If not targets, teeth...

The great McKinsey has spoken ....

“Treat gender diversity like any other strategic business initiative with a goal and a plan that your company follows up at the highest levels over many years“ (Nov 2012 “The Global Gender Agenda”)

 But, for sure, the response from the likes of the Government, the CBI,  individual company boards and, sadly, the 30% Club will continue to be:

          1.     “We can’t possibly put in targets or quotas – it’ll upset the women who get promoted as they’ll think they’re just token”.

 You know what – they’ll get over it (or so the post-quota legislation female leaders in Norway tell us) – they’ll be too busy doing what they love and have been over-working and over-performing all their careers in the hope of.

               2.     “The boys will be upset and throw their teddies out of the pram.”

 Try explaining that all the evidence says that companies do far better with a critical mass of women at the top than those that don’t*; that teams that need to innovate are at their most productive when they have at least 50% women** and that in a global economic melt down its a no-brainer to invest in out-smarting competitors.

OK, fine, if you don’t have the courage to commit to the strategic benefits of delivering gender-diversity within the company plans, follow McKinsey’s plan B:

“Where targets are rejected, other mechanisms “with teeth” are necessary”

And where should you apply these teeth? To the communities that feel the pain the most:

•        Those who are responsible for delivering business performance: LEADERS
•        Those that will join your competitors (or set up on their own) if you keep over-looking their actual and potential contribution – WOMEN

Leaders can’t manage what they don’t know – right? OK, so they need to know whether or not their decisions on teams and talent are balanced, or whether unconscious gender bias towards the pale male is negatively affecting results.

Start here – https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/research/ and get your leaders to assess their unconscious gender bias. Guaranteed - they’ll be shocked. I was when I measured mine and I've been working on gender diversity full time for 7 years, and I was born a feminist (gosh, did I say that out loud?)

Then get them to identify the range of decisions this could impact and then task them with identifying sustainable, measureable mechanisms to address them.

Women need dedicated support with teeth, not patronising presentation skills workshops. They face a labyrinth of barriers, detours, dead-ends that their male colleagues don’t. However, women often resist support, and HR worry that it’ll be discriminating against others if they provide support just for women. Get over it!! Use these teeth to bite the bullet. Women do not get there on merit because of this unconscious bias (there own bias included) – so if you’re going to manage talent to ensure it’s all utilised then make it happen.

Here’s what should be on the list of women’s development strategies with teeth:

•       Assessment: to identify where they are against the range of labyrinthine challenges (defined within the Women’s Sat Nav to Success™) and to create individual development plans
•       Coaching  (against pre-defined objectives for their progression)
•       Senior sponsorship (to champion individuals to secure pivotal assignments, higher profile and more strategically significant, stretching work)
•       Training to understand the nature of the barriers and strategies to overcome them (www.womenssatnav.co.uk)

As McKinsey says, 

“successfully transforming gender attitudes and performance requires much greater leadership attention and dedication than even committed CEOs and top teams are currently giving to it”

So, in the absence of the leadership courage needed to embed binding targets (in the face of overwhelming evidence of the economic need for delivering diversity) “mechanisms ‘with teeth” are necessary’”.
Here's to the future...

*McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Catalyst reports between 2007 and 2012

**London Business School “Innovative Potential: Men and Women in Teams” 2007

"I just don't feel valued"

If I got a fiver for every time I heard a woman say "My results should speak for themselves - I should get rewarded based on how well I'm doing"...I'd have retired at a shockingly young age.

Are you one of the women who could have been contributing to my early retirement on this thinking? Or are you one of the 3.7%* who habitually give employers the opportunity to stop their talent boosting their competitors performance, by asking for an improvement in their package? 

Here's a sobering question - when did you last ask for a pay rise? Really, think about it. How long ago did you actually ask for more money? Not just pitch up and attend an appraisal with all your homework showing your multitude of development areas balanced by a token strength. In honesty, have you asked at all in the last 5 years?

And in all of that time politely waiting to be spotted and rewarded for your diligent contribution, do you think the boys (your male colleagues) have been doing the same thing?

You are not allowed, at this point, to state the defense for the organisation -  "it's not a good time because of the economy...cut backs... the market...the  full moon....there's an 'r' or an 'a' or an 'e' in the month".  Nor are you allowed to reel off the standard list of personal reasons - "I'm not quite ready yet...when I've got / done / achieved / experienced x,y and z then it'll be different".

Do you think or say these things or something along these lines? And do you really believe these reasons are valid?  

The fact is that women individually carry the burden of contemporary perception of the role and value of their gender in society and in the workplace. (A perception built throughout history, which remains robustly intact despite a few decades of equality legislation in the west). The impact is that we feel, subconsciously, worth less than our male counter-parts. We often feel grateful for the job we've got and the pay that we are given. Many women say to me, "I''m just waiting to be found out, as I feel like a fraud". The implication, in our minds, is that if we go and ask for a pay rise we are asking to be told that we're actually as rubbish as we thought,and not only are we not getting a pay rise, but that we should get our coat instead, and do the organisation a favour by leaving!!!

 So, we don't ask. But we must. 

 You must ask. You must make it a habit. You must know your market value and be clear on alternative employers. You must separate your capability as a unique individual (who happens to be a woman) from this sense of lesser-value that hangs above us, inside us and around us.This is far,far, far from easy, for deeply-seated psychological reasons. But be very clear - these reasons are not connected with your capability, your value or your potential. By definition, as psychological reasons, they are all in the mind!

So, here's my top tip to ease your way into this new habit...

...START SMALL & SAFE

Build up your confidence and a body of evidence that proves it's OK to ask by starting with  small requests. Re-frame the conversation - you are giving your employer opportunities to continue to benefit from your talent. They'd hate to lose you**

Ask to go on a course that hadn't been planned into the budget; ask for a piece of software to support your role; ask to lead a project. Notice what the result is, how the request was received and the truth about how difficult it wasn't in reality.What can you learn from that small, safe experience? And, what does that inspire you to do as the next step up?

Warning: do not start the conversation with "I know it might be a bad time but....". Leave the reasons why not to the person making the decision (they won't be as creative as you... and they may have been waiting for you to speak up for so long that they'd almost lost the will to live!)

In fact, women I interviewed in the creation of The Women's Sat Nav to Success™ told me wonderful stories of responses to finally asking for assignments or promotions, along the lines of "thank God, we thought you'd never ask and we'd have had to settle for someone else [less]".

And, the most common feedback from our Fast Start Seminars is the news of promotions, pay rises and sponsorships - and within days and weeks of the event!

So, go and ask. Tomorrow. Then write and let me know about your successes

*estimated percentage based on the proportion of women who say they have asked for a pay rise in the last 5 years when asked this question during our Women's Sat Nav to Success™ Fast Start Seminars (http://www.synapse-li.co.uk/index.php/women/our-approach)

**A note to employers: often the first time you'll find out that a female employee wanted a pay rise is in her exit interview. If she is waiting to be offered a [good] pay rise and its not forthcoming, she wont ask, she'll become discontented and then leave.

Not Being Heard

Have you ever had the situation when you’re in a meeting and you put forward a solution to something that’s being discussed, and it’s as if you were in a parallel universe, not actually the same meeting?  No one responds to what you’ve said. It’s as if you hadn’t said anything. And then, a few minutes later one of the guys says exactly what you’d said. And this time it’s different. “Great idea Mike”, “we need to build that in”, “fantastic solution” “you’d better get started on that straight away”. Your jaw and your motivation is on the floor. Your idea, your opportunity gone.

If that’s happened to you, you are far from alone. In fact, you’re in great company. Most of the top women I’ve interviewed in the process of developing The Women’s Sat Nav to Success™ have recounted their stories of this happening and what they’ve had to do be seen, be heard and be respected for what they bring.

So what’s going on? The content of the suggestions was the same, but the gender was different.

There are some critical dynamics in human psychology – our behaviour and how our brains work - that explain why our voices are not heard.

Firstly, we see what we expect to see. If you’ve ever sailed passed a turning that you should have taken because it was on part of a route you use regularly, you’ll have experienced this. If you’ve ever put down your keys but not found them again although they were staring you in the face because they weren’t where you expected them to be, you’ll know what I mean.

And this is the way that our brain works. It’s an unfortunate bi-product of how it makes sure it’s not getting clogged up in details that we don’t need. And it applies to what we hear as well.  We don't hear what we don’t expect to hear.

I don’t expect my 11 year old daughter to know how to mend my computer, so while I’m swearing at it and fighting the urge to throw it out of the window I’m also dismissing “Mummy, have you tried clicking this?”. If I finally calm down and try what she’s said after everything the older and wiser Me can try - then, bingo, problem solved. So much time and temper wasted – if only I’d considered her worthy of listening to. If only I’d valued her intelligence, her experience with IT and her less limited thinking.

So that’s the second part – my stereotype of an 11 year old is that she can’t help solve “grown-up” problems.

The workplace schema*  (in the majority of cases) is that men have the answers because they’ve been the only source of answers in the past, and therefore we expect to listen to them. They are the default setting. So we don’t pick up on what is being said by people we don’t expect to have the solutions.

I’d love to hear your examples of when and where you’ve struggled to be heard and in my next blog, “Making Yourself Heard”, I’ll talk about what to do about it.

* A schema can best be understood as a dynamic stereotype; a stereotype of an event or process.So, if the stereotype is a leader then the schema is leadership (how it is done). We have a schema of how a meeting works or what the experience of going to the cinema involves. 

I've landed!