![What to Expect at our 2019 Re:Imagine Leadership Summit: Spoiler Alert – We’re Planning to Blow Your Mind]()
Leadership
Our team is thrilled about this year’s Re:Imagine Leadership Summit in San Diego on April 25th. As we looked back at feedback from attendees of past years’ summits, two themes emerged:
1) the desire to spend more time with other attendees
2) the desire to deep dive into the content
So, here’s what we have on deck:
Divide the day into two sections, both focused on leadership. The morning is dedicated to self-leadership — because you simply cannot be an effective leader without understanding how your own wiring impacts your ability to assess reality correctly. We’re going to look at neuroscience and talk about the impact of power on the brain. We’ll talk about triggers — where they come from and how to control the impulse to transform into the Incredible Hulk in front of your colleagues.
In the afternoon, we’ll turn to the subject of leading others during a time of intense divisiveness. It’s a subject that many of our clients and readers have been asking for guidance on this year. We’ll address how to get back to human and help participants create connection in an age of isolation.
Both morning and afternoon sessions will be designed around collaboratories (or “collabs”), where attendees will work through the day’s content together. Throughout the day, we’ll mine the room for tough questions, case studies, and breakthroughs. It promises to be our best Summit to date. I’m looking forward to being both teacher and student, and hope that you will join us for a day of re-imagining leadership for the 21st century.
Question: What are you doing to invest in yourself as a leader in 2019?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
![What to Expect at our 2019 Re:Imagine Leadership Summit: Spoiler Alert – We’re Planning to Blow Your Mind]()
Leadership
A few years ago, I attended the Inspiration Conference at Harrah’s Resort in Southern California. The day was packed with inspiring and motivational speakers in celebration of Women’s History Month.
One such speaker was Amy Cuddy, the social psychologist and sensational TED Talk speaker. You may remember her from “that YouTube video about posing like Wonder Woman.” Cuddy’s premise sounds simple: assuming a posture of confidence, even for a couple of minutes, can increase your testosterone and cortisone levels, and help you feel more powerful before an important meeting or presentation. Power posing inspires you to be more authentic, more passionate and more present.
Her book, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, is packed with research and anecdotes about how to help you to demonstrate your worth with ease and conviction. Here’s a snapshot:
Take a Stand Against Imposter Syndrome
You know the feeling. You take on a new challenge – prepare for a keynote, negotiate a major deal, interview for an advanced position. At first, you’re filled with enthusiasm about the possibilities. But soon, you find yourself bumping up against the limits of your ability. Then, a voice inside your head asks, “Who do you think you are?” Suddenly, your courage is overtaken by self-doubt and paralyzing fear that the world will find out that you’re a fraud.
Studies show that this modern neuroticism is common, especially among high-achieving women. The antidote to this paralyzing self-consciousness, Cuddy argues, is the quality of presence — the ability to project poised confidence, passion, and enthusiasm in high-pressure situations.
Cuddy suggests that the first step to overcoming Imposter Syndrome is to “fake it till you become it.” By assuming the power pose, you can improve your mood and turn self-doubt into self-confidence. The power pose also affects the way others perceive you. When people acknowledge the presence you exhibit, a positive feedback loop is created. You settle yourself, engage in the moment, and the physical manifestation overpowers the mental neurosis.
“The ideal effect of presence [is that] you execute with comfortable confidence and synchrony, and you leave with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, regardless of the measurable outcome,” Cuddy writes.
Presence isn’t just about how to become a relaxed public speaker, a more persuasive negotiator, or a more compelling interviewee — although it certainly can affect those outcomes. It’s about something much deeper than that. It gives us permission to become a witness to, but not a victim of, our vulnerability.
Presence and impostorism are opposite faces of the same coin—and we have the power to determine which face we present to the world.
Question: When was the last time you battled the fear of your limitations? Did you win?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
![What to Expect at our 2019 Re:Imagine Leadership Summit: Spoiler Alert – We’re Planning to Blow Your Mind]()
Leadership
Women’s History Month gives us an opportunity to explore some of the latest books written by women, about women, and for women. Here are 6 new titles that will inspire you to become more self-aware, break social expectations, and participate in healthy conflict to reach the greater good.
1. The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir by Steffanie Strathdee
What it’s about: A fascinating and terrifying account of one woman’s extraordinary effort to save her husband’s life – and the discovery of a forgotten cure that has the potential to save millions more.
Why pick it up: A real-life against all odds thriller that proves when science, medicine, and love align, the impossible becomes possible.
2. Quirky: The Remarkable Story of the Traits, Foibles, and Genius of Breakthrough Innovators Who Changed the World by Melissa A. Schilling
What it’s about: Melissa Schilling, one of the world’s leading experts on innovation, invites us into the lives of eight people – Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Elon Musk, Dean Kamen, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, and Steve Jobs – to identify the traits and experiences that drove them to make spectacular breakthroughs, over and over again.
Why pick it up: It’s a reminder that when it comes to understanding the extraordinary, outliers and exceptions are invaluable teachers.
3. Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think by Tasha Eurich
What it’s about: Organizational psychologist, Tasha Eurich, reveals that self-awareness — knowing who we are and how others see us — is the foundation for high performance, smart choices, and lasting relationships. There’s just one problem: most people don’t see themselves quite as clearly as they could.
Why pick it up: Integrating hundreds of studies with her own research and work in the Fortune 500 world, Eurich shows us what it really takes to better understand ourselves on the inside — and how to get others to tell us the honest truth about how we come across.
4. Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
What it’s about: Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, and if there was still a way home.
Why pick it up: Beautiful and propulsive, the questions Westover’s book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?
5. Fully Human: 3 Steps to Grow Your Emotional Fitness in Work, Leadership, and Life by Susan Packard
What it’s about: HGTV cofounder, Susan Packard, tackles unconventional topics, like how workaholism keeps us emotionally adolescent, and how forgiveness belongs in the workplace too. Packard shares her EQ Fit-catalyzed success at HGTV and teaches an ‘inside out’ practice of self-discovery, which helps you uncover and dispel unproductive emotions.
Why pick it up: No matter where you are in your career, success is an inside job. Packard lays out how to develop interdependent work relationships, and for leaders, how to build healthy company cultures.
6. First: Sandra Day O’Connor by Evan Thomas
What it’s about: The intimate, inspiring, and authoritative biography of Sandra Day O’Connor, America’s first female Supreme Court justice, drawing on exclusive interviews and first-time access to Justice O’Connor’s archives — by the New York Times bestselling author Evan Thomas.
Why pick it up: As the author recounts with delicious particulars, time and again, Justice O’Connor prevailed in “getting to five” on complex cases by avoiding emotional flare-ups and no-win fights, balancing realism and idealism, refusing to retaliate, and compromising after recognizing that her perceived best result was not going to be possible.
Question: What titles would you add in honor of Women’s History Month?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
![What to Expect at our 2019 Re:Imagine Leadership Summit: Spoiler Alert – We’re Planning to Blow Your Mind]()
People
Picture a leader. Do you see a woman? If not, you aren’t alone. A recent study published in the Academy of Management Journal confirms that getting recognized as a leader is more difficult for women than for men.
Yet, history is filled with women who defied the norms like the four women below who persisted in claiming their leadership role – though you may have never heard of them.
1. Victoria Woodhull, First Woman to Run for President (among other firsts). Victoria Woodhull was a leader of the women’s suffrage movement. She was the first woman to own a brokerage firm, Woodhull, Claflin & Co., on Wall Street, the first woman to start a weekly newspaper, and an activist for women’s rights and labor reform. At her peak of political activity in the early 1870s, Woodhull is best known as the first woman candidate for the United States presidency, which she ran for in 1872 for the Equal Rights Party, supporting women’s suffrage and equal rights.
“I shall not change my course because those who assume to be better than I desire it.”
2. Elizabeth Jennings, Sued a Railroad Company for Segregation (and won). A little over 100 years before Rosa Parks took a stand by sitting on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, Jennings, a young African-American schoolteacher, struck her own blow for justice after she was forcibly thrown off a segregated streetcar in lower Manhattan. Jennings teamed up with future president of the United States Chester Arthur to sue the Third Avenue Railroad Company, paving the way for integrated transportation in New York.
“Ladies wear a lot of hats, and they deserve this.” (Note the double entendre.)
3. Lois Weber, First American Woman to Direct a Feature-Length Film. An innovative visual storyteller whose films tackled social issues, Weber was also one of the most respected and highest paid filmmakers in the industry. Her name was routinely mentioned alongside that of D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille as one of the top talents in Hollywood. In 1916, she was the first and only woman elected to the Motion Picture Directors Association, a solitary honor she would retain for decades.
” I like to direct, because I believe a woman, more or less intuitively, brings out many of the emotions that are rarely expressed on the screen. I may miss what some of the men get, but I will get other effects that they never thought of.”
4. Kathrine Switzer, First Woman to Run the Boston Marathon (and fight off a race official on the route). In 1967, Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to officially run what was then the all-male Boston Marathon, infuriating one of the event’s directors who attempted to violently eject her. In one of the most iconic sports moments, Switzer escaped and finished the race. She made history then and has continued to run the race with No. 261 emblazoned on her shirt nearly every year since, including last year at age 71.
Life is for participating, not for spectating.
To close with a quote from Shirley Chisolm,
“Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.”
Question: What women have you known who have changed the world despite the odds?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
![What to Expect at our 2019 Re:Imagine Leadership Summit: Spoiler Alert – We’re Planning to Blow Your Mind]()
Leadership
In 2012, American lawyer and politician Reshma Saujani started a nonprofit called Girls Who Code. “Coding,” explains Saujani in her 2016 TED Talk, is “an endless process of trial and error, of trying to get the right command in the right place with sometimes just a semicolon making the difference between success and failure.
Code breaks and then it falls apart, and it often takes many, many tries until that magical moment when what you’re trying to build comes to life.
It requires perseverance. It requires imperfection. We immediately see in our program our girls’ fear of not getting it right, of not being perfect.
Every Girls Who Code teacher tells me the same story. During the first week, when the girls are learning how to code, a student will call her over and she’ll say, ‘I don’t know what code to write.’ The teacher will look at her screen, and she’ll see a blank text editor. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think that her student spent the past 20 minutes just staring at the screen.
But if she presses undo a few times, she’ll see that her student wrote code and then deleted it. She tried, she came close, but she didn’t get it exactly right. Instead of showing the progress that she made, she’d rather show nothing at all. Perfection or bust.”
If you are a woman born in the 20th century, you can probably relate to the phrase – perfection or bust. Three years ago, I was asked to participate in the inaugural year of SUE Talks. These TED-like talks were designed to inspire women to embrace their inner SUE by sharing stories of how they were Successful, Unstoppable, and Empowering. Since the launch in 2015, dozens of women have shared their SUE Talk on stage. Several of those talks, like two of the examples below, are examples from women who struggled for years to break the code that was written about how women leaders should behave. The third is from a woman who defied social stereotypes at an early age, and took code-breaking risks that paid off.
1. Surfing for Business, by Cheryl Goodman. In the summer of 2012, Cheryl Goodman nearly drowned. But in the moments after a set of rogue waves separated Goodman from her surfboard and threw her repeatedly to the ocean floor, her fear was not of dying – but of embarrassment.
2. There Once Was a Good Little Girl, by Michelle Bergquist. In this warm and witty recount, Bergquist shares her struggle to outgrow the childhood poem that shaped her self-image, even as her young husband recovered from a severe stroke.
3. Shooting for the Moon, by Kathy David. One month before her 16th birthday, Kathy David had a nervous breakdown. After a 3-week hospital recovery, she went home and demanded emancipation. David changed the trajectory of her life starting with a risky interview for a banking job for which she had no experience.
As we prepare the next generations of women to become our future leaders, what codes are we writing for them about what it means to be a woman, and which must they break in order to make progress?
Question: What self-limiting barriers have you had to break to become the best version of yourself?
