Tag Archive for: organizational psychology

On Changes After 15 Years: Nicki Gilmour: CEO And Founder, The Glass Hammer

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Nicki Gilmour The Glass HammerThe Glass Hammer was founded fifteen years ago (July, 2007) with the distinct intent of helping professional women – especially within financial services, law, technology, Fortune 500 – understand how to navigate their careers with the ultimate goal of advancing. The mission was to inform (provide expert career advice), empower (by bringing women together with events and networking), and inspire (by profiling women who have blazed the path and broken through the glass ceiling in some form). We sit down with Nicki Gilmour to discuss where things stand now as we celebrate this milestone of the longest running career advice publication for professional women.

Q: How have things developed since The Glass Hammer launched?

The world has changed significantly across these past fifteen years. But the pandemic has created the most seismic shift in how people work, how people want to work and how people live. Many people, women in particular, found themselves suddenly dropped into a very different reality as of March 2020 that included swapping the commute and the long office days for long days in front the computer and longer days in some cases homeschooling kids and sanitizing everything.

Perhaps one silver lining of the pandemic, if you can call it that when there was such sorrow and stress for so many, was the chance for all of us to understand that the future of work could happen more quickly than we realized was possible. We saw how we could switch to Zoom, Teams, Webex, Google Meet and other platforms to conduct conversations and share documents. And guess what? We still managed to do business – despite the constraints and challenges, both for individuals and organizations. ‘The future is now’ comes to mind as it is no longer a theory to work remotely as it pertains to equal or increased productivity.

Beyond the practical logistics of work, people also started to really look more deeply at their personal values. When your back is against the wall, it’s time to ask: what really matters here?

Q: What has changed for professional women in the past 15 years?

So much and yet nothing has changed for professional women.

I think the greatest thing that has changed is that people want to see their leaders show more empathy than before and that success and professionalism, as definitions, have become wider and more diverse.

Ambition remains a very personal trait that is present, to a lesser or greater degree in all people as they are individuals with personalities, specific belief and value sets and varying needs and experiences. Many ambitious women still envision a linear path to the top. But I believe that having been through the pandemic and the shift in many realities, people also understand more than ever that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I can’t speak for any other human except myself, but I do see, observationally, as an executive coach and Organizational Development consultant, that generally people are tired of accepting the legacy status quo as the only way forward in terms of what dictates how we work and when we work as well as where we work.

With the ‘Great Resignation,’ some people have literally voted with their feet and walked out of very well-paid jobs including Sheryl Sandberg who left Meta recently. Sheryl, as we know, was the author of Lean In. Well, she’s decided to lean out. I think that says a lot. I believe this was an era of ‘celebritizing’ a handful of women and it continues as VC’s are still backing firms that do close to zero for women on a structural change level and continue to implicitly tell women to just network.

Certainly people, and some companies, have also finally decided to stop tolerating the same biases based on gender, but there is still a lack of transparency around pay equality. Just recently, Google has paid out $118 million in settlement to 15,000 women in a class-action lawsuit about gender pay discrimination. I would hope there comes a day when equality is built through solid processes and good human behaviors not litigation – however, as it seems law suits are still the most effective method, that comes at great cost to the women who bring them.

I definitely see a theme where things, that we didn’t contest in the past, are more explicit and more accessible to contest at least. We are asking companies to walk the talk on equality and meritocracy. That starts and ends with transparency. There still isn’t a consistent pathway to get to the mystery of what you’re being paid and why, depending on who you are from a biology or ethnicity perspective, as pay is not really assigned strictly on merit, experience or even qualifications in most companies.

I have spent the past few years contemplating whether breaking the glass ceiling is a redundant concept for younger professionals in the sense that people don’t want to be on the other side of that glass if the traits it takes to be successful there means assimilating to something that just doesn’t resonate at all. When what’s been holding everything up is the structural walls of rules that clearly don’t favor meritocracy, due to flawed cognitive and social constructs around who gets to lead, is the work that is needed to be centered differently? A new way of looking at this? I am not sure the work is as evolutionary in the linear sense that we all once believed it was.

Q: Say more about how you are approaching the big questions, now.

I think futurism is key now in terms of understanding what can be, as well as what has been, or what is. I think that it’s a time of considering a deeper structural review instead of incremental bricks on the old crumbling foundations. Saying that, there are 41 female CEOs in the Fortune 500 right now, or 8.2 percent, which is a record high. I do not want to dismiss the fact that incremental change is happening, but it isn’t enough in terms of impact for anyone to truly celebrate progress with any sincerity, as if this was a product it would be shelved due to slow adoption in the marketplace. The big question is, are we happy with very gradual, incremental change? And how long will it take for equality to happen? Especially when we take huge hits like the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Title IX and other various cultural backslides that hamper women from an equal existence generally, as well as specifically.

Academically, this is going back to Virginia Schein’s (et al) “Think Manager – Think Male,” which began over 40 years ago. Without knowing the human involved, people in aggregate still vote for the straight male manager as the most leader-like with real traits like productivity, competence and assertiveness. Conversely, they continually mark in the traits survey that women are less competent, productive, and assertive even though there is not a specific woman being assessed, just generally as a cognitive concept of a female manager, which is very disheartening and often the respondents are also women. This remains in play in a very real way in a workplace near you! Never underestimate the power of the cultural wallpaper and what it can do in terms of unchecked internalized misogyny.

Q: Systemically, what cracks are we seeing more clearly than ever, especially now?

It goes back to promises not kept – transparency of pay, transparency of promotional track. The entire system has never been truly re-envisioned to integrate women’s lives or value our spherical lives as a whole. There’s also the blunt fact that organizations still ignore life outside the skyscraper. It has been well-documented that women do the second shift at home and do something like 10 extra hours of housework and childcare relative to their male counterparts. And that’s not just something that occurs in heterosexual relationships. It also shows up in LGBTQ+ families, because someone has to pick up the slack. But systemically and culturally, it has always been a majority of women that do that, while expected to be superwoman at work. Kudos to the men who do it as they rarely get recognized and should be, also.

“There’s been various research studies on remote work showing that many working mothers find it quite beneficial to work remotely because, productivity-wise, it’s helpful to not commute a couple of hours a day. We should be moving to results-oriented work, because professionals know what they have to deliver. We no longer need to wear pinstripe suits, ride a train and be in an office 9-5. We have to get away from this model that was designed last century. LinkedIn is redefining what it means to be “professional,” and it’s no longer being a white man going to the office in a three-piece suit with a briefcase.

“The office is now in your head and on your computer, and the cries to get back to the office are not necessarily based in productivity claims. For organizations and leaders to ignore that employees are actually telling you what they want and to ignore the data around productivity is just basing in (disproportionately white and white male) preferences. Many people can’t understand why they’re at the mercy of their manager’s choice. And now people, who would otherwise continue to work remotely, are worrying about falling on the wrong side of proximity bias. Just as paternity leave and full maternity leave are still underutilized because the hidden penalties and state-by-state and company-by-company inconsistencies do not always support people to feel it’s in their best interest. Often women are torn about how much time they can take for maternity leave in the pressure of 24/7 work with many exhausted and typing emails close to the birthing event. I know I was writing emails right up until the delivery room as that was a badge of honor that I just don’t believe Gen Y and beyond buy into on any level.

Q: So what can organizations who want to lean in, and walk the talk, do right now?

Organizations have a place to play in this because within their sphere of influence, inside and outside of their ‘virtual’ four walls, they can create a microcosm of equality – and it’s not that hard to achieve. It comes from:

  • Being clear in your mission and strategy around DEI aspects, and other aspects such as social responsibility, just as you would decide what you’re going to do with your core product. It’s as simple as that.
  • Make your management practices transparent, clear and consistent – so everyone knows what they have to do, what flies and what doesn’t. Make sure there are explicit norms as opposed to implicit norms that are subjective.
  • Surface anything that is a covert process – meaning: in denial, not on the table for discussion, for whatever reason.
  • Make sure everybody knows their role, their responsibilities, what’s expected of them, what are their goals, and ensure their responsibilities are aligned with their ability to execute on them. Make sure their skills and abilities match the job requirements.
  • Remove as much organizational grind as you can: the barriers, hindrances, obstacles to doing the job the way that people see fit, the way each person sees fit as a professional.
  • Understand individual needs and values, beyond grouping people together based on social identities such as gender, nationality, sexual orientation, or otherwise.
  • Help your people understand what success looks like. Let them know what it means to be doing a good job here.
  • Make sure people know which direction the company is going, what the company values and what are overarching goals, and that can include societal topics: because social issues have never been more integrated into corporate life than they have been in the past two years. To leave things unaddressed is a recipe for disaster. Silence is complicit and colluding.
  • Finally, make sure that when you talk the talk, you walk the talk. Ensure that you are creating actions to meet your espoused values, behaviorally. This means coaching leaders of all genders and creeds to understand how to create and implement positive change for all employees to be engaged and performing in a high but healthy way.

It’s not actually impossible or unreachable – and this is the work that has to take place as opposed to telling women to lean in, keep their head down, and keep at it. Because the last fifteen years has shown us that change has been present, but slow.

Thank you all for your continued presence and readership. We wish you a safe, healthy, enjoyable summer season.

Interviewed by Aimee Hansen

*After this week, The Glass Hammer will be taking a publishing break until September. Enjoy your summer as we are walking the talk on our values and focusing on coaching leaders and developing organizations to connect to the human factor better via our sister site evolvedpeople.com. Enjoy our 8,000+ articles and we will be back in the early Fall.

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Why Introverts Are Needed In the Workplace

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introverts at workWhen you enter the corporate world as an introvert, one of the first hurdles you may have to overcome is the societal expectation that you should behave more like an extrovert. The temptation to be someone you are not can be overwhelming and may lead to disappointment and missed opportunities. What if rather than hiding who you are, though, you were able to listen to your own wise inner voice and use your unique communication style and let your true personality shine through while also contributing tremendous value to your organizations and teams?

The reality is that if you are willing to stretch and grow and be a little bit vulnerable, if you are willing to stop being who people expect you to be and to start experimenting with being curious, listening more, and showing your real quirky self to the world, you may be surprised at the results. When you stop talking only about business, stop trying to be the loudest, smartest, most confident person in the room, you are then able to access your unique introverted abilities and wield them like a superpower.

The Advantages of Being an Introvert in Business

Let’s look at some well known introverts who demonstrate this every day. In his article, 23 of the Most Amazingly Successful Introverts in History, John Rampon tells us that many industry giants are not only introverts but their success shatters stereotypes about what it means to be an introvert in the business world. Among others he shares with us that Marissa Meyer, current Yahoo! CEO, has admitted that “I’m just geeky and shy and I like to code…” He and numerous other sources quote Bill Gates as saying, “ …if you’re clever you can learn to get the benefits of being an introvert, which might be, say, being willing to go off for a few days and think about a tough problem, read everything you can, push yourself very hard to think out on the edge of that arena.”

This comes as no surprise when you look at research done by organizational psychologist Adam Grant. His findings not only confirm that there is no real long-term difference in the effectiveness of introverted and extroverted leaders, but that in some situations, introverts actually outperform their extroverted colleagues. For example, his findings show that introverts really shine in situations where creativity and team cohesion matter. They are more likely to be better listeners and to encourage creativity and to form deep and meaningful relationships with team members.

If you think back over your own personal experiences, you may have found this to be true at times in your personal experience also. Can you remember a time when you listened deeply and collaborated with another individual only to find that you had effortlessly built a relationship without even really trying? That ability is the secret sauce that introverts often don’t even know they possess because they are trying to so hard to act like extroverts instead of tapping into their natural relationship and problem-solving abilities. When introverts tap into their unique ability to listen, collaborate, problem solve and build trust, they are a quiet but powerful force in an organization that helps share a diverse orchestra of talent that works together to create a beautiful symphony of diverse abilities.

A 2002 study by Nassbaum supports this idea and reveals that introverts are in fact more likely to work together to find solutions to problems and to listen to and ask for other people’s suggestions. They are more willing to consider new ideas and are less attached to their own personal ideas. This allows team members to feel valued and free to share their ideas and for clients to feel cared for and part of the problem-solving process when issues arise. When introverts let go of the expectation to come up with all solutions on their own and to be the most engaging person in the room and just let themselves be a safe place for others to express themselves, relationships blossom from that organically.

A study by Rehana Noman in the International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences reveals that more than 79% of introverts rely on their intuition, inner feelings and reactions to make decisions rather than making snap impulsive decisions. This is compared to 50% of extroverts who report making snap impulsive decisions on their own. The most successful introverts know their strength comes from their natural ability to listen not only to their own intuition but also to seek input from others and to cultivate deep long-term relationships one at a time. They may not woo a room of a hundred people in one fell swoop or shake 50 hands in a night, but just like the proverbial tortoise and hare, they move slowly but surely across the finish line. Over time they gather speed as one relationship leads to another and then another. Initially it may take longer for their careers to take off but the willingness to be open and vulnerable can create a feeling of reciprocity that naturally leads to long term relationships and a surprisingly large network of clients, colleagues and referral partners that form a solid foundation for growth.

Supporting Introverts Helps Your Organization Thrive

The problem comes when a workplace is set up in such a way that introverts don’t have a chance to have a voice or use their unique strengths. For instance, let’s look at another study by Adam Grant of Wharton with his colleague, Dave Hofmann of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They studied a U.S. pizza-delivery chain and found that introverts’ strengths are often locked up simply because of the way work is structured. If in meetings only the loudest voices are given a chance to share ideas or employees are pitted against each other to find solutions, then any solutions presented will naturally come only from the extraverts and solutions that might otherwise be found are squashed by the loudest voices. On the other hand, if meetings are structured in a way that everyone has a chance to speak, or introverts are given opportunities to lead small teams, that creates a culture and space in the organization that allows room for their natural creativity, intuition, and desire to collaborate, and results follow.

How does an organization get the most of our its Introverts? It creates a work culture that allows introverts to be themselves, have a voice, to lead small groups and to have opportunities to build deep meaningful relationships one at a time. By holding space for both personality types, leaders and organizations can access the unique skillsets and characteristics that both personality types bring to the table and reap the rewards of a neurologically diverse and productive workforce.

By: Monica Parkin is a self professed introvert, an award winning International speaker, author of Overcoming Awkward, the Introverts Guide to Networking Marketing and Sales and Podcast host at the Juggling Without Balls Podcast. Find out more at monicaparkin.ca, connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at info@monicaparkin.ca

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Laura Ansloos: Company Head, apio

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Laura Ansloos“Training is very heavily criticized for its return on investment. Well, why is that?” asks Laura Ansloos. “What happens when the whole picture is not taken into account before training is deemed to be the answer to the problem? What may be working against training within an organization? What are the other forces at play within organizations that drive behavior change, or impact on individual’s performance?”

She continues, “Going down the trajectory of organizational psychology has given me the words to articulate these matters with my clients, help them see the plurality of some of the issues they are dealing with and to find ways to move forward.”

Ansloos talks about her passion for behavioral economics & organizational psychology, how the training issue is often a failure to diagnose the problem and why L&D truly belongs both at the leadership table and in problem-solving teams.

Reclaiming Her Own Trajectory

As often happens when you step on a certain track, the track can begin to take you along it—until you find yourself at the top of a trajectory you never set out for.

With a degree in biochemistry from McMaster University in Canada, Ansloos did not identify with the idea she held of being a scientist in a lab, so ended up pursuing medical communications, a specialist service within public relations and advertising that works with mostly pharmaceutical clients. She quickly fell into client management, gaining higher profile roles and bigger clients in little time and moving up through the business development and commercial leadership route.

Ansloos moved towards the e-learning industry by joining a leading learning solutions firm, Epic, where she managed multi-sector client portfolios such as Civil Service in the UK, Burberry, Diageo, Barclays Bank, EasyJet, and British Airways, helping them transform their internal learning & development offerings towards digital. Soon enough, and amidst a merger, she was Managing Director EMEA of LEO Learning.

“I reached what would be considered a pinnacle if you’re working in a client services career trajectory. But I didn’t love it,” she admits. “I remember always saying that I never want to be responsible for the money, but that’s the trust you build. That’s how it went and where it went to.”

Ansloos wanted to gravitate towards her passion of being more “hands on” with problem-solving around her client’s people and performance matters, and further away from managing the provision of services to clients. She’s been making progress in that direction by leading consulting on workplace learning and performance strategy with Ogilvy Health, heading up the Ogilvy Health UK company apio, and is currently attaining her Masters in Organizational Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London to go further.

Through the depth and breadth of her experiences in management, she’s developed an acute, insightful overview of why training is often set up to fail. Now she seeks to bridge her management and leadership background with adult learning, behavioral science and psychology to create meaningful behavior change intervention in the workplace.

The Missing Diagnostic: Is It Really a Training Problem?

As a new manager with a team of 25 direct reports, reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team nearly 15 years ago is what first ignited Ansloos’ fascination in understanding behavioral motivation, the psychology of management and leading change. She then became interested in behavioral economics, with popular books like Thinking, Fast and Slow, Predictably Irrational and also Inside the Nudge Unit, which explores how the UK government uses behavioral economics.

“I was reading all this stuff and thinking, why don’t we use this in organizations? Why is this thinking not there?” she wondered, which led her to another question: “Why does training have such a bad reputation? Why is it so often ineffective?”

Ansloos points to the value of using behavioral science insights to inform interventions in individual performance or behavior change in the workplace. For example, we are more motivated by the fear of loss, due to its emotional impact, than we are by gain (prospect theory). We also have a tendency to do as others do, particularly if we identify with them (so called social norms). Armed with these sorts of insights, one can expose hidden opportunities to influence behavior change in the workplace.

For example, she was asked by a client to help provide an educational piece to their leadership team on the value of strategic partnerships. They needed their leadership’s advocacy and support, otherwise the rest of the organization would not understand why partnerships were needed. The challenge was that those partnerships were not yet delivering immediate or tangible commercial gains and came with risk, and so their value was being questioned and “ears and minds of leaders were closing”.

Ultimately, Ansloos and her team used psychology and behavioral science to frame interventions. They set out a value proposition for partnerships using a loss aversion frame: without partnerships, the future leadership position of the organization as an innovator was at risk. They used social/occupational norms and commitment devices to encourage leaders to go public to their peers and share their personal story on what convinced them to “give partnerships a chance to shine” and ask their peers to do the same. While the brief started with an educational request, the team ultimately intervened with psychology to reframe partnerships not as a long term gain but as a way to avoid material losses, and ensured that giving partnerships a chance was “the done thing” among leaders.

Bridging the Gap

Observing that small changes play a huge role in creating significant performance results, Ansloos sees more opportunity to bridge the gap between psychology and management: “Because I’m not an academic, I have that opportunity to help bridge the gap, because it is missing and it’s a very under-tapped area in organizations. We need that expertise of organizational psychology to help widen the lens of the relationship between people and work.”

The big “miss” she sees in L&D is the too often absence of diagnostics around the problem itself. Often organizations leap frog to training as a reflex. But if the issue is not a training (capability) problem to begin with, training will not solve anything.

Ansloos loves the simple and academically grounded COM-B model that says behavior results from capability, opportunity and motivation: “Using this kind of diagnostic lens you say, ‘this is the problem that the business is having, but we first need to see if it’s a capability issue, an opportunity issue or a motivational issue – and then design our interventions accordingly.”

She gives the example of R&D lab scientists in a pharmaceutical company who weren’t filling out timesheets that financial regulators required: “The organization just wanted to implement training on the time sheeting system. But by taking a behavioral lens, we helped them to understand that they didn’t have a knowledge deficit issue that scientists didn’t know how to timesheet. They had a motivational deficit because R&D scientists don’t see it as their job to be commercial entities.”

Rather than training on timesheet completion, which would never have helped, they did psychology-based nudge interventions, like making the task both simple and social, so that scientists witnessed each other doing it and followed along, using the social notion of the ‘in-group’.

“A progressive organization values and understands the mindset of always learning and has the ability to evaluate its systems, its own psychology, its policies, wider society and the expectations it operates within,” observes Ansloos. “It can diagnose what its issues are and where and when training or learning strategy is needed, and what other behavioral interventions may be best required to help solve problems, make better decisions or fulfill individual potential.”

L&D Belongs Across & Within Teams

“Having been in management roles for so long, I know how important it is to get these things right and how much it can bring to the table, so I really believe in this work,” says Ansloos. “I can explain things in a way that is easier to understand and relatable.”

She has been honing her ability to question accepted knowledge, not just relying on status quo but being willing to step back and ask ‘why are we doing it this way’.

This kind of critical thinking is often missing in organizations— this fear to challenge, or to ask a question in the spirit of actually trying to get to a better place,” says Ansloos.

She feels that L&D suffers from being a subset of Human Resources, which is female-dominated but with far too few seats at the leadership table. This is why the notion of the Chief Learning Officer comes in: “Learning is so central for individuals and the organization. Why isn’t it given a more strategic or louder voice in the leadership part of business?”

Ansloos notes HR is perceived as being less strategically tied to business or adding less value, so L&D gets these associations too: “But re-skilling is the number one priority for most CEOs or leaders at the moment. Well, that is learning and development.”

In her years of experience as a learning consultant, she has been surprised to find she is only working with the marketing teams on the client side, with a limited base of learning as extensive as knowing what their predecessor did.

“L&D should be across and integrated into all functional areas of a business. It shouldn’t be departmentalized,” notes Ansloos. “Training is often the first thing to be blamed, so it needs a competency and understanding that is centered and situated within teams that have a broader understanding of when, why and how training is effective.”

Asking Why

With one year to go in her organizational psychology degree, a wife and two children of seven and five years old, Ansloos keeps very busy these days.

In her children, she witnesses the ability to center themselves, question why things are how they are and challenge assumptions—and she plans to keep on encouraging it and learning from them, too.

By Aimee Hansen

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