NAWO - In Conversation NAWO

Welcome to Episode 2 of the 2020 Series.
 “Disruption affects the default” Anneli Blundell.
 There is no need to state the bleeding obvious. We find ourselves in challenging, tumultuous and uncertain times. But as Winston Churchill once said “One should never waste a good crisis”. Now is the time to proactively leverage the disruption and embrace the positive personal and systemic change that has been brought about by this public health crisis. Carpe Diem – Seize the moment!
 
This conversation was borne out of a passionate phone conversation between Anneli and I and we decided it would be great fun to  challenge you to think about what you can do to leverage opportunities for change that propell us towards a more inclusive workplace, through choosing what you are going to retain from all this in relation to your own habits and behaviour, through advocating for team process and systems that support a new, more inclusive way of working and really just being the change you want to see.
 
Anneli Blundell is an author, a speaker, a facilitator, and executive coach and mentor – and by all accounts a great dancer and roller blader. Anneli has been a supporter of NAWO’s for a couple of years now and we had many NAWO members attend her Leading out Loud program, with awesome feedback. Anneli uses her vast knowledge and decades of experience decoding people, to bring the everyday behaviours and communication habits to the forefront of getting results. It’s often the simplest shifts that create the biggest results, but the key is knowing what to shift. The way we interact, communicate and connect with others has a dramatic impact on our ability to get results.
 
You can see more about Anneli at anneliblundell.com.
 
In the last episode I introduced you to the NAWO Nine Levers for Gender Balance. If you are a NAWO member you will be hearing a lot more about the NAWO Nine in the coming months as we align our Industry Solutions activities, and resources to these levers. The NAWO Nine aims to provide a roadmap to help our member companies identify where they are making good progress and also where they may need to shift their attention to ensure we continue to engage in practical action – both behavioural and systemic, to achieve greater gender balance.
unwavering leadership commitment to diversity and inclusion. The many ways we have worked more flexibly, the use of digital tools and technology, changed attitudes toward children and pets popping their heads up in meetings, alignment to new behaviours norms with faciltating (hopefully fewer) meetings, injecting news ways to connect all team members socially, finding new ways to share the care at home, thinking differently about the skill sets required for certain jobs and how we might leverage alternative pools of talent……, the list of what has been disrupted and what has evolved is endless  - but what is critical is how each and everyone of us plays an active part in taking the good bits forward – to resist falling back into old patterns and falling back to the status quo. 

Many of the areas of opportunity that we refer to in this conversation are aligned to these nine levers and really at the heart of the conversation is how to maintain 
 
We sincerely hope this inspires you to be a changemaker and use your individual power to influence and ensure that we do not revert back to systems, processes and behaviours that no longer serve us well.
Anneli has two amazing programs on offer that we are promoting through the NAWO network. The Winning@WorkFromHome Online program and her highly regarded Women in Leadership Masterclass. You can find more information here. https://anneliblundell.com/programs
 

Welcome to Episode 1 of the 2020 Series.
 
“The compelling logic for increased diversity is because it increases performance” Dr Karen Morley.
 
We can now access research from a range of credible sources that have a diverse workforce, and an inclusive work culture provides tangible and measurable benefits to organisations, teams and individuals. But why is progress so slow? NAWO member companies join NAWO because of a commitment to achieving a greater gender balance in operations, yet the WGEA data informs us that we still have quite some way to go.
 
In this podcast I speak to Dr Karen Morley about the book she has just released called Beat Gender Bias: How to play a better part in a more inclusive world. It is the best book I have read on the topic of bias in quite some time and we have a fabulous chat about the really practical approach this book takes to beating it.
 
I also introduce you to the NAWO Nine Levers for Gender Balance. If you are a NAWO member you will be hearing a lot more about the ‘NAWO Nine’ in the coming months. These levers provide a roadmap to help our member companies identify where they are making good progress, and also where they may need to shift their attention to continue to engage in practical action – both behavioural and systemic, to achieve greater gender balance.
 

 
The ability to call out bias and prevent the negative impact of it on decision making is fundamental to all Nine Levers and that is why we have opened our Podcast series with this very important conversation with Karen. We hope you enjoy it and certainly hope you put Karen’s book at the top of your reading list!
 
You can connect with Karen and purchase copies of both her terrific books at www.karenmorley.com.au

In this episode I have the pleasure of speaking with the incredible Fabian Dattner from the The Dattner Group. Fabian has so much passion for the topic of this conversation – Living with Complexity – and so our discussion focuses on how to lead through complexity as well. There was so much to cover that we have actually split this podcast into two chapters. You can listen to chapter 1 on the way to work and chapter 2 on the way home!
Fabian Dattner is recognised globally for her advocacy for women with a STEMM background (science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine), leading for the greater good, influencing policy and decision making. 
Fabian is a founding partner of The Dattner Group, a Leadership Consultancy that specialises in cultural transformation, executive development, senior leadership development and working with women. She is also the Founder of Compass, an Australian transformational initiative for women wanting to be more visible as leaders, building courage over confidence. She is the visionary and co-Founder of Homeward Bound, a ground-breaking global leadership initiative for women in STEMM, set against the backdrop of Antarctica, which aims to heighten the influence and impact of women in making decisions that shape our planet. 
 
Fabian’s conviction on the impact of great leaders is well documented. Her expertise comes from working over 36 years in entrepreneurial, government, not for profit and corporate sectors and she is an inspiring leader who helps others understand they are leading for the greater good. 
Fabian and her team work in energy, food, education, Federal and State Government, corporate and not for profits. Over 1200 women have experienced Compass and some 350 women have done or are about to experience Homeward Bound, finishing with an expedition to Antarctica. Fabian has worked with women from the US, Canada, UK, South Africa, Germany, France, Spain, Columbia, Chile, Argentina, Australia, Namibia, India, Malaysia, China and New Zealand. Fabian’s focus is to build leadership capability across generations with women’s visibility as leaders a key contributing factor towards sustainability.
 
In early September 2019, the AFR 100 Women of Influence were announced and you guessed it – Fabian Dattner was one of them. We are really excited for Fabian and her whole team who bring exceptional development to life for women in leadership. Check our Fabian’s blogs on her Linked In page. Or go to these websites for more inspiring blogs and details about the incredible homeward bound project.
 
https://www.thelovingdisruptor.com/
www.homewardboundprojects.com.au
 
and this is a link to the oatmeal backfire effect comic that Fabian referenced in chapter 1 of the podcast. It’s awesome!
 
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

In this episode I have the pleasure of speaking with the incredible Fabian Dattner from The Dattner Group. Fabian has so much passion for the topic of this conversation – Living with Complexity – and so our discussion focuses on how to lead through complexity as well. There was so much to cover that we have actually split this podcast into two chapters. You can listen to chapter 1 on the way to work and chapter 2 on the way home!
Fabian Dattner is recognised globally for her advocacy for women with a STEMM background (science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine), leading for the greater good, influencing policy and decision making. 
Fabian is a founding partner of The Dattner Group, a Leadership Consultancy that specialises in cultural transformation, executive development, senior leadership development and working with women. She is also the Founder of Compass, an Australian transformational initiative for women wanting to be more visible as leaders, building courage over confidence. She is the visionary and co-Founder of Homeward Bound, a ground-breaking global leadership initiative for women in STEMM, set against the backdrop of Antarctica, which aims to heighten the influence and impact of women in making decisions that shape our planet. 
 
Fabian’s conviction on the impact of great leaders is well documented. Her expertise comes from working over 36 years in entrepreneurial, government, not for profit and corporate sectors and she is an inspiring leader who helps others understand they are leading for the greater good. 
Fabian and her team work in energy, food, education, Federal and State Government, corporate and not for profits. Over 1200 women have experienced Compass and some 350 women have done or are about to experience Homeward Bound, finishing with an expedition to Antarctica. Fabian has worked with women from the US, Canada, UK, South Africa, Germany, France, Spain, Columbia, Chile, Argentina, Australia, Namibia, India, Malaysia, China and New Zealand. Fabian’s focus is to build leadership capability across generations with women’s visibility as leaders a key contributing factor towards sustainability.
 
In early September 2019, the AFR 100 Women of Influence were announced and you guessed it – Fabian Dattner was one of them. We are really excited for Fabian and her whole team who bring exceptional development to life for women in leadership. Check our Fabian’s blogs on her Linked In page. Or go to these websites for more inspiring blogs and details about the incredible homeward bound project.
 
https://www.thelovingdisruptor.com/
www.homewardboundprojects.com.au
 
and this is a link to the oatmeal backfire effect comic that Fabian referenced in chapter 1 of the podcast. It’s awesome!
 
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

With Professor Amalia Di Iorio and Megan McCracken.
The whole confidence myth  - is it time it was busted! Our guests in this podcast say yes and they take two different angles on this topic.
 
Professor Amalia Di Iorio explains how self-efficacy is the key to increased female participation on boards and executive level roles. We discuss the four constituent parts of self-efficacy and how important it is for us as women to seek these four component parts for ourselves and how critical it is for organisations to support their female talent in these 4 constituent parts to better enable success;
Experiencing small successes Having strong role models Being given immediate and constructive feedback Being willing to take on new tasks as challenges  
Megan shares insights from her extensive operational experience and talks about the importance of fixing systems (in contrast to fixing women).  Megan’s passion for supporting women in how to navigate ‘broken’ systems, and the capabilities that can help us as women to achieve this shines through in this conversation.

In this episode we are delighted to speak with two leaders form the Pepsico business, from the Tingalpa snack foods facility in Queensland, where they are having great success in extending flexible work options to their shift based teams. Instilling a flexible work culture  has been a journey for Pepsico across all their functions, and they have pretty much nailed it, with their ‘One Simple thing’ approach to conversations around flexible work requests earning them a WGEA Employer of Choice Citation this year.
 
Jason Webster, Senior Supply Chain Leader and Plant Manager at Tingalpa and Stephanie Ridge, HR Manager for the site, share their approach to flexibility on site and give examples of how well it is working for their people and their operation.
 
At NAWO we are passionate about Flexibility because we know it is a key enabler of increasing female participation in the workplace, however what is beautiful about enabling flexibility in your workplace is it benefits everyone, regardless of gender and the Pepsico example really demonstrates this. Attracting a diverse workforce to shift based teams requires businesses to look critically at the overall package they are provide to employees, to attract them into the business and retain them. Pepsico’s experience proves that shift work can provide very interesting opportunities for flexibility if there is a willingness to consider different models, think laterally and invest in skills development across teams.
 
Key Learnings:
A workplace culture of trust is a pre-requisite to successful implementation of flexible work Principle-based leadership and reference to clear principles directly applicable to flexible work requests is vital as the foundation for encouraging requests for flexible work and having open and honest conversations about how they can be accommodated An investment in cross training/skills development for front line team members is integral to enabling flexible options Positive role modelling of the behaviours around flexibility, in line with principles, from leaders is extremely important Clearly articulating the level of flexibility that can be enabled for particular roles and job classifications (e.g low, moderate and high flex roles) manages expectations from the outset There are huge benefits to implementing this approach to flexible work for sites with long tenure in regard to transition to retirement Extending opportunities for flexibility beyond traditional parameters (i.e. part time or casual work for mothers returning from leave) provides enormous retention opportunities for all employees (studying, transitioning to retirement, sporting commitments, parenting, elder care, commuting problems, faith etc)  
Attached here is a Linked In article I have written reflecting on principle-based leadership  - what it is and why it matters and a short slide deck providing some example principles specific to enabling flexibility.
 
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/principle-based-leadership-what-why-matters-louise-weine/