From Perfection to Passion
Women often get caught in the dilemma of being savvy business people while shouldering the responsibilities of demanding roles—wife, breadwinner, caregiver, mentor.... A women for all her resilience, tough mindedness, independence, and ingenuity often finds herself feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, and stretched thin. The challenges of shifting demands, the want to be perfect, and trying to be everything to everyone makes everyday, all day, a workday. This can lead to exhaustion, a loss of focus, missed opportunities, or, worse the questioning of her confidence and abilities.

From Perfection to Passion encourages women to see themselves from a different and inspiring and empowering perspective. We explore the shift from living a life clouded by the pressures to be perfect, to one where women define or reclaim the passion that makes life and work rich with meaning. Women come to understand how to stave off the craziness of trying to be perfect—those places where she loses herself and rather begins to stand in the richness of her passions. Here she relies on her story to become the person she would like to be. Women acknowledge and come to believe in the influence they possess, and the importance of articulating purposeful ways in which to exercise this sway across all facets of life. Leadership, entrepreneurial vision, transitional change follow. Ultimately this keynote is about discovering, reclaiming, and embracing the callings and activities that bring value and color across the spectrum of life.

MEN.DACITY™
It’s important to understand how unquestioned assumptions about women (and leadership in general) affect success in the workplace. Too often, without realizing it, men close off women or do not see their potential because of stereotyping and a culturally generated blindness to the full capabilities of women.

Along with this, men, good men, often do not understand or appreciate the quick-shifting and multifaceted demands and pressures that women face. One minute she is a workplace leader, next caregiver to the young or elderly, then next, wife and homemaker. Nor do they appreciate how a woman’s perspective can have dramatic, profitable, and positive affects in the workplace.

Through candid video/audio interviews with businessmen and women we reveal the common, everyday & dominant perspective of how men “see” women at work and how women so often not only are seen but view themselves as deficient men. These common narratives & those unquestioned assumptions from which we view/define leadership, roles, behavior, success are juxtaposed with quantitative and qualitative revelations that organizations with high levels of women’s involvement and that have women in leadership/voice positions are shown to be more profitable, have better customer relations, and better retention records. Women affect the bottom line in ways that often go unrecognized.

This keynote celebrates the broad and applicable value in understanding, appreciating, and welcoming the perspectives, insights, and ingenuity women offer to the workplace and to overall organizational success and growth. The presentation is marked with dignity and levity with the intent for positive change.

Cultivating Business without Golf Balls or Cold Calls:
Women's Networks & Philanthropy
Women network differently than men. It’s often more subtle and wrapped around events and intent that promote long-term relationships. Women imagine activities through which relationships are woven and connections sustained. Such ways to network stand apart from the rule-bound, competitive situations that provide a mode of connection in which men thrive.Women experience success and find fulfillment in maintaining rich webs of relationships where everybody wins. More and more, women are finding creative and innovative ways to build successful, client-cultivating activities that are not focused on golf balls or cold calls.

This participative session or keynote investigates how philanthropic and/or social networking activities offer forums to attract, nurture, and develop clients in settings where women feel comfortable, where their natural talents to shine, and where they build lucrative and meaningful relationships.

ANTIDOTE: Workplace Cultures that Value and Welcome Women's Talents and Perspectives
No matter how much talent a woman has or how hard she works, if the organization does not have a culture that embraces diversity—rather than merely tolerating it—then she, and the organization, are destined for failure.

Divanation provides alternative perspective on how to energize and strengthen the way companies do business in this emerging Creative Age.

Divanation offers a narrative-based model for culture development, which serves as a antidote for everyday workplace maladies such as rampant inefficiencies, loss of common sense, an overabundance of rules, low morale, deficit-based thinking, lost initiative, reactive management, and meaningless mission statements. Divanation perspectives provide a pathway and a blueprint for positive change and success.

Leadership in a Changing World—Starting from the Self
As the global economy moves from the Era of Information to a new Creative Age we are experiencing a dramatic transformation in the way we work and the very ways business get done. In the midst of this change, individual success depends on identifying, mastering, and performing a whole new configuration of workplace skills and sensibilities.

In this provocative presentation, learn the “what” of the nature of this contextual change, the fundamental importance of emotional intelligence and self-awareness, and the “how” of the essential ability to align design with intent, and the necessary skill of communicating vital information in meaningful stories, andthe critical capacity to have “hard fun” in the workplace.

For more information concerning scheduling a Divanation keynote, contact:

USA and Global:
Leanne Meyer at +1 412.478.4060; e-mail leanne.
Frank Lehner at +1 412.928.5942; e-mail frank.

South Africa:
Anita Venter at +27 083 635 4493; e-mail anita.