This year's Women in IT luncheon was a new format. Rather than have a panel, there was one presenter, a very impressive one at that - Lori Brownell, a General Manager at Microsoft. I think one of the highest ranking women there.
The luncheon itself was great. Lots of round tables with about 7 people at each table giving us an opportunity to chat through lunch, network, etc.
Click on the photo to see an 8 second video showing the full room.
Lori's talk was about leadership. Not so much about women in leadership, but more generally, which was great since we don't generally get to hear the perspective of a woman in such a prominent leadership role.
The four points that Lori drilled into that make a good leader were
1) Have confidence in your vision. Everything you say and do should evoke your confidence. Gaining that takes work and research but once you have put your vision out there, don't back down. The phrase that she returned to frequently was “courage of your conviction”.
2) Creative thinking. Thinking out of the box is always a way to stand out in the crowd and sometimes solve problems in a way that is a suprisigly successful approach. She gave a great example of a young Michael Dell coming up with a completely different approach to telephone marketing during a summer job when in high school.
3) Delegation. Should be a no-brainer,but sometimes we hold things too close to our chest. Again, using Dell as an example, Lori talked about the effects of not delegating and the bonuses of delegating and doing it well.
4) Building a culture of excellence. This is sometimes not easy because it also means pruning. But it is an important factor behind many organizations. One of her examples here was Jack Welch from GE.
The Q&A pulled some even more interesting and personal experiences from Lori.
Someone asked her what lessons she has learned over time that might have benefited her earlier in her career. Without hesitation she said that not being able to determine when it was better to make a quick decision or better to get concensus. A good indicator thare is derived by considering the impact of both routes.
One of the most powerful things for me that happened during this luncheon was a woman who came to the microphone to tell us that some advice that she got two years ago at this luncheon has impacted her career enormously since then. I looked around the room to see if Kate Gregory or Michele Bustamante or Kimberly Tripp who had been on the panel were in the room. The advice had been not to think of yourself as a “woman in i.t.” but to think of yourself as in IT Pro (or devleoper, etc). Don't walk into work everyday thinking you are already behind the 8-ball because you are a woman and having expectations based on that and reacting to people and events based on that. I was sitting with Esther Schindler who said she remembered her asking the question that resulted in that advice two years ago. It was amazing to hear how empowering this event had been for her. I saw Kate and Michele and Kimberly later that night to let them know and we were all just thrilled.
This is always such a great thing to happen. Many women are coming to an even like TechEd for the first time and an event like this and are not someplace where they have a mentor. I know that the luncheon has an important impact on many attendees.
