Women Organize Conferences, People Get Nervous
These conferences may not change organizations, policies, and cultures that hurt women, but they change people who go on to change organizations, policies, and cultures.
Using World Café to Open Up the Conversation on Women, Activism, & Leadership
Not a panel discussion and Q&A on women’s leadership, not a wide open discussion with no structure… but a World Café: a uniquely open/structured conversation designed to invite and allow for convergence, divergence, complexity, and new clarity/actions
Be Careful the Stories You Tell Yourself About Power
When you think of power in terms of “power to” (versus “power over” people and ideas, or “power within” existing institutions and systems), the world suddenly opens up. The world does not suddenly become more fair or equitable, but one’s felt sense of personal power transforms.
Lean Startup Conference Organizers Solve Gender Balance Problem
While so many organizations and business conferences struggle to achieve or are unwilling to look at gender balance and/or racial diversity, some folks are keeping it simple and getting it right. In San Francisco today, hundreds of folks will gather for day 2 of the wildly popular Lean Startup conference, based on the 2011 book by the same […]
The New Women’s Movement is Going to Take All of Us
I want to see a women’s leadership panel that includes both Sheryl Sandberg and bell hooks, working and thinking together because I know they each hold a piece of the puzzle when it comes to taking our collective work to the next level.
What will motive men to push for gender balance?
Could men’s (and many women’s) silence around women’s leadership and resistance to gender balance not only be gender bias or an unwillingness to do the hard work of movement building… but also a sign that we’re missing a pretty huge piece of the puzzle?
Women’s Leadership: Moral Obligation or Good Business Decision?
Marino cited a Japanese business principle “kaizen”—which directly translates as “improvement,”—saying that kaizen is actually quite a bit more than just improving a work process. It also means agitating one’s company in ways that it needs to be agitated. This includes agitating the organization around issues of gender bias. What kaizen is really about, he says, is “waking up every day trying to make things better.”
Diana Nyad’s Real Victory: Fewer Heroes, More Swimmers
Everybody wants a hero—heroic leadership has been all the rage for centuries—but truly, sometimes we really don’t need one. All we need is a 64 year old author/journalist/distance swimmer named Diana Nyad to fulfill her 35 year long dream of swimming from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage… emerging from the water after 50 hours to remind everybody, “It looks like a solitary sport, but it’s a team [effort].”
5 or 6 Coping Strategies for When You Don’t Feel Heard
Ever have a really interesting idea at work or in the world, share it, and notice that you don’t get much of a response? Either because people just don’t seem excited about it or say they don’t understand it? And then a dude, maybe someone you know or don’t know, maybe someone who came up with the same idea, or someone who is intentionally trying to support you, shares this same idea and everyone responds enthusiastically? Yeah, me too. Weird, right?!
If Men Don’t See You, Are You Really There?
“How many of you think you have to be seen by men before you can be seen?”
Nilofer Merchant asked this question at a fantastic conversation/salon I attended in New York earlier this year led by Merchant and Ellen McGirt. The topic was women, work, and visibility—and the concept of “onlyness”—our unique contribution as women and as individuals, in the workplace and in the world.
