Don't miss our next Women's Leadership Circle event
Topic: Developing Your Leadership Brand
Speaker: Tara Cree, Western Region Lead, Knightsbridge
Thursday, January 31, 2008

Other Events
Business After Business
Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Managers’ Toolbox
Topic: HAPPINESS IN THE WORKPLACE: New approaches to peak performance
Speaker: Dr. Kenford Nedd, MD, President, International Stress Control Centre

Happiness is not just a tub of "Chunky Monkey"
At the end of 2007, the National Post ran a series of articles on some of the most interesting ideas…

Belonging and connecting

Keep out of our clubhouse?

Enjoy the journey tips
If you are a commuter, you aren't likely to immediately pack up and move to be happier…

Practising what we preach

About the Women's Leadership Circle

Advisory Board Members

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Celebrated with a stamp in 1999, the Happy Face symbol was created 33 years earlier by Seattle ad executive David Stern http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=2840

At the end of 2007, the National Post ran a series of articles on some of the most interesting ideas to emerge in the past year. The first article, The Pursuit of Happiness by Joseph Bream, deals with the science — yes science — of happiness. "Psychologists and economists have started to bring objective rigour to a field that was once thought frivolous or unscientific," Bream writes. "Our sense of well-being is starting to give up its secrets, just like the atom and the genome before it."

Prof. John Helliwell with WLC Advisory Board Member, Judy Thomson

In Vancouver we are lucky to have one of the leading researchers on happiness and he’s a leading economist from UBC. His name is John Helliwell and he has spoken at The Board on a number of occasions. What Helliwell and others have found is that, if there is a key to happiness, it is belonging — to families, clubs, sports teams, churches, the more the better. "Belonging, what they call social connectedness, predicts happiness far better than wealth, health or intelligence."

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Social connectedness is what The Board’s Women’s Leadership Circle is all about. Yes, we look for topics and speakers that have a particular resonance with women, but the goal is to bring women together to feel that sense of social connectedness and become engaged with other women in this community. The Women’s Leadership Circle is a gathering place.

Here are some simple tips to make the WLC a place for you to bond.

• Invite someone to come to the Tara Cree event, or any number of Board of Trade events in January. It could be a client, a potential client, or a friend you haven’t touched base with in a number of months. Arrive together and get there early enough to circulate.
• As tag teammates, go over and introduce yourselves to others at the event — you have permission.
• Exchange business cards when you first meet; once again, you have permission.
• When sitting at a table put two people between you and your tag teammate. You’ll meet more people that way.
• Make sure you introduce yourself to everyone at the table, prior to the meal service. Exchange cards with all your tablemates.
• Act as a host at the table, making sure no one is stuck in the cone of silence.
• After the event, follow up if there is something you can do for the people you’ve met.

"It’s not about closing a sale, but opening a relationship."
—WORK THE POND! definition of Positive Networking®

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No way. Unlike other women’s organizations, the Women’s Leadership Circle is inclusive. Of course we wanted men involved! Just take a look at our Advisory Board list and you’ll see what we mean.

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If you are a commuter and want to add a bit more happiness to the ride, there are some really cool things you can do to make the most of that time AND enjoy the journey.

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I write a weekly online networking tip with Darcy Rezac and Gayle Hallgren, and this holiday season we suggested our readers reach out and contact someone who has dropped off their radar screen. I thought I should follow our own good advice. So, I dusted off a tattered address book and searched for the last mailing address of an old friend and CA colleague from 30 years ago. I knew he and his wife lived in California, but we had lost touch over the last fifteen years. I thought, what the heck, why not reconnect? With little more than his name and a very old California address, I began my search. Between Google and Superpages you can find anything. I dropped their Christmas card (along with my business card, of course) in the mail with a note saying, I hope this makes it to the right person. It did. He emailed me back. I have now sent him some photos from a Christmas lunch I organized for twenty of our old accounting colleagues. His job? To put a name to all those familiar faces, bifocals and balding pates and reconnect him with his Vancouver network. It's that simple; try it yourself.

-JUDY THOMSON
Women’s Leadership Circle Advisory Board Member; Chief Operating Officer, Shepa Learning Company; and co-author, WORK THE POND!

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The Women’s Leadership Circle is a community of women leaders who are members of The Vancouver Board of Trade. It is designed to deliver programs, speakers, topics and other events that will help The Board of Trade be more engaged with women in the community and to help women feel more engaged with The Board. It allows women to be involved in the social and political issues The Board tackles, as well as the networking and the wonderful relationship-building activities The Board provides.

The WLC is open to all 5,700 members of The Vancouver Board of Trade, one-third of which are women. Almost half of all The Board’s new members currently joining are women.

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Founding Chair: Sue Paish, Vice-Chair, The Vancouver Board of Trade & CEO, Pharmasave Drugs (National) Ltd.

Join the Women’s Leadership Circle™ and keep up-to-date with the program through our monthly newsletter. It’s free and it’s exclusively for Board of Trade members only. Call Maria Braungart at 604-641-1224 or email mbraungart@boardoftrade.com.