Brilliant! I’ve shared it with my eldest daughter, who is at home for the week end, and I was moved to see her moved, too, even if she added, at the end,

-” It’s all very nice, but it’s an Utopia, Maman!”.

I answered: “It’s not an Utopia, my dear girl, it’s human, it’s empathic, it’s also about passion and suffering.”

It also resonates with my own way of thinking, mixing intellectual concepts and comics. At last, I’ve found someone who thinks in the same crazy way as me!

Serendipity strikes again! I just learned (via Twitter, of course) that Jeremy Rifkin would be in Lyon this week end, invited for the 10th edition of the “Nuits Sonores”. Crossing my fingers I will be able to see him live. More to come soon…

A great source of info to refer to for our next presentation or conference about gender-balanced leadership!

Running is one of small victories I have achieved during the past two years when my consultancy business started to be erratic and unpredictable. I would have weeks packed with corporate training, speaking and coaching assignments, travels abroad, followed by weeks of single one-to one coaching sessions, with a few teaching classes and mainly non-paid conferences and volunteer activities.

Ebb and flow

Faking flow. Pushing for more flow. Sending compulsive signals on the web. Beacons in the Twitterverse night. On the ebb periods, waiting for the flow to come back and inundate my soul and my bank account, (insert a *grin* here) I would sit and stare at this screen, send messages in the bottle and spend an awful amount of time surfing the web and collecting beautiful sea-shells. I would “scoop” them, tweet them, “like” them, google plus and share them on linkedIn, more and more seldom blog about them.

Why not on my blog? Because I felt I had first to “be the success I wanted to achieve” and sharing these long periods of waiting for the next assignment was just making me feel even more miserable. I wanted to keep the cheerful “go and get them, girl” kind of face.

I didn’t want anyone to feel “sorry” for me. I didn’t want anyone to know that I could struggle with getting clients, with my financial autonomy. I am supposed to be a creative positive successful executive coach who walks her own talk with confidence and teach by example. Phrases like “fake it until you make it” are still very strongly engraved in myself. Or “success attracts success” and that kind of crappy law of attraction babble.

So I stayed out of my blog for a couple of weeks, which actually became two months. I found myself good excuses for not exercising (too cold, too windy, too rainy, my running clothes look ugly, I have my periods, I am not a sports person anyway, I have already taken a shower, I have to finish this conversation on twitter and then I’ll go…). You guess what? The ebb lasted a little longer than usual.

The Ebb

Fantastic rainbow projects co-designed with a couple of trusted partners (no signed agreements, though) since last november are still six feet under. I had pictured myself in spring, joyfully loaded with clients and new assignments, frolicking between airports, making Tuscan plans for the summer with family. I find myself at the ebb, on an empty shore, counting a few sea shells & weeds, still waiting for star fish. Explaining this painfully to my banker. Looking at reality in the face (face palm as my mischievous friend Sandy Maxey explained me on Twitter).

So, what does it have to do with cherry trees?

I took Steven Pressfield’s advice about horse power and exercise and resumed running. I also took my own advices actually. You remember the big triple crisis I had last summer? It led me to write Silly things that help during crisis. Well, I should have known better and sticked to these as a daily routine. They saved my sanity once, they should be used as preventive medicine, not only during the crisis.

When I say I go for a run, I actually follow the exact routine I have achieved thanks to an iPhone app called “Couch to 5K” (no sponsor!) and great music too! I may bridge into 10 k, but not ready yet…So, I  do the exact same run every time and I’m starting to spot each tree, each country road, each rock by heart. I associate them with vivid smells, song tracks and the sound of my pulse in my heart, my throat and my ears and my feet on the earth. I have developed a habit of snapping a few pictures on my way, almost at the same places.

One particular tree always pulls me in. I have to stop and stare. Contemplate and meditate. Maybe it’s because the slope is going up, it’s almost the end and sweat starts to dripple between my shoulder plates. It’s the cherry tree you see at the beginning of this post. That was a couple of weeks ago, in full bloom, radiant and proud. Like me, coming back from a week’s leadership training for l’Oréal marketing directors and preparing for my first TEDx talk in Stuttgart.

Then, there’s this other shot. Where the flowers are withering, the colors are fading, turning brownish, hanging their lost heads down.

Natural and so “cliché” vision of the seasons. What struck me, however, was the co-existence simultaneously of dead flowers and very lively fruits. It had never occured to me this way before.

Doubts and fears

I stopped and reflected. A major assignment I had counted on had been postponed. People who had asked me to do “tons” of business with them were becoming silent. I thought I hadn’t perform as well as I would have liked during my TED talk. I listed the payments I was late into and worried about making ends meet. I wondered if I’d better not get a “real” job and stop living in the Teddy bear’s house (bisounours).

Focus on Bright Spots

I gazed a few minutes, standing in front of the cherry tree, getting closer and closer, taking big breaths of earthy smells. I looked closer and I saw very clearly an olive like fruit, solidly and confidently growing among the withering petals. I regained trust and started to look at the future more cheerfully. This too will pass.

When I came back home, I cleaned and vacuumed and tidied. I woke up my three hibernating teenagers in Easter holidays, still sleeping at noon. I didn’t take personally their grumpiness and snorts. I went into the garden and cut armfuls of Lilac. I prepared simple spaggetti with olive oil and garlic and plenty of parmigiano.

After the lunch, I asked the twins to help me plant some potatoes. We’re starting a vegetable garden. Until now the earth had been too dry and tough to dig. They asked me for instructions. They saw my blank face. I said I had never done it but it should not be too complicated. We started to laugh hysterically together. We got dirty and exhausted from the hard physical work. Much harder than in the movies, when they are shoveling tombs for cowboys. We discovered we had fun digging and being outside together, instead of each of us separated in front of a screen…

When I eventually came back to my home office and sat down at my desk, I found this lovely post in my email box. “The Ebb of Absent”. I was not alone to feel that. It was ok, not the end of the world. I felt “validated”. I commented and almost immediately started writing again. Translating into English from French someone else’s thought, then finding my own voice again. I wrote “A Woman for whom Leadership has no Gender and is an Art”.

The next day, I spent two hours weeding the garden. When I came back inside, it was easier for me to convince the kids to get to do their homework. Incredibly easy actually. I sat at my own desk and, believe me or not, I had a confirmation for one of the Intercultural training assignments I was counting on, since november. Actually, I had just given up on “hoping” and decided to close that drawer for good. A small step, just a one day training, but I took it as a lucky omen. An olive-sized green cherry.

Some times, all what it takes is staring at a cherry tree and weeding your garden. click to tweet

When Fatiah Hajjat, who launched TEDx Lyon, put me in touch with Florence Poivey, one of the four TED Speakers that I would guide and coach for their talk, she simply told me that I will fall under the spell of this woman and be very impressed by the quality of her presence.

I was indeed impressed and immediately fell under her genuine spell. A mix of childlike enthusiasm, peaceful determination and profound humility.

Why? I found in her the embodiment of the best integration of masculine and feminine traits in a leader. A balanced leader, embracing fully the feminine, extreme consideration for others, empathy and intuition while at the same time advocating audacity and achieving great results.

Regarding the childlike enthusiasm, here is a little story.

I use plastic (yes, plastic!) figurines, toys representing fairy tales heroes and heroines,frogs, princes and witches, and also cartoons characters during my coaching sessions. To prepare for each of the TED Talks, I had asked each speaker to choose a figurine which would resonate with her, or him and symbolize the ressource most needed. Here’s a picture of the Hero’s Journey, illustrated by figurines at each different stage.

Without hesitation, Florence chose as a “Talisman” the one which most resembled her childhood heroine, Heidi from the Alps, an enthusiastic little girl, who sees the world like a playful human adventure.

This character is actually called “Nana”, from the French cartoons series called TomTom & Nana, and it’s all the more touching that such a grande dame, a Lady CEO, picked up such an innocent and fun character!

I am very grateful to have established such a trusting connection with her and shared authentic conversations. Although she confessed she had always managed to keep away from any “women’s groups”, she recently accepted to be our guest speaker for the launching of the international NGO Business Professional Women, BPW in Lyon. She eventually became an official member of our BPW Club in Rhône Alpes, because she felt the humanity and the strong values that we shared as a team and as an NGO, not only because we were women…

Florence Poivey  keeps on impressing me and believe me, I am not the only one!

Here is a translation of an article in French by Bruno Rousset, from an interview on his Blog, “Valeurs d’entrepreneurs”, with the permission of Florence Poivey. Bruno Rousset is the founder and ex CEO of APRIL and also founder and head of the private equity group EVOLEM.

Every human being is a work of art.

For Florence Poivey, promoting and empowering women and men are not options but the very basis of her management style. Convinced that women and men come before the manufacturing tool, this self-taught woman has very quickly understood that this posture would enable her to maintain the company’s competivity. Her beautiful industrial SME, Union Plastic, exudes humanity. « Trust », « empower », « foster team spirit », « give everyone his or her chance » are on the agenda every single day !

I have also been seduced by two of her key ideas. One idea is the necessity of developing the  collaborators’ autonomy, while at the same time freeing them from any ideological sytem.

The other idea, less common, consists in believing that the more we can make each collaborator feel as a unique and essential part of their mission, the more we can increase the operational forces of the company and develop the employees’ satisfaction.

This idea takes its full measure when it applies to the least advantaged, such as people with disabilities, who most of the time re-enchant and energize the organizations which welcome them.

I also share this belief that a company is a « work of art » in which all collaborators are called to create and crave for being actors, in their jobs, just like they are actors in their own life.

What strikes me, is the audacity of the leader, by the way used to climb Annapurna. There is a saying which says luck only favors the bold ones. Florence Poivey takes up bets that are very remote from a risk management, by far too inhibiting. She knows that an accident may happen anytime, however she considers that overcoming this challenge offers an healthy opportunity to grow. At Union Plastic, we resolutely trust in the future.

This company is a living organism where blood circulates, organs help each others and collaborate for the sake of all. The biological unit is systematically sought after. The osmosis with the outside world can be perceived, the company feeds and grows thanks to the contact with its natural environment. Thus, Florence Poivey has made of Union Plastic an emblematic reference for entrepreneurial community, displaying an excellent capacity of adaptation to a competitive and extremely changing environment.

Union Plastic has been a specialist in designing and manufacturing plastic parts for the pharmaceutical, veterinary and medical industries for 45 years. There are 195 employees, including 10 disabled persons.

Here is the video of Florence Poivey’s TED Talk.

The name of her talk is : “L’entreprise bijou”, “The Jewel Company”, for a Jewel Woman Leader.
Florence Poivey happens to be also the president of one the most prestigious business leaders club in Lyon, called “The prisme”.
It could be called The Diamond, and contrary to Augusta, not only is it opened to women, but it is led by a woman.

A woman for whom leadership has no gender and is an Art.

How? By promoting a wide range of leadership styles, reflecting diverse motivational preferences, or work values, diverse choices influenced by individual and cultural differences.

Finally by understanding 6 fundamental management dilemmas, based on our evolutionary roots: Self-enhancement versus Consideration for others and Stability versus Change.

Want to pull more women in the leadership pipelines?

Recognize the complexity of human nature! Teach young MBAs to dance with dilemmas and embrace diversity and complexity!

Give GenY women managers new and diverse role models! Hire women on boards!

Give GenY women a positive and “kaleidocope-like” representation of leadership and power in the boardrooms! Not mono-chrome, mono-culture, mono-generational, northern-western-patriarchal, white baby-boomers, conservative, short-sighted, control-focused.

All the ingre­di­ents of a fairy tale are there, just like  in Ursula Burns’s story:

• The ordinary world. Picture one of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas.

Just like in a Charles Dickens story taking place in Brazil 20th century, you can imagine how Maria das Gracas Foster grew up.  She was born in 1950, in a favela, a slum, a part of Rio de Janeiro now known as “Complexo do Alemào”. Valor Economico reported (via The Financial Times) that “she started work at the age of eight collecting waste paper, bottles and aluminium cans to sell to pay for her school things.”  I could not imagine reading Christine Lagarde’s or any European CEO’s bio and discovering such an extra-ordinary life’s story, of transformation and meritocracy.

• The obsta­cles. Class, poverty, gender and…domestic violence.

“I experienced domestic violence during my childhood and the difficulties of life. I have always worked hard.”

• The Call for Adventure. No Prince Charming, but hard studies, scientific studies. Maria went to an Engineering School, she holds a degree in Chemical and Nuclear Engineering and on top of that, a doctorate of economics.

• Her secret weapon? Her strong character, cast in iron, forged like a sword by self-discipline and hard work. “The Iron Lady of Oil”.

• The Fairy God Mother. One of her mentor is for sure Dilma Roussef, Brazil’s President. Dilma Roussef chaired Petrobras’ board when Lula was Brazil’s president.

• The Long Journey with many ordeals and trials. Her nomination, marks the peak of a 30 years career at Petrobras. Maria das Graças Foster entered Petrobras in 1978 as an intern (just like Ursual Burns with Xerox…). She had been director of the Gas and Energy sector since 2007. Not a magic wand, just hard work and persistence.

“I worked my way up the corporate ladder, one step after the other in this company. I didn’t suddenly wake up and realized I was Director of Gas & Energy sector.”

• The Reward? Achievement. Academic, business, political, achievements and the highest rank in Brazil’s corporations. She will be the second-most powerful woman in Brazil, after the president. Not bad for a favela’s kid…

• Secret for her success? I would say it is humor and wisdom, as she declared recently to the Financial Times, in “Petrobras’s new CEO: secrets of her success”

“I don’t remember that I have a husband”…

But also her wisdom, about work and office time and family time, whatever the moment may be:

“Dedicate yourself to that moment.”

Next post will be an analysis of Maria Foster’s Leadership and communication styles, among the 12 dimensions SPM model. But you may have already guessed…

Further readings, 3 stories around the heroine’s journey in the corporate world…

• A Fairy Tale Story in The Corporate World, the story of Ursula Burns at Xerox. Read it here.
• Sylvia Ann Hewlett and the Heroine’s Journey. Read it here.
• Arianna Huffington ‘s story: Arianna and the Labyrinth of dilemna. Read it here.

Avis à toutes les lyonnaises, préoccupées par l’égalité hommes/femmes, … et les hommes aussi, qui souhaitent promouvoir la mixité professionnelle :

We’re expecting more than one hundred persons. Subscribe here!

]]> http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?feed=rss2&p=4320 0 http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?p=4320 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GeronimoCoachingNow/~3/8bx9erpwMWI/ http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?p=4314#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:21:17 +0000 admin http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?p=4314 Continue reading →]]> Here is the new TV spot designed by the French Laboratoire de l’Egalité for their new campaign, Equality between men and women. Feeling of “déjà-vu”?

Découvrez le spot télé de la campagne pour l’égalité hommes-femmes

I have just spent a business and networking lunch with 6 top executive women from a big French Pharmaceutical Company, who are pioneering a women’s empowerment and gender equality programme in their company. We discussed this TV spot, naturally, since it’s just been released in the French media and quite provocative.
We all agreed that we totally related to each of the women ignored, silenced or by-passed. One of the women even shared the situation she had witnessed just the day before, during a Strategy Management meeting, when she noticed that men started to doodle on their notes, when her female, senior executive, colleague started to present and speak up. One after the other, each of the brilliant women present started to share a critical incident like this.
We also agreed that the end of the movie was maybe caricatured and even rude. The huge man who sits on the woman’s laps and seems to literally crush her makes us feel nauseous.
Provocative for sure, which is excellent when you want a message that sticks!

What do you think of this movie? Does it remind you of any situation you’ve experienced in the workplace?
We would love to know how different it can be across the world.
And do share this movie with others!

]]> http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?feed=rss2&p=4314 0 http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?p=4314 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GeronimoCoachingNow/~3/nZEg3bUDUoc/ http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?p=4050#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:43:45 +0000 admin http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?p=4050 Continue reading →]]>

After Ethos and Pathos, here comes…Logos!In the Three Musketeers series, Logos is Aramis, “the Brain”! It refers to the logical argumentation of your talk. It’s the Mathematical Facts.

Confession: one of the reason I procrastinated so long before writing this 3rd post is precisely because it’s the part I dread most. My logic seems to be more poetical than mathematical, more irrational than logical. But I’m getting better and better at keeping some balance!

One of the speeches which , according to me, best illustrates the use of logos, is the speech given by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the APEC’s Women and the Economy Summit last November in San Francisco.

(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America)

I have posted a short video and some striking phrases from the speech here. The full text and video of Secretary Clinton’s speech can be found at the US State Department’s website.

“To achieve the economic expansion we all seek we need to unlock a vital source of growth that can power our economies in the decades to come. This source is …women.”

What can we learn from Hillary Clinton’s powerful keynote to the APEC’s delegates?

• Do not rely only on Pathos. Speaking about women’s rights can very quickly become overwhelmingly emotional. It involves dramatic topics such as the feminization of poverty, sexual exploitation, abuse, rape, political oppression, mutilations, girls forced marriage, etc…In a recent article found thanks to Twitter, I read for the first time the expression Poverty Porn. Exactly what I mean when I say don’t add pathos to an already very emotionally charged subject. Read Nathaniel Whittemore in Fast CoExist, The rise and fall of poverty porn. Here, in this talk, Hilary Clinton chooses to focus on facts and figures, on concrete steps to implement the change we all want to see, on positive and direct economic consequences of investing on girls and women. The APEC stands for the globe’s most powerful economies: the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s (APEC). Together the APEC nations, which include the United States, Russia, Japan and China, account for more than half of global GDP and 40 percent of the world’s population. These powerful economies don’t feed on social justice or pathos but on hard data.

• Put yourself in your audience’s most rational shoes. Here, the APEC delegates want to know how they will benefit and what concrete steps they can take. Hillary Clinton gives them precise figures, hard data, for each of the points she wants to make and she follows a logical structure, very classically deductive.

Today women entrepreneurs face challenges obtaining capital, reaching markets and accessing networks. Fewer than 3 percent of Fortune 500 companies in the United States have a female CEO. And in much of the world laws that bar women from owning land or inheriting property keep women from accessing financial services.

A 2007 U.N. report noted that the Asia-Pacific region is “losing $42 billion to $47 billion per year because of restrictions on women’s access to employment opportunities—and another $16 billion to $30 billion per year because of gender gaps in education.”

It is time, Clinton says, to reverse these numbers—for everyone’s sake. How?

• Use Hard Data: Use facts, figures and data as simply and clearly as you can.

“In the past a lack of hard data was part of the problem with pushing political leaders to address the opportunity gap between men and women. Now the numbers tell the story—and more of them are needed.”

“Unlocking the potential of women by narrowing the gender gap could lead to a 14-percent rise in per capita incomes by the year 2020. For every one percentage point increase in the share of household income generated by women, aggregate domestic savings increase by roughly 15 basis points.”

What’s in it for your next presentation:

• Do not rely only on Pathos
• Put yourself in your audience’s most rational shoes
• Use Hard Data
• Be clear and follow a logical order

Such a powerful speech reminds us  of Hillary Clinton’s 1995 address in Beijing to the Fourth World Conference on Women in which she famously stated that:

“Women’s rights are human rights”

One of the greatest woman orators of our time, balancing with “maestria”(bravery), heart and intelligence the three key ingredients of a great speech: Ethos, Pathos and Logos.

Bonus! There’s a bonus which comes with integrating logos in your speech: it enhances your ethos! Which is something executive women speakers especially could benefit from, in a workplace where they remain still invisible and unheard and where they have to prove their value, collect evidence and results in order to get promotion and to be recognized.

“By demonstrating logos with strong, logical arguments, your audience will tend to see you as knowledgeable and prepared. This, in turn, raises your ethos (because, after all, only someone with pure intentions would work so hard to prepare such a convincing argument).

Similarly, speakers with high ethos tend to receive less opposition when they present logical arguments. Their facts and claims are more easily believed.” Andrew Dlugan. Six Minutes Blog.

Andrew Dlugan concludes: “Work on both traits, and you will be much more persuasive.”

Excellent readings if you want to explore further the Ethos, Logos and Pathos use in presentations: read the dozens of articles written by Andrew Dlugan on his blog, Six Minutes.

]]> http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?feed=rss2&p=4050 0 http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?p=4050 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GeronimoCoachingNow/~3/NUkYt0rTJ4s/ http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?p=4286#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:49:28 +0000 admin http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?p=4286 Continue reading →]]>

“The transformative nature of the undertaking that lies ahead is, in my view, not unlike other momentous shifts in the economic history of our world. I believe that here, at the beginning of the 21st century, we are entering the Participation Age, where every individual, regardless of gender or other characteristics, is poised to be a contributing and valued member of the global marketplace.

If we really want to achieve full parity for women in the workforce – both that they participate and how they participate – we must remove the structural and social impediments stacking the deck against them.

I don’t urge this because it is the right thing to do, though of course it is.
For the sake of our children and our nations, it is the necessary thing to do.

Because a rising tide of women in an economy raises the fortunes of all families and all nations.

My husband often has said, in making the argument that everyone counts in life, “we don’t have a person to waste.”
That is true.
When it comes to the enormous challenge of our time—to systematically and relentlessly pursue more economic opportunity in our lands—we don’t have a person to waste… and we certainly don’t have a gender to waste.”

More on Hilary Clinton’s speech at the APEC’s Summit in San Francisco, November 2011 on this post: Bring Logos in Your Next Presentation.

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