Monday, May 21, 2007

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.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

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

Thursday, May 3, 2007

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.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

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!