By Kathryn Woof, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Client Solutions
One of my key enjoyment factors at yesterday’s Women In Tech conference in Singapore, was that the majority of the conversation about tech, not women.
It’s great to have an event which has so many inspiring women speakers, and labelled as WiT it did encourage me to head along to an event which had deliberately aimed itself at a community I’m part of. But tech is tech, STEM is STEM, and sitting with 1,000 delegates during the keynote speeches, I loved how it didn’t feel like we had to Lean In as women, but as tech industry experts.
Mission accomplished, WiT – high five!
My ah-ha moment of the day was Martin Mackay of CA Technologies, one of the world’s most ethical companies to do business with, stating that digital transformation has created a new skill set necessity for leaders: they have to be authentic, face uncomfortable truths, and results alone are no longer good enough as a sign of successful leadership. Today’s Talent seek purpose beyond profits, which means leaders in the digital economy must deliver RESULTS, REPUTATION and RELATIONSHIPS before they can consider themselves a success.
Martin used the word ‘benevolent’ to exemplify how a leader should conduct themselves, and emphasised benevolence wasn’t a sign of weakness. Kindness as a leader, a customer, a supplier, is something that feeds into reputation and relationships, internally and externally. In a digital ecosphere, this is known and understood to be your authentic self. And no-one wants to work with or for a ****. My words, not Martin’s.
My envy moment of the day was hearing Dr Bidushi Bhattacharya’s keynote on space technology and astropreneurs. This woman can actually start a sentence with ‘When I worked on Hubble…’. She took us all right out the moment and impossible became nothing as I realised my own children could be living in a Mars colony before I kick the bucket.
Thanks again to WiT for a day of inspiration. Now back to the day job, with a little imaginary anti-gravity bounce in my step.