Women Talking to Women. Over the last two weeks I have been meeting with executive women from both entrepreneurial and corporate settings and professional women in small groups at networking meetings. Given my launch of w2wlink.com I have been sharing the vision for the site and new offerings in the tools and articles and in the networking area.
I find that a shared view by each woman I am spending time with is really appreciative at the risk I have taken with building something new from an idea and putting it into a website form. And that the website, open online to all, in a way is very visible of the risk I have taken as a leader and as a person. The feedback and support and the positive about the site is very affirming--and what I most appreciate is the respect for the risk and vulnerability there is in choosing to build a business from full start-up.
A takeaway. As I meet with men and women daily in work and professional meetings I find that with men and women there is a shared appreciation for the w2wlink.com site quality and the look and feel of the website. And so what is interesting to me is that with men we speak less of the the sense of risk that I have taken with w2wlink.com launch. One takeaway from these conversations is that I find that I see many more men that take risk with early stage, and there are more men that are investing in early stage with again is another form of risk taking.
Risk Taking. One of the leadership competencies that you will see in research and correlated to leaders who get to the highest levels is that risk taking is a key competency. This can be risk by moving from a functional comfort zone and leading in a different area, especially shifting to a more operational leadership area with p&l and metric driven responsibility. Very measurable areas that a leader is seen as making their numbers or not. In a conversation this week with a leader that had moved into a role that she was measured directly on training and the costs and metrics around the training. The leader was grappling with the new measurements and how to make changes that would drive the metrics. Here was an example we can each picture that we are now at a higher level in an area of "functional expertise" and yet when the area gets more "measurable and metric driven" it can cause stress. This more operational aspect is really important to then work differently with our time and leadership to influence the metric. Risk in this case was to change weekly patterns and time allocations across a month to proactively drive activities to improve the measure. Risk is making changes and seeing if it worked in the metric.
Help others. I would encourage each of us to support others in taking risk. Coach others on ways to make adjustments and give examples of where we have taken risk and where we learned from mistakes and successes. Many of us are in formal and informal network groups that support the mentoring and shared learnings. We also have the ability to share in conversations in our day to day life.
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