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

Why having a Digital Strategy is now the lifeblood of any business

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#LadyValNetwork, Digital Strategy, Susan Kabani, ugenie

Susan Kabani, cofounder of Ugenie, leading the Lady Val post-lunch workshop

Susan Kabani, the co-founder of Ugenie, conducted an afternoon workshop for the Lady Val November Women’s Network lunch in central London to show us the power of digital tools to help our businesses grow. She is a non-tech founder of a tech business and that in itself was welcomed by our audience of women leaders and entrepreneurs, some of whom might admit to being a little fearful of getting to grips with the advancing digital world.  Her start-up business Ugenie provides private membership platforms for business communities and Susan is in line for a Best New Business of the Year award having made it to the final round of the Women’s Business Club New Business Award for 2019.

Susan started by pointing out that digital strategy is so much more than posting on facebook and Instagram, two things that many (older!) people dread using for business. She gave us a few definitions of what of it means and warned us that the way we are used to running our businesses today, can no longer be the way we run them in the future. Digital technology has connected us in such a way that there is no going back.  Any organisation’s business strategy today has to encompass digital. There is no longer a choice. So how do we really leverage digital tech to get more business?

To emphasise the power and impact that digital tech has been having in the world, Susan told us that 88% of the Fortune 500 companies that existed in 1955 are gone. These companies who looked invincible have either gone bankrupt, merged with another business or they are no longer in the Fortune 500 listing.  Most of the casualties came from not adapting their digital strategies in sufficient time and were replaced by others who had a better grasp of the changes being brought by the digital era. 

Susan Kabani workshop The audience was asked to think about brand name companies that we had grown up with which were now no longer here. Although no longer here, these once powerful businesses did not adapt to digital well enough .. Kodak and Polaroid are the stand-out examples of failures. Susan said that Blockbuster video, another big brand that had disappeared, had been approached by Netflix for joint ventures but they rejected them. Founded back in 1997 when Blockbuster was riding high on video cassette tape rentals with lifelong club membership, Netflix now has revenues (2018) just shy of $16 billion. If only we could see the future eh?!

If you don’t build digital into the plans today of your business, you stand a chance of going the way of Blockbuster …. losing out big time or disappearing altogether! Susan kindly shared her powerpoint as a great aide-memoire of the workshop. You can review that here. Highlights are summarised below: 

1. What’s important to know: Susan emphasised that getting a grasp of digital does not necessarily mean that you need to know the how of getting digital done, you just need to know it must get done. She pointed out that she is a non-tech founder of a tech company!  Bring in the right expertise. You need to have fluency about what can be done but not necessarily then implementing the tech you take on board.

2. Entry level to business is now lower: Digital has changed the economics of running a business too. Back in the day you needed to rent or own the real estate to run your business (all those Blockbuster Video stores on all those neighbourhood corners!) … now you can have a virtual location and even run a business from your sofa! The worldwide phenomenon Airbnb started in one room with one airbed!  When Netflix started out they did not need to invest in property. They invested in new tech instead.

3. Haphazard approach is not workable: MIT and Deloitte recently did a survey of companies… the first were just adding bits of tech here and there and determined that in order to be competitive, there was a need to embrace technology in a holistic way for the whole business.
4. The power of Gen-Z (cohort after the Millennials, defined as those born from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s): Young people today want to work with a company that has a clear digital strategy. If they do not have one, they are not interested.  In the ten years this generation is going to be 40% of the buying power of consumers. We have to know how to reach this group and understand today how they are consuming in readiness for them having more and more influential buying power.

5. Privacy is paramount: The next generation in particular are more sensitive about the privacy of their data. In this regard, Facebook is now a less trusted brand  .. and this might not bode well for this super-large company in the future unless they can turn that around.

6. Speed is everything: things are changing and upgrading so fast .. we have entered the era of exponential growth, so it is important to have digital data to give you feedback quickly. The goal posts are moving all the time now. You need to have your finger on the pulse to react quickly. A Digital Strategy has to be able to evolve constantly.

7. Communication confusion: There can be too many channels to choose form – is the message I am looking for in WhatsApp, or text, or Messenger .. or on email?? The advice is to choose one or two channels and stick with them. Keep it as simple as you can.   

8. Everything is included: Digital Strategy is not just able sales leads. It is as important for team communication as it is about customer feedback.

9. Tips about time: dob’t forget to include your own time in any project calculation. Even if your own business cannot afford to pay you at this stage, you must have an allowance for your strategy otherwise you can never afford to replace yourself.  Build a salary into your financial model. Make sure you value your time. And so you know what an hour of your time is worth? Are you able to calculate the return on investment of any activities you do?

10. What processes are we uses that saves us time? The workshop came up with a few digital hacks and apps that we are currently benefiting from:
    1. Trello helps us project manage and keep up with team activities, who has done what.
    2. Zoom brings us together across the world for meetings and conversations
    3. Movie is another communication program like Zoom but with the added benefit of a trained message stream
    4. Notability allows you to use an iPad and bring together handwritten notes converted to text with inserted photographs from a meeting which is very useful
    5. Copper brings together everything Google to manage leads and emails, putting relevant contacts into a leads generator. If you are looking for investment then being able to show you have ready-pipeline makes you more investable.
    6. So much about digital tech gives greater efficiency and not just sales leads

11. Building a Digital Strategy has to start from the top: you have to be informed to drive change with the right tech because you can meet resistance from people who feel they already have a solution. You need to know if what you are introducing is better. Build the data and track what is working. Take the time to acknowledge what is working when it is a success.  If it is not working .. be prompt in changing it. Bring in good tech for measuring.

12. Buy right the first time: do your research so that you do not install something that ends up being the wrong fit. It is more cost-effective to get it right from the start. And if you need to change it usually possible to migrate your data .. with the right expertise.

13. Women on the Web support: is a digital community with helpful, bite size how-to videos. If there is something you need to learn how to do, this is the place. You can even ask for specific subject to be covered and one of their community of 45+ women teachers will prepare something to add to the resource library. (For example Susan has prepared a video on how to load your photos from your computer up to Instagram, instead of your phone). Find out more and join.

14. Choosing advertising: Boosted Facebook adverts can add up and are they successful? Are you tracking them?   Where are the competition advertising? Why aren’t they using Facebook ? where are they placing their activity now? 

15. Before your Strategy comes your Vision: what are your specific objectives? Clarity helps with decision making. Is your networking producing leads? Have an objective for each event you go to. Is is able leads / contacts / intelligence? Do you know your key numbers? How many to reach to sign up as customers/sales?  Smart tech for finance: there is so much out there for assisting in organising finances, invoices and budgets. Use it. Find a person skilled in setting it up. 

16. Gen-Z want more support … track how you are helping them, with things like health and wellness. They are much more mobile. If they are dissatisfied they move on. They are also interested in the social values of your business. They have a whole new way of looking at the world that we older people need to understand as it will likely affect their business.

17. Good data management is at the heart of good decision-making: invest in getting the right systems or procedures to give you the data you need so you know where to put your effort, resources and money. You don’t need all the channels .. choose the best for you. Email still remains a very strong marketing tool as is local marking in your computer. With so much choice out there … keeping it local can keep it simple. Figure out where your audience is and choose the best channel for your key market … LinkedIN ..or networking / face to face meetings.

18. Simple simple: people get lazier .. they want things done for them or to put in minimum effort. Don’t ask too much of people. Spoon-feed. Be really clear with your call to action in your website. Don’t leave them in a quandary for what action to take .. at the right time. Don’t make them register their info twice. Be the same with your brand across all channels.

19. eCommerce remains huge:  Amazon is the biggest retailer in the Western Hemisphere. They have so much helpful data. You can track where your customer are dropping off in the sales process, where in the sales / buying journey is the weak spot you? Very useful info.

20. The Mayor of London’s Promotional Agency: has an initiative called the London and Partners Business Growth Programme. Businesses that have at least 3 people can apply for benefits. It’s all about bringing more employment to London. It’s worth investigating for possible support. More about this initiative here.

• About Susan Kabani: she was an IT lawyer who went straight into her family business to protect their trademarks & copyrights, specialising in sports law. When she started there fresh out of law school, she found they had no electronic record of past customers, all 2.000 of them!  In order for her to retarget the most valuable asset of the business she had to go back over all the paper invoices. Just putting these on a spreadsheet was the beginning of taking the company digital. 
• About Ugenie: Launching her current business with her other non tech founder, they saw a need to offer communities a private way to connect with each other. They saw that some groups were struggling to be in communication using Facebook or several WhatsApp groups. They have developed a private app that these communities can use more effectively by being digitally connected and not having to share all their data.

Prue Leith Queen of Cooking recalls her colourful life

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#LadyValNetwork, Bake Off, Prue Leith

Bake-off star and cookery legend Prue Leith entered the room to a welcome of thunderous applause from the sold-out capacity gathering at Lady Val Corbett’s women’s networking lunch at the end of November.

Prue Leith and Lady Val were both involved with The Hoxton Apprentice, a restaurant that trained the long-term unemployed. Lady Val started her Women’s Network there in 2005 holding her lunches for 7 years. This event celebrated the Network’s 14 years of successful gatherings.

It was good to hear that Prue and Val have a history, with both coming from South Africa to the UK in their youth and staying in touch over the years. In fact, this lunch event was also a birthday celebration for Lady Val’s network which started 14 years ago in Hoxton Square in a training restaurant for the long term unemployed that both women were connected to. The two women and their ventures have gone from strength to strength.

With a female speaker for a large group of women, we are looking for gossip, insider secrets and tips for how we can emulate her success. Prue did not disappoint. She turned out to be a kick-ass business woman with a winning smile, a colourful presence and in her own words a “terrible show off”!

“Business is boring” ….. but is it?

It’s interesting how as a young woman Prue got the idea that business was boring so she chose a career that she thought was more creative, fun and involved people… cooking. She was good at it growing a team of cooks, then over the next year she found herself out of the kitchen … “Guess where I was …the team were in the kitchen doing the cooking, and I was on the phone, selling the stuff and making up the menus and doing the bills and organising the restaurants …. I was in an office doing business!”  To her surprise she found that she absolutely loved it getting as much of a buzz and “smug self satisfaction” from getting the right numbers on her profit and loss as she did from preparing a big wedding feast. 

Creative with Marketing

It not only helps to be a good cook but you have to seize the opportunities to move up the ladder and grow your business whenever you can. Prue spoke of a time when she was cooking for a wealthy woman in her Holland Park home. Through the server hatch she overheard the dinner parties guests give lavish praise for the food and ask for the name of genius cook. The hostess then claimed that she had cooked all the food herself and the “little girl in the kitchen” was simply there for clearing the dishes. That little girl resisted the temptation to shout through the hatch and instead came up with a great idea. A small sweet revenge. She took her business cards and wrote on each one that this was the person who had cooked their lovely meal then slipped them into the coat pockets of all the guests. Bingo!  Shortly after, she received a call from the secretary of the Chairman of Reed publishing inviting her to cook for the directors’ lunches. He was impressed with both her cooking and marketing skills.  Be brave and seize the moment.

Evolving with age

When Prue got to her mid century she wanted to heed a different call for creativity and write novels. Owning three very successful businesses took all her time and creativity so she decided to sell them all … her cookery school, Michelin star restaurant and catering company which now had 500 employees. That’s certainly a brave shift. She opened up space for her creative writing phase but after some time decided she actually missed the buzz of business. 

You’re never too old to start again

Recalling how Lady Val celebrates a woman’s love of handbags and shoes (a regular toast at her networking events) Prue pointed out that these items are either hidden under a table on the floor or on our feet and then tucked away in cupboards. She decided to be a bit more canny and showy and choose to channel her creativity into the design of a range of colourful Prue spectacles and gorgeous necklaces .. items that already formed part of her personal brand image and are always on display! Having previously enjoyed wearing colourful and inexpensive plastic jewellery, Prue’s range is a bit more eco friendly and not based on plastic but on beautiful gemstones which also make for a more sustainable business with better margins.

So having semi-retired from her businesses in her 50s .. here she is about to enter her 9th decade and back in the business fray, collaborating with jewellery and spectacle designers. It’s never too late to take on something completely new challenge.

Older women and Invisibility

Reflecting on her own journey through the years, she has noticed that women in their 50s can feel, and also look, invisible. She encouraged women to accept the fact that older men will let their gaze land on more nubile and younger women (that’s just what they do!) and we can still have a good time. Don’t give up on yourself she said … embrace colour. 

Finding love

Prue referred to her long and happy marriage with her first husband. He was 20 years older than her and sadly he died when she was in her sixties. She has been very public in her comments about her surprise and joy at finding love again in her later years. She is going to be 80 next year and is delighting in her wonderful marriage to a man who is seven years her junior which she called “the right ratio” to much applause from the audience.  

Women can often find themselves single in later life for a variety of reasons but she pointed out that even though we might not all enjoy the love and connection of a life partner, love is still hugely important in our lives and takes many forms. Appreciating the love we have from friends and even our pets is nourishing and important. Having love and being long sustains us.

 

Recipe for success

Prue says that because she seems to do a lot, and has accomplished so much, she is often asked about her secrets for success. This is a hard one for any of us to answer but she says she can only draw on her innate optimism. She says she is upbeat in her approach to life. “I do think I’ve been lucky ……. you know, if something goes wrong, I will more likely say, it was really worth a try. I’ll do it again…. Or that didn’t work so I’ll try something else. I think much more about what I’ll do next, rather than worrying about what I’ve done wrong….And I’ve done lots of things wrong.”  It can be so easy to focus on the mis-steps and the failures and let them hold us back but Prue maintains a focus on the future which sounds really healthy. Keep your eyes forward and don’t get hung up on the past.

Embrace the colour

Her other secret is her love of colour which she says has a great deal to do with how she feels … “maybe this is because I’m busy flogging colourful specs and colourful necklaces! … but I do think that if you wear a red jacket or a yellow coat on a miserable morning you immediately feel a little happier. So I’m really for us all having colourful lives, and that means having a go with everything.”

A new career phase with Bake-Off

When Mary Berry stepped out of the Bake-Off team when Channel 4 bought the franchise, Prue, already an old hand at TV work, wondered who they would find to replace the iconic female elder stateswoman of baking … she thought “surely they’ll never ask for yet another old lady…  Channel Four always want to do something different .. a young cool black woman perhaps …But they obviously didn’t want to mess with the formula”. So she was approached and is now a key part of the successful continuation of the series.

Everyone wanted their photo taken with the Bake Off star

The big faux-pas

As the first Bake-Off series involving Prue came to a close, she recounted how she was prompted to congratulate the winner after 10.30pm. Of course we all know it is a pre-recorded programme and the winner is a very well-kept secret (and has been for 7 years) until the recording is aired many weeks after the actual event.  On this occasion Prue was in Bhutan with very spotty phone reception so when that prompting message appeared on her phone, she looked at her watch .. 10.30pm …so she sent out that famously ill-timed message of congrats to the winner. It was certainly 10.30pm in Bhutan but much earlier in the UK and the show had not yet been aired. Her assistant spotted the spoiler message and deleted it so it was only up for 89 seconds .. but that was all it took to spread like wild fire. The spoiler-alert story made headline news. Instead of having her contract terminated as she fully expected, Prue was relieved to find a compassionate response at Channel 4, particularly as ratings soared when many new folks tuned in to watch the show.  The potential debacle had another upside when the Prime Minister of Bhutan called her for a chat … congratulating her and thanking her for putting Bhutan on the map .. in the most unusual way!

That is definitely a sign of a woman who is a pure magnet for good luck!!

Lady Val’s next lunch event for women in London is February 20th

Why make life harder when all you need to do is ask for help?!

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#AndyLopata, #AskforHelp, #JustAsk, #networking, ginalazenby, Lady Val Network

Andy Lopata is a leading networking strategist. He has written four books on networking and often been quoted in the media, including The Sunday Times, The Financial Times and Inc. In fact, the FT called Andy ‘one of Europe’s leading business networking strategists’ and both Forbes.com and The Independent called him ‘a true master of networking’.

Workshop leader Andy Lopata with Lady Val at her Professional Women’s Lunch

Andy opened his afternoon workshop at Lady Val’s Professional Women’s lunch with a plea for us to “please stop lying!.”  He explained that we are doing this every single day when we respond to the questions: 

“How are you?” … “How’s work?”  with … “I’m fine”. 

He says this is a bad habit when often we are not fine and actually could do with some help! The problem is, so few of us are open to letting people in to help us.

Andy has developed a passion to help people open up

A member of the PSA (Professional Speakers’ Association), Andy recalled being at a PSA event in Reading, at a time while his business was struggling. The speaker asked a simple question. What is the status of your business?  Is it Growing, Scaling, Stable, or in Decline? Andy realised that even in the company of his own tribe, his closest community, he was not able to be honest. Nobody was able to acknowledge whether their business was in trouble and in need of help. And the room was full of people who could help.

Andy is seeing this as a big trend. People are beginning to realise that they need to start being open and vulnerable instead of feeling the need to look good and strong to those around them. Nobody wants to look weak or feel a failure and yet our inability to be honest and ask for help can really hold us back. Of course it is natural to want to look good and strong to our peers. 

Instead, finding a way to open up to the all the resources that are around us, inside the contacts the we already have, will help us move forward.  Stop worrying about how you look, be honest with yourself and ask for help. Then you can tap into the resources that are in the room at whatever network or community event you are attending.  We are always surrounded by answers. Just let them in by asking for help.

Andy tested the workshop audience. He came up with two common challenges that affect people in business and asked if we are facing these right now (hold up a red card); or if we have faced the challenge in the past but overcome it (hold up a green card); and if we have faced it in the past, overcome it but the challenge has come back (hold up both cards). 

1 Time Management .. look round and see who is holding up a green card and could help you? If they have a red card then you know you have much to share with a common problem. 

2  Courage of your convictions…. confidence to speak out about your beliefs? 

It is our networks that are vital to us for support

When we look around and see who has the same challenge as us, and notice who has overcome that challenge, it creates a bridge for sharing and having honest and open conversations that could be transformative to our life and business.

Andy’s experience and insights have been channeled into a book coming out next year called “Just Ask”.  He interviewed a wide range of people all over world, in business, music industry,  politics … and gathered helpful insights  and true stories where people overcame their blocks to reach out for transformative help.  He said it was interesting discussing with UK politicians James Cleverly and Jo Swinson if we could allow our politicians to be wrong?

Let others in so they can make a difference in our lives

What beliefs do we have from our upbringing or life experience that stop us from reaching out for help or support? Andy has a strong background in networking and he wants to encourage us to let in colleagues and friends from our trusted networks to become resourceful allies to help us overcome problems. Don’t think that you have to face everything alone. Somebody, somewhere has experienced the same as you have and has overcome it .. in fact you might actually find that most people have had the same experience.

Do men find it more difficult than women to ask for help?

So much of this is tied to cultural difference. That is probably the case in very patriarchal societies or macho, male-dominated work places.  Yes women are more used to asking, and also to supporting each other. Men can seem to prefer to find solutions by themselves. At the core, this is a human need and will be expressed differently according to the influence of culture and what is held to be appropriate. In Hillary Clinton’s last book she revealed that she had a close inner circle of trusted female friends and colleagues to whom she would open up.  That is something we all need. Andy’s research reveals that women have circles of trust that includes both men and women. The safer the space that we can create, the more we feel we can trust and reach out. Women have had support communities for years and now men are finding this is now available to them with an increase in the number of men’s groups.

 

The Vulnerability Wheel ..

This is a tool that helps you to make an assessment for different areas of your life and work. That leads to an action plan (overleaf) in terms of you as an individual, your organisation and you as a leader. (Link to download this Wheel here Andy Lopata Rules of Asking. ).

 

 

Mastermind groups are vital

Finding a group of colleagues to work with, with whatever connection seems appropriate (for example same industry or location, same chapter or club members, graduates of a programme) is so helpful. This group can evolve over time into a really safe space to share our deepest fears and get valuable input for moving forward. It is almost impossible to lie in such an intimate group and candour is always rewarded. If you are not already in such a group it is worth finding one or even creating one.

Can we be honest at work?

Not every corporate culture is predisposed to openness and honesty, unfortunately. And even where this culture of open sharing does exist, the business can go through cycles where fear takes over. If employees sense that their leaders are holding back about the future of the company, it can really create an atmosphere of fear and distrust. If this goes on too long, it can be highly toxic and drive people out. Transparency, with agreed boundaries, is vital for a healthy office culture. We all need to feel safety at work to express ourselves and trust the company’s vision and direction (perhaps that is a new dimension to add to what can sometimes seem an old bugbear ‘Health & Safety’!).

What about honesty in Leaders?

Leaders have to be authentic. In times of difficulty and massive change, such as many companies and organisations are facing now with the uncertainty of Brexit looming, no single individual can hold a mandate to make change by themselves. They have to unburden, unload and share or they will simply burn out. Leaders have to give confidence and they do this by being truthful and authentic, not by trying to be positive.  

Leadership and vulnerability

There is a fine line in authentic leadership of presenting capability and confidence, and honesty about the real situation. Each person has to find their own natural path to being friendly and connected to their team, while still commanding respect. You need both modalities not just one. It really is OK not to have all the answers. The important thing is be on the quest for solutions and involve others in this. 

Easier to support others!

Just like advice is easier to give than to receive … many of us can find it easier to offer help than accept it. Get over that! As Andy says “Just ask!” Check out this handout from Andy Andy Lopata Rules of Asking

Andy Lopata is an author, speak and professional networking strategist

Connect with him on LinkedIn

Lady Val’s Next Lunch event in London is on Thursday 28th November

The Power of Megatrends

Tags

#helenwebb, #LadyValNetwork, #megatrends, ginalazenby

Guest speaker Helen Webb, Lady Val Corbett, workshop facilitator Andy Lopata

Today’s speaker at Lady Val Corbett’s Network Lunch in London was Helen Webb and she gave us a great deal of food for thought with her explanation about the far reaching power of the Megatrend .. that’s something a bit more stealthy and world-changing than a simple trend or fashion fad.

Power of Storytelling

Lady Val manages to book some really excellent speakers for her lunches and it’s always fascinating as a speaker myself to see how they approach a presentation. Helen started hers with a story which is both a successful and engaging technique for winning over an audience and also gave her the opportunity to draw our attention to the power of Storytelling as a key trend in communication today. How much do you use this in your own business? Could you use it more? Helen recounted how Lady Val had approached her by email asking her to be a speaker but how her initial response was to think the email was a scam and she resisted opening the attachment. She invited Lady Val to call her .. if she was a real person .. which indeed she is as Helen found out the next day when Val made the call!

Another key trend Helen says is loss of trust!  Gone are the days when we simply trusted people with, and in, power. Lies and half-truths have been relentlessly exposed so now we are much more cautious. That’s why building up your contacts and connections inside a trusted community like Val’s network is really useful. And yes .. it is wise NOT to open attachments unless you are CERTAIN you know the sender .. and even then, maybe not!!  🙂  

Using your Superpower

We all have our superpowers and it is immensely helpful when you are fully aware of what that they are for you. Clearly, Helen’s superpowers include Strategy, Problem-Solving and Vision in her own consultancy and as a non-exec director.  She was the UK MD of lastminute.com, a hugely disrupting influence in the travel industry that everyone must be aware of. It was a real game-changing business. Among the interesting things she has done, she has written a photography book with the beautiful title, Shoot The Baby, and as part of her passion for history and old buildings, has renovated a Tudor house and now sits on the board of the Landmark Trust. If you want to explore travelling to REALLY interesting places that are usually well off the popular map .. then check out their website.

Preparing a 20th century business into the 21st century

It seems that again we have an example of something that is not “too big to fail”. The veteran British travel company, originator of that oh-so-familiar package holiday, and dating back to the 1840s,  went bankrupt a few days before. Reflecting on that we can see that it was very much a success in the last century but the leaders in that organisation failed to see, or adapt to, the fast-changing conditions of this new millennium. Here is a new word for you .. disintermediation .. which basically means taking out the middleman and of course if this is happening to you, like Thomas Cook, then you are going to have to find a new role in the marketplace. Today, thanks to the leaps of ecommerce and digital technology, we can book virtually anything direct or via a platform that is not a physical shop with an agent.

Defining a Megatrend

Helen called this a “pattern of activity which has a major impact on people, business, the broader economy and our society over the long term”. When it is a MEGA trend, its effect is far-reaching, and relentless and stealthy in its growth over time. Think of the ageing time bomb we have known about for several decades as our society has got much older while we are all able to live longer. Fads can gain popularity quickly and while a trend lasts longer, the megatrends grow and develop over many years and are extremely hard, or impossible, to reverse.

Video is a big Megatrend

We have all witnessed the growth of Youtube .. but did you quite realise that it is the second most visited website in the world now with over 5 billion videos watched every single day?!  Do you have a presence on Youtube? Are you publishing something as written copy that could alternatively, or in addition, be broadcast as a video?  It’s the millennials who are driving this visual culture and I find it is helpful in a room full of older folks planning something, to get a ‘younger perspective’ .. and they will often say .. “why don’t you do that as a video?”!  We don’t always see the possibilities and can have a video blindspot.  Helen recommends checking out Fiverr, a platform for creative work that is done by suppliers, based all over the world … another example of industry-changing globalisation and tech enabling us to access talent anywhere!

The Sharing economy will continue to grow

I just about got my head round this when I put my London home on to the newly discovered  Airbnb website back in 2014. I was not sure what it was at the time but it felt like an interesting idea to join. Since then there has been an explosion of opportunities for us to leverage our unused resources .. be they bedrooms, cars, private planes .. anything that can be added to an online ecommerce resource platform.  All this provides opportunities for the Gig economy where people can work with relative freedom and create their own jobs. One of the best known is Uber where you use your own car as a taxi and are linked to potential riders via the massively expanding cloud technology. 

The shock waves have a long reach with a Megatrend

Uber is also part of the quest to bring driverless cars to the market. We have been reading about this for a while but now the possibility of it become a norm is literally round the corner. Helen says, according to Forbes, the estimate is that 10 million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020 (that’s next year!) with one in 4 cars being self-driving by 2030. We all tend to think about how that will affect us but Helen’s says that when a megatrend like that hits, it has a very long reach affecting, for example:

• car manufacturers
• car insurance
• car repair and accident & emergency departments with potentially less repairs
• employment of truck drivers and HGVs
• tyre manufacturers
• taxi companies
• parcel delivery
• public transport
• car parks and parking revenue
• disabled and senior mobility
• alcohol sales
• the military
• ..  it’s an endless list of potential challenges and opportunities and goes to prove that the knock-on effect of change may catch us unawares if we are not vigilant.

Climate Change is one of the biggest game-changers

The latest IPCC report published this week asserts that global warming is happening faster than was previously forecast. Helen drew our attention to the fact that as much as 1% of global GDP could be spent on climate change consequences by mid century 2050. So many smaller trends sit under this big one and we are all familiar with the shift to a greener economy, the need to be more sustainable, and the rise in more conscious and ethical consumerism. How will that affect your business? Perhaps you, like the recent LinkedIn adverts on the London underground, will highlight the social purpose behind your business or work. The simple drive for growth and profit is losing its appeal, especially with the younger generation. Purpose in business has power.

When Kodak lost their moment

Helen said that this was a company which had very visionary thinking. They could see the future was digital for photography way back in the 1970s.. and yet …. they lacked the courage to act. They buried their new idea and then as the technological decades moved forward, they got overtaken by faster and more agile companies, sadly going out of business in 2012.

In the Q&A Helen was asked “Where do I start?”

Her advice: “Bring fresh thinking into your organisation to help you spot new opportunities. If you don’t want to go as far as a consultant, then talk to the youngest person in your organisation and listen to their ideas of how you might prepare for the future.

Keeping up to date

Gina Lazenby discussing the speaker Helen Webb’s recommended book choices 🙂

I think one clear message that came from listening to Helen is that we need to do our research and keep informed. Buy the books on trends, keep reading and asking questions about where the future is moving (the Financial Times Weekend is a great read for this) and determine what role is there for you and your business. You need to stay ahead of the game to maintain your agility and resilience. 

Thinking back to Kodak, even with their insights to the future, you have to have the courage to act. And indeed it can take immense courage to make adjustments with perhaps short term inconveniences and losses, in order to better ride a wave that is gathering huge momentum. Taking advice from those who are adept at reading the signs is often a wise move.  Helen Webb has a strategy consulting business and can be reached via her website or Linkedin profile.

 

Helen’s recommendations on books to read

It’s always good to note what a trend watcher is an advocate for. Two books she mentioned:

“Let my people go surfing” – Key insights from the book

 

One minute book review of this book on Youtube

Lord Robin Corbett of Castle Vale: A Life Well Lived

The Robin Corbett Award

A wonderful story of living by purpose, contribution, making an impact and leaving a legacy.

For more info on future events hosted by Lady Val Corbett

How to create a good Personal Brand for yourself

Tags

Jenny Garrett, Lady Val Network, Persona Branding

Jenny Garrett gave a workshop on Personal Branding at the Lady Val’s Network Lunch in June.  (next event is 26th September)

Have you ever been asked a question .. one that turns out to be really memorable and life-altering?

That is what happened to Jenny Garrett when a friend turned to her and asked “Where next Jenny?”  At the time she was working for a leading business school and feeling comfortable and accomplished in her work. Then her friend pointed out that she could do so much more with her life and career. How would you react to such an insight?

Well, Jenny considered her various options, but her fear of public speaking ruled out so many of them. She had let that fear hold back her ambitions. And she would not be alone feeling that one!  Jenny’s friend persisted and pointed out that she was a really good listener so why not consider coaching. Jenny edged out of her comfort zone and that became an opening for her to move forward in a coaching career. It also caused her to transform and expand her sense of self. That led to her starting her own business. She specialised in leadership then developed her own leadership programmes authoring a success guide for women called “Rocking your Role”. Speaking on stage naturally followed and this was now no problem for her because of her growth and confidence she had developed in her work.

At this major turning point in her life she recognised the particular challenges women can face in being the primary income earner in a relationship, or family. However well women do out in the world, they can still be expected to maintain a supportive primary carer role. This can often lead to women experiencing a lack of recognition for their contributions, both at work and at home. Jenny realised she needed to communicate better all the ways she was making an impact.

Personal Branding makes the difference in business referrals

Jenny began to understood that her personal brand was really important in expressing who she was and had become. She could see that how people talk about you when you are not in the room is really key to your success. You really want your name to mentioned when opportunities come up, and for the right reasons.  People will recommend you if they understand your brand and what you are about… whether you are a business owner or an employee inside an organisation. 

Technology fuels female ambition

In today’s world technology is key .. like it or not, every business is going to become a technology business. A big question for all of us .. “How do I get digital? How do I engage?”

Five years ago Jenny did some research for the Nivea Brand looking at technology and how it impacts people. What they found was Technology is fuelling female ambition. 87% of women use social media to get their ideas out into the world. Three out of four people believe that technology’s social media will speed their career success and business advancement.   Instead of moving step by step like before, now we have the means to take the escalator to the top floors advancing so much more quickly using these new technologies.  The internet is creating a generation of female digital role models.

 

We need to think differently about the way we do business. Face to face meetings and physical connection remains important but digital connection needs to be brought into the mix. And good branding is crucial here to help you stand out.

Confidence is key for expanding your profile

Jenny also did some research on confidence and found that women are more confident than they have ever been before. But confidence remains an issue when we feel we have to get ourselves out into the world.  Expressing our personal brand is essential but it does require confidence.

The Nivea research findings did show a gap between men and women in terms of confidence but still, men experience confidence issues too. Is the narrowing of the gap to do with honesty or that women are indeed getting more confident and closing that gap?

An age curve was noted. Under 24s were the least confident but women get more confident as we get older until later age … After age 55 that can reduce perhaps when we have had a knock in life… loss of a partner or ill health.

Personal Branding can give a much-needed confidence boost

Confidence at work is affected by colleagues and peers  .. a lot of people show up as bullies trying to make you feel bad. The biggest way to increase confidence is to step out of your comfort zone and do something different. Putting yourself out there into the world and working on your personal brand go hand in hand at building your confidence.

Keys to Branding

• Your personal brand is about YOU but it is very interlinked with your Professional Brand.
• Impact: You can’t just rely on people to simply buy your products. You need your brand to make you memorable as that is the key to being recommended by other people to their contacts.
• Portability: Brands are completely portable .. if you leave an organisation, your brand goes with you. Developing your personal brand inside an organisation is not being disloyal. Your good profile or activity will benefit your organisation with an afterglow. It is a win-win.
• Word of mouth marketing is personal branding is, letting people know what you are good at and encouraging them to tell other people. Make sure what they pass on is what you want them to say about you, and that is represents you well. You are responsible for that. Any business that comes to you by personal recommendation that is your Personal Brand in action.
• Authenticity is key.  You can’t make it up. Competence always comes first. You need to be good at what you do.
• Self awareness: Highlight your strengths then you build your brand around that. You can talk to others about what you need from this place of strength and self understanding.
• Being seen: Good branding brings visibility

Create Your Brand using your “GPS” – these are the 3 areas to work on

1 Your Gifts = G

What comes naturally to you. What do you do really well?

What good feedback do you get?

What do you bring?

What do people mostly say is good about you?

How you choose to engage

What difference do your strengths make ? 

What is the tangible impact you make?

2 What are you Passions = P

What is important to you?

What do you really care about?

3 What do you want to be in Service of? = S

With whom do you want to work?

The difference I want to make?

What do you want to be doing?

What legacy do I want to leave?

This is your GPS guiding you. The Sweet spot is in middle of this GPS is the heart of your brand. 

• Bring all this together for a brand statement.
• Instead of introducing yourself to new people as a role, say what you are passionate about. The more you practise this it becomes more succinct.
• Ask people for feedback for what you are saying about yourself. Check that you are a actually projecting the things that you are saying about yourself. 
• You must ensure that others really understand you.  Then you will get the right clients
• Be memorable.

_______________________________________________________

EXERCISE on finding our GIFTS (some can find this difficult):

Working in pairs. Share something good that happened in the last few weeks.

Your listener takes notes .. what you said, how you shared it, what did you demonstrate in that sharing? What came across?

Next:  Your partner compliments you, giving feedback on what they heard of what you said. It’s important to simply accept these compliments, not to flick them back. 

This is your Brand .. what they observed about you and experienced in the conversation.

Yes it is good to receive a pat on the back but we take on it board more when we are given specifics. This detailed feedback is so helpful. We can be tempted to dismiss all the good feedback and remember the one bad negative piece. Don’t fall into the trap of amplifying any negative feedback. That being said, it is important for each of us to find ways to give others positive feedback. It is particularly helpful for those of us work alone a lot on our own in business.

_______________________________________________________

How does it feel to receive compliments? Good. We feel seen, recognised.

Mark Twain said: “I can live a good few months on a good compliment”.

TIPS: It’s important to brag!  

share your amazing achievements. Everyone needs to know.

What are your Bragables? have you saved people money?

Recognise your own power? Where are you powerful? 

Where do you make a difference with your power?

Share your CV on Linkedin .. do something different…. some people have used a song at piano to sing their CV.

Use explainer scripted videos.

Words on paper no longer stand out.  Don’t be bland or the same as everyone else. Be different,

And finally ….

It’s NOT about how many people you know

It’s about how many people know YOU  … and let them know who you really are with your personal branding.

Lady Val’s lunches are always fascinating and fun. So many interesting women to meet and connect with, and she brings in great keynote speakers and workshop leaders. The next event is 26th September – more details here

Lady Val Luncheon.  London

Notes from Gina Lazenby

June 27th, 2019

How a chance conversation led Dame Stella to be the first female spy chief in the UK

Meeting the real life “M” …. Dame Stella Rimington sharing her life story

Last week I attended a special women’s lunch hosted by Lady Val Corbett. It was a celebrated of her 13 years of hosting a professional women’s network. Val always finds extraordinary women who have made it to the top of their field and invites them along to share their insights and life story. In most cases, it is not just how clever or courageous they were in being successful or high achieving, it is about how they managed to break, or circumvent, the system. That system, the world of work created during, and before, the twentieth century was created by men for men. This event’s speaker was a superlative example of a woman who achieved the pinnacle of leadership in a highly male field .. spying!

Dame Stella Rimmington, ex head of the MI5 and the first head to hold such a secretive job and be named publicly.  Stella has gone on to be a successful author of spy novels (drawing on her own first had experience of course) following the publication of her auto biography. Life stories of high profile and successful women are irresistible and the room was pin drop silent as Stella shared how she become head of the UK’s spies  … or “M” as we came to know her when Judi Dench famously played the role in Daniel Craig’s Bond movies… even copying her hair style and jackets she noted!

I’ll share three insights that might interest you.

1. Career Advice – make it up as you go along, just keep at it

Although there was never any career planning for Stella at least she decided she wanted one … and that presented its own difficulties in an era, the 1950s, when women were NOT supposed to have careers. After university she became an archivist and little did she know that the research she did there would later serve her in the Intelligence service. Once she was married it was difficult to countenance any kind of career but she ended up in Delhi as a Diplomat’s wife, simply expected to uphold several British social traditions of whist drives and jumble sales. Modern women looking back now from our vantage points in the twenty first century will feel appalled at the waste of intelligence and the frustration that must have been felt by women back then who were hungry for more than being just a wife.

Stella did not languish for long because, like a scene from a movie, someone whispered in her ear at a garden party about the spy service and she found herself recruited as a typist working for MI5 in 1967.  It did not seem to matter that she could not type .. in those days it was much more about WHO you were, rather than WHAT you could do! That was the beginning of her illustrious career where she would reach the very pinnacle. 

She was asked how she managed that career with marriage and motherhood. Well sadly, the marriage did not survive so she ended up a single mother and her advice for others navigating life and career was to “keep your feet on the path .. and struggle on”. Just keep at it!

2. As a woman, just being you will probably mean you are called Uppity and Difficult

When Stella returned to the UK and and got another job with MI5 she really did enter a male dominated sphere where the men were out in the world as the spies and the women were relegated to a different grade of work providing the back-in-the-office research support. As the era of equality started in the early 1970s, women were doing their best to move upward and onward and Stella was one of the first to break through. Any woman who did stand out from all their colleagues, by simply not being a man, would often be seen as uppity.

Fast forward 40-50 years and not that much has changed. MP Kenneth Clark famously referred to Prime Minster Theresa May’s tenacious quality by calling her a “bloody difficult woman”. And the London Evening Standard newspaper this week highlights an interview in Tatler Magazine with actress Kate Beckinsale. Often referred to as a “Diva” she denied any special, attention-seeking behaviour and said, the stars who demanded special treatment or kept others waiting hours were invariably men. 

3. It takes more energy to change the system than simply move up in a career

As one of the early female spy recruits, Stella told us that the training they were put through would often hilariously or dangerously backfire on women because everything was designed by men for men. Not only had the women be good to advance upwards but they had to push at the structure that expected them to be men and had difficulty adjusting to their gender.

One training task Stella shared was to go into a pub, sound out a target member of the public for information then have a colleague come in and out them as a spy, and then they would need to handle this revelation. Stella was sent to a back street, smokey dive of a pub full of men in raincoats drinking on their own where any conversation with a lone woman would be seen as seductive chatting up and the subsequent reveal simply ended up rescuing her from goodness knows what!  It became clear that the system would need to adapt to handle gender differences!

Most successful women who have climbed the ladder have stories where they are the only woman in the room or at the meeting where they have been expected to pour the coffee, or had to endure executive hospitality clearly designed for men, including an expectation of joining in visits to strip joints or tagging along at a boar hunt …. but times indeed have changed and these situations are decreasing. Certainly the #MeToo era has made so many distasteful experiences openly unacceptable. 

If you want to find out more about life as a female spy then Stella Rimmington’s ten spy novels utilise her career rich with fascinating stories that she would not be able to reveal in an autobiography. I got my copy of her first book “At Risk” signed by Stella. Her autobiography also reveals the path she took to her ground-breaking role as one of the top female leaders in the UK.

I led a workshop after the main speaker session about the value of Women’s Gatherings. You can read more about that here.

Lady Val will host another lunch with an interesting female speaker on Thursday February 28th, 2019 in London. These events always sell out and are an excellent networking opportunity for women.

Being a Woman is a Serious Business

Being a Woman is a Serious Business

The fact that continues to emerge is how much the world is changing and consequently how much business has to play catch up. Where do women fit in and how can feminine values come in, answer questions and solve problems? On last week’s episode of The Rise of the Feminine, a special feature from the WIN conference in Rome, we learned about the serious business of being a woman and the impact of women stepping into the big decisions of the corporate world.

Radio Guests Susan Schachterle, Keith Coats, Prof Nigel Nicholson and Dr Kaouthar Darmoni

Susan Schachterle – Women are not Aware of their Power

• Women so often don’t even recognize that they carry power. They are conditioned to think of power in terms of how men demonstrate power but women carry a depth of wisdom and power that creates the foundation for any kind of success in business.
• Women tend to be conditioned to think of power in terms of giant business deals or being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, very masculine power without beginning to realize that there is nothing weak about connecting, creating relationships and alliances and collaborating. There’s nothing weak about compassion, empathy and nurturing.

Gina Lazenby with Susan Schachterle in Rome, Italy, at the WIN conference

Keith Coats – Women are Natural for Tomorrow’s Leadership & They Can Ask the Right Questions

• The emerging next economy is referred to as the connection economy or relation economy and this is going to be the first context that doesn’t only not prejudice women in leadership but favors women in leadership.
• When you look at what it’s going to take to lead in the connection economy, it hinges on the ability to relate, to go over the far more instinctive feel, to have a lot of dexterity. Women generally have a far higher intuitive sense and ability in those areas.
• One of the biggest challenges facing business is that it’s an understanding that strategy is no longer the leading jab or the driver, it has to be around culture.
• If you’re talking about an adaptive organization, it’s not a strategic response, it’s a cultural response. When you look at what the ingredients of culture are that make up the business model, women are better equipped to lead in that domain.
• Smart leaders today are leaders who frame great questions. Again, women are just more comfortable in that, of not needing to have the answers but are of hosting questions, of getting participants to discuss and share opinions. This is really important in politics but especially in corporations today.

Nigel Nicholson – When Women are Given the Choice to Lead, Some are Choosing Not To

• The way we’ve created and structured the concept of leadership within organizational structures looks pretty poisonous to a lot of women who have leadership capability.
• Women think they might have to forfeit their personal life, exercise remote authority, or work in a rule based performance driven culture that is always focusing on achievement and tasks of individuals and the like of teamwork and all these other things.
• What women bring to the table is flexibility and adaptive leadership. It means you don’t try to be a man or a woman for all seasons but you’re ready to do what’s needed or to find somebody else who will do what you can’t do to make sure that the right things happen for the good of the common wealth.

Dr Kaouthar Darmoni – Reframing our Understanding of the Female Body

• Women don’t dare to use to use their breasts because we think it’s sexual but men use it very well. When they want to be macho, they raise with their chest. Women should do the same as well, it’s a natural expression.
• What happened in Western society which is very sad, is we internalized this male gaze on the female body. A male gaze which is also has been completely distorted by the culture of pornification. The body is important, not only to desexualize it but also to depornify it.
• In these spaces, in my culture where come from where we are completely amongst women, we have this pure way of celebrating the female body in its most purest beautiful form as it is.

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Talking to the men .. at the Global Woman Summit

Gina Lazenby, will be speaking at the Global Woman Summit in London this weekend, July 30-31. The Summit is organised by Mirela Sula of Global Woman Magazine in collaboration with the Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research and Club of Budapest.  It is designed to bring together like-minded people passionate about entrepreneurship and creating game-changing business with a focus on financial, personal and spiritual well-being. In these times of fast-paced and complex change, a new paradigm of thinking is being called for.

The main keynote speaker is ERVIN LASZLO, Director of the Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research (Italy) and Founder and President of The Club of Budapest. Ervin is a renowned philosopher, scientist and humanist, dedicated to the global transformation we need for a sustainable future which he sees will be woman-led. This is the time for women and Erwin will map out how he sees the world shifting from the hyper-masculine that no longer works.  The event has a high quality forum of world class speakers with content aimed at supporting women move forward to create the new world. Attendees will be coming in from almost 20 countries.

Gina Lazenby will be moderating a panel of men, exploring their views and the role of the new masculine in a world of rising feminine energy. Organiser Mirela Sula says, “I have really enjoyed having Gina involved in our events as she brings her great wisdom. She is known for contributing to women in so many ways, helping to make them more visible and build their confidence and stay united together. Gina is very good at collaborating and I have learned much from her, together I know we can do so much more. We are looking forward to having her as a panel host at the Global Woman Summit and especially leading the conversation with the men.”

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