8:50 am - Registration

I was feeling anxious yet excited to have the opportunity of a new experience but was comforted that Steph Webster, Inlight’s Client Services Director, was running the event with her company Miss Collective. I knew the conference was about 'levelling up' and supporting women; I still wasn't quite sure what that meant, but I was keen to find out more.

I arrived at the beautiful Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron and was welcomed at registration with my own tag marked with my name and that I was representing Inlight. In the centre of the table was a fishbowl full of business cards for, what I heard were some excellent door prizes. I don’t think it’s commonplace for interns to be given business cards, so I took a sharpie and created a DIY card so I could be in with a chance. I made my way upstairs to join the buzz and chatter and I was met with a scene that was quite daunting. I entered a very open space with crowds of confident and stylish professional women by myself and scanning the room for the one person I knew. I was feeling a bit like a fish out of water. But as I looked around this room, I realised that everyone was here to support each other and what a safe environment it was - so I made the decision to approach someone. Soon enough, I was feeling much more comfortable mingling with a bottle of Remedy kombucha in hand and enjoying myself.

11:00 am - Using Presence for Greater Managerial Effectiveness

The next standout idea to me was presence. Jack Skeels, CEO of AgencyAgile, spoke about how to harness your presence - physically, emotionally and mentally. I thought, "If I exist, don't I already have presence?" and soon my definition of what presence was, changed. Acknowledging the fact that you have value and the right to be in the space that you are in right now is physical presence. But it was the emotional and mental presence that shifted my perspective. He used a couple case studies of a managerial confrontation for comparing the degrees of presence. The underlying factor to gain presence was to express your presence through your words by sharing what you thought or felt or moving from a judging perspective to a learning perspective by asking questions to discover more about a situation rather than assuming what the situation is.

4:00 pm - Mentoring Panel

Prior to the mentoring panel, I thought of mentoring as a bit of a buzz word or something that no one actually did. The panelists shared how they had a particular person that they could go to for anything - career, relationships, personal wellness, or sometimes they had about three or four people for different areas of their life. But then the audience was asked, "Who is your mentor? If you don't have one, why don't you have one?", and those questions really hit me because I didn't really have answers. I felt I could relate to one of the panelists, Allison Tsao, founder of Humans Who Lead, when she expressed how she used to feel about mentoring which was what I was feeling in that moment. She said she felt that she didn't deserve a mentor because she felt that she couldn't give them anything in return. But I learnt that's not true. Mentoring is essentially a gift of their time and insight into the path that you're about to walk, with only wanting to see you succeed and do your best in return. You don't need an official mentor and you can receive mentorship from multiple people or gain something from everyone you meet. It inspired me to think about who might play that role for me and I’m excited to have a catch up with a former Team Inlight developer. I think a mentor will help to guide and support me with my professional and personal development and help navigate situations where I’d feel quite lost on my own.