In my previous blog, I reported on the highlights of the W.I.N. Global Leadership conference held in Prague, Czech Republic on October 8-10.

In addition to those highlights, during the conference two business school professors from London and Switzerland  delivered presentations that I found quite thought provoking. Both discussed the different characteristics that make women leaders thrive, but also pointed out ways they shoot themselves in the foot.

Do you agree with these competences and assertions from Nigel and George or do you have a different list?  Do any of these competencies strike an idea for a new development area for yourself?

Nigel Nicholson, Professor at the London Business School, began by stating that we have a fundamentally wrong model of leadership being practiced today that is based on meritocracy where decisions are made on a linear hierarchy.  It creates a purely random universe where people “get there” by luck.

What you are supposed to be doing as a leader is getting the best out of those around you.  There is a unique set of characteristics that women have used to help drive the future that are actually more positive than the male dominant hierarchy model.  However, women often don’t jump into the water if it doesn’t look good.Meaning they don’t move between enough different environments - which lessens their opportunities for leadership roles.

Nigel also talked about the strategy of the future being based on vision and outlined some key skills that women have and should develop in order to prepare themselves for future leadership roles.  These key skills include:  asking questions; de-centering (seeing what something looks like from another perspective); managing like a partner and not a boss; storytelling - connecting people with the past, present, and the future in a way that is emotionally compelling.

A leader answers the following questions:

1. Who am I and why am I here?
2. Who are we and what do we stand for? - Our core competence and real purpose
3. Where are we going?
4. Why are we going there? - Stated with conviction!
5. Why must we change? - A crisis is a terribly opportunity to waste

On the last day of the conference, George Kohlrieser, Professor at IMD in Switzerland listed out his view of the critical competencies for women leaders.  His background is very interesting as he began his career in law enforcement and grew to become a hostage negotiator.  Much of his work is about resolving conflict and many of the ideas presented below are covered in his new book “Hostage at the Table: How Leaders Can Resolve Conflict, Influence Others, and Raise Performance.”

The core competencies for women leaders he highlighted in his presentation were:

1. Being assertive
2. Being decisive
3. Social bonding to raise performance (otherwise known as connectedness or networking)
4. Managing conflict for a win-win outcome
5. Being a secure base and having secure bases
6. Mastering the mind’s eye to focus on positive goals (versus being sucked into the negative outlook on life)
7. Developing resilience
8. Understanding business

One of the most compelling statements he made was how we get to the highest level of performance through failure and how we live in a world where there is a high expectation for entitlement.

On October 8-10, 2009, I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the W.I.N. Global Leadership conference in Prague, Czech Republic. This was my third time attending this conference and I was again impressed with the integration of creativity through music performed at the start of each plenary session and the bevy of global thought-provoking speakers.

The W.I.N. audience is very similar to that of FWE&E in its composition of entrepreneurs, executives, consultants, thought leaders who are forward-looking people and influential decision makers. They state that the W.I.N. woman is typically culturally aware, wants to be part of a community and has an international and open mindset. She is well educated, keen to learn, to grow and to contribute, receptive to new technology, embraces change and listens to her intuition.

The theme of this year’s conference was Wisdom in Action - divided into three main segments with the first day providing a global overview of topics of interest to women leaders, followed by a day of work and career issues, concluding with a day focusing on leadership and personal growth topics.

Some of the highlights for me included Axel Olsen from the Institute for Future Studies in Copenhagen who stated that the future is going to be created by women in new and different ways than we’ve seen in the past. This is the best time in life to create our own future where the opportunities are as big as the risks. The Institute offers 15 megatrends that they feel will shape the future with the top five being knowledge, new technology, acceleration, hyper-complexity and globalization. Other trends that interested me were immaterialization, individualization, networks, environment and aging. He ended by stressing that existing competition means nothing and that surprises will come from new and different angles.

Other sessions that I found quite compelling included hearing from Lorella Zanardo, Founder and General Manager of Sportgate who has taken on the challenge of highlighting sexism against women in Italy by creating a documentary entitled The Body of Women after being shocked by the images of women in the media in Italy on public television during early hours of the day.

The story of Unilver’s re-energizing of the Dove Brand as told by Angela Nelissen, Sales Director HPC of Uniliver was such an interesting story. The idea of the body self esteem campaign came from a brainstorming session held at a corporate offsite where the women were sharing the issues that meant the most to them and many of them related to self esteem. It was interesting to hear the stories of the internal communication created to “sell” the new campaign and the resistance shown by countries such as France and Italy where beauty was not viewed in the same manner. The new Dove self esteem fund for girls has been a very generous and creative offshoot of the campaign.

We heard the story of career development from Alison Smale, Executive Editor of the International Herald Tribune who, after spending many years in Eastern Europe and Russia and actually being present when the Berlin Wall came down, now lives once again in the UK. Her story of her education, opportunities that opened, and risks that she took were very compelling. What was most interesting was to learn that the International Herald Tribune is about to begin a new series on global women entitled “Turning Point” where they will cover information about women in all walks of life in all countries.

I was moved to tears by the story from Marguerite “Maggy” Barankitse from Burundi who has founded the Maison Shalom (House of Peace) and has supported up to 10,000 children orphaned by the strife in her country. Her native language is French and hearing her wonderfully accented voice tell the story of seeing her family killed in front of her, pleading with the killers to let her save the children, starting to care for them with nothing and ending with the successful story of building a wonderful school, hospital and many other services was beyond amazing. Her focus on it all being driven by love, her compassion and her belief that it could all be done was humbling.

The conference concluded with a drumming session lead by Doug Manuel and Sewa Beats where, through the practice of drumming, we learned how to follow and how to lead. An incredibly fun and motivating experience if you’ve never done it.

I look forward to hearing more stories from the other participants and will continue to post updates on the learning from this amazing group of women who come together as W.I.N.