Up to two million women are considering leaving the workforce. The challenges facing companies right now are serious. Among mothers who are thinking about downshifting or leaving, a majority cite childcare responsibilities as a primary reason. 

Note that women are highly concentrated in sectors that [experienced] high rates of disruption and layoffs in 2020, including hospitality, food services, and retail.  

Adding deeper insight into the situation, for six years, the Women in the Workplace study has shown this to be true: compared with women of other races and ethnicities, Black women face more systemic barriers, receive less support from managers, and experience more acute discrimination.  (McKinsey & Company, Inc., March 2021)

Our panel of women presenters from the Whole Person Leadership team will grapple with these questions:

• What next? What can companies do now to affect a positive future for all women? For Black women?

• What are barriers of longstanding for mothers and caregivers in the workforce? Who can fix them?

Join us for a scintillating and useful dialogue convened by the Whole Person Leadership team, Patricia Neal, Vivian Jenkins Nelsen, Lynn Nelson, Kim Kristenson-Lee, Claudia Eisinger.

Conveners: (Whole Person Leadership Team) Patricia Neal, Vivian Jenkins Nelsen, Lynn Nelson, Kim Kristenson-Lee, Claudia Eisinger

How You Can Successfully Shift to this New Frontier of Work

Executives anticipate that 80% of employees will be in the office 1-4 days per week. (McKinsey) but 58% of workers say they would “absolutely” look for a new job if they weren’t allowed to continue working remotely in their current position. (FlexJobs) Remote job postings have increased more than five times on LinkedIn and attract a diverse talent pool. Women and Gen Z are among those more likely to apply for remote vs. on-site positions. (LinkedIn)

Hybrid work and communications plans bring a certain amount of chaos! Most of us are used to working in a “symmetric” work environment, with 2-3 communications channels. Hybrid brings the need for new skills to thrive in an asymmetric environment.

Even now many organizations have no detailed vision or plan communicated for hybrid work.

Convener: Patricial Neal

Patricia works at the intersection of individual and organizational change, where she collaborates with individuals, teams to increase their positive impact in the world in a way that feels inclusive, inspired and alive. She does this through thoughtfully curated, high-impact experiences; workshops, retreats, and courses; and speaking.

Patricia’s focus is inspiring CPL’s growth through program development and execution of CPL's signature programs: The Art of Convening Trainings, Purposeful Leadership model and toolkit, and consulting and coaching programs. All CPL programs are dedicated to creating a world that works for all.

How is this conversation important to your own well-being?

Reclaiming Our Common Humanity: We are all born as beautiful human beings. Race is a pseudo-science. Racism is how we are acculturated, not our natural state of being.

We will explore how to get off the sidelines and get living an anti-racist life: reclaiming our common humanity. How can we use the learnings from the recovery movement to inform how to look at and address the framework that keeps systemic racism in place?

A promise we made this Spring was to stay in the exploration of how to care for our neighbors and grow together. By exploring systemic racism’s roots and remedies, we hope to inspire people to move from simply not being a racist, which does little to dismantle racism, to actively living an anti-racist life and becoming an ally to the Black community.

What could be the “12-Step” program to move from separation to common humanity? Step 1: acknowledge that racism exists.

Conveners: Kelly Chatman, Craig Neal, Terry Chapman

We really are better together!  Understand unique and distinctive ways that team settings can foster individual wellness and shared resilience...especially when its members are faced with uncertainty and change.   Learn the exact steps YOU can take to create a positive physiology of team performance:  safe, appreciative, and high learning.  Integrate into your toolkit nine specific checkpoints to ground and center the team when the team is operating in an unpredictable environment, or even actively disrupted.   Re-envision your future, remove self-limiting beliefs, untangle challenges, eliminate blocks, and make progress at crossroads

Kim Kristenson-Lee, MAIR, ICF-credentialed coach (ACC), Trauma-Informed Certified Coach, and an Art of Convening™ Certified Convening Leader. Kim offers a range of coaching services for individuals, teams, and organization leaders. Kim’s coaching practice specializes in feedback-informed leadership development and in aiding teams after disruptions. She owns Labyrinth Leadership Group, LLC, and is Director of Coaching for The Center for Purposeful Leadership, in Minneapolis.   Being aware of the significant role that trauma and disruption has played in her own life enables her to be an empathetic and humble learning partner.   Growth is not only possible, but indeed, likely with the right support. 

Trust is critical to effective leadership at all levels. Trust is the cornerstone of effective, long lasting diversity initiatives. It is the necessary component for building authentic relationships across differences. We will look at how trustworthiness is built and maintained, and how you developed your trust style. What is after DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion)? DEIJ!

Justice is the step beyond equity that rebuilds relationships in conflicts, rights wrongs, seeks reconciliation, forgiveness and restitution. Let’s create a new vision.

Vivian Jenkins Nelsen is a diversity practitioner, aka the Diversity Doctor. She has had a long academic career, is active in her community having served on many boards. Nelsen co-founded The INTER-RACE institute at Augsburg University and is the CEO of The Hypatia Group, Inc. She has authored a large number of articles, training methodologies and eleven books. She loves music, the arts and serving as a surrogate “Nana” for Weston, Oliver, Sade, and Solomon. 

We explore the six dimensions of Wellness (intellectual, spiritual, vocational, emotional, social and physical) and allocate time we wish to devote to each, based on Getting Your Life into Balance author Lynn Nelson’s Time Diet. We also look at the nuances between black and white and help you define your own Shades of Gray when it comes to: play to workaholism, helpfulness to others to care for yourself, do-it-yourself to delegation, etc. And we come up with a plan to shift toward better balance now and in the future. 

The Great Resignation Is Here, and It's Real | Inc.com
What's going on? A new Gallup analysis by Vipula Gandhi and Jennifer Robison "finds that 48% of America's working population is actively job searching or watching for opportunities. Businesses are facing a staggeringly high quit rate -- 3.6 million Americans resigned in May alone -- and a record-high number of unfilled positions. And Gallup discovered that workers in all job categories, from customer-facing service roles to highly professional positions, are actively or passively job hunting at roughly the same rate."

What’s next?
What can organizations do to keep their employees? If you are transitioning, how do you manage the in-between time? How do you care for your family or obligations that depend on a paycheck? How do you care for yourself?

How to plan? You know what you don’t want. How do you begin to create or ask for what you do want?
How do you find employers of choice? Or, decide to strike out on your own?

We will discuss Purposeful Transitioning: discovering and being grounded in your purpose as your true north and compass.

Convened by the WPL Team: Patricia, Lynn, Vivian, Kim