Power Up: Igniting the Intentional Leader for DEI

Issue 166 — April 19, 2021

Did you ever have an idea and after some months it actually happens? Were you surprised? Excited? So sure it would come to pass that you weren’t worried about it even when it seemed like it would be impossible to achieve for whatever reason? All of the above?

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The Whole World Is Getting a Spring Cleaning.

I was never much of a housekeeper. “Shmutz,” my husband lovingly calls me while he cleans up the place. I long ago decided I’d rather spend my precious time changing the world than vacuuming it. But even I have to admit spring cleaning brings a special lightness to the spirit. This spring, in particular, feels…

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The Sum – Meaning of the Week: Crossroads

“The first responsibility of leadership is the creation of meaning.”—Warren Bennis. Word of the week is CROSSROADS. As in a junction where two or more roads meet, offering the traveler multiple paths. As in an intersection, a point at which a crucial decision must be made that will have far reaching consequences (yep, I googled this…

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Do Mainly Men Have Ideas Worth Spreading?

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,

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Today’s Power Point: Where Were the Women at Davos?

Check out this info from the Aurora Monthly Newsletter put out by wheretowork.com:

Following recent headlines about the lack of women at Davos again this year, women question the role of such a forum if it doesn’t comprise diverse leadership. The World Economic Forum’s own leadership structure that sets the agenda and decides who attends is not gender diverse. 4 / 22 foundation board members are women. There are 0 women on the managing board responsible for WEF’s operations and running. 2 / 10 senior directors responsible for subject areas within WEF are female. It ‘d be quite insightful to know which corporations and Governments in attendance at Davos sent mixed gender delegations.

In chaos is opportunity. Mark my words, despite the many real dangers that women (being often the last hired) might face heightened vulnerability to losing jobs during an economic downturn, the current economic chaos is great opportunity for women to advance.

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