Helen Clark – the Future of Leadership
By Julia Hitchcock

The ‘Future of Leadership’ was the overarching theme for NZBWN’s intimate dinner event with Helen Clark at the lovely Modern Pantry.

Helen spoke to a room filled of NZBWN members as part of a celebration of our successful mentoring programme.
This included current mentees on our leadership group, previous mentees from the last few years, current mentors and guest speakers, industry and community leaders and our mentoring programme team.

The evening began with each table discussing their respective leadership-focused questions covering diversity, support, challenges, examples, sources of inspiration... and the rest!

Helen then spoke to the attendees on leadership in the political and corporate world as it stands and the evolution of these throughout her career. She spoke both about the positive change that she has seen concerning females in leading roles and the obstacles that are yet to be overcome.

Helen answered questions regarding where she finds support herself, her role models and what she deems as the Future of leadership going forward.

The night concluded with each table reporting back on their assigned topics with insights into real world examples of role models, constructive leadership traits and how women can support each other to both shape and continue to be the leaders of the future.

The event was an amazing success and a memorable night for all!
Helen is truly tuned in with the economic and political worlds and her perspective on the evening’s topic was hugely inspiring.

The golden nugget of the evening was Helen’s clear message that all of us in the room needed to help women up the ladder from behind and this could be as easy as a few words of support.

Thinking, Fast and Slow, written by Daniel Kahneman
Book review by Liz Hargreaves

NZ Business Women’s Network Book Club (Business Book Brunch) met on Saturday 16^th February at the Ozone Coffee Roasters in Leonard Street, London. Rachael and Kirsty provided a warm welcome in the funky ‘boardroom’, set the scene for easy sharing and ensured the smooth running of our discussion around the book of the month;

Thinking, Fast and Slow, written by Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and economist, Senior Scholar, Emeritus Professor and awarded a Nobel Prize.

We were immediately engaged, ready to learn, yet the early theme was we generally found Thinking, Fast and Slow to be a challenging read. Off to a slow start we were able to take a ‘deep breath’ thanks to the arrival of our delicious brunch, scrumptious coffee and tea, then we all set back to it… and the inspired conversation started to flow.

This book is the result of many years of research of two friends who are and were arguably two of the world’s brightest psychologists. The Author aims to give us a language for thinking and talking about the mind. He journeys us through Thinking, Fast and Slow by breaking it into five parts,

Part 1 – presents System 1 and System 2, an approach to judgement and choice,

Part 2 – updates the study of judgement heuristics – we take shortcuts which prevent us from seeing the full picture

When you think of a marathon sea swimmer, you probably think the idea of sea-creatures and sharks doesn't scare them, for Tracy Clark, this couldn't be further from the truth. Sharks are one of her biggest fears but "land sharks", the people set to drag you down are what scare her the most.

She’d spent her life surrounding herself with people who didn't support or encourage her. even her father said her childhood dream of swimming the English Channel was a pipedream.

During Tracy's presentation "Avoiding Sharks" we could all relate to Tracy’s idea of encountering these land sharks in their many forms as we face physical or mental challenges in our own professional and private life

Tracy has found that by surrounding herself with positive people who build her up and support her life choice is the key to her success. She also has a support crew who push her to the ends of the earth but equally would never let her put herself in danger.

She believes in "Turning Negatives into Positives", never giving up when you have dreams to achieve and being focused on what you want to achieve. In swimming this has meant never asking "how much further". Repeating two of her biggest supporters’ names, her sons, over and over again with every stroke helps her focus on the end goal and not the pain it takes to get there. Every single swim she has undertaken, whether it be sitting on the banks of the Cook Strait for 3 weeks waiting for the wind to stop blowing, sharing the seas with great white sharks in the Catalina Channel, dodging freight liners in the Strait of Gibraltar or worse yet, dodging rubbish swimming around Manhattan Island, Tracy believes that staying focused on the end goal and surrounding herself with her incredible support team has gotten her through.