Who Says Women Are Too Catty to Work Together???

I don’t usually blog about my clients, but I’m making an exception today. The client I'm commending is the Space Coast Chapter of FEW (Federally Employed Women). This group of NASA women usually host an annual one-day local conference for their membership. This year, at the same time, they also hosted the FEW Southeast Region’s conference as well. For both conferences, I presented my mentoring workshop, Somebody’s in My Corner: Mentoring Strategies for Women.

The women of the Space Coast Chapter of FEW demonstrated everything that is good about a high-functioning team. Because they did, I think they are wonderful role models for other groups of women. Here are the characteristics they - and every truly good team - demonstrates:

1 – Getting the Job Done
Hosting a conference is a major undertaking…a big deal. It requires a super amount of work. It’s everything from getting sponsors and organizing the venue (including rooms for both the event and the participants, choosing meals, etc.) to selecting speakers, marketing the event, filling the venue with participants, and making sure their participants and their speakers are taken care of and have a good experience. Each one of those tasks is major and has hundreds of smaller, associated tasks. Getting it all done as effectively and efficiently as the Space Coast FEW did was no easy job…but they did it exceptionally well!

2 – Doing the Job Right
There never seems to be enough time to do everything we want to do for ourselves, let alone for others. It seems that it’s easy to cut corners, especially when it gets down to the wire.

The women of the Space Coast Chapter of FEW unselfishly coordinated their time, effort, talent and energy to provide professional learning opportunities for hundreds of other women. They didn’t get to rest until after the conference was over and the last attendee went home – and even then, their job wasn’t over.

In the weeks that followed, they still had summaries, reports, etc. Not every team takes the time to make sure that, even in the post-event work, all the “i’s” are dotted and “t’s” crossed. They did.

Can you imagine my delight when, six weeks after the conference ended, I received a beautiful, personal letter from the Speaker Chair and the Conference Chair thanking me for the job I did and encouraging me to connect with other FEW chapters. They didn’t have to…but I really appreciated that they did.

3 – Keeping the Team Intact
By the end of the first day, I noticed something different about the “FEW ladies” compared to some conference groups with whom I’ve worked. I asked them how they maintained their camaraderie and good humor. They told me that when they had their first meeting, they acknowledged the effect stress could have on their chapter and talked about it. They all knew that conference planning can put so much pressure on the team that it could be destroyed in the process. In fact, they knew chapters that did break up as a result of conference-planning stress.

So, as a team, they made a decision. As one woman said, “We agreed that we were friends before this started and – no matter what happened in the planning - we’d be friends after it ended.” So, even though they admitted that there were tense times during the nine-month planning process, they were wrapping it up together – and were even stronger.

In addition to doing a big job well and growing through it in the process, the Space Coast chapter of FEW even managed to use their event to give back to their community via educational scholarship funds to the Brevard Community College WENDI program, which helps people prepare to reenter the work field after a significant change in their lives.

WELL DONE, Ladies!! You are a special team and great role models for others.

And, to my contact Jean Grenville: thanks so much for making my FEW experience so positive. I enjoyed our many conversations and look forward to seeing you and your colleagues again in the future.

In victory,
Annmarie