As 2008 speeds into its second quarter, executives’ minds are whirling with ongoing and newly hatched problems and opportunities. In many cases, their minds are spinning and groaning simultaneously.

Groans be gone! Skilled managers of any size company, department or team can facilitate a productive and effective meeting, walking out with specific goals and action plans addressed and achieved.  Below are 10 tips to help managers facilitate more successfully.
To further ensure success, if possible, use a professional facilitator for your problem solving, brainstorming, and Best Practices sessions, and team-building and strategic planning meetings/retreats.  This strategy ensures objective and expert work, sends a message to the group that the meeting is of considerable importance, significantly diffuses any potential conflict and contentious tone, and helps both plan and achieve desired goals and objectives. A professional facilitator can also help set realistic expectations for the group relevant to process, tone, purpose, and behavior.
10 Tips for More Effective Facilitation

Here’s an excerpt from an interesting article from today’s Menphis Commercial Appeal:

Our minds are wired to perceive differences, make assumptions and put people who don’t look like us into easily stereotyped categories. And only now are researchers beginning to dig into how we might rewrite the software and perceptions of our unconscious selves and begin to alter the innately racist and sexist wiring of our minds

Click here for the full article

This article perfectly illustrates the great desire women have for a feeling of community. This group comes together for networking and to make a difference in their community, and benefit in other ways as well!

Click here for the full article

I just read a fascinating essay on gender and racial equality. it explains the author’s interesting, and for the most part, objective views on the causes of disparity and tools for change. Whether I agree or not is not the point but I love reading it. And, for the record, I absolutely agree with most of it!

Click here for the blog posting on Dar Kush by Steve Barnes

Here’s a nice short posting about a woman’s personal experience witnessing the desire and power of community for professional women…

“A funny thing happened on the way to growing our community at AWP and now Affiliated Women Intl(tm) or AWI! Yesterday, we introduced ourselves, the vision, mission, purpose and goals to a small group of dynamic women in Indianapolis, Indiana (the capital of motor racing and home of the championship Colts, mind you!). As some of us are fond of saying - it was a “God thing!” I watched as 8 women including our Indy planning team bonded together and agreed to take leadership for launching the AWI face to face groups in greater Indy. I watched as pairs of well-acquainted women bonded with women they just met to form the core of “community”. Women of faith; women of commitment; professional women with talent, skills & abilities that make one’s head swim!”

Click here to continue…

Australia is experiencing the same women’s issues as the United States, relevant to the advancement of women in the workplace. Look at these stats then visit the blog below to read the full posting:

• Women spend 90 cents in every household dollar.
• Australia’s 35% of s 1.3M SME operators are women (this figure growing 3 times faster than for men).
• 40% of professionals in Australia are women.
• Between 70-90% of all household financial decisions are made by women.
• 40% of property investors are female.

Australia Women Advancement In Business

Medical evidence shows that the female brain has four times as many connections between hemispheres of the brain as that of a male. A woman not only processes information four times as fast, she also utilizes both sides of the brain, tapping deeply into the right brain of emotion, experience, and reward behavior.

Does this mean women are more intelligent than men? Absolutely not, just that women process information and make decisions differently.

For the whole blog posting see http://michelemiller.blogs.com

An October 2007 study from the National Association of Manufacturers reported that the number of women-owned manufacturing firms has nearly doubled since 1997. And while all manufacturing sales grew by just 8 percent between 1997 and 2004, sales of companies owned by women grew by 38 percent.

Statewide, some 2,500 women own small or mid-sized manufacturing firms, and many in the industry say that number is only growing.

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=169295