The Lean in Agile for Women session is designed to explore some of the additional challenges women face in today’s workplace and to provide unique techniques to help women empower themselves and each other.

This exploratory workshop brings women together to discuss shared experiences to identify barriers and to explore techniques derived from Lean and Agile values to generate insight and facilitate targeted behavior change.

Lean In Agile is a community organization created to raise the value and visibility of women within the Lean and Agile spaces and beyond. Join us to experience the LIA difference and walk away with a greater toolkit for personal empowerment as well as the potential to be part of facilitating community and organizational change.

Summary: Building high performing teams requires leveraging various elements of diversity such as Cultural, Personality, Learning and Thinking styles.

Description:

Recognition and deep appreciation of diversity is aligned with the guiding principles within the Agile manifesto: Individuals and interactions over Processes and tools.

Often diversity is perceived as synonymous with age, ethnicity and gender. However, a team could be diverse in culture, personalities, thoughts and learning styles as well. Diversity within teams does not automatically contribute to high performance unless a safe and open environment is created to capitalize on their collective strengths, while enhancing communication, collaboration and cohesion.

The session will focus on two elements of diversity

1. Cultural diversity: In this session, you will learn about cultural dimensions and frameworks forcross-cultural communication. People from different cultures generally have different levels of expectations, ways of interacting and communication. You will also learn how to understand various cultural attributes and ways to overcome the cultural barriers. This will reference Hofstede's cultural dimensions 
2. Diversity in Thinking and Learning styles: This session helps you discover and utilize the strengths and dominant themes impacting an individual’s performance. Complementary skills and thought diversity within the teams can significantly contribute to innovation and excellence. This will reference Hermann’s Whole brain thinking methodology.