Pause

Can a company run itself? Lessons BlogHer has taught me about collaboration

In honor of the BlogHer Conference, starting tomorrow, here's a little food for thought on the wonders of collaborative leadership, from my perch at BlogHer.org's Business and Career section.

BlogHer Wrap-Up: The Six-Hour Flight Edition

It had been 36 hours since BlogHer. I was at the airport, standing in line for coffee, when the phone rang. It was Lisa Stone. I had sanctioned myself from speaking with her or Elisa for at least 24 hours and thought against calling either of them last night. If we were all going to detox from living on our cell phones and computers and talking BlogHer I had to be respectful of boundaries.

But, hey, she called first.

"This a good time?" she asked.

I was juggling two pieces of luggage, balancing a coffee, and fishing for change to give the cashier. I sensed the people behind me were annoyed.

"Totally." I said. "What's up?"

It was time to dish, to start to process all that had gone on that Saturday, stuff that we were too busy or frazzled to actually absorb at the BlogHer conference.

"How are you feeling today?" Lisa asked, meaning, "How'd you think it went?"

"I feel amazing."

"Yeah?"

"Yep...you?"

"Me too."

As we started to discuss the day (Lisa never got a BlogHer/Google tote bag!) a theme arose. Sure, there'd be plenty of logistical details to hash out in an official post mortem (cough cough, wireless connection). But all we could think to talk about were the PEOPLE we met, the QUALITY of the discussion. It occurred to me, for all the planning to make the conference go off without a hitch, the real success was in the energy of the attendees. They generated the content, the conversations, the connections. All we had to do is make sure they had a place to do these things.

Don't get me wrong--the details were necessary, but what really differentiated the conference for me was observing this community take care of itself, entertain itself, educate itself, promote itself, and--when necessary--laugh at itself.

I've been writing about the Power of the X Chromosome, which I define as qualities unique to women that cultivate effective leadership when used to their potential. I think that these qualities--communication, connectedness, humilty--were in play all weekend. (And may I add that it was exhibited as strongly with our male BlogHers, all of whom seemed to "get"--or at the very least, be in awe of--the powerful dynamic generated in TechMart.)

Let me drill down a bit and go through my experience of the weekend, if for any other reason, before I forget it.

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.

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?