The Thread: Women's Leadership Collective

We talk a lot about values as a team and within our cohorts at The Thread. Values are what is important to uniquely you…not the world or your neighbor or parents…but YOU. It’s important to take the time to know what’s important to you in this season! One tool we picked up from our last alumnae workshop with Haley Prophet was the idea of making sure your values have a place on your calendar. For example, is growth one of your top two values right now? If so, how are you planning to create an environment for growth in the next two weeks? Are you meeting with a coach? Taking on a challenging project that will stretch your skills? Implementing a new habit that will support the type of person you want to become?

For the past three months we’ve had the privilege of working with the team at Angel Wings Learning Center! They pour into the children 👶🏽👧🏻🧒🏾👦🏼 they care for every single day and thanks to Career Pathways & DCF, who funded this program, they got to pour back into themselves. Together we’ve workshopped through purpose, strengths, confidence, vision-casting and goal setting. Now we will provide one-on-one coaching for the team. We’ve loved working with their resilience and service-oriented leader, Jerrica French to create a customized program that supports their needs!

Today’s version of work hard, play hard = Wichita Habitat for Humanity Women Build followed by lunch & 🍺 at Hopping Gnome Brewing!

“Elevate” is a Thread Program for Women at Spirit AeroSystems and yesterday we held a Growth Mindset workshop for Cohort Two. Jennifer Person did an amazing job of leading us through the concept and practical steps to develop this skill, including utilizing the “power of yet”. You see, much of growth mindset is believing that you CAN develop the skills you seek. It’s looking at your skills not as a fixed, stagnant part of you, but a fluid and ever-evolving part of you. So…how could you make the “power of yet” work for you? #growthmindset #powerskills #leadership

“What that means is…” The next time you encounter a challenge, try using that phrase. Example: You didn’t get the promotion you wanted . Reframe: I didn’t get the promotion I wanted and what that means is…I have the opportunity to ask for specific feedback on the skills I need to grow in order to be more highly considered next time. Once I have this information, I can make a plan! We’re not talking toxic positivity here. We’re talking about using this phrase as a tool to unstick our brains aka growth mindset work. As our speaker, Nikki Beyrle, MBA, SPHR shared with us during this teaching, “Adversity is a gift.” #growthmindset #womenempoweringwomen #leadership

What a great night at The Neighboring Movement’s annual gala!

We're so excited to partner with Cohort Six alum, Bridgett Combes to offer our Thread alum & cohort members a pre-opening class! Saturday, June 22nd at 10 am Email [email protected] to sign up - space is limited!

Yesterday was our last lunch time book club for our alum! Here are some of our favorite thoughts from our current Alum Book Club pick, Hidden Potential by Adam Grant Which one resonates with you most - 1, 2, 3 or 4? #hiddenpotential #growth #selfawareness

Yesterday our Thread team had the opportunity to partner with Tanganyika Wildlife Park 🦒 where we were able to apply a concept we’re learning about in Adam Grant’s latest book, Hidden Potential. 📖 Our mission: Build an environment of curiosity 🧐 and candor with The Thread community at large in order to generate ideas that support Tanganyika’s organizational goal. Applied learning: “Extensive evidence show that when we generate ideas together, we fail to maximize collective intelligence. To unearth the hidden potential in teams, instead of brainstorming, we’re better off shifting to a process called ‘brainwriting’. The initial steps are solo. You start by asking everyone to generate ideas separately. Next, you pool them and share them anonymously among the group. To preserve independent judgement, each member evaluates them on their own. Only then does a team come together to select and refine the most promising options.” It’s one thing to learn about new concepts, but trying to (imperfectly) put them into action is where the real growth comes in. Thank you to LynnLee Schmidt and her Tanganyika team for engaging us! Share in the comments if you have ever tried this method within your teams or projects!

The idea for The Thread was built off of this piece of research from a 2019 Kaiser Permanente study - "Women want to take on bigger leadership roles, but two things hold them back: confidence & connections." Increased confidence is a foundation in what we do! We've had the privilege of learning all about the skill of confidence from Emily Stevens several times this year, including yesterday with Cohort Seven. Here were some of their top takeaways! #confidence #powerskill #leadership