EMERGING LEADER
In the early stages of your career, you are appropriately focused on your own professional development, understanding and building on your strengths and seeking opportunities for greater development. You utilize feedback to support your growth, work effectively as part of a team and have a track record of success in managing projects and even major department initiatives.
With about 5 to 9 years of experience, you are laying the groundwork for your next phase of leadership development by broadening your perspective, enhancing critical competencies and raising your hand for greater challenges. You may hold a title such as Administrator, Coordinator, Specialist, Manager or Senior Manager.
On the Monday and Tuesday of Conference, WFF will offer four education sessions. Attendees will have the ability to select three of the four sessions during the registration process. See below for session details by day.
Monday
Be the Spark - Establishing Your Personal Brand in 2020
Competencies: Influence and Diplomacy
It’s possible to get a paycheck just for showing up, but real opportunities go to those with the SPARK to think and work beyond their current role. Finding your SPARK will enable you to establish your personal brand and set yourself apart so you can shine brilliantly in a world of competition and uncertainty. With content drawn from Simon's book, Be the Spark: Five Platinum Service Principles to Create Customers for Life, you will learn how your personal brand is the SPARK needed to create a purposeful career, unleash innovation and create brilliant customer relationships.
Attendees will:
- Learn to establish your brand on your team, department and organization
- Understand how to find a sponsor to promote your brand to key influencers
- Assess your personal brand using the SPARK framework
- Identify the mindset, skillset and will-set needed to thrive in 2020 and beyond
SPEAKER:
Career Strategies to Increase Your Impact
Competencies: Taking Initiative/Influence and Diplomacy
Many professional women want to up their influence and impact but struggle to identify the right opportunities and carve out the time to make it happen. Based on years of experience and research, JJ DiGeronimo wrote the professional playbook on how to secure that next position, land a board seat, or even launch a new initiative by enhancing relevance, aligning to specific projects and strategically expanding your network. This interactive work session and discussion will highlight strategies from her research and award-winning book Accelerate Your Impact: Action-Based Strategies to Pave Your Professional Path.
Attendees will:
- Examine self-imposed boundaries
- Review techniques to highlight professional value
- Consider activities and projects to gain momentum
- Discuss ways to connect with career mentors and sponsors
SPEAKER:
Leading on Your Feet: The Art and Science of Leadership Through Improvisation
Competencies: Awareness and Insight
In our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, strategies change frequently, businesses rise and fall overnight and those adept at thinking on their feet are best positioned to leverage change. This highly engaging and interactive program will draw from improvisation techniques to equip attendees with the skills to lead on their feet.
Attendees will:
- Learn the leadership mindset
- Explore the perils of 'unleadership'
- Define success in a VUCA world
- Use improv principles to embrace change
SPEAKER:
Owning the White Space
Competencies: Awareness and Insight
White space is untapped territory where your future is waiting to take shape. But it takes courage to see those openings and step into them. While others are too worried about fitting in or wedded to playing it safe and sticking with what's worked before, the brave can move forward to tap new opportunities, do what no one else is doing and blaze their own path to success. Learn how to own the white space of new opportunities in this highly engaging and inspiring session with the woman who met her greatest challenges head on in 100 Days Without Fear.
Attendees will:
- Learn to cultivate courage and authenticity
- Gain confidence to strike out in new directions
SPEAKER:
Tuesday
The Fine Art of Building Business Relationships: One Conversation at a Time
Competencies: Building Networks
You’re finally in front of the sought-after mentor or have been introduced to a group of influential colleagues, and now you’re struggling for what to say to get the conversation going. In this interactive, fast-paced session, you will master the nearly lost art of conversation to increase visibility, build influence and make the most of face time and key networking opportunities with communication and conversation expert Debra Fine.
Attendees will:
- Learn how to turn every conversation into an opportunity for success
- Replace awkward silences and excessive chatter with meaningful interaction
- Gain the conversational tools to excel in social and business situations
SPEAKER:
The Leadership Test: Six Questions That Transform People and Organizations
Competencies: Driving for Results
TTake the six-question “Leadership Test” to generate simple behavioral changes that build better careers, stronger organizations and more fulfilling lives. In this engaging and empowering session, you will uncover how daily commitment to the values of impact, courage, growth, empowerment, class and self-respect change how you think and what you do.
Attendees will:
- Make simple but highly effective behavioral changes
- Gain insights from leaders of all types – CEOs, elite athletes, cab drivers, custodians and everyone in between
- Glean learnings from small-town Canada to the deserts of Qatar
SPEAKER:
Many Communicate. Few Connect.
Competencies: Communication and Listening
Regardless of workplace or industry, the most successful people know how to connect with others and get their message through despite a daily barrage of digital distractions. When you connect and communicate on a deeper level, you form crucial relationships that drive productivity, engagement and collaboration while increasing respect and overcoming conflict.
Attendees will:
- Awaken your personal awareness to foster healthy communication
- Align your thoughts, words and actions to build trust and increase influence
- Learn to champion the accomplishments and strengths of every team member
- Increase rapport and leave a positive, lasting impression with everyone
SPEAKER:
Dare to Thrive
Competencies: Awareness and Insight
Dima uses her personal story of vulnerability, insight and transformation as a powerful teaching tool that resonates with and encourages other women to face and conquer internal limitations. She dares you to look deeper and sparks a guiding light for an individual journey of self-discovery and growth.
Attendees will:
- Address fears of failure, pursuit of perfection and worries about judgment
- Master tools to shatter limitations and emerge as empowered leaders
SPEAKER:
EMERGING EXECUTIVE
Well into your career with a history of accomplishment, you have a broad and strategic perspective that enables you to not only motivate and lead your team effectively, but to help advance organization-wide priorities. You have deep functional expertise, strategic networks across the organization and know how to lead through others.
Typically, with about 8 to 20 years of experience, you have P&L responsibilities, have led a department, business unit or region and know how to set and reach goals through teams. You may hold a title such as Director or Senior Director.
On the Monday and Tuesday of Conference, WFF will offer four education sessions. Attendees will have the ability to select three of the four sessions during the registration process. See below for session details by day.
Monday
Why Curiosity is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage
Competencies: Driving for Results
Perhaps the only thing harder than getting to the top is staying there. From blind spots about our business to the pitfall of feeling like an expert, this thought-provoking session reveals the smokescreens that can obscure imminent threats to long-term viability for you and your company. Learn how to boost innovation, uncover unmet customer needs, increase employee engagement and create new value for customers by flexing your Curiosity Muscle, also the title of presenter Diana Kander’s new book.
Attendees will:
- Learn why curiosity is your greatest asset to drive innovation and help your company compete on more than price
- Develop better questions to institutionalize curiosity, remain relevant and drive growth
- Reduce the risk of new ideas and create a more innovative culture
- Identify pitfalls within your organization and avoid the expert trap
SPEAKER:
All In: How the Best Leaders Create a Culture of Belief and Drive Big Results
Competencies: Driving Results
When team members believe that what they do matters, organizations can deliver extraordinary results. In this session, you will explore research from more than 300,000 people in high-performing organizations captured in the best-selling book All In: Real Life Business Lessons from Emerging Entrepreneurs. In this session, you will learn how leaders engage, enable and energize their teams with highly relatable stories of leaders in action.
Attendees will:
- Grasp the three characteristics of the world’s most productive organizational cultures
- Go deep on the 7 steps today’s to generating buy-in and belief
- Learn how managers at all levels can build a productive culture where employees go above and beyond
SPEAKER:
Building a Personal Brand You're Proud of Through Your Communication
Competencies: Awareness and Insight
How you show up and how you stayed show up for all interactions determines how people perceive you every day of the week. Is your personal brand consistent or are people guessing who’s they will interact with?
This interactive session will give you the how to’s for building a personal brand and teaching your teams how to do the same through your verbal and non-verbal communication.
Learning Objectives:
- See yourself as others see you. Are you as good-or bad as you think you are when you communicate with influence?
- How to’s for building a personal consistent brand Monday to Monday®
- Communicate with brevity and build trust to be heard
- How to’s for holding yourself accountable by applying the skills we discuss
SPEAKER:
Leading Change - What All Leaders Must Know
Competencies: Driving for Results
The same bias for action that is a critical component to most leader’s success can often undo the change management process where slowing down to provide the “why” is one of the most effective ways to generate buy-in and drive success. This fast-paced, engaging session will challenge your thinking on change management, increase your understanding of our psychological responses to change and provide the tools and insights to shift workforce resistance, support and guide colleagues through the transition and avoid the negative consequences of well-intended but poorly executed change leadership.
Attendees will:
- Explore why change fails
- Study the importance of the “quiet phase” in building alignment
- Understand why the rules of change leadership differ from general leadership
- Gain tools to diagnose where people are in the change process and how to move forward
- Learn to normalize the predictable productivity drop and emotional journey of change
SPEAKER:
Tuesday
Leading Through Influence
Competencies: Influence and Diplomacy
Great leaders exist at every level of an organization positively influencing the attitudes and behaviors of others. They possess emotional intelligence, communicate effectively and engender authenticity and trust. Not a special disposition or personality trait, these skills can be practiced and honed to maximize performance and potential.
Attendees will:
- Learn what drives human motivation and behavior and how to build trust and credibility
- Identify and harness individual strengths
- Tap into the motivators of others
- Practice communicating to get it right, rather than to be right
SPEAKER:
Lessons Learned from Leadership
Competencies: Problem Solving
Navigating the emerging executive level is challenging; serial CEO Alyssa Rapp will share her experience in problem solving, managing and mentoring teams, while securing your own mentors and coaches.
SPEAKER:
Becoming a Better Leader: Bridging the Gap Between Knowing and Doing
Competencies: Awareness and Insight
How do we bridge the gap between what we know about leadership and who we actually are as leaders? David has the rare ability to raise people’s expectations of what they can become and the expertise to show the way there. He delivers practical, cutting-edge solutions to bridge the gap between knowing and doing and energizes, inspires and motivates in the process.
Attendees will:
- Explore obstacles to leadership growth
- Learn habits and practices that disqualify people as leaders
SPEAKER:
Influence Redefined: Be the Leader You Were Meant to Be, Monday to Monday®
Competencies: Influence and Diplomacy
The way you show up every day in your personal and professional interactions determines how people perceive you. Do you present a consistent personal brand that impresses, or is your communications style spotty, leaving people guessing what to expect in your next interaction? This engaging session will equip you with the verbal and non-verbal communication skills to build your personal brand, and enable you to help your team to do the same.
Attendees will:
- Develop the ability to see yourself as others see you
- Learn how to build a consistent personal brand Monday to Monday®
- Communicate with brevity and build trust to be heard
- Hold yourself accountable for applying new communication skills
SPEAKER:
EXECUTIVE
A seasoned leader, you have a company-wide perspective and are a change agent who contributes significantly to organization direction. You play a high-impact role internally, and represent the organization externally as well. In addition to setting and leading organization priorities, you are focused on developing the next generation of leaders.
You have 15 to 20+ years of experience, unique expertise and have significant P&L experience or contribution to overall organization financial health. You may hold the title of Vice President, President, C-Suite member or Owner.
On the Monday and Tuesday of Conference, WFF will offer three education sessions. Attendees will have the ability to attend all three sessions during the registration process.
New this year, senior executives will enjoy a unique opportunity to dig deep into a critical topic of their choosing. In these workshop-style sessions, carefully selected experts will challenge your thinking, provide opportunities for hands-on exploration of new knowledge and enable you to adapt and apply learnings to your unique workplace context.
In group settings organized for interactive, roundtable peer learning, you will wrestle with executive-level content and participate in candid peer discussions. In-depth experiential learning will ensure you leave the workshop not simply acquainted with new concepts, but adept at their application in your world.
See below for session detail by day.
Monday
The Best Way to Create the Future is to Map It
Competencies: Business and Financial Acumen
Disruptive change coming fast and furious from artificial intelligence to robotics, global disasters, governmental shifts and changing worker attitudes means today’s leaders need proactive strategies to anticipate and map the future of work while dealing with today’s realities. Learn how to flex in times of flux with creative approaches that actually drive transformation and build future-ready teams and organizations. Learn the NextMapping™ model and steps to create your future for yourself and your business.
Attendees will:
- Understand the impact of AI and robotics on your industry locally and globally
- Explore a bi-modal model to merge the best of what’s working now with future trends data
- Evaluate case studies of organizations that have successfully mapped their future
- Harness the ‘people first’ principle that leverages technology to increase value for clients and upgrade the employee experience
- Develop a checklist of ‘what needs to change’ and ‘what will never change’ to prioritize strategic actions
SPEAKER:
Leveraging Technology and Digital Media to Build Brands
Competencies: Strategic Thinking/Visioning
There are few industries as low-tech and change averse as the US wine or healthcare industries. Learn from serial CEO Alyssa Rapp and how she leveraged technology to accelerate growth in both industries over the past decade.
Attendees will:
- Learn how to leverage technology to accelerate brand growth
- Draw on highly creative strategies to create, launch and build robust brands
SPEAKER:
Recovery Hardware
Competencies: Influence and Diplomacy
A leadership dynamo who opened 12 urban Ace Hardware locations in as many years, Gina Schaefer likes to give people, and businesses, second chances. She shares how she creates a culture of trust and empowerment with more than 300 team members from all walks of life, and how strong company culture and calculated community involvement can help an underdog succeed.
Attendees will:
- Look for inspiration around the globe
- Learn to create an inclusive culture
- Hear how Schaefer infuses fun into franchise retail despite stiff competition for customers and employees
SPEAKER:
Tuesday
Leadership Unchained: Defy Conventional Wisdom for Breakthrough Performance
Competencies: Awareness and Insight
As the very nature of business rapidly changes, effective leaders must also disrupt the way they see, think and lead. Leadership author, Sara Canaday, challenges seasoned and emerging leaders to adopt signature habits that will catapult conventional thinking into high-impact, modern leadership. Based on her ground-breaking business book, Leadership Unchained: Defy Conventional Wisdom for Breakthrough Performance, Sara reveals the daily practices that separate innovative leaders from their counterparts. With a dynamic combination of case studies, experience and story, she provides a clear roadmap for enhancing excellence by defying conventional wisdom.
Attendees will:
- Learn to balance a bias for action with a bias for thought
- Ditch your dependence on what you’ve always done
- Be informed by data, but not driven by it
SPEAKER:
Managing Change from the Inside Out
Competencies: Awareness and Insight
Change is as much about what happens internally as it is about what is happening around us. That’s good news because, although we can’t always control situations and circumstances around us, we can control the responses to change that originate within us. Angelia helps audience members shift their focus from the external to the internal and ultimately reshape knee-jerk reactions to change. She will discuss and explore the concepts of emotional deficiency and emotional abundance and how your emotional intelligence governs your response to change through the mind, mouth and actions.
Attendees will:
- Better understand how thoughts truly govern how we lead change in our organizations
- Identify and shift limiting mindsets in response to change
- Learn practical tactics that create positive energy and ownership of the most difficult changes
SPEAKER:
I Know Who I Am, I Respect Who You Are: Developing an Authentic and Functional Approach to Leadership
Competencies: Awareness and Insight
Developing a strong sense of self-awareness is an important first step to determining the kind of leader you want to be and can be. Leaning into your strengths and creating teams that complement areas where you are less strong is a courageous way to lead. Developing a deep respect for others and creating a diverse and inclusive culture on your teams and in your company will create an environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging, can perform at their best and drive toward collective goals.
Attendees will:
- Learn how to develop an authentic and functional approach to leadership
- Deepen respect for others and the value of inclusive environments
SPEAKER:
Executive Workshops (Tuesday 2:30-5:30 PM)
New this year, senior executives will enjoy a unique opportunity to dig deep into a critical topic of their choosing. In these workshop-style sessions, carefully selected experts will challenge your thinking, provide opportunities for hands-on exploration of new knowledge and enable you to adapt and apply learnings to your unique workplace context. You won’t waste time on the basics, but rather interact with your faculty and senior colleagues to tease out the nuances of your selected topic and consider how best to apply strategic insights to targeted needs and opportunities.
In smaller group settings organized for interactive, roundtable peer learning, you will wrestle with executive-level content and participate in candid peer discussions. In-depth experiential learning will ensure you leave the workshop not simply acquainted with new concepts, but adept at their application in your world.
Brain Synch for Better Group Decision Making
Using neuroscience to improve decision making
Because the human brain (and the people carrying them around) evolved to live and work in groups, we can recognize a sense of connection and harmony when we’re all on the same wavelength. Neuroscience can now explain that feeling with research that shows how meaningful engagement and interaction actually synchronizes group member brain patterns. This session explores specific tools and a simple, effective system that draws on “synchronized thinking” to increase the quality of group decisions and team buy-in. Participants will work with the model and practice group decision-making in real time and learn how to bring the techniques back to the workplace to drive better outcomes with less meeting time.
Participants will:
- Generate fast yet robust dialogue and exploration
- Move beyond either/or thinking to both/and solutions
- Avoid pendulum-swing decisions that tend to be short-lived
- Apply a whole-system process that embraces paradox, reduces conflict and avoids paralysis
SPEAKER:
Future-Ready Yourself, Your Team:
Competencies: Driving for Results
This is not your mama’s workplace with AI and automation, shifting worker attitudes and skills, remote work and the gig economy, and increased competition pressing leaders to predict future workplace dynamics today. Future of work expert, Cheryl Cran, will break it down in this roll-up-your-sleeves session where she will provide hands-on strategies to help you get future ready, and to prepare your teams as well. For more than 20 years, Cheryl has equipped leaders and teams with the creative solutions and practical strategies to build business, attract top talent, grow people and ultimately take success to the next level in a rapidly changing world.
Registrants will complete a pre-workshop survey to highlight challenges and goals and participate in in-session polling and interactive texting to gather and share insights in real time. Cheryl will also introduce her proprietary NextMapping models on how to lead change to the future and how to think like a future-ready leader. Interactive exercises, role plays and team activities will focus on building future-leader competencies.
Participants will:
- Delve into the top three challenges keeping senior leaders up at night
- Explore success factors of a future ready workplace culture
- Understand why diversity and inclusion are key to future of work success
- Create a roadmap of action items to apply now
SPEAKER:
Building an Inclusive Culture Begins with Building a Culture of Authentic Influence Leaders
Competencies: Building High Performance Teams
In this workshop the leader will be given the tools to shape culture within a team or organization to effectively deliver results. The tools they takeaway:
- Culture Defined
- The Experience Cycle and the role of Story within your culture
- Psychological Safety within your teams
- The Role of Purpose
- The Authentic Influence Leader
- The Accountability Experience and what it truly means to be accountable in life
- The Ownership Trap
- Identifying Cornerstone Systems to Sync Up
- The Systems Audit checklist
SPEAKER:
CEO & President Forum
Monday, March 30
The most senior executives in the industry are invited to this special session to hear the latest news about women’s advancement in the Food Industry and learn from influential thought leaders sharing proven solutions within a candid executive dialogue.
For CEOs and Presidents only, this unique gathering engages the most senior executives leading core industry organizations with significant scope across the business.
The CEO & President Forum is an invite only event.
One of this year’s featured speakers is Judy Smith, strategic advisor to Fortune 500 corporations. Judy will share learnings from 25 years of guiding corporations and individuals on topics related to diversity and inclusion, gender equity, and crisis prevention.
Session Sponsored by:
SPEAKER:
HR/D&I
Sunday 9:30 AM-11:30 AM
WFF Gender Equity Workshop (Invitation Only)
Sunday 12:30 PM-1:30 PM
Women’s Networks provide specific strategies to increase the representation of women, support and connect women with each other and the broader organization. This session is designed to provide shared solutions for women’s engagement within an organization.