Last month I had the phenomenal opportunity to attend a leadership conference “Strategies for Success” at Aetna, our parent company. 50 of Aetna’s ‘top high-performing, high-potential women’ were invited to attend the conference, and to say I was honored to be among them is an understatement! In some ways it was a pretty different experience from a typical tech conference (no t-shirts and jeans here! 🙂 ), but very similar in other ways: the week was jam-packed, I learned a ton from everyone there, and had a complete blast!
The conference was organized with the help of the Center for Talent Innovation, a New York based group that does research and outreach to leverage talent across the divides of gender, generation, geography and culture. This is a great group, and their website contains a wealth of material free for anyone to check out. About a month before the conference, they hosted a virtual meeting, where we all logged in anonymously, and CTI facilitated a conversation about our perceptions of leadership and opportunities. I’d never done something like that before, and it was really interesting and well-run. It was also a great way to gear up for the actual on-site conference.
The setting of our conference was the beautiful Aetna campus in Hartford, CT. I’d never been there before, and was surprised at how beautiful it was! I was expecting some bland office park, but was instead greeted by this pretty building:
Above is the auditorium where we heard from several phenomenal speakers. Here are few highlights from the speakers:
"Some of the best career advice you can get comes from your own candid team members. Foster an open culture" #SforS14
— Kelly Shuster (@KellyShuster) November 11, 2014
It's not "How bad could it get?" Ask instead "How good can I make it?" #SforS14
— Kelly Shuster (@KellyShuster) November 11, 2014
The world belongs to the one who stands out, not the one who fits in. @gailblanke #SforS14
— Kelly Shuster (@KellyShuster) November 11, 2014
Even if it's scary, think big and bold for the next 10 years. You've got 50,000 hours of learning you can do! @CarolynBuckLuce #SforS14
— Kelly Shuster (@KellyShuster) November 11, 2014
Love that @ProfKWPhillips doesn't mess around! Pitching to the room to practice strategies to influence. #SforS14
— Kelly Shuster (@KellyShuster) November 12, 2014
I have to say my most favorite speaker was Professor Katherine Phillips, Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics, and Senior Vice Dean at the Columbia Business School. WOW was her presentation on Strategies for Influencing amazing! She had a lot of great things to say about walking that line between asserting yourself and your achievements, while also being approachable. And I also loved that she really put us on the spot! We all had to give a pitch to the whole group, and then discussed areas we could improve.
One fun perk of the conference was getting access to the corporate photographer, who was great. In the conference we had a lot of conversations about executive presence and building a personal brand. One small way to convey these is through a great professional photo, so we had some time one afternoon to get our picture taken. Here I am, looking like a professional person. (Did I mention I was in a suit and heels almost every day!?)
While each day was filled with speakers and workshops, evenings were a little more relaxed with networking receptions or casual dinners with fellow attendees.
On one evening, we had a networking reception with the Aetna executive committee. Initially it was pretty nerve-wracking, but I got some great advice from a mentor before the trip. He suggested I demo recent examples of our app, as an ice-breaker into conversation. It worked! I might not know much about running a Fortune 100 company, but I can definitely talk tech. And lucky for me, the people I spoke with were interested in hearing about tech! 😉 Phew!
On the final day of our conference, CEO Mark Bertolini addressed our group. This was definitely a huge highlight of the trip for me. He spoke about the importance of being passionate about your work, and true meaning of success. One really great point he made was about ‘job security,’ and how this mentality holds people back. People say they don’t want to be indispensable, but he believes this to be the wrong train of thought. If you aren’t dispensable at your current job, why would you get promoted to work on something bigger and better? Totally.
He also talked about how success is really a personal metric, and you’ve got to be happy and truly love what you do every day. When you do what you love, you will find that doors open to new opportunities. It reminded me of something Elaine Wood (CEO of Wayin) said in a talk last year, that ‘the cream always rises to the top.’ If you love what you do, and you are good at what you do, you will you will find yourself where you want to be.
Mark Bertolini’s authenticity and passion for his work shines through him. It was pretty obvious to me that he genuinely loves what he does, and his words really resonated with me. I’ve never had so much fun at work as I do now, and at the same time I’ve never had as many opportunities as I do now. I’ve never worked harder than I am now, but the funny thing is that it doesn’t really feel like ‘work’; I just do fun stuff all day and night, and that fun stuff sometimes leads to even more fun stuff.
After the conference ended Thursday afternoon, I had a few hours to kill before my flight back home. A colleague and I grabbed a coffee and went on a leisurely stroll along the river, chatting about all we had learned from the week.
I am so grateful for this wonderful experience. The numbers for women in leadership at the top of corporate America aren’t great, but it is pretty awesome to work for a company that is actively working to change that.