2007 Corporate Seminar Catalog

In addition to 1-on-1 coaching, Women's Leadership Coaching have a track record of delivering leadership seminars that help companies groom and retain women leaders. Recent clients include:

• Women at Intel Network (WIN)
• Oracle Women's Leadership (OWL)
• Genesys (An Alcatel-Lucent company) Women in Leadership
• Nortel's Global Women's Business Council
• National Semiconductor's Women @ National Initiative
• Rockwell Collins Women Employees Network
• Integro Insurance Brokers Women in Insurance Forum
• Capgemini's Women of the West.

To discuss options for your women's initiative, download the course catalog here, and contact us to set up a teleconference.

Are You the Invisible Employee?

I wrote the article "Are You the Invisible Employee?" a few years ago for MSN Careers after noticing how many smart, talented women I knew were working their behinds off, consistently delivering high-caliber work, but being passed over for more rewarding/responsible roles. If you have ever felt like you are the best-kept secret in your company, this one's for you!

Read the article at MSN.com

Negotiation as a Way of Life

As part of our presentation, Negotiation as a Way of Life, for a group of Oracle's high-potential women at the Oracle Women's Leadership Conference (OWL) today, Leslie and I shared some of the most recent (scary) data on women and negotiation from Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide, By Babcock and Laschever:

In surveys, women were 2.5 times more likely than men to say they feel "a great deal of apprehension" about negotiating.

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Men initiate negotiations about four times as often as women do.

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20 percent of adult women say they never negotiate at all, even though they often recognize negotiation as appropriate and necessary.

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When asked to pick metaphors for the process of negotiating, men picked “winning a ballgame” and a “wrestling match”. Women said “going to the dentist”.

I asked the group of 100 women "How many of you would rather go to the dentist than negotiate? I was joking when I asked, but a few hands were raised!

The solution we advised is to stop thinking of negotiation as a skill to be used only in rare, high-stakes business circumstances. Instead, think of negotiation as a way of life, meaning that the best way to master this skill is to negotiate everything, every day, in every conversation you encounter.

Examples are: negotiate who cooks dinner, negotiate who will drive the carpool, negotiate which movie to watch, negotiate who will help you on a project... etc. Until negotiation becomes a natural way of life.

Professional Business Women of California Conference

The Professional Business Women Of California Conference (PBWC) in San Francisco is always incredible, and yesterday's event did not disappoint. I have lost count of the number of PBWC conferences I've attended, and with that the number of incredible women I have met and stayed in touch with as a result. Our women's leadership seminar programs for Oracle and Genesys came via women we met at PBWC in 2006. Some highlights:

Our VP Business Development (and Women's Leadership Coach) Leslie Scida flew in from Denver (she is such a frequent guest at our home, we renamed the guest bedroom Leslie's Room). Kim Zilliox joined us for her first official event as a WLC coach. The entire team came together for the first time!

To celebrate what has been a breakthrough year for WLC, we hosted a client appreciation event at our exhibit booth (with champagne and handmade chocolates from Saratoga Chocolates -- for those of you who are considering becoming clients!) and schmoozed with clients from Oracle, Cisco, Chevron, and Delta Dental. WLC = Women Love Chocolate!