net4tec @HerCareer Review

 

After HerCareer fell victim to the pandemic last year, the time had finally come on September 16^th   and 17^th. net4tec happily joined the leading fair for female career planning, that opened its doors with more than 230 exhibitors and 450 speakers to support woman’s careers under the motto – “Behind every woman is an army of women hyping her up.”.

For us this was the first opportunity to meet our members, interested parties and partners once again in person after 18 months. We eagerly prepared the fair behind the scenes, to welcome our visitors appropriately at our booth and to go to the next level by launching our PIONEER community of woMen and carry out our strong mission:

“Rock” the STEM world and make it more colorful by lifting female careers and shaping a new face of leadership with the power of community. Realize your full potential

The first in person event from our network was most expected and celebrated with lots of inspiration and full of opportunities. Coincidentally, the fair collided with our usual 60 minute session, which we offer every two weeks from our network for our network. So, we took the chance and started the day with a live broadcast of the session about systemic leadership lead by our role model Linda Oldenburg. Attendees could get the feeling of having been at the fair themselves.

During the fair we met friends, members, companies, and business partners as well as completely new people in a relaxed atmosphere to discuss how we can put our new mission to life with the power of community. Many memories have been created throughout great conversations about:

• Diversity
• How we can revolutionize the STEM world
• How we can develop a new understanding of leadership
• How we can redefine career
• How to disrupt the status quo and move forward together
• How to build allies with men we need, to bring woman forward.

Besides engaging at our booth, we offered special meetups with our net4tec members: 

Belen Romero, (Sustainability & Energy Consultancy, Ambassador net4tec Munich) invited to discuss “How do we bring value to business? A guideline towards sustainable transformation” where she provided practical know-how about sustainability.

Alina Popa, (Global Program Manager – Client Success Strategy @ Pegasystems Inc., Ambassador net4tec Munich) presented “What we can learn from Customer Success and how we can apply this to accelerate our career?” and taught participants about Customer Success / Roles and responsibilities of the Customer Success Manager role in the IT Industry.

Mariya Davydenko (Business Development Director @Ciklum, Ambassador net4tec Stuttgart) talked on the topic “Transformation in automotive, from manufacturer to service provider – a challenge for OEMs, an opportunity for your career”. She lead a discussion about the industry development, career opportunities and required skills.

Begonia Merayo finally enriched the fair with her panel of the Working Moms e.V. and attracted a variety of women and men to our booth. Read on for her own impressions and personal highlights from net4tec @herCareer on LinkedIn.

Every format engaged more visitors, started cool exchange, and offered great possibilities for fresh networking.  All in all, you could feel the indescribable spirit and exciting energy. The overwhelming feedback we received shows that it was a super successful event for visitors and exhibitors alike.

Let’s continue to collaborate and unlock the power of community together – Get Started.

HerCareer 2022 – we are coming again on 06.-07. October 2022!!!!

#newfaceofleadership #rockthestemword #liftingeachother #powerofcommunity #stemcareer #optionsmakecareer

Christine Koch
Global Ambassador & Role Model Coordinator

18.05.2021
Open roundtable and networking for German Diversity Day

We are diversity! How does diversity unite us? We are all traveling on our own diversity journey!

To celebrate the 9^th diversity Day #DDT21 we offered an open round table & networking for our net4tec community. Some of our very own role models, ambassadors, and members shared their inspiring life stories that resonated with each and every one of us in a lot of ways.

Between the speeches, we got to know each other in a more intimate setting via breakout sessions and discussed our different views on diversity with the community. #Community #RoundTable

The virtual space filled quickly with many like-minded people from all corners of the world, like Ukraine, Lebanon, the former Soviet Union, India, Spain, Germany, and so on. Our Moderator Sara Rapsch welcomed all the participants in a bonfire atmosphere and guided us through the entire discussion with great energy and passion. Before we jumped into the first round of stories Begonia Vazquez Merayo the founder of net4tec opened the round with her own special story. #Diversity #International

Our speakers were Mariya Davydenko, Pavlo Stroblja, Nimmy Nemlin, Rana Estephane, Dr. Alexander Steinbrecher and Prof. Dr. Eleonore Soei-Winkels, all of them giving their takes on diversity and their life stories.

The breakout sessions allowed us to reflect on chances to foster diversity in our everyday life. All participants were able to engage in a safe space with each other and share their diversity stories as well. #OwnYourStory #Reflection

It was great to find so much wisdom and energy throughout this unique evening and a great quote from a speaker – “Diversity means to learn and become a better version of yourself by embracing different perspectives”. Here are some aspects and pieces of this great experience as well as learnings. #Learning

What brings us together

• We were all shaped by our upbringing
• We experienced exclusion at a point in our life
• We learned to be who we really are instead of trying to fit in
• We cultivated openness and learned from other’s stories
• We Learned to be an ally

What each of us can do tomorrow

• Embrace our own identity to be able to embrace diversity
• Embrace openness to create an open culture
• Stay curious and fail
• Be a little uncomfortable
• Do not ever stop asking questions
• Show that you care and be interested
• Invite and appreciate different opinions
• No need to agree with every story but accept
• Build bridges to different backgrounds
• Find commonalities then look at differences
• Find more allies

Future considerations

• Teach children early with classes in school
• Raise awareness and foster diversity everywhere
• Balance female and male power
• Think out of the box
• Authenticity is the key to everything

All the stories during the round table have been so compelling and inspiring. To tell these in detail, however, would go beyond the scope of the article. Nonetheless, those who could not be there have a glimpse into the lives of our moderator and the speakers.

Sara Rapsch – Career Programs & Talent development Lead EU Business School | net4tec Community Champion
She came to Germany from Spain at the age of 7, barely knew the language, and experienced exclusion immediately. Often, she felt that she had to adapt instead of being able to live her whole being.

Begonia Vazquez Merayo – Managing Director WhyConsult _ Power of Diversity | Founder net4tec
Diversity means identity. Born in Spain, she spent many years there before she studied in France and started an international career. During her professional life, she had the opportunity to live in different countries and continents leading truly diverse teams. Diversity is like water for the fish for her. Reflecting on many situations in her life like having children, being a working mom, and leaving the industry brought her to her mission “Unlock the power of diversity”. That is why net4tec is here now and generates options that make careers.

Mariya Davydenko – Business Development Director Ciklum
Mariya is from Ukraine, studied and lived in Germany and China, and speaks 6 languages. For a long time, she has worked as a female in a male-dominated world, especially in transformation and digitalization. Passionate about entrepreneurship she brings business ideas to life. It was interesting to hear how she once hired a team while focusing mainly on necessary skills instead of background or origin. It turned out to be the strongest team in the company thanks to members across different age groups and cultures. She always thinks about how we can achieve diversity in each and every company. Believing in equal opportunity, she is convinced that a balanced diversity contributes to the best performance.

Pavlo Stroblja Founder Queermentor gGmbH | Coach | Mentor | LGBTIQ | Empowerment
Come as you are – Being different is not a weakness, it is a strength. Pavlo gave some insight into his difficult upbringing in the former Soviet Union where he had some hurtful experiences. Later he moved to Germany to study where he finally felt empowered enough and secure to take a chance for his coming out. It was the best feeling not to hide his sexual orientation anymore. #LGBTIQ
Pavlo learned to speak up for himself and not be a people pleaser nor look for recognition from other people but himself. After developing personally and consciously reinventing himself he is now helping others who struggle with their background.  As the founder of a digital platform for mentors (Queermentor) he offers training as well as empowerment, gives people opportunities and matches them with mentors from different industries and cultures. People find others to talk to and learn to master that it is ok the way you are.

Nimmy Nemlin IT Product Owner at BMW Group
Step out of your comfort zone and do not be afraid of failure are Nimby’s takes on diversity. As a female, she always navigated in a man’s world. Coming from India, which is a truly diverse place already, she moved within the country to study and continued later in Germany. Learning about different cultures even in her own country helped her a lot. She recommends not to stay in your comfort zone too much in a homogeneous group but try to think out of the box, exchange ideas with different people and foster a holistic diversity approach. It is never too early i.e., with children nor too late to raise awareness of diversity. The more diverse your network is, the more you will be heard and seen.

Rana Estephane EMEA Modern Work Technical Delivery Manager Microsoft, Digital Transformation enabler | Team empowerment and career coaching | Advocate for Diversity & Inclusion
Rana introduced herself to the group in a completely new way by verbally describing that she was sitting in her home office and describing her clothes as well as her appearance in detail, in order to be inclusive for all areas of diversity. She is originally from Lebanon, and even as a teenager, diversity was evident in her DNA while playing and communicating with all sorts of friends whether Christians, Muslims, or Jews. Despite many obstacles, she fulfilled her dreams of studying at a private university and earning a System Engineering degree and even moved to Italy. Today she is promoting and celebrating diversity as a technical delivery manager at Microsoft. She believes in being yourself, learning more about others, understanding that everyone is unique and accepting differences. Her main commitment is on gender diversity followed by building experiences that are accessible to all while inclusion is complementary.

Dr. Alexander Steinbrecher Head of Group Legal Bombardier Transportation | Of Counsel | Board Member| Lecturer | Speaker |
As a lawyer, Alexander is passionate about legal topics. He picked up on the quote “Diversity is invited to the party and inclusion is being asked to dance” and shared a nice diversity experience involving dancing he had during his studies in Berlin. During his childhood, his parents taught him already that people are different and have beliefs and reasons for decisions and behaviors which do not necessarily correspond with his ideas. Even though one does not agree you should accept that people have different opinions. Fascinated about D&I he shared his thinking about how one becomes curious. He believes that these days schools are missing classes that teach children how to become curious, open-minded, and tolerant. Today he is focusing on gender diversity, empowering working moms, and using his voice to mentor others and promoting female colleagues.

Prof. Dr. Eleonore Soei-Winkels – SocialProfessor – Founder & CEO | Professor FOM University of Applied Sciences for Economics and Management
Eleonore shared an interesting diversity approach by looking just at the brain. When you are looking into the brain you do not see who they are. The brains just look the same. Why are people looking at the differences when the main instrument is the brain? The brain is changing constantly with every experience we are having. Neurons try to find new ways. If the brain can change then people are able to change as well. Sameness bores the brain. Expose it to something different and give the brain lots of stimulus like people or teams need to be on the rimes of their comfort zone. Eleonore shared many examples from her teaching experience as well as how she is learning from her students. She always tries to do new things because you will learn something from everything if you are ready to reflect. Different orientations – Different cultures – Being different is the superpower.

 

Our stories unite us all. Reach out to the individual speakers if you would like to know more or join net4tec and become a member of this community. You are welcome to attend one of our networking events and experience the great atmosphere yourself. Share your very own story next time because your stories made you who you are today.

Thank you for this inspiring and amazing evening!

Christine Koch net4tec
Munich Support

Burnout Prevention: Resilience

Covid19 hit us all abruptly. When faced with sudden changes or difficult situations, everyone reacts in an individual way depending on their resilience. But what is #Resilience? Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly or bounce back into shape as soon as possible from such a situation.

Nanna Rüster, senior executive coach for ‚leadership in transformation‘ and partner at Upgrade an organizational development consultant team, guided us through the topic of resilience by taking a different #Perspective and encouraging participants to share feelings as well as experiences on the subject interactively. Attendees state ranged from “energized”, “relaxed” over “roller coaster”, “unbalanced” and “stress”.

Several practical tips have been shared on how to navigate through the next coming weeks after the seven essential dimensions of resilience have been introduced.

1. be optimistic
2. accept the crisis
3. Orientate towards the solution
4. Leave the role of victim
5. Take responsibility for your own life
6. Build new networks
7. Plan and shape the future

The key for everything is to create your own #Strategy. A short excurse to the four personality types and the Maslow’s pyramid showed how people are triggered differently and hence behave differently in a crisis. #Personality, your own experiences, and needs should be considered to find your own way.

To define their own new strategy participants were then asked to elaborate on questions like

• “In what kind of condition, you want to reach the end of the year?”,
• “What will your friends and colleagues say about you when they look back?”
• “What do you have to do to have a particularly good celebration at the end of the year?”.

Simple tricks can be implemented to build up energy while working on four major fields for resilience – Mind – Body – Soul – Heart. Some of them will be shared here as well.

#Mind

Start with your mind. Step back and look at yourself, observe how you are thinking and talking about the situation as well as yourself. Identify where you need more energy.

• Start journaling
• Write about your current feelings and the situation
• Change your attitude while moving it away in your language
• Reframe your language and your thinking
• Create a new reality for yourself
• Focus on positive aspects

#Heart

Heart stands for what is feeding you and when do you feel emotional alive.

• Make an altar and collect symbols for losses, failures, and unrealizable plans for this year
• Grieve passionately
• Build another altar with symbols to look forward to
• Analyze your contacts and give them an energy index
• Give and take with empathy

#Body

Allow sleep, food, sun, love, and exercise for your body and trust your body. Exercise for instance like:

• Sit up right with feet on the ground
• Feel your breathing
• Feel your gravity
• Use your space
• Knock or drum your body

#Soul

Soul can be everything and is very special as well as personal. Look for things that make you feel alive. Find your own way. Everything is part of being resilient or alive like:

• Feel your senses
• Cook a dish
• Watch movies
• Get on a swing
• Read a book

Key take away

• Shape your own strategy in sync with your personality along mind, heart, body, and soul
• MIND – observe yourself from a distance and create a new reality
• HEART – check for energy sources and collect items to grieve and look forward to  
• BODY – balance food, sun, movement, love and sleep carefully
• SOUL – find fulfilling events and activities and enjoy

 

Christine Koch net4tec
Munich Support

Content is Queen 

It is been seven weeks now that net4tec introduced a weekly virtual morning session. After the basics of #PersonalBranding were presented in the #4 session, this week’s session immersed in creating content and how to attract interaction with the audience. #ContentMarketing

Dr. Irene Kilubi, our net4tec role model, Founder & Managing Director at brandPreneurs & brandFluencers invited everybody on a journey to create a successful content marketing strategy while showing how good content has to look like and how the needs of the target group can be met with unique and amazing #content. Everybody had a chance to choose the media to start best with as well as formats and types to use.

In a short mentimeter survey everyone had to chance to assess what kind of social media type they are and which type they wanted to be in the near future.

While the majority stated as participant or curator, everyone was highly interested in becoming a creatorand generating more content. These 6 different social media types were available to choose from:

1. Ghost: Makes a profile, but never o rarely checks in
2. Participant: Avid supporter, liking and commenting on other people’s content frequently
3. Observer: Occasionally scrolls trough the feed, no original content
4. Curator: Strategically crafting comments and network
5. Salesman: Only interested in cold messaging for sales
6. Creator: Strategically writing content and engaging with

If you want to turn from a ghost or any other type to a content creator #JustdoIt. Even if you might think you are not good enough in the beginning, free yourself from what others think and throw your fear overboard. #TrySomethingNew.

Content Media

Although there is a wide spectrum of content media the session concentrated on written content only like blogpost, reports, articles, case studies, infographics, emails, whitepapers, surveys, e-books and more.

The golden rule? When creating content choose a channel first, define the target groups and start with what you feel most comfortable with (i.e video or blogpost).

Content Formats

• People want to be up to date and talk to their colleagues about the latest industry trends.
• They love statistics and figures or look for things to overcome challenges.
• Start for instance with a “How to” article, explore on hacks or write about industry trends to help professionals to improve in their roles like “5 ways on how to increase productivity” or “8 things you should not do when you start a new job”.
• Structure your content well and engage with your audience though infographic and listicles, combine a short survey with a gift, add a call to action (i.e. to request feedback) and/or use tagging wisely.
• If you’re missing information from existing content, add your point or perspective as a comment.

Content Types

As soon as you put yourself out there and start posting and commenting you are a content creator. During the session 4 different types of articles and posts have been discussed to support participants.

• #Information help to make people to take new or better decisions
• #Education help people acquire new skills or enhance their capabilities
• #Inspire help people believe in themselves and try new things, motivating people
• #Entertainment that attracts people’s attentions and engage their emotions

Exercise & Call to action

The session was finally closed with a call to action asking participants to write a post about the session to even get valuable feedback from our #contentqueen Dr. Irene Kilubi.

See for instance the posting from Begonia Merayo and Nadine Greck how this task was accomplished.

Key take away

• Define the social media type you want to be
• Just do it, if it does not work try something new
• Share what you most feel comfortable with
• Interact with your audience
• Do not give up and be consistent!

 

Christine Koch
net4tec Munich Support

Exceutive Presence in a virtual world

 #Executive Presence – what is it and how important is it in a virtual environment? It is about the ability to show up strong with your team, leading by example and inspire #confidence in your team. Some people say you have to be born with it, but many leadership coaches say it is possible to learn the representing behaviors and improve your executive presence with a little practice.

Deidra McGinn who has worked in the technology industry for 25 years and recently founded her own company StepInStepUp where she focusses on lifting others and helping with executive presence, advanced coaching & style coaching, created lots of energy during this session and #inspired the participants with an enjoying interactive presentation. By sharing the executive presences framework everyone was able understand, what executive presence is, and which benefits it can bring. #Coaching

What is Executive Presence

Simply put, executive presence means inspiring confidence, create a higher level of engagement and loyalty from your clients, team members or just the situation you are in. It is especially about how people experience you.

• How you act
• What people see
• What people hear
• How you make them feel

Benefits of a virtual executive presence

These difficult #Covid-19 times have disrupted how we work and how we show up every day. We spend lots of time in front of a screen. While this can be very energy draining, it is important to show up well and practice executive presence to take advantage of it like:

 

• Inspire confidence in teams or clients you work with
• Maintain #trust, by showing a little vulnerability and sharing how you feel
• Get taken seriously, by acting like you would act in an office
• Build stronger connection
• Increase your ability to influence others

 

Executive presence framework

The framework consists of four elements which refer to skills you can build while practicing them every day. If you would like to improve your executive presence look for feedback from trusted sources. For instance, ask within your team or people you constantly work with on how your behavior and image is perceived.

Four elements:

• #Act is about your behavior – 66% of your executive presence is gravitas, improve your gravitas  
• #See is about optimizing your professional image – impressions matter, you are visible from the head to the top of your shoulders, wear clothes like you go to the office, watch your colors, watch your posture, smile
• #Hear is about how you communicate in the virtual world – it is about how you say it, power of breath, voice, storytelling
• #Feel is about what is happening and how you make people feel, show strong empathy, people do not remember what you said but how you made them feel

 

 

Key take away

• Virtual executive presence is important but can be developed
• Create the best impression of yourself
• Bring color into your world
• Practice Act, See, Hear and Feel every day
• People do not remember what you said, they remember, how you make them feel

 

Christine Koch
net4tec Munich Support

Personal Branding

Personal branding is more important than ever. These days it is not enough to BE GOOD but to BE VISIBLE as well. Everyone creates a personal brand, often without realizing it. If you are not knowingly branding yourself, you can be assured that others are doing it for you. #PersonalBranding

So better start and steer in the right direction. Using social media and networking opportunities you can influence how you want to be perceived by others. Effective personal branding sets you apart from the competition and helps to create trust with potential customers and employers. #Trust

In our morning session Dr. Irene Kilubi , Founder & Managing Director at brandPreneurs & brandFluencers and  #net4tec role model presented the steps that should be taken to work on your personal brand and make yourself more visible. As part of an interactive journey she encouraged participants to discover their SOUL in four steps.

Be clear about yourself

The provided soul analysis template helped to jump in the driver’s seat and to define what one wants to stand for based on your values and purpose. It can for instance be useful for becoming more visible, looking for a new job, a new speaking opportunity, or gaining more clients.

In order to get more clarity on strengths you can for instance consult friends and colleagues to help you identify areas where you good at or use the power of 34 talent topics of Gallup strengthfinder to find your potential.

#Strength

• Define your strength and core #Competencies
• List qualification, certification
• Define your #Skills

#Offerings

• Be yourself
• Analyze your competitors what you can do better to fill the gaps
• Position yourself in a niche
• Understand the needs of your customer
• Network, show interest in topics

#Uniqueness

• Your network is your networth
• Build a network before you need it
• Be helpful first
• Give, give, give and then ask

#Likings

• What are you passionate about?
• What are you enjoying most?
• What would you do if money does not count?

Know your target group

In order to better define the target group, it is important to focus on persona, platform and profile at the same time.

Persona

• At first create a realistic persona of your desired customer.
• Put yourself in the shoes of your customer and ask yourself questions about that persona.
• Describe for instance demographic characteristics as well as goals and fears.

Platform

• When choosing a platform, it is recommended to start with one or two channels LinkedIn, Xing, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter).
• Decide how much effort you can or want to put into social media #SocialMedia
• Consider what channels are used by your target group (B2B, B2C).
• Be conscious about whether your content contains a lot of photos or videos (i.e. Instagram, Pinterest).
• Consider retention time of the chosen channel
• Regularly create valuable content to be successful

Profile

• Create a great summary to increase attention and optimize your profile. Tell a story about yourself and make sure to use keywords.
• Put your expertise, offerings and target group into your profile slogan
• Choose a high quality picture, where you appear according to your target group and smile
• Be creative with your header by writing your activity or offer in text form #Creativity

Create relevant content

Producing relevant content is part of building a strong personal brand and therefore deserves a more detailed analysis. Since the topic has gone beyond the scope of our #Morningsession, a separate session will be offered soon.

Key take aways

• Be clear about yourself
• Start personal branding now
• Know your target group
• Start with one or two channels
• You cannot make a personal brand without creating relevant content

 

Christine Koch

 
Virtual Leadership

Leaders and team members had to switch to virtual communication suddenly when being forced to work from home due to Covid19. People who have previously worked in virtual or international environments might have advantages here, but virtual leadership is different during social distancing. Lots of people are exposed to a new situation to manage or being managed remotely. Both sides, managers and team members, must catch up and develop new competencies.

In our second virtual morning session we focused on the challenge of “VirtualLeadership” during the current phase of #socialdistancingnow.

Andrea Griesinger, net4tec Ambassador Frankfurt, guided us through the session and provided her experience of the last 10 years as (digital) business consultant in the IT Industry.

Challenges

• Stay in contact and foster #engagement
• Provide orientation and #stability
• Embrace your #customers
• #Trust the team members
• Encourage #communication
• Value #punctuality

Many helpful tools are available some of them for free during the corona crisis. If you are new to virtual team meetings and remote management, try out some tools, tips and tricks:

Helpful Tools

• Microsoft Teams – part of Office 365, privately available for everyone until 2021, restriction on user limit has been lifted.
• Zoom – virtual teamwork, online demos or online training for up to 100 participants, Tutorial for how to use breakout rooms
• Note taking tools – PowerPoint allows note taking in the active slide everybody can see
• Whiteboard tools – i.e. MURAL as virtual flipchart, for brainstorming and post it
• Meetinginsights – Capture and organize meeting content
• Other tools – Breakout, Webex, Adobe connect, Skype

Establish Rules

• Recordings are more valuable for conveying content than interactive meetings, Caution: recording might need to be announced in advance to get consent from all participants.
• Agree beforehand on contributions and comments, direct interruption might work for smaller teams, while announcing the desire to speak in chat is advisable for larger teams
• Set housekeeping rules in the beginning like interrupting rules, mute microphones when not speaking to reduce echo and background noise
• Agree where to find documents
• Let people finish taking
• Agree when questions are taken

Define Structure

• Send an agenda in advance so that the participants know what to expects and can prepare for the topics
• Collect more agenda items at the beginning to creates commitment and attention
• Agree on a note taker
• Create a summary with actions and to-do’s
• Circulate to all team members
• Close the meeting with a question what team members can take from the meeting

Virtual Teambuilding

• Create a good atmosphere for conversation in the beginning
• Add Ice breaker and Virtual Teambuilding idea
• Start the meeting with a question to share your thoughts I.e.
• Engage team members by moderate and take notes alternately
• Balance between information and interaction to foster collaboration
• Invite everybody to speak
• Share a video the beginning A Conference Call in Real Life

Key Take Aways

• Use tools for #collaboration such as Mural
• To record or not – There are tools that enable transcripts + recordings with keywords and searches (e.g. Meetinginsights exists for S4B, is currently available as a beta version for MS Teams)
• Use PowerPoint to present and take note directly on the slide
• Suggestions for start and final round Virtual Teambuilding ideas
• Collect agenda items at the beginning to creates commitment and attention
• Use Ice breaker as common warm up

Looking forward to seeing you during our next virtual morning session on April 9, from 9-10 am: Please sign up here and we will send you the meeting link with the dial-in information via mail.

Join our net4tec community as a member– that way you won’t miss the next gatherings.