Mentoring Professional Women at Work while Navigating Sexual Politics

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women working mentoring

By Cindy Krischer Goodman

The number of male managers who are uncomfortable mentoring women has more than tripled in 2018, with one in six male managers now hesitant to mentor a woman, a recent survey by the LeanIn.Org and SurveyMonkey found.

The survey results, considered a backlash from the wave of sexual harassment allegations known as the #MeToo movement, have sparked #MentorHer, a new campaign by LeanIn.Org. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and founder of the nonprofit LeanIn.Org is calling for male managers to commit to mentoring women as a crucial component for equality in the workplace.

“We are at a pivotal moment,” Sandberg’s LeanIn.Org has announced. The #MentorHer campaign comes as the world celebrates International Women’s Day, a global celebration in March to celebrate the achievements of women. This year’s theme is a call to press forward and progress gender parity, a message Sandberg’s campaign embraces.

So far, Sandberg’s #MentorHer campaign has the backing of more than 38 prominent leaders and CEOs, including Disney’s Bob Iger, General Motors’ Mary Barra and Netflix’s Reed Hastings, who have committed to mentor women within their organizations.

The #MentorHer campaign is call to action to keep progress moving forward in advancing women to leadership positions. In a study on men who mentor women , The Harvard Business Review found receiving mentorship from senior males can increase compensation and career progress satisfaction for women, particularly for those working in male-dominated industries.

Why is Mentoring Important?

Maria Bailey, CEO of BSM Media, a 20-year-old social media and marketing firm, received mentoring from a half dozen male business leaders during her career. The mentoring, she said, helped her rise within the corporate environment of large public companies, and later succeed as a business owner.

“The best mentorships are based on shared values and professional chemistry,” Bailey said,

“Some men may be afraid now, but that will weed out people whose intention is not as strong in creating a mutually beneficial mentoring relationship. If a man really wants to help a woman grow her business or grow in her career, he will do that because great leaders are fearless leaders.”

Business executive Erin Knight, founder of a LeanIn Circle in Miami, said mentoring programs formed by corporations embolden female employees to become leaders but need protocols in place to encourage participation for both the mentor and the mentored. She comments, “I believe this will allow men to feel more comfortable participating.” At the same time, she said, “Women should continue to conduct themselves in a professional manner and seek the support of both males and females who share the same degree of integrity and professionalism.”

LeanIn.Org’s new survey findings on male hesitation to mentor females come as women already are underrepresented in most organizations, especially at senior levels. If fewer men mentor women, fewer women will rise to leadership, according to the organization’s findings.

On its website, LeanIn suggests men find at least one woman to mentor. Once identified, the organization advises the mentor to take give women specific input on the skills they need to build, give women skills-based feedback to improve their performances, put women’s names forward for stretch assignments, advocate for and open doors for women, and include women in opportunities to build valuable relationships.

Mentoring is on the Rise

Corporate mentoring is on the rise with about 71 percent of Fortune 500 companies offer mentoring programs to their employees, according to a study of workplace mentoring programs by Chronus, provider of talent and career development software. The study found the mentoring programs led to salary grade changes, higher retention rates and more promotions for the mentee and the mentor.

The benefits of mentoring are clear but evidence documented over the last ten years suggests sponsorship can be even more important because it entails people advocating for you as well as offering advice. Workplace experts consistently find mentorship and sponsorship play a key role in promotions and raises, stretch assignments and flexibility.

Unfortunately, women are 54% less likely to have a sponsor and 24% less likely to get advice from senior leaders, according to Lean In research.

The nonprofit has concluded that we all benefit when a colleague shows us the ropes and sponsors us for new opportunities; particularly when they’re more senior, as men often are.

What Stops Men from Mentoring Women?

The 2018 Lean In survey found half of male managers are “uncomfortable” working alone with a woman. According to a story we wrote in theglasshammer.com in 2013, the Center for Talent Innovation report named The Sponsor Effect, states that “senior men shy away from mentoring or sponsoring junior women because of assumptions about what that relationship entails. “

In a Harvard Business Review blog post, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founding president and CEO of the Center for Talent Innovation, writes, “However, fear of being even suspected of an illicit sexual liaison causes 64 percent of senior men to pull back from one-on-one contact with junior women; conversely, for the same reason, 50 percent of junior women are hesitant to have one-on-one contact with senior men.”

How Can We Help Men Get Involved?

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, Wharton professor and business book author, has a few ideas. In his LinkedIn article titled Men Are Afraid to Mentor Women, Grant said men should hold themselves (and each other) accountable for parity, such as including women in meal outings. He also suggests men avoid running from discomfort and talk to women about what makes them comfortable or uncomfortable. Lastly, he advises men to mentor women in small groups if they are terrified of one-on-one.

Richard Outram, CEO of Financial Acumen, a financial consulting and leadership development firm, said he has and will continue to mentor women. Outram, a former executive at Burger King Corp, Sunglass Hut International, PRC LLC and PricewaterhouseCoopers, believes men who understand the value of the male/female mentoring relationships will continue as well. He states, “It’s eye-opening at times to put yourself in a female’s shoes. Women and men are wired in different ways and we can learn from each other.”

Outram said while some men may be reluctant in the wake of the #MeToo movement, more corporations are making diversity a priority and comments,

“A lot of companies are putting structure and accountability around mentorships to ensure they continue to happen,” He continues, “I won’t say it’s critical for a female to have a male mentor to get to the C-suite. There are female superstars who have made it on their own. But there are a ton of egos in the workplace, so you want a mentor who will help you through the challenges and do it with the right mindset.”

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Opening Spaces to Value Women’s Voices: For Ourselves and Each Other

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 Guest Contributed by Ilene C. Wasserman Ph.DWomen Speaking

“I would like to think that things have changed for women at the workplace, but just when I let my guard down, I am reminded of the vestiges of the old patterns.”

Often, while working with senior executive women, I inevitably hear about the challenges of measuring up – of adhering to the standards that seem to be differently applied to men versus women. While ostensibly, conditions and opportunities have improved for women, the frequency intensity and amount of such comments seems to be on the rise. Some of what I am hearing includes:

  • When I speak up in a meeting, it doesn’t land with the same “punch” that it does when a man says the same thing — just a few minutes later. I say to myself Didn’t I just say that? When it continues to happen, I am tempted to keep quiet.
  • But when I do say something with force, I am often viewed as “too” forceful!

For decades, my colleagues and I have listened to this pattern of gender dynamic in meetings. More recently, the research that is documenting this pattern and the impact that it has on collaboration and productivity at the workplace as well as new words that are being used to describe these behaviors is gaining attention in the popular press.

Professor Victoria Brescoll from Yale University asked professional men and women to evaluate the competence of executives based on who spoke more often. Men who spoke more often than their peers were rated 10 percent higher. However, when women spoke more than their peers, they were rated 14 percent lower. As noted by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg in a piece they wrote for the NYT January 12, 2015: Speaking While Female “women who worry that talking too much will cause them to be disliked are not paranoid; they are often right”.

Tali Mendleberg, from Princeton University goes on to say that while women may be confident in their views, “they’re not confident that what they have to say is valued, and that in turn shapes how willing they are to speak, and what is discussed.”

Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant are joining their voices on a regular basis to call attention to these and other issues of relationships at the workplace.

The pattern of “speaking while female” has consequences beyond the muffling of one person; rather it results in organizations and public forums missing out on a group of key contributors. It is critical that, together, we notice these patterns and be intentional about making changes such that all voices are heard.

In our book: Communicating Possibilities, we offer specific steps for noticing patterns using the acronym NOREN. NOREN stands for (1) Noticing, (2) Observing, (3) Reflecting, (4) Engaging, and (5) Noticing (Again).  In this case, how might we NOTICE when some people are speaking more than others while others are being talked over? In another blog, I wrote about micro-inclusions. A micro-inclusion is an act of stepping up and calling attention to the pattern of a man’s re-statement of a comment previously made by women is acknowledged in a way that links backs to and acknowledges the initial contribution.

OBSERVING is the active process of looking at how I, we and the organization might miss out on the contributions of some who are either talked over, interrupted, or who may be silencing themselves due to being less confident in the value of their ideas or are concerned about the consequences of asserting their voices.

REFLECTING is the ongoing process of taking what we notice, and consider what we might do, interpersonally, on teams and as a whole organization to create new patterns that are affirming and inviting.

ENGAGING differently – taking leadership to break the pattern and create openings and be an ally, by intervening interpersonally in a conversation or meeting, or structurally by initiating forms of contributing that mitigate barriers to contributing, and,

NOTICING AGAIN what we are creating together. How do we enact changes that are affirming, inviting and hopefully enable all people to see what they have to gain by enhancing the fullest contribution of women and other marginalized voices?

Change is a coordinated effort. We as women can do our part in noticing how we inhibit and silence ourselves. AND women need allies with each other as well as with our male counterparts to notice these patterns and enact new ways of listening, hearing and acknowledging each other to create new and better patterns of collaboration.

Ilene Wasserman, President of ICW Consulting Group is the author of Communicating Possibilities: A Brief Introduction to the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM). She is passionate about helping her clients see the opportunities in diversity.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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Are You Being Sustainable? Avoid Burnout and Disengagement at Work

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Nicki GilmourBy Nicki Gilmour, Executve Coach and Organizational Psychologist (www.evolvedpeople.com)

Let’s talk about stress. We all have it, but it’s how we deal with it that matters.

Days can go past very quickly and the news cycle and social media only provokes our limbic reactions further. Are you getting good quality sleep? Are you actually benefitting from exercise or wearing yourself out? How is your stress level affecting your socio- emotional competencies at work? Or, in plain English, are you leading and managing less optimally than you could? Are your clients getting the best from you? Are you feeling mentally good about saying yes and saying no in the right ratio? What toll is it taking on your personal life?

Dr Karen Wilson and myself have developed a coaching program for high (insecure) achievers who say yes and more all the time and are very successful. But, we help you be sustainable in your behaviors, throw away the thoughts and actions that are holding you back and let you be human and great at the same time.

If you would like to enroll in our 16 week program that starts in June, we are now putting together that cohort. The cost is $4000 per person.

Please contact nicki@evolvedpeople.com telling us more about you.

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Women at Work: The Importance of Strategic Support

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Aoife FloodContributed by Aoife Flood. Based in Dublin, Ireland, Aoife is Senior Manager of the Global Diversity and Inclusion Programme Office at PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited.

International Women’s Day is the perfect time to celebrate the many achievements of women, and think about what more can be done to help them achieve their career goals.

The good news: women are more confident and ambitious then ever. This is one of the findings of a new PwC report – Time to talk: what needs to change for women at work – which looks at the views of over 3,600 women around the world from employers representing 27 different industry sectors. We focused on women in the pipeline, aged 28-40, because it’s at this stage that we start to see female representation gaps widen and the challenges of combining personal and career priorities increase.

Leadership aspirations on the rise

Women are more career confident and ambitious than ever; 82% are confident in their ability to fulfil their career aspirations, 77% in their ability to lead, and 73% are actively seeking career advancement opportunities. Furthermore, they have strong leadership aspirations, with 75% of women saying it was important to them they reach the top of their chosen career, namely obtain a leadership position. Women are confident, ambitious and ready to progress.

But the survey also highlights we still have a long way to go and identifies three strategies which are essential to creating a more inclusive working environment. One of these strategies centers on the importance of strategic support, ultimately highlighting that support networks and advocacy go a long way. In a nutshell women need strategic support.

Women need strategic support to succeed

Think of this strategic support structure as a series of circles. In the middle is the individual woman: an ambitious skilled professional who needs the confidence to put herself forward to achieve her career and personal aspirations. Fundamental to this is the support she gets from the circles around her: her workplace and personal support networks.

Time to talk

In the workplace, she not only needs a manager who will help develop her talent and advocate on her behalf, but a series of informal and formal support people and programmes. She needs role models of both genders to look up to and learn from, mentors who help her navigate the path to success and sponsors who can push her to the next level. Personal experience has taught me just how critical sponsorship and advocacy is. The two biggest career milestones of my career, which involved me moving into new areas of the Human Capital spectrum in which I’d no previous experience, would simply not have happened without male sponsors who on each individual occasion were advocating that I was worth taking a chance on when I wasn’t in the room.

In the world outside of work, the third circle, she needs a supportive network, from parents to partner, and friends to peers, that reinforce her career ambitions and work life decisions. For example, women might need to enlist family members and other people to take on more home life or caregiving responsibilities in order to allow her to be successful at work. Interestingly, 84% of the women in our survey in a relationship identified as being part of a dual-career couple and 80% of the women in the survey said they have support from their family and/or partner in their career ambitions.

Self-advocacy pays off

Traditionally, women have been uncomfortable with self-promotion. Our research shows that when presented with a promotion opportunity, women are much more likely to expect to get a tap on the shoulder from their employer; expecting their hard work to be recognised as a symbol of their ambition to progress. They are also hesitant to put themselves forward where they feel they don’t meet all the job criteria for the role.

On the other-side of the spectrum, however, the good news is that women are definitely being more proactive in pursuing their career goals. They are more actively negotiating for and seeking out the experiences seen as critical to advancing their career such as high-visibility projects and stretch-assignments. And our survey showed it is working – there is a strong positive correlation that the women who negotiate are getting what they ask for.

Women won’t succeed without formal and informal support networks. In the workplace, the critical issue is finding the right mix of push and pull to help women simultaneously realise their personal and professional ambitions. And in their personal life, women need to discuss balancing their career and personal ambitious and asking for the help and support they need to achieve these.

Women are more confident and ambitious than ever before, but they need to be able to self-advocate and vocalise where they want to go. This blend of workplace and personal relationships and support is critical to supporting and reinforcing a woman’s self-belief and catalysing their self-advocacy.

My advice to women this International Women’s Day is:

1. Think about what you can do to solicit greater levels of strategic support.
2. Reframe the action of ‘self-promotion’, which has negative connotations for many women, as self-advocacy.
3. This month, put your hand up for a stretch assignment you may be hesitant about, say yes to something you are not sure you are ready for, or schedule time with your boss to make your career aspirations known. Realise the power of self-advocacy and relish the results.

I know it certainly has worked for me. I wouldn’t have been involved in leading this research publication if I didn’t put my hand up four years ago to lead PwC’s first global diversity thought leadership project, something I had never done before. That decision four years ago has led to me being involved in some of my most enjoyable and career developing work, in addition to raising my profile both within and beyond PwC.

Find out more about the importance of strategic support in PwC’s Time to talk: What has to change for women at work publication: www.pwc.com/timetotalk

Follow Aoife Flood at @aoiferflood.

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Work-Life Integration…. Mixing Business and Pleasure Successfully

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By Chutisa BowmanProfessional-networking-advice featured

Why are some women executives able to mix business and pleasure more successfully than others? They do it because they are able to achieve better integration between work and the rest of their life. They function with the awareness that work and personal life are not competing priorities but complementary ones. In essence, they never lose sight of the fact that their personal lives have an impact on the way they approach their work.

Whether you have already reached the C-suite or are still working towards it, your ability to mix business and pleasure successfully is essential for personal effectiveness, peace of mind and success. Work-life integration is apparently a better choice, cognitively, than trying to balance between the two, according to research published in the journal Human Relations and the Harvard Business Review.

While the C-suite requires commitment, mixing business and pleasure should not be impossible. This is not about work life balance. It is about creating a life style that gives you whatever it is that you need in your professional and personal life. It’s about finding the combination of work and play, business and pleasure that works for you.  According to the Medical Daily, keeping work and life separate is not best for wellbeing and performance. The most successful executives are those who have an ability to achieve professional success without always having to sacrifice the things that matter in their personal lives.

So how do you know you have what it takes to mix business and pleasure successfully and achieve work-life integration? A good place to start is to acknowledge that work and personal life are not competing priorities but complementary ones. You must stop being fixated on balance. Instead, put your energy towards integrating what makes your heart sing, what’s fun for you and what you love to do, into your daily life.

Here are three things you can do to develop this ability:

Assess your current position. Looking at yourself as you really are and your life as it is now, is the first step in restructuring your life. To truly integrate work and life successfully, it is crucial to become aware of where you are functioning from, that is creating the life you currently have. The moment you take the initiative to become aware of your points of view, habits and behaviours, you are on the path to having true work-life integration.

So, first ask yourself these questions –

  • “Do you feel physically exhausted, mentally stagnant or find yourself without close relationships?”
  • “Do you react to everything, including things people say and to conditions outside your control?”
  • “Does everything become an emergency in your life?”
  • “Does your life feel chaotic, messy, topsy-turvy and has taken on an erratic flow?”
  • “Would you call yourself a workaholic?”

If you answer yes to any of these questions, your life and your work are probably out of conscious integration.

Clarify what is important and what will work for you. Do you know what you want to create as your life? What do you really want to create as your future? What are your priorities (business, work and personal)? It is super-essential to be clear about your personal interests and concerns—to identify where work falls in the spectrum of your overall priorities in life.

To mix business and pleasure successfully you must cut through the charade about priorities. Begin by making your work priorities crystal clear, and define them in terms of possibilities, priorities and in terms of outputs. Simultaneously, set the important priorities, concerns, and demands outside the office that require time and energy. The target is to have a clarity about both the business and your individual priorities and then to construct a plan for fulfilling all of them.

To know what will work for you, you need to take into consideration that life is constantly changing. The right mix for you today may not be the right mix for you tomorrow or next week or next month. Over time your priorities change. The one way to know you have an integrated work-life is the feeling of accomplishment, fun and happiness you enjoy every day.

Make a conscious choice and commit yourself to embrace work-life integration. To make a conscious choice to create a meaningful existence where enjoyment exists amongst all areas of your life, you have to make a demand of yourself: “No matter what it takes, no matter what it looks like, I am going down this path.” Be willing to be vulnerable and to stay open to the new, the unfamiliar, and the unknown.

Be open to all possibility and be willing to look at what you can do that will generate different possibilities. Choose to be ever aware and mindful, ready to shift strategy and tactics as the situation requires. Having this awareness will prioritize the activities necessary for success. Priorities make it easier to say no to distracting initiatives.

Chutisa Bowman is a Pragmatic Futurist, author and curator of Generative Woman Blog. She is best-known for her work in strategic awareness, benevolent capitalism, prosperity consciousness, Right Riches for You and conscious benevolent leadership. Right Riches for You is a speciality program of Access Consciousness.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily thhose of theglasshammer.com

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Listen More, Talk Less to Change Your World?

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Nicki GilmourBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

This International Women’s Day 2018 has positive messages regarding professional women’s careers. Messaging that women can go far and fast has never been stronger and some companies are making strides promoting women. Work for good companies, functional teams and good managers as happiness can happen at work and if you are not happy then take control of it.

Every day is women’s day on theglasshammer.com as we don’t just talk about what needs to happen (systemically and or individually) one day per year. For eleven years we have been asking you to #pressforprogress and we have been doing it too. By creating visibility of all types of professional women, celebrating women at work and reducing bias and stereotypes via our training and coaching as well as editorial articles based on research. It has not been easy work and we thank those of you who have persisted in trying to change the world around us.

So on this day and month we choose to look more broadly at the world to understand the narrow issue of advancing professional women at work. Why? Because we understand that the culture outside the office affects the culture inside the office.

International women’s day is a third world and first world issue as we see from the horror stories from near and far regarding how men’s needs are placed high above the human rights and freedoms of women. From #metoo in the States to tribal honor killings in India and Pakistan, the one consistent element seems to be that men are always given more power than women. And, if the small minority of bad guys chose to wield that power in an evil way (thankfully so many men don’t) the system and the cultural norms in first and third worlds are remarkably similarly weighted against women.

At least we are talking about inequities now in a way that never before have been up for discussion. But, how do we change things? Change is not easy as it requires systems, structures and policies (and their enforcement) to change. Behavior is like a river running its course, it just happens naturally and having to create a new pathway without a reason to do so is possible, but hardly probable without perturbation.

Sometimes we all need to feel uncomfortable in order to change. Nilofer Merchant writes in the HBR blog to Listen more and talk less to change someone’s mind. At first, reading this piece I felt sheer horror that girls were being traded for compensation. I felt my values being challenged on every level and I feel a rejection of the culture being described in the scenario to the point that I wondered why I was still reading it. Then, I read on. Ironically, the story was about listening without giving an opinion, in service of having people get to a change point of view themselves. Having no verbal opinion can be powerful in some cases where cultural norms will squash dissent or people that aren’t straight men.

This concept really stuck with me, not least because change is about exactly those three elements – culture, values and behavior and Warner Burke Professor of Organizational Psychology and Change Leadership always says “You cannot change the culture by changing the culture.”

In the continued work of finding a true level playing field, all of us need to understand how to challenge ourselves before we can challenge others.
The sheer idea of not having an opinion and voicing it is contra to most advice we see and having a voice for yourself and for the voiceless is a strategy that cannot be dismissed. But, isn’t it interesting as a career strategy to let people think its their idea?

If like me, you are fairly ambivalent about this then thats ok too! This is the time to have a voice because 2018 is a turning point for people and specifically women to be heard and believed. At work, there is a range of situations where you still aren’t being heard, from meetings where the guy next to you repeats exactly what you said, to no win conversations where power plays are present. My favorite books on this are by Deborah Kolb and Judith Williams who wrote Everyday Negotiations and by dear friend Carol Frohlinger’s and Lois Frankel’s Nice Girls series.

Have a good month, enjoy the #IWD celebrations!

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International Women’s Day 2018: Time’s Up For Change

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By Aimee Hansen

“This year, International Women’s Day comes on the heels of unprecedented global movement for women’s rights, equality and justice” states unwomen.org.

The United Nations notes that across the globe, viral advocacy echoed the collective rising of women’s voices in the #MeToo movement to highlight further injustices affecting women, including pay inequality and political representation.

As more women spoke out, the issues affecting women spilled over into the social, corporate and political discourse. In fact, sexual harassment even became an official discussion topic at the World Economic Forum, an unprecedented occurrence.

The selected themes of IWD 2018 send a clear message: We have energetic momentum towards change and equality. It’s time to put that energetic momentum into action.

From Momentum To Action

#MeToo, in its broadest social implication, was about even more than women standing up to sexual harassment and abuse by saying it has affected their lives, too.

It was about bringing the reality of hushed and hidden aggressions against women out into the public discourse – where they can no longer remain denied nor trivialized nor marginalized.

With #MeToo, the conversation became both personal and public, all at once. It echoed through both our homes and our institutions, even if it was somewhat bound to the voices who had the “privilege” of feeling safe enough to speak.

By November 2017, #MeToo was tweeted 2.3 million times across 85 countries. The rising of women’s voices and experiences struck a deep chord in the collective consciousness. With the question of the validity and vastness of the problem widely evidenced, we can focus on how we address change – as individuals, as groups, as society.

International Women’s Day is seeking to take that momentum and extend the reach of both women’s issues covered and women addressed, with urgency:

The International Women’s Day website announced the theme #PressforProgress. building on the strong global momentum for gender parity evidenced by #MeToo and #TimesUp. While the UN theme for International Women’s Day 2018 is “Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives”.

As stated on unwomen.org, “International Women’s Day 2018 is an opportunity to transform this momentum into action, to empower women in all settings, rural and urban, and celebrate the activists who are working relentlessly to claim women’s rights and realize their full potential.”

From Urban To Rural

UN global efforts for International Women’s Day will focus on women in rural areas, who experience more drastic gaps of inequality than urban women: “less than 20 per cent of landholders worldwide are women, and while the global pay gap between men and women stand at 23 per cent, in rural areas, it can be as high as 40 per cent. They lack infrastructure and services, decent work and social protection, and are left more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.”

This greater rural wage gap is not unlike the greater race and ethnicity wage gap in the U.S., as last year UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka wrote: “the average gender wage gap is 23 per cent but this rises to 40 per cent for African American women in the United States.”

For global progress towards gender parity, moving towards Sustainable Development Goals means urgent action for rural women – action for an adequate standard of living, freedom from violence and harm, access to land and productive assets, food security, decent work, education, health and sexual and reproductive health rights.

From Hollywood Stars To Low-Wage Workers

Two months after #MeToo, Time’s Up (#TimesUp) was spearheaded by over 300 women in Hollywood. Time’s Up is a leaderless, collective movement (run by volunteers and made up of working groups) to counter systemic sexual harassment and sexism in the workplace across all industries.

The movement emphasizes providing legislative and legal resources and support to those women in low-wage industries who face harassment without the resources to effectively speak out and oppose it.

This was in part catalyzed by a letter from 700,000 female farm workers who responded to #MeToo with their solidarity, while expressing the challenges of working “in the shadows” with “too much at risk” to expose sexual harassment, including worries about feeding their families.
An open letter addressed to “Dear Sisters” and signed “In Solidarity” includes the statement: “The struggle for women to break in, to rise up the ranks and to simply be heard and acknowledged in male-dominated workplaces must end; time’s up on this impenetrable monopoly.”

As written by Megan Garber in The Atlantic, “While the former (#MeToo) has, thus far, largely emphasized the personal and the anecdotal, #TimesUp—objective in subject, inclusive of verb, suggestive of action—embraces the political. It attempts to expand the fight against sexual harassment, and the workplace inequality that has allowed it to flourish for so long, beyond the realm of the individual story, the individual reality.”

#TimesUp will challenge workplace sexism “through legal recourse”, “through improved representation in board rooms and beyond”, and “through the changing of norms.”

Among the initiatives are a legal defense fund supported by a GoFundMe effort ($21 million at the time of writing) to protect women in low-wage industries from sexual misconduct and the potential fallouts from reporting it by enabling the resources of legal representation.

It also includes plans for legislation to penalize companies that allow harassment to persist and to discourage the use of nondisclosure agreements that silence victims.

The homepage states, “No more silence. No more waiting. No more tolerance for discrimination, harassment or abuse.”

What You Can Do

International Women’s Day is both a celebration of women’s achievements and a collective call to work together towards gender parity. This year, women can stand in our power of glimpsing more of what is possible when we add our collective voices in solidarity against oppression.

If you wish to further advance gender equality for women who may not have the same resources through #TimesUp, consider donating to Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, or one of the many organizations that work with rural women across the globe for greater equality.

The Time’s Up mission statement also encourages women in positions of leadership to recognize their power in providing opportunities for other women:

“Acknowledge that talent is equally distributed, but work and career opportunities are not. Mentor someone from an underrepresented group in your industry. If you are in a position to do so, hire someone who can diversify the perspectives included in your organization; your team will be better and stronger for it.”

As demonstrated by the movements of women’s voices that have echoed through these past six months, the voice and actions of each woman matters on a day intended for all women.

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Do You Know How to Learn, Think and What You Value?

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Nicki GilmourBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

As a coach and organizational psychologist, I often work with companies and individuals to help people understand that we don’t all take in information the same way.

Some people like to experience a case or task (usually observing or minimally touching -like residents in Greys Anatomy) and others like to understand concepts first in abstract ( also important for say doctor training).

We have to watch our biases and preferences when it comes to designing rewards and promotions as the people who learn by jumping in feet first and learn on the job often start with mixed results which makes sense. This is opposite to those who want to reflectively design but are not seen as doers. There is value to both and there is more value in one person being able to do both (or all four quadrants of the Learning Styles Inventory). The developmental goal is to move around the experiential learning cycle encompassing thinking, feeling, and doing as all learning is relearning. It is not a coincidence that when people get their Myers Briggs reports it often lines up the Extrovert and Introvert with applying action and applying reflection respectively. It does not take an organizational psychologist to tell you that extrovert doers get rewarded and then apply a gender lens and a nationality lens and a ethnicity lens and I think you know where I am going with this. Worth noting even if the course of action is not optimal that the loudest duck, as Laura Liswood calls it, are not the most thought out or intelligent (as we see everyday in corporations and in government).

And then there is the left brain versus right brain discussion, fascinating when applied to gender in what I believe to be entirely faux science. Men are from Mars because social constructs over 10,000 years have created that possibility. There are physiological and hormonal differences between men and women’s brains but that should not be confused with how thinking styles appear at work. I participated in two Columbia University executive cohorts over five years, I have seen 99% and then 100% of men appearing in the right brain column of the brain tool results. Men who work in the Army, financial services, consulting, tech, law and medicine. Cordelia Fine just wrote a great book on the myths around this topic.

Then, there is personality- the power of our intrinsic personality that we are born with and the levers and triggers that are then activated with whatever external environment we are set loose into. Ever seen a person thrive in one company and fail miserable in another? Exactly.

How does this apply? For example, I am just slightly more left brain in my thinking style (measured by Neethling Brain instrument ) and my preferred learning style (measured by Learning Styles Inventory instrument) is to learn by experiencing and doing. Along with high need for mastery and high need for aesthetics and need to be recognized for good work done ( measured by the Hogan instrument ). I know what triggers me on a bad day under stress and I know how I show up to my team and clients in those moments (measured by ESCI and 360s).I know my stress recovery ability via sleep and exercise via wellness reports. I know what works suits me and what bores me and what I can do to manage my energy and balance work with family. This is pretty helpful as if you know this stuff about yourself then putting one foot out the door every morning, you have a shot at the systemic challenges or just the dynamics that happens in every office between humans.

If you would like to work with an executive coach on change, challenges or knowing yourself better, contact nicki@theglasshammer.com

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7 Tips All Businesswomen Need to Conquer the Fear of Public Speaking

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Guest contributed by Fiona CuttsWomen Speaking

Being able to speak confidently and well in public is essential for any ambitious woman looking to advance her position and career prospects. And yet, statistics show that 74% of people are afraid of public speaking and so, unlikely to perform at their best.

Here are some proven strategies for overcoming this fear, and allowing public speaking to be one of your strengths for excelling in your career.

Deal with nerves

You may feel overpowered by these sensations: sweaty palms, sickness in your stomach and even shaking hands, legs, and voice that your audience may notice. These are familiar feelings that even the most successful, powerful businesswomen will experience, and like them, it is something you can learn to combat strategically.

Whilst standing in front of your audience, plant your feet firmly on the ground, quite far apart, and breathe deeply into your abdomen. This allows you to be present and stable.

At the same time expand your awareness outwards so that you are aware of what is going on beyond the audience and the room you are in. Doing this will help to prevent you feeling overwhelmed.

Appear confident

Even though you may feel afraid and nervous, your audience does not need to know that. Choose clothes that a confident woman giving this presentation would wear, even if that feels a bit of a stretch for you. ‘Practise’ wearing these clothes outside of your work environment, whether you’re out with girlfriends or spending time with family, so that you become at ease in them. As you become comfortable wearing them, you become the confident woman you envisaged giving the talk.

Be the leader in the room

Undermining your abilities and shying away from any show of strength is a detrimental stereotype for women that is often hard to navigate. Remember that you are the one who is up front. So, you need to be the authority in the room and not be afraid to take control. Of course, you will be well prepared, that goes without saying. But beyond that, you need to be willing to be an authority on your subject, whilst including and empowering people in the audience.

Great female leaders are clear about what they know, whilst not feeling threatened by other people contributing what they know. Women looking to advance their career should seek advice from female colleagues or friends on ways they were able to take charge and assert their authority while delivering a speech – it’s vital to remember that looking to other women, particularly those in a higher position to that of yourself, for support and guidance can help you on your journey to advancing your career.

Connect with your audience

Often when people are nervous speaking, it is hard for the audience to engage with them, and sometimes even hard for the audience to hear them.

Sometimes, in an effort to avoid this, you can come across ‘pushy’, literally pushing the words and information at the audience. This tends to make the audience resistant and maybe even ‘zone out’.

An effective alternative to this is to ‘pull energy’. Many great female speakers and performers do this naturally. You can imagine a thread of energy coming from your audience, through your audience, through you and to behind you. This helps your audience feel connected to you and drawn into what you are saying. It also tends to mean they feel awake, alert and enthusiastic – which of course is what you would like them to be experiencing during your presentation or speech.

Keep it short and sweet

There is no need to tell your audience everything about your topic. Give them a base level of information, enough that they can understand what you are talking about but also so they are intrigued and wanting to know more. This provides you with an opportunity to shine even more and opens a dialogue between you and your audience, ensuring they are more engaged and interested in what you are talking about.

You can also ask a simple question to allow you to know what information to include and what to leave out: “What can I say that would enthuse this audience?” When you ask this, you start to get pointers as to what is appropriate for your intended audience.

Be you

This may at first sound strange and yet a lot of people stop being themselves when they give a presentation. They may find that they start to sound dry and boring, a bit like a textbook or that they suddenly have some mannerisms and habits of their mother or father.

If you notice this happening, simply ask yourself: “Who am I being?” It will bring you back to you and let the confident woman you know you are, shine.

Don’t be afraid of judgement

If you give a good talk, you are likely to be judged by a certain proportion of people in the room. As women, we’ve certainly experienced judgement, and even been guilty of judging others, at some point or another. Women can also often be judged when they excel in industries dominated by men. Your ability to receive this judgement will determine whether you continue to excel or choose to limit your success to provoke less judgement!

Judgement is always about the other person and never about you. It often means that the other person is not achieving what they desire, and is jealous of you and your great presentation.

So, know that the more successful you are, the more likely you are to be judged. You can even make the choice to view judgement as a motivator to fuel a decision to challenge your position and traditional dynamics in a male-dominated workplace, ask for that raise or promotion you know you deserve, or take charge during meetings and presentations more.

Putting these simple tips into practice will help you tackle the fear that many women assume is an integral part of public speaking, and be the successful businesswoman you desire and deserve to be.

About Fiona Cutts

Fiona Cutts is a communications coach, linguist and facilitator for Right Voice for You, a special program by Access Consciousness. An extremely shy and dreamy child, Fiona found herself drawn to languages and travel from a very young age. As well as her native English, she speaks German and French, and has lived in, or travelled through, countries all over the world. During her career as an accountant and auditor, Fiona struggled with an intense fear of public speaking and presentation delivery. As a Right Voice for You facilitator, she draws upon that experience to help others liberate themselves from fear and judgment, and unleash their confident and authentic voice. www.fionacutts.com

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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How to Trot Not Plod Through the Year of the Dog

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By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

The Year of the Rooster is over and the Year of the Dog is beginning in the Chinese (lunar) New Year. So, if January did not feel as good as you would have liked it to, or if you are now ready to get what you want, or at least have a good shot at figuring out what that might be, then you are in the right place.

Ask yourself these five questions:

1. How energized am I on the project I am on right now?
2. What is it that made my best time at work so great?
3. What could be changed to make work great?
4. What do I want out of 2018 at work?
5. How can I get it?

It is important to know what is going on with yourself and to know what the external factors are that make you happy at work.

if you would like to work with a coach on exploring questions, answers, dynamics and getting from here to there, then we have a team here that can help.

Contact Nicki (nicki@evolvedpeople.com) for a free 15 minute exploratory call around challenges and pathways.

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