Reverse mentoring – the other point of view?

Long before Microsoft, I used to work in a company that paired the very junior in the organisation with the very senior.  It served 2 purposes.

It helped the junior staff understand organisational challenges or running a medium sized business and gave them confidence in dealing with people working at much senior levels to them.  But more than that, it gave the organisational leaders an insight to the challenges of starting out in the organisation, the problems of junior menial tasks , lack of responsibility and decision making at lower grades.

 

The most beneficial pairings were when young females were “mentors” to the senior male managers.  These young women had such a fresh approach to every day tasks that often, a totally new process was implemented.  A refreshing change.

But I thought that this approach was limited to smaller organisations, and the big guns stayed away.

 

 

So I was delighted to read that Dell have adopted this reverse mentoring approach where female middle managers coach the senior male leaders. 

The programme helps men to understand the ways in which women approach their roles and to develop appreciation for their different styles of working. Sales, for example, is typically seen as a function more suited to male traits, but women have key selling skills that are often over-looked such as listening, collaboration and diplomacy.
The pilot has helped to remove some of these misunderstandings and, given Dell’s male workforce, a greater appreciation of their female colleagues’ skillsets. The firm calls this ‘inclusive  leadership’,

What a brilliant piece of leadership Dell, a very refreshing approach to an age old problem of miscommunication and misunderstanding.

Thank you for taking the lead.  Now all of the other companies in the “Connecting Women in Technology” need to follow suit.  Because with the big guns in the Technology industry leading, many other smaller or less enlightened companies will eventually follow suit…

 

Technorati Tags: Women in Technology,mentoring

Johari window – perceptions of you

I had an amazing day yesterday at the Connecting women in Technology Event at Dell (I’ll write up the proper report soon when I get some access to the official photos from the day).  I delivered a session on the Johari window and helping you to communicate – more effectively and in teams.

One of the key things about Johari is that often, the way you perceive yourself is not the way that others perceive you.  You need to create your own window by selecting 5 or 6 descriptive words about how you perceive yourself – then send it to friends and colleagues.  Here’s an example:

The pink area represents what people know about you when they first meet you.  as they get to know you and find out about you, your open area increases.  Your blind spot represents things that people know about you – but you are unaware of.  Asking for feedback will reveal things in the blind spot.  Talking about your hidden areas brings them out into the open.  Here’s an example of a completed Johari (not mine)

   The top left area represents things you know about yourself – and others know about you.  So this person (a woman I admire) has a couple of qualities that she thinks about herself but others don’t.  By disclosing these qualities to her friends and colleagues, her calmness and energy move into her arena  (open area) area.

It’s a great tool to use as an individual, and also to use in Group sessions so that you can improve communications – and if you’re really brave – have a look at your weaknesses using the Nohari version of the Window – and find out what people think that you could do better

A great tool for discovering a little bit more about yourself and what your friends think of you

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Do something every day that scares you

I’m not a runner.  Some would say I’m built for comfort, not for speed.  But on Sunday I did something I’ve never done before.  and I was totally terrified about it.  I actually ran the London 10k run.  And I finished it too.  I made a promise to the Connecting Women in Technology project team that I’d run with them in aid of the Sands charity.  One of the ladies on the team had lost her daughter at 11 days old, and had struggled through our last event with amazing courage.  Her daughter would have had her 4th birthday on the day of the event – yet she still held it together for the day.  What an effort that must have taken.

So running this race was the least I could have done for her.  But, as I said.  I’ve never ran more than 200m since I was at school.  Eek!  So with advice from the experienced runners from Cisco, Dell, Microsoft and Nortel,  I downloaded a running plan (6 weeks to get to 5k) and followed all of the recommendations.  Moving from 3 minutes running, 3 minutes walking, to 5 minutes running 3 minutes walking made me sick with anxiety, and 5k stretched out like an unachievable object, weeks ahead.  But I got to 5k, slowly, but I got there.  Then worked up to 4 miles then 5 miles, then got to last Sunday. I was awake from 0300hrs, terrified, sick, anxious, with no belief that I’d ever get to the finish line, no confidence at all.  But I’d made a promise – and I was going to do my damndest to get round somehow…

Me, and 27,000 other runners started off in Piccadilly (here’s most of us outside the Ritz before we started).  The atmosphere was like a carnival, and it was great fun waiting in the queue to get to the start line.  40 minutes later the 11 women in the team, set off, knowing that the elite athletes at the front had already completed the run!

The first 5k was relatively easy – I’ve done this a couple of times in my training and it was great to be running amongst all of the other people running for charity.  The 2^nd 5k was hell.  Blazing sunshine,  hot and sweaty temperatures and not enough drinks stops either.  The sound of the ambulances rescuing people behind me was strangely comforting though and I took solace that I hadn’t yet collapsed in the heat.  I ran the last 4k with Louise from Dell who slowed down, bless her, to run with me,  and this is me – not walking – just before the finish line

So I did it.  Something that I never imagined that I’d ever attempt after 14 weeks of not too hard training.  But it was SO nice to stop and meet up with the other runners in the melee (I think that Jane was more delighted than me to see that I was still alive after all!)

I had some amazing experiences – being overtaken by 2 runners also running for SANDS who wished us luck and strength to carry on.  Total strangers cheering and clapping when  I passed and getting to join in a rousing and echoing chorus of Oggy Oggy Oggy with about 1000 other people running through the cool tunnel along the Embankment before the 5k mark.  A Magic moment.  And the knowledge of course that all of the donations we received  helped us reach our target sum.  For that, all the stiffness and wobbly walking since have made it worthwhile.  

Would I do it again?  well if you’d have asked me at 0500hrs on Sunday morning when I was vomiting with fear I would have said NO!   But now, 3 days later, I’ve realised that I’ve conquered a huge limiting belief.  A belief that pigeonholed me into believing that I’m not a runner.  So now,  I’ll work on improving my time for the next one…

So this has certainly proved to me that anything is possible if you actually believe in yourself, and I’ll certainly bear tat in mind when confronted by something that scares me in the future.

So have I got the running bug now?  I’m already planning my route around the country lanes to try and improve my running speed.  So I think that I’ve actually turned my fear into a positive feeling.

Amazing…

All Woman team in the Imagine Cup final

Mary Jo Foley noticed that there’s an all woman team in the  final of this year’s Imagine cup which will be held in Egypt in July this year. 

So who to root for?  The UK team or the All Women team?  difficult choice.  Whichever i choose, I think that this is an amazing contest with some true inspiration from every entrant – so all should be commended for their efforts and innovation so far.  Well done all…

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Lovelace colloquium at Leeds university

Long day yesterday.  I travelled up to Leeds for the day to present a session on Unified Communications for the Lovelace colloquium.  The audience consisted of mainly female Engineers and doc and post doc students in computer science.  Very intimidating for me, who left school without a degree and went out to travel the world in the navy, see the sights  and earn some money.

The day kicked off with Alan Pollard, president of the BCS, welcoming everyone to the day and talking about the need for the recognition of the IT profession (something I feel really strongly about).  Julie Greensmith  (Dr. Thrill) from Nottingham Uni talked about measuring emotion (and terror!) on fairground rides (and enjoying most of the rides she went on in the course of her research).  Gillian from IBM talked about being an inspiration to other women – here’s part of her keynote session:

 

After lunch – my session on UC, RoundTable Exchange UM, and then a really interesting session on UX design for the mobile phone by Karen Groenink at Google before the 4.5 hour train journey home.

A huge thanks to @handee, for organising all of this, and especially to @ChristineBurns for being so diligent with her amazing Flip Video recorder (just like the one I carry around in my bag) , and capturing so many soundbites from the day along with Kate, who blogged about the day.  i was inspired to be amongst so many amazing women…

 

By the way:  I got my BSc (hons) degree eventually after 7 years study with the Open University so I’ve finally caught up

 

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Ada Lovelace: a descendant

GetSETWomen has a blog post about Honora Smith who was a direct descendant of Ada Lovelace who has been blogged about extensively on 24th March.

Dr Honora Smith is a lecturer in Operational Research and Management Science at the University of Southampton School of Mathematics. She is a member of the Operational Research Society and the EURO Working Group on Operational Research Applied to Health Services

She is also a member of GetSET Women

Impressive pedigree – and with such a memorable ancestor too

 

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Ada Lovelace Day: the woman I admire is…

My pledge for Ada Lovelace day was to publish a blog post about a woman in Technology whom I admire

 

Gillian Arnold at IBM

I met Gillian about 6 years ago. She managed a team of technical people, and I was part of a team who were presenting to her team about Server Consolidation.  She stood out as a feisty independent woman who knew what she was talking about technically, was competent and capable.  We exchanged business cards, promised to meet up for a glass of wine soon (we must have bonded straight away in that area!)

I next bumped into her a couple of years later on a panel, hosted by Maggie at Women in Technology.  We were discussing the challenges of being a woman, managing a home, and a family and the challenges of remote working.  Gillian like me, lives over 100 miles away from the office and has the same challenges as i do about commuting, managing remotely and keeping her work life balance on the correct side of manic.  We swapped business cards again, reminded ourselves to meet for that glass of wine and went our separate ways.

I then met her at the BCS – we were both part of a strategy groups, and then at Intellect where we discussed the Gender pay gap, and what we could do to make women in the IT Industry feel less isolated in the workplace.  And that’s where my fledgling idea for my Connecting Women in Technology initiative was formed.  IBM were the first company I “recruited” into the project team, they held the first CWT Event in March 2008, and although the diversity leads have changed at IBM internally, we still have a really good connection and are going from strength to strength.

All because of Gillian’s tenacity, passion and dedication in connecting women together, highlighting gender issues, salary gaps in the workplace, and her desire to make the world a better place for women in IT.

But, Gillian – we still haven’t got around to having that glass of wine

 

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Connecting Women in Technology – noise and energy

I’m exhausted after yesterday.  I’m usually fine when I deliver large events, and not at all worried or anxious about the presentation setup, the room, microphones, or the audience.  heck, I do events regularly, and as long as my laptop is set up well, the demos are working and the sound system is fine, then I’m calm and relaxed.

But this was MY Event.

It all started with the germ of an idea I had a while ago, turned into an exercise of influencing and persuading women in other businesses of the business imperative for retaining their own talent and maintaining their scorecard for women in IT, and grew to an initial event hosted at IBM.

Well we’re a year old, we’ve held 3 events so far (the latest was at Microsoft yesterday) and we’re going from strength to strength.   Google are the latest addition to the Project team (and Sarah, the Industry Director of Technology at Google welcomed 200 women to Microsoft Campus)

And I was terrified in case anything went wrong. 

And this initiative has been so successful we’re now replicating the framework in Ireland and France.  I’ve even been talking to someone who wants to retain more talented women in Engineering so wants to replicate the model.

I really think that this idea will grow and go on… so the logo seems quite appropriate really.

We had an amazing afternoon, listened to some amazing women, swapped stories with our peers in other companies and asked thorny questions of the panel (with some amazing men on there too)

And I don’t need to worry about hosting another one of these until 2012.

Phew!…

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Being a Geek Goddess

Dan responded to a post I’d made over on my other blog when I posted about Dame Wendy Hall.  He pointed me to a book written by his wife Christina Wood and a blog interview he’d done with her about her new book, How to be a Geek Goddess.

I often get asked why I like technology so much and I find it hard to explain.  I just do.  I mean I like making things work and finding out just what something actually does.  I get frustrated about the design of things sometimes – which is why I stop using things after a very short period of time if they’re not logical or intuitive to use – so I’m always interested in how stuff is designed.  Dan asked Christina:

If you could change one thing about the tech industry, what would it be?

I’d get more women in there designing the stuff. Then we will see some cool products women will like.

So what would I design that’s cool? An app that lets me dial home and turn the heating on and record the TV when I’m late back home.  Oh, and it’s got to work on my smartphone, from wherever I am in the world.  X10 remote control,  stuff like that.  i know it’s possible – but I want it from my phone as i can’t get a signal from the train on my PC

So what would YOU change about the Tech industry??

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Women in IT gets a dame

I’m delighted to see that Wendy Hall has been made a Dame in this year’s New years honours list. 

Very well deserved indeed.  Here’s the article on the BBC Website talking about Wendy’s achievements in the world of Computer Science.

I first met Wendy when she chaired a Diversity Forum for Equalitec at the Royal Academy of Engineering and I’ve bumped into her at several other events  supporting Women in Technology and Science and also in her work for the BCS Women’s forum.  She’s a passionate advocate for increasing the numbers of women in Technology and a great supporter of the work that various women’s groups are doing to address the gender imbalance.

It’s wonderful that her achievements are being recognised in this way.  Well done! 

Technorati Tags: New Years honours list,Wendy Hall