The Strength and Leadership of Women

This is an excerpt from a workshop presentation I recently gave at a Senior Executive Women’s Event for a Fortune 50 company…. here’s just the beginning…   Donna Rae

 “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows’, composed by Helen Keller, more than 50 years ago has inspired me throughout my life.

Helen Keller, encumbered with an inability to speak, see or hear, become one of the world’s most inspirational voices – and most heard voices.

Helen Keller, a voice of courage, ensuring her voice was heard.

Like each and every woman today, Keller realized amazing accomplishments. To be here, we all have accomplished much, aspire to go beyond, and perhaps we have daring dreams. Yes, we have come along way by overcoming barriers and still confronting barriers today.

I believe the world needs women, the voices of women, and the intrinsic strengths of women more today than ever before. Our intrinsic strengths of connecting, collaborating, open & transparent risk taking, learning from our failures, our insightfulness, deep intuition, and our capacity to be voices of persuasion with the utmost of integrity.

And today provides an opportunity, a personal leadership experience, for our presence, our voices, and our natural strengths as women to be heard.

During today’s  session, I will provide you with interactive experiences and tools to expand your personal leadership capability in new and different ways. I will also provide you with a personal leader development model that you will be able to immediately take into action once the session ends.  

Even though you do not know how the next two hours are designed, I would like you to reflect on what would make this event meaningful for you personally. And for you to have that meaningful outcome, what are you willing to do to make that happen? What are you willing to do, think, say, ask – that is different – and is a stretch for you?…”

A Reason To Believe

A REASON TO BELIEVECandid Self-Reflection

Leaders are objective observers by applying the habit of self-reflection. They acquire self-knowledge by observing their impact on others, linked to business results. A candid self-reflection question could be, “What am I thinking, saying or doing in this moment and what is the impact?”

In today’s ever-changing business environment, leaders must be increasingly intense, intentional, agile, rapidly integrating and possibility-seeking learners. Leaders must actively and easily seek, see and seize unexpected opportunities, early indicators, trends and possibilities in the moment – faster than ever before.

These agile leaders have strengthened capability in four surprising areas:

 

In the Moment Innovation

These leaders are in touch with many different and contrasting views. They make the statement, “These are our first ten ideas, we have many more. Let’s explore our next ten ideas.” This habit is powerful in five minute bursts.

Feeding the Future

Wealth creation is inspired by future forward communication in simple, clean, clear verbal visuals. One of the highest performing real estate companies in the U.S. uses the color green to inspire belief in real estate wealth. What visual branding or picture can you create that enables people to become a part of that forward focus?

The Reason to Believe

Leaders help others have confidence to believe in themselves, the company and the business opportunities. Past history of overcoming challenges, producing results and collaborating is essential for creating a foundation for the future. When one of our global clients chose to make a challenging acquisition – the president inspired the workforce by highlighting magazine and newspaper articles from past successes. Create a wall of past positives that demonstrates the power of the past for your business strategy.

There is no better time than now to strengthen your leadership agility linked to achieving bottom line business results.