Go Lead Idaho

Motivating women to lead and demonstrating why it matters

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Ready2Lead: Work Life Balance

General Session panel on Work-Life Balance

    • Former First Lady Patricia Kempthorne and founder & CEO of the Twiga Foundation
    • Jennifer Pugh, Chief Human Resources Officer, Scentsy

Patricia Kempthorne: Work life balance is just life – and how we make that work for all of us.

Jennifer Pugh: I don’t really think about it as work-life balance. I think about it as work-life integration. Taking all sides of my life, because I don’t compartmentalize, and integrating all of the elements into one. (Jennifer created a family policy handbook and standard operating procedures for her household of 11) I realized that my day became what everyone wanted from me – not the priorities I was setting.

Jennifer: Email makes everyone else’s needs and priorities your urgency. Try to minimize the number of times you check your inbox. Try color coding your calendar to be able to see at a glance if you have balance in your life – and address it if you don’t.

Patricia: Every business started out as an idea, as a dream. It is about the people that you bring into the organization to make it work. To have a bottom line in business that is sustainable you have to take care of your greatest asset – your people

Jennifer: To me business, like politics, is all about relationships.

Jennifer: Don’t create workplace policy to solve issues for your worst employees, create workplace policy based on your best employees and what you want to empower them to do.

Patricia: Work-life integration is more than a gender issue, a business or politics issue, but a cultural issue.

Be a mentor, be an advocate, raise your hand and speak up when there are work-life integration issues at play. Advocate for each other – women and men alike.

 

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Ready2Lead: Increasing Your Net Worth By Expanding Your Network

The second general session panel: Increasing Your Net Worth By Expanding Your Network

    • Emily Kertz Lampkin, President of Lampkin Group
    • Julie Larson, Business Coach/Consultant at Burg Communications
    • Moderator: Dean Cathy Silak, Concordia Law School

Julie Larson: What is networking

Networking isn’t about you. It’s about cultivating mutually beneficial or win-win relationships. You do that by shifting your focus onto the other person. That’s how you add value – by putting their interests first.

The ability to influence is the ability to lead and succeed.

Emily Lampkin: 

Your power and your ability to be helpful and be successful is based on your ability to have information and know where to get it from.

Strategies to build your network

  • Start with who you know and are already connected with
  • Look at where you are on a daily basis (personal life)
  • Think, ‘Where am I already, how do I find new eyes to interact with on a daily basis?’
  • Don’t look for perfect – look for an opportunity
  • Don’t overlook the power of a handwritten note for networking & building relationships

Comments from the audience:

  • Women have been networking for years – we don’t have to joins formal group to be good at it.
  • Key to networking? Turn on your inner 4-year old to leverage your natural curiosity

Julie shared a quote from Robert Kiyosaki to end the session:  “The richest people in the world build networks, everyone else looks for work.”

 

 

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Ready2Lead: Identifying Your Passion & Your Value Statement

Our first General Session Panel focused on Identifying Your Passion & Your Value Statement with the following panel:

  • Lee Flinn, Advocacy Director for AARP Idaho
  • China Gum, Political Director at Raul Labrador for Idaho
  • Jana Kemp, Facilitator, Author, Speaker, fmr Independent Candidate for Idaho Governor
  • Betty Richardson, Attorney/Advisor, U.S., Department of Justice, Executive Office for United States Attorneys
  • Moderator: Marcia Franklin, Producer/Writer/Coach at Idaho Public Television

Betty Richardson’s Value Statement: I will make a positive difference in the world I will do this by developing my mental, physical, social and emotional abilities so I can be the best wife, mother, friend and attorney…I will act with integrity, authenticity and compassion to make my neighborhood, city, state and planet to better reflect the values of liberty, equality and justice

China Gum:

  • I am loyal and I do not take no for an answer
  • My advice for those in politics? Stay grounded, know who your friends are and fight to the end for them
  • Leadership is a transferable commodity so find a mentor (& share it)
  • China’s values list: family, patriotism, integrity, challenge, friendliness, generosity, dependability, flexibility and love

Jana Kemp:

  • Personal values: faith, family and friends
  • Professional values: integrity, improve the productivity, profit and morale of day to day  business decisions
  • Jana shared sections from her book Run for Elected Office

The list of challenges facing society is endless. Numerous financial and social problems affect the world and individual countries. And they also affect states, counties, cities, and even school districts and neighborhood policy councils. It’s time for fresh thinking and new ideas in the public arena; it’s time for more civic-minded people to get involved by running for—and winning—elected office.   Run for Elected Office—and Win shows you how. It is designed to help readers make a positive impact on the world and in the communities in which they live. It starts with how to make a decision to run for a particular office and ends with how to proceed with a successful political career—and it covers everything else in between. This book helps readers: 

    • Learn the ins and outs of winning an election—from an author who’s done it!
    • Understand how to plan and schedule a political campaign
    • Employ the power of social media in gaining name recognition
    • Learn how much money it takes to run a campaign and what it really takes to win

The women of Idaho MUST come together, whatever our party affiliation, in order to achieve participation & representation so we are not left on the menu but at the table making decisions 

Lee Flinn: (Part of) her values list includes authenticity honesty kindness love, achievement healthy living, creativity curiosity

Sometimes when you go through really difficult things it helps define who you are and who you want to be. Bumps in the road help clarify who you want to be, what your passions are.

When you have opportunities, say yes, take risks, don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Marcia Franklin shared the following quote from Mary Oliver to end the session “I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

 

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Ready2Lead: Center for American Women & Politics

Debbie Walsh, Executive Director of The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), sets the stage for the rest of the day with her morning address.  Go Lead Idaho is proud to be a partner of CAWP – here’s what the organization is all about.

The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of theEagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is nationally recognized as the leading source of scholarly research and current data about American women’s political participation. Its mission is to promote greater knowledge and understanding about women’s participation in politics and government and to enhance women’s influence and leadership in public life.

CAWP’s education and outreach programs translate research findings into action, addressing women’s under-representation in political leadership with effective, imaginative programs serving a variety of audiences. As the world has watched Americans considering female candidates for the nation’s highest offices, CAWP’s nearly four decades of analyzing and interpreting women’s participation in American politics have provided a foundation and context for the discussion.

CAWP helps identify women in American who feel qualified and ready to run, and empowers women to not just passively wait but think strategically to position themselves & create opportunities.

What CAWP has learned over the past 40 years:

  • The big names we see – Michelle Bachman, Hilary Clinton –  mask that we haven’t
  • In US Congress only 17% are women
  • 24% of all state legislators
  • Only 6 women governors
  • US ranks 75 in the world in the percent of women in our national legislature – tied with Turkmenistan and Kazakistan
  • A quota for women in elected leadership was put into Iraq’s new constitution
  • Idaho ranks 17th in the nation for number of women in our state legislature

We care because women’s voices make a difference – and bring a different set of life experience to policy making.

CAWP research has found that in state legislatures, women are more likely than their male colleagues – cutting across party lines – to care about issues affecting women, family and children and thinking that government should operate in a more transparent, inclusive way. One of the prime reasons women run for office is because of a public policy issue. Men tend to run because of a longstanding interest in politics. Men run to be someone, women run to do something.

In surveys of those in state legislatures:

Men were much more likely to make the determination on their own to run for office

Women would need to be asked multiple times to run for office.

Consider this event your invitation to run.

We are looking to you as potential candidates and asking you to run.

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Ready2Lead: The Power of Women in Leadership

At 8am this morning we kicked off  Go Lead Idaho’s 2nd annual leadership development conference focused on empowering and inspiring Idaho women to take on leadership roles in the public, private and non-profit sectors. Ready to Lead features two tracks, Ready to Serve, for those interested in serving on community, non-profit and business boards and Ready to Run, for those interested in running for office.

Following Welcoming Remarks from Dean Cathy Silak of the Concordia University School of Law and Go Lead Idaho Co-Chair Anne Wilde, Motivational Speaker Rep. Cherie Buckner Webb started the inspirational day with The Power of Women in Leadership.

As always – Cherie shared gems

  • I’m giving you permission today to focus on yourself and your leadership…this day might be lifechanging
  • Leverage the old and familiar, but do it in a new way
  • Find a way to acknowledge your skills and talents in a more public way
  • Find a way to educate, instigate, educate, disseminate and proliferate
  • Step out of a predictable and comfortable way to establish a new normal
  • Lean into the possibilities; sometimes you have to get completely off balance to find your new core and new balance
  • Hopefully it will become a new habit that you step up boldly and powerfully in your own unique way to be powerful
  • “Knowing we can make a difference in this world is a great motivator. How can we know this and not be involved.” – Susan Jeffers
  • A lot of us are socialized to be caring & concerned & then we don’t know how to do conflict. Conflict is an important part of working with people
  • Women are mission driven. The goal isn’t for the position it is for the position to get the mission done

Show up, stand up, speak up

Everything you have done in the past prepares you
for the leading you want to do in the future.

I wish you strength and determiniation to run the race you have before you

I wish for you clarity of purpose as you lead with integrity andjoy for the journey

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