Conference Overview - Lead From Where You Are

Gloria Feldt of Take the Lead presenting a keynote at the conference

I am incredibly lucky to work for a company that has an awesome women's network that holds a conference every year! The 2014 conference was this past Friday, and it was inspirational and informative, as always. There were 1000 attendees - amazing! The theme was "lead from where you are," and there were four keynote talks, one breakout session, and a panel discussion.

Some of my favorite quotes from the conference:

• "We're all leaders every day in the various interactions that we have" Doug Davis
• "Drive actions that result in an important reaction" Doug Davis
• "Make up your mind, continue to learn, practice, seek inputs from other people and take them seriously" CC Liong
• "You have to get out of your comfort zone to really grow" Kelly Benak
• "Lead yourself well first"Kelly Benak
• "Power unused is power useless" Gloria Feldt
• "Don't follow your dream - lead it" Gloria Feldt

The first keynote was by Doug Davis, and it focused on the role of leadership and growing careers. There were several key traits of leadership that were brought up through a panel of women Doug has sponsored, influenced, and been influenced by. From the discussion, good leaders:

• Provide opportunities for others and help them succeed in their challenges
• Clear the path
• Provide support in work and in life
• Are open to other viewpoints
• Stick to their convictions and follow their expertise
• Empower, don't rescue
• Enable, support, adapt, and empower others

The second keynote was by Pat McDonald, who covered many bright spots in human resources and diversity and emphasized accountability, candor, and velocity. One of the ways she suggested creating accountability is clear ownership across the board. She also highlighted the need to step out of your comfort zone when you see an issue and ask for help/expertise as you need it. 

I went to a breakout session about storytelling by Brian Carson. His talk was really interactive and full of great tips for developing talks and presentations! He first pointed out that we are all natural born storytellers, we just have to practice and look for the story in our work. He gave us a few exercises - tell the story of your name to the person next to you and Ignite karaoke (Ignite Phoenix is an event where passionate people share their stories and ideas through 5 minute, 20 slide talks) - to practice telling stories and prove that we're all storytellers. Carson pointed out that stories are important in presentations because they engage both the left (analytical) and right (emotional) sides of the brain and help you connect better with your audience. He suggests using stories when you need someone "to believe something is true, take action or make a decision, or remember something". He also presented "four ideas worth sharing" about presenting: the talk is about the idea, not you or your work; use your unique point of view and authenticity in a presentation; share intimate stories from your perspective - tell the audience what happened, not what you think they want to hear; remember that you are not the hero, the audience is the hero. There are also ten TED Commandments that are excellent guidelines for speaking. Carson next went over tips for giving a strategy talk: be realistic about the current landscape, be candid about the problem, explain what the response will be to the problem and how the response is going, and end with a vote of confidence - why do you believe that this is the right strategy? Finally, Carson presented four measures of a successful talk: a successful talk is provocative, candid and authentic, clear to the audience, and inspires confidence.

We then had a great networking lunch where I met some awesome colleagues, and after that there was a panel discussion where we got to hear from four talented fellow employees: Kelly Benak, CC Liong, Indira Negi, and CJ Boston, facilitated by the equally talented Heather Mattisson. Some of the main themes from the discussion were:

• When working with or leading a team, allow people to have their own scope and creativity
• For your own career development, make a goal in advance (possibly years ahead), let people (managers, sponsors, mentors) know what your goal is, start building the skills you'll need, observe people currently in the position you want to be in and learn from them, and practice what you learn
• When trying to influence others, clearly articulate your problem statement (and have data to support it), align the benefits of your proposal to their interests, think through the negative impacts and come up with mitigation strategies, put in the time, work hard, and be persistent 
• Best Advice: get a mentor that you can freely express your goals and desires to and receive feedback from; find a sponsor who can speak for you and position you for the future; take care of people, continue to learn, and be sincere; bring a genuine person rather than a mouthpiece to tough discussions; stay true to who you are and what you believe in

Next, Gloria Feldt gave a thought-provoking talk about women in the workplace. She pointed out some stark statistics, including: women make up 49% of the workforce but only 18% of the top leadership positions and women value their own work 19% less than they value the work of others. She pointed out that the structures we have in the workplace were designed by men, for men, so we need to work on redefining some of those structures in order to create a more equal environment. Feldt also emphasized the fact that there are both internal and external barriers to overcome in the quest for leadership parity. She encouraged us to embrace the power we already have and highlighted the difference between power over and power to. Feldt ended her talk by telling us what we can do with our power to: mentor, sponsor, refer others; lift other women to leadership positions; speak up, raise your hand, ask. 

The final talk was by Rani Borkar, who presented three life lessons through compelling stories in both individual and organizational frameworks. The first life lesson is "don't get stuck in the victim mentality." This mentality causes you to blame everyone else and doesn't enable you to do anything, so it's better to take responsibility and take control of the situation so that you can move forward. The second life lesson is "be true to yourself and stand up for it" - take a stand and be persistent. The third life lesson is "continuously learn and improve to stay relevant and grow" - get out of your comfort zone and continuously adapt. Borkar ended her talk by passing on the power to the audience, she told us that we have the power - we should make our own reflections, write down our own life lessons, and refer to them often, especially when we're having a tough time. 

The leadership conference was a wonderful experience, and I am really thankful for the advice I received and lessons I learned by attending it. 

The Take the Lead Circle takes on Networking

Source

Take the Lead is a unique organization that is bringing together women from all industries to support one another and make the push for equal pay and equal leadership positions. From the Take the Lead website, the organization's mission statement is:

"TAKE THE LEAD prepares, develops, inspires and propels women to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors by 2025. It’s today’s women’s movement — a unique catalyst for women to embrace power and reach leadership parity."

After the Take the Lead Launch Event on February 19 of this year, a Take the Lead Circle developed on Mightybell as a place for women to connect and support one another in the Take the Lead mission. 

Kaitlin Rattigan is a Community Builder for Take the Lead and the facilitator of the Take the Lead Circle. She and I recently led a Circle Chat on networking, and we had a dynamic discussion that I'd love to share. We posed four different question on networking throughout the chat and elaborated on each as a group. 

For the first question we discussed the things that make us uncomfortable about networking and how we can overcome those feelings. Several discomforts came up including, finding it hard to talk about your expertise, feeling like you don't qualify, dealing with people who are aloof, not knowing the subject area or how to initiate or insert yourself into a conversation, and being unsure of how to end a conversation and connect later. 

To initiate an interaction, we discussed a few tips:

• Wear a statement item like a brooch or jewelry to make yourself stand out and give others a conversation starter
• Ask for help - ask someone where to find something or for helping picking up something you dropped and then initiate a conversation after getting assistance
• If the event has a theme, use it as part of your introduction or as a conversation starter with someone 

To become involved in an ongoing conversation, we had some great ideas:

• Positive body language - smile, lean in, nod your head, make eye contact, keep your body open and engaged (don't cross your arms)
• Stand on the periphery of the conversation and get the gist of it and then jump in and say "are you all talking about [blank]" along with a comment about the topic
• Know that nearly everyone feels awkward networking and joining in on conversations –just embrace the awkward

To extract yourself from a conversation gracefully, we came up with some techniques:

• Bring someone else into the conversation and make the introduction, then let the conversation start up again and slowly make your way out
• Say "It's so good to meet you, but since this is a networking event, I'd like to talk to some more people" and make a plan to follow-up with them after the event
• Ask "What's the best way to keep in touch with you?" and jot it down on the back of their business card then make a commitment to get in touch
• If all else fails, you can always use the restroom excuse

Our second question was about building your network, and we asked where people go to meet others and network. We found that there are a huge number and variety of places to network: meetup groups, panel discussions, eventbrite, conferences (better yet, volunteering at conferences), community organizations, volunteer events, and professional associations. We also discussed happy hours and had a mixed reaction about whether these were good or bad places to network. Generally we agreed that happy hours are positive for networking if you know the community attending or if it's with colleagues or a small group of professionals. 

The third question involved maintaining your network. How do you keep up with your connections and where do you store all of their contact information? We all use different ways to store information about the people in our network: Outlook, Evernote, Google Docs, LinkedIn, plastic file folders for business cards. There are also many ways to keep in touch with people, especially with social media. We discussed using Twitter to retweet or mention someone, Facebook to send a quick hello or like, and LinkedIn to keep up with professional updates and congratulate on job changes/promotions. In keeping in touch, we emphasized the importance of adding value to our contacts - sending a useful article, passing on a book that might help them, inviting to an event, and connecting them to other people in our network. The key is making it about your contact and what they need or what might help them rather than making it all about you. We also learned about a free app called CamCard, which you can use to scan business cards and import contact information without having to type it in yourself! 

For our final question, we discussed preparing for conferences and networking events. We got a ton of great tips from this question, and I plan to use them all in preparing for an upcoming conference I'm attending:

• Prepare your elevator speech and your answer to "What do you do?"
• Look up the speakers and find out their organization, business needs, and what they care about so you’re prepared to engage with them
• Figure out who else might be attending so you can prepare for conversations
• Ask the organizer for a list of attendees
• Ask people you already know if they are attending and if they can connect you with others at the event; organize a "mixer" style event within the conference
• Reach out to people before the event with a message that says "I'm looking forward to meeting you" 
• Get in a good mood and pump yourself up; make a decision to connect with others
• Set goals…
• To meet a certain number of people or specific individuals
• To network with a purpose
• Prepare an outfit that includes something interesting or a statement piece

Overall, for networking, it’s important to keep a positive attitude and enjoy the event, find mutual interest so that you’re actually networking and making good connections, and be open to talking to anyone.

So there you have it! Our key learnings and discussion points from our Circle Chat on networking. What are your thoughts on networking and our discussion?

Want to get involved? Join the Take the Lead Circle and connect with us!