Calendar of Events: TechLeaders
TechLeaders: Realizing Your Vision for Women of Color
September 10, 2008 to September 11, 2008
TechLeaders: Realizing Your Vision for Women of Color is an exciting new offering by the Anita Borg Institute. This two-day workshop specifically designed for technical Women of Color provides skills to help increase your scope and influence while defining and building your technical vision, as well as the opportunity to network and deepen your relationships with other Women of Color in the technical community. Learn more.
TechLeaders: Power and Influence - Seattle, WA
May 21, 2008 to May 22, 2008
This two-day workshop featuring Jo Miller, CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching, will focus on extending your power and influence as a technical woman through increased organizational awareness, negotiation techniques, strategies to increase your visibility, and influence techniques to increase buy in for your ideas. Learn more
Techleaders: Strategic Persuasion and Change Leadership
June 3, 2008 to June 4, 2008
POSTPONED
This two-day workshop is designed to provide technical women with skills to succeed in accomplishing their goals in negotiations and meetings as well with the capacity to use these skills to effect organizational change. The June 2008 workshop has been postponed and will be rescheduled for Spring 2009.
Senior TechLeaders: Leadership, the Final Frontier
June 30, 2008 to July 1, 2008
The goals of this two-day workshop for senior level women were to expand participants network of senior technical women colleagues across industry, academia, and government, and to increase participants collective impact as a group of powerful women better connected with each other. This workshop increased participants awareness and capacity of their leadership strengths, challenges and create a vision for their career. Learn more.
TechLeaders: Power and Influence
February 27, 2008 to February 28, 2008
This two-day workshop featuring Jo Miller, CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching, will focus on extending your power and influence as a technical woman through increased organizational awareness, negotiation techniques, strategies to increase your visibility, and influence techniques to increase buy in for your ideas. Learn more
Work-Life Balance: Fact or Fairy Tale?
In a 2006 study of 1030 mothers, researchers found that working mothers reported lower levels of happiness, health, and satisfaction in their marriages than non-working mothers.
The reasons for this are varied, but the main source of conflict arises when women try to achieve work-life balance, but instead find themselves facing a work-family conflict. The conflict happens when demands of family life are incompatible with the demands of work life, often forcing women to leave the technical track entirely in an “all or nothing” proposition.
This pressure of career and family hits women at the mid-level especially hard. Mid-level career women face more challenges when balancing work and life, leading to more difficulty in career growth. The difficulty stems from the fact that there is a double push on these career women as they are forced to compete between two competing ideals: of mother and devoted worker.
Within IT companies especially, “flexibility” often means staying at work until midnight or being on call 24/7. In these types of companies, women are encouraged to work more and more hours and there is a constant expectation of increased productivity and constant availability. What’s more, women in technology feel a continuous need to upgrade their skills on their own time.
Flexibility is Key
While many women are leaving these technical fields, there are ways to encourage them to stay. A research study on the impact of flexible schedule by Dalton and Mesch shows that the introduction of a flexible scheduling program leads to higher employee satisfaction and reduced absenteeism.
In fact, a well-designed flexibility program is of paramount importance to working mothers – flexibility needs to be tied to the business strategy and shouldn’t be seen as a perk, according to Linda Golan, founder and CEO of Third Avenue Consulting (a firm that helps companies make strategic decisions about how to proactively retain, recruit, and reposition high-caliber talent).
If you’re looking for ways to create more balance in your own work and home life, implement these tips from the Anita Borg Institute’s TechLeaders Workshops:
- Think of work and life as unified spheres; work is part of life, and vice-versa. While our culture frames them as competing priorities, seeing them as unified and complementary spheres helps decrease the frustration of having to juggle work and family.
- Focus and prioritize. Identify the important goals you are trying to achieve and focus on them. Say no to the rest and don’t try to do everything.
- Remove interruptions in your day and carve out key productivity times. The average employee gets interrupted every eight minutes and the average manager every three minutes.
- Set aside time every day without interruptions to tackle projects that require deep thinking. Block these chunks of time on your calendar so other people can’t meet with you or interrupt.
- Shift your own expectations of yourself. At the end of the day, recognize what you have accomplished instead of obsessing about what you didn’t finish.
Senior Techleaders: Leading Across Cultures
December 11, 2007 to December 12, 2007
The goal of this two-day workshop for senior level women is to expand your:
- Network of senior women colleagues.
- Effectiveness at working across cultures whether those boundaries are across geographies, hierarchies, or organizations.
- Awareness and capacity of your leadership strengths, challenges, and career.
- Collective impact as a group of powerful women better connected with each other.
Aspiring TechLeaders: Realizing Your Vision
December 4, 2007 to December 5, 2007
This two-day workshop provides skills to help increase your scope and influence while defining and building your technical vision, as well as the opportunity to network and deepen your relationships with other women in the technical community.
Visit the workshop page
TechLeaders For Social Innovators
October 17, 2007
11:00 am to 5:00 pm
Open to women technologists at all levels, this one day workshop will be held in conjunction with the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference. It will showcase, discuss, and inspire participants on the potential for the positive influence of technology around the world.
Aspiring TechLeaders: “Realizing Your Vision”
February 6, 2007 to February 7, 2007
Hillsboro, Oregon; Hosted and Sponsored by Intel - 64 technical women from 9 companies attended this soldout workshop. The workshop offered a unique set of speakers, opportunities to deepen relationships with other technical women in the Pacific Northwest and new skills to help increase the attendee’s scope and influence while defining and building their technical vision. Workshop outcomes were an increase in participants’ confidence and energy and the identification of skills and techniques to break through barriers in their careers. The techniques and knowledge created in this workshop are detailed in “Do’s and Don’ts for Realizing Your Vision, by ABI’s TechLeaders
