Hard-Won Wisdom Webinars
These webinars provide career counsel, space for reflection, and positive connection as LeaderMoms.
Whittling Away
What Doesn’t Work
This is about our arch enemies and how to battle them — specifically, how wise LeaderMoms shed 3 oh-so-tempting, self-defeating habits of thinking and behaving, and instead cultivate self-valuing habits that are sources of power and stamina.
Martyrdom
“Wonder Woman” complex
Excessive guilt
Our favorite part of the webinar is the dialogue with two accomplished LeaderMoms. One is an executive in healthcare and the other is a senior leader in insurance. They described very different work cultures. In one, 24-7 availability is the unwritten rule for top leaders; she is working to create an authentic voice and brand to captures how committed and effective she is at her job and as a single parent. The second works in a more family-friendly culture and struggles with well-intentioned – albeit misplaced and unconsciously biased – assumptions that she doesn’t have capacity to take on more work because she has children. She does.
*Heartfelt thanks to Kelly Frederickson, LeaderMom executive in residence, for the whittling metaphor.
Personal Brand: Paradox of
Strategic Authenticity
Our starting point was a simple charge to Kelly Fredrickson and Sarah Moore: Can you help us make the phrase "personal brand" work for LeaderMoms? Catherine described her love/hate relationship with the term that stems from a deep awareness of how important reputational capital is AND of how pernicious gender biases can be. As a long-time executive coach, she often sees gender and other biases cloaked in jargon-heavy feedback about executive presence, culture fit and personal brand.
With Kelly and Sarah's deep expertise in branding and marketing, combined with their own LeaderMom lived experience, they offered wisdom to make it more likely we can take back "personal brand," navigate common landmines, and evolve our brand in a way that supports our growth and ambitions at work and beyond.
Not only did we get the insight we wanted, we had a great time in the conversation. Join us! And please let us know what you think and what your next most important step is after you listen to or view the webinar.
Sustaining & Gaining
Through Transitions
Seeing oneself and others through the emotional and psychological aspects of transitions is a core leadership skill. Because June is full of transitions– end of school, graduations, summer, mid-year reviews, role changes, and more – we invited Elicia Spearman to our last LeaderMom member webinar. Elicia, is an accomplished lawyer and HR professional, mom of a teen, and beloved spouse of a powerhouse, full-time-career husband. Her stories embody so many things essential for LeaderMoms to grow our careers while loving our families.
Being clear and brave about our value and potential as leaders – not settling, battling complacency.
Being willing to engage in conversations about possibilities with headhunters and colleagues, who can help you to see your value and potential.
Navigating the emotional discomfort of transitions.
Making tradeoffs to align priorities with her family –
Being amazing and human – Allowing moments of self-doubt and believing deeply in her wisdom and capacity.
Perhaps most important, Elicia strikes us as embodying two things critical to happiness – grounding herself in her signature strengths, deep expertise and tremendous capacity, while leaning into a challenge.
Getting Ahead: Advancing Our Value in Year End
It’s that time of year… prepping Halloween costumes and buying candy, unpacking stored clothes to match the changing seasons, AND starting to think about our contributions at work this year. For most of us, at some point in the next few months we will be expected to participate in a year-end performance review discussion. In this quarter’s webinar, Steve Lindia and Nasheela O’Dowd discuss how to combat the mindset that “your performance review is something that is done to you” and how to ensure that you are getting what you need from your performance review.
Proper preparation is key! Robust preparation will equip you to engage in a dialogue where you understand and advance your value, celebrate your accomplishments and identify how to expand on them, combat common biases that sometimes creep into process, contract for the next year, and articulate what you want and need for future success!
Check out the worksheet and downloadable pointers over on the Q4 Webinar page.