OP-Ed: 3 Ways For You To Be An Inclusive Leader.

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Inclusive Leader“The future doesn’t just happen- people create it through their action, or actions today” according to The World Futurist Society. 

If you are a leader, you probably want to be your best self when it comes to creating high performing teams where people can feel empowered and like they belong, regardless of who they are. But, often the demanding focuses of the day job can suppress the best of intentions and actions in this space. Ever wondered how to fix this?

Let’s start with why diversity and inclusion seems to be the slowest, toughest and least integrated part of most businesses.

Close to twenty five years ago in 1996, Robin Ely and David Thomas wrote an article in HBR called “Making Differences Matter” —outlining three paradigms or approaches to diversity. This is possibly the best single piece of work for companies to follow as a “how to” for creating a learning culture for effectiveness in all areas, and specifically diversity. Ely and Thomas themselves know their “learning and effectiveness paradigm” was not implemented, to the detriment of the theme, and patiently explained again to the world what needs to be done in their latest paper in November 2020 called “Getting Serious about Diversity: Enough Already with the Business Case”.

The approach that they so accurately describe is to create a learning organization, meaning —in my opinion and in plain language— do the right work, not some pretend moral endeavor which is supposed to lie in ethics, which only some are compelled by, and only to some degree even with the best of intentions. Also, stop approaching representation as counting or hiring two of each type onto Noah’s Ark, thinking you have to be a giraffe to sell to a giraffe.

Lastly, they rightfully point out to stop the fallacies of women being magical unicorns who make share prices rise alone due to their presence on boards and instead: understand the work, make mistakes and learn, integrate the work. Rinse and repeat.

Adding to this, I would say stop categorically believing women’s networks or other ERGs (employee resource groups) can take the place of a systemic change rooted in behavioral change—which needs everyone to buy in and change. Having a strategic network is different from being part of an ERG that wants to do philanthropy or overlooks the fact that it has no real authority or power, as it’s not inside the hiring or promotion discussions for every person in the firm, where the changes that actually need to happen for real outcomes take place. Lobby for change, educate and gather —as ERG’s are good for some things— but know what they are there for, and align goals and resources accordingly!

Here are 3 areas to consider on your leadership journey to grow into the leader you want to be:

#1 Know yourself

Start with you and understanding your styles and preferences regarding work. You can recognize that others have a different style to you, once you see styles for what they are and how they show up in communications, learning and thinking. How do you uncover your style? The fastest way is to work with a good executive coach who specializes in executive and leadership development, as opposed to straight career coaching.

But, if you don’t have access to that type of resource, then ask yourself: what are your style preferences when it comes to communicating and being communicated with? Are you direct and candid or do you prefer to couch your requests in sentences where the audience can hear a gentler message, sometimes amongst other messages? We are all different and there are many free versions of Myers Briggs and other great tools free online to start, such as SCARF (the neuro-leadership institute) and Emotional Agility report by Dr. Susan David. The Learning Styles Inventory (LSI) is not expensive and comes with a full explanation of how you learn and apply knowledge. Curious souls on their development journey will benefit.

We are all somewhat beholden to how we were raised in our families and societies, unless we have taken the time to disrupt that – which you can start doing today by reading Immunity to Change. Doing this with a coach, or even by yourself, will help you to understand what is stopping you from reaching goals in any sense, including D&I ones.

# 2 Take time to know others

Some cultures find it quite impolite to just ask and other cultures find it weird not to say what’s on your mind. Some people might not comply with what you culturally assume they might, so rule number one is don’t assume anything.

Regardless of which schools of thought you buy into, or where you were brought up, or the body and skin you were born into, the psychology of inclusion and high performance are the same. Simply put, nobody likes to have grind or experience hindrances and barriers in doing their job and everyone wants psychological safety. We are exploring what it means to speak up safely.

Personality-based theory from behavioral and organizational psychologists would argue that all behavior is a function of your personality (traits, that are mostly intrinsic), times or reactive to the environment you are operating in. So, if you are a less-than-calm type, stress and certain work cultures will accentuate your excitability for example and can seem volatile. We know that certain people are judged more harshly for anger in the workplace than others, with Serena Williams punished for expressing something that Novak and all the men readily get endorsed for as part of an aggressive champion brand à la John McEnroe.

Instruments like the Hogan, which you may have done via a coach or a training session, will tell you these things. For inclusion, this plays out in many ways including, for some, a skepticism when people don’t walk the talk which makes diversity fatigue kick in, or else an overly diligent approach under stress to stick to outdated playbooks because historically things were done a certain way and status quo is a safer path.

Know where you are honestly at on your own journey. Take an audit of what life experiences you have had, what exposure and connection you have had to people different from yourself. Be compassionate about it, as it is a journey and about building trust and forgiveness for ourselves and others. In a recent Pew survey about cancel culture, the highest amount of respondents believed that context is the most important factor to understanding past behaviors. We can give people room to learn and adapt and grow, educate not punish.

Take the time to ask people who they are including. Straight white men are not a homogenous group either, just as all women or LGBTQ or Asian or African Americans/Black people are not the same. We are individuals, so the career advice here is to ask questions so that people can tell and show you who they really are, what their work styles are and where their interests lie as it pertains to projects. Just because you met one person of color once or a gay cousin, doesn’t mean you know them all, we are not a melded persona and the color of one’s skin or who they take to dinner doesn’t dictate their thinking or work preferences in any way, so just ask open questions to learn more. I am spelling it out here, but are brains are wired to evaluate and label and to override. We think we have seen the movie and how it ends before, when we haven’t.

#3 Know the cultural norms in your firm

How does work get done around here? Who gets rewarded and why (which behaviors) and what is not tolerated? It is key to understand the general ocean you are swimming in and the direction of the currents to truly leverage systems, programs and processes that can help you positively impact culture and succeed in being a change leader. Going from status quo to a new world of meritocracy is a change project. Who are your allies? And who can you form coalitions with to create a more positive inclusive culture where people get to thrive, not just survive?

Start today. The journey is worth it and a leadership one. Anything less demotivates talented people, discredits true high team performance and denies the reality of the world around you. Build trust.

by Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder, Evolved People (theglasshammer.com)

If you want to be a leader, work with Nicki Gilmour – Founder of theglasshammer.com , organizational and leadership coach this summer. Book here for a free exploratory session and then decide if you want to commit to a six session pack for $2,200 this year.

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OP-Ed: 9 Ways Working Moms Can Successfully Work From Home with Their Children Present

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working momsWith the pandemic (hopefully) coming to an end and corporations getting back to business as usual, many U.S. workers (including working moms) aren’t quite sure they want to head back to the office in person, at least not full-time. Instead, some experts predict a Great Resignation is on the horizon, with many U.S. employees indicating they’d rather quit their jobs than go back to in-person office life as they knew it pre-COVID-19.

If you’re a working parent considering making your home your new permanent workplace, you’re bound to have some moments when your work and home life intersect. While it’s ideal to have your kids in child care or to have someone present and watching your kids while you work, sick days and school holidays will likely mean you’ll need to simultaneously juggle caring for your kids and caring for your work obligations at least some of the time this coming year. Here’s how to handle working from home with your kids present long or short term.

1.     Set Expectations. First, set expectations with your kids about the day’s activities and what you are doing and why. Ask them for what you need and explain the boundaries.

2.     Distract Wisely. Give them age-appropriate distractions; it can be helpful to only allow screen time at these moments to keep their attention longer. Have a reward system in place to reinforce good behavior.

3.     Plan Ahead. Try to set up calls on days or times your kids aren’t there or during normal nap times. Perhaps arrange for grandma or grandpa to stop by right before your call and read a favorite book to your child. Or ensure your calls are with another understanding parent if your kids are present. If you expect your kids to interrupt you, proactively let the person on the phone know in advance that it may happen, and explain the situation and how you’ll handle it.

Concentrate on your highest priority work to-dos and those that require the most intense level of attention first. Start your day before your children wake up. This valuable time will be free of interruptions and will have your full attention. If you only have time to work on a few things, make sure they’re the ones you really care about or that really need to get done.

4.     Get Active Early. Depending on your schedule, play with your kids early in the day. Kids hate waiting, especially for our attention. Instead of making them more and more frustrated as you make just 1 more conference call, give them the attention they need at the start of the day and get them moving with fresh air and exercise, if possible, early on. Take a walk outside with your kids first thing in the morning when you wake up. When you finally do need to sit down and hammer out a few tasks, they won’t be so antsy, and you’ll be able to fully concentrate.

5.     Think Outside the Box. Consider an alternative schedule, especially if you have a partner who is also working from home. Mom may take the 6:00 am to 2:00 pm shift with the kids, then “go to work” in her home office, and dad works 2:00 to 8:00 pm. Or divide up the day. Think about working in 2-hour shifts, switching off with your partner or another caregiver.

6.     Consider Your Space. Designate areas of your home for specific tasks, and create visual cues that let your kids know you’re off-limits while you’re in those spaces. Your garage, the basement, a bedroom — these can all serve as work areas. When you physically separate from your kids and take yourself out of their line of vision, you’re less distracted, and your kids are less confused about your accessibility. As the saying goes, “out of sight, out of mind.” A red stop sign or a cutout of a hand on your office door is a clear indicator even to young children that work is in session and reinforces that you’re not available at the moment.

7.     Create Structure. Set your kids up for success during important meetings by creating structure. For preschool and elementary children, set up interesting activity centers in their playroom with model clay, craft paper and markers, or books they can interact with while you’re away for a short time. For older children, make a list of 10 activities they can do when they feel bored and put it on the refrigerator as a reminder for the times you’re off-limits. Use times you’re completely off-limits to have them dedicate effort to traditional schoolwork or online learning.

8.   Feed the Beast. Plan ahead for food needs. Cut up fruits and vegetables in advance and put them into containers labeled “Meeting Snacks.” Make mini quesadillas with protein and veggies, cut them into triangles, and set them out right before your meeting starts. For older kids, set out ingredients for sandwiches or salad before you head into a session with a client or coworker so it’s easy for them to put together a snack while you’re away.

9.     Be Honest. Be transparent with your business partners about the fact your kids are in the home with you. The more honest we are about how our home and work lives intersect, the more we normalize that experience for others, and, ultimately, push employers toward considering our whole-person needs as they create policies and culture.

Above all, give yourself grace. Accept that when you’re trying to do two jobs simultaneously, you’re bound to sometimes be less than perfect at both of them. Take breaks with and without your kids. Definitely don’t add even more to your proverbial plate — the errands, the vacuuming, that toothpaste you still need to buy — it can all wait. And, remember, if you eventually find yourself longing for a little more separation between your work and home life, that’s okay, too.

Whitney Casares, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.A.P., is the author of The Working Mom Blueprint: Winning at Parenting Without Losing Yourself. She is the Founder and CEO of Modern Mommy Doc and host of The Modern Mommy Doc Podcast.

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Three Ways to Move Into The Self-Care of Thriving

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Self-CareAs we hit the midpoint of the year and get into summer, let’s take a break from going through the motions to re-evaluate and practice self-care: what do you need to do for yourself to restore and regenerate?

Too much of self-care talk focuses on topping up the energy you have depleted so you can survive the daily grind. Self-care is not really about getting by, but committing to yourself and your authenticity so you can thrive.

Prioritizing self-care is about restoring your energy and your connection within, so that life becomes more energy-generative.

Here are three ways to practice self-care so you can feel more alive in your skin:

1. Get Back Into Relationship With Your Body

How often have you overrode your body’s messages – be it forgoing rest, healthy food or physical activity – while striving to do everything else that seemed ‘more important’? Women are especially prone to burnout at work and the long hours game has a disproportionally damaging effect on women’s health.

Overvaluing the mental urge towards productivity while disconnecting from our physical bodies moves us away from health and the feminine wisdom of our bodies. When you lose intimacy with your body, you lose the ability to access gut feelings, intuition and valuable emotional guidance.

As Stephen Covey would put it in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you also make the mistake of prioritizing production at the expense of nurturing your production capability, which is only good for short-terms external wins but ultimately exhausts your ability to show up, especially for yourself.

This summer, really get into your body. Not just as a means to another end, such as running off the stress or shedding pounds. And don’t just recharge your body: you were not born to be a battery. Moving your body is not the same as being in a listening relationship with your body. Instead, re-attune to your body. Restore the connection with self, starting here.

Consider a yin yoga class, a restorative yoga class or perhaps 5 rhythms dance. Or let the sun pour in through your skin for twenty minutes. Do something new or slow or fast that brings your awareness back to the simplicity of your ‘being’ and the innate guidance of your body.

Your ‘doing’ will only benefit from bringing it into balance with your ‘being.’

2. Experience “Immersive” Time

“We wake up in the morning and we say, ‘I didn’t get enough sleep.’ And we hit the pillow saying, ‘I didn’t get enough done,’” says Brené Brown.

We conduct our busy work lives in linear time, which helps gives rise to the cultural narrative of scarcity, and the persistent feeling that you can never do enough. But the one-way march of time is just one left-brained frame for experience where we often end up “hustling for our worth,” as Brown puts it.

The seasons of nature and the physiology of the female reproductive body reveal the right-brained frame of cyclical time. What psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes as a state of Flow and the Greeks called kairos is yet another experience of time that is alive, creative, connected and synergistic.

“Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners, schedules, beepers…Kairos is transcendence, infinity, reverence, joy, passion, love, the Sacred… We exist in chronos. We long for kairos. That’s our duality,” writes Sarah Ban Breathnach, in her NYT bestseller Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. “Chronos requires speed so that it won’t be wasted. Kairos requires space so that it might be savored. We do in chronos. In kairos we’re allowed to be. It takes only a moment to cross over from chronos into kairos, but it does take a moment. All that kairos asks is our willingness to stop running long enough to hear the music of the spheres.”

This summer, drop into immersive time more often. A key quality is that the experience of presence and participation themselves are the reward of this time, not the result.

Perhaps it’s getting lost in adventures with your family or a deep conversation. Perhaps it’s a long walk or drive in nature. Reading a book. Cooking a homemade meal. Dancing or painting or writing or meditation or playing an instrument. Whatever activity makes you forget both yourself and the world because you are so inside of it, that’s the gold.

In a feminine sense of creativity, we do not forgo self-care in order to labor ‘at all costs’ for what is, relative to our health, an abstract outcome. We value and care for ourselves throughout the process as the experience is the creation. Tapping into immersive time increase your well-being, your creativity and your productivity, too.

3. Rediscover How To Use Your “No”

Halfway through the year is a good time to step back and ask where your time and energy is going and whether it’s adding up to create fulfilling meaning for you, rather than just ticking off your list or other’s needs.

As in Covey’s famous time management matrix, are you steadily putting energy and resource into the Quadrant 2 area of “not urgent but important” in your life? This is often the hardest area to devote yourself to when life pulls from all directions, so take a break to get an overview of your energy investment relative to your real values and desires.

More than ever, our energy is susceptible to be whittled away by low importance matters of false urgency, as 24/7 responsiveness and social media addiction has become normalized. Look at the hours you’ve spent on the phone in a day and ask if you deposited anything in the investment bank of your heart? How much was truly connection and how much was distraction?

When our commitments, as demonstrated by habit, are not aligned with our values-based desires, we begin to feel the pain of disconnection with self.

Realignment of energy with values is going to require emotional attuning.

One question that can be useful is to ask: What is the one thing I am getting angry/resentful for not doing? If you’re giving all your energy away except to the thing that’s really important to you, you will begin to feel like the world is crashing in on your personal boundaries. Now, how can you choose time to prioritize what you yearn for? Can you let discipline come from love?

As part of trauma exploration, Gabor Maté, M.D. talks about how most of us ‘wisely’ adapted to give up our authenticity for attachment as children. But when we continue to forgo our authentic needs, due to the stories and guilt we’ve cultivated, it causes stress, suffering and disease. He asserts that if you can’t say ‘no’, your body will.

According to Maté, women have a harder time saying no and suffer the health consequences. One essential step in self-care, and restoring your authenticity, is relearning how to give an authentic ‘no’ – whether in work or personal life.

Maté suggests to ask the following questions around saying ‘no’:

  • Where in my life do I have difficulty saying no?
  • What story did I tell myself about why I couldn’t say no?
  • Is that story really true?
  • What is the impact on myself when I don’t say no?
Thrive, Not Survive

This summer, think about self-care not as a way to survive the grind of your life, but to step a little further into thrive, whatever that authentically means for you!

By: Aimee Hansen

Note: We are taking a publishing break and our own advice and we will see you on Monday 12th July, and remember we have over 5000 articles to read in the archives if you are missing our cutting edge career insights!

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5 Ways To Become a Better LGBTQ+ Ally

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LGBTQ+ allyBeing an LGBTQ+ ally is being an advocate for, and active participant in, building cultural inclusion.

According to Fast Company, “Allyship refers to everyday acts which challenge behavioral norms and support members of marginalized groups through an awareness of the issues being faced by others.”

A team of professors in Harvard Business Review view “allyship” as: “a strategic mechanism used by individuals to become collaborators, accomplices, and coconspirators who fight injustice and promote equity in the workplace through supportive personal relationships and public acts of sponsorship and advocacy. Allies endeavor to drive systemic improvements to workplace policies, practices, and culture.”

Here are five ways to be an accomplice in creating cultural inclusion:

1. Cultivate Awareness and Empathy.

A lot of advice for being a better ally focuses on self-education. But what is the objective of that? Cultivating awareness and empathy.

A prerequisite of support is cultivating awareness of realities and painful disadvantages that you do not have direct experience of: becoming aware of the bias and discrimination and understanding why it causes harm. The absence of having to experience that reality is what we call ‘privilege’.

Allyship requires a willingness to open your eyes and place yourself in another’s shoes as they tell you how that experience exists for them through their eyes.

In their March 2020 survey of 2,000 LGBTQ+ employees and 2,000 straight employees, in partnership with NYC LGBT Community Center, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found an interesting insight.

Natural allyship is on the rise, because the separation between young LGBTQ people and their straight peers is more narrow. Compared to their older counterparts, straight employees under 35 are 1.6 times more likely to know LGBTQ colleagues, 3.6 times more likely to join ally programs and 3 times more likely to find value in colleagues being ‘out’.

The younger the employee group, the greater the awareness of discrimination. For example, only one-fourth of straight 55-64 year olds witnessed any discrimination in the past year, compared to 57% of their LGBTQ+ peers. But 85% of straight 18-24 year olds witnessed it, much closer to the 91% of LGBTQ+ who also did.

That change reflects a much smaller gap and increased sensitivity in the ability to see certain behaviors as harmful to certain groups, even if you do not belong to the group.

By expanding your exposure to the stories of others, whether through personal connection, documentaries, books or following LGBTQ+ leaders and media, you increase your awareness of the nuances of discrimination and build empathy. Start here: Are you aware of the common microaggressions that LGBTQ+ people experience?

2. Recognize Identity As Personally Defined and Fluid.

As theglasshammer covered recently, social identity is increasingly becoming more personal, intersectional, fluid and multiple. But more than anything, identity is increasingly self-identified. The myriad range of LGBTQ+ experiences are far from universal.

It’s important to realize that language matters, and not make assumptions about the identity or orientation of another person or about what that belonging means for them.

By allowing others to tell you about themselves through their voice, rather than make assumptions, you remain curious and allow others to find their authenticity. An inside-out connection that begins with the internal connection with self, and interacting with others and the world from the space of that inner truthfulness, is the basis of authenticity.

Being conscious of your own language helps to avoid making assumptions, such as using gender-neutral terms like ‘partner’. Honoring a person’s self-identity includes observing the personal pronouns that people choose for themselves and normalizing that choice.

Certain short-cut assumptions are well-conditioned in our brains, so it takes effort to not make those automatic leaps. But when it comes to another person’s life, it’s far more connective to show up by listening to them before you assert assumptions about who they are.

3. Embrace The Growth in Discomfort.

“Allyship is not knowing it all and never making mistakes. That’s impossible,” writes Freddy McConnell, host of Pride & Joy BBC podcast. “It’s putting in the effort and not expecting trophies.”

Allyship requires vulnerability, because you’re going to be clumsy at times. As McConnell writes: “When my friend came out to me as nonbinary, I practised their pronouns in private. Being trans does not imbue me with a special gift for unlearning familiar speech patterns.”

It’s not about getting it right or wrong, but about being open to learning. Before we challenge any unconscious bias, stereotypes or assumptions in the culture around us, we often foremost come to confront the existence of them within ourselves, even as part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Often the roots of rejection (of others and self-rejection) are shame-based beliefs and conditioning. Evolving involves unlearning that cultural conditioning, including the habit to shame ourselves if we get it wrong.

A willingness to be wrong, admit when you’re wrong, own your mistake and be receptive to guidance is what is valuable to a growth mindset and to keeping the focus on your intention of better allyship.

“Allyship is actually more about the mistakes than the things that you do right,” says human rights advocate Maybe Burke, who conducts allyship training on behalf of the Transgender Training Institute. “It’s about how you deal with those mistakes and move forward.”

4. Treat Ally as a Verb.

As suggested in a University College London (UCL) blog: “Think of ‘ally’ as an action rather than a label.” Being an ally is not about whether you consider yourself as an ally, but how you show up in support consistently.

In their research, BCG found that only 34% of straight employees always intervene when they see an encounter. As written in HBR: “When you witness discrimination, don’t approach the victim later to offer sympathy. Give him or her your support in the moment.”

Remaining silent is a comfortable form of passive collusion—it assures that heteronormative assumptions and microaggressions remain invisible, insidious and unchallenged within the fabric of an organizational culture, and puts the emotional burden on LGBTQ+ people to be the only ones calling out these behaviors. It also makes it more vulnerable for them to do so.

Are you willing to speak up when you hear something that feels wrong or discriminatory or does not sit well, inside of your heart? And will you be that voice in the room, even when the LGBTQ+ person may not be in it? Are you being an ally (verbing it) in the moment it’s called for?

5. Uplift LGBTQ+ Voices.

Ultimately, allyship embraces an interdependent lens: a culture is not really working for anybody if it’s not welcoming and nutritive for everybody. An organizational culture needs to be a win-win for all employees on all levels to be maximally effective.

That’s why performative allyship is dangerous—it comes from a place of ego protection, does not integrate win-win and keeps the focus on the appearance of allyship (the guise of doing good) rather than fundamentally being aligned to real organizational change for everyone’s good.

Performative allyship fears losing its position or does not really embrace the point.

Speaking up as an ally is not about speaking over, but raising everyone’s voice. Be willing to ask how you can support your LGBTQ+ colleagues in the way that is most meaningful for them.

While your voice will be needed as an ally, your success will be evidenced in the greater space for marginalized LGBTQ+ voices at the center, not the edges, of the organizational conversation—down to the small and casual daily interactions that form relationships and culture.

(If you are a leader who wants to develop your skills as an inclusive leader to leverage diversity and truly understand the topic as a strategic capability, work with Nicki Gilmour on this topic as she coaches male and female leaders and managers who are growing their skills and evolving their behaviors to lead the current and future top talent of their firms. For an exploratory call, please book a session here.)

By Aimee Hansen

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How To Disrupt Gender Bias in the Virtual Workplace

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Gender BiasWhat can leaders, managers, allies and women themselves do to minimize and challenge gender bias in the virtual workplace?

Last week, theglasshammer.com explored the impact of the virtual office in either neutralizing or amplifying pre-existing dynamics of gender bias.

Ultimately, the gender bias present in our cultural paradigm is also present in our offices, and this week we explore how to address it.

How Leaders Can Diffuse Gender Bias in the Virtual Office

An article in the World Economic Forum asserts that when it comes to bias in virtual meetings as in any context, “changing the environment in the room – rather than changing women’s behavior – should be the goal.“

“If we build a world in which women’s voices are valued and listened to,” says Jessica Preece, associate professor in political science at Brigham Young University, “they will speak up without having to be told to.”

“Smart companies create inclusive work cultures so that all employees actively support each other, particularly marginalized groups. Allyship and curiosity should be at the heart of a manager’s leadership, regardless of gender, to create a more inclusive, welcoming workplace,” says Serena Fong, Vice President, Strategic Engagement for Catalyst.

As leaders, meeting chairs can set the tone and expectations upfront, including implementing ground rules for discussions that mitigate some of the communication challenges and gender imbalances, such as a no interruption rule in Zoom calls.

As written in Forbes, reducing interruption requires the self-reflection of questions such as “Is this person making a point I need to add onto?” and “Am I listening equally to everyone in the room?”

Calling out when gender imbalances occur is another approach to being an ally on Zoom, as exemplified by an associate professor who let the men dominating the virtual conversation know that she was happy to hear their input, but also wanted to hear from the women.

Introducing positive interjections, such as “that’s a really valuable point” to validate, amplify and give pause of consideration to women’s voices is another strategy for leveling the field.

Putting workflow systems in place that ensure communication flow, project tracking and clear administrative responsibilities will also help reduce the amount of extra work picked up by women.

According to Fong at Catalyst, leaders should embrace these five key strategies to disrupt gender imbalances and build a more flexible, equitable and inclusive workplace for all:

  • Lead inclusively through crisis: keep inclusion front and center as you navigate the shifts in how we’re working currently and how we’ll be working in the future.
  • Tackle inequities, large and small: face biases and stereotypes head on through workplace policies and opportunities such as re-skilling your workforce, examining talent management, recruiting, and advancement practices for biases, and setting DEI targets and goals.
  • Connect with empathy: put yourself in your colleagues’ shoes and imagine what they might be experiencing vs. your experiences.
  • Trust your team: don’t micromanage projects and processes, and be transparent about when, how and who is involved when decisions are made.
  • Work remotely and flexibly: the pandemic dispelled many myths and assumptions about working remotely and flexibly. Take the lessons learned and incorporate it into the “new normal”.
How Women Can Ally Together in the Virtual Office

While not responsible for correcting gender imbalance, women can still be allies to one another in subverting gender imbalances of the virtual workplace.

“If you see a colleague being ignored or is trying to speak, say something. If you learn about an act of bias, think about how you can address it,” says Fong. “It may not seem like much, but it is infinitely better than ignoring it.”

Carol Vernon, founder and principal of Communication Matters, recommends for women to set the stage early for speaking up in a virtual meeting rather than waiting to have the perfect compelling thing to say, and to take the lead in introducing non-verbal expression to the meeting.

Another way of subverting bias is by actively reinforcing ideas that another woman has brought to the table and then re-accrediting the idea as hers, as While House staffers did during the Obama administration.

Women leaders have also told theglasshammer.com about actively inviting female colleagues who hold valuable insight on a topic to share their viewpoint, as well as instant messaging with coworkers during meetings to enhance solidarity and encourage each other to speak.

Nicki Gilmour, Leadership Coach, Organizational development specialist and founder of theglasshammer.com adds, “Creating psychological safety as the leader in the virtual room matters also, as who you authorize to not only speak but to demonstrate expertise matters. People will take their cues from you in person or otherwise about who is truly authorized to speak up. Asking for different people’s viewpoints from their perspective will not only add value but level the playing field for the quieter, more hesitant people on the call.”

Virtual gender bias is really just the same dynamics at play in a new space, but perhaps the playing field also allows for new disruptions.

By Aimee Hansen

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Is Gender Bias Amplified in the Virtual Workplace?

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Virtual workplaceWhile remote working is a key element to creating more gender equality, the coexistence of the virtual workplace alongside virtual schooling has exacerbated the disproportional hours women spend on caregiving and domestic work, driving women to exit the workforce or consider downshifting their careers.

The dissolution of physical boundaries between home and office and classroom very rarely affords a woman with children “a room of her own” in which to conduct her professional life, unlike her male counterparts.

And now the remote workplace itself—the virtual meeting room and Zoom office—is introducing a mixed bag of gender-related impacts, neutralizing some imbalances while magnifying others.

How the Virtual Meeting Room Could Neutralize Gender Bias

As of February, researchers in Forbes reported that sentiments towards moral, motivation and collaboration related to the virtual workplace have been dropping into negative territory since November among executive leaders. Yet women leaders remained more positive than men—especially in relation to impact of the virtual workplace on productivity, decision-making and communication. Women leaders were more positive about the chairing of online meetings and that it sets the space that ‘ensures all team members can contribute to meetings’.

While men are socialized to establish dominance and position in team communications, women are inclined to establish relationships and build trust. Some research has indicated that virtual media, with a lack of non-verbal cues and three-dimensional richness, can led to greater misunderstanding in communication, but also diffuses the ability for men to dominate team interaction.

“With completely remote-meetings, the physical and social dynamics of in-person conversations unhinge the norms of hierarchy,” speculates UX researcher Allison Yu. “In Zoom, everyone is literally on an equal grid.”

Yu points out that when the active speaker is everyone’s primary focus on a Zoom screen, the act of cutting someone else off simply becomes more blunt. The virtual office also mitigates height bias, which favors men.

Whereas access to senior leaders is generally lower for women and women of color especially, Yu argues access becomes more equalized in a virtual workplace where some of the more exclusionary casual networking meet-ups, cultivated through affinity bias, aren’t as frequent or prevalent.

How the Virtual Meeting Room Is Proliferating Gender Bias

On the other hand, the virtual meeting room is also playing out to magnify pre-existing gender dynamics—such as male executives winning competency points for speaking longer while women lose them, passion expressed by women leaders being perceived as overemotional by male counterparts, men being 33% more likely to interrupt their female than male colleagues (manterruption), women speaking up 25% less than men in the meeting environment, and live reverbalizaton and appropriation by men of ideas previously introduced by a female colleague.

According to Catalyst research, 1 in 5 women has felt ignored and overlooked by coworkers using video calls. 45% of women business leaders say it’s difficult for women to speak in virtual meetings and 42% of male business leaders agree. Additionally, 31% of women and queer/non-binary respondents reported “getting talked over, interrupted, or ignored more frequently during virtual meetings than those held in person” in a July 2020 survey by the Society of Women Engineers.

In September, University of Iowa Grad student Claire McDonnell shared a video call recording on TikTok entitled “live footage of being a woman in STEM” that went viral within 48 hours. The clip shows her repeatedly being interrupted by fellow male students when pitching project ideas and having her own ideas appropriated and re-presented by her peers, though she was the only with with actual work experience with the topic.

As written in the New York Times, Georgetown University professor Deborah Tannen asserts that the remote workplace amplifies pre-existing conversational imbalances in who gets heard. Whereas men will tend to be argumentative and speak longer to convey authority, women will often be succinct, self-deprecating or speak in more indirect ways to not take up more space than necessary and be likable.

“Women are systematically seen as less authoritative,” said Jessica Preece, associate professor in political science at Brigham Young University. “And their influence is systematically lower. And they’re speaking less. And when they’re speaking up, they’re not being listened to as much, and they are being interrupted more.”

As put forth in Fast Company, women also have weaker informal relationships at work and office politics are still at play as “the official virtual meeting represents only a fraction of interactions, and real power dynamics will move backstage, excluding women as needed.”

Research also shows more women (46%) are struggling with group work than men (37%), often picking up more of the undefined, collaborative-based tasks and carrying the load of remote office housework. Also, “when faced with poor visibility or communication on what their colleagues are doing, many women compensate by working more,” an impulse which can be amplified by lack of co-presence in the remote working office.

How to Diffuse and Disrupt Virtual Bias?

While the flexibility of the remote workplace is generally supportive to gender equality, and virtual meeting rooms could counter or neutralize aspects of gender bias, the last year has revealed that entrenched cultural gender dynamics will reveal themselves, sometimes more so in altered circumstances. If gender inequality is inherent within our culture, it’s frankly alive and well in our virtual offices.

Next week, we will explore how leaders, managers, allies and women colleagues can play a role in addressing and mitigating the dynamics of virtual bias.

By Aimee Hansen

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OP-Ed: Why Female Leaders Experience More Burnout and What to Do About It

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Jessica ThiefelsWhile COVID took a toll on all of us, women in the workplace are feeling the burnout effects at higher rates than their male counterparts. Data from a 2020 McKinsey poll found that:

  • 53 percent of women reported feeling job-related stress, compared to 46 percent of men
  • 37 percent of women felt exhaustion, compared to 31 percent of men
  • 32 percent of women felt burnout, compared to 28 percent of men

The disparity is even more obvious at the senior level. For example, 54 percent of senior-level female leaders felt exhausted compared to just 41 percent for men, and 39 percent experienced burnout with only 29 percent of male leaders reporting the same.

To counteract widespread burnout as a female leader, it’s important to understand the root causes of your work-related stress and find actionable ways to avoid it. Here are some strategies you can use as a female leader in the workplace fighting burnout during COVID and otherwise.

Understand the Relationship Between Mental Health and Burnout

Burnout is due to chronic stress, fatigue, cynicism, and lack of accomplishment, according to a study from Frontiers in Psychology. What’s more, the research indicates that burnout often shares commonalities with depression and anxiety.

With stress at the root of burnout, it’s vital that you not only be aware of how stress levels can impact your mental health but your physical health as well. You may not notice the stress if you’re used to it, but you might notice these physical stress indicators:

  • Tense muscles
  • Blood pressure increase
  • Increase in heart rate
  • Hyperventilating
  • Off-balanced digestion

In “How to Free Yourself From Stress”, HealthMarkets explains that the real trouble starts when this stress becomes chronic. They explain, “The constant physiological response wears us down, affecting several major biological systems. Our stores of energy drain. Our bodies produce fewer infection-fighting T-cells, so our immune systems become weak, making it easy for illnesses and diseases to push their way into our lives.”

Fight burnout: Use an app like Symple to track your daily mental and physical health. It’s easy to ignore stress when it’s become the norm for you. This small step will force you to focus on your overall health each day, which can point you to burnout before it becomes a problem.

Fight Back Against Social Media Fatigue

Female leaders are expected to write sharp industry articles on LinkedIn and promote themselves as the face of a brand on Twitter. Not to mention, it’s often a component of our personal lives. Yet, excess social media consumption can also lead to burnout.

The problem is that too much social media exposure is dangerous to mental health, especially for female leaders. Recent research has found that social media fatigue is a legitimate condition that can lead to anxiety and exhaustion.

As a modern successful woman, you’re constantly taking in the highlight reel of your peers and colleagues. To make it even worse, instances of “mom-shaming” for working mothers are on the rise since the start of COVID-19.

Fight burnout: How often do you mindless scroll on social media? Probably more than you think. Set social media boundaries so you can still show up where you need to, but walk away when you don’t. For example, you set a rule that you can’t look at social media until 10 am and then you put it away for the night after dinner. If you can’t stop yourself, let your phone do the work with an app like Offtime.

Untangle the Excessive Demands on Female Leaders

Based on the same McKinsey data, COVID-19 workplace shifts caused unequal challenges for female leaders, especially when compared to men. The pressures of household responsibilities, fear of suffering job performance, and lack of flexibility/work-life balance forced many women to scale down their careers or leave their job. One in three working mothers faced this decision due to limited childcare options.

It’s even tougher is when you’re the solitary female in your position. The report explains, “Senior-level women are also nearly twice as likely as women overall to be ‘Onlys’—the only or one of the only women in the room at work.” This circumstance sets the stage for microaggressions, criticisms, dismissals, and high-performance stakes, all of which contribute to female leaders experiencing burnout 1.5 times more than male leaders.

If you add childcare into the equation (working mothers currently spend 15 more hours on domestic labor per week than men), it becomes an impossible situation.

This is when it becomes important for organizations to play a role in helping women mitigate their burnout.

How Organizations Can Help Female Leaders Combat Burnout

You’re likely not the only woman dealing with this burnout in your organization—and in some cases, it takes the organization to make changes for you to be able to better manage the stresses put on women in the workplace.

Consider using these strategies to recognize and counteract burnout for women company-wide:

  • Promote mental health awareness: Ensure transparency surrounding mental health benefits, I.E. therapy and other available resources. If your benefits plan is lacking, Eric Freedman, founder and CEO of eSkill, suggests circumventing financial barriers by exploring options such as telehealth counseling sessions or access to mobile wellness subscriptions. Companies can also provide mental health support with group meditation classes. Organizations including Nike, Google, and Sony have built this into their company culture.
  • Support working mothers: Assist working mothers in finding solutions for childcare or allow for more flexible hours for those who also home-school their children due to COVID. Don’t just to send an email or memo, but make changes that help women make these changes in their workday. What’s more, female leaders can lead by example by setting boundaries, like being offline at certain times, so their direct reports know that it’s acceptable to do the same. Check out this Fast Company piece, which highlights how other companies provide for the “patchwork of childcare needs” of their employees.
  • Get real: It’s important that company leaders don’t just talk about these things, but they take real action. This will look different for each organization, starting with getting serious about allowing for greater flexible schedules, getting realistic about workloads and where support is needed, updating paid leave policies, and even discussing whether female leaders’ pay is equivalent to the work they’re doing.
Female Leaders: Support Yourself and Others

Whether you manage women in leadership positions, shape your HR policies or workplace culture, or are a female executive, you’re likely experiencing burnout in some way. The first step to solving this issue is understanding where the root causes are and then taking real action to provide solutions. It’s time to put sustainable policies and processes into place so female leaders can do their job without an impossible burden on their shoulders.

Jessica Thiefels is the author of 10 Questions That Answer Life’s Biggest Questions, podcast host of Mindset Reset Radio, CEO of Jessica Thiefels Consulting and founder of the Femxcutive Personal Brand Coaching Program. She’s been writing for more than 10 years and has been featured in top publications including Forbes and Entrepreneur. She also contributes to Fast Company, The Ladders, and more. Follow her on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Remote Working Hacks: From And For Executive Moms

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When interviewing female executives for her first book, Pulitzer-winning career columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Joann Lublin, became intrigued by the strong representation of executive moms.

“I was surprised to observe that more than 80 percent of the women, irrespective of where they had landed in their jobs, had kids,” she recalls. “And when I looked at those who had become public company CEOs, the percentage was even higher.”

With a career focus on leadership and executive women, Lublin interviewed 86 prominent executive mothers for her recent book, Power Moms: How Executive Mothers Navigate Work and Life, to gain insight into juggling both managerial roles and families.

We spoke with her to glean insightful hacks from successful executives for managing the remote workplace, as it exists in 2021.

Not the Remote Office We Anticipated

While remote work is part of the solution towards gender equality, forced remote working in the COVID-19 context has been a curveball of mixed gendered impacts.

“I don’t think any working mother in America expected that the multiple roles that we were already playing—the first shift, the second shift, and what I call “the third shift,” the mental load—would all be exacerbated by the fact that now the kids would be stuck at home,” says Lublin, “and because we have gendered role expectations, mom would be seen as the primary teacher, caregiver, parent and all of the above.”

Lublin points out that mothers with children under 12 were nearly three times as likely as fathers to have left their jobs between February and August of 2020. As of November, research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis reported that when it came to parents with children under five, “while nearly all fathers returned to the labor force, mothers regained virtually none of their lost ground”.

“The solutions have to be both personal and societal. On one hand, women have to stand up and insist that parenting is not a solo art. To the extent there are two parents in the home and they’re both working, this has to be a co-parenting arrangement,” says Lublin. “By the same token, they need to speak up and make their needs known to their employers, who in turn not only must trust their employees to get the work done while showing maximum flexibility, but also need to be checking in frequently with their employees.”

Here are six hacks for managing the 2021 remote working office:

 

Set Your Availability

Whether company or individual-driven, Lublin observes the trend and importance of setting hours when you are unreachable.

One Gen-X executive, who has been working remote for years, agreed 7-11 am as her protected hours with her company, reserved for her yoga, exercise and morning routine with her children.

This executive also began scheduling outside interruptions to her day (eg. home maintenance) only during the fringe hours when she would normally be on her commute.

Coordinate Your Co-Parenting

One executive and her husband were each starting their own companies, now both at home with their four and six year old children.

“They initially winged it. It all happened pretty suddenly and you think, we’ll just sort of take one day at a time,” says Lublin. “That was not working.”

The solution the two former Nike executives turned entrepreneurs found for successful co-parenting was to create a  spreadsheet each Sunday night, where they blocked off work engagements and agreed three-hour shifts of rotating parenting responsibilities for the week. While they also learned to allow for flexibility within a plan, this helped them to both dedicate time to family and their work endeavors.

Another way to manage the overall household, says Lublin, is to involve older children. One executive rewarded her teenage daughter for supporting her six year old in doing her schoolwork from home.

Embrace “Work-Life Sway”

Lublin addressed the elusive idea that is “work-life balance” in a chapter called “Manager Moms are not Acrobats” in her first book, Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World.

“That quote came from an executive who strongly believed that this idea of work-life balance was an impossible ideal,” recalls Lublin, “that we could no more achieve work-life balance than we could stand on one leg for that wonderful yoga pose for 24/7.”

Early in her recent research, she came across work-life sway, an approach which encourages ebb and flow between life and work, immersing in whichever you are in right now.

“The idea of work-life sway is that when we have to be a 110% in the moment for work, we will give our all and then some,” says Lublin. “But if life invades or intrudes, if the water heater overflows or the toddler comes running and dumps the contents of her diaper on your lap, you won’t get flustered or totally fall apart or give yourself a guilt trip. You will sway to being present in the other part of your life. The whole concept here is to go with the flow.”

She cites an executive who left her office immediately when she received a video from her nanny of her daughter taking her first steps, and was then home in time to witness the second and third steps.

Release The Guilt

Lublin notes that Melanie Healy, now a Board Member, Investor and Strategic Advisor to many organizations, not only inspired the chapter title mentioned above, but also encouraged her to focus on ditching working mother guilt as “a complete and fruitless waste of our energy.”

If you sit down to eat dinner at 7pm with your children because the day was full until then, as an example, then celebrate that you’re sitting together for dinner rather than guilt yourself about the time.

Unlike many boomer moms, Healy did not hide the personal importance of her work, and instead involved her children in work decisions. She would share with them why a work trip was important to her as much as why their school and extracurricular events were important to her.

Another executive mother with young kids gave her children the power to invoke family time in the evening on demand.

Take Self-Care Time

“The book points out is that self-care is not selfish care,” says Lublin. “If we don’t take care of ourselves, we’re going to burn out.”

From taking two hours to herself on a Sunday when the other parent has the kids to taking a sabbatical, executives found time for personal regeneration to prove essential, even when they resisted doing it.

After a sabbatical, one executive mother decided no longer to be CEO of her company, and instead became Chief Visionary Officer to reduce the amount of operational work she was involved in.

Leverage Job-Share or Reduced Schedule

Turning to personal experience, the first time she proposed a four-day work week with a 20% cut in pay and benefits at WSJ, Lublin was declined.

At that point, she had one child under four years old and was just back from maternity leave with her second. But later that year, WSJ published a front-page story about moms returning to work after maternity leave only to throw in the towel. Norman Pearlstine, Managing Editor at the time, reached out to her.

“I could really relate to that,” she told him. “You know, I’ve got two kids under four. I’m working full-time and I’m dying. I really can’t do it. It’s just too much.”

He invited her to re-propose her reduced schedule and not only did she receive the four-day week work, she also kept full pay and benefits—with the condition she could not work on Friday at all or the deal was off.

Not only did the reduced hours not diminish her productivity, as her bosses had trusted, but she was promoted to management a few years in. Her reduced schedule helped her effectiveness and set a newsroom precedent that allowed other women to job-share.

Lublin advocates that women consider job-sharing as a strategy for advancing in management.

Recognize that Parenting Builds Your Leadership

Lublin feels that parents learn delegation, multitasking and other skills that help them become better leaders. “I think women in particular are able to hone certain skills that make them more effective bosses,” she observes, “particularly, they learn the importance of being an empathetic listener.”

She reflects that being a highly successful reporter did not prepare her to be a successful boss, but parenting was complementary and did help.

“Having children before I moved into management taught me how important and how good it is to be a great mentor,” Lublin concludes. “To be a good human being is to give back and pay it forward.”

By Aimee Hansen

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Four Steps to Making Professional and Personal Life Change in 2021

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Nicki GilmourOur lives changed one year ago this week, in ways we could not have predicted. Most professional women lost the office, the commute and socialization with clients, coworkers and friends in New York City, London or wherever we live and work around the country and the world.

Cities emptied as many relocated to the countryside or the suburbs. Mothers took on 15+ more hours a week of domestic work and childcare, and some left work due to the strain. Others experienced a workforce reduction that cut across every sector in one way or another.

In an unprecedented year, many of us have felt shock, pain, loss and grief in different ways for different reasons. As most changes to our world endure, this brings another level of internal processing and feelings.

In a time where the external context has felt both uncertain and unfamiliar, many of us have felt more compelled towards reconnection with our center, our internal compass and our animating purpose—What do I value? What do I want to envision and create? Where do I want to focus my energy and attention?

These questions matters, now as much or more than ever. Here are four steps to support in the process of re-evaluation:

Step 1: Feel the feels.

Let yourself feel everything, but know that you are not your emotions, rather that you experience these emotions.

“Emotional Agility” is important. Being able to recognize and name how you feel and know that you can see it objectively, and not only experience it subjectively, means understanding that you are not the emotion.

Emotions are data that can help you understand what next steps are right for you. The amazing Dr. Susan David at Harvard has worked extensively on helping people understand that if we put our emotions to one side to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to deal with the world as it is, instead of as we wish it to be.

In her TedX talk, she recounts that over the years, when people say they don’t want to try something or they prefer to avoid disappointment or they want fear and shame to just go away, her humorous response is: “I understand, but you have dead people’s goals.”

David offers a free quiz to begin the journey of becoming more astute about your emotions, and her bestselling book is a great way to start getting in touch with your emotions as your guides.

“Normal, natural emotions are now seen as good or bad,” she states. “Being positive has become a new form of moral correctness. It’s unkind and ineffective.”

Ignore the societal call for relentless positivity and keep it real, so you can be honest with yourself about how you feel. You will be happier for it and more guided towards genuine contentment and joy, because you listened to yourself.

Step 2: Take Care of Inner Business.

“Wherever you go, there you are” is the saying.

Who are you? Do you behaviors line up with what you say matters to you? Or, what are you committing to, instead? How do you show up for yourself?

In her excellent book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and in her body of work on transitions, including during Covid (quick read here), Herminia Ibarra suggests that in the messy business of getting to where we want to go, we should consider not only our current selves but our future possible selves also.

“Possible selves are the ideas we all have about who we might want to become. Some are concrete and well-informed by experience; others are vague and fuzzy, nascent and untested,” writes Ibarra. “Some are realistic; others are pure fantasy. And, naturally, some appeal more to us than others.”

List your skills, your values and who you want to be. To self-assess your driving inner forces around recognition, fairness, and autonomy, for example, take the SCARF free quiz to see where you fall on the spectrum of these behavioral motivators.

Harvard’s longest running study on adult development suggests that while we say we want money and success, those who live the healthiest, happiest and longest actually share one essential experience —having deep human connection. That includes with ourselves.

Why not use the shake-up of this liminal time to shine an investigate light in the places where you have been on auto-pilot and check-in if you are still living in alignment with yourself, now?

Step 3: Commit to the Changes You Want to Make.

In this blurry time, I invite you to take stock as professional women to review what is working for you and what needs to simply change—in both your inner story and your outer physical world.

Change is hard and neuroscience and psychology shows us that we tend to stick with what we know through routines, even if the habits aren’t that useful to us anymore. Trying to live like we did before is pretty impossible, but being resilient and adaptable amidst whatever this new decade brings in our world is key.

It is the mental or even professional pivot, not the hanging on, that will empower you. Pivoting is something that we are all doing, whether it is small adjustments to how we work or a big transition into a new career altogether. Ibarra has always argued that we are all in transition at work, but we just don’t know it yet.

Businesses who have pivoted during the pandemic have seen the best results when they protect their core, while innovating slightly to meet needs of a changing customer. Company culture and brand purpose matters the most—who are you and what do you stand for?

If businesses are taking stock of these questions, take the same permission slip: Who are you, now? What do you value, now? Where do you wish to set your vision and put your energy, from now onwards?

Step 4: Elevate Your Development With a Coach.

I know this is going to sound strange, but as an executive and leadership coach, I effectively spend four to eight hours per day inside other people’s heads. Like in the movie Being John Malkovich, I become privy to the inner voices that we all have, and it is fascinating to witness the “truths” that we all tell ourselves.

We all have a bunch of constructs, albeit different ones, that make up our default operating system. Your brain, mostly your unconscious, is running the show and is building data models day and night via associative process. This comprises your worldview or mental model, literally the lens through which you experience your life—unless seen, challenged, disrupted and revisioned.

We’re often blind to what creates our limits and blocks. We all have goals, but we need to surface our subconscious gremlins, who are trying to thwart are best-laid plans for change by creating hidden competing agendas.

A great model for approaching this internal work by yourself is available in the book Immunity to Change, which really is a life-altering read that I have discussed at length here on the site. Imposter syndrome runs rampant with successful overachievers, and I have not met one client yet who doesn’t have some deep fear of failure, wobbly sense of worthiness, or hidden insecurity or shame.

But you don’t have to be beholden to these gremlins anymore, and you don’t have to overcome them alone, either.

You can do so much to clear the debris and make real change uninterrupted by your subconscious fears. Neuroscience research has now caught up with what social psychologists have been hypothesizing on for decades: The brain is high elastic or plastic and even the most entrenched behaviors can be modified.

Ibarra and others suggest that coaches are key to the process of making the changes you most hunger for: Firstly, in talking it all out. Secondly, in helping you make real and actionable plans. Thirdly, in acting as an accountability partner and advocate to be in your corner as you navigate the course to new territory.

Are you ready?

If you would like to work with Nicki Gilmour as your executive coach, she has some (daytime only) spots left or we have a cadre of vetted professional coaches available (some have evenings available). Please click here for an exploratory call.

Packages start at $799 for 2 sessions, 5 sessions for $1999 and ten sessions for $3,899.

by Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder, Evolved People (theglasshammer.com)

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Check-In: Let’s Put Self-Love On the Conversation Table.

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self loveWhile it’s now normalized to talk about self-care and self-worth in the discussion of our professional lives, it’s rare that we dare to talk about “self-love”.

Yet self-love is an internal orientation from which to envision and navigate our lives—be it personal or professional, and it is what fosters self-worth, self-respect and self-care.

So as we near Valentine’s Day, let’s invite self-love to join this conversation.

Is Self-Care Enough?

According to Psych Central, “self-care is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional and physical health.”

But we often talk about self-care as a momentary respite from a hectic life in order to restore our energy, or a set practice we do before the day runs away from us.

“Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure,” writes Brianna West writes in Thought Catalog.

“Self-compassion is regarding yourself compassionately. Self-care, by contrast, is treating yourself compassionately,” writes Charlie Gilkey, “…Self-care without self-compassion discharges a debt, usually with suffering somewhere else.”

Self-care spa dates alone are no proxy for cultivating a state of self-love as your foundation for experiencing yourself and the world. Without self-love, superficial self-care can be the coping mechanism or distraction from living a reality that is painfully out of alignment with your needs, desires, meaning fulfillment or growth.

Self-Love Means Self-Valuation

“Self-love means finding peace within ourselves — resting comfortably within the depths of our being. We might find temporary respite by doing something to nurture ourselves,” writes John Amadeo, Ph.D. in Psychology Today, “But a deeper inner peace requires cultivating a certain way of being with ourselves — a warm and nurturing attitude toward what we experience inside.”

Self-love is by definition an ability to meet ourselves where we are, loving and accepting of this moment of “me” right now, right here. It asks us to create expansive change from a place of love and respect, rather than shame or fear.

“Self-love is not simply a state of feeling good. It is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, psychological and spiritual growth,” writes Deborah Khoshaba Psy.D. “Self-love is dynamic; it grows through actions that mature us.

“When we act in ways that expand self-love in us,” Khoshaba continues, “we begin to accept much better our weaknesses as well as our strengths, have less need to explain away our short-comings, have compassion for ourselves as human beings struggling to find personal meaning, are more centered in our life purpose and values, and expect living fulfillment through our own efforts.”

As “actions that mature us,” self-care can include listening within with radical self-honesty. It can mean making the sometimes difficult, heart-aligned, self-discerned choices and changes that create a more integrated life.

“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing,” West writes, pointing out that self-care often means doing the thing you least want to do — whether it’s figuring out your accounts or leaving the position or relationship or forgoing the immediacy of a compulsive habit to self-parent yourself into making the choices that nurture your growth.

“Self-love means having a high regard for your own well-being and happiness. Self-love means taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing your well-being to please others,” writes Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., President & CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. “Self-love means not settling for less than you deserve.”

Increasing Heart and Mind Alignment

According to HeartMath Institute, which studies the effect of heart activity on brain function, the mind and the heart (which has its own neural network) are constantly in two-way communication.

The heart actually actually sends more signals to the brain, influencing both emotional processing and higher cognitive faculties, than the brain sends to the heart. Your brain is constantly responding to your heart.

A big part of self-love is coming into that place of acceptance and self-validation where your mind and heart are more aligned more often, and you create from this space.

When you’re out of alignment with the core pulse of your inner being, you may feel life is hard and that you’re stuck. You may feel disconnected with yourself and sense that something is generally off, no matter what you do.

You may often feel foggy and lack energy or animus or vision, like your personal meaning has drained of color. You may feel like you’re living an external reality that does not match, or no longer matches, who you feel you are inside, and your self-care is your attempt to cope.

Sometimes, you can be in a moment in life where your meaning-maker is in cyclical change: where what used to fulfill you no longer nourishes you the same and perhaps your personal evolution calls for something more.

However, when you are deeply honest with yourself, deeply accepting of yourself, and honoring and validating your needs while acting from personal alignment, you begin to feel less stress and more vitality. You do not block any emotion because emotions can provide data and feedback.

You feel a greater sense of wholeness and peace within yourself and connection to yourself, to others and to the world. You are more curious and more creative. You feel mentally and physically more solid and have greater resilience for accepting yourself even in your struggles.

Questions To Check-In With Your Heart:

– How open are you to feeling all of your emotional experience? Do you block, disallow, distract or escape from experiencing certain emotions? Can you accept yourself in both uncertainty and vulnerability? Do you practice bringing awareness to your emotions as information?

– Do you trust in yourself — and at least as much as you trust others? Do you listen to your own voice as the authority in your life? Are there areas in your life where you could gently build up more self-trust and inner accountability? Are you able to forgive yourself?

– Do you create the space to intentionally check-in with your heart? Do you slow down and get still enough to discern the signals of your own truth from the collective noise, or do you keep the wheels spinning so you can’t? What would you hear if you did?

– Do you self-validate your experience and your own needs? Are you compassionately aware of your needs and willing to take responsibility for them and clearly communicate them? Or do you invalidate, dismiss or disown them? Are you willing also to own and validate your inspirations and curiosities and desires for expression?

– Are you willing to listen to and even act upon the wisdom of your gut and heart? Or are you dismissive of internal callings or yearnings if they fall outside of your mental framework of what’s rational or realistic?

– How honest can you be with yourself? Are you attached to any concept or identity of yourself that inhibits your ability to know yourself more deeply and possibly, openly? What questions are you unwilling to ask yourself?

– Are you willing to say “no” from love? Have you created boundaries as a healthy container for honoring your values, your energy and your time? Are you willing to choose yourself?

– Do you know what you value? Are you willing to act in alignment from your values, even when it’s difficult? Do you live with intention and are able to make the choices that nurture your center and further your growth?

– Is what you are committing to, through where your energy and action goes, the same as what you want? Can you bring your habitual commitments into closer alignment with your desires?

– Are you still hustling to earn your sense of worth and value from others or do you claim it for yourself? Are you able to embrace growth opportunities or do you shrink at criticism? What is one area of your life where you might need to claim your worth and value?

We are all on a journey of cultivating self-love, and that journey impacts everything about not only how we show up in the world — in every facet of our lives — but also how we experience ourselves as we do so.

When it comes to enjoying that ride, cultivating self-love is probably the richest, most valuable, rewarding work we will ever do.

By Aimee Hansen

(Our “Heart” Coach)

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