sphinxx news alert  
19 May 2010 | www.sphinxx.com.au   

This week we talk about winning the Edna Ryan Workforce Award, leadership and technology, powerful liars, workplace bullying, conversations with male colleagues, the modern woman’s anthology, divorce support, a great Sister in the City Event plus we have an enormous Innoxa give away!

Also I will be in Melbourne around May 28th, so if anyone would like to meet up to discuss how you can best support women in leadership, contact me now so I can fit you in!

1. A word from the SheEO: sphinxx SheEO receives Edna Ryan Workforce Award for improving conditions of female workers
2. WORK: Is leadership different because of new technologies?
3. Be warned: powerful people make better liars
4. Workplace bullying petition
5. Know the game and play the game
6. LIFE: The Modern Woman's Anthology
7. Support for when marriages go wrong
8. Fabulous Sisters In the City Event
9. OFFERS: Enormous Innoxa give away! Doing no harm and a whole lot of good

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

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.

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sphinxx SheEO receives Edna Ryan Workforce Award for improving conditions of female workers

Thank you to the sphinxx team for nominating me for the Edna Ryan Workforce Award which I humbly received on Friday night. This award recognises the work sphinxx does to support the advancement of women as leaders, thereby improving conditions for women workers. It’s nothing really though in contrast to what Edna Ryan achieved in her lifetime.

The Edna Ryan Awards celebrate the life and work of a feminist social reformer, political activist and author. When Edna was born in 1904 (the tenth child in a family of 12 children) things could not have been more different to the workplace I work in today. By the time Edna was five, her father was unemployed and her mother was the family breadwinner - however as a woman her mother could earn just over half the wage paid to a man.

When she died in 1997 at the age of 92, Edna Ryan left a rich legacy. An active feminist all her political life, one of her great joys was the burgeoning of the women's movement in the 1970s, when her long involvement in the equal pay struggle finally culminated in the equal pay decision of 1974.

Edna Ryan’s achievements are many and varied, and include:

• authoring two books
• organising the first Women and Trade Unions conference in 1976
• starting the first post-war work-based childcare centre in 1977
• serving on the executive of the Family Planning Association of NS
• actively supporting women’s theatre and art groups
• using the industrial relations system to make wages and conditions of women workers equal to that of men.

To the other category winners of the 2010 Edna Ryan awards - congratulations on the change you have made to our communities, social activism and the feminist cause. Your stories as you told them at the Awards Night are amazing and - like Edna Ryan - you are being the change you wish to see in the world.

We’re constantly on email, both at our desks and whenever we’re on our phone. Everyone is blogging, texting, tweeting, broadcasting, link sharing and status updating these days. Does this level of constant communication and reach-ability improve our ability to lead our teams, to inspire our friends and to ensure that the work we’re responsible for is as good as it could be?

Jim Champy is an author and consultant, and has written an article on the impact of web 2.0 on leadership for the Harvard Business Review as part of their six part series on what leadership may look like in the future… Click here to read more.

Be warned: powerful people make better liars

A study has recently been conducted in which scientists tested a range of people, both employees and bosses. The study focuses on comfort and success of these individuals when lying. The really interesting and potentially applicable part of this study for us is the finding is that people in more powerful roles such as CEOs, portfolio managers, politicians and elite athletes show fewer involuntary signs of lying such as shoulder shrugging, increased speed when talking.

Click here to read the full Harvard Business Review Article where Professor Carney shares his findings.

Workplace bullying petition

A couple of weeks ago I published a blog summarizing the findings of a new study in workplace bullying. The study by Jenny Morris of Orijen found that 23% of her survey participants (women in management) were currently experiencing workplace bullying in some form.

Marie Claire magazine is currently running a petition calling for a review of workplace bullying laws that is set to go to Julia Gillard, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Sign the petition and add your voice to hundreds of Australian women calling for a better system of support and protection for victims.

Know the game and play the game

One of the key challenges many women have found in their professional advancement is networking and forming friendly genuine professional relationships with their male colleagues. Given there are less and less women the further up the ranks you go, it becomes increasingly important to be able to form good work relationships with men. A great new website has started up that might just give you a new way to engage in those casual office conversations… Click here to read on.

The Modern Woman's Anthology

'There's insight and inspiration here on page after page. For women readers, the breadth of shared experiences must surely be a comfort. For men, it's more of an unveiling; a privileged glimpse into the secret corners of these incredible women's lives. A worthy cause and a terrific read.' - Greg Barton, Editor,
Australian Traveller Magazine

Isn’t it wonderful when you read something that just makes you feel inspired, touched and proud, all at the same time?

The Modern Women’s Anthology is a literary project that has chapters from 20 very different Australian women. I contributed one, and so have Australian athletic hero Cathy Freeman, award-winning children's author Libby Hathorn, chairman and executive director of Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Dr Gene Sherman, Australian Local Hero & Oz Harvest Founder (2010) Ronni Kahn (also a May Ascend Speaker) just to name a few. Reading the contributions by so many Australian women from such a variety of walks of life fired up parts of my brain I haven’t used for ages.

The Modern Women’s Anthology raises money for mental health, and raises the spirits of its readers. I'm speaking at a fundraising lunch this Friday 21st May at Table for Twenty in Surry Hills. Tickets are $100 and spaces are limited... click here for details on how to register.

Support for when marriages go wrong

Divorce can be extremely stressful and painful, trust me, I know! And it’s recognized as one of the most serious distractions from work. Especially when there are children involved. No one wants a divorce, but sometimes it’s the only sane option and with 1 in 3 marriages ending in divorce, it’s a challenge millions of Australian women face.

I just found out there is an online community exists to support men and women planning, going through or recovering from divorce… Click here to read more.

Fabulous Sisters In the City Event

Who’s excited about Sex and the City 2 coming out? Heralded as one of the most hyped movie releases of the year the adventures, cinemas are already fielding huge group bookings of women getting their friends together to enjoy a night out of empowered female fun.

But why not get your girlfriends together and book into see the movie at an event that not only offers a complimentary cosmopolitan, NIVEA gift bags, photo booths, silent auctions and raffles but is also fundraising for a truly fabulous cause? … Click here for more details.

Enormous Innoxa give away! Doing no harm and a whole lot of good

In keeping with the spirit of Ascend, and advice and story sharing and celebrating women, we are giving away an Innoxa goody bag for every blog comment post this fortnight!

So from 10th – 23rd of May a quality comment on one of our blogs will earn you some beautiful bath products.

The lovely people at Innoxa came on board as sponsors for sphinxx and the May Ascend series, and we were delighted when boxes of their goodies started rolling into the office.

They’ve gifted the sphinxx membership and Ascend attendees with goody bags containing a facial moisturiser containing apple and orange nourishing fruit waters, a heavenly smelling “dreams” body lotion and a bright pack of eye shadows in a leaf green, dark golden brown and a bright highlighter colour.

Innoxa products are all hypoallergenic, and cruelty to animals free. You can check out their website here.