Communicating for Influence and Impact - GHC16 - My Perspective

The first thing that comes to my mind while thinking about communication is there is nothing that beats a clear and effective communication. But at times we aren't able to do that and whatever we want to convey just stays with us. 

Also, if you want to communicate something specially in the workplace you will surely want it to be heard by the intended recipients so that you get some outcome . With all these things in mind I sat for the "Communicating for Influence and Impact" session by Denise Brosseau in GHC'16.

The session started with an introduction by Denise, CEO, Thought leadership Lab and Nicholas Creswell, VP Talent & Development - Enterprise Technology and Operations at Thompson Reuters.

They both talked about their respective career journey - what they are today and how they reached this level. I specially liked the way how Denise showed her career graph with a candy land model. Something like this - https://careerbrander.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/candyland-big.jpg

It was really interesting since our lives' journey is never linear - it has its ups and downs, good moments and bad moments and together they make this whole awesome thing called life :).

After that we gradually started delving into the sessions some more, We all have seen companies telling us that their organization structure is either hierarchical or flat but when it comes to communication flows we never see it going that way. 
We always tend to have few key people who communicate the most and take the word of others forward. Also, they act as mediators who not only connect people but also listen very carefully to each and every individual so that they can in turn help them. And these are the people who end up having the maximum amount of influence and impact in an organization.


The session was pretty much hands on with loads of exercises that we did that focussed around how you can be a competent and sympathetic listener at the same time. I wouldn't go into details of them but will do some special mentions.Since it was a 3 hour session (2 - 5 pm) there was a lot of thing that was covered.

One thing that deserves mention here is how to effectively present your ideas to your peers and superiors and what are the different phases for the same -
(1) PREPARE ( the BEFORE idea phase) You start with good amount of preparation  where you do your research - do a rough draft and final draft and also make sure you have good backing to hold your idea .
(2) PRESENT ( the DURING phase) How you present your idea to your peers/boss or anyone relevant to the conversation.

(3) PREVAIL (the AFTER phase) the final phase of your idea and how to make sure that your ideas stick around and finally gets implemented.

And not to forget all these phases are always added by Feedback from your listeners. In my opinion, feedback is something that should always be there,
An effective communication can never be 1- way, it has be 2 way where after we take feedback we act upon the same as well. And what can be better than a different perspective. Isn't that how all great ideas are born?

Coming back to the session , we had all these exercises that were done in groups of two or three and also there were people who shared some of their own experiences and ideas to the entire group. And trust me that was the most exciting part of the session. First of all kudos to these women who were bold enough to do that. They not only made the session more interesting but also when you hear things like how with their influence and ideas they were able to bridge cultural gaps, motivate others, help their peers, achieve something in their careers that surely makes your day and ends up in motivating you in turn!
The session finally ended with exercise and this one was something that we as women never acknowledge , that is 'how each one of us is a super women in our own way'. As women aren't we always shy of compliments and if we do something better than others we always thing that "oh that's nothing big really". But have we ever seen men doing the same? Men love to brag about everything but i have seen very less women who are doing really great and bragging  about it as well. A small 'thank you'  and accepting a compliment graciously instead of 'that's fine' or just turning back when we are being applauded, can't we all put that in our daily routines 
As i mentioned earlier there were lot of things that wee covered in this session, and if anyone is interested in the slides, here is a link where you have to register and they will mail that to you - http://gettalk.at/ghc .
Also, I managed to click a photo of Denise  (psst I cropped myself, as it was definitely not one of my photogenic days :|)

Thank you Denise for this amazing session!

Ciao,
DD

P.S. comments and suggestions are always welcome!

Noobie@GHC

With less than one month remaining for GHC'16 I can hardly contain my excitement!

But why am I excited? Well there are various things that contribute to it –

1) noob - excitement

The number one reason is that I am attending it for the very first time in my life, and there is this certain unknown factor of what’s going to take place in those three days.

My first encounter with GHC was when I was working in Bangalore and while it was going on I had picked on a conversation between some colleagues that how unique it was and how prestigious was to attend it.

For people who were clueless like me back then, here is the link to their site - http://ghc.anitaborg.org/

2) Networking is the key baby!

In this age of social media we can connect to people in seconds through Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Whatsapp, IRCs , not to mention good old mails and so many ‘n’ different ways. However when it comes to GHC instead of all that I will be connecting with people in the industry in person and attend sessions presented by the leaders of the technology world.

In GHC's site it says it is the largest gathering for women in technology - that surely means I get to meet more geeky/technology enthusiast people apart from my Grad school classmates and my colleagues at work.

This thing is also something that I can vouch for, before my own eyes when the registration linked opened on July 13th within 20 minutes it was sold out.

I remember how glad I was that I registered on time and also I had bragged about my promptness to all my colleagues and manager.

So much demand seriously makes me wonder what might be the deal here.

3) Women in technology - are we booming or declining?

It seems there aren’t enough women in technology as there are men and one of the main aim of GHC is bringing together 'women in technology’. This made me do some of my own research on that and here is what I came across on some statistic -

https://www.ncwit.org/resources/numbers

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/27/women-in-tech_n_6955940.html

I would definitely like to gain some insight on why we have so less women in technology and what can be the factors that make them decide that they don’t want a career in technology.

Anyway, I think I am delving into a serious topic here than what this first blog post is intended for and I can probably defer a discussion on this to my future posts.

Let me again bask in the glory of being able to attend GHC'16 (thanks to my company for sponsoring me)

Before I wrap up this post, I would like to share some of the Googling I did for first timers like me in GHC'16. Those who are super excited about it but also at the same time aren't sure what to expect there .

Some packing tips - http://ghc.anitaborg.org/news/announcements/packing-for-ghc/ - (from The GHC official website) - If you are someone like me who wants to take every new piece of cloth they are holding on dearly for conferences and want to walk in their new heels (however uncomfortable it may be) this information can be quite handy.

Some more -

https://www.quora.com/What-should-I-pack-to-the-Grace-Hopper-Conference-Should-I-leave-room-for-swag(Quora is one site I can send hours and hours and probably months without getting bored one bit)

It seems SWAG is going to be one of 'The Thing' there! 

Also, I came across some information on what to expect in the actual conference from seasonal GHC attendees to noob'ers like me.

http://product.hubspot.com/blog/an-insider-s-guide-to-the-grace-hopper-celebration

http://ghcbloggers.blogspot.com/2015/09/ghc15-first-timer-questions_9.html - A really interesting article on various questions I had in mind regarding GHC.

Even after reading all these things and googling for more than 3 hours on GHC and first timers in GHC - I am still not sure what to expect there. But yes, they did gave me the confidence that I have at least done some research (the noob confidence I guess)

Hopefully this will be a good place to start your initial research on GHC before you pack your bags and hop on the flight/train/car/spaceship and be on your way to Houston!

Hope to see you all there.

Ciao

DD