Bringing Balance to Boards

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#BalancedBoards #LadyValCorbett #WomenonBoards

At the February Business Women’s Networking lunch hosted by Lady Val Corbett, we are lucky to have specialists give advice on how women can grown their business and expand their reach in the world. Today was about how we might get onto a Board .. if that is a goal in our sights.

Our workshop speaker was Jeff Green, founder of Balanced Boards. His motivation behind launching this consultancy was his belief in the importance of inclusion, equality and equitable opportunities for all, regardless of gender, race, or age.

Jeff has many senior contacts in the city and particularly among senior executives at Board level. He confided that some of his male colleagues who are on the receiving end of his passionate crusade to rebalance the country’s Boardrooms .. and have been known to resist conversation about what a few call “diversity nonsense”. To get them re-engaged Jeff has reframed the diversity agenda as social inclusion and mobility. Now that he says, they are much more willing to get behind. When they are reminded, these executives do actually want their own daughters and grand daughters to have equal opportunity, now and in the future. To have balance on a board it’s not just women’s voices that are needed, it’s everyone from all those other under represented groups of race, social class and under privilege. Then the Board is more likely to have the richer and diverse debate about an organisation’s more sustainable future.

Jeff is now actively engaged with US-based companies who have, or want to have, a global reach. It is easy to open up these leaders to the possibility of taking on a woman when he points out that they are aiming internationally and yet all their board members speak the same language and in no way reflect the markets the company aspires to. As they look east to Europe and Africa, Jeff is proposing non-American women for the vacancies that are opening up. Sounds like a pretty neat move. 

• Getting onto the Board: If you want to makes change you have to be on the inside of the system and get as high up as you can get … even if you are actually a diversity hire. Grab the place and start working for others to join you. (Watch the movie on Amazon Prime called Late Night where this is the core story with spectacular results for change to the mono-culture of a Emma Thompson’s script-writing team who are all male, and white. See what happens when the female Asian woman joins the group!)
• What is a non-exec director? A non-executive director typically does not engage in the day-to-day management of the organization but is involved in policymaking and planning exercises. In addition, non-executive directors’ responsibilities include the monitoring of the executive directors and acting in the interest of the company stakeholders.
• Time and money:  can be 1-2 days a week with typical payment of £48,000 to £980,000 per year
• Starting out: some advise getting on a charity board as a good start. Yes it does give you some Board experience but Jeff says this may not be the best way, unless the charity is a passion project for you. Being a school governor also gives you good experience. 
• Good cv is needed: tailor your cv to really highlight your special skills and experience from which a company can benefit. Forget where you went to school, focus on what you can bring that will be of benefit and help grow the company.
• Soft skills are now much in demand so conveying your ability to be charismatic and articulate is helpful. Remember men are just as capable of these soft skills and the empathy, compassion and relationship building ability that women are deemed to have more of. It is often the culture that holds back these values so potentially the arrival of a woman (or more women) may create a bigger shift.

Jeff Green, founder of Balanced Boards, was guest workshop leader at Lady Val Corbett’s Women Business Networking lunch Feb 2020

• Your special contribution: How can you help the company innovate? what can you do to support the increased focus on mental health.
• Networking:  women often do not know where to network and they can end up networking with each other and not finding the right contacts for board positions. Jeff says to network in your particular domain, in your special industry or skill area. Contacts to higher levels can be gleaned if you focus there. He called this the lowest hanging fruit.
• Creating Change: Once on a Board you might find the need to shake things up … it is best to hold back on this until you have a sponsor to support you, preferably the Chair
• When to start: why wait til you are older? Young women in their 20s should start planning their progress to Board level, now.

Contact Jeff Green on Balanced Boards for more help getting onto a Board

After our session today with Jeff Green more women are on the case to the change this given the tips and roadmap that he highlighted for the Women’s Network

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Secrets to Powerful Public Speaking

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#EstherStanhope #GinaLazenby #LadyValCorbett #ImpactGuru, #WomensNetworking #PowerfulSpeaking

Powerful Public Speaking .. some really helpful tips

As a a former senior producer with the BBC Esther Stanhope has met them all  … the most senior politicians and the Hollywood greats. She has helped prepare them for interview and calmed their last minute nerves. She was confident, competent .. brilliant at her job. Then someone asked to speak on a stage about her role and she realised she was utterly terrified of public speaking. So, after leaving the BBC and starting her own business she developed mastery of a field she felt initially she had absolutely no confidence in.

Esther with our host Lady Val Corbett

And what a shining example she is of a Zero-to-Hero transition in a field of expertise. She was an absolute knockout of the speaker at our bimonthly women’s Business networking lunch run by Lady Val Corbett’s Network at the end of February.

Esther Stanhope has become a great asset to both junior and senior people in many organisations. She is particularly helpful if you feel highly competent in your job but not confident about being in the spotlight. Does that resonate with you? How many of us are confident in one area of life but not all? Esther wants us to be visibly brilliant as well as technically brilliant. Ever heard of Imposter Syndrome? She says “Get over it”, you are fabulous and if you believe you are, others will too.

Esther is a great speaker and presenter, and really funny too. But the goal is not to copy her and try to be like her ….. it is to have the skills to be our own authentic self and use her tips to put our unique personality into a situation or onto a stage with faith that we can come across well. If we can make that breakthrough in confidence then we can inspire others and become the best version of ourselves. Are

Good speaking changes your life

Speaking up and speaking out is a skill we can all learn .. and Esther says we absolutely should learn how to create impact on a stage, in a boardroom, during a pitch .. anywhere where we would like to have influence. She said “When you learn to speak in front of an audience, it changes your career, it changes your life. It attracts people to you immediately. It is unbelievably powerful. It transforms your businesses. It transforms you and your confidence levels, it just takes you to another level.” Yes there are times when you will be worried and scared but that means you are really living ….. you are stretching yourself!

Esther now speaks at conferences all the time and gets paid handsomely. She has proved to herself that she can do it. So she encourages .. nay she challenged us to do the same …. “Go out and get yourself speaking gigs … keep at it.”

“First of all” Esther said, “ Everyone has got good bits and bad bits. It’s about finding your good assets….  finding the your own superhero powers and really really working with them and are.”

That little voice of doubt on the shoulder, 

Have you got one of these sitting on your shoulder criticising you? Esther gave hers a name …. she named her cruel inner voice Cyril. She recognises when he mutters at her and tells him to be quiet.  What can you call your critic? 

TIP: tell yourself “I’ve got this .. I am nailing this” .. stop the negative internal chatter and reinforce yourself with good positive statements.

What is your confidence rating?

Esther gave us a scale of 0 to ten, with ten being the best. Where are we with our speaking skills she asked the audience of 80 women? At a recent gathering of Mumsnet women hoping to return to work, she said the average audience score was just 2.1 … our audience had an average of 6.2. Ok we are better but we need to aim for 9.8.

Have you experienced one of these problems?

• Being interrupted at meetings
• Feel like an idiot
• Had difficulty speaking up in a boardroom and getting heard, perhaps as the only woman
• Not expert enough
• Legs go shaky
• Mind goes blank
• Somebody walked out of the audience, put me off my stride
• Missed something out of your intended script
• You think the audience does not like you
• You are boring people with too much data
• All your slides are too full of words

Esther has tips for everything and gave us some good basics to boost our confidence and skill levels. She has written a book called: “Goodbye Glossophobia – Banish your fear of public speaking”. It’s a great read and somehow reassuring when she emphasises how nervous and horrible she used to feel. A million miles away from the delightful and relaxed woman who entertained us for 40 minutes.

She reminded us that we can make up so much nonsense in our heads …. OK so we left something out of the speech .. does the audience know, or care? they have got blank faces .. may be they are concentrating on what we are saying?  

TIP: one of her first tips was “Do not imagine audience naked!”  ..  It’s not a pretty sight and does not help at all.

Start with the basics

The actual physical side effects of anxiety and nerves have a really quick fix.  The first thing that you need to do if you start feeling nervous in any situation, whether it’s public speaking, or a job interview or maybe you’ve been invited to do a webinar, is a breathing exercise. 

TIP: Smell the roses, blow out the candle. 

This is a really good quick fix, an instant stress buster. Simply breathing through the nose and then slowly out through the mouth. Three times, for around about 45 seconds. You can rid your body of cortisol, the stress hormone; you can rid your body of panic in under a minute. Do that before you go on stage. Smell the roses, blow out the candle. There is loads of science to say this works and it immediately gets your heart rate down.

 

Don’t be the woman behind the scenes .. with the clever pen!

Esther loves to work with women and sometimes notices when working with major international firms and senior leaders, quite often, the women are writing the speeches… but not giving them.  They’re the ones with the vision, doing all the work ….. they’re the ones with the roadmap to the new regime. And yet it’s the senior guys that are doing this public speaking, chairing the meetings, being seen at the town hall sessions. Many women want to stay in background … their fear holds them back. We can’t let that continue. The only way we’re going to change that is by doing it ourselves. get out there and SPEAK UP. Be brave. Learn how stand in your power.

Esther’s challenge to you: Get yourself a speaking gig. Do more. Encourage other women to speak more.

The Simple Art of Telling a Story

So you say to yourself … “I’m not a writer .. I can’t tell a story!” Yes you can! As a human being you have a story. Stories are where it is at right now. They are SO important. You can draw on anything and the idea is to paint a picture for your audience so that you can connect with them.

1. Start the sentence .. I remember one time when …
2. Give an image or feeling .. Connect with audience. Paint a picture for them, engage their senses
3. Mark Zuckerberg’s assistant blow dries his armpits on his T shirt before he makes an appearance. That gets a laugh.
4. Picture the story in your head then you don’t need a script. It is in your memory easy to access when you choose some real life event or anecdote.
5. Come up with a nostalgic memory that takes people back to their own childhood or youth

BIG TIP: Power pose

This is a a very quick way to look good, sound good, and feel good. The power pose. The Amy Cuddy TED Talk explains the science behind taking a powerful pose. Her 2012 Ted Talk has had over 56 million views.. and counting. Watch it. Are

Instructions: 

1. Find a private space like a toilet before going yo your speech location
2. Stand with your legs hip width apart. You want to feel the gravity under on your feet, 
3. Keep like the for 2 minutes
4. You will feel more confident because you fill your body up with testosterone which makes you feel more courageous.
5. Neuroscientists also suggest you put your hands in the air, and expose your armpits too. Imagine Wonderwoman. 

Strike a P.O.S.E.

Esther came up with this acronym when supporting her nervous guests before live TV and radio interviews. Four tips for a quick fix.

Posture, Oomph, Speech .. and Smile!

P is for Posture

• There is so much science behind having the right physicality.  Your brain thinks you are powerful with the right posture
• Do not totter around on wobbly heels. Good posture means you look more confident, it is better for your voice, even sitting at table 
• Spread out and take up space. Look at how then men sit
• Presence is as important as content

What to do with hands?

Option 1 – Keep your hands in front .. men could look like a bouncer.

Option 2 – Keep your hands behind your back, like Prince Philip

Option 3 – For TV you need are them to be in the square of the screen above the hips so do that and just hold on to your third finger to steady your hands .. like Tess Daly

O is for Oomph 

• You need energy, enthusiasm
• Think about where you get your energy from
• Have enthusiasm .. “give it some welly!”
• NLP advocates will show you a power move that galvanises all your energy

S is for Speech

• Vocal warm up
• Use a Tongue Twister to get your chops working … like Unique New York
• Try an Evil Laugh (best to be on your own with these!)

E is for smile

• Smile and people will think you are confident and relaxed 
• Smiling moves nerves upward in face
• Have power and warmth and you will look confident 

TIP: for connecting with the audience

Maybe you have been given a difficult subject or one that your audience has been told to listen to and which they fear or find difficult .. be open and honest, acknowledge how difficult it is for them, help them relax .. acknowledge and let them share their feeling honestly. This authenticity should break down any barriers you feel.

Sign up to Esther’s great mailing list for more tips: 

 

.. and get out there and speak .. see you on the stage!

Esther Stanhope, the Impact Guru with author Gina Lazenby

Where do we get love from?

Conscious Cafe Skipton met late February at Avalon Wellbeing Centre to talk about LOVE ..

In that quieter space after Christmas, when all the glittery decorations had been put away, I walked round the shops and noticed how everywhere seemed to have been taken over by heart bunting and the colour red. It’s obviously for Valentine’s day the next month. The marketing industry has firmly anchored in the notion that, although love is all around, it is all about romantic love and coupledom. Unless you have a sweetheart to buy a card for, you might just feel a tad left out, even isolated. And yet love is so much bigger than that narrow perspective. So I proposed a conversation about this for our late February Conscious Cafe conversation in Skipton.

A small group of us set out to explore the deeper meanings of love and examine all the areas in our lives where we experience love.  Judging by the number of people who mentioned to me afterwards their desire to attend our evening, but in the end chickened out, and not because of the terrible weather, it seems that talking about love may be a bit uncomfortable for some. So I’m grateful for the courage of our small group who met at Avalon Wellbeing centre.

Where does love come from in your life?

Here is a summary of the insights from the evening. Our full list of questions is at the bottom if you are interested in taking them on for yourself.

1. Blood connection: Setting aside for now, the love of a romantic life partner, where else does love come from. We started out by acknowledging the love of family, children, parents, siblings …… the tribe we grow up with and for the most part, spend the rest of our lives tethered to in some way. These are strong bonds of love.
2. Friends can become our family of choice. The sitcom Friends clearly demonstrated the potential for deep loving relationships among friends, and the endurance and nourishment of companions who are able to create close connection is what must have made the TV show so popular for ten years.  It is still on our TV screens, every day, 16 years after it ended!  If, however, you’ve been in a loving relationship for most of your adult life, and not spent much of your time being single, you might not have had the chance to create this kind of community of friends. It is different for us all.
3. Saying “I love you”: Does this become easier as one gets older?  Is it easier with age, or is it something about the spirit of the age that supports and evening encourages more openness and makes it easiest for us to say, I love you. I know that I can now tell one of my close friends that I love them and yet I would not have done that years ago.
4. Words have power:  Perhaps the most important person to say I love you to, is yourself, especially if you live alone and you don’t have that close knit circle of friends where loving conversation and expression is comfortable and familiar. We did an exercise using muscle test to demonstrate the power words can have on the body to either weaken or strengthen physical resistance. Saying kind and loving words to yourself (even as unspoken thoughts) makes you physically stronger than saying something negative.  It’s definitely worth trying.
5. Love yourself first:  We all want love. That is the bottom line. And what is at the heart of the human experience is the need to be seen, to be heard, to be listened to… valued. To be loved.  But it’s hard to ask others to give you what you are unwilling to, or feel incapable of, giving to yourself. Being able to love yourself is the single most important factor in the success of any relationship. And that love is not self-indulgent or arrogant, it’s simply about self acceptance and feeling worthy.
6. The power of a hug: There’s plenty of scientific research into the benefit of physical touch. Hugging someone for 10-20 seconds, actually has the power to reduce pain and clear headaches. Not everyone is comfortable with this closeness, so do check first. It’s a great currency to have, to be able to contribute to others’ well-being and your own by smiling, reaching out and giving a hug.
7. Touch is part of the language of love: It’s not just in the words I love you. Love can be conveyed with intention. Love comes across through the simple touch of reaching out and holding or squeezing someone’s hand.  It shows you care.  Just as eye contact and really looking at someone, giving them a moment, letting them know you see them. That is powerful. It’s an expression of love.  
8. Touching in the modern era:   Everybody’s personal boundaries are different. So in the #metoo era, when some men are not sure how much physical contact is now appropriate, (or even post coronavirus where we might fear we are exposing ourselves to germs) there are other ways of connecting and showing warmth. If a fist bump is a bit too American frat boy, or an arm grab is too Trump-like there’s always the symbolic greeting. Put your hand on your heart to convey a desire for connection or place your hands together Indian prayer style, perhaps with a bow. That way you are saying a lot and also throwing up a physical barrier to any surprise hug.
9. Cultures vary:  We’ve all got our different codes for expressing friendship, companionship connection and love.  In Pakistani, for example, men feel much freer in their masculinity and are able to hold hands together without conveying without that being read as a different sexual preference.
10. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: those who have experienced this may have a different way of feeling.  Having been exposed to such an intense and wide spectrum of feelings, it may be that some experience a need to cut themselves off from feelings to minimise the impact on themselves, until they feel healed. But those who have suffered this also have the capacity to be much more aware of what they are feeling.
11. Language of love: beyond words and touching, there are many different ways to show love. Gifts are important for some, taking action, being there and present, and even doing supportive jobs are ways to show love. A very powerful one is the preparation of food. It’s universal and often the secret weapon of mothers and grandmothers. What could be more loving than everyone round the table for a big Sunday lunch?! I always provide home-made cake at Conscious Cafe events. Yes I could make it easier for myself and buy one, but by making one, I am showing my appreciation for people who make the effort to come and be willing to be in community for an evening. (For this event I made gluten-free pancakes in honour of Shrove Tuesday!)
12. Finding words to describe love: this we found difficult.  There are so many ways to love, so many different forms that we feel the need to expand the language more.So many meanings for just one word!
13. All embracing nature:  a deeper meaning for love is our connection to spirit or God, or whatever word you use for Source. We are receivers of consciousness, conduits between heaven and earth. The spiritual aspect of love is our higher nature beyond all relationships. And it is something we can access by ourselves .. taking ourselves to a higher state, being in meditation, feeling wonder. Even looking at the stars can expand our sense of self and make us feel connected to everything .. having a sense of oneness that transcends all.
14. Unconditional love: There’s no greater gift in the world than to have the love of friends or family, where you know you are unconditionally loved and supported. Animals can also give us that without any judgments, being in the way. Unconditional love is the greatest nourishment we can receive and it is good to take a moment and appreciate that in our lives.

How to access or get more love

1. 

   Being in nature not only changes us physically, emotionally and mentally but it can take us to another state of feeling connection with all

   For the most part, meditation and developing an increased awareness is helpful in connecting to our loving nature. Breath work, being still and quiet, focussing on your heart, are also good ways for taking you to a state of grace.

2. Being in nature enables you to feel connected to everything.
3. Perhaps through your beliefs or religion you feel powerful connection by being in a sacred space like a church or any place of spiritual power.
4. Smiling at others, feeling compassion or joy can all help strengthen and amplify your connection to God or source or light.
5. Receiving the response of a smile and giving one changes your own body chemistry.
6. Giving to others, acts of love, sharing prepared food.
7. Feeling love for yourself and giving yourself positive self talk.

Conscious Cafe Skipton Questions:

Question 1 – Where does the love come from in your life? In what ways are you present to the love that you have? What does love like in your world? 

Question 2 – What do you do to nourish the love you have? How do you show or express love? Psychologist Robert Sternberg says “Without expression even the greatest of loves can die”.

Question 3 – Is Love a choice? How do you decide who and what to give your love to? 

Question 4 – And if you think love is missing in some way, how could you find it again?