The Joys (and Occasional Challenges) of Mentoring and Sponsoring

By Gloria Feldt | September 1, 2011 |

A “Heartfeldt” THANK YOU to everyone who read and commented on my virgin column on leadership at BlogHer Career. Your lively responses, challenges, and questions affirm that leadership issues are high on the agenda.

[caption id="attachment_5338" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Fork in the Road courtesy of Debra Condren, author of "Ambition Is Not a Dirty Word""][/caption]

Hands down the hottest topic in questions this past two weeks was mentoring. Such as:

What’s the relationship between mentoring and fostering leadership capacity in women? Mentoring compared to sponsorship? How do you get a mentor and cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship? How to lead, mentor, and retain high performing employees? How to get a mentor or be a mentor when you’re a consultant or an entrepreneurial business of one?

Great questions all, threading into two major categories around which there are many stories and studies to share:

Read More

Do Mainly Men Have Ideas Worth Spreading?

By Gloria Feldt | December 6, 2010 |

Since my friend Ruth Ann Harnisch told me about it a few years ago, I’ve thought that attending a TED conference should be on my bucket list. I LOVE big ideas and great speeches about them. So why did I decide not to go to one when the opportunity was offered to me to attend TEDWomen in Washington D.C. December 7 and 8?

I vaguely wondered if the TED folks thought the little women still needed a conference of their own because women’s ideas aren’t as big as men’s. Organizational reputation scholar and consultant CV Harquail raised the same concerns more powerfully in this post when TEDWomen was announced. Nevertheless, I filled out the forms and proposed myself as a speaker on the very big idea of what specifically it will take for women to “reshape the world,” as TEDWomen’s tagline proffers. That was rejected based on some pretty lame reasoning, in my opinion. Then, frankly, I got so busy with my own speeches and interviews after No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power was published in October that I forgot all about the conference and let the slot I’d been offered go.

This past week, the topic of TEDWomen and TED in general heated up so much in the blogosphere and on listservs I’m on that it came back into my consciousness. About that time,

Read More