The reviews are in.  The Day 1 pre-summit launched with a bang!  Each of the 4 speakers was thought-provoking and entertaining.

Here are my GWALS presentation notes from Day 1 of the pre-summit

• Doug Emerson: Real Effectiveness – Apparently Not
• Rayona Sharpnack: The Missing Link in Gender Equality: Women Empowering Women
• Dave Buck: Dream – Team – Coach
• Dr. Lise Janelle: Courage in Leadership

I have a page of scribbled notes on each presentation!  In the interests of time, I will put out some of the top ideas or action items I took away from each.  If you see a star, it is to remind me to include that on my menu of don’t-miss presentations.

A few thoughts on the Summit overall:

• I recommend registering for some of the pre-summit sessions.  At worst, you lose a half hour of your day.  But you are more likely to walk away with one or two simple action items that could optimize the way you live.
• The Early Bird pricing is in effect until Thursday Oct 15.  I would take advantage!  Your ticket entitles you to the recordings of all the pre-summit sessions.

Real Effectiveness – Apparently Not.

Doug Emerson, Canada

Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. Drucker

Real Effectiveness is measuring your success in your position by quantifiable measures.  But in today’s world, we are often assessed instead by ‘Apparent effectiveness‘ – ‘how are you doing your job?’.  It is the difference between being measured and being judged.

Effectiveness is a discipline and like every discipline it can be learned and must be learned. 

Women are often held to a higher standard than men.  Therefore it is in their interests to pick their assessment metrics to reflect the actual outputs of their jobs, and move the discussion away from one of ‘how well’ they did it.

Takeaways:

• Use your job description and daily activities to generate a list of measurable outputs
• Then ask yourself “If I do these well, what does it look like”
• GET CLEAR on what you need to do
• Create teams that have fun while they are achieving their goals

I will be looking forward to Doug’s hour-long presentation on October 26.

The Missing Link in Gender Partnership: Women Empowering Women

Rayona Sharpnack, USA

Rayona is the CEO of Institute for Women’s Leadership.  She addressed the issue where women will often prefer to be managed by men than be sabotaged by a female boss.

She discussed the social, gender and ethnic thinking that can sometimes make us our own worst enemy.  Each behaviour creates two impacts – desirable and unintended.  We need to recognize both and work to balance the effects.

She talked about her frame of reference being to work really hard so she could succeed.  And successful she is – but not without impact to her health, family and friendships.

Takeaways:

Women need to support other women in their efforts to succeed.  If we each AMPLIFY each other’s contributions, everyone wins.

Together we are smarter than either one of us!

Change our thinking / re-invent ourselves / upgrade ourselves like software! / Instead of saying “be nice to everyone”, “the TEAM” did that, take on some male sports characteristics … Don’t be a wimp, Volunteer even if you don’t know how

Share your story – the success AND the failures, because they will together serve to lay a lessons learned for those that follow.

Dream – Team – Coach 

Dave Buck, USA

This presentation was invaluable in that it gave me a completely different perspective, and really got me thinking.  Not about the topic as a whole (which I am totally behind) but about my traditional (read conservative) approach to it.

Takeaways:

I recommend this presentation to any parent who is wondering “what will the work world look like for the next generation”.  We are going to see a shift towards an economy and culture that supports living with purpose.

• The generation of young professionals want to leave their mark – just as we did.  But they also know it is possible.  It is incumbent on the Manager of today to evolve into the Coach of tomorrow.
• We need to figure out how to engage our team
  1. Create a sense of belonging and common purpose
  2. Engage and empower your team to share in delivering the results.  Let them decide if they want to dunk, alley-oop or pick & roll, so long as they make the basket and win the game

We are the generation that is going to do the most transforming however.  We are the children of an industrial era, but the parents of a purposeful age.  And we have to learn how to translate.

Quotes & keywords:

• Routine is the enemy of the brain
• Game design
• Non-conscious mind is where the action is taking place!
• Design a winning environment
• Relate to fear – explore and play with it

Courage in Leadership 

Dr. Lise Janelle, Canada

Lise brought her presentation and lessons to life by using her recent climb to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro.   She offers a practice that recommends coaching more from the Heart than the Head.

The core to her presentation was ‘The 3 Cs of Courage‘.

• Clarity – make sure your goal is clear
• Commitment – need to adapt to win
• Consciousness – we need to keep our conviction

Takeaways:

• We need to lead from the heart, because that is where our true commitment resides
• Leading from the heart is not emotional, but assertive

‘}…{‘

Over to you:

} .. Which topic resonated the most with you?

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INSPIRATION AND RESEARCH MATERIAL FOR THIS BLOG:

• Got to www.gwals.com for the rest of the  pre-summit and full summit programs, and for the full presenter bios
• Register for the program here
• Link to GWALS facebook page