LMA--creating centered leaders.

• Author: Simon, Lisa
• Position: President's Podium

A friend recently sent me the latest edition of "The McKinsey Quarterly." The title of the report is "Centered leadership: How talented women thrive." Intrigued, I quickly began to scan, but my scanning turned to thorough reading after the first paragraph. The driving force behind the McKinsey Leadership Project was to determine why women, with the same level of intelligence, education and commitment as men, find few top spots in corporate America. After interviewing more than 85 women from around the world ("and a few good men," the report said), they found five leading characteristics of what they dubbed centered leadership. Centered leadership was found to be effective for both women and men.

While many of the characteristics were not particularly surprising, one specific characteristic called out to me and reminded me why LMA is such a unique organization. The characteristic is what McKinsey calls connecting, which included network design, sponsorship, reciprocity and inclusiveness.

"People with strong networks," the article says, "enjoy more promotions, higher pay and greater career satisfaction." While that may be a great outcome of being a member of LMA, I wouldn't say that's why people join our organization. Our own recent survey of different members of LMA found that people join LMA in order to belong--and the belonging is unique to our organization.

Earlier this year, LMA convened a task force to develop a new strategic plan for the organization. Armed with bright minds, a great facilitator and data collected from interviews with different sections of our membership, we set upon the two-day process of developing a plan that...