Women Leadership Summit

Women's Work : The Great Juggling Act

Kavita Dhar

Centered Leadership Model

Meaning

‘To love what you do and feel that it matters—how could anything be more fun?’

- Katharine Graham, the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 enterprise (the Washington Post

Company)

Meaning

What is it?

• Happiness• Signature Strengths• Purpose

Without meaning, work is a slog between weekends. With meaning, any job can become

a calling.

Meaning

How to find Meaning?

• Follow your heart• Be honest with yourself about what you’re

good at and what you enjoy doing.• Build these signature strengths into everyday

activities at work • Look for patterns in jobs that have and

haven’t worked out• Talk with others about your experiences

Meaning

What if I cannot follow my calling?

• At times, priorities can be different• Sometimes a job is better than a calling• The key to success is being aware of the

current priorities—and making conscious choices about them—in the context of bigger goals, personal or professional.

Meaning

Managing Energy

‘Flow’—a sense of being so engaged by activities that you don’t notice the passage of time

- Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, a founder of positive psychology

ManagingEnergy

What is it?

• Minimizing depletion• Restoration• Flow

Work–life balance is a myth—so the only hope women have is to balance their energy flows

ManagingEnergy

How to Manage Energy?

• Identify what replenishes your energy and what saps it.

• Incorporate restorative elements into your day. • Space out your energy-sapping tasks throughout the

day, instead of bundling them all into a single morning or afternoon.

• Give yourself time during the day to focus without distractions such as blinking lights and buzzing phones. Your productivity will benefit several times over.

ManagingEnergy

Positive Framing

No matter how pessimistic you are by nature, you can learn to view situations as optimists do

- Martin Seligman, psychologist

PositiveFraming

What is it?

• Self-awareness• Learned Optimism• Moving on

PositiveFraming

How to be an Optimist?• Self awareness – are you a Pessimist?• Learn to view situations as optimists do. • E.g. A negative experience of a meeting gone badly

– Limit your thoughts about it to its temporary and specific impact and keep them impersonal.

– Talk with trusted colleagues about the reasons for the poor meeting and ways to do better next time.

– Act quickly enough for you to make a specific plan and act on it. – Undertake some activity that will restore both your energy and

your faith in yourself—perhaps having a hard workout, going out with friends, or spending time with your children.

PositiveFraming

Connecting

‘We were supporting each other, and there was power in the many’

- Dame Stella Rimington, MI5 (UK’s domestic intelligence organization)

Connecting

What is it?

• Network design• Sponsorship• Reciprocity• Inclusiveness

The ability to figure out where to go and to enlist the people and groups necessary to get there.

Connecting

How to Connect?

• Learn that Reciprocity (Give-before-you-get) isn’t bad!

• Make it personal – show your “human side”• Assess your comfort level with the people you know

through work, as well as how influential they are professionally. Find a suitable sponsor.

• Provide and ask for help on a regular basis. • Find ways to forge connections through interests

outside of work.

Connecting

Engaging

‘You did the work, so you’ve got to talk about it’

- …

Engaging

What is it?

• Voice• Ownership• Risk taking• Adaptability

Create your own luck

Engaging

How to Engage?

• Speak up when you have something to say.• Accept risk as a part of opportunity. Risks of

unexpected changes commonly seem more obvious than the benefits.

• Follow a systematic approach to self-improvement.

Engaging

To recap …

Some Suggestions

• Prioritize tasks • Time management

• Read “The Assertive Woman” by Stanlee Phelps & Nancy Austin

Some Thoughts• Women perform 66% of world’s work, earn 10% of

world’s income and own 1% of the world’s property• Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal

mental capacity• To get more women at work, we need more men to do

more at home• Women start careers in business and other professions

with the same level of intelligence, education, and commitment as men, yet comparatively few reach the top echelons.

Thank You&

Have a great time