#VOICEINME | LeanIn | LevelUp — Grabbed my bits of Wisdom

After a long time, I had an active start to my saturday morning where I got to meet a bunch of ambitious women from various organizations sharing their experiences, their professional journey, and the bits of wisdom. This event was the second session from #LevelUpSeries organized by Lean In Network WiTI

LeanIn Women in Tech — a community that encourages women to continue to be active and ambitious in their careers and reach their goals. Preethi Guruswamy described this word “LeanIn” so beautifully!

Be the guiding light to other women around you…

Be that invisible friend / ally to the women around you…

LeanIn to support..

LeanIn to Lift..

LeanIn to motivate..

LeanIn to have a conversation…!

Wow! So true Preethi Guruswamy.I never thought by Leaning In, we are helping ourselves and others too! That’s why it’s said that “Being an Enabler” gives a sense of pride.

“Together, we can break down the stereotypes that hold us all back, making our organizations more productive and our homes happier. Together, we can create a world where everyone — women and men, girls and boys — has true choice and equal opportunity to follow his or her dreams.” — Sheryl Sandberg

To start the day, a few “LeanIn” stories were shared by Preethi Guruswamy and Smitha Mave and these stories clearly depicted how they found their safe place, best ally, true friends, & mentors/guide who played a role in their career journey. Followed by that Smitha Krishnamurthy shared her career journey and a remarkable leadership position that she holds at Nasdaq. Smitha is extremely influential leader and yet so grounded! Thanks to Smitha Krishnamurthy & Nasdaq team for being the amazing host!

As we moved through the initial hour, I underwent a very interesting session and it was about #VOICEINME by Rashmi Shetty. I must admit that when she was speaking (for nearly 1.5 hours), my focus & attention was undivided. The aura she had, the impact she made on me, the influence her voice & words created was just magical!. Listening through her challenges, her stories and grabbing the wisdom nuggets at the end of each story was simply outstanding. I tried to capture the wisdom bits I got from her in this article for the larger outreach.

To begin with, she clarified the air to make us understand what Mentoring, Coaching, and Sponsorship is all about! And how they are different!

Mentoring is structured, task oriented & methodical focusing on developing individual’s skill/competency and capability. However, Coaching is relationship driven — It is advisory, interactive and iterative process which helps an individual gain valuable insights, leads to increased self-awareness, and career development. Sponsorship is a process where your leader or any influential person within an organization actively advocates for an individual’s career advancement. Sponsors use their influence and decision-making power to help you gain visibility and access to opportunities.

As we moved through the topics, she talked about the significance of “Making your presence felt through your Voice”. Voice plays a very crucial role in building meaningful connections. The energy with which you share your vision, your idea or information along with right vocabulary, results in “connections” through “communication”. Thus Voice is described as;

V = Vision

O = Outcome

I = Information

C = Communication

E = Energy

When we emphasize on “communication” piece, it is more important to understand how powerful “Silence” is! She explained us how to practice “Silence — Pause — Pace”

• Practice silence — you need not speak all the time. Sometimes, write down your thoughts, let them stay with you!
• Practice Pause — Pause is important, and it gives you that space to soak in that moment and respond accordingly
• Practice Pace — Altering pace is important when you talk. This will give your audience the time to catch up with your thoughts and digest it!

Few of my key takeaways from the session are:

• Storytelling is an art and is extremely important
• Create visibility for yourself through your voice (make your thoughts being heard)
• Meaningful connections can be formed through conversations

As the day came to an end, I found myself much more energized, made some good connections, friends, created memories and in a way started to #leanin together!

#VOICEINME #LevelUpSeries Lean In Network WiTI #growth #learning #networking #100daysonLinkedIn #leanin #leaninnetworkwiti #leaninwiti100daysonlinkedin #FridayFeatures #EmpoweredVoices

Preethi Guruswamy Sobhitha Neelanath Deeksha Jaiswal Devi Anantharaman Surabhi Kumari Shilpi Mitra Rashmi Shetty Smitha Mave Smitha Krishnamurthy Sowmya Gopal