On the Horizon - Upcoming events for April and beyond

A variety of upcoming events that may be of interest to our readers...

If you would like to promote your event, please contact us at The Bickley Blog

Directors Toolkit Briefing: What keeps directors awake at night?
12 April 2012, 5:30pm - 8pm in Perth, Australia
Presented by the Australian Institute of Company Directors

Today, directors face a multitude of external challenges - from their suppliers, financiers, the Australia economy and the global economy. In this brad discussion, a panel of advisors and ASX listed directors will discuss their views on the some of the hot issues for 2012.  Speakers include: Roch Krasnoff, Conquest Mining Ltd; Simon Winfield, Hays Executive; Tony Adcock, Birchman Group; Jeff Vibert, Grant Thorton. For details and registration, visit the AICD website.

Getting Started: Realising your Board Potential

9 May 2012, 2pm - 5pm in Perth, Australia

Presented by Women on Boards

A workshop specifically designed to assist you with strategies for board and career development. The session provides an overview of what it takes to be a director and strategies for including board work in your career. For more information and registration, visit the Women on Boards webpage.

Engineering Leadership Conference
Passing the Baton: Engineering Australia's Future
30 May - 2 June 2012 in Adelaide, Australia
Presented by Engineers Australia

This year's theme is Passing the Baton, exploring the profession's direction through a series of dynamic and thought-provoking speakers and presentations.  The key note address will be delivered by former Australian Deputy Prime Minister, the Honourable Tim Fischer.

Wired for Influence Workshop

19 July 2012, 9am - 5pm in Melbourne, Australia

Presented by Women on Boards

A workshop designed for business people at all stages of career from early career to Non-Exec Directors interested in developing strategies to boost influencing for career success. For more information and registration, visit the Women on Boards webpage. 

The 8th European Conference on Management, Leadership and Governance
8-9 November 2012 at Neapolis Univeristy Pafos, Cyprus

The ECMLG will bring together a unique blend of leadership scholars, researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to share the insights of management, leadership and governance in the 21st Century.  Call for papers is now open, with abstracts due on 20 April 2012.  For further details of conference tracks and key dates, visit the conference webpage.

Leading Out of Maternity Leave

Lead Engineer and Bickley Blog reader, Helen Pedersen, gave a thought provoking presentation to Engineers Australia members recently entitled "Leading Out of Maternity Leave". In 2007, Helen attended a presentation of the Career Review of Engineering Women report - the report investigates the issues surrounding women's retention, satisfaction and progression in the engineering workforce. She discovered that the report did not contain much in the way of good news and she observed a negative, almost defeatist response to the results from the mainly female audience. Questions asked from the audience indicated the difficulty of struggling against the tide and that young women were hesitant to have families because of the conflict with career.

Helen was driven to look on the positive side and reflected on her own experience as a parent and as an engineer. Her experience is that parenting is not negative, but can add to and complement a career. Her view is that there are leadership skills that are learnt in many other areas of life that are directly applicable to the workplace, with parenting being a prime example of this. The idea for the "Leading Out of Maternity Leave" (LOOMOL) project was born.

source

Helen's presentation discussed the findings of a survey that she performed as part of the LOOML project, in conjunction with the Western Australia Women in Engineering group. The survey explored the additional skills that parenting can provide and looked at how these skills fit in an engineering environment. Her belief is that recognition of these skills will have multiple benefits - increased confidence for women, better employee contribution for employers, and improved retention for industry.

A group of engineering parents were asked to identify their sources of parenting learning and to rate their leadership skills in terms of how much impact parenting had on these skills in the workplace. The top five skills, seen as enhanced by parenting were:

1. Time management


2. Planning


3. Delegation


4. Self-management


5. Acknowledging effort

The results strongly suggested that the participants felt that parenting skills were relevant and tranferable to leadership in the workplace. Participating in the study was also observed to have a positive impact on those involved - many of the participants were empowered by thinking about their parenting skills in this way and there were tangible changes in confidence and reported self-image.

The findings of the study are being used to develop a set of resources for engineering parents and organisations, to assist with the return from a family break - "The Parenting Pack". It is hoped that this project can demonstrate the useful leadership skills that are gained and enhanced by parents in their time away from the workplace rather than being on a break with no identifiable professional development.

We look forward to further updates from Helen on the progress of this great idea!