Inspirational leadership messages from General Colin L. Powell, USA (Ret.) Former U.S. Secretary of State will take center stage during the Tuesday Morning General Session. WFF attendees will hear The Leadership Principles of Colin Powell first-hand as he shares some of the most well-known and recited quotes on leadership and their relevance in the business world.

Dr. Bertice Berry returns to the WFF Annual Conference with her unique style of motivational messages. She is an award-winning entertainer, lecturer and comedienne. The gifted speaker will be the featured Keynote during the Monday Morning General Session.

"Sunday Morning with Susan Taylor" will kick off this year's conference at the re-formatted Multicultural Event, to be held on Sunday from 10:00 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. Ms. Taylor, the senior editorial executive at ESSENCE Magazine will discuss diversity and the challenges facing women of color in today's business world.

Learn ways to develop others to help the best become even better with Joy's energetic and fun presentation. Learn to use the 10 characteristics of the most admired leaders to coach, mentor and develop your team members, utilizing the various ways different people learn.

Understanding our reactions to change empowers us to master our behaviors. This session will teach you strategies for reducing stress and techniques for viewing change with a constructive mindset of flexibility, adaptability and resilience.

To get to the C-Suite and then to become effective in that role, hard work and experience can only take a person so far. Executive presence seems like a mystery, but is actually a set of essential leadership/communication skills business leaders can learn. Suzanne Bates, executive coach, former news anchor and author of Speak like a CEO, will illustrate the CEO secrets and techniques for communicating vision, persuading others into action, commanding attention and getting results.

This working session will review key financial concepts (e.g., Return on Investment, Pro forma) and teach you how to interpret and make decisions from a financial standpoint. You will also learn how to prepare a financial business strategy utilizing relevant financial information. At the end of the session, you will demonstrate greater business acumen and understand how sound strategic decisions contribute to the financial health and the success of the company you work for.

In this dynamic two-part session, you will learn to develop strategies to lead more courageously and deliver greater results. Dr. Eisenman will help Emerging Executives understand how to stand firm when implementing unpopular decisions by identifying red flags, hidden influencers, and working through team challenges. Learn how to promote open communications with key stakeholders to make smarter decisions and not be blindsided in your goals.

Explore reasons why our potential to create a vision and set direction is unlimited, yet our effectiveness to establish our vision and lead change is limited by how we think, what we do and what we say. Discover how habits are formed that limit your opportunity to see more of your potential and the potential of those you lead. Learn the tools that will create winning attitudes, confidence and extraordinary belief systems that produce consistently winning results.

No matter how expert you are at what you do, you can’t be successful in the workplace unless you know how to negotiate.  Every day, you face situations that require using negotiation skills as a way to resolve conflict and reach agreement.  You need to negotiate with clients, colleagues and managers. Women, however, face some distinct challenges with negotiation – learn what those challenges are and how to manage them.   Don’t miss this opportunity - become empowered to negotiate for what you need to create the conditions for your career success.

Ever wonder how Ghandi would “motivate” an employee? How Martin Luther King would “compete” for the future? Personal power in organizations increases when people begin leading from their souls rather than positions of authority – when leaders leverage external and internal power. External power (the capacity to act) is represented by confidence, competence, expertise, titles, success, money, self-esteem and recognition. Internal power (the capacity to reflect) emerges out of our inner self and our deepest values. The integration of the two reveals who you really are and your life purpose.

Joe reveals a simple, yet powerful model that teaches the four competencies necessary to build performance-enhancing trust. This session will provide practical and proven "how-tos" that can be used to create a Radical Trust that attracts and retains talent, repairs broken trust, prepares managers to better navigate change and growth, bridges generational and diversity divides and changes negative conflict into creative dialogue.

It's not what you know; it's persuading people that what you know is worth knowing! The high-impact presentation skills you learn in this session will give you the confidence and competence to persuade your managers, colleagues and customers to "sit up and listen." Based on the 4 steps that every powerful presentation must follow, you'll learn how to enhance your influence and move people to action.

Life does get tornadic. And before you know it you're caught living life "reacting" to the tornado and passing it on to everyone around you. Come on! Who wants to work with that?! In this audience participation session, we'll discover what it takes to have impact when your tornados are at their worst. Michael's methods will have you laughing in the aisles and impacting your LIFE and the way you see it, live it and approach it "on purpose."

To be a leader you have to speak like a leader, share your vision and values and get your ideas heard. This 90-minute power session led by Suzanne Hopgood will address the practical applications of "Building Influence and Collaboration" while introducing trust as a cornerstone to success. How to present the strategy, the new business venture, or an emerging idea are explored. Building on the learning from day one, we'll explore common mistakes made when presenting to the C-Suite or the Board; how best to position your idea, venture or strategy; how to create credibility; and how to establish partnerships outside of your sphere to expand your influence.

According to Greg Link, "You can have all the facts and figures, all the supporting evidence, all the endorsements that you want, but if you don't command trust, you won't get anywhere." Leading at the SPEED of TRUST will help you learn pragmatic, practical, and actionable skills you can implement immediately regardless of your role in the organization. This highly interactive workshop engages executive leaders in the real work of identifying and closing the trust gaps that exist in their organizations.

Conflict is an inevitable part of the environment we work in. If we don't deal with conflict well, we will leave the table with less than the best outcome for any of the parties involved. To be successful in today's fast-paced environment, we must learn how to make positive changes through conflict resolution with an aim to get the other party to change behavior in desirable ways and to create positive outcomes.

Senior executives are invited to attend a luncheon featuring a candid session with Shannon McFayden, Senior Executive Vice President, Head of Human Resources and Corporate Relations for the Wachovia Corporation. Shannon has been named one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking by US Banker magazine and received the United Negro College Fund’s “Maya Angelou Women Who Lead” award. As a preeminent agent of culture change, she successfully transformed a culture with 300,000 employees. Genevieve Bos, Owner and Founding Publisher of PINK Magazine, will guide the discussion in an engaging Q&A format.

In this interactive presentation, emerging leaders explore ways to build credibility, remove barriers, get buy-in for your ideas, and make a larger impact in business through understanding the mechanisms of power and influence. Use a self-assessment tool to identify your areas for development so you can walk away with a personal action plan for growth.

All-new programming geared to the entrepreneurs in the WFF membership ranks as well as those thinking about venturing out on their own, “Do You Have What it Takes?” is a session with accomplished speakers and a panel of successful entrepreneurs that will inspire and motivate. Join Mariel Miller of Extraordinary Outcomes! Franchise Performance Systems as she highlights key characteristics found in high-performing female executives in franchise leadership; and Nina McLemore, a visionary executive, founder of Liz Claiborne Accessories and now CEO of her own company, as she provides insight into the challenges, decisions and risks involved with breaking out into an entrepreneurial venture. An expert panel representing franchisees, franchisors, operators and vendors will share how they turned their dreams into reality, their successful strategies and the valuable lessons they learned.

Moderator:  Mary Jo Larson, Publisher/VP, Franchise Times

 

Panelists:

• Laren Gartner, CEO and Chairman of the Board, Cheeseburger Restaurants, Inc.
• Marcia Hales, Chairman, My Girlfriend’s Kitchen, Inc.
• Ellen Hui, President, EBR Investments
• Joy Wallace, President & CEO, J.O.Y. Foods, Inc.

 

Conflict is inevitable. Anger, blame, grudges are not. Conflict is normal and occurs in every arena of life. We can't avoid conflict, but the way we deal with it will determine whether it is a destructive or constructive force. Learn guidelines and techniques for opening the lines of communication, boosting morale and fostering teamwork in conflict situations.

How do you influence it? Join two of Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Business: Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo CEO, and Claire Babrowski, Toys “R” Us EVP and COO. Kathleen Matthews, EVP Global Communications, Marriott International, will lead an intimate discussion with Indra and Claire as they share personal experiences and lessons learned on the impact of power; how they have built it and how they have effectively transferred it to new situations.

Women in the workplace are expected to have impeccable communication, listening, and presentation skills that compel and move employees and customers to action. This workshop is designed to increase emerging leaders' self-knowledge, and gain personal mastery through the application of excellent communication and listening skills. These critical tools improve productivity, create customer loyalty, and improve bottom line profits. Learn how to deliver the tough messages. Prioritize and delegate responsibilities and get the results you need.

What are the key differentiators for those who make it to the C-Suite – as well as those who stay there? In this session, Linda Pharr, MS, President and COO of Batrus Hollweg International, will unveil the ground-breaking results of the 2006/2007 WFF Executive Competency Study (conducted in partnership with Batrus Hollweg International).

The study, conducted among male and female C-Level executives in the foodservice industry and executive search firms, identified 11 core competencies – and the corresponding behaviors required – to overcome barriers that prevent women from reaching the C-Suite. Through a personal assessment and active high-level table discussions, this energizing session will help executive attendees truly grasp and understand the behaviors and identify those risk and reward opportunities that take their careers to the next level.

There's a conversation you need to have. You've been putting it off because you believe it won't be easy. But when you know how to Speak Strong, it's easier than you imagine. You will walk out of this session inspired to say what you need to and armed with the words to "talk tough" in a way that does not create reaction. Both emerging leaders and executives will learn the knack of effectively assertive communication.

Rebecca Shambaugh, author of It's Not a Glass Ceiling, It's a Sticky Floor, will drill down into the self-limiting beliefs, assumptions and behaviors - "The 7 Sticky Floors" - that often hold women back in their careers.  Address these barriers and then learn practical strategies, techniques and tools to help women leaders detach from common "sticky floors" to achieve their greatest potential at the highest levels of organizations.

One of the WFF's most popular speakers, Marilyn Sherman is back with a new workshop specifically designed with the WFF in mind. Being a success in foodservice encompasses many things: attitude, drive, compassion, willingness to step up to the plate. You will learn what it takes to succeed in this business and have an attitude of enthusiasm that is contagious back at work! Learn to energize and ignite your teams and develop Foodservice Fanatics!

Gain a fresh perspective on your business while gaining skills to help you avoid information overload. The key differentiator for leaders is the ability to find new ways to link information, ideas and concepts. Barbara introduces a new kind of RADAR that will help you connect the right dots, in the right way at the right time. This interactive, dynamic program will help you understand and use both "flow" and "synchronicity" to uncover new possibilities and a new vision for yourself and your organization.

Multi-Unit Managers (MUMs) are effectively "Regional CEOs" - responsible for as much as $30 million in sales in their territories. So why do restaurant servers receive more training and development time each year than MUMs do? This workshop is based on brand new research with over 500 multi-unit foodservice leaders. You’ll learn the 7 stages of multi-unit leadership growth, the 4 phases of developing high-potential GMs into effective MUMs, and the 12 best practices of high-performing MUMs who build revenue-generating units, exceptional teams, and higher customer counts across their regions. Learn how to get great and stay great as multi-unit leaders. This dynamic workshop is a must for all Multi-Unit Managers as well as those tasked with developing and retaining exceptional leaders at the multi-unit level.