LeadHERship Global

We don’t tend to think of the workplace as a place where we need to overtly work with trauma. Trauma belongs in the domain of mental health. It belongs to your therapist, and not your leadership consultant or your executive coach. But here’s the truth: adults spend most of their time at work. Workplaces need to become places where we not only grow and develop—they also need to be places where we can heal and repair what has been hurt. A basic definition of trauma is that it is an experience or event that overwhelms your capacities to depend upon or protect yourself.  Trauma impacts the way we behave, the way we interact in relationships and the way we can learn and grow.  And shifting from ‘what’s wrong with you?’ to ‘what happened to you?’ is needed in our places of work. While much of the trauma that we think about is acute trauma or one-time trauma, like car accidents, a lot of the trauma that we experience is actually repeated trauma. With repeated trauma, our brains and bodies shift to protection. And this efficiency and repetition of protection becomes our way of living in the world—it becomes our personality. It becomes the way we lead. Listen in as Linda Conyard, Australia's leading pioneer advocating for trauma-sensitive change and informed responsiveness to trauma in the workplace, talks about how to overcome the traumas in your life in order to lead in a healthy, balanced and authentic way!

Good leaders often possess a combination of various “leadership qualities,” such as creativity, motivation, vision, and empathy. However, the most successful leaders are able to adapt to the needs of different situations, employing their diverse set of leadership skills in order to achieve their goals. Traditionally, the idea of feminine leadership is used as a kind of shorthand for an approach that places an emphasis on empathy, humility, and relationship dynamics in business practice. The result can deliver a more considered—rather than impulsive—decision-making process and subsequent action. Traits such as sensitivity, supportiveness, gentleness, warmth, cooperativeness, expressiveness, modesty, humility, empathy, tenderness, and being kind, helpful, devoted, and understanding have been cited as stereotypically feminine. But, Feminine Leadership belongs to all of us. It is a state of being that recognizes and understands the power of connecting, learning, sharing and evolving as a leader. Feminine leadership creates space for unique creativity, inclusiveness, collaboration and supportive competition. Those that step authentically into their feminine when leading are able to demonstrate insight, kindness and the desire to energetically connect to and unlock true potential in others. Listen in as Ela Staniak explains the Feminine Leaders Empowerment Methodology focusing on the three core pillars of alignment, beliefs and connection and the fundamentals of purpose, performance and creating the ultimate life!

Most organizations understand that marketing is important, but few adopt a truly holistic approach to marketing. Marketing is a vital process for small entrepreneurial start-ups to billion dollars enterprises because no business venture can become established and grow without a thriving customer base. Every business must differentiate their company's products or services -  so its distinctiveness and value are clear to the customer. This is the job of marketing. According to the most recent B2B Marketing Mix report, 67 percent of companies surveyed named lead generation as their top marketing objective. Of course leads are important, but customer experience is critical for sustainable growth of the business, so marketing departments must do more than just enable sales teams to do their job. Good marketers, in fact, understand what customers want, how a company’s solutions meet those needs and how to communicate that relationship effectively. A marketing-first approach to business ensures that the products and services the company offers are relevant to the marketplace. Through components like brand-building and brand positioning (both internally and externally), the best marketing-first companies drive their competitive advantages - and their success. Most business owners find marketing both critically important as well as a challenging part of their success. There are so many elements of marketing to master: branding, competitive differentiation, story-telling, digital, social, thought leadership, sales enablement, ongoing customer communications, and more.  So today, we’re lucky to have Monique de Maio with us, the CMO and Founder of a 23+ year old marketing consulting firm, ondemand CMO, to discuss how to create a sustainable competitive advantage for your business, through the development of a strategic holistic marketing plan.

As we shift our thinking about our situation, there is a change in emotional tone and the meaning that we give to our life circumstances. We can choose to move our experience from a negative frame to a more hopeful one, filled with opportunities. This process of reframing allows us an expanded view of our reality. One of the skills to help us develop as mature, resilient individuals is that of reframing. When we change our point of view on any given situation, the facts remain the same, but a deliberate shift is made in how we see it. Reframing requires seeing something in a new way, in a context that allows us to recognize and appreciate positive aspects of our situation. Reframing helps us to use whatever life hands us as opportunities to be taken advantage of, rather than problems to be avoided. Breakdowns are transformed into challenges and new possibilities to experience life more fully and to become a more whole human being. Kim-Adele Platts, leadership coach, bestselling author and keynote speaker will explain how we can replace dismal, energy-stealing thoughts with more responsible ones, such as: “I think there must be something important for me to learn here.” In three easy steps, Kim will explain how to reframe problems as challenges, and challenges into opportunities!

Raising finance for your startup can be challenging, particularly as a female founder. Today, you’ll learn precisely what it takes to be ready to pitch to investors, how to attract their interest and make your pitch compelling - whether you're pursuing angel investors or venture capital firms. We will also discuss different types of funding available, how to choose the right type for your business, and what it takes to begin investment conversations with angel investors and venture capital firms. Paulina Tenner is an entrepreneur, a seed investor, an angel investor, a start-up mentor, an author, a TEDx speaker and a founder of GrantTree, a firm designed help tech startups navigate the complex world of government funding. Since 2010, the team raised over £200M for more than 600 technology startups and scaleups using solely government funding!

Gartner defines the future of sales as the permanent transformation of organizations' sales strategies, processes and allocation of resources, moving from a seller-centric to a buyer-centric orientation and shifting to hyper-automated, digital-first engagement with customers. To meet customers’ new buying preferences and succeed at virtual selling, sales leaders must adopt a totally different mindset. B2B sales reps need to embrace new tools and channels as well as a new manner of engaging customers, matching their sales activity to their customers’ buying practices and information-collecting needs. To learn how to align selling activity to customers’ preferred engagement channels and purchasing journey, sellers will need entirely new methods of sales enablement.  In fact, among B2B sales organizations, sales enablement was the most critical priority last year. In addition, Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. CSOs and other senior sales leaders must accept that buying preferences have permanently changed and, as a result, so too will the role of sellers. To keep sellers engaged and executing sales, CSOs must find the right balance between the technology deployed and the volume of content that sellers interact with to do their jobs. In addition, CSOs and sales enablement leaders must train sellers differently to better optimize virtual sales enablement practices. Listen in as Carajane Moore, President and Partner of Hunt Big Sales, explains what the future of sales looks like and why you need to revamp your approach now!

Microaggression is a term used for brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral or environmental slights, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative attitudes toward stigmatized or culturally marginalized groups. To be clear, the "micro" in microaggression doesn't mean that these acts can't have big, life-changing impacts. They can, which is all the more reason to address them when you see them. These everyday, subtle, intentional — and oftentimes unintentional — interactions or behaviors communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups. These are the thinly veiled, everyday instances of racism, homophobia, sexism (and more) that you see in the world. Sometimes it's an insult, other times it's an errant comment or gesture. The difference between microaggressions and overt discrimination or macroaggressions, is that people who commit microagressions might not even be aware of them. We're all human beings who are prone to mistakes. But you need to be more aware of your biases and impact on people. Research has shown that microaggressions, although they're seemingly small and sometimes innocent offenses, can take a real psychological toll on the mental health of their recipients. This toll can lead to anger and depression and can even lower work productivity and problem-solving abilities. Which is why we’re so lucky to have Mickaela Lusignan with us to help us navigate the issue of microaggressions in the workplace – so we can all commit to working on these things in order to create a more harmonious society.

Is your personal brand living up to your aspirations? When you apply for a C-Suite position or a public board seat, or you’re raising capital, selling high value products or inspiring your teams - how you present yourself makes an enormous difference. Unlike a job, your personal brand follows you wherever you go, so it’s critical to define it, nurture it, and fire it up so you stand out and achieve results. Listen in today as Nicole DeMeo and Jeanine Moss of Outfront Solutions explain how to differentiate yourself, harness the power of visual branding and engage your communities to drive your success - and harness the power of YOU. You’ll get resources to help you uncover the “authentic” you, your purpose and create your unique value proposition. Learn how to apply the same branding principles, that helped to create iconic companies like Apple and Nike, to your personal brand so that your story sticks. You’ll hear tales of brand building for some of the world’s most high profile leaders from Steve Jobs to Carly Fiorina!

Setting good personal boundaries is critical to creating healthy relationships, increasing self- esteem and reducing stress, anxiety and depression. Strong boundaries protect your self- esteem and your identity as an individual with the right to make your own choices. Conversely, a lack of boundaries opens the door for others to determine your thoughts, feelings, and needs. Unhealthy boundaries are often characterized by a weak sense of your own identity and your own feelings of disempowerment in decision making in your own life. This leads to relying on others for happiness and decision-making responsibilities, thereby losing important parts of your own identity. An inability to set boundaries also stems from fear; fear of abandonment or losing the relationship, fear of being judged or fear of hurting others feelings. As important as it is to set healthy boundaries, most of us have a difficult time setting healthy boundaries consistently. At times it is difficult to identify when our boundaries are being crossed. We may even fear the consequences to our relationships if we set them. As leaders, we may know the things we need to do to set boundaries, but with the pandemic and the blurred lines of work/home, often, we aren’t living those boundaries. By modeling boundaries, as a leader, you are giving your team permission to do the same. Good boundaries are a sign of emotional health, self-respect and strength. Listen in!

Most leaders have moment of intuitive insight, but they don’t live intuitively. In the co-creative state, you experience a high-level of engagement and clarity, which transcends your current human thinking.  Co-creation means tapping into the collective consciousness of the universe, working in tandem with it create new and novel possibilities. In a co-creative state, you can experience a higher level of engagement, enjoy a oneness of being, and transcend limited human thinking. Who you are in your co-creative form is limitless.  Think about it – when elite athletes are “in the zone” they say time slows down, reaction times speed up, and they know what to do long before they have to do it. When was the last time you really felt in the zone? Most leaders know what its like to be “in the zone” but don’t know how to live there all the time. Today, we’re going to talk with Sally Anderson, world-renowned leadership coach, leadership advance facilitator, inspirational keynote speaker, author and master coach trainer, about how to live “in the zone” by learning the art of co-creative leadership!