Lately I've been coming across a great deal of content on leadership traits. We've touched on leadership behaviors and traits before in this blog, but I want to talk about a leadership trait that isn't always celebrated or achieved - the ability to use your influence to help women inside and outside your own line achieve success.

Recently Catalyst Canada announced the recipients of their Catalyst Canada Honours awards. Amongst the three announced winners was Colleen Sidford, VP & Treasurer of Ontario Power Generation (OPG). Colleen has obviously been successful in her career, but one thing that sets Colleen apart from many other women who have achieved similar success is that she used her influence, in an industry that is very male dominated, to help other women in her organization obtain the skills needed to be successful. To do this Colleen launched a program at OPG called the emPOWered Women's series.

The emPOWered Women’s series, is a leadership development and mentoring program designed to provide professional guidance, develop networking relationships, and to be a platform to advance the careers of women throughout OPG by removing barriers to their advancement. Training includes working on presentation skills, having a presence in meetings and gaining confidence and ability to “take the stage,” vocally, verbally and physically.

Colleen might have left the development of women in her organization to the human resources or equity and diversity people and concentrated on her own development and the development of her team, but instead she saw a gender gap in leadership roles at OPG  and created a program that would help all women from the shop floor to middle management obtain a level playing field, with their male colleagues, when applying for leadership positions.

Women in Nuclear (WiN) nominated Colleen for this award because WiN saw this program as a valuable stepping stone to women's advancement in the nuclear industry. Colleen is very deserving of this award for all her hard work in setting up this program when I'm sure she had an overflowing plate with her "real" job. OPG  should also be very proud of Colleen's efforts and should take pride that they encouraged Colleen to pursue her passion. There has been a lot of press coverage on the announcement of this award, which has put the nuclear industry in the same category with the financial institutions who traditionally have made great strides in diversity and inclusion efforts. The entire nuclear industry should celebrate Colleen's success and congratulate her on dealing with such an important issue in a very positive way.

Colleen is an inspiration to all aspiring and current leaders and we should all work to develop the leadership trait of influence, regardless of where we are in our organizations, and follow in Colleen's footsteps to inspire and develop others in our organizations.

For more information on leadership traits and the Catalyst Award visit:
http://www.leadership501.com/five-most-important-leadership-traits/27/
http://womensmedia.com/lunchtalk/what-are-the-traits-of-a-great-leader/

http://www.wincanada.org/news/win-member-is-named-catalyst-canadas-business-lead
http://www.catalyst.org/blog/cancon/