eve-olution latest newsletter - October 2009
Contents of newsletter this month
- Introduction, message from Tracey Carr
- The Journey to Authentic Leadership
- Gender IQ Live Chat was a Big Surprise!
Introduction
What a whirlwind month it has been! I was privileged to join a select group of women for the Inspirational Women Network lunch where women had flown in from all over the world and I ended up sitting next to the (female) Honorable Sherriff of Mumbai. The speakers were Rachael Elnaugh of Dragons Den fame, who lost her business (Red Letter Days) after building it from scratch into a company making a million profit every year. Where did it go wrong? Rachael says she listened to Management Consultants instead of her own voice and lost control of the business. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room as Rachael became emotional when she described how one decision by her Bankers, Barclays, was the difference in her being able to save the business or put it into administration. Her descriptions of going from the administrators meeting to the reception to breast feed her baby were harrowing. A truly inspirational woman. Go Rachael!
I also listened with much interest to Susan Rice OBE, Managing Director of Lloyds Banking Group Scotland talking about Gender Differences and the recent press speculation on whether we would have seen a credit crunch of such severity if it had been Lehman Sisters? If you want more insight into that subject – read a book called ‘Confessions of a City Girl’ ….fascinating read, I read the whole book in 1 day last Sunday! It is written anonymously by a woman who was recruited as a trader in 2007 and worked through the credit crunch. Not for the feint at heart!
We finally lunched our new platform Gender IQ and there are more details below on how our exciting launch went. What a steep learning curve for me – technology!
Do join us next year at one of our Authentic Leadership seminars. New dates have just been released.
And don’t forget to ‘Live with Passion’
The Journey to Authentic Leadership
I have been truly privileged to have so many fascinating and inspirational women go through the Authentic Leadership programme this year, held at the beautiful Lythe Hill Conference Centre, and honoured to have been invited by Lloyds Bank to run the programme internally for their high potentials. We have seen entrepreneurs, rocket scientists, high powered corporate women, gentle and supportive leaders and some enlightened and interesting men too. All have contributed to the greater understanding that Authentic Leadership is the only true power. You cannot own your power (charisma) by conforming to an expected stereotype or pretending to be somebody else. At the seminar I demonstrate this using a muscle test technique where people have to say their real name and then a fake name. The muscles are ALWAYS weaker under the pseudo name.
Knowing all of this is one thing but how many of us take the time out to discover our own inner self? If you don’t take time to do this how can you be Authentic? This is not a skill set that you can learn at work. This is personal development – pure and simple. Full of impact and giving lasting, positive change to your career and your personal life.
I recently read this article on the challenges that women face as they rise through an organisation and, guess what, Authenticity is number 1! Following on from this are wholeness, self clarity, connection and agency. One of the exercises we do on the seminar is a brain storm on the ‘ideal’ candidate to fill your job for a whole year whilst you are on holiday. You can return to work and enjoy full pay only if your ideal candidate performs well in your job. The brainstorm brings out character traits such as ‘influencer’, ‘dynamic’, ‘excellent communicator’, ‘decision maker’, and many more but never a ‘skill’ ….in other words you can learn skills very easily but the right personality traits (the soft stuff) are harder to come by.
Take some time next year to develop your character and catapult your success and happiness to the next level. Your attendance also includes a 21 day support programme, see below for Carol’s experience of the programme and the support programme. Carol is a senior executive, in case you make the natural assumption that all senior people must already be super confident….not true!
“Hi Tracey, I really appreciate these daily emails. So much so that after the 21 days I may go through withdrawal. The 2 days really helped me to see things from a different perspective, and boosted my own confidence levels. So, my feedback... well I am still absorbing it all, but one ironic thing happened last Wednesday evening after leaving the course. I met my manager and in the course of conversation he let out that he felt that I was 'soft' and lacked influencing skills and gravitas. This took me aback, knowing that this is not me, plus after just going through my DISC profile... the best part (extra boost from the 2 days with all of you) was that I just didn’t swallow it and keep my mouth shut but had a good discussion with him on this... although I realise it will always be a challenge I didn’t let it get to me!
Keep the good stuff rolling in! Regards, Carol”
Gender IQ Live Chat was a Big Surprise!
Last week we launched our first live event from the Gender IQ platform and were overwhelmed with the response. We had 200 people sign up and over 70 people in live chat simultaneously! None of us were expecting such a huge response as we only had 8 days for marketing and very little opportunity to speak to anybody about spreading the word. The fact that we had such a response is, I believe, testament to the fact that this is a much needed resource. It confirms what I have suspected for a long time – that people need a safe space for discussion and learning on this sensitive topic. Why do I believe that? Because talking about gender related leadership affects everybody and everybody has taken a ‘position’ on it. Many senior women feel that they are more masculine in approach and, therefore, want to distance themselves because they believe they have nothing to contribute. Feminine women feel there is no place for them in senior corporate life and anybody of a different sexual persuasion feels left out. No wonder then men have gone into hiding ……how do you talk intelligently about this with all those undercurrents going on?
The biggest surprise of all was that during live chat we had more questions from men than we did from women. I believe this is because it gives men a real chance to talk about something which has been confusing at best and threatening at worst. Anybody (men and women) who have been excluded because they are not A type personalities or Alpha in character had a chance to ask questions such as ‘but senior women seem more like men and most of us don’t want that’ or ‘how do I make my team more effective by increasing my Gender IQ’?
Questions can be asked anonymously and there is always a video round-up of reflections on the questions the next day. Feedback from Corporations was very positive too and some have decided to lease the films to host on their own intranet systems. The beauty of this platform is that it can meet your needs in many flexible ways and we hope that it will grow and flourish as quickly as it has begun.
The only snag – there is always something to learn – was that a small minority of organisations’ security settings are set so that they are unable to view the video. If that is the case for you then please do visit our site and test your PC or Lap Top to see whether you have the right applications enabled.
We are really looking forward to the next event on November 10th and we hope you will join us to watch the next video on how companies are making money from including all of us in Leadership (not just Alpha males and females) and what the Biological differences are between the male and female brain.
Finally, we are launching an exciting piece of research next month called ‘Styles of the Sexes’. The research looked at men and women and whether there are any real differences in management style. We are analysing the results now – watch this space for some surprising findings!
The world is changing rapidly and we all need to take part in its evolution. Gender is about all of us and we all have a responsibility to challenge the status quo and help corporations change into the kind of place where everybody wants to work.