Women, men and office politics

After my Office Politics workshop at the Network of Executive Women Leadership Summit, a woman stood up to ask:

"Do men and women handle office politics differently?"

One of the two men at the session, Tom, proceeded to unleash a big belly laugh, so I invited him to speak up.

Tom described his observation that men get more emotional at work: they yell more and overtly show their frustration, while women seem much more calm in the face of conflict.

Count me among the 150 women in the room who were surprised to hear it.

Becoming a Person of Influence, at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

I presented How to Become a Person of Influence on Wednesday 9/30 at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, followed by a panel of senior-level women in industry who are role model influencers. The ballroom filled early with 600 women, setting a new high bar for me professionally!

Valerie Bubb Fenwick, Staff Engineer with Sun Microsystems summarized the session her blog post, remarking "if you want to be a leader, you have to be a leader!" I recapped a couple key parts of the presentation with video bloggers Erin "Ed" Donahue Ed and Ashley Myers.

Why You Need to Become a Person of Influence



Your 6 Sources of Influence

Panel - A Person of Influence - In Real Life

After my workshop at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, we brought together a panel of senior-level technical women in industry to build on the influencing principles discussed on my workshop, bringing the theory to life with their stories of influencing in the real world.

From left to right:

Jo Miller, CEO, Women's Leadership Coaching Inc
Rebecca Norlander, Partner Engineering Manager, Microsoft
Wei Lin, Sr. Director of Engineering, Symantec
Romea Smith, Sr. Vice President - Customer Support, CA
Dr. Ann Quiroz Gates, Associate Vice President of Research, University of Texas at El Paso
Nina Bhatti, Principal Scientist, HP Labs (Watch Nina's post-panel interview. )

Highlights from the discussion included:

• Hearing about panelists' personal influencing style, and influencing skills they use.

• Why it is important for technical women to learn how to influence

• Advice for women on how to become stronger influencers

• Times when they have tried to influence a person or situation, and failed--how did they recover?