Wednesday, December 30, 2009

10 Status Updates to Support Girl Scouting


You're already tweeting and Facebooking just about every day. Why not use one of those updates to support girl leadership and Girl Scouting? Here's 10 status updates (or tweets) you can use to support GSCTX.
  1. I love being a (insert "troop leader", "Girl Scout mom" or other relevant description)! Time for you to join too - http://www.gsctx.org/?nd=join.
  2. I'm a fan of GSCTX on Facebook! Are you? http://www.facebook.com/gsctx
  3. I just made a difference in a girl's life by donating to Girl Scouts. http://www.gsctx.org/?nd=donate_summary
  4. Learn the three keys to leadership - http://www.gsctx.org/?nd=gsle
  5. Nobody knows cookies like Girl Scouts. http://www.gsctx.org/?nd=fall_products_and_cookie_programs
  6. Follow Friday (#ff) @GSCTXcouncil
  7. Its always s'more fun at Girl Scout Camp. http://www.gsctx.org/?nd=girl_scout_camps
  8. My Girl Scout just earned the (insert patch name)! I'm so proud! http://www.gsctx.org/?nd=patch_programs
  9. The best thing about Girl Scouts is (your most favorite Girl Scout thing ever).
  10. Courage, confidence and character - its what Girl Scouts is really all about. http://www.gsctx.org/?nd=mission_promise_and_law.
And here's my next tweet/status update - I'm a professional Girl Scout and I love it!

Happy tweeting/status updating!

-Cheryl Black

Monday, December 28, 2009

Self-Confidence: A Barrier to Girl Leadership

Self-confidence is a belief in oneself to be able to achieve goals and objectives. This self-confidence or self-esteem comes from inside each of us. However, many of the individuals I’ve talked with believe self-confidence is the “the greatest single barrier to leadership for girls.” Several studies show that girls' self-esteem and self-confidence tends to decline after about age nine as girls enter puberty.

Timothy Judge, et al. (2002) contends that self-confidence is “an indicator of low neuroticism and is predictive of leadership. [Neuroticism is defined as] representative of the tendency to exhibit poor emotional adjustment and experience negative affects, such as anxiety, insecurity, and hostility” (p. 767). Although there is contention as to whether it is an inherent trait or a learned skill, self-confidence is a vital quality of a leader and this belief is supported by literature, theory and practice.

How can we help girls overcome this barrier and assist them in developing the self-confidence that is within them? Here are a few tips to consider:
  1. Provide positive role models
  2. Promote a healthy body image
  3. Recommend participation in new activities (i.e. hobbies)
  4. Support their interests
  5. Grant them the opportunity to share in planning and decision-making
  6. Actively listen to them
  7. Provide a safe environment
  8. Teach them to give genuine compliments and receive compliments
Peter Northouse (2004) describes the importance of self-confidence as “a trait that helps an individual be a leader … [by possessing] the ability to be certain about one’s competencies and skills … where one believes that she or he can make a difference and be an influence to others” (p. 19). As a parent of a beautiful young woman, I’m going to do all I can to ensure her self-confidence level is a healthy one. I’m envisioning her making a difference in our world. Join me by doing all you can to aid in developing your daughters, granddaughters, nieces and student’s self-confidence. The success of our world is depending on it.

 -CJ Harris

Carlena "CJ" Harris joined IBM in June 1997 and has held various roles within the IBM Software Group division. She has eight years of experience leading and managing virtual teams. Currently, she is a Global IT Program Manager. She holds degrees from University of Houston (Information Systems Technology, BS) and St. Edward's University (Organizational Leadership & Ethics, MS). CJ volunteers as a motivational speaker and life/career coach. She is also a wife, mother of two, coach, mentor and an aspiring writer.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Girls in the News

Girls are pretty popular. Nearly every week new information about girls, what they do, what they like and how they act is showing up in the media. Now, for your reading pleasure, here are some of the most informative and interesting recent news articles all about girls.
And here are a few articles specifically about Girl Scouts here in Central Texas.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Girls View Leadership as Taking a Stand

In meeting with Rusine Sinclair, CEO of the North Carolina Girl Scouts Council, she shared with me that she believes young women are concerned about making a difference in the world. They are interested in something that would improve a situation. They are defining those things that are important to them and using the leadership from within to improve things in their world.

This stuck with me and motivated me to learn how many girls actually want to be leaders. According to a nationwide survey, conducted by the Girl Scout Research Institute (GSRI), they found that thirty-nine percent of girls want to be leaders, and that the desire for leadership is higher among African-American (fifty-three percent), Hispanic (fifty percent) and Asian-American (fifty-nine percent) girls compared to Caucasian girls (thirty-four percent).

Victor Inzunza, author of the press release titled, “Nationwide Study Finds That Girls Aspire to a Different Kind of Leadership,” reported that the data from the survey indicates girls aspire to a different type of leadership, which focuses on personal principles, ethical behavior, and the ability to affect social change. The young women I met from McNeil High School during my research on “Young Women and Leadership” also echoed that they believe leadership for them means taking a stand and making a difference. All of the young women agreed that a leader is a person who is not afraid to step up, blaze a new path for change, and teach individuals.

How inspiring!

 -CJ Harris

Carlena "CJ" Harris joined IBM in June 1997 and has held various roles within the IBM Software Group division. She has eight years of experience leading and managing virtual teams. Currently, she is a Global IT Program Manager. She holds degrees from University of Houston (Information Systems Technology, BS) and St. Edward's University (Organizational Leadership & Ethics, MS). CJ volunteers as a motivational speaker and life/career coach. She is also a wife, mother of two, coach, mentor and an aspiring writer.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Swift Giving

Country-pop-music-sensation/good-girl Taylor Swift recently celebrated her 20th birthday by giving $250K to the US education system (read story). As if we didn't have enough reason to love this squeaky clean, polite, talented young lady already!

Besides being a good piece of celeb news, Taylor's generous birthday gift provides Girl Scouts with a good lesson at the holidays - it really isn't about the gifts you get, it's about the gifts you give.

If you would like to use Taylor's example as you speak to your Girl Scout about giving back, consider working in the following.
  • Taylor gave to education because its important to her. What is important to you?
  • If you can't give $250K (that's OK!), how can you help your community?
  • What can you do right now to help others? 
For more ideas about giving back, check out the service projects Web page or read stories from Girl Scouts who are making the world a better place.


The Taylor Swift photo is a downloaded image from Big Machine Records.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Girls Care About Leadership

Girls care about leadership and girls’ definition of leadership changes as they age. By knowing how girls define leadership, we can help guide them in more successful development.

The Girl Scout Research Institute (GSRI) focus groups revealed that as girls grow and develop new skills and ideas about the world, leading moves from a more singular approach with elementary school age girls (girls lead with action—what I can do) to influencing others at the middle school level (girls lead with voice—how I can impact others). As girls enter high school their ideas about leadership become inner-directed again with an emphasis on confidence (girls lead with vision—who I am as a leader) as they seek to validate their own ideas and become comfortable acting on them (GSRI, 2006, p.19). The GSRI included in their report that there are two major approaches to leadership development in girls’ programming:
  • The individual (i.e., “being in charge”) and
  • The collective (collaborative activity)
The GSRI report also included research by the Ms. Foundation for Women in regards to the two approaches. The Ms. Foundation for Women (2000) research with girls in community-based organizations (part of the Collaborative Fund for Healthy Girls/Healthy Women Initiative) acknowledges the need for both approaches in working with girls. One approach does not exclude the other and each can emphasize a different aspect of a girl’s experience. The Ms. Foundation (2000) research identified three strategies that reflect aspects of the individual and collective approaches:
  • Leadership through Voice and Culture - Building girls’ ability to use their voices in celebrating their culture
  • Leadership through Social Action/Change - Community change that affects the environments girls participate in
  • Leadership through Traditional Achievement - Building girls’ competencies, skills and qualities so that they can advance in the world
These strategies suggest that programs that encourage girls to be engaged in the community by acting as agents of change may also enable girls to internalize individual qualities and assets that they can use for their own benefit in the future (GSRI, 2006, p.21). By exercising their voices on issues they care about and taking action in the community, girls are exercising their personal power and amassing skill sets that enrich their individual competencies (Ms. Foundation for Women, 2000). These explanations are among the many reasons why the Girl Scout Journeys and Discover, Connect, Take Action model are utilized to grow girl leaders.


Resource: Girl Scout Research Institute (2006). Unpublished Pilot Survey Results on Girls and Leadership. NewYork: Girl Scouts of the USA.

 -CJ Harris

Carlena "CJ" Harris joined IBM in June 1997 and has held various roles within the IBM Software Group division. She has eight years of experience leading and managing virtual teams. Currently, she is a Global IT Program Manager. She holds degrees from University of Houston (Information Systems Technology, BS) and St. Edward's University (Organizational Leadership & Ethics, MS). CJ volunteers as a motivational speaker and life/career coach. She is also a wife, mother of two, coach, mentor and an aspiring writer.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

There's a photo of WHAT on your phone!?

Have you tried to buy a phone without a camera recently? It's not easy. Some cell phones are used as much for their photo taking capabilities as their talking capabilities. Great photos have come from cell phones - license plate numbers from hit-and-runs, smiley cute puppies and more. And not so great photos have come from cell phones too and a lot of those fall into the category of sexting.

In a nutshell, sexting is the practice of sending sexually suggestive or inappropriate photos between cell phones via SMS. And wowzas, is it done more than you or I would ever care to know. In fact a recent poll by AP-MTV found that more than 25% of young people are in on sexting and girls do it more than boys. I'll say it again - WOWZAS!

It's not just adults who are blown away by these stats; girls are too. As we've been planning the 2010 Girls' Respect Conference, our girl committee has spoken up about all this. They've told us it's a real problem and they want GSCTX to speak up about it at the conference.

But why wait to speak up? The conference is in June but girls are sexting now. In no particular order, here's five reasons why sexting is a terrible, terrible idea.
  1. It spreads like wildfire. Cell phones are connected to each other and now more than ever, the Internet. One little picture to your sweetie could go everywhere with a mistaken forward or after a nasty break up or even via a hacker. Pop sensation Miley Cyrus had the hacker-experience after sending photos to her then boyfriend. And once those pictures are out there, not even Miley Cyrus can get rid of them.
  2. It's actually illegal. If the subject is under 18, it's child pornography. There are teens who found this out the hard way and will suffer for years.
  3. It'll come back to haunt you. Remember how on point #1 we said you can't ever get it back? Now imagine that photo finding its way to a college admissions office or your dream job's HR department. One word: disastrous.
  4. It might not be so cool. 40% of girls who have done it say it was a joke but nearly 30% of boys thought it meant a girl "expected to date or hook up." (Read the full article from Cosmo Girl and the National Center to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.) What about unintended recipients? People check each other's phones all the time. Will the recipient's mom think it's that cool?
  5. You are worth more than that. You are an intelligent young woman with a lot more to offer the world than your good looks. Don't sell yourself short. You work hard to be respected, listened to and heard; an immature act like this undermines everything you've worked for.
 Take this list and go forth! Let's crush the sexting trend one person at a time!

-Cheryl Black

PS Need more info? Read the Newsweek blog entry from 12/8/09.

Monday, December 7, 2009

How Girls Learn Differently

Did you know that boys and girls see differently? Carol Kaufmann, author of “How Boys and Girls Learn Differently” interviewed David Chadwell, the first and only state coordinator of single gender education. Male and female eyes are not organized in the same way, Chadwell explains. The composition of the male eye makes it attuned to motion and direction. The female eye, on the other hand, is drawn to textures and colors. It’s also oriented toward warmer colors—reds, yellow, oranges—and visuals with more details, like faces. To engage girls, instruct them to form a circle facing each other, use descriptive phrases and incorporate lots of color.

If girls work well in circles and are oriented toward visuals with more details, adults should consider the following when assisting in developing young female leaders:
  • Provide a mentor/protégé program. Girls need positive role models that they can access and learn from. Women leaders can listen and share their experiences with future young women leaders.
  • Create a buddy system. Girls thrive in positive relationships and are open to learn from one another. Maybe it’s a student in the 7th grade teamed up with a student in the 6th grade. It would allow the new student the ability to learn from a student who has completed a year at the school. In return, the 7th grader gets to mentor the 6th grader.(See the Program Aide opportunities at GSCTX.)
  • No Command and Control. Teach leadership skills that differ from the command and control style. Girls aspire to a different kind of leadership that serves a bigger purpose. They are not interested in power for the sake of power. (Read the BusinessWeek article based on research from GSRI.)
  • Encourage extracurricular activities. Girls Scouts, sports, critical thinking classes are great examples. Social skills, competition, and self-confidence are skills which are taught successfully in these programs.
  • Support their interests. When girls are passionate about something they tend to volunteer to lead. Rusine Sinclair, CEO of the North Carolina Girl Scouts Council, stated, “Young women are concerned about making a difference in the world to see positive outcomes. They are interested in something that would improve a situation. Again, I believe they are defining those things that are important to them and using the leadership from within to improve things in their world.”
In summary, Cunningham and Roberts’ (2006) research indicates men understand the world by constructing systems. Women understand the world by putting themselves in the shoes of others, feeling what they're feeling and seeing what they're seeing (Our Six Themes: Masculine is Hard-Wired to Systemize; Feminine is Hard-Wired to Empathize section, 2006, ¶ 2).

Now that we know that there is a difference. Let’s get busy implementing strategies to support our future women leaders.

-CJ Harris

Carlena "CJ" Harris joined IBM in June 1997 and has held various roles within the IBM Software Group division. She has eight years of experience leading and managing virtual teams. Currently, she is a Global IT Program Manager. She holds degrees from University of Houston (Information Systems Technology, BS) and St. Edward's University (Organizational Leadership & Ethics, MS). CJ volunteers as a motivational speaker and life/career coach. She is also a wife, mother of two, coach, mentor and an aspiring writer.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Teenagers Ready to Do the Right Things—With Our Help

Are young people today more moral and ethical than they were a generation ago?

If you’re prone to watching television shows like “Gossip Girl,” your answer is likely to be no. The truth, however, is that the popular media’s depiction of young people as morally adrift, materialistic and disaffected is wrong. The great untold story about young people today in Central Texas and across the country is that they are much more apt to make responsible choices and refrain from risky behavior than in the recent past.

Research is increasingly bearing this out. There has been a substantial drop, for example, in teenage crime over the past decade. The dropout rate has also decreased and college attendance among young people reached an all-time high in 2008. And recently, the Girl Scout Research Institute published a nationwide survey of young people in middle and high school. The study, almost identical to one done in 1989, paints a fascinating picture of the beliefs and ethical values of young people and how they have changed in just two decades.

It turns out that nearly two out of three young people say they would not cheat on a test compared to about half in 1989. Fifty-eight percent say they would refuse an alcoholic drink if offered one at a party. That’s compared to fewer than half (46 percent) in 1989. And only 18 percent say they believe that smoking is alright if a person finds it enjoyable. In 1989, more than a quarter of those surveyed thought smoking was acceptable.

And our young people value diversity and civic involvement in a big way. Nearly six in 10 say that being around people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds is important to them. This appears to be particularly important to girls (63 percent versus 55 percent of boys). And some 79 percent say they are ready, willing and able to volunteer in their communities, and 71 percent of them say their religious beliefs are important to them.

This is not to say that all is perfect. Although many young people have good intentions about making responsible choices, they need help connecting these desires to action and decision making. That’s where we as adults come in. We should be doing all we can to value their voices and create venues for them to get involved. Our young people are as comfortable—if not more so—speaking their minds as previous generations, so let’s give them ample opportunity to do so by engaging them on issues that matter to them and getting them to take action by serving in our community.

This is not an issue solely for our schools; this involves all of us as a community. We at Girl Scouts of of Central Texas offer many opportunities for girls to come together, develop skills and take the lead in projects that serve our community.

The Forever Green project we are piloting allows girls to take lead on environmental projects and initiate a sustainable change in our communities. The girl advocacy network helps girls learn how to impact laws at the local, state and national level. And last but not least, the Girl Scout Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards provide project road maps for girls to make the world a better place through a cause of their choice.

We’re certainly not alone in offering young people opportunities to express themselves and build leadership skills, but all of us must redouble our efforts. That's why we want to hear it from you: How do you empower girls to make the world a better place? How do you offer guidance? What activities have been the most successful? What tips can you offer other adults committed to helping girls grow?

If we as a community help our young people, they can fully develop the moral and ethical values that will serve them—and all of us—well for generations to come.

-Etta Moore