Pause

It Came, It Went; I Slept

I'm still pulling my thoughts together on BlogHer. B-friend thinks I need to pull away from my computer for a day and fulfill my promise to start having a life again, so I refrain from writing one of my lengthy diatribes today. But I'm off to the East Coast first thing tomorrow morning--it's a mighty long plane ride. Hope you'll have a few minutes...

I'll just say this: I am BLOWN AWAY by women--my co-horts who helped plan this event. The women whom I've been reading whom I met in the flesh, and the women I now will be reading. I was impressed with the men who were there who took it all in. I was impressed with the little green leaves the catering staff used to garnish the cookies we had at break time. But alas, I'm getting into petty details, the sort of stuff I save for longer posts. Hold tight.

The Power of the X Chromosome in the Workplace (Conclusion): On Humility

In honor of BlogHer--which is taking place this weekend!--I'd like to end this series with another inherent aspect of women’s leadership that I found to be quite effective while planning the conference, but applies to any major business or community endeavor—humility.

I can personally attest that not all women are humble. I’m pretty clear that I’m quite alpha when I want to be. But you don’t gather the trust of a community, nor of a gaggle of top bloggers and top sponsors who have heard every pitch in the book, without some humility--or shall we say, authenticity. And in my humble opinion, women do a much better job of falling on their sword. Men, think about it: how many times have you given in to your wives or women friends after they’ve said, “You’re right, Sweetie; I’ll defer to you.”

The Power of the X Chromosome in the Workplace (Part III): The BlogHer "Experiment"

In her essay in More Space: Nine Antidotes to Complacency in Business my co-author Evelyn Rodriguez writes about a shift in value memes, or set of beliefs that comprise a decision-making framework. We are moving, she says, from a green, or consensus-based dynamic, “that often views hierarchies as oppressive” and “establishes linked communities” to a yellow value-meme:

       “The yellow value meme integrates systems and explores open systems and networked meshes. It reintroduces vertical hierarchies and ranking, grasps big picture, and tends to be expressive … Rather than create a duality of any sort, it tends to accept people and values—while not necessarily agreeing with their varying world views. It is the basis for ‘Integral commons.’”

When I read about the yellow value meme I thought of the underlying ethic behind BlogHer--a laboratory of sorts where I personally have been allowed to experiment with a feminine brand of leadership.

The Power of the X Chromosome in the Workplace (Part )II: Women Really Are Different than Men

(Another installment in the series I've written for the Future Tense, Corante's latest blog devoted to trends in the workplace.)

My subtitle sounds a bit strange, but it was my realization a year ago, when I attended a personal development retreat, and was brought back in touch with my feminine nature. Before that I figured that men and women were the same, but that men actively decided to be obnoxious listeners.

At the end of the seminar, when I was asked what I'd learned, I didn't know that what I had said in earnestness would inspire laughter from the group.

I said: "I learned that women really are different than men!" There really are inherent natures in each gender that facilitate entirely different management skills.

As I mentioned in my last installment, I haven’t always had the best time working for a woman or being a boss. Though I don’t think that failure to lead is a female inadequacy. Not at all. I think that my experiences were the result of bad leadership—both mine and my colleagues’.

I once wrote about an outstanding female boss I had. She was outstanding, not because she was a woman, but because she was less concerned with her SVP title than she was with determining her team’s strengths and building an organization that capitalized on them.

HOWEVER—isn’t there always a however?—I believe that, being a woman, she was much more attuned to the underlying dynamics of our team, which had morale issues from having seen a number of bosses and business models come and go. She interviewed each of us informally to get a sense of our personalities, the things we were most proud of accomplishing, and she fought for us when other demands unrelated to our core goals threatened to divide our attention. She didn’t assume that she knew the answers before investigating. Her goal was not to kick ass and take names, but to help the company thrive by helping us be our best selves.

Come Back, Mac Users, Come Back!

Once when I was 16 years old and working in the lingerie section of a department store, I left to grab a bite to eat and use the washroom. On the way back from my break, a total stranger, a woman who could have been my mother, tapped me on the shoulder,

"Excuse me, Sweetheart. I hate to tell you this, but if it were me I'd want to know: Your skirt is stuck in your underwear." Apparently I had pulled up my skirt along with my oh-so-grown-up panty hose while in the john.

This is one of those mistakes that women make only once because it's so freaking painful when it happens. And it's not unlike the feeling I had yesterday when meeting with my BlogHer cohorts, Lisa and Elisa. For weeks now, I've had a glitch in my html and have had my entire blog hyperlinking to the BlogHer blog. PC users didn't see it; they only saw my front. It was the Mac users who had the view of my ass.

Needless to say, I'm mortified. I should have followed up when dear Jill Fallon had alerted me to my hyperlink mishaps during the Fourth of July weekend, when TypePad decided to integrate a number of changes and temporarily made everyone's blogs flow in single columns. I did what the TypePad folks said to do and republished my site, but this didn't solve the problem. What's that line from Benny Hill? Never ASSUME!

So, in effect, I've had a 5,000-word ad for BlogHer placed on my blog for three weeks. It's a good cause but, sheesh! Do you think I'm a whore? What do I need to get the Mac Users to come back, more rants against Dell?

Not Bad If I Do Say So Myself: The ThirdAge Blog

In case you couldn’t tell by the decreased frequency of my blog posts, I’ve been quite busy of late. In May the folks at ThirdAge asked me to help them create a blog for their site. If you haven’t been to ThirdAge, it’s a site for the 40+ set that provides information and community on everything from dating to establishing a new career. I came across ThirdAge back in 1999, when I worked for it’s competitor, which, I’m sad to say, didn’t quite make it. But ThirdAge did, and prospered.

I met with some of their current experts, like dating expert Tom Blake, relationship coach Rinatta Paries, and Elder Care Expert Jaqueline Marcell and thought, “Jackpot! Good content.” Jed Diamond an expert in men’s psychology (yes there IS such a thing as Male Menopause) and nutritionist Dr. Susan Mitchell brought their medical expertise to the fold. There were more credentials here than you’d run into at Davos. They’d never blogged before, but fortunately for me they were very open to the joys of  inserting HTML tags.

ThirdAge was also quite open to having experienced bloggers come on board, so I pulled some of the best I knew: Colleen Wainwright (her sassiness could threaten to short out the system, but I’m willing to take that chance); my More Space co-author Lisa Haneberg (whose work on breakthroughs, I thought, was perfect for this audience), Jill Fallon (someone whose perspective I’ve always really admired and wish I’d thought of first) Yvonne Divita (Gotta have some Jane in the mix!), and Ronni Bennett (Crabby Old Lady is guaranteed to make them think and laugh until a kidney shakes loose).

Oh, and lil ol’ me. Relax, I’m working on a new head shot. If you can believe it, b-friend Photoshopped himself out of that one, and it’s currently the best one I have. A dear friend has taken pity and agreed to take a real professional shot and put me out of my misery.

Thanks are quite necessary to ThirdAge CEO Sharon Whiteley—an entrepreneur with some killer instincts, who was even willing to write for the blog! (She posts on Fridays, and it shouldn't be too tough; she's already written a book). She was ready to find out if ThirdAgers are ready to embrace the Blogosphere. I’m betting my chips on yes.

The Power of the X Chromosome in the Workplace (Part I)

(Imagine how psyched I was when Elizabeth Albrycht, editor of my favorite new blog, Corante's Future Tense, asked me to contribute a series to the site. I thought about what's been on my mind in the work world these days, and I find that I'm living an interesting dynamic. I'm experiencing first-hand the power of women's leadership. Here, as it appears in Future Tense. See what I'm talking about.)

My phone rang early on Saturday morning. Calls like these, from people who assumed I had no personal life, used to come from my mother, but that was before I started working on the BlogHer Conference.

“You up?” it was Elisa Camahort, one of the BlogHer co-founders. She and Lisa Stone took me up on my offer to “help out where I could” back in March. Who woulda thunk we’d practically end up appendages of each other?

“Yep, I’m up,” I said, lying.

“I need you to look at something before I send it out,” she said. It was a note to a key figure we needed to engage for a session we were developing. After three months a Pavlovian response was starting to kick in. I had unlearned my usual Saturday-brush-off response, “yup, looks fine”—and sat at my computer to read the note she’d written.

Since March, we’d moved full-force into developing a conference for women bloggers. The finish line (at least for now) is July 31—the day after the event. What started as a pet project scheduled in the periphery of my time has stirred in me a renewed interest not only in blogging and the power of online communities, but in the power of feminine leadership. Why, despite my varied past working with women leaders, was this experience so transforming, and others so disappointing?

Living Without a Net: An Odyssey into Self-Employment (Part XVIII): On Creating Boundaries, Destroying Expectations, and Learning to Float

A very good friend called me on Sunday; she wondered how I was doing. I had just been to her wedding—the first of six in our wedding season—and wondered why she’d asked: I’d just seen her three weeks ago and had attended her bachelorette party.

But then I thought about it: I had showed up to her bachelorette late since I was on a work deadline; I joined her and her girlfriends for a quick bite and then left early,  as I had to get up early the next morning (a Sunday) to report on a story. I went to the wedding, but didn’t really get a chance to catch up with her; b-friend and I had to leave for a party someone at his work was having. I’d promised b-friend we could go, since I’d been unavailable every weekend up to that point.

I’d become one of those people whose philosophy on quality time is “catch as catch can,” who slips in and out of special events as it befits her schedule, who you invite but don’t really expect to show. The kind of person who you wonder if she’s really having a good time or if she’s planning in her head what else she should be doing and silently ticking off the minutes of obligatory face time she’s put in. I’d become elusive and seemingly glamorous, but untrustworthy. I’d become a Slippery Person.   

I suddenly got a very precarious feeling of someone who has cashed in nearly all of her excuses. I’d used deadlines, work, launches like they were get out of jail free cards, allowing me to pass through parties, weddings, events with some regal, unquestionable higher purpose. I realized my friend was calling me on my bullshit.

Costco Anxiety

Seven days wasn’t enough time; we were just there last Sunday, when he said we’d pick up a few things. Then, later this week, b-friend insisted, “We need to go back to pick up food for the Fourth of July.”

“I thought that’s why we went. Why didn’t we get food then?”

“The meat’s fresher if you get it the day before,” he said. I rolled my eyes. What are freezers for? And I knew what would happen; we’d get more than just meat. We always walked out of there with something else, something too big to fit in our refrigerator, or something we’d store in the back of the cupboard that we’d forget about and buy more of. Claiming you’re going to Costco solely to pick up some meat is like saying you’re popping into Ikea for a can opener.