Innovation and people in the 21st century
Over the years I have delivered speeches in business schools, corporations and conferences about a large range of topics.
Here below are a few of my favorite ones. They can all be customized to address the needs of smaller groups (team and individual coaching, round tables, leadership training), or the expectations of larger gatherings of any type and size.
Role Models & Mentors
At the foundation of any company lies economic logic. At the foundation of a smart company to work for lies a social symbolism that can be independent from work activities and that reflects the peoples' humanity, their desire to communicate, to give, to help, to motivate, and ultimately their desire to multiply and diversify the social links within an organization.
Diversity by Design
Diversity initiatives are often frustrating because they come as an afterthought in organizational architectures that create exclusion of even “non-diverse” populations. Delivering on diversity is first and foremost about building inclusion for all, which means hiring differently, caring about the personal meaning employees see in their work and how they cooperate.
Above the Glass Ceiling
This topic has a somewhat of an autobiographical flavor. As a single mom, tech entrepreneur and immigrant, I wasn’t going to let pieces of a cracked ceiling hit my head. I thought I could walk outside.. and, of course, I realized that only the sky is the limit. The metaphor of the glass ceiling may indirectly disempower women and could be retired.
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Leadership is as much about empathizing with others as it is about authority. But how do we go from simply claiming to be empathetic to enacting empathy meaningfully? The relevance and effectiveness of our EI is predicated upon our accessing and reflecting over the emotional data of the people we want to empathize with.
Emotional Intelligence is about Data
Culture is about Belongingness
It’s customary to idealize startups and no less customary to look at large organizations as a human nightmare. The truth is that many startups are due for a human turnaround before they even reach 50 employees. So when do organizations of any size create disengagement? When they forget that culture is about fostering belongingness and not simply a matter of “values.”