Top takeaways from the 2015 Women in Leadership Institute^™

Thank goodness I took a lot of notes at Linkage’s Women in Leadership Institute^™ because between the seven keynotes, five competency sessions, four days of learning team work, and countless networking opportunities, I learned a lot! To help me get my head around everything I experienced, I created this top takeaways list:

1. If you want something (a new assignment, a promotion, time off, etc.), it is your job to tell people that you want it.
2. As women, we tend to invest in performance currency (how well we do our work). We need to invest more in relationship currency (building the right relationships).
3. The definition of success is always shifting. Find out what success looks like. Then, align your performance to match expectations.
4. When talking to someone, consider, what is the best way to deliver my message? How will this resonate and what am I using to communicate the message?
5. There is a difference between confidence and worthiness. Confidence-building occurs over periods of time and is the belief you can do something. Worthiness is a state of being.
6. Our inner critic, that voice inside our head that is critical of us and critical of others, causes unnecessary pain. It pushes us down to harshness (shame; focused on ourselves) or up to grandiosity (pointed at others; it feels great to us, but awful to others). Watch your bounce between the two. Practice coaching your inner critic with our very own Susan MacKenty Brady.
7. In any exchange of feedback, the receiver is in charge because she or he decides what to change. In this video clip, one of our 2015 keynote speakers Sheila Heen explains why receiving feedback is key to fueling growth.
8. As leaders, we can become change agents; we have the ability to impact our cause right now.
9. By becoming more conscious of our environment, we can raise awareness and make different decisions that will impact our generation and future generations.
10. Think about three things that describe your brand and your leadership. Now, ask someone you trust to do the same for you. See how they compare.

I was just one of 750 people at the Institute this year. The takeaways I chose are not inclusive of all of the great things that happened. If you were one of the men or women at the Institute, let me know which takeaways were most important or impactful to you. Tweet me at @Buscher or share with us in the comments below.