The gender balance scale in the oil and gas industry is still disproportionately tilted in favor of our male colleagues. We have all talked about it, complained about the unfair biases prevalent in the workplace, and made the business case for better gender balance. But it is now time for us to take action, learn from the experiences of the most successful women around us, and become the leaders we were born to be. This is what WGLC 2019 was all about.
Through this article, I want to share with you seven valuable leadership lessons I took away from this year’s Women’s Global Leadership Conference (WGLC 2019). These lessons reinforced that I need to own my career and that it is not just my organization’s, but my responsibility to take action and move the needle in favor of gender equality.
What is WGLC?
Women’s Global Leadership Conference (WGLC) is the largest women’s conference in the Oil and Gas industry organized by Gulf Publishing Holdings LLC, (publisher of World Oil, Gas Processing & LNG, Hydrocarbon Processing, Petroleum Economist, Pipeline & Gas Journal and others). WGLC provides access to some of the most influential women in the Oil and Gas industry, and brings over a thousand high-potential women in the industry, along with their male supporters, to network and foster exchange of ideas. Targeted towards women’s leadership, the conference provides a forum for having meaningful and actionable discussions on topics related to diversity and inclusion, career development, and energy business outlook.
What I enjoyed most at the WGLC 2019?
WGLC 2019 was hosted by the Royal Sonesta in Houston, Texas from October 28-29, 2019. It was my second time at the conference. I had an incredible opportunity to attend the event in 2017 as well, where I met 798 other amazing women from the O&G industry. This year, approximately 1000 women participated at the conference, and once again, Melissa Smith, the Events Director, did an incredible job of making the conference very inspiring and actionable.
Not only did I take away many valuable leadership lessons from the conference, all of which I will deep dive in the next section, I also had an incredible opportunity to do the following:
1. Build my network:
I met several amazing women not only from Schlumberger (my company was the platinum sponsor for WGLC 2019, sponsoring over 80 women from all over Houston to attend the conference) but also from several companies across the oil and gas value chain. Whomever I chatted with, I made sure to take a photo of their badge, which made it incredibly easy to connect with them on LinkedIn, a hack I definitely recommend to you for your next networking event. I also connected with speakers, many of them being CEOs or high-power c-suite women, by personalizing my LinkedIn invite with the notes I made during their presentations. At the end of the two-day conference, I had expanded my network by over 100 connections!
2. Connect with other organizations:
WGLC was an excellent way for me to connect with other organizations and non-profits that are doing powerful work for promoting women’s leadership in the oil and gas industry. I felt greatly inspired by learning about the work done by several companies, including WatchHerWork, Female Quotient, Lumeri, LeanInEnergy, and FlippingtheBarrel.
3. Establishing Mentoring Relationship:
WGLC 2019 was great for not only connecting with women leaders in other industries, but also for making stronger relationships with senior women in my own company. I approached one of the women leaders in my company to compliment her on her talk, and hesitantly asked her for a mentoring relationship. She was so welcoming, and graciously accepted my request. I realized that all the self-doubting talk is often just in our head, and it is easier to approach senior leaders for mentoring than we often think.
4. Promote Pinkcareers:
Most women who attend WGLC are looking for inspiration and resources to grow their career to the next level. Therefore, it was the perfect avenue for me to spread the word on Pinkcareers. I had printed business cards for my website and gave it to many women I met at the conference. I also loved the opportunity to practice delivering Pinkcareer’s mission and appreciated all the positive feedback I got on the work I am doing for the blog. Such feedback is what encourages me to continue blogging in the wee hours of the day!
7 Valuable Leadership Lessons from WGLC 2019
Let’s finally dive into seven valuable leadership lessons I learned from WGLC 2019:
1. Shelly Zalis on ‘Taking equality from an ideal to the reality‘
The 15th WGLC opened with a bang with the keynote speech by Shelly Zalis. Shelly is the CEO of the Female Quotient, a female-owned business that is committed to advancing diversity in the workplace through collaboration, activating solutions for change, and creating measurements for accountability.
Shelly spotlighted the business case for gender balance front and center, and why it is up to each one of us to change the narrative on gender diversity. She also stressed the importance of finding leadership allies, and that we are stronger together when supported by our male colleagues.
One of my favorite quotes from her talk was:
“Equality is a choice, and conscious bias is an excuse.”
Shelly Zalis
2. Maggie Peterson on ‘Identifying your leadership style‘
Maggie Peterson is a former United States Air Force Staff Sergeant and the founder of Camp SHiEld – After Military Service. Through her non-profit organization, Maggie focuses on nurturing the female veteran emotionally, socially, and physically, to ensure she can thrive after military service.
Maggie did a very actionable exercise with the audience to help us identify our leadership style using the True Colors Leadership Assessment. I found that I am RED-YELLOW, inclining more towards the RED quadrant.
What was great about this exercise was that I not only learned about my leadership style and how I respond at work, but also got some great insights into how to manage personal and professional relationships with people of opposing personalities.
I also found the link to the exact test that Maggie did with us. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you take this quick test to learn more about your leadership style and how you can make your interactions with others more effective.
Check out True Colors Leadership Assessment HERE.
3. Pranika Sinha on ‘Impostor Syndrome: What, Why and How to deal with it‘
Pranika Sinha is the senior manager of Talent and Organization Development at Oxy, a diversity and inclusion leader, and an outspoken supporter of women empowerment. She dealt with alopecia for most of her life, and it is this vulnerability that she brought to her talk on Impostor Syndrome is what made it so powerful.
Through her presentation, Pranika shared with us that many types of high-achieving people (women more than men) suffer from Impostor Syndrome: perfectionists, superwomen, natural geniuses, soloists, and experts. People who have their sh*t together suffer from it, and people who don’t have their sh*t together also suffer from it.
How to get over Impostor Syndrome? The common advice we get is, “You just have to tell the voice inside your head to shut-up.” But Pranika gets a bit more practical than that. She shares three strategies to deal with feelings of fraudulence that I resonated with:
- Reframe the discussion in your head
- Find a wing person who can encourage you when feelings of fraudulence start to take control
- Celebrate what you do well
4. Vicky Jackson Nielsen on ‘Are you building and managing your network?‘
Vicky Nielsen is the Director of Bakken Drilling and Completions for HESS. She holds a 360 view of the upstream oil and gas industry, having worked for both service company and E&P, and has done several roles in technology, production, sales, and Management.
Vicky shared with us the power of networking to accelerate our career growth. Her talk really resonated with me as I also got my last two roles through networking within my company. According to a recent survey by Linkedin, over 85% of people got their current role through networking, yet so many women I know in STEM industries either shy away from it, or they don’t know how to network with deliberation and purpose.
There are three powerful networking tips that Vicky shared during her presentation:
- Stay connected with people
- Don’t be afraid to ask for a connection
- Use your network to build your network
Here’s an example of how you can make tip#3 actionable. Say you are looking for a job at Google. You don’t know anyone who works there, but you have a 2nd-degree connection on LinkedIn who works at Google. You can now reach out to your common (1st degree) connection and say, “Hi Molly, I saw that you know Eric, who works for Google as a Software Engineer. Would it be possible for you to connect me with him, so I can learn more about his experience in the company?”. And just like that, you now have a connection made that can give you some valuable insider information on your dream company.
5. Jackie Dryden on ‘How to love Mondays forever‘
Jackie Dryden is the Chief Purpose Architect at Savage Brands, and a prominent author and speaker on parenting, creativity and business skills.
Imagine you are presenting to a group of 200 women in a high profile conference. Your presentation is primarily comprised of videos, but you have a tech glitch, and the audio fails to work. What would you do? Will you freeze up and act all awkward? Or will you still be able to present comfortably?
That’s exactly what happened with Jackie during her presentation. Instead of complaining about the tech glitch, she made the best of the situation and acted out each of her videos! It was so good that the audience broke into loud applause every time she did one of the enactments. Therefore, one of the key takeaways for me was that if you are comfortable with your material, you can really own the floor!
Jackie also gave us a lot of food for thought on how we can forever love Monday! There are three fundamental questions we need to ask ourselves:
- What get’s you up?
- What do we want to be known for at our eulogy?
- And finally, who shares our passion?
When we do work that lights us up, has the impact that we want to make on the world, and is done with people who share our passion, we will forever be in love with Mondays.
6. Lisa Johnston on ‘Engineering helps develop a growth mindset and opens unexpected opportunities’
Lisa Johnston, the Chief Marketing Officer for AVEVA, talked to us about why it is of utmost importance to have a plan for our career. A forward-looking career plan, deliberate mentoring relationships, and hard work helped her accelerate her career.
Without a career plan, we are relinquishing control of our career to someone else – your manager, your HR or circumstances. There are three elements of a forward-looking plan to achieve your long-term career goals:
- Know what skills you need to master
- What experiences you need to have
- What roles you need to do
If you have a plan, are excellent at your job, and are open to new opportunities, the world is yours to own!
7. Denise Hamilton on ‘7 Actionable tips to increase women in workforce‘
Denise Hamilton is the founder and CEO of WatchHerWork, a digital platform for video-based professional advice for women. She was the keynote speaker for day 2 of WGLC, and quite literally blew my mind with her impactful presentation. Denise believes that no one has all the answers, but together we have all the answers. This is exactly what she aims to do with her multimedia company WatchHerWork.
Among several thought-provoking ideas that she presented, the one that resonated with me the most was:
“Beware of the wrong YES”
Denise Hamilton
She gave us a story from nature that I found very powerful. Turtle hatchlings, born on the shore of Florida, have an inborn tendency to move towards the brightest light, which normally is the moonlight reflecting off the ocean. However, artificial lighting near the shore causes many hatchlings to be distracted and wander off in the wrong direction, where they die of dehydration or predation. On the other hand, the ones who swim into the ocean may traverse a thousand miles and live on for the next 200 years.
Not only do we need to keep our eyes on the bigger goal ourselves, but also help the younger generation re-orient themselves when they get lost or get distracted by the next shiny object.