Business Continuity, Success (and Sanity) During COVID-19 Telecommuting (Bonus Signature Seminar)

Tuesday, March 24, 2020 – 1:00 – 2:15 pm EST

Featuring – Manar Morales, President & CEO of the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance

Whether or not you have a telework policy already in place, there are best practices to follow, both as a supervisor and as a teleworker, when unforeseen circumstances force organization-wide, unscheduled remote work.  It’s not always a simple matter of logging in, especially when you may not have been prepared to telework for an unspecified length of time.

The Alliance has always been a proponent of teleworking, and we’re here to share best practices for business continuity, success, and maintaining your well-being during this time. What can managers do to make sure employees have the resources they need to keep workflow seamless? What can employees do to stay engaged and productive? What can we all do to support each other? What are additional telework policy considerations to think about moving forward?

Join us for our special webinar for members where Manar Morales, the Alliance’s President & CEO, will share guidelines on these issues and answer your questions. Although we will be taking questions during the webinar, please feel free to forward any before the webinar (email manar@dfalliance.com) so we make sure we get to everyone.

Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace

Thursday, March 5, 2020 – 1:00 – 2:15 pm EST

Featuring Lily Zheng, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Consultant and author of Gender Ambiguity in the Workplace: Transgender and Gender-Diverse Discrimination (2018) and The Ethical Sellout: Maintaining Your Integrity in the Age of Compromise (2019).

In this Signature Seminar, Lily Zheng will share stories and research findings from Gender Ambiguity in the Workplace, and contextualize them within larger industry and cultural trends. They will offer their suggestions for actionable organizational and individual solutions to end discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression and create inclusive workplaces for transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive employees.

Research Briefing: Trends from the 2019 Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Study

Wednesday, February 26, 2020 – 1:00 – 2:15 pm EST

Featuring Manar Morales, President & CEO, The Diversity & Flexibility Alliance

Manar will provide individuals from all member organizations with insights and in-depth analysis on the results of the 2019 Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Study. The presentation will include trends and best practices in flexible working and leave initiatives.

Develop Your Professional Presence

Thursday, January 9 , 2020  1:00 – 2:00 pm EST

Featuring – Christine Clapp

Whether you’re in a meeting, on the phone, around the proverbial “water cooler,” at a conference, or anywhere else: your ability to speak with confidence will drive your career forward — just as a lack of confidence will frustratingly hold you back. In Develop Your Professional Presence, Spoken with Authority will offer an interactive and consciousness-raising webinar experience. If you participate fully, you will gain a set of powerful insights and practical strategies that will rapidly enhance your professional presence.

Objectives:

  • Explore the five elements of professional presence
  • Assess your personal strengths and weaknesses
  • Identify strategies for leveraging strengths and mitigating weaknesses
Christine will provide complimentary copies of her book to the first ten attendees to complete the webinar evaluation (and provide a mailing address).
Christine Clapp is the author of Presenting at Work: A Guide to Public Speaking in Professional Contexts and the president of Spoken with Authority, a Washington, D.C.-based presentation skills consultancy that explores the intersection of presentation skills and inclusion. Through training programs and coaching engagements, Christine and her team help professionals at law firms, corporations, associations, and non-profit organizations elevate their presence and expand their influence.
*Pre-work: Before the webinar, record on your phone or tablet a 60-90 second clip of your response to one of these questions:
  1. What does flexible work mean to you?
  2. If you could have all the flexibility in the world, what would it look like and how would it impact your ability to do your job?
You can do this quick exercise with a colleague before the webinar, or you can record yourself. Please speak standing up, record from the waist up, and make sure it’s a video (not a still photo or just an audio recording). You do NOT need to watch your recording before the webinar, and you will NEVER be asked to share it with others.
You’ll review your recording individually several times during the course of the webinar to raise awareness of your communication behaviors and to start improving them. Bring a pair of earbuds if you’ll be watching in a group setting. By doing this exercise ahead of time, you’ll ensure a robust learning experience.
Members should register in the Member Resource Center.

Ending the Silence: Strategies for Ending Workplace Misconduct & Building a Culture of Respect & Inclusion

Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 1:00 – 2:00 pm EST

Featuring – Lauren Stiller Rikleen

When workplace colleagues engage in harassment, bullying, or demeaning behaviors, it can have a profoundly negative impact on the careers of others, affecting employee engagement, productivity, and even mental health. Too often, victims of workplace misconduct fear to report and bystanders also feel helpless and worried about retaliation.

 

Lauren Stiller Rikleen, author of The Shield of Silence: How Power Perpetuates a Culture of Harassment and Bullying in the Workplace, offers a timely and nuanced analysis of these challenges and describes specific strategies for creating a culture of respect and inclusion. Lauren will discuss how existing workplace structures and dynamics inherently thwart the very result that many policies claim to promote by serving as a protective shield around perpetrators and as a barrier that prevents victims from accessing the system that should offer them protection.

Examples of what you will learn in this program include:

  • Why sexual harassment is not about sex
  • How to protect and empower bystanders
  • Why the #MeToo backlash is a decoy
  • Strategies to create a respectful and inclusive workplace culture
Lauren’s presentation will also include findings from the survey she conducted in partnership with the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts: Survey of Workplace Conduct and Behaviors in Law Firms.
The recording is available to members in the Member Resource Center.

Creating Your Best Life In & Out of the Office: How Women Can Create Meaningful Goals & Live Without Regrets

Tuesday, September 17, 2019 1:00 – 2:00 pm EST

Featuring – Caroline Miller 

Hidden talents. Unused strengths. Unrealized goals. Women are often so busy meeting everyone else’s expectations that their own professional and personal goals get left behind.

Goal setting expert Caroline Adams Miller, author of Getting Grit, inspires women to put their innate strengths to use. She encourages women to become their authentic, ideal selves—not just who they feel they “ought” to be—and provides proven techniques to help them reach their full potential. In this fast-paced, energizing and research-based session, female leaders learn practical steps to create their best self in and out of the office, including how to:

– Identify strengths to increase success.

– Use the new science-based approach to set goals to achieve the best outcomes.
– Develop a supportive “web of influence”—women helping women.
– Build a culture of positive energizers.
– Cultivate a mindset of self-efficacy, resilience, optimism, and grit.

Making the Most of Your Business Development Time

Thursday, May 2, 2019, 1:00 – 2:00 pm EST

Featuring – Tasneem Khokha, Managing Director, Growthplay

 

Time is one of our most valuable assets, particularly when it comes to business development. And yet, business development is a long-term pursuit, where we don’t often see the fruits of our labor until months and sometimes years later. As a result, even when we do make time for business development, it can be difficult to judge whether we’re investing that time wisely.

This workshop addresses the challenge we all face in making time for business development and how to ensure that the time we invest is well spent. In particular, this workshop will provide tools and best practices for:

– Choosing business development activities that are well-calibrated to create the results we want;

– Preparing for and following through on opportunities in a way that maximizes the results of our efforts;

– Leveraging our investment of time and resources to get the greatest return on our investment;

– Measuring the results of our efforts using both short and long-term metrics for success

Tasneem K. Khokha has spent almost 20 years in the professional services space working with lawyers and other professionals to grow their businesses and helping firms make the most of their relationships with their clients, their talent and their recruits. Prior to joining GrowthPlay, Tasneem was a partner and the Director of Marketing at Katten Muchin Rosenman. Tasneem previously practiced law in the corporate department of Latham & Watkins and in the restructuring group of Kirkland & Ellis.

 

 

The Remix: How to Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace

Tuesday, February 5, 2019, 1:30 – 2:45 pm EST
Featuring – Lindsey Pollak 
Lindsey Pollak is one of the country’s leading experts on the millennial generation and today’s multigenerational workplace. Based on Lindsey Pollak’s new book of the same title, this presentation offers her latest insights into how to lead yourself and your organization in today’s unprecedentedly diverse and ever-changing times. This program is full of cutting-edge research, engaging anecdotes and actionable takeaways. Participants will:

– Receive a thorough understanding of each of the five generations in today’s workplace today – Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Generation Z – with a special focus on Millennials, the largest generation in today’s organization

– Build a personal toolkit of habits to communicate, build relationships and get more done with colleagues across all generations

– Learn the best practices of organizations and professionals across all industries who are succeeding with colleagues and clients/customers across all generations

How Women Rise

Tuesday, January 22, 2019 1:00-2:15 EST

Featuring — Sally Helgesen, speaker, leadership coach and best-selling author of How Women Rise

In her session How Women Rise, Sally will draw on her best-selling book, co-authored with Marshall Goldsmith, about the behaviors most likely to hold successful women back as they seek to move to higher levels. She will show how the same behaviors that often serve women well early in their careers can undermine them as they assume greater responsibilities. And she’ll offer practical and proven ways to cultivate more effective habits.

While this program will be helpful to participants seeking to hone and develop their own leadership style, Sally’s primary focus will be on demonstrating how an understanding of the behaviors she and Marshall have identified can be useful to HR professionals seeking to help women reach their highest potential and maximize their contribution while creating stronger cultures of support.

*As a reminder, our Signature Seminar Series webinars are free and open to all Alliance organizations and their members as part of your paid member benefits. Any professional currently in a managerial role or looking to advance to a managerial role should attend. For more information, and to subscribe to Signature Seminar Series announcements, contact Eliza Musallam.