Recent Events
Move to Greatness
Leaders need to know who they are, how to use their strengths, and how to overcome their barriers. Both success and failure originate in our use (or misuse) of four fundamental patterns in the nervous system.
Based on the book Move to Greatness: Focusing the Four Essential Energies of a Whole and Balanced Leader by Dr. Ginny Whitelaw, this session, held in June 2010, showed our members how to discover their natural preferences, and how to move to newfound greatness.
Members had the opportunity to take the Focus Balance Energy Indicator (FEBI) prior to attending and then biophysicist Dr. Ginny Whitelaw provided kinesthetic exercises to experience the four fundamental patterns in the nervous system: the Driver, the Collaborator, the Organizer, and the Visionary.
Ginny started by asking us, ‘What is something you love doing; when you do it you feel in the flow? What would you like to be better at? What is some feedback you’ve been given about changing yourself? And something that renews you?’ These answers helped us start to think about our ‘patterns of personality’.
She then explained the background and history of her model. Ginny has been studying the body for years, first as a biophysicist studying energy in the nervous system and later as an aikido and Zen practitioner. She explained that her model comes from physiology and not psychology. ‘Why? Because thoughts are slippery and hard to work with; the body is easier to work with’. Her model looks at coordinating patterns or how opposing muscle groups coordinate in motion and how motion, emotion, thoughts and actions function together.
Finally, she demonstrated the four essential energy patterns in executive leadership styles and had us experience all four.
The Driver pushes into every barrier with speed, directness and intensity. This pattern is linked to PUSHING AND THRUSTING.
The Organiser does the right things, putting every thought and action in its proper place with discipline and order. This pattern is linked to HOLDING FIRM.
The Collaborator swings into playful engagement with life and the people in it. This pattern is linked to SWINGING.
Finally, the Visionary goes with the flow, hangs out in the chaos and leaps to new possibilities. This pattern is linked to HANGING, DRIFING and EXTENDING.
The evening ended with us looking at fun and practical ways to develop our non-preferred patterns. Yoga, golf, karate, tango lessons? All great ways to develop your leadership!
Mass Career Customization
Sweeping changes in the way we work, live and build careers are not just on the horizon – they are here and here to stay. A book, written by two executives from Deloitte, takes a clear and cogent look at the realities of today’s world of work and offers a new and innovative corporate model to meet these realities. The Mass Career Customization model is an elegant solution to a complex issue – one that can no longer be classified as a women’s issue, a generational difference or a heated debate about work/life balance.
At a virtual meeting hosted by Deloitte on 8 June 2010, Anne Weisberg, the co-author of the book Mass Career Customization, and Hebe Boonzaaijer, a consultant responsible for MCC implementations both inside and outside Deloitte, explained the details, benefits, and advantages of MCC and how they could also make a difference to our members in their organisations.
You are invited to view the Microsoft Office Live Meeting recording.
Please note: requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or higher.
Joint Event with Thomson Reuters
In March we held a networking workshop as our first joint event with Thomson Reuters in their Canary Wharf offices. Heather White, of Smarter Networking, spoke about basic networking theory, gave practical guidance and some hands-on exercises.
She urged the audience to confront their networking fears. “Think of the friendliest person you know as well as the scariest. Think of what makes you feel more confident and what scares you.” She confessed she practised her own networking skills on the scariest person she knew.
She advised drawing personal network maps to identify networking gaps. Having identified targets and the best way of meeting those targets, good networkers needed to be sure of the objective of their networking and prepare what they were going to say to their new contacts. Having a strong but authentic personal brand is critical.
Heather also talked about the importance of following-up with new contacts, some dos and don’ts for working a room, plus how to read body language: Heather co-opted one of the two men who attended the event to demonstrate the differences in men’s and women’s body language and help the audience identify when to conclude a conversation or join a group.
The workshop ended with a prize draw from Heather with one lucky member of the audience winning a free EPWN membership.
Cultural Transformation – No Longer a Need to ‘Fix’ Women
by Amanda Phillips
The event was opened by Chris Eosco, Chief Administrative Officer, EMEA at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, who generously hosted the evening. Christine Lawrence, Chair of WIBF, welcomed everybody and shared a reminder of the importance of networking outside our immediate circle of supporters; she noted how this shared event with EPWN and WIBF had come to fruition through an idea and connections made with EPWN President Michelle Brailsford, Charlotte Sweeney, and herself.
A packed agenda with 3 great contributions – Ruth Sealy from Cranfield’s International Centre for Women Leaders, Karen Stefanyszyn, Head of Leadership and Culture, Aviva Group and Rob Barkworth from Pearn Kandola; each spoke from their different and very interesting perspectives. The panel was moderated by Sylvana Caloni from WIBF.
Ruth noted that there are now 12% females on FTSE 100 boards, 7.3 FTSE 250 and 5% in smaller companies. She said the glass ceiling was raised but it was still prevalent, and that the appointment and promotions processes in place have a lot to answer for, including homophily (hiring in one’s own image). To encourage women in the future there also needs to be a sense of ‘fit’, the presence of others above you with whom you can identify. ‘“Nothing succeeds like (expectations of) success”.
Gender blindness with no recognition of a cultural or systemic issue, a sense that ‘gender issues’ are passé, and ‘gender fatigue’ with younger generations operating with a post-feminist approach, are all challenges to progress. She also acknowledged that recognising individual ability is not the only thing that determines success, for some, there can also be a danger to self-perception.
Karen outlined work going on at Aviva. Whilst the organisation does not set targets and quotas they have an aspirational journey for ‘balanced leadership’ and a strengths based development approach. She recognised the scale of the challenge at Aviva in opening up the powerful and important conversations they are having on these issues.
Rob began by saying he was disagreeing with the theme of the talk. There is a need to fix women he said and a need to fix men too! He talked about the unconscious bias that we all have, and the cultural change that is needed for us all to attend to these. He demonstrated these issues in a fun and interactive way with good input from the audience. He summarised by saying we cannot manage someone else’s bias. People need to want to change. We all need to manage our own biases and spread the word in organisations.
The session was closed by Michelle Brailsford who invited everybody to connect over drinks and canapés and to consider the question “what am I going to do tomorrow that’s different?”
Social Networking Webinar – “Building and Maintaining your Online Brand”
Eileen Brown, an accomplished and well-known international speaker and expert on Social Media and Online Branding, presented this session. Eileen is CEO of Amastra, a company that helps achieve aspirations using offline and online social methods. She has been in a variety of roles in the IT Industry since 1993. The session focused on:
- How to use social networking as a business enabler
– Ensuring the security and privacy of your profile data
– Potential issues with using social media and how to avoid any errors, which might embarrass you professionally
– Tools to help you advertise your presence across social media sites
– Promoting your online brand for discoverability for search engines
– Top tips to get you started with brand consistency.
Over forty attendees joined the session over the internet, the newest place to connect and learn!
