By Katie Ziegler
Several dozen women legislators gathered in Park City, Utah, earlier this month for NCSL’s first Women Legislative Leaders Symposium.
The leaders spent three days learning about leadership from expert faculty and from one another, and discussing the unique situation of women in legislative leadership.
Women are a minority of state legislators, comprising about 24 percent of all legislators nationwide, and make up only about 20 percent of top legislative leadership positions.
The group enjoyed presentations by Laura Liswood, cofounder of the Council of Women World Leaders; Brigid Schulte, author of "Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time"; and Kellyanne Conway, CEO of the polling company, inc. / WomanTrend. Roundtable discussions about legislative leadership featured New Hampshire Speaker of the House Terie Norelli, former Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Mary Panzer, and former members of Congress Elizabeth Holtzman and Anne Northup.
Interactive workshops about developing your personal brand, women and leadership, and techniques for powerful persuasion had the group thinking critically about themselves, learning how to deliver a message, and even playing with Tinkertoys.
Here are just a few of the ideas that prompted great discussions.
Leadership traits found in women leaders from around the world include:
- Curiosity
- Courage
- Vision
- Ideas
- Passion
- The ability to help others succeed
- Humor
- Listening
- Telling the hard truths
- Creating trust
- Never making people do something that they will later be ashamed of
Components of Your Personal Brand:
- What you do
- What are you uniquely known for
- Your personal qualities/traits
- How you create value
The trainers, from Deloitte Consulting, shared the example of a legislator who writes a personal brand statement and gives it to her staff to ensure that all communications are consistent with her brand. The legislator would “check-in” with her brand statement and revise it as needed every six months.
Brigid Schulte said that she intended to give the group a “permission slip” to play and be idle. She noted that our brains are most active when we are idle, but that women worldwide report that they feel they don’t deserve leisure because the to-do list is never done.
Schulte's suggestions included:
- Disrupt the busyness: don’t get caught up in a busyness cycle
- Flip the to-do list: Joy first, stuff later
- Chunk your time: Work in pulses (we have 90-minute attentiveness cycles), take breaks
- Schedule play: Play is important because it allows you to be fully in the moment.
Kellyanne Conway shared her “Consumer’s Guide to Polling,” which included important questions to consider when evaluating a poll:
- Are you being asked to respond or react?
- Could you possibly have an opinion, or does the question seek your greatest hope or best guess?
- Is the question linear and simple or labyrinth and complex?
- Is the question TOO simple, meaning, it presumes you already know the topic?
- Who responded? Who was excluded (cell phones, overnight polls)?
- Did the respondent feel comfortable to admit they don’t know/don’t care/may not vote?
NCSL was gratified by the enthusiastically positive evaluations the symposium received, and we look forward to convening similar meetings in the future.
Katie Ziegler is program manager of NCSL's Women's Legislative Network Program. Email Katie.