To Be a Great Boss, Focus on These Three Qualities
If you’ve ever been told you won’t be able to get ahead if you’re too nice, Fran Hauser, author of The Myth of the Nice Girl, has news for you.
You don’t have to choose between kindness and strength. You only have to focus on how you communicate—which is more important today than ever. Read More
Four Ways to Candidly Improve Your Work Relationships
It can’t be fun to be pulled aside by Sheryl Sandberg, after giving what you think was a successful presentation to Google’s Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt, and be told that when you say “um” every third word, it makes you sound ignorant and stupid and you really should see a speech coach.
But Kim Scott, author of New York Times best-selling book, Radical Candor, was immensely grateful for the experience—because, after seeing that speech coach, she discovered she really did say “um” every third word; and after a career of giving talks, she felt like Sandberg was the first person to point out that she had a giant hunk of spinach between her teeth. Read More
The Q&A—on How Women Succeed
With SKG’s CEO Beth Goff-McMillan
With SKG’s CEO Beth Goff-McMillan“It is more about the finesse than it is slamming the driver down the fairway.”
What was your dream job and why?
I knew my dream job would be a mix of the creative and the strategic, but I couldn’t identify it at the time. I loved beautiful things and being creative, but all the games the shows I loved were built around strategy. I was always drawn to Monopoly and Clue and the TV show Dallas. But it wasn’t for the drama. It was the strategy and maneuvering. I knew I had to find something that was creative and involved problem-solving.
Today, you’re the CEO of the second-largest woman-owned business in Central Texas and one of the fastest growing companies in the country. What is something that you do to help the women on your team succeed that you perhaps not every organization does?
One of the things I do is take time for other women. I think a lot of people talk about it and think about it, but I don’t think a lot of people do it. Every single day, I carve out time to listen, to advise, to coach and mentor women inside our company. I want people to know how much I value them, and I want to give them my time to share where I have succeeded and where I have failed and the lessons I have learned. That goes personally and professionally.
Proven Ways to Pioneer Equity and Diversity
You might want to take a deep breath before you take this in:
- At the rate we’re going, it will take another 202 years for women to be paid as much as men, according to the World Economic Forum.
- The percent of women CEOs on the Fortune 500 list is still less than 7 percent—despite the fact that women represent 47 percent of the workforce.
- And, it’s all worse for women of color (despite last month’s report that the majority of Americans now entering the work force are people of color, primarily women).
Now for the good news! Research is revealing what works—and what doesn’t—in efforts to give all women a fair shot at career advancement; and Lori Nishiura Mackenzie of Stanford University Clayman Institute for Gender Research knows what they are. Read More
Stop Underestimating Yourself
Before being interviewed for the position of president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards thought she was unqualified and should just skip it. Uncertain what to do, she called her mom, the late former Governor of Texas, Ann Richards. Never one to mince her words, the elder Richards said simply: “Get it together.” Read More
Don’t Play the Weather Girl if You Want to Be the VP
A woman gets into an elevator. She’s a hard-working executive who comes to the office early every day. One day, the CEO gets into the elevator with her. She freezes, afraid to talk and afraid not to talk. So, she chats about the weather.
Another day, she’s riding the elevator when the CEO steps in again. But this time, a male colleague also gets in, shakes the CEO’s hand, introduces himself and says: “We just had a great meeting with a new client we were pitching the other day. And, I think we’re going to get the business.” The CEO looks at him and says, “You just made my day.”
The woman, realizing her mistake, reflects: Her colleague was branding himself as the next VP while she was branding herself as the weather girl. Read More
Think Only Extroverts Can Lead? Here Are 5 Reasons to Think Again
If anyone has ever hinted that you need to be an extrovert to be a successful leader, here’s your one-word response: Oprah.
As Susan Cain wrote in her 2012 bestseller, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, there are many misunderstandings about the nature—and skills—of introverts. But over the past decade, that has been changing.
Here are five things people are now recognizing about introversion in the workplace and beyond, according to Jennifer Kahnweiler, a Conferences for Women speaker and author of The Introverted Leader, Quiet Influence, and The Genius of Opposites:
How to Master the Tiny Habits That Will Help You Reach Your Potential
When he was a teenager, James Clear got hit in the face with a bat during a baseball game. It took surgery and nearly nine months for him to be able to work on regaining basic functions, like walking in a straight line. And even then, he could only focus on developing one tiny new habit a time. But together, these tiny habits turned out to make a difference—big enough that, in college, he was named an Academic all-American.
Luckily for us, Clear also went on to be an expert in how tiny habits can help us reach our potential—insights he compiled in 2018 New York Times best-selling book, Atomic Habits and is sharing with the Conferences for Women.*
“Excellence is not really about making radical changes,” he says. “It’s about accruing small improvements over time and committing to this philosophy of continuous improvement.” Read More
Six Powerful Ways to Take (Happy) Charge of Your Time
If you wanted to, you could read more than 5 billion search results about how to save time. But, ironically, that might be a waste of your time. After all, as KJ Dell’Antonia, former New York Times reporter and author of How to Be a Happier Parent, says:
“When it comes to time, you can savor it. You can endure it. You can miss it—which is that thing when you suddenly look up at the clock and realize you just spent an hour and a half on Facebook. But you really cannot save it. It only moves in one direction.” Read More
Networking is More (and Less) Than You Think
Laura Okmin
Sometimes, the most valuable lessons come from the most humbling moments. At least, it was one of those moments that gave FOX NFL reporter Laura Okmin one of her greatest insights in what not to do when networking.
As a young reporter, and the first woman to be covering TV news in Alabama, she had gotten to know Charles Barkley, the NBA champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist.
“One day, I called Charles and he answered the phone and said: “Well, well, well. Laura Okmin, what do you need?” And I went: “Well, can’t a girl just call and say hello?” “A girl can,” he said. “You just never do.…I know when you call, you need something. So, what do you need?”
Register one of the biggest networking mistakes: always having an agenda. From then on, Okmin made sure she reached out to offer something—such as, congratulations on wins and condolences on losses—more often than she asked for something. She’d learned that networking is really about relationship-building.
Here are 3 more tips from Conference for Women experts: Read More