The Canadian Institute's Women's Leadership Forum

Registration and Coffee Served

Opening Remarks from Conference Chair

The Advancement of Women: Current Catalyst Research, the Gender Gap, Myth-Busting

• An overview of the latest Catalyst research: what are the barriers to women’s advancement and how can organizations promote change?
• Understanding the gender gap and ways to create a culture of inclusion within your organization
• Key resources for women when preparing for a leadership role, including the critical role of mentors and sponsors
• Making inroads in governance: Catalyst initiatives for advancing participation of women on boards

Boosting Women’s Participation on Boards: Leading Ways for Securing Directorships

• Winning tips for women striving to a corporate board position: Who should you approach? What resources are available?
• Examining why women are still not properly represented at the board level: what can companies do to promote diversity and lessen the gap?
• An in-depth guide to preparing for a board position: advice and tips successful female board members can offer other women

Keynote Address

Networking Coffee Break

Developing Your Personal Brand: Taking Ownership of Your Reputation Image and Appeal

• Defining your brand: identifying your best attributes, forming a cohesive message and effectively marketing it
• Understanding the importance of authenticity: ensuring your professional image aligns with your genuine leadership style
• Ways to manage your personal brand online: creating a coherent, substantive image across social platforms
  • Leveraging LinkedIn to build your brand
• Ensuring your personal brand aligns with – but also transcends
  • your company’s brand

Taking Risks in Your Career: Embracing Opportunities Outside of Your Comfort Zone

• Understanding the importance of putting your hand up: how to effectively express interest in new opportunities both within and outside of your workplace
• Exploring ways to diversify your skillset, invent new possibilities and tackle unchartered territory
• Knowing when risk will reap reward: identifying the right opportunities and ensuring you are prepared to take the plunge
• Best practices for generating support from your network to achieve success
• Exploring opportunities in community leadership

Networking Luncheon for Speakers and Delegates

Becoming an Effective Change Agent: LeadingYour Organization in Times of Transition

• Getting buy-in: winning practices for promoting change within your organization
• Exploring ways to develop a strategy for change: What factors should you take into account? Who should you approach for input?
• Best practices for keeping your employees motivated and engaged throughout the transition
• Special considerations for communicating change: promoting transparency and providing support
• Beyond strategy: ensuring changes cascaded throughout your organization, properly executed and successfully implemented

Emotional Triggers and the Brain – How Do Such Factors Affect Corporate Decision-Making?

• Exploring why the most effective leaders are those who are aware of their emotions and who have the ability to understand the emotions of others
• Insights from the field of neuroscience: a brain-based model for collaborating with an influencing others
• Understanding the principle of “minimize threat and maximize reward” and how it informs are social behavior
• Enhancing professional and personal relationships through recognition of emotional triggers

Networking Coffee Break

Making Tough Decisions: Leadership Guidelines for Showing Resolve

• Identifying key factors to weigh into your decision-making process
• Tips for remaining dispassionate and objective when assessing your options
• A guide to communicating your decision, including:
  • Getting buy-in and motivating stakeholders to support you
  • Providing support and guidance to those impacted by your decision
  • Best practices for delivering difficult news
• Selecting the right advisors: ensuring you receive quality information and advice
• Dealing with public opinion: to what degree should it factor into your decision-making process?

Building a Network – Making Meaningful Connections in Today’s Digital World

• Establishing and capitalizing on professional networks
• The Do’s and Don’ts of developing your network, including approaches for:
  • Making first contact
  • Expanding your network
  • Keeping in touch with your network
• Realizing the importance of reciprocity: widening your reach by helping others make introductions
• Tapping into every opportunity to build your network: mobilizing social media, professional associations, colleagues and friends
  • Leveraging LinkedIn to build your brand
• Beyond invitations: ways to maintain your connections on social media

Closing Keynote: Identifying and Cultivating Exceptional Leadership Skills

• How to successfully drive employee engagement to achieve passion, commitment and empowerment
• Understanding the difference between leadership and management
• Ways to effectively gauge employee learning styles and personality types to lead effectively
• Unblocking the pipeline of women leaders: integrating gender diversity into your leadership development strategy

Coffee Served

Opening Remarks from Conference Chair

Toward Work-Life Integration: Transforming the Balancing Act into an Achievable Reality

• Perspectives on the elusive notion of balance: reinventing the ideal into something more readily attainable
• The advantages of understanding work and life as one in the same as opposed to mutually exclusive categories
  • Understanding work-life integration as a professional achievement as well as a personal one
• Special considerations impacting the sandwich generation: managing the challenges associated with having responsibility for children and aging parents
• Exploring accommodation in the workplace: what policies and procedures can organizations provide and what benefits can they accrue in doing so?
• Technology as friend or foe: does round-the-clock network access promote or preclude better work-life integration?

Networking Coffee Break

Mentors and Sponsors: Identifying a Champion to Take your Career to the Next Level

• How does a sponsor differ from a mentor?
• Understanding how a mentor or sponsor can help women navigate the leadership system, win promotions and gain recognition from management
• In what ways does mentoring differ between men and women? How does sponsorship differ between men and women?
• Exploring how to prepare for sponsorship and mentorship
• Leading ways to galvanize your career through sponsorship

Inspiring Your Employees to Greatness: Driving Results with a Best-in-Class Company Culture

• Building a winning company culture: ensuring employees are on board and invested in your organization’s vision and values
• Engagement vs. fear: which leadership approach inspires better performance?
• Leading ways to establish a culture of continuous improvement
• Realizing the importance of everyday leadership in producing results
• Promoting accountability: inspiring every employee to work like an owner

What You Stand for: The Importance of Understanding and Living your Core Values

• Understanding and living in accordance with your core values is a critical success factor for leaders today
• Learn the similarities and differences in the top ten values of male and female leaders from a recent national study
• Gain awareness of the high cost of not living in accordance with your values
• Living your values enriches our lives and our relationships… personally and professionally

Networking Luncheon for Speakers and Delegates

Women and Corporate Social Responsibility: Empowering Your Organization to Foster Sustainability and Community Engagement

• How women can promote and manage community engagement and increase competitive advantage through CSR commitments
• Understanding the long-term value of having a winning CSR strategy
• An overview of innovative trends in the field of CSR and how you can apply them to your organization

Making Inroads in Traditionally Male-Prominent Fields

• Exploring how to succeed in sectors known for low female representation
  • What were the challenges faced and how were they overcome?
• How have these industries transformed and become more inclusive over the duration of their careers?
• In what ways can leaders encourage emerging generations of women to pursue careers in male-prominent industries?

Networking Coffee Break

Finding Your Leadership Voice: Empowering Women to Put their Hands Up

• Encouraging other women to find their leadership voices: how institutions can unconsciously mute women’s proactive engagement in discussions
• Is the practice of creating an environment inclusive of women entering the mainstream?
• Supporting women’s ambition and assertiveness: is it more difficult for women to have these traits vs. men?
• Understanding the importance of advocating for yourself: how to take credit and own your accomplishments

Developing the Leaders of Tomorrow: Opportunities and Challenges for Future Generations of Women

• What do emerging generations of women value in the workplace and how can employers appeal to these priorities?
• Exploring ways that the next generation of women have seized opportunities to be their own bosses – and how this trend will impact future leadership styles
• The path forward: understanding what needs to be accomplished to achieve gender equity in the workplace

Closing Remarks from Co-Chairs Conference Adjourns