Michael Fenlon: It Takes Confidence to Instill Confidence | Big Think.

It Takes Confidence to Instill Confidence

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Michael Fenlon, global talent leader for PwC, discusses his company's Aspire to Lead initiative, which seeks to guide the next generation of women leaders. In order to be a great leader, you have to have the confidence in yourself to make others around you better.

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MICHAEL FENLON:

Michael Fenlon serves as the US and Global Talent Leader for PwC, a global network of firms with 190,000 people across 158 countries. He has responsibility for employer branding and social media, talent acquisition, analytics and talent management. He has held a variety of senior leadership roles in Human Capital since joining PwC, including strategy, operations and lead generalist roles.

Mike is a psychologist with expertise in strategic and organizational change, talent management and leadership development. He directed executive programs, including: Highlights of the MBA, the Leadership Development Program, and the Columbia Senior Executive Program, as well as custom programs for global clients. He was a faculty member of the Columbia Business School executive education team that was ranked by The Financial Times as #1 in the world.

He also served as Associate Dean for Executive MBA programs in New York, London (with the London Business School) and in Silicon Valley (with the Haas School at UC Berkeley), and taught a popular course on Executive Leadership. He has consulted in the non-profit and government sectors and served in Executive Programs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

He previously served as a Principal Consultant with Price Waterhouse LLP in the strategic and organizational change practice.

Mike is a member of the American Psychological Association and the Academy of Management. Publications include “Rethinking Retention Strategies: Work-life Versus Deferred Compensation in a Total Rewards Strategy” in the World at Work, and “Developing Leaders and Teams Who Build Exceptional Client Relationships,” and an article for HR Magazine on using human capital analytics to drive strategic change. He has been featured in The Financial Times, The New York Times and Fox Televison Business News. He was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Columbia University where he received three master’s degrees and a Ph.D.

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TRANSCRIPT:

This year, as we look towards our next Aspire to Lead global video webcast, we’re going to touch upon the topic of confidence. You know, there are consistent research findings that show that men tend to overestimate their competence and women underestimate their competence. Research has also shown that women are actually more competent leaders and that startups with women at the helm, that boards with more women on them, and that organizations with greater gender diversity outperform their competitors.

Understand that if you aspire to a career, a profession, a leadership role, in many respects you're going to be judged and evaluated on your ability to bring out the best in others, to create a work environment that's truly inclusive, that allows the best ideas to percolate and to come from all members of your team, your organization. And to do these things, to bring out the best in others, we've got to start by bringing out the best in ourselves by building self-awareness, understanding our own implicit beliefs, the stereotypes we carry around that can hold us back, and hold others as well.

Michael Fenlon, global talent leader for PwC, discusses his company's Aspire to Lead initiative, which seeks to guide the next generation of women leaders. In order to be a great leader, you have to have the confidence in yourself to make others around you better.