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THE VANCOUVER BOARD OF TRADE’S WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP CIRCLE®
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What’s useful about Centered Leadership is that even if you aren’t a natural optimist, or fearless or have energy to burn, the model gives you the tools to help you change the way you operate. Come to this event, bring co-workers and friends. This might just change the trajectory of your career! Read more about The Five Dimensions of Leadership before the February 3 event.HOW TALENTED WOMEN SURVIVE
POWERFUL WOMEN—YOU GOT THAT RIGHT!*
Speaking of powerful women, as of January 1, 2010 Bev van Ruyven (pictured above) became the acting president and chief executive officer of BC Hydro. Bev is one of Canada’s 2009 Top 100 Women Award winners and a WLC Advisory Council member. Find out who else is on the 2009 list. Fortune magazine also lists the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business. There are a number of interesting categories you can scan: Highest Paid, Youngest, Movers, and Global women leaders. LIVING THE REMARKABLE WOMEN MODEL
In 1950, with four young children, Wendy took over as president of B.C. Bearings, when her first husband (who started the business) died in a plane crash. Unfortunately, she was widowed twice more, when her second husband drowned and the third was killed in a car accident. Over the years her accomplishments have been many. She was the first woman chair of The Vancouver Board of Trade, was honoured with the Veuve Clicquot Award of Distinction, which is awarded to top businesswomen in different countries each year and received an Order of Canada designation in 1997. If you want to read Wendy’s story, there is a new book, You Got That Right: The Story of Wendy McDonald and B.C. Bearing Engineers. It’s written like an album of her life, full of great Wendy stories and amazing photos.
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When events have “women” in the title, women come to the event, men don’t. A case in point was the WLC event last year, where Catalyst vice president Deborah Gillis shared the 2007 Catalyst Census of Women Board Directors findings. The report showed that companies with the highest representation of women directors had stronger performances than those with fewer women – 53 per cent higher return on equity, 42 per cent greater return on sales and 66 per cent higher return on invested capital: pretty remarkable data for anyone interested in corporate governance and its relationship to organizational performance. What was unfortunate was that the audience was primarily women. I noted at the time: “this information is great, but I think we’re speaking to the wrong audience.”
HOW TALENTED WOMEN THRIVE 
You’ve just had a major screw up at work (we figure it is okay to use this word — Obama does). So, how do you recover from something like that? Here is an example from How Remarkable Women Lead of how leaders can survive a career-limiting move. Authors Barsh and Cranston tell the story of Ellyn McColgan, an up-and-coming superstar at Fidelity Investments, who had what could only be described as a ‘near death’ business failure of her unit. “I thought my career was over.” The steps of how she survived that business crisis are lessons we all can learn. “A natural reaction to failure is to be afraid and to get smaller,” Ellyn says. “But what you should do is get bigger.” Along with this, Ellyn also unplugged her natural reaction to be defensive. Following a series of important steps outlined in How Remarkable Women Lead, she recovered her reputation. What was interesting was the amount of time it took. For example, it took a year to win back the trust of her boss. To have the confidence and self-belief to “hang in there” are skills that we can all learn.
There was a time, not so long ago, that the business community would have looked askance if someone had suggested a MOST POWERFUL women list. Today there are annual most powerful women lists. We have Toronto’s Pamela Jeffery of the Women’s Executive Network (WXN) to thank for going where no women’s group had gone before, with the establishment in 2003 of Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Awards. To date, 460 women from across Canada have received this Award and 62 of these women have been inducted into the Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Hall of Fame. 
*“You got that right!” is the trademark saying of one of the most amazing, powerful and wonderful women leaders, our own Wendy McDonald, the dynamo behind B.C. Bearings. Wendy exemplifies what Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston’s research found: “Every woman leader we met was an optimist, and it really doesn’t matter who was born one and who developed the skill.”
PREFERRED HOTEL RATESFor more information, please e-mail design@boardoftrade.com.
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