Multiple Historic Events this Week - The times, they are a changin'

For those that have spent the week glued to the convention in Denver and witnessing the historic event of the country's first black nominee, not to be outdone, the Republican's have pulled out a very attractive rabbit out of their hat. Sarah Palin will be the Republican Vice Presidential Nominee.

Although I promised no politics on EGG (as for those who know me well, I am about as apolitical as you get), I find this move to be a very interesting one and can't resist commenting on this turn of events.

I am quite sure that many will write this off as pure political strategy. I've already read comments on blogs about this being a "beauty queen pick". But with a presidential candidate turning 72 today, the party had to have thought long and hard about this one and deeply analyzed her credentials. Clearly, if McCain/Palin are elected, we have a very real chance of having our first female president sometime in the next 4-8 years.

Whether or not you like Hillary Clinton, her speech this week was a very real reminder of how very far women have come in our lifetimes.

I am truly encouraged by the fact that this year we have had two such strong women being considered for the highest offices in the land. It gives hope that we can indeed "be anything we want to be" and "go anywhere we want to go".

This week Roger Dow of TIA sent out an email, which if you didn't get it, provided a score card to measure each of the the candidates at the convention. Here is the one for Obama. They'll post the one for McCain next week.

http://www.poweroftravel.org/statistics/reportcard_lasvegas/obama/

The Power of Travel site has some interesting statistics about how travel effects our economy and how important it should be for all of the candidates. Check it out. You may be surprised at what you see.

Regardless of who is elected in November, it is clear that 'the times, they are a changin'.

Have a super weekend. Prayers to those that are in Gustov's path.

Chicke Fitzgerald
founder Executive Girlfriend's Group

Recap of Mary Lippitt vignette on the Leadership Spectrum

Thanks again to Mary Lippitt for being our EGG vignette speaker on Friday. For those that missed the call, here is a summary of her talk.

The Leadership Spectrum Profile: The Third Generation Leadership
by Dr. Mary Lippitt, Enterprise Management Ltd.

In today’s business environment, characterized by global competition, new technologies, changing regulations, flatter organizations, and talent shortages, speed in leadership development becomes increasingly critical. The first generation of leadership theory focused on leadership style or personality. Because changes to personality or style occur slowly, if at all, the second generation of leadership targeted skill sets or competencies. However, after more than 20 years, it has become clear that this approach also takes too long to impact actual behavior or results.

Rathe than focusing on skill sets, the third generation concentrates on mindsets, or what business priorities or goals are driving your decision making and goal setting. If you want results, must focus on them.

The six critical business priorities are:

1. Keep products/services up-to-date and/or state-of-the art
2. Gain and keep market share; serve customers
3. Build organizational structure and systems to establish high performance
4. Improve processes and procedures for efficiency, quality, and ROI
5. Develop committed and competent workforce as well as build a supportive environment and identity
6. Position for the long-term by surfacing trends, assumptions, and issues that offer opportunities or potential threats

The benefit of third generation approach is that if offers-

• A context based framework which enables changing circumstances to become part of developing leadership judgment
• Encourages leaders to connect the dots and “see the whole board”
• Generates respect and inclusion for everyone who contributes to goal achievement , rather using demographic classifications that ask us to “tolerate” someone from a different race, age group or gender

The issue of gender has frequently been introduced into leadership with the divide so deep that women and men are characterized as hailing from different planets. Another unrealistic way to capture gender leadership is to characterize men as taking charge and women as taking care of others. These approaches confuse work with family roles and obligations. When only work behavior is examined, the results are vary difference. Women and men operate from the same business priorities. What is different is that women at supervisor and manager levels use more than one priority to make their decisions while men with those titles only operate from one priority. At the executive level, women wanting faster change, accepting more risk, and looking more at external factors as they set goals.

What this means for organizations that want to retain executive women, is a strategy that offers women an opportunity to make change happen rather than merely offering them more flexibility for work-life balance at all.

For further information contact Mary at mlippitt@enterprisemgt.com or read her award winning book, The Leadership Spectrum. If you would like to take the assessment, Mary will provide an online version for EGG members, just put EGG in the subject line of your request.

Guest Speaker for today's call: Mary Lippitt, Author of Leadership Spectrum

For the first 10 minutes of today's EGG call, Mary Lippitt will join us to talk about the "3rd Generation of Leadership". This will happen after our intros, which normally take the first 10-15 minutes of the call.

We hope everyone will be able to join us today. If not, have a super weekend and see you next week!

If you were on the call today, please contact Mary for your copy of the test instrument to see where you fall on the spectrum. Please mention EGG in your request to Mary.

mlippitt@enterprisemgt.com

Happy Birthday Darlene Rondeau!

Best wishes from all of us to you Darlene! Have a super day!

“Pedal Power” - Contribution from Becky in Denver

History was made in Colorado this past weekend as girlfriends from the Denver metro area participated in the 1st ever all-women’s bike ride. Because it was a new ride the organizers only expected 200 riders. Can you imagine the elation and excitement when 700 of us showed up for this inaugural event?

It was a cool and damp morning when we put mettle to the pedal to raise money for Greenhouse Scholars, an organization that helps high achieving but under-sourced students go to college. Boas, tutus, and crowns could be seen on many of the riders so this made for a colorful spectacle. And, of course, we were chatting with each other for the entire trip!

The word for the day was “shine” and shine we did as we raised enough to send 6 students to Colorado universities this year.

It was a true testament to the impact we girlfriends can make when we come together for a great cause.

Becky Watson
EGG Board Member

Here's to you girlfriends!

Thanks so much to those of you who were on the call on Friday. We changed up the time to 400pm ET, so we had a few stragglers who called in at 430pm. Not to worry! Get there when you can, for how ever long you can. Just get there!

This week we welcomed a number of new girlfriends to the call and they caught up by telling us about themselves, including their favorite places to visit internationally (or to dream about). Two themes this week - you guessed it, Italy and Tuscany in particular and Dubai!

We also share our "high points" and gave the opportunity to share "low points" of the week. While we all agreed that we didn't want to dwell on the low points, it is good to know that you have a safe place to share.

Lee Granger shared her experience in attending Marilyn Carlson Nelson's retirement dinner. See the post below about Marilyn's new book on leadership. You can pre-order it now.

We got some good recommendations on books and movies that I'll be posting later. So if you have read something or seen something special recently, let me know!

This week's call was sponsored by Renie Cavallari, the author of the Official Girlfriend's Getaway Guide. Check out the post from Friday to get more information about her research of this fascinating market.

Vela Mitchell sent me a book last week called Trillion Dollar Moms. I haven't read it yet, but am working with Vela to get Bonnie on the call sometime in August to tell us about this aspect of marketing to another subset of the girlfriend market.

Next week we are going to focus on goals and what you would like to accomplish before we all get together face to face. Annette Hogan and I are working on the first annual Executive Girlfriend's Getaway retreat. It will be held somewhere warm and sunny in late January or early February. We will keep you posted as the location gels and the agenda is firmed up.

Have a super week. Talk to you on Friday.

Chicke Fitzgerald

Aspire's Girlfriend Getaways

I want to thank Renie Cavalari, the sponsor of today's EGG call. I had the pleasure of spending the day with her yesterday, being interviewed on her Aspire Live! show here in Phoenix. I'll let you know when the segment is posted on my website. By the way, it is a dry heat, but 108 is 108 no matter what!

Renie has just written a book, "The Official Girlfriend's Getaway Guide" based on research that she did earlier this year on how girlfriends like to travel. Author John Gray (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) wrote her intro.

You can pre-order the book and see the recommended trips on her new site www.givetoyourself.com. I'm delighted to say that she has integrated my new company's "Adopt-a-Trip™" tool so that you can find the trips and then adopt them and customize them for yourself. The RoadTripWizard.com provides the trip planning tool on the back end.

Thanks Renie! I will be inviting her to join us on our call in the near future and talk to us about marketing to the $6b girlfriend's segment. Who knew???

Chicke

Why Girlfriends Lie

Our humor today is courtesy of Flo Lugli

Why Girlfriends Lie

One day, when a seamstress was sewing while sitting close to a river, her thimble fell into the river. When she cried out, the Lord appeared and asked, 'My dear child, why are you crying?' The seamstress replied that her thimble had fallen into the water and that she needed it to help her husband in making a living for their family. The Lord dipped His hand into the water and pulled up a golden thimble set with sapphires.


'Is this your thimble?' the Lord asked

The seamstress replied, 'No.'

The Lord again dipped into the river. He held out a golden thimble studded with rubies.


'Is this your thimble?' the Lord asked. Again, the seamstress replied, 'No.'

The Lord reached down again and came up with a leather thimble.


'Is this your thimble ?' the Lord asked. The seamstress replied, 'Yes.' The Lord was pleased with the woman's honesty and gave her all three thimbles to keep, and the seamstress went home happy.

Some years later, the seamstress was walking with her husband along the riverbank, and her husband fell into the river and disappeared under the water. When she cried out, the Lord again appeared and asked her, 'Why are you crying?' 'Oh Lord, my husband has fallen into the river!'

The Lord went down into the water and came up with George Clooney.

'Is this your husband?' the Lord asked.

'Yes,' cried the seamstress.

The Lord was furious. 'You lied! That is an untruth!'

The seamstress replied, 'Oh, forgive me, my Lord. It is a misunderstanding. You see, if I had said 'no' to George Clooney, you would have come up with Brad Pitt.

Then if I said 'no' to him, you would have come up with my husband. Had I then said 'yes,' you would have given me all three.

Lord, I'm not in the best of health and would not be able to take care of all three husbands, so THAT'S why I said 'yes' to George Clooney.

And so the Lord let her keep him.

The moral of this story is:
Whenever a girlfriend lies, it's for a good and honorable reas ]on, and in the best interest of others. That's our story, and we're sticking to it.

Signed,

The Girlfriends, Amen

Talk to you at 4pm!

Great inaugural call!

Thanks to all who participated yesterday in our first call of the Executive Girlfriend's Group - Travel Edition. We had 16 participants. We had a great call, just getting to know a bit about each other. I strongly suspect one hour isn't going to be long enough once we get more folks on the call, so I am adjusting the call to 4pm and we'll go to 530pm ET if we need to.

The topic of the day was international travel experiences and dreams and Florence was the all time winner.

If you weren't able to participate yesterday, please just join us next week, ready to share your experiences and dreams about foreign ports of call. Our normal format will be sharing high points and low points of the week, so we can get to the heart of the matter - forming deep friendships and a support network that is meaningful. We know your time is precious.

Have a super weekend. And don't forget to join the Facebook Group (see link to the right). That will help everyone see who is on the group until we launch our community site (coming soon from one of our new sponsors!).

Next week I'll also be introducing some new coaching resources (life coach, health/wellness coach), so if you have any names you want to submit, let me know!

Chicke