Leadership Academy

In JCI we develop leaders, we give the opportunity to people to develop and use leadership skills through learning by doing. I feel we don't do enough to train people in leadership skills. We have some events on leadership during the year, but I really missed a full weekend intensive leadership academy similar to what is available for local presidents (European Academy) and national presidents (JCI Academy/Japan Academy).

Luckily, as a local President, you have some leverage as to what should be happening in your chamber the year you are a president and I used this leverage to create a JCI London leadership academy. I proposed the project formally to my council, but I think they have learned that if Solveig wants something, better not go against her...so they approved it. Good council.

The Academy took place in October in central London locations, and a bit in London itself. We had 20 participants, mostly from London but also from Reading and Glasgow, all of them amazing upcoming leaders who all participated actively throughout the weekend.

Friday evening we discussed what leadership is and the importance of personal branding. Throughout the academy each participant had an envelop with their name on stuck on the wall and the other participants were encouraged to leave feedback whenever a participant made an impact.

On Saturday we had sessions on communicating leadership and personal branding, trainers were Simon Bucknall from JCI London for the morning session and Tony Friende from Enos consulting for the afternoon session. We then let the participants out on the streets of London with apprentice style challenges that involved getting other people involved. One team had to find sponsors for our National Convention, another were asked to get publicity for the Nothing but Nets campaign and two teams were tasked with creating flash mobs and PR stunts for JCI. In the middle of the challenge the participants were told to also get featured in the media.

In addition, each participant were set a personal leadership challenge and had to lead an activity during the weekend, such as an ice breaker, time out or thank you speech.

Saturday evening we celebrated, the teams presented what they had done in the afternoon, we had speeches from National President Lesley Young and Past EVP Joe Dilger. We also had the honour to witness National President Lesley Young receive a senatorship, a lifelong honourary membership of JCI. The participants got to hear about leadership on different levels of the organisation, and also see how we reward leadership.

Sunday was the last day of a long weekend, Tony came back with his colleague Joe Howard and trained us in creativity and leadership. At the very last JCI member Oxana Andreeva led a personal coaching session for all participants.

Afterwards we had drinks, certificates (where each participant had to choose what kind of leader they wanted to be), and some participants went for dinner.

I loved the weekend, I loved the participants, I loved that the participants want to organise another one next year, it spurred me to sign up to an improvisation course, JCI London is planning to organise improvisation evenings next year, and I think we have an amazing team for next year's council.

Quotes from the participants:


"The Academy was a great weekend that not only made me think greatly about my own Leadership style, but the fantastic speakers and Sessions equipped me with new skills to take my Leadership to the next level in all aspects of my life. "
Callum Waddell

"We can learn by reading a book or watching how others do it, but nothing stands even close to personal experience. This training allowed me to learn and experience different concepts of interpersonal skills and to learn not only from my experience but from the experience of other Academy members.

By exploring ourselves we not only understand ourselves better, but also other people around us which allows us to act and communicate more successfully.Sometimes we need to be reminded of what we can do and sometimes we need a push to get out of our comfort zone. The satisfaction of pushing boundaries creates momentum - I can still feel the immense energy boost I received at the Academy."

Imants Krezins

"With the Leadership Academy being the first JCI course I have been on, I didn't really know what to expect. Having completed it, I now want to do every course there is!

It was a fantastic combination of highly-skilled trainers imparting knowledge on a diverse range of leadership skills, with a huge amount of hands on learning from the attendees. This allowed for you to work with a large number of different people and to learn from them, as well as from yourself.

Through the weekend I came to realise that leadership needs to start from self awareness, and we had so many opportunities to try out ways of being, of communicating, of interacting and to see the impact that has.

A fantastic course that I would highly recommend to anyone and everyone."

Robyn Peel

"JCI leadership academy - a supercharged course, by outstanding trainers, that pushes you out of your comfort zone and provides you with tools to make you a better leader."
Faisal Mooraby

catching up on things - awards and national convention

Life as a local president is busy and its been nagging me for a while that I should have been writing more on my blog....so much has happened since I last wrote, and I'll be updating on what's been going on from now on until the end of the year. And then I'm going to take a break. A JCI break. With no JCI between the 14th of December and new years. Yuhu!

Awards and National Convention
Last weekend (ish), JCI London had the great pleasure of hosting the first ever JCI United Kingdom National Convention.
The first, because in earlier years JCI UK has had two events - National Conference and National Awards, both about a day and a half. This year, to save members some money and offer a truly outstanding event, it was combined into almost three days with training sessions, parties, speakers and competitions.

It was fun. people came from all across the UK, British Isles and Europe. We've not had that many international attendees at a UK national event since many years. Among the attendees were JCI Director for Europe Michele Hermans, JCI VP Serge Goussaert, President Elect JCI Belgium 2011 Steven Vandenabeele, JCI Scotland President Karen Manson, JCI Ireland President Mark Kelly, representatives for WC 2011 in Brussels and EC 2011 in Tarragona, members from JCI Tallinn, Belgium and more.

I had the great honour to receive the award of Most Outstanding President JCI UK 2010, while JCI London won a number of awards (well done everyone!), among them Most Outstanding Chamber 2010 (you can see them all here: http://www.jcilondon.org.uk/news.php?id=251).

COC Director Sarah Beckwith and her team did an outstanding job. I know how much stress they've lived through with this convention and what they delivered was amazing.

Marco van den Heuvel took pictures, you can find them here.

See you next year!

visiting JCI Norway

One of the greatest things with JCI is to travel to visit other chambers and other national organisations.
I'm very lucky, I have two national organisations - JCI United Kingdom which is "my" national organisation, where I am currently Local President and Impact Officer, and will be National Marketing Director 2011, and JCI Norway, where I'm nothing at all but get to enjoy a status as adopted member, not really part of anything but access to it all.

I love seeing how different the two organisations are, JCI UK and JCI Norway, and how similar.We struggle with the same things, we argue about the same things, but we are good at very different things, and that is what we need to learn from each other.

While I was in Norway I got to
...practice my JCI World Public Speaking Championship speech and get feedback
...learn how to motivate others
...learn a lot about how JCI need to focus more on our current members than all the ones that haven't joined (yet)
...be inspired by JCI Norway's fantastic National President 2010 Heidi Murdoch-Larsen and learn about strategic networking in action
...meet lots of great people, many of whom I'll see again in Osaka
...debate why sex is better than alcohol

...feel loved and cared for and completely spoiled

Having lived almost 10 years abroad, I have friends in Norway but not the professional network I would have had had I lived there my professional life. Or at least that is what you would think. But with JCI Norway, the love and commitment I feel from its members, I have the best network I could possibly have in Norway. Thank you! You are all spoiling me!

JCI Belgium National Convention - Staines Memorial Award

This weekend I had the honor to travel to Mechelen for the JCI Belgium National Convention to presents the Staines Memorial Award.

Every year the President of JCI London presents the Staines Memorial Award to an outstanding member of JCI Belgium.

It was very hard to present the award. No matter how many times I practiced my speech, it never got easier, and when giving it on the stage it was hard to stay calm, something I think everyone noticed.

The award went to the wonderful An Deventer, very well deserved!

Otherwise the convention and the gala dinner was really nice. Good to meet old friends and make new ones. I look forward to seeing you all at our National Convention in November!

And finally a big thank you to the always graceful IVP Serge, International EVP Pierre, Dieter who took us around everywhere, and Diederik who hosted us at the beautiful From Dusk til Dawn. 

Here is my speech:

38 years ago, the 18^th of June 1972, the JCI Belgium National Board was on their way home from the European conference in Edinburgh. In London they boarded flight BE 548 for the short flight from London to Brussels.

A few kilometres outside London, about 3 minutes into the flight, two young brothers saw the plane fall from the sky  in what was to become known as the Staines disaster, after Lockerbie the worst air disaster in Britain.

JCI Belgium lost 7 members of the national board and 2 spouses and 12 children were orphaned.

My name is Solveig Malvik, I am standing here today as the President of JCI London. It is an honour for me to introduce the Staines Memorial Award which will go to an outstanding member of your organisation.

This award is presented every year by the President of JCI London as a mark of the bond between our organisations that came to be because of the Staines disaster.

You can never prepare for something like the Staines disaster, but that doesn’t mean you should stop living.

It is a great credit to JCI Belgium that you took what was the worst accident in your history and turned it into a way of recognizing someone who makes your organisation stay truly alive.

We cannot prepare, but we can build resilience. We can build an organisation that is connected because our relationships give us strength, our friends help us through hard times and remind us to keep on living, and that is what the Staines Memorial award recognizes.

As JCI Belgium you are facing new challenges this year and the next. We as your friends stand with you, and now – like then – as your friends we will not allow you to fail.

I am convinced that you will not only success but come out stronger and your relationships are witness to this.

I would like to paraphrase the actress Mary Pickford, for we can give ourselves a new start any moment we choose, because this thing we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down.

It is my honour to give the word to Serge Goussaert who will recognise a member of your organisation who through their work has made your organisation stronger, more resilient and more alive.

Night at the Zoo with JCI Bellevue-Zurich

Last night I had a great night with members from JCI Bellevue-Zurich. 

Once a year the museums of Zurich stay open the whole night. All the museums, and the zoo. Most stay open until 2am, some until 4am. Lots of things going on - dance performances, lectures, parties and DJs. 

First we had dinner at a nice steak house next to the zoo, we had a great time, lots of laughs, some wine, great steak.

After the dinner we went to the night zoo, which looked quite a lot like what you see to the right here. But fun. A bit like "find 5 differences". Is the slightly lighter gray thing on the rock actually a rock or is it a tiger? Is the slightly darker gray rock next to the rock another rock or is it a giant turtle? Hummmm... I might have seen a tiger, two wolves, a lion (pretty sure I saw a lion), two elephants, a giant turtle and a very scary bat (see below).

JCI Bellevue-Zurich is running a project not very different from JCI London's Go for It! project in two weeks, and I'll be very interested in learning about their experiences and sharing best practices.

I had a great night with a great bunch of people, thank you JCI Bellevue-Zurich for taking very good care of me.

What's your tail?

I have a tail. Depending on the day, on the time and the need its either a cat's tail, a fox's tail or a squirrel's tail.

My tail keeps me in balance, reminds me its got my back, reminds me to walk proud.

Have you ever looked at people and wondered what their tails are? Its fun, I promise. Men are often dogs, wolves on a good day. Something about the shoulders, how they walk. Would you tell your friend if he's a pig or an elephant? A monkey?

Local Leader Summit 2, JCI Norway

This weekend I got the honor to speak to around 20 of the local JCI leaders in Norway. It was a lot of fun!

It is very interesting to learn about what is going on in other local and national JCI organisations, and great to see how much we have in common and how we can learn from each other.

I like the concept of the local leader summits, it allows the local leaders to network, learn from each other and share success stories. We don't have anything similar in the UK, but it is a concept I'd love to introduce to JCI UK. Many other national organisations have something similar and I would have loved to have it as a local president.

In my workshop I started by presenting JCI London, how we have developed, what we are doing that is working, and what we are struggling with. We then worked on the JCI mission and vision, practiced our elevator pitches, then we brainstormed solutions for some of the issues the local presidents feel the organisation is facing. We had so much to discuss with lots of great input, so we didn't get as far into the last exercise as I would have liked, but you live and learn and this was the first time I had 3 hours to give a workshop, and 3 hours turned out to be both quite long and too short.

As a thank you gift I got a book on the history of JCI Norway from the beginning to 1979. It is interesting to see how we are not only similar across borders, but across generations, and how we have been facing and working on the same issues since the beginning. Interesting - and quite a bit frustrating.

Thank you JCI Norway for inviting me and for making me feel welcome!

Leadership Academy

I love creating things, I love organising things. Love, love, love how the ideas, inspirations and inputs come together and take shape.

My latest project is the JCI London Leadership Academy, its my Presidential Project for JCI London.

Why a leadership academy? In JCI London (and in JCI in general) we talk a lot about leadership development, but we don't do much about it. We give people opportunities to develop leadership skills in action, we throw teams and projects at them, but we don't do much to support them or develop them, and that's where this new Academy comes in. And its not something new, most JCI organisations - local as well as national, has some sort of leadership training or academy, its honestly us here in London that are slow....

And the pieces for this academy are coming together beautifully. I have secured 4 brilliant speakers - 2 from within JCI London and 2 from the outside. Location has been booked, dinner has been booked, tickets have gone on sale, logo has been designed, work book is being designed...yay!

So what will happen? 
The academy is process based, not speaker based, so the speakers and program is designed to work together to create a process of learning and development in the participants (but that doesn't mean we won't have brilliant speakers...)
The first evening, Friday, we'll start with looking at the concepts of leadership - before we start learning about leadership we need to know what we mean, break down the big words. We'll look at power, values and behaviours, explore and challenge what we think leadership is and what we think about it.
Saturday will be a practical day. We'll explore our personal leadership brand and style, learn about how to use our networks and resources strategically, how to build support for ideas and who our "customers" are as leaders. Then in the afternoon the participants will be split into teams that will go out on the streets of London to take on leadership in action to succeed in a challenge that will get gradually harder...then we'll have a nice dinner where National President Lesley Young will share with us her thoughts on leadership.
Sunday we'll learn about communication skills as leader, how to communicate our brand, and finally look at career development how to define our brand and how to get there.

Speakers:
Simon Bucknall
Oxana Andreeva
Tony Friede
Joe Howard
 

Preparing for LS2

I've been invited to speak at JCI Norway's second leadership meeting of the year, LS2. Yay! I love getting invitations to speak!

I'm going to give a 3 hour workshop to the local presidents and deputies in Norway about membership growth, engagement and impact. I am really looking forward to meeting them all and working with them. We're talking a lot about these things in London and the UK, and its always great getting other perspectives on things.

The greatest Chamber in the world II

...yeah, that's our ambition....And we're on our way!

Last week was very exciting! On a very short notice we organised two informal discussions at a wine bar in central London about what membership in London is about, where we want it to go, and how we can take it to the next level. One group met on Tuesday and another on Thursday, both about 7-8 people, a mix of council members, long time members, new members and non-members - all of them pitching in with their view on things. It was awesome!

JCI London has gone through a lot of changes the last couple of years, and the growth in members (from 41 in 2008 to 130 (and counting) in 2010) and in numbers of events are the changes that have made the most impact on how we function and what we offer our members. Are we the best we can be? What can we do better? What would the ideal organisation look like and what has to be true for that to happen?

The two discussion meetings were quite different, not so much in energy but the focus in each meeting was different, and I was the only person present at both meetings. I asked the people present to discuss our ambition to be the greatest chamber, what does that mean? To our members? To London?  How can we get there?

One thing both meetings looked into was the difference between long term and short term benefits. We're not a short term benefits organisation, but most members join us for the short term benefits, then stay for the long term benefits... During the discussions at the first meeting I was inspired to write the tag lines below, and its now going into the national newsletter here in the UK as a definition of what JCI is not... I know its not good to focus on "nots", and not good to write "buts", but (yeah yeah) here I feel it works....

We’re not a networking organisation…

…but through us you’ll build a network of ambitious future leaders and friends that will last you a lifetime

We’re not Toastmasters…

…but through us you’ll get training in public speaking and presentations and the opportunity to practice in front of a variety of audiences locally, nationally and internationally

We’re not a CPD organisation…

…but through us you’ll get professional and personal development cheaper than with any other comparative organisation (and you can even log it as CPD hours)

(CPD means Continuous Professional Development and is a means for professionals to maintain their skills. Many companies and organisations in the UK require employees to log a certain number of CPD hours per year, obviously logging those hours through JCI is both cheap to the company and a lot more fun to the employee!) 

If you have ways to make this text better, or suggestions to how it could flow, please feel free to share them with me in the comments!

I'll come back with another post on the outcome of this whole process later, I need to share it with my council first, but I just couldn't wait sharing at least a tiny bit....its all so much fun!

Reading habits

I have a bad Amazon habit...

I've told myself that I won't order more books until I've read all the ones I have from before, but when those books are on topics like quantum mechanics and feminism, keeping that promise to myself has turned out to be hard. Not to mention that reading anything at all has turned out to be hard as a Local JCI President...there's just too many other things to do...

I have spurts of random interests when I decide to buy all the books I can find on Amazon on a certain topic. Ok, not all the books, but enough to feel that "ok, if I read these, then I'll know what its all about". Last year two of these spurts were as mentioned quantum mechanics and feminism. I then realised that quantum mechanics actually is physics, and feminism - yeah there's a reason I hadn't already read all those books. I'm absolutely proud of being a feminist, but the thing I feel with books that broke new ground 50 years ago is that the ground has been broken and what the books are saying have been incorporated into mainstream thinking. And that's excellent, it means the book really made an impact, but it also makes for an unmotivated Solveig.

Other interests last year that made an impact on the content of my bookshelves:

• Russian language (ya khasho champanska)
• Modern Russian history (still reading those books, especially Orlando Figes and books on current oil politics)
• Modern African history (I actually read those books, yay!)
• Philosophy of Ethics (I love Alasdair MacIntyre, but his books aren't easy reading so I'm still working on them)
• Israeli military development (nope, not read)
• State building and how to save failed states (read some...)
• general stuff on leadership, networking, personal development

Some of my book habits are good, some are bad. I tend to read about six books at a time, which I think of as a good habit. I need one book to relax with, one book on politics, another for inspiration on leadership issues, then its the book I'm reading for the training I'm planning to give in August, then its the book on international finance I just never managed to finish but still want to read now and then....and on and on and on...

A bad habit is that I never remember what I've actually read. To help me remember which books I've actually read (yeah, that's an issue...) I've one of those neat new moleskine book journals where I note down the basics about each book, and then I have another (also moleskine) where I write more substantial notes about the books I really want to remember. Writing book reviews here on my blog is also a great way of getting more out of a book as it forces me to make up my own opinion about a book and dig out the important points. I also make lots of notes in my books, with various colored pens. Which can be fun, as I've sometimes grabbed a book I thought I hadn't read yet, only to come about halfway to find lots of my own notes...therefore the moleskin book journal (which is a pretty recent acquisition).

Today I got 5 more books from Amazon (bad, bad Solveig). "Beware of Small States" by David Hirst (I need to stay up on Middle East politics!), "The Diamond Cutter" and "It's your ship" (both recommended by brilliant Tony Friede and both on leadership theories in practice), and Peter M. Senge's "The Fifth Discipline" on learning organisations (I'm fascinated by organisations and have been since my student years, both small and large, from government level to JCI and family level, how do they really work and how do we make them work better?). The last is actually two books, so that makes five! And I'm sure Daniel will be very happy to know that at least 4 of the books are exceptionally large, completely justifying the new Billy bookcases we have to buy either way...

...and I'm already waiting for my next Amazon package  ;) 

Public Speaking

As you might know, I participated at the European Public Speaking Championship in Aarhus, Denmark at the JCI European Conference in June this year.

I've always loved speaking in front of people. Since I was a kid, I've taken every opportunity to speak or perform. My largest audience ever was when I "graduated" from the humanist version of the Christian Confirmation course in Norway, I was 14 and held a very serious speech in front of about 1,300 other 14-year olds and their parents and families. I also always speak at family gatherings, everywhere I can I get up and speak. And I've been some in the media. I think I like communicating!

The most challenging thing with the speaking this time around wasn't so much the delivery. If I relax and I feel confident, my delivery is natural, engaged (because I care about my topic) and I use my voice in a natural manner. The challenging thing was the content, and the context. The content - I think I got that under control, the context - well...I'm working on that...

I had two breakthroughs in the preparation of the speech, and I will share them here.

Simon Bucknall (Champion 2008 & The Art of Connection) went through the content and structure of the speech with me and made me understand that I should only keep things I was genuinely passionate about, things I really mean and believe, and that contributes to the story. And to discard anything that either distracts from the main point (no matter how much I like the point), or that the audience don't strictly need to know in order to get the main point.


Caroline Hall helped with the same thing (I had done my best after getting coaching from Simon but there were still darlings to kill), and also coached me on body language. I get nauseous from speakers that move too much from side to side (and as we've learned from this book, its because people's fear reflexes are on and we think its harder to hit a moving target...) so I've really worked on standing still. Caroline told me that its ok to move, as long as the move fits my story (i.e. if its natural for me to step forward or walk to explain something), and if - when I walk to the left, as soon as I reach the left side, I look to the right to engage the public on the right too, and don't walk more than 3 times back and forth and always make sure I end up in the centre.

What I should have been coached on, if its even possible, is to not read emails right before going on stage, and to not get affected by emails from a disgruntled boss.

I had to give my speech twice, first round we were 12 speakers in an auditorium with a small audience that we looked up on. Second round we were three finalists speaking in small hall where we looked down on the audience, and the audience were considerably larger

What surprised me was how different the experience of speaking was from one to the other. The first one I was almost in a daze, I don't remember anything (except thinking it was uncomfortable to look upwards and that I was focusing on not looking too much on the judges), and it was great. No thinking, just doing!

The second time around I was conscious of every step and every move. It was horrible! "Should I walk forward now?" "Should I lift my left hand?" "What's the next word again?" Was it the situation or the emails from my boss? Probably everything, but its end result was a very nervous Solveig on stage.

And that's what the judges told me afterward too. They said that first time I spoke I did excellent, second time I was too nervous. I also asked what I can change to win in the finals in Osaka in November (of course I want to win!), and they said that the only thing I should change was to not be nervous....easier said than done....But I got some advice on how to do that (give cell phone to friend day before, have a cheerleader group, focus on smiling people etc...)

As I've mentioned in an earlier post, I won! yay! In the picture to the left you can see I got my award from Roland and Bertold. Lesley, the girl to the left, National President JCI United Kingdom, came on stage with me, and I was trembling walking on stage. I wasn't aware before my name was announced how nervous and apprehensive I'd been about the whole thing. The whole rest of the evening I was like a balloon with no air, all the tension and nervousness relieved you think I should be happy, and I was, but my body was just deflated.

After the award ceremony I was overwhelmed by the support and love from everyone. Everyone came to congratulate me and in some way or another offer me help and support. Coaching, speaking practice, advice and most importantly of all their pride and support in me representing Europe in the World Finals.

Next step now is the World Finals in Osaka, Japan in November, where I'll meet the winners from Africa and the Middle East (a Syrian girl), Asia and the Pacific (a girl from the Philippines), and the Americas.  But right now - a little break from it all, then I'll look at my speech with fresh eyes and keep working on my nerves!

6 months council review/dinner

Its been a while since I wrote last, I've been traveling a lot, and I will be updating this blog with stories of my travels, as its all been JCI travels, and all been amazing. But right now I want to write about something even more amazing, my JCI London council.

For our 6 months review I took them all out for dinner at a small place in central London where there's a really nice private dining room, Chez Gerard.

We had some good food, some wine, and we went through what we felt had worked so far this year, and what hadn't. I also gave them my speech from the European Public Speaking  Championship (which I won!), and then I challenged them to write down the answers to these questions...

1) How will you take JCI London to the next level the next 6 months?
2) How will JCI London help your skills and your job the next 6 months?
3) Describe the dream organisation, the ideal JCI London
4) What has to be true in order for your ideal JCI London to be true?

Then, at the end, I had them all write down positive comments to each other that we placed in envelopes on the back of their chairs. We're 6 months through the year, everything isn't easy, we've all ran into some obstacles, we might have disagreed on things, some things we wanted dearly to do haven't happened yet, and we all need some cheering up (I loved the comments I got. Thank you so much everyone. I hope you all enjoyed the comments you got as much as I love mine!).

Again - in the responses to the four questions above, my council are amazingly ambitious and brilliant. I won't write down any of the responses here (many of them are very personal), but I will mention them in future posts as we will be working on them all over the coming 6 months towards Christmas....

Our next council meeting will be on membership, and I challenge you to think about how we can be the best for our members, take our organisation to the next level, and be the dream organisation.

Thank you all for everything so far!

Moving forward - JCI UK Presidents Day and the Impact Plan

Last weekend, chambers from all across the United Kingdom met in Belfast for JCI UK's second national event of 2010, the Presidents & Deputies day. It was excellent, JCI Belfast did a great job organising the event, and in addition to the formal parts of the program, we also got to see lots and lots of Belfast.

I was very excited, because this was the day I was to present the Impact Plan to all of the local Presidents in the UK. I knew from before that not everyone was as excited about the plan as I was, and that not everyone was as accepting of my role in it all. That's ok, I'm a new player on the stage of JCI UK, and I have maybe not been as good in communicating the purpose with it all as I should have been.

In the end I think it went quite well. I gave a quick overview over the plan, then we all decided on four topics we think are the most important for JCI UK at the moment. After some discussions we agreed on continuity, communication, profile and engagement. We then had a world-cafe style brainstorm with 4 groups rotating between tables discussing and mapping the different problems connected to the 4 topics. We focused on the problems and not the solutions mainly for two reasons. I felt we needed to get the problems aired, the problems we are facing needed to be recognised and put on the table, but also - now that the problems have been aired, we're done talking about them and from now on we will only be focusing on solutions. Basta.

After the brainstorm, I asked all the participants to look at the 4 papers and mark the problems they thought was most important, both long term and short term, this was then used to kick-start four volunteer task groups that will work on each issue up until the national convention in November. I was very happy to see that people took up the challenge and both volunteered to be part of and leaders of the various task forces, I'm also very happy to see that the groups have a variety of members from all across the UK, including Northern Ireland.

You can find the JCI UK Impact Plan on the slideshare link below.

Jci uk impact plan 2010 2012

View more presentations from JCI London.

Next week I'm off to Singapore for the JCI Asia Pacific conference 2010 and I'm very very excited! I've never been to Singapore, I'll get to fly the A380 plane over there, and in addition I'll get to go to another (I'm sure excellent) JCI conference where I'll meet up with old friends, make new friends and learn new things.  Now I only have to make sure I finish my Union Jack dress in time, I'm leaving on Monday, today is Thursday, and the dress is not yet started...(not to forget all the other things I have on this weekend, Saturday is JCI's day at the Art of Engagement, and I'm really really looking forward to that. Almost 60 UK Jaycees coming together for a whole day exploring leadership, management and engagement)

Taking JCI to the next step - Horizontal leadership - leading beyond authority

In this post I write about what we need to do to take JCI London to the next step, make us a player in the London civic space, and also a bit about personal ambitions and impact.

JCI London has a cooperation with Common Purpose where we organise a joint event about once a year. Last year's was on passion and this year's event will be on "your leading edge". Common Purpose and JCI have a lot in common, though Common Purpose is a professional organisation which allows for a whole other level of events, the passion and purpose behind the organisations are much the same, and the people are all engaged, passionate and interesting, so we all get along brilliantly.

I've recently started one of Common Purpose's programs, International Navigator together with my Marketing Director Evren. So far we've done one full day seminar and one half day learning session. The full day seminar was on leadership, power and leading beyond authority and it really got me thinking, challenging my concept of both power and authority. The half day learning session was on passion, we also worked through some individual leadership challenges (and not surprisingly I chose one JCI London is facing right now), but I'll write more about that later as it deserves its own post.


So what is leading beyond authority?
Leading beyond authority is a concept developed by Julia Middleton, the founder and CEO of Common Purpose, and expanded on in her book Beyond Authority: Leadership in a Changing World. 

In short - you have your inner circle, where authority is asserted by formal positions, structures or hierarchies. For me - I'm Director in my company, I'm President in JCI London, and both those positions give me a formal right to authority and power in those inner circles. In my company its the people I manage, and in JCI its my directors and council (though yeah you can debate how much actual power I have over my directors ;) ).

The second circle is the wider company, and in JCI its our members and partners. I have some notion of authority by being the JCI President, but I have no formal authority over anyone.  My position is recognized, but does not necessarily imply any direct authority.

The third and final circle is the wider community or civic space where we have no formal authority. I'm not recognised neither as JCI President nor as Director in my company. If I want to lead in this circle I have to do so based on personality, impact and achievements in that circle. Achievements and authority from one circle is not directly transferable from once circle to the next.

For each person and each organisation these circles are different, but overlap. For example one of our partners would have their inner circle in our second circle, while our inner circle would be part of their second circle, etc.

How do we move our authority into the third circle? 
I believe JCI definitively deserves to be more visible in the third circle, have more authority. I don't mean the authority or power to boss people around, I mean presence, visibility and recognition. I want the newspapers to call us if they need a quote from a young leader, I want the CEOs of companies to recognize that involvement with JCI adds value to a CV, I want the HR departments to encourage their employees to become engaged with JCI, and I want our programs and projects to be recognized.

We need to be more visible, have a clearer branding strategy (or rather...have a branding strategy in the first place), a fresh profile, quality events and also flag ship events that extend beyond our members. It all sounds so easy....after speaking with people who've never heard of JCI I've come to realize that there's no way we can expand outwards unless we know who we are and can explain this to people in less than an hour, so branding - knowing who we are, is the first step.

Horizontal careers
All this have also inspired me to look at my career and my goals and how I personally can move horizontally. I realised that I want to stop focusing on the upward career ladder, but rather focus on how I can expand my career sideways. Does this mean I don't want to move upwards in JCI UK? Not really, but that is because (and I might be big-headed in this) I think the organisation needs me to get more involved, but it does mean that if I had thought these thoughts last year I'd probably stayed on as business director and worked on creating more outwards impact in that role. 

This lead me to read a bit on portfolio careers (yes yes a book review is in the making). Portfolio careers are careers where people have more than one job, often jobs that compliment each other, jobs that contribute to our portfolio of skills. Jobs that make us feel more like a whole person, drawing on more than one skill set and more than one type of challenges. I want one of those!

Thinking about it, I've come to realize I  have a portfolio career. I have my day job, I write for Malvikbladet, and I'm the President of JCI where in addition to doing the management I also give quite a bit of training. Not all of the jobs making up a portfolio career need to be paid jobs, for example a trustee ship can be part of a portfolio career, and I definitively think JCI is part of my career, though unpaid. What do I want to do more of? More training, more speaking, more writing, maybe also find a trustee position somewhere.


So my goal for this year and the next two years is to move JCI London and JCI UK outwards into the civic space. I want us to be visible, to be a player, to be counted with and on. It will take time, but we need to start now. This year my focus is to create a brand for us, a profile, and make our members proud of who we are and what we stand for. Building on this we'll take the organisation outwards, forwards and upwards. yay!

councils and marketing and challenges all around

I've started my second round of individual director meetings - we meet over dinner or in another informal setting and discuss the year so far, the months to come, challenges and successes. It is interesting to note that almost all of the directors more or less find themselves at this point in time in the same position and with the same challenges. I encourage the directors to share experiences and advice, as they are all struggling with the same issue, and I suggest solutions.

What is this thing they are all dealing with? Team building...Team building, team building, team building... We've had a couple of months now with activities, projects and team meetings, and some things have worked out, and some things haven't, and the one thing they are all struggling with is this thing called team building...

How do you make a team work? And how do you get a team in the first place? I don't have the answers, but I continue to advice my directors to do several things - dare to give space to other people to take initiative, allow people ownership over projects and ideas, recognize the team members as individuals and follow up with them on the individual level, organise interesting quality events that attract new team members. I think the most scary of these is allowing other people to take initiative. We are all so ambitious, we want things to be the the best and be done as soon as possible, but sometimes we have to lean back and realise that sometimes that means not doing things ourselves. I must say though that my directors are good at delegating, this isn't a issue we have a lot, but something that was a hard lesson for me when I first headed a project.

Next council meeting will be special, I'm taking them all out for a big dinner in a private dining room in central London - both directors and deputies, and we're going to talk about how things have gone, and how we can take JCI London to the next level. In a way, all the meetings we've had so far this year has been building up to this meeting. Creating awareness of membership issues and processes, why people join and why they stay, how we brand ourselves, how we promote ourselves. I'm planning to challenge my council a bit, go outside the box, but at the same time create the confidence in each individual that this is something we can achieve.

I'm also very excited about our new marketing budget. I've been sourcing designers online, both friends and strangers, and now we're developing a long list of everything we would like to have made. We plan on creating a new graphic profile for JCI London, a profile that is both in tune with our history and our particularities as a chamber, as well as conforming to the global JCI branding guidelines. Very exciting!

In addition to the JCI London council meeting last night, I also attended the London Chamber of Commerce's council meeting. Every President of JCI London sits on the "grown up" chamber's council, and its a lot of fun!
 Yesterday we learned about the recent election (and it was very timely, as Brown just resigned the minute our briefing started!), and I learned about what goes into running a professional chamber of commerce. Its interesting to see they deal with a lot of the same issues - membership, press and meeting, though apparently on a different level.

I also really enjoy connecting with the individuals on the council, and last night left my head spinning with ideas and possibilities. And about a million lunch dates. And spinning from wine, something that my JCI council had to deal with when I was chairing our meeting right after...Did that positively or negatively affect my marketing proposal? Not so sure, but it went through!

Marketing workshop - extending our visibility & influence

Yesterday we had a (I think fun) workshop on marketing and PR for JCI London. We looked at JCI London's circle of influence, target groups, the ideal organisation, members - why they join, why they stay, and then how we can become visible.

We started out looking at the organisation and what our target groups would be, then we decided on 5 areas to brainstorm on using the GPS for Enterprise from Flanders DC (which the team really liked), and finally what would be our immediate action items.

 We also looked at facebook ads. I've been playing around on facebook, and though we've had quite a few click-throughs to JCI London's website, we've not had anyone signing up to the event I've promoted (for one I promoted last night's marketing workshop, but as this was election night for one of the probably most exciting elections in the UK since about 30 years....not many Brits turned up), the other event I've been promoting is the new member event the 27th, maybe still too far ahead.

To the left you can see one of the facebook ads, it will go live around the 20th of May, linking to a new member event the 27th, target - women university graduates in London. I got some advice on facebook ads from Marius Fredriksen, from JCI Evolution, and I'll probably go back to him ask for some more once I start to learn a bit more how it all works.

Here's one of the outcomes - some focus areas and the activity level we foresee in the various areas. Short term we want to focus on promotional literature (including fridge magnets, pop up banners etc) and things that enhance the membership experience and identity (merchandise). We then want to focus on media and the press, and extending JCI's visibility and influence in London's civic space (see a forthcoming blog post on leading beyond authority).

All in all - a fruitful workshop and I look forward to seeing what the team will come up with moving forward. 

Book review - Body language

So I'm reading an excellent book, but I'm really annoyed with the title. For a while I debated not telling you the title at all, just give you a non-descriptive link, but here it goes. Don't judge a book by its cover is a cliche, but this is really one of those moments. 

Winning Body Language: Control the Conversation, Command Attention, and Convey the Right Message without Saying a Word

And why do I not like the title? Because it sounds like one of those "how to win friends" books. This isn't a book filled with postures and how-to's, its a book that goes deep into the human psychology and history and looks at why and how we react to non-verbal communication the way we do.Why are we so nervous in front of a public? Bowden argues that it is because we've activated the same triggers in our brain as we would have activated if we were attacked by a mountain lion, its a pure fear thing, hormonal. And because of another hormone, oxytocin, its natural for us humans to mirror each other. So if you are standing up there on stage sending out fear signals, guess what the public is feeling?

The book its an easy - and entertaining - read. The concepts aren't easy, and its Bowden's experience as a speaker and his grasp of these concepts and the English language that makes it easy to read. Well worth your time.

who are you disapppointing?

One of my favorite poems is "The Guy in the Glass", it reminds me that the only person who will be disappointed in me, is myself. Not my parents, not my friends, not by my boss, not the JCI members, only myself. Of course - other people can be disappointed if I promise something then don't do it, or forget, but that's not the kind of disappointment I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about the more serious kind of disappointment, the am-I-fulfilling-my-expectations-to-life disappointment, the one that can lead to serious self-doubt and self-confidence issues.

One of the first things I say to members that want to get involved in JCI activities is to not disappoint themselves. In general, JCI members are ambitious young people, we see something we don't like and we fix it, we get ideas, we implement them, we go for our dreams, go-getters, sometimes even overachievers - you can call us a lot of things. And sometimes you can call us disappointed. Not in each other, but in ourselves.

Sometimes we think we can do everything, we'll spend an hour each and every morning working on JCI things, we'll get Richard Branson to come speak for us, we'll do everything, go to all meetings, travel...

And its a killer.

How, as a leader, do you deal with disappointment in a team? From an email saying "I'm sorry I didn't do what you expected", to someone who is so discouraged by their own efforts they don't even want to come to meetings any more? We've all been there - the project you don't even want to think about, the contact you should have emailed ages ago and now its too late, the note to yourself telling you to follow up on that lead...

So I do my best to not have to deal with it, telling my directors to not set themselves up for disappointment. I tell them that I will never be disappointed in them, in JCI we all participate as much as we can, but that they can be disappointed in themselves, and its a lot worse. It is better to give more than expected than less.

Yes - I am only disappointing myself, but is that really an "only"? Are we not the harshest judges of ourselves and our accomplishments?

I don't believe in living without expectations, I believe in following your dreams, being your best, but also keeping it all within reality. You should have a big hairy goal, an ambition you think is only 50% achievable, a dream to work towards and live up to. Just keep it --- you know ---- semi realistic. 

Investing in yourself - youth getting a competitive edge over their peers

There has been much written about unemployed and lazy youths having to get off their backsides. Youths – together with the rest of the UK – are facing the challenges of the recession, but not everyone is making this a disadvantage. In voluntary organisations we see many youths rediscovering the value of being an active citizen, not only to their communities, but also to their CVs and career prospects.

As President for the biggest Junior Chamber in the country, I see more and more young people looking to find that particular competitive advantage that will propel them into working life, fill that elusive gap on the CV, or help them make the next step on the career ladder.

Youth involvement in voluntary and political organisations decreased dramatically during the nineties and the first decade of the new millennium. Why? We-the voluntary organisations- don’t know. Did life get too comfortable, Did people not care about anyone but themselves? What we are seeing now is that involvement and membership in voluntary and civic organisations is again on the rise. Youths, including myself, are realizing the benefit of working for something other than our account balance.

Are we seeing the rebirth of the active and engaged youth? The abundance of jobs our parent’s generation got used to simply does not exist any more, jobs have to be created, they are not up for grabs any more.

JCI promotes youth leadership and entrepreneurship and we see that those members who lose their jobs rarely stay unemployed. Investing in oneself is worth more than investing in the bank. Getting proven hands on experience from a voluntary organisation, be it project management, leadership or budgeting, pays more in terms of real and tangible opportunities to get the dream job than any number GCSEs or A levels. Not forgetting the social and professional networks involvement in a voluntary organisation allows a person to build.

Branding JCI UK

Those who've known me for a while know I love making dresses, its just I've not had the time the last couple of years.

Combine that with a need for more visibility for JCI UK in international JCI circles and a lazy Sunday among inventive girlfriends (and pitchers of pimm's), and you have the result you can see on the left - formal dresses with a hint of Union Jack.

The greatest Chamber in the world

...at least that's our ambition.

Last night at the JCI London monthly council meeting we had a workshop with Sofie on branding, We analyzed the brand of the After Eight chocolate, then we looked at how we brand JCI London, and how we would like JCI London to be seen.

And it turns out JCI London's members are pretty ambitious! Which I like! Not only do we feel we live in the greatest city in the world, we also believe we are members of the greatest JCI chamber in the world (but to not sound too cocky, we modified it as "Becoming the greatest JCI Chamber in the world"). 

Next council meeting the 10th of May will be on membership - who our members are, how can we encourage them to be (and stay) active, how can we get more... All JCI London members are welcome. After the meetings we normally go to the pub for a pint of beer and some informal chatting.

newsletter challenges

so I'm in Dubai, something that has proven a problem for this week's newsletter. But no problem is unsolvable, and I'm sure we'll be able to find a solution.

So the thing is, Dubai (and the United Arab Emirates as a whole), bans any website they think can be against their religious or cultural sensitivities, so any website with nude images, gambling, references to alcohol etc, but also a lot of networking websites. And also Flickr, where I get the images for the newsletter from, so all the images I have in my newsletter comes up as broken links... annoying!

The yellow image of Um Saeed to the right is what I see when I try to access a blocked website.

oh well - I am sure we will find a solution, I am not the only person in the world able to do this newsletter, it might end up being sent a bit late, but challenges are there to be resolved.... otherwise I'm enjoying Dubai. Crazy working hours (I'm 4 hours ahead of the UK and 9 hours ahead of the US), lots of meetings, but also lots of sun, summer and good friends.

 Here's an image of me in front of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest tower in the world. I saw this tower when it was being built, and now its finished. Its actually very very big. The base is enormous and its hard to fit the whole tower into a picture.


 Maybe this is what I will have to do, upload images to my blog and use them for the newsletter (weirdly enough blogs aren't banned...). Hum hum. 

Book review: "Collaboration" by Morten T. Hansen

I've just finished a very good book,  Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results by Morten T. Hansen.

The book has given me great inputs and powerful tools on how to evaluate and enhance collaboration in JCI London, and also inputs for how we can implement the JCI UK Impact Plan and develop "connected autonomy" in our chambers throughout the UK.

Inspired by the book, I made this collaboration quadrant for how the chambers in the UK are working now, and where we want them to go. I really like the term "Connected Autonomy", coined by Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsicCo.

The book looks at both bad and good collaboration, opportunities and barriers for collaboration (no - collaboration isn't always right), right into the very organizational culture, analyzing what supports collaboration and what works against it.

How can we collaborate without anyone feeling threatened? How can we avoid that people think their input is not acknowledged, that their contributions are not recognized. Sometimes in teamwork, the individual disappears, the individual value disappears, and that would be of no help to JCI UK. Luckily, Mr. Hansen deals with exactly that (and a million other things, like how to build networks, how to set goals...), and I'm hoping to finish a plan of action for JCI UK this weekend that looks at how we can achieve "Connected autonomy" in our chambers.

New Directors (2)

Last week we were looking for two new directors, and this week we got them! yay!

Anne is adding to her engagements in JCI London and coming on the board with a full directorship, Anne is already local TOYP coordinator and Deputy Business Director, and now also new International Director. Too much? Anne is very efficient and has a work capacity beyond most people, and I'm trusting her to keep me up to date if something changes. Also Anne is very ambitious on behalf of JCI and wants to do as much as she can for the organisation in the years she has left as a member (membership ends at 40), something we always like!

Second new director is new member Timmy from Sweden. New to JCI and new to London Timmy made a strong impression on us already from day one, and is also ambitious in using his role as Strategic Partnership Director to build networks and visibility in London both for JCI and himself. I've had a meeting with Timmy already and I'm excited for the new push.

learning something every day...

Going through my daily news sites (in my job you need to be on top of what's going on, today's lunch discussion was who's going where in the US senate), I stumbled upon this article in the Times: Why women are such bad networkers. Of course I felt personally challenged by this article, as I consider myself a reasonably good networker (and a reasonably good trainer in networking...).

But we learn something every day, and one of the lightbulbs from this article was to maybe focus less on networking with women-only groups, but get out of my comfort zone and network with the guys too. It also reminded me to make more of an effort, research and reflect on what I do and what I learn. I'm very good at doing, I'm very intuitive, but I'm not very good at reflecting on what I've done and what I've learned.So today I'm buying a moleskine notebook, small enough to come with me everywhere, and I'll start reflecting... cross your fingers for me!

In addition the article reminded me to make more of an effort online. I read an article yesterday on how to make better use of LinkedIn, and reading the Times article was yet another reminder to get going with this. So I've rekindled my twitter account (twittername: solveigma), and will reconnect it with facebook so that I don't have to do two updates (if I find out how!).

Efficient ladies!

Last weekend's JCI Doncaster's Annual Dinner was as always inspiring. Its great meeting up with other local presidents, Senators and people from the National Board. Lots of ideas and input for how we can move forward, and also ideas for events and projects (picture is of Allison and Debbie from National Board)

This morning I've been emailing with Katie, Local President JCI Doncaster, to organise a JCI Ladies Day at the Races in Doncaster in September. We started working on the project this morning, and now, 3pm, a flier is done, the registration website is up on eventbrite (see!), and we're ready to take registrations! Efficient ladies indeed!

The races in Doncaster are some of the oldest established races in Britain. If you are interested you can read up on the history here.

The day will include a champagne breakfast as well as the required pretty dresses and hats, so if you're a JCI lady, old or young, join us!

Brands and partnerships

Today turned out to be a really long day, but very interesting!

Deputy Strategic Partnership Director Anna got in touch with Ben Leon from Bravo Lima, who met us for a drink and to talk about branding, clarity in branding, and partnerships. The meeting turned into two hours of passionate discussion about anything from entrepreneurship to the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Ben had lots of smart things to say about how JCI London can promote and profile itself, and lots of ideas for partners and partnerships. Both Anna and I had a lot of realizations during the discussion, and are both inspired for Monday's council meeting which will be themed on partnerships.

One outcome is that we need to be clearer about our message. JCI can be so many things to different people, and have so much to give, that when we want to communicate it all it does not enforce but dilute our message. Who our partners are and how we feature them also contributes to our message, or our brand, so that's something we should rethink. Finally Ben gave a range of suggestions to how we can add value to and contribute with the different partners. Lots of great ideas, lots to dig into, and lots to discuss on Monday!

After the meeting with Ben I met with Anne, and discussed the role of International Director, and how she can use JCI to promote her career. We talked about the opportunitie JCI gives to learn about and create contacts in the EU, our relations with the UN, how JCI UK/London profiles itself internationally, and just in general all the international opportunities with JCI London. And with at least 25 nationalities among our members that's not few!

Anne will present her ideas for the position at the council meeting, and hopes they will elect her as the new international director (but she might have competition...).

We're trying to do the council meetings this year less admin and bureaucracy, but more strategic; leave the directors to do (more or less) what they want with their areas, and use the monthly council meetings to decide where we want the organisation to go; what we want it to be; exchange experiences; contribute to each other through sharing synergies and ideas. Monday will be the third meeting..so its still a pretty new concept...we'll see how many shows up!

New Directors

This week has barely begun and I'm already on the hunt for two new directors. When we learned that two of our dear directors are leaving the council, Sarah (my deputy) and I talked about what our options are.

Martina is leaving her role as International Director because she is leaving London for Barcelona, while Tamas is leaving the role as Strategic Partnership Director because he wants to focus more on his job. Tamas and I have not had the best of communications, something we have both been aware of, and as the role is a new role taking upon itself things the President used to do earlier, I think that bad communication between the President and the Strategic Partnership Director, in addition to it being an entirely new role, made it a particularily difficult and time consuming role.

I have a council of almost 18 people, with 14 different nationalities, and I would be lying if I said that communication is not an issue. Its not normally been much of a problem though (at least not that I am aware..).Instead it is challenging and fun. I deal a lot with different styles of communication and cultures in my job, and what I learn in JCI I can use in my day job, and vice versa.

I have already several people showing interest for both director roles, so the option Sarah and I discussed if we did not get anyone interested does luckily not seem to be relevant. Instead we have a different challenge; how to select the new directors from all the interested applicants! Luckily there are lots of other great opportunities to get involved, so I hope I will not leave anyone hanging...