Recap WITI Orange County - May 15, 2014

What are your Habits of Leadership? - WITI Orange County Recap, May 2014

In order to drive the collective performance of a team, organizations today require leadership on all levels, regardless of role or position. To help achieve this end, WITI Orange County was delighted to host Michelle Parish of Parish Partners LLC, an executive consulting firm. Held at the verdant and modern Capital Group (CG) office in Irvine, the meeting nearly filled CG's largest available facility where a number of OC based technology groups congregate at different times throughout the month (e.g. WITI, Agile So Cal, SCQAA).

Michelle Parish kicked the evening off with a personal story of her sky-rocketing success as an Intel executive and how she grew her division from 4-36 billion. After 15 years of an illustrious career at Intel, she reached a point where her personal passion and commitment waned. Parish realized that the most authentic Habits of Leadership must stem from leadership commitment. As a result, she was determined to start her own consulting firm, helping others become better leaders. Michelle started the evening with a key question: How are leaders different from managers?

Managers > Create Order > Devise Systems and Structures
Leaders, however > Produce Change > and Inspire, Motivate people

Throughout the remainder of the evening, Michelle created an engaging and nurturing environment for attendees to discuss their personal experiences as we leveraged the key aspects of Parish's B.M.O.R.E framework, helping us "be more" of the leaders we can be



B-uilding Commitment: How are we doing this with ourselves and those we work with? Committed teams are high performing teams.
M-odeling Passion and Purpose: Are we too engaged in just solving "how" problems and not focused enough on connecting "whys" to our passion? Leaders focus on vision and driving out reasons and motivators.
O-perating with Excellence: Once teams understand the vision, it is equally important to focus on "how" we get there. Do you and your team understand your role? Do you have a realistic roadmap to plot your journey? Are you prepared for bumps in the road?
R-elating Authentically: Being authentic means being convinced. Benjamin Franklin said: "People are best convinced by things they themselves discover." Are we allowing discovery to unfold naturally within ourselves and our team mates so that "buy-in" isn't just about the elusive management "them and they." Do we believe instead that "we" can drive a part of the vision?
E-ngaging Self and Others: Michelle shared story about a time when she questioned her own engagement with others as she reflected upon results from a 360 review. Many team members commented that she was "professional". While it was definitely good to be recognized for this, she wondered if between the lines people were trying to send a signal that being solely professional might also mean that she was aloof. How do we know we are truly engaged and have gained the trust of others?



Time with Michelle Parish flew by so quickly, that our usual WITI bling raffle was done at lightning speed. (By the way, we give away many fabulous prizes). It was a good evening!

Opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of WITI.