Learning from other women - WIT WOTY winners

Today I had the pleasure of attending a panel discussion with the winners of WIT's Woman of the Year Awards. What amazing women and so inspirational.

I loved the camaraderie in the room... the humor... the feeling that we are all in this together.

Sue Ellen Reager, the CEO and founder of @international Services, who told us about her career choices presented to her in high school. She could be either a secretary or a school teacher... but she had a bad attitude. She then went on to travel the world, learn 11 languages, teach herself to program. She has received an innovation award for her inventions. And now she oversees a virtual company with people in 70 countries.  but best of all? she met William Shatner. WOW. very memorable.

Barbara Carkenord, chief curriculum and strategist at B2T Training... who is getting married soon. Sharing the need to have direct conversations - YAY. Right after my own heart.

Sallie Graves, head of IT at ING, who loves college football, fantasy football, and all sports. Good thing she has boys!

Lisa McVey, VP, CIO at McKesson, who told us her big a-ha was when she found out that the executives didn't know all the answers and that their meetings weren't much different from the ones she had been going to.

Julie Untener, Director of Enterprise Applications at NCR, who grew up with seven sisters learning the power of girls and also how to navigate and get along.

I loved the themes that came out from all these women and the open, candid conversation. The way they shared funny and personal stories. The way they played off each other...

Here are some of the things I took away today.

When were you passed over and how did you handle it?

What struck me was 1) no one said - I haven't ever been passed over and 2) the answers were all about finding innovative and creative ways to deal with this situation.

Sue Ellen said that her bubbly personality was seen as cute but no one was buying from her. So she went on-line, signed her name as S. E. and ended up being very successful. Then by the time they met her, she already had the credibility.

What gets in our way?

The confidence theme kept coming up. We are good planners and we want it all planned out before we will raise our hand to take on risk. We are uncomfortable leaping without knowing we can do it. We see there are other experts out there who know more and can do it better... and we let them. As these successful women all stated... we need to get MUCH better at raising our hand and taking on the challenge even when we don't know if we can do it, we don't know how to do it, and we haven't ever done it before. We are smart and we can figure it out.

What do you do when you don't get supported by other women?

Have a direct conversation about it. Wow. This is something really hard for us to do. But what a great idea. It is so much easier to complain about it, gossip about the person who isn't supporting us, but wouldn't it be fantastic to have an open conversation about it? I think we need to hold each other accountable for having these conversations and not let one another get away with this behavior.

These are amazing women. These are women who want to help others. They are all actively supporting other women. LOVE IT!! What great role models for all of us.

Competition and Collaboration

This weekend I saw "Easy A." I really enjoyed it - great lines, good acting, and just fun to watch. Made me wince as I remembered high school and the way we treated each other. When does this competition start among girls and why are we still dealing with it as adults? Or do we just move from the overt viciousness of high school to more sophisticated, covert competition as professionals?

I have wonderful relationships with my women colleagues. They are smart, talented, and great to work with. I enjoy working with them and we like to spend time together outside work too. But I have the luxury of picking my team and the people I work with. And I have often thought that having an exclusively female team might also have something to do with the dynamics.

Last weekend I listened to a group of women discuss how poorly their women leaders were dressed at a big-wig presentation and how distressed they were with the way they represented the company. I wondered if any of them had provided feedback with the women in question. It is disheartening to hear professional adult women speaking about their leaders in such a negative way.

Recently, we spent quite a bit of time coaching one of my recent women clients to have direct conversations and provide feedback when she repeatedly moved into speaking negatively about her women peers/leaders. It was a recurring pattern in this organization - quite a few women were in direct competition and were completely unsupportive of each other. The result was a lack of trust, cliques, and people "in" and people "out". A lot like high school.

I'm always surprised at the stories I hear about women who are reluctant to support other women, who are not pulling women along with them, or who are afraid of how it might look if they support women too much. And I love the stories of where it is working.

I have a friend who has repeatedly built strong and successful teams by promoting and coaching women. By putting them into stretch roles, giving them opportunities to fail, and consistently speaking positively about them. This happens to be a man. How can he be so good at this while so many women are lousy at it?