A Room Full Of Powerful Leaders

Leadership intrigues me. I am always looking for thoughts, ideas and insights to challenge my thinking and help me grow. 

I work in an organization that, at the local level, is predominately female. Like so many others, we are facing an eventual exodus of many retirement eligible staff and our continued growth and success requires us to be able to develop and retain quality, effective leaders.

Our turnover is low and we have some pretty solid leadership development program in place. So by these two measures, and some others, we are doing well. I am interested to see just how well we really are doing and what can we do to do it better.

I will be attending the Women's Leadership Conference, April 27 -April 28 as a guest of The Conference Board. The  presenters include senior executives from Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Sara Lee, State Farm, AstraZeneca, QUALCOMM, Pitney Bowes, GlaxoSmithKline, UPS and Deloitte as well as Gail Evans, former Executive Vice President of CNN. Talk about an all-star cast!

The sessions of particular interest to me are Returnships (think internships): Programs for Workforce Re–entry; Social Communities: How to Best Use Them; Scalable, Sustainable, & Cost–Effective Mentoring; and Being Resilient: Leading with Energy.

What ideas can I bring forward for discussion and what types programs could our Workforce Development Committee consider and in what other ways can we contribute? At the conference I will not only enjoy meeting some of the finest, I will be conducting informal data gathering on how to be a human resource executive and gathering  ideas that I can bring back to my organization, share with my colleagues, and use to enhance my career. 

I am also out to help you. Do you have any questions you want answered from the Women's Leadership Conference?

It's Me. It's Always Me. And If You Are A Leader, It's You Too

Leadership. Human Resources. Supervision. Process Improvement. Conflict. Resolution. Performance. Outcomes. Motivation. 

I've been doing this long enough to know that if something is not going the way that I want it to, the way that I expect it to, or just seems to be continually amiss, it is not long before it circles back to me.

You don't know how many times, or maybe you do, I've started to work through a workplace concern with my coach and ended up sitting back in my chair saying, "It's me. It's all me.  Again." 

It's at these time that I often wonder, "so, what's a nice girl from Long Island doing in a place like this?"

Seriously though, leadership is a series of course corrections and it always comes back to the leader. I shouldn't be surprised but it really is an eye opener for me - each and every time. Am I alone on this?

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