Beyond You- Leadercast 2014

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to attend Leadercast, which is a full day conference in Atlanta, Georgia but has 750 host sites around the world, which allows 150,000 leaders to participate. I was at one of the host sites as a guest of Kinetic Noise Control.

This was the first time that I attended Leadercast and it was an amazing experience!! The day was full of inspiring speakers- like Laura Bush, Malcolm Gladwell and Desmond Tutu- who spoke on the topic of 'Beyond You' leadership. Leadership is not about you, it's about the people you are leading. Leadership should not be self serving. 

It was energizing and thought provoking. I was inspired to go back to work and put into practice things that I had learned (and things I had been reminded of). 

Good leadership lives beyond you. Otherwise you become someone's bad example. 

Good leaders ask how they can help and then actually help out.

Good leaders take the time to mentor the younger generation...they aren't scared to do this, even is the younger generation might take their job. 

Leadership starts before you become the boss. Be a team player.

This was such an amazing day and gave me a little boost of confidence on how to approach some things in my life. It has inspired me to change some of my approaches for work and has given me ideas on how I should structure my leadership style for the two summer students I will have working with me this year. 

Tripp Crosby was one of the co-hosts...he is hilarious, by the way. One of my favourite quotes from the day was:

Leaders do not take selfies. 

Tripp encouraged us to start a new trend of #Yousie, where we take a picture of someone else and say something encouraging/nice about that person when we post the photo on social media. 

Tripp is also behind this, Real Life Conference Call:

How funny, and true, is this???

I am so thankful to Kinetic Noise Control for inviting me to be their guest and giving me the opportunity attend. 

Leadercast 2015 is taking place on May 8...everyone should have the chance to attend this fantastic event!!

Life Update- Friends, Time Off & Toronto Raptors

I can't believe it's only Thursday! This has been such a long week and it's only half over! In the midst of the craziness of this month, I realized I didn't do a life update for March! 

March started off with my uncle getting married! I've mentioned this a few time already, including here. It was surprising news, but happy news. My new aunt is great...I really like her and she clearly makes my uncle happy. The Monday after my uncle got married, I had the day off so I saw my psychic friend for a Reiki session. It was nice to see her again and to chat...she's so interesting! 

Work was full of meetings- staff, team and two community partner meetings. I also had an event for work...a whiskey tasting! This was such a fun event and the first time I worked on it! We had a great turn out and everyone really enjoyed themselves!

I also had two sorority meetings and a program themed for St Patrick's day. It was lot of fun, even if my team didn't win the trivia game. I meet a long time friend for coffee and had Girls Night with a friend in the city, where we drank champagne and watched Bridesmaids. 

The highlight of my month, would have to be the Toronto Raptors game! I won tickets through Brock Alumni and was able to go with a friend of mine. We had fantastic seats! It was the first NBA game I had ever been too. It's always fun to go to Toronto and the game was pretty good, even though the Raptors didn't win. After the game, we drove to Guelph where we met my friends brother and her boyfriend for dinner. It was a really fun Sunday. 

Speaking of basketball...I don't follow basketball or do a March Madness bracket, but I randomly picked Kentucky to win, just because they were the only team that I knew was in the tournament. They made it all the way to the final! So that was a pretty good pick on my part.

I actually took a ton of time off this month. I took a day off and had breakfast with a friend from university, who happens to live near me! I saw his brother at a Brock Alumni event in February and he reconnected us. It was great to spend time with him and get caught up. I took a Thursday-Friday off mid-month and didn't do much, just stuff around the city and my apartment. 

I also took 10 days off at the end of the month, went up to my families second home. I spent the first 3 days with my dad and grandma, it was nice to spend time with them. I spent the rest of the week relaxing, reading and watching tv. I met a friend and former co-worker for breakfast, where I got to hear about some research she's doing and I had dinner with my psychic friend. I had a nice visit with another friend, who owns a holistic centre, where I also had reflexology done. She also did a tarot card reading for me, where I was told that I need to take more time for myself and spend more time relaxing. Unfortunately it was cold and snowy the whole time, so I ended up spending a lot of time inside.

Even with all my time off (10 work days plus weekends), I still had a lot going on in March. The month flew by...but it was great to have so much time for friends this month.

Dragon Boats- The Experience

After mentioning it on my blog a bunch of times (like here, here, here, here, here, here and here), I'm FINALLY going to share my Dragon Boat experience!

Official Team Shirt

A number of months ago, at a Brock Alumni meeting, I mentioned that Brock Alumni should put together a Dragon Boat team. Everyone thought this is was a great idea and at our next meeting, Brock Staff (who oversees our committee), brought a Dragon Boat Coach. At the meeting, Coach gave us a rundown of the sport/paddling and set up a learn to paddle event for us at the end of May. This event would serve as an opportunity for us to try out paddling/Dragon Boating and as our first team practice. 

A couple of weeks later and days before our races, we had our second practice (pictured below). It was here that we got our official team shirts (which I am actually wearing as I write this) and our Brock Alumni sunglasses.

Photo courtesy of Brock Alumni- Facebook page

It was after this practice that Coach gave us some last minute advice on how to prepare for our races. One of the pieces of advice was not to eat McDonald's. The following day, I was at an event with a sponsor and she asked if I wanted to grab a quick bite before heading back to the office. I said sure and she suggested McDonald's, which I lamely had to say 'My Coach said I couldn't eat there before our race.' This was met with a weird look and I had to explain the situation. I did tell my Coach/Team this story between races...we all had a good laugh about it.

The day before our races, I saw my uncle- a former Dragon Boater- who provided me with the following:

Rubber gloves for a better grip of the paddle and a whistle in case I fell in the water, they'd know where I was.

We raced on Henley Island, which is a world renown rowing course and really pretty. I believe we had to arrive around 9:15am and we had a Brock Alumni tent, which is where we hung out most of the time- when we weren't racing. We actually had a great spot, right on the water, so we had a great view of the races.

View from our spot, looking towards the dock.

It was great to have a spot that Alumni could hang out, talk and get to know each other. There was a lot of laughter. But it wasn't all fun and games...Dragon Boating is serious business!

We were a community team, which means we were not a university team or a team that competes competitively at Dragon Boating. A lot of teams start holding tryouts in December, making cuts in March and hit the water for their first practice as soon as the ice melts off the water (my uncle was on a team like this). There are also teams that have their own paddles and life jackets, and some were even working out prior to their races! We were not any of those teams. But we were fun!

Before each race, Coach would gather us for team meeting. He'd give us advice, reminders, get us pumped up. We'd head to the staging area where we'd get our life jackets, paddles and move onto the dock to get in the boat.

Photo courtesy of my sister.

From here, we'd have to paddle out to the starting line and wait for the other boats to get out before we could start our races. Our racing times were in the 2:44-2:48 ranges, which is pretty standard time and really good for a rookie team like us- at least that's what Coach told us. After we were done our race, we had to paddle back to the dock. It was A LOT of work! 

Once we got off the boat, Coach would gather us for another team meeting, where he'd tell us what a great job we did and tell us what to work on for the next race. As one my teammates said, we got the motivational coach. 

Post race team meeting- serious business. Photo courtesy of my sister.

I had so, so, so much fun! Everyone on our team was there to have good time, and that we did! There was a lot of laughter and fun had by all. Even when we were in the boat, pre/post race, we were all laughing and joking around-and maybe yelling things at the other boats to throw them off...Coach would say "Guys...eyes in your own boat" in an attempt to get us focused and under control.

I'm pretty sure that we're going to enter a team again next year...can't wait!

BrockTv was there to shoot a piece on us. You can see our team in action (aka watch the clip) here.

Oh So Social- Ravine Vineyard & Brock Alumni

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I am a Brock University Alumna, I LOVE Brock and over the past 5-ish months I've become active in Brock Alumni events.

At the end of February, Brock Alumni hosted an event at Ravine Vineyard. The plan was to go ice skating at Ravine followed by a wine tasting. A couple of people attempted to skate, but it wasn't cold enough- the ice was soft. 

Instead, we were treated to an amazing tour of the property by Gillian. She gathered us all and brought us inside to get some wine in our hands before we started the tour. 

There's Gillian!

This picture was taken right at the beginning of our tour, where Gillian gave us the history of the property.

This picture is from the front of the property. These are the grapes used to make the various types of red wine made by Ravine. At the back of the property, are the grapes for the white wine. I thought I had pictures of the back, but I don't. 

Something that I learned on the tour is that the grapes for specific wines are grown in specific areas. For example, I thought all the vines were the same, grapes were harvested and then different wines (ex merlot, riesling, etc) were made. But actually, all the grapes that will be used for merlot are grown in one section, grapes for the riesling are grown in another, etc. 

We were taken into the cellar where the wines are barreled. This was a new addition to the winery and it was cool to see the machines used as well as the barrels. 

More barrels! This was also in the cellar, but you can see the oak from the barrels changing colour from the grapes. 

This was the room where we had our wine tasting. I thought it was kind of spooky with the candles, low ceiling and the barrels. It made me think of a secret society initiation or something. Everyone else thought it was really pretty and cool- which it was once I got passed the 'spooky' part.

These were the wine and food pairings. Everything was so good! Gillian also taught us the correct way to do a wine/food tasting and she gave us background on the wines, as well as the food. She was so knowledgeable! 

After our tasting the event was 'over' but we all headed back upstairs to the store where we took a group picture, sat by the fire and chatted, tasted more wine and wondered around the property. 

This was such a fun event and I had the best time! 

Thanks to Brock Alumni for organizing and Ravine for hosting us!

P.S. Don't forget to enter this really great giveaway! Four gift cards (three for $100 and one for $30), four winners!

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