My Reflection from Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2019

Early morning on one of the Workday's I received a surprise invitation on my outlook stating that "I am invited to Grace Hopper Celebration(GHC), 2019", It gave me a hint of a technology event, unsure at that point of time how significant it is! Thanks to my Senior Manager and Leadership who have allotted my name to be one of the attendee's in the event. I couldn’t have imagined that those 4 days in the conference will give me one of the most valuable experience’s of my life. For those who haven’t heard of the Grace Hopper Conference, GHC is the world’s largest gathering of women technologists from all around the world. In Oct, 2019 it was celebrated in Orlando, Florida and Workday had been a 3rd consecutive year proud diamond sponsor of the GHC Conference. Read More..

After receiving the invitation, I dig deeper into the GHC to find out about its origination as I heard about the conference for the first time Read More About Grace Hopper. I am a first time GHC Conference attendee and I was already blown away by the representation of women from different backgrounds, industries, and experience levels. Listening to the women leaders talking about their life journeys, challenges and experience was awakening. The moment I entered the GHC Conference hall , the overall experience overwhelmed me to find 25000 women under the conference roof looked so passionate about technology. The energy in the room was truly incredible.

I am hereby sharing my reflection from the conference which have helped the speakers in their personal and professional life to achieve exponential growth in their leadership journey. I hope inculcating these in our everyday professional and personal life can help us go beyond the reach and also to those who surround us.

Key Takeaways from GHC 2019

1) Strengthen the Communication and Building Trust

In one of the Keynotes GHC speaker's encourages women professionals to build the strong and valuable communication with the people in every facet of our life. Communication is what leaves an impact on people and promotes ever-lasting working relationships. Strong communication eventually leads to building trust among people and hence fosters productivity, rapport and morale building.

2) Commit to Help

We will take our power and channel it to a commitment

- Brenda Daren, President and CEO , AnitaB

The GHC Speaker asks for the Commitment from women out there to help each other and to bring everyone along so that we can prosper together in our challenges and bring light into each other’s life. Women leaders inspires us to fight for ourselves and for each other.

Don’t walk alone, bring people together with you as "United we stand, divided we fall". "Commit to Help" promotes creating unity among women and towards supporting each other in our journeys.

3) Power of “We”

“ Women Thrive on We”

- Jenny Crocker

As we all experience in our daily life Connection is the “SUPERPOWER” in the modern world, and Women THRIVE ON “Power of WE”. We are and we can do better together and we can reach heights by supporting each other in our endeavours. When we support each other in our struggles we become each others SUPERPOWER. Speakers Judy Cohen , Founder, Amaze Strategies and Erica Elam, Leadership Facilitator , Phoenix Technology Consulting asks us to fully embrace and leverage our powers, develop, expand, enhance , amplify our powers by collaborating and co-creating.

Be your vulnerable, authentic and powerful self! - GHC19

4) Volunteer Often

GHC Speaker here highlights the importance of volunteering, finding a social cause/sustainability concern and works towards it, and the significance of giving back to the society and living the "life of service" . Speaker here asks us to live the “Life of Service” and to go back and look at the community who don’t have what we have and be grateful. Go to those communities and become a champion. Let’s live the "Life Of Service".

5) Universe Inside "US"

Realise the vast universe inside you!

Think about the time when you felt small but together we can do great things and boost each other. We all have experienced those moments in our life where we lose ourselves and feel small. Just in those moments, consider doing this exercise: Take a Pen and a paper do a small exercise below and surely you will again realise your true potential which will help your work higher on your upcoming goals.

• The Success I have achieved so far !

• The Failures I have survived so far!

• Obstacles I have overcome so far!

• What I have learned so far!

6) Genius in You!

Whose Genius are we going to ignite today”?

- Ana Roca Castro, Genius Plaza

We know we have a "Genius" inside of us which is capable of performing miracles. Speaker here explains her story of how here genius was ignited. There is always someone in our life who has ignited the genius in us! Speaker’s genius was ignited by “ Mother Treasa who taught her the “life of service”. Remember those people who had played a significant role in you life till date and may be give them a ring and express yourself to them. Your Genius was ignited, now whose Genius are you going to ignite!

7) Avoid Mental Guardrails

Speaker Denise Brosseau, CEO, Thought Leadership Lab talks about the factors which obstructs women to reach the top of the organisations. Women Leaders talks about few areas where we future leaders require to be cautious of.

The four of those factors we need to keep an eye on so that we don’t fall prey to them.

• Perfectionism: It means the refusal to accept any standard short of perfection, refers to an all-or-nothing mentality. Perfectionist believe is that only achieving perfection can provide them happiness. Perfectionist constantly worry about their own impossible standards and which leads to Depression, Health Issues, Anxiety.

• Procrastination: Delaying/Postponing something, often to the point where it is impossible to complete or do well. People Procrastinate due to the fear of failure as we are dealing with the perfectionism or negative self-belief.

• Imposter Syndrome: Individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalised fear of being exposed as a "fraud". Inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been achieved as a result of one’s own efforts or skills.

• Bragging: Not appropriately bragging, unwilling to share our accomplishments, even when it's warranted and necessary. Bragging can give one a bad impression however, We require to skill this art of bragging where we are showing people in the right situation and time what our qualities are and what we are capable. For E.g. If you are applying for a promotion or a pay rise, appropriate bragging is required to make your evaluators evaluate and analyse your performance and deliverables. Make them aware how much u do behind the scenes.

8) Crank up the Volume!

The GHC Speaker Aylin Turhan Orakcal, Software Engineering Team Lead, Blooomberg talks about the importance of Amplifying to make the large - scale organisational impact. But, how does amplify matters? It is our responsibility to communicate our accomplishment appropriately wherever possible to not to miss the opportunities for recognition. It simply means “Reaching Out More”. Speaker mentions that "Movement Communities, Working Groups and collective events are an effective way to spread your impact across the organisation and to leave your mark.

Interestingly speakers Yolanda and Revekka both Software Engineers from Bloomberg also mentions the importance of Agile at Workplace as Agile promotes people to speak up and help ask questions, helps us in participating in the discussions and openly speak about our ideas. Agile development can help secure your seat at the table, find your motivation and achieve the career satisfaction.

"Let's Amplify Each Other" says Denise, CEO, ThoughtLeadership Lab - I strongly believe that Amplify can play a huge importance to a person's life in the sense that whenever we recognise a person's "SuperPower". We should take a chance to Amplify it to them, doing this will eventually help the person to realise the potential and to do exceptional in that personality trait.

9) Diversity improves Decision Making

We will be fearless and take a stand for diversity - GHC19

Diversity matters as Divergent Thinking is an Essential Capacity for Creativity as Great Minds Don't Think Alike" says the speaker "Sarah Yang, Talent Brand & Diversity Lead, Getaround". Diversity helps in bringing innovative approaches and uniqueness to the teams, helps improve team performance and collaboration. Companies are more complete and successful when they have more dots to connect, more creative ideas they generate. The key is to understand different viewpoints and bring them across and blend them.

Throughout the conference a huge emphasis has been placed on the Diversity. According to the speakers Diversity of thoughts and inclusion of people enable developing life changing technologies. I am proud to say that Workday has put a phenomenal effort into belonging, diversity and inclusion. We have 160 nationalities at the workplace and we also celebrate VIBE week which stands for "Value Inclusion, Belonging and Equality for all".

10) Creating a SAFE Space starts with “YOU”

Importance of empathy in the workplace. when you show deep empathy towards others, their defensive energy goes down and positive tops up.

Create an environment in which you love working. SAFE stands for "Sharing, Acceptance, Fairness, Empathy".

Empathy has a key importance at our workplaces. There are 4 steps to Empathy : Value Yourself, Value Others, Listen, Solve Problems. I am proud to belong to Workday as my workplace makes me feel included and physiologically safe and where my voice is heard and I can be my most authentic self.

11) Expand your Circles

Visibility is the most prominent factor for career advancement and recognition in the tech world - GHC19

The importance of visibility for the women in tech and it applies to everyone in general. The amount of influence you can have in your organisation is also directly related to the visibility. Speaker mentions that " Founding and leading grassroots initiatives that have organisational impact is a powerful approach to gain visibility - Aylin Turhan, Software Engineering Team Leader, GHC19

The Speaker here makes a point that in order to eliminate the erasure of women in tech, women needs to put efforts towards increasing their visibility in each facet of their lives.

12) Creating Effective Teams

What makes an effective team? Denise, CEO at ThoughtLeaderlab talks about the key aspects which assists a leader in creating the effective teams are:- Teams Values and Celebrations, Team Structure, Culture, Spans from On-Boarding to Off-Boarding.

The questions the teams can put on the above 4 categories are:-

• Values and Celebrations:- Are you explicit about your values? What do you stand for and what do you celebrate?

• Structure:- What are the accountability, tracking, meeting structures are in place?

• Culture:- Is there a well defined culture, what are the culture norms?

• Spans from On boarding to Off-boarding:- what are the onboarding rituals, how do you welcome people, how do you send them on their way?

To summarise I say that "Together we are the super-power and together we can create the better place for all of us in the world so lets join hands and aspire towards it United"