sphinxx news alert    
20 January 2010 | www.sphinxx.com.au   

sphinxx is the network for women leaders and provides support and services to working women to assist in managing their work and life priorities, and leadership advice to help them scale the heights in their careers.

News on sphinxx this week:

1. YOUR CAREER: How to be heard in meetings - secrets to overcoming the men who hijack your ideas!
2. WORK: The Best-Performing CEOs in the World
3. LIFE: Bypass those annoying salesmen when making your next consumer electronics purchase
4. OFFERS: Snap up the last remaining seats at Ascend
5. OFFERS: Free coaching offer from "Career after Kids"

If you have an idea for a topic we should include in a future news alert, please let us know - we’d love to hear from you!

All the best,

Jen Dalitz
Founder & The SheEO, sphinxx.com.au

How to be heard in meetings - secrets to overcoming the men who hijack your ideas!

You’re in a meeting and put your idea forward yet it doesn’t make it to the whiteboard, or into the budget. Until one of your male colleagues picks it up, reframes it and claims it as his own... to the great fanfare from the rest of your team.

Does this sound familiar? And what can you do to change the outcome?

How to be heard in meetings, and how to get your initiatives onto the strategic agenda, is one of the most common issues raised by the mentees and female audiences I work with.

So what can you do to make sure your voice is heard?

1. Be clear. Just as being heard is a common issue for women, my male colleagues tell me regularly they don’t hear what it is we’re asking for! Keep it brief - focus on the key outcome your idea will deliver. Sometimes this will be enough, but if you’re asked to give more detail, provide a high level overview of how you’ll achieve it.

2. Avoid using meetings to launch new ideas - syndicate them beforehand if possible with colleagues to get their buy in. This way you’ll already have supporters in the meeting you can turn to for back up.

3. Wait for the right moment to contribute. I learnt this from my friend Mark who’s a lawyer and the best listener I’ve known. He taught me to wait til other people have had their say, and to look for the gaps... so that your solution, when offered, is the most obvious and complete solution on the table.

4. Own your ideas. When you’ve raised an idea with colleagues in catchups or meetings, follow up with an email outlining your key points and the support you’re looking for. If you’re in the meeting and someone hijacks your suggestion, repeat your initial points and point out the resemblance to your own IP.

5. Be persistent. Don’t expect to get a yes on the first try! It takes on average three to four attempts to get to yes, so manage your expectations accordingly and expect to repeat and rephrase your request til you get what you want.

These are my ideas - and I’m sure you have more! Post your comments here on The SheEO Blog and share your secrets to successfully being heard - we have a copy of How to Bake a Business by Julia Bickerstaff to give away for the best suggestion this week.

Who would you rate as the best performing CEO in the world - now and over time? This month's Harvard Business Review includes of the best performing CEOs in the world. Given a lot of people have blamed short-term thinking for causing our current economic troubles, debate has ensued about what time window should be used to assess a CEO’s performance. Today boards of directors, senior managers, and investors intensely want to know how CEOs handle the ups and downs of running businesses over an extended period. Many executive compensation plans define the “long term” as a three-year horizon, but the real test of a CEO’s leadership has to be how the company does over his or her full tenure.

This article contains the first ranking that shows which CEOs of large public companies performed best over their entire time in office—or, for those still in the job, up until September 30, 2009. The results were compiled by collecting data on close to 2,000 CEOs worldwide. It may come as no surprise that Steve Jobs topped the list - but who else ranks in the Top 100 CEOs? The article also asks the questions do we celebrate the wrong CEOs - and why are there so few women CEOs?

In this study of the leadership of 2,000 of the world's top performing companies, only 29 (1.5%) of those CEOs were women, an even smaller percentage than on the Fortune 500 Global list (2.6%). Only one woman, Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay, made it to the top 100 rankings.

Although it's quite US-centric, this is one of the best leadership reviews I've read - click here to access the article.

Love to bypass those annoying salesmen when making your next consumer electronics purchase?

We know that women control an estimated 80% of all household purchasing decisions... so why don't the salespeople we encounter get that and treat us as the intelligent consumers that we are? Because until now they could!

But if you're planning on making any consumer electronics purchases - from DVDs and plasmas to hair straighteners and even shavers for your man - did you know there's an easy way you can bypass the bull and go straight to the facts on the latest products as they hit the market?

ConnectedWomen is a friend of sphinxx and Australia's only weekly newsletter designed to entertain, inform and inspire women about the world of consumer electronics. The website and the free newsletter is full of suggestions on the latest electronics and technology products as they hit the market - so you can read the reviews and shortcut the buying process. And there's always loads of competitions and freebies to boot.

Click here to subscribe to the Connected Women newsletter.

Snap up the last remaining seats at Ascend

If you are planning to attend our Ascend development days in February you'd better get in quick! All the events are almost fully subscribed with only 2 tables left in Adelaide (10 Feb) and Sydney (12 Feb), and 3 tables left in Brisbane (17 Feb) and Melbourne (23 Feb). Click on the city of your choice to download the event flyer and you can register online via the Events page on the www.sphinxx.com.au - or phone our office on 1300 969 070 if you'd like us to take your registration over the phone.

Free coaching offer from "Career after Kids"

Are you planning on returning to work or reviewing your career options so you have more work life balance? Mums@work is proudly supporting mums & dads to return to work and kickstart their career by running a ‘Career After Kids’ practical 2.5hr seminar facilitated by career experts to answer all your questions about getting back to work. This seminar has it all and is designed for parents on parental leave, looking to re-enter the job market or make a career change.

The first 3 sphinxx readers to book on the Career After Kids seminar on 24th Feb in Sydney will receive will receive a bonus free one-hour coaching session - to book in simply call Emma at Mums@work on 02 9967 8377.