Aspire, Adapt and Advance by Working Mother Group

I had the opportunity to attend the Global Advancement of Women Conference and Diversity Best Practices in Dubai on 11 & 12th November. Here are some of my key takeaways that I'm sharing here with the larger group.

1. Take risks to follow your dream. If you don’t have a role model, you become the role model. [Thank you, Subha V Barry President Working Mother]

2. Face your fear of failures, and if you fail (in your options/career), don’t let the failure put you down. Look at your failures as your experience that also showcases your resilience. As you move towards your career progression, it’s important to manage the fear of failure. Even if you fail, know how to come back and rise. [Thank you, Celine Bermaud]

3. The importance of male allies to make good progress on this journey. It is proven with data that if men and women collaborate, the success rate is greater in creating an inclusive culture.

4. Mobility constraints - how do you work around it if it comes in your way of career progress?

5. Time and again, it has been proven that if you are passionate, you will find a way to make it happen. Sometimes it may happen a little slower, but you need to have patience.

6. Women supporting other women is key. We need to break the myth of women not supporting other women at the workplace. [Thank you, the leadership panel, hosted by Soundarya Rajesh Avatar, Mouli V PayPal, Geetha Thiyagarajan, TCS, Melinda Tylor, Unilever]

7. I enjoyed the interactive session hosted by Kelly Nobles, Executive on Strategies, to stop sabotaging your career. The session taught tools and techniques to help identify when you are sabotaging your career - so you can recognize those triggers and act on them. Identify things that you do when you are not happy with your career or current situation. Do you play the victim card and stress out to get into bad behaviors? [go for junk food or skip your exercise?] identify those triggers and slowly turn those habits into positive behaviors that are good for you physically and mentally.

8. We also had the Aspire to Advance workshop by Sarah Christensen and got a glimpse into tools/techniques which you can use to plan your career advancement. The workshop gave an interesting perspective on how exposure plays a key role in your career advancement, more than your performance. The importance of exposure and brand/image playing a key role in advancing your career was discussed. Another key message was to visualize what you want to be and always keep that vision in front of you. You are more likely to achieve it when you see it. Also, think positively about yourself every single day. 

Diversity Best Practices [Day 2]– We had a lot of companies sharing their programs, and a few things stood out for me:

1. The great news is that a lot of companies acknowledge the importance of building an inclusive culture at their workplace to increase engagement and improve productivity.

2. Be self-aware about your biases, which is key to driving change.

3. It is important to look at inclusion from all dynamics, not just gender. [key programs such as economic inclusion, which PayPal drives, and how can we make an impact on other's lives.]

4. Formal sponsorship programs to help women advance their careers. We have been talking about mentoring, which has started to show good progress. Now it’s time to bring traction on formal sponsorship programs, especially for women to advance their careers.

5. More gender-neutral policies needed to build a more inclusive culture in the workplace.

6. Employee Resource groups are playing a key role across all organizations to bring the community together and increase engagement and to also create an inclusive environment.

7. Interesting workshop on playing the devil’s advocate. When you try to roll out any program, it is important to play the devil’s advocate - and ensure people open up with all their concerns, so it can be addressed rather than not discussing those points.

To conclude, it was time well spent. It helped reassure me that we are focusing on the right things and that every individual is keen to learn more about creating an inclusive work culture. We should all share, learn and grow from each other.