industry. Actively managing and expanding your professional network. These are all ways to maximize those 70-20 areas on your own. While formal classroom offerings can obviously help your personal and professional growth, in the final analysis, Thompson says, "you are responsible for your own development. You have to own it and find some way to learn. You have to make it a priority because if you're not growing, you're not getting any better."

She has taken her own advice to heart and, by all accounts, seems to be at the top of her game. Since arriving at Janus in 2005, she has initiated several leadership programs for employees with remarkable results. While it's challenging to measure the effectiveness of something as intangible and nebulous as leadership skills, there are some encouraging signs.

For example, on an employee survey at Janus, the responses to the statement "My manager is an effective leader" changed drastically for the better after Thompson's team rolled out a leadership program. While she modestly concedes that her team cannot take full credit for that positive upswing, the leadership program no doubt played a significant role in the shift.

Perhaps one of the biggest validations of the effectiveness of the development programs that Thompson's team has rolled out occurred this past fall when Janus was recognized as the No. 1 training organization in the country by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) in its annual "BEST" awards. The ASTD is the largest professional organization in the industry, and this award was an incredible honor in a competitive field of more than 100 companies. Ripped straight from the ASTD's "BEST" publication, these companies are "a group of stellar performers who shine above all the rest" – and Janus was picked for the No. 1 slot.

It was the first time Thompson's team had even applied for such an award, but rest assured that they'll probably be defending their title in 2009.