29 Tuesday May 2012
Posted in business, success, Baby Boomers, Women Leaders, leadership
Tags
Success in the City, success, leadership, cynthia de lorenzi, Change the World, personal power, career advancement, Gen-Y
An open letter to the next generation.
I’m old. My generation – either Gen X and the Boomers depending on which source you use – isn’t going to save the world, despite the fact that we’re going to keep trying. Sheryl Sandburg said it best in her Barnard Graduation address in 2011, the numbers just aren’t there for us. It’s up to you, Gen Y.
22 Tuesday May 2012
Tags
advice, business, career, cynthia de lorenzi, personal power, Skills, success, Success in the City
Fortunately, humans love happiness. Who doesn’t want to be happy? Unfortunately, it turns out that plenty of us don’t seem to, based on the way we stick our noses to the grindstone and assume that if we work harder we’ll achieve success and happiness. Fortunately, the relatively new science of positive psychology is finding ways to help us achieve business success. Unfortunately, many of us are currently doing it backwards, and hobbling our professional capability in the process. Fortunately, all we have to do is be happy and grateful in the present moment, and we become more effective at what we do and more likely to achieve success.
Here is an entertaining and mind-blowing TEDx video by Shawn Achor that synopsizes this research.
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf Continue reading »
17 Thursday May 2012
Posted in business, career, success, Women Leaders
Tags
business, career, cynthia de lorenzi, executive coaching, InPower, leadership, management, success, Success in the City
Moving from managing to leading is a challenge because the skills that make you a good manager aren’t enough to help you excel in leadership positions. Men and women alike sometimes perceive the gap between managing and leading to be a glass ceiling when, in many cases, it’s not necessarily that at all; it’s a subtle group of skills you must have to be considered for leadership.
Many people who make it into leadership, even the ones who don’t appear to deserve it, have mastered skills that don’t show up on a traditional resume. They have built a strong Invisible Resume that helps them get into — and succeed — in the executive and C-suite ranks
In this three-part video series, I’ll cover several diverse aspects of your Invisible Leadership Resume, your global perspective, your leadership presence and your authentic leadership style. Continue reading »
15 Tuesday May 2012
Posted in business, career, Women Leaders
Why are women so good for business?
Reason Number 4: We’re good investors.
In the ongoing hunt for insights to understand The Woman Effect Manifesta, I’ve discovered that the Return on Women (WOR) is really high! – I’ve been delighted to discover that women have excellent investment instincts! Since I can’t think of a more important business leadership skill than investment savvy, I am excited to highlight it here as one of the reasons that professional high-achieving women contribute so strongly to organizational performance, including profitability and sustainability.
At first this finding flummoxed me because it was right up along side stats in Forbes and The Center for Venture Research that said that women were not actually very prevalent in the investment community. But digging deeper I noticed a few things, not least of which was my own experience with Venture Capitalists during my startup years where I learned that VCs are both clubby and traditionally interested in one thing: quick profit. Looking at the investment perspective that women bring to the table, it’s no wonder we aren’t more present in the traditional VC communities.
However, women are gaining new respect as investors, and part of the reason why is our neuroeconomics. According to Denise Schull “New research shows that investors or traders who are tapping into their people-reading skills are better at predicting markets.”
But the reasons we make good investors go beyond just our wiring. This fantastic TEDWomen video by Halla Tomasdottir makes it clear why. Listen to Halla as she explains her investment firm’s feminine-influenced investment values:
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
I want to highlight two of these factors contributing to our investment prowess because I don’t think they get enough attention.
Investing is risky by definition because your returns are in the future.
On the surface, the data on women and risk appears a bit contradictory and confusing, but from what I can tell reading the research, the studies don’t seem to use a common definition of “risk.” In reading them, and in considering the general use of the term, I see two distinct patterns of “risk” discussed:
1) seat-of-the-pants, hope-and-a-prayer kind of risk that some researchers say is testosterone influenced and
2) calculated, researched and considered risk.
None of the studies I read distinguished these kinds of risk, however, a high-level view of the research leads me to believe that women are uncomfortable with the first kind of risk and comfortable with the second. This makes sense to me personally too.
There is some swagger associated with risk (including investment risk) that culturally credits the first kind of risk, the go-with-your-guts kind, with phenomenal success. Really, if you think about it, the gut-risk story is baked into the rags to riches American Dream. When people packed their worldly possessions up in wagons to head west, they were often following little more than the promises from a flyer tacked on the saloon wall. Reading the research and associated commentary after the Great Recession, it seems that our financial sector suffered from a bit of bravado, didn’t it? You could even make the analogy between the saloon flyers and the mortgage and refi brochures we kept finding in our mailbox, no?
Contrast that with the other kind of risk, the more considered kind, which is based on analysis and a willingness to more openly deal with unwanted news where women excel. It turns out that women are excellent investors in charity too, because they are motivated to conduct in-depth research, focus on results and provide strategic support.
If you’re giving your money to someone to invest in an uncertain future possibility, which kind of investor would you like to have? Right.
In addition to being good risk-takers, women tend to take a longer term and broader view of success, which helps protect the business against the volatile cycles that the quest to show shareholders quarterly profits tends to produce. As quoted in a Forbes “data from the Center for Talent Innovation (formerly the Center for Work-Life Policy) show that most talented women aren’t motivated by money alone. More than half (56 percent) want their work to have a positive effect on society; in fact, more women place a higher priority on that karmic paycheck than on high financial compensation. Furthermore, the vast majority of college-educated women want to amplify their own altruism through their employer: 88 percent of Gen Y women, 91 percent of Gen X women and 90 percent of female Baby Boomers feel it is important to contribute to their community or the wider world through work.”
In fact, recent commentary out of The Great Recession has called into question the viability of our short term financial success model entirely. If the market’s definition of success shifts to reward a longer-term view of returns, then women’s natural talents at managing for the long term will become even more valuable.
I find it fascinating that this dialog about women as investors is happening in and about the wealthiest markets in the world at the same time it’s being discussed in the smallest and poorest villages, too. Research by the World Bank is finding that when women thrive in tiny villages and towns, so do the villages and towns! Why? Because women manage resources differently. They ensure that the children eat and become educated so they can contribute more to the economy – definitely a long term view of their investment. They invest differently and in ways that contribute to the health and build the wealth of the whole community. Whole economies perform better.
And if that isn’t proof of women’s investment instinct, I don’t know what is.
What is your experience? Do you see women’s investment styles paying off in your business pursuits? Have you tried your hand at investing in money, assets, people? Yourself? What results have you seen?
This post originally appeared on InPower Women. I am a leadership consultant, coach and women’s InPowerment advocate. I started InPower Women to activate The Woman Effect and rewrite the feminist narrative on women and power. Follow me! (I follow back) LinkedIn Google+ Twitter
13 Sunday May 2012
Posted in career
Tags
cynthia de lorenzi, Denmark, Happiest Nation, happiness, Having it all, Joy, Madeleine Albright, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, Stress, Success in the City, Working Mom's, Yoga
On Wednesday, May 16th Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and Success in the City will be hosting a fascinating International Women’s Breakfast with Danish women of The Albright Group.
The Albright Group was founded in 2005 by communications consultant Signe Wenneberg, a Danish Journalist and public figure recognized as the Martha Stewart of Denmark. Signe Wenneber was inspired by former US Secretary Madeleine Albright after meeting her at a dinner party in Copenhagen 2004.
Ms. Albright emphasized the importance of female relationship networking and the value of learning from men, whom, as she put it, have been skilled networkers for centuries. Ms. Albright visited the group in Denmark for a round-table discussion and lunch in 2008 celebrating their founding of this prestigious organization founded in her name.
Comprised of approximately 70 women leaders throughout Denmark Albright Group women, like Success in the City women desire to make a difference for other women and throughout the world.
In a April 6, 2012 Huffington Post article on The World Happiness Report 2012: Scandinavian Countries Are Happiest on Earth and Denmark ranked the list as number one!
Happiness, understanding what it is, how to find it, cultivate it, keep it and nurture it, has been a topic of conversation amongst the women of Success in the City since its inception in 2004. For the past 3-years we have hosted a sell-out event on the subject of happiness and we still find it something that seems to often elude so many of us. Sometimes we even wonder if we are happy and we just don’t have the capacity to recognize it.
Even more compelling about The World Happiness Report is that “for the past 30 years, scientific researchers and survey results have all reached the same conclusion—Danes are consistently happier than the rest of the world” On the “world map of happiness”—a map created by a social psychologist in England—Switzerland, Austria and Iceland rank just below Denmark on the happiness scale. Canada comes in at number 10, while the United States is a distant 23rd.
What is universal for both Danish and American women is stress, which seems to resonate as a challenge for coping with success, family and the having-it-all-factor for women around the world.
On Wednesday we will include in our myriad of discussions the topic of stress, how each of our cultures manages it and share insightful techniques and strategies for lowering our perception that we are all experiencing ever climbing stress levels.
Recently, Inc. wrote about the entrepreneur’s secret anti-stress weapon: meditation. But how can you find your inner calm between meetings, carpool, checking email, and getting your already long to-do list done?
We will also be conducting mini-on-camera interviews with our attendees so do hope you will join us to share in what will be a fascinating cultural exchange.
LOCATION
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman
2300 N Street NW
Washington, DC 20037
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
7:30am – 10am
