Us and them

Ah, the topic I have been wanting to write for a long time now: Women on the leadership. There’s so many flavours out there these days: Women in technology, Women on leadership, Women everywhere. Similar to what I wrote on the diversity post are we really addressing the problem?

If companies are not diverse, the leadership of most companies is even less so: white male, likes whisky, likes golf. This is obviously a stereotype, but stereotypes serve their purpose. Companies have then realize there were not enough women on the board, in C positions or just generally leadership overall. There’s also the gender pay gap which has been shared a few times (which I believe it’s not just a women’s topic, I’m sure it might well be a minority issue too, however for the same of it I’m only focusing on the women’s topic today).

So what have we done? What we always do, find the easiest way that shows that we are trying to address the problem, and what’s that? Forcing quotas (which I wrote about a few years ago here). It goes something like this: we need to hire more women, so if there’s 2 suitable candidates and one happens to be female, that’s the one that gets the job. What a time to be female! Does that actually resolve the problem? I’m afraid not.

Why don’t we have more women in the leadership? It does require more work to formulate all the hypotesis and then determine appropriate treatment causes for them. So why don’t we have more women out there? As everything I write around here, these are my own ideas on the topic – to be taken with a pinch of salt as I am: a women, a mum and I even work in technology.

• Unconcious bias – Yes, I’ve said it. Who are we actually promoting? We typically promote those that look and behave like us. Even before we have the chance to promote anyone, we tend to surround ourselves of people with the same belives and same attitudes (those we perceive as good ones to be held in a leader). So who is going to be promoted? It takes effort to challenge our own bias and to stop and asssess where our decisions are coming from doesn’t it?
• We are wired differently – It’s just the way nature did us. Again this is stereotyping, but our brains work different ways (I’m in no way in a position to articulate my thought from a scientific point of view, but hang in there). We like different things. Even from a young age I always gave my daughter all toys and colours, while she has fun playing with cars she’s obsessed with princesses and pink even though toys are toys, she’s making her own preferences. I was actually chatting with my husband about why there’s so little female representation in the world of gaming. Well because that’s not something which ticks most of us. (I did play a fair lot of games while at uni, but the moment time is a precious resource, gaming is not my top priority whereas it’s quite high on my husband’s list). Focusing on the career aspect, I don’t believe for a second that we don’t want to become leaders, oh boy we do very much, but we don’t go for it, we tend to have more self doubt and believe we need to be doing 3 levels ahead before we raise our hands and say we want it. Men on the other hand, from the moment of having to ask a girl out, will raise their hands if they believe they are 1/3 ready for it. Again given point 1 above, this makes it harder for us to get out there and continue to climb the career ladder.
• For those that do climb it fast – you might well get the tag that you climbed horizontally. I am yet to hear such comment of a men that happens to grow fast in his career. No, he will get remarks like: “he’s really good”, “so ambitious, he made it”. For the ladies – and if it happens they are good looking – oh yes, you will get tagged wether you want it or not. While it might be true that some indeed had to climb that way otherwise they would be no climbing, it’s a lot easier for us to get negative tags.
• “She’s too loud”, “She talks too much”, “She’s bossy” – If we show exactly the same characteristics as our male counterparties again we get negative tags on our back which might deter so many of us to make our voices being heard. This latest wave of feminism is not helping either. I find myself behing far more conscious of what I say because I don’t want to be perceived as a modern feminist (it has really lost proportion out there and this is a topic I don’t even want to ever write about).
• The ones that are out there all look the same – It sounds the only way to make it to the top is to behave exactly like the men and be “aggressive” so you are perceived as strong and as an equal. Find a few examples of women leaders and tell me don’t they look just the same? Same haircut, same style of dresses, same speech. For those that do not identify with the examples they see on the top, they end up giving up because they don’t see examples they relate on the top. I am very blessed to work in a company where not only we are having around 50/50 distribution of the resources, but we have very diverse examples in the leadership. I felt like crying when the current leader of my group took over because she was nothing alike all the examples I used to see. She was humble and human and not afraid to show she was feeling nervous for taking over the role. I never had such a big smile on my face as that townhall. We need more examples because we are all different. The quote below describes exactly how I feel about it.

• Family roles – There’s no denying, no matter which job we take not even who generates the most income, women still have the primary role to play around home and taking care of the kids. First of all it starts with the examples we grow up with and then later, with “simple” things like parental leave. Very few countries in the world properly share parental leave. I was once quite focused on my career until my daughter was born. Now I am not keen on taking too much responsability which means I will be glued to the email all the time and not spending quality time as a family. I don’t want to be a parent that pays for someone else to take care of your kids, I just couldn’t do it. Maybe when she’s a teenager my priorities will change again but overall I believe until Mums have way more support, they will struggle to push themselves out there without sacrificing their mental health or their career as it’s hard to have both.

So what do I believe the solution could be? Challenging uncouncious bias, forcing today’s leaders to assess who they want to be surrounded by. If you only surround yourself of people that think and act the same way you do you will never get innovative ideas to progress and keep on growing your business. Also, there is a lot to be done at government level to ensure parental leave can be shared as it fits each household and more support for parents who would like to put their kids at nursery but can’t afford the cost (and many times it’s cheaper if one of them stops working althogether).

Would love to hear from you. Any different thoughts?

Blurred lines

Whoever is working from home and having to deal with the kids at the same time please raise your hands up in the air, that is, if you still have the energy to raise them.

I think every single parent out there trying to make it work at work with kids at home, be it with homeschooling or not, younger or olders, hats off. What a time! You go through a 360 round of emotions on a single day from: “I can nail this” to “I have no idea what I’m doing, is 10a.m too early to start drinking?”. The truth is we live in blurred lines.

Sourced from: Huffpost Canada

Pre-covid, most of us would commute to the office and have a clear physical separation between home and work, between which role in your life you were taking. In the office it was the professional you, then you had your commute back home where you could “enjoy” some me time, which for a lot of parents was the only me time they had, and then switching roles to the parent until eventually you would crash in bed after a long day. That physical separation helped us to switch between roles and help the brain cope with it. Yes, some of us would end up once in a while having to work at home, and yes if the kids would get sick or the school closed we would have to work from home with them around.

Right now however it feels like a constant battle where you don’t have a clue if your wining or losing it. I’m a firm believer multitasking is a lie, but now it’s a necessity. In the ideal world there would be 2 parents at home where 1 would dedicate a few slots in the working diary to support the kids and compensate at a later stage but it doesn’t work like that. You might be in the middle of a really important meeting when your precious little one remembers you are a snack provider, or that the tablet stopped working and it’s really important for it to be fixed right now. I’ve lost the count on how many times I ended blurbing in a middle because I lost my full train of thought.

But here’s some good news: every parent out there working from home is in the same boat! We all feel guilty we are not doing enough in both the homeschooling or work or both at the same time. We are trying out best in these unprecedented times. We are not super human, we are not an octopus either. Our brains are not geared to a gazillion things and more (while flipping pancakes at the same time).

So here’s my thoughts on this parenting jungle:

• Let’s be grateful first and foremost we are juggling work and parenting as it means we still have a job and we can work from home (I have found than in the middle of this madness practicising daily gratitute and recognizing all the good things I have helped me to keep sane);
• Our kids do not see our failures the same way we do (well unless they are teenagers, then they see failure in everything we do), they see the love we have for them and they feel happy for having us home next to them. I know they don’t say thank you when we are getting the 100th snack in the morning, but they feel a lot of happiness;
• We are spending more time with them, haven’t so many of us done the yearly resolution of spending quality time with the kids prior to all of this? I had. I know most of the time it feels too much, but I know she’s happy to see so much of me. Also she’s seeing how hard both mummy & daddy work (or try to make it work). That’s important too.
• Whenever your day allows try to divide your day in blocks:
  • Consider if you can wake up before the kids to get some work done before they wake up (this works for me because my daughter sleeps until 07h40 – 08h00, would never work if she was waking up at 06a.m!)
  • I find straight after breakfast my daughter is more focused (either playing or in the case of homeschooling), so you can use this slot for your focus time. In my case I happen to always have meetings in this slot, so works for me.
  • Block a mid morning slot where you can spend a few minutes with the kids, either help them with school work or even just sit next to them and paint, or do some maths together or even play some lego. We all need a break right?
  • Plan your snacks. Yes I mean it. Plan what you are comfortable with them eating and leave them in places where they can easily reach it (e.g. fresh fruits, cereal bars, bread). My daughter is even able to do her breakfast by herself as I ensure I have most of the stuff within her reach (she will use the chair to be able to remove the bread from the toaster and she can open the fridge to get her milk). On the other hand, hide all the stuff they are not meant to eat without supervision (chocolate, cookies, you name it). I have to ask my husband to hide it really high so there’s no chance she can reach anything (after we found her eat a whole package of cookies in one go that I had hidden and still she manage to find). This means they don’t need to disturb you all the time for snacking. Also they love being independent.
  • Reserve a slot in your calendar for lunch together at the table. I do meal planning on the weekend and mostly dinner meals will include leftover for lunch next day so I don’t need to stress over making food and finding a slot for lunch. It’s just warm up and sit together at the table.
  • If you have a critical meeting and your other half can support you and ensure the kids are monitored, great. If you have a part of the house / flat you can hide, then hide. You could also try to talk to the kids and tell them not to disturb you for whatever it takes. Bribary is totally allowed here. As said, we are not super heroes. Whatever works!
  • If you have something critical to finish but didn’t manage to finish during the day then try to finish after kids go to bed. I have to ask my husband if this happens given that my daughter is really hard to put in bed and she will not fall asleep before 20h20 or 21h no matter how early I start the routines.
• You know all the rules about how much tablet and tv was allowed? Forget it! Bin them if you need to. As I said, sanity is more important than anything else.
• Give them a role in the household, e.g. I’ve asked my daughter to ensure the cat has food in his bowl also to tell daddy if he popped so he can clean it (I said give a role, not necessarily a fair one!). They need to understand they need to help based on what they can do for their age. The house doesn’t get sorted by magic. I ask my daughter to put the table while I warm up the food or clean the dishes and she quite enjoys it as a 4 year old (well, most of the time).
• Celebrate the weekends by planning something special (if you’re running our of ideas use the existing holidays, especial days, I never celebrated valentines day until this year for example). Here’s a few things we’ve done recently: Movie night with popcorn, playstation game night, pijama party with pillow fight, board game night, making clay hearts and then paiting them another weekend. I’m sure some of you out there have even better ideas than mine.
• Give yourself a big hug, because this is hard! Remember there is no point in a burn out: Nobody will thank you for it. You can’t have it all perfect, so just decide what’s really important and what can be left behind (valid both for work items as well as stuff around the house). No matter how hard we try we can’t ace it everywhere just remember what’s really really important and you are important too!
• It’s ok to celebrate when the kids go back to school again, I will be celebrating that’s for sure (she has been home since 11th December, almost 3 months now!)

The lines are blurred so it’s up to you to find how to give some kind of order to your day and find what works for all of you. There is no right or wrong answers here, just keeping sane.

Empathy

This is a topic I really wanted to write for a long while now, because to me it’s one of the most important leadership skills yet not usually perceived as such.

As usual, let’s start with the definition:

The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

From https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/

So why does empathy matter in the context of leadership? Well, because we are leading people and if you want to lead people then you need to understand how people behave and have the ability to walk in their shoes. Empathy it’s not about being friends with everyone – although I believe that would help – nor it is about being “soft”, but I do believe that establishing trusteable relationships helps. It’s mostly about listening.

If you understand how others feel you are able to make more informed decisions, it’s about bend of break really. Let’s imagine you need to implement a controversial measure for the benefit of all in the company. If you want to use “dicatorship” (just for the sake of the explanation here) you would dictate your team how the measure needs to be implement and when. You are very likely to encounter a lot of resistance. Also, if you are leading them by fear, your team will probably not raise relevant points to you as they will be afraid of getting negative feedback from you. They will hold their thoughts and feelings because they don’t want to be in the line of fire. Sounds familiar? I guess in our careers at some point or another we would have been in this scenario.

In this case, if something goes wrong then it will be your fault as it was your idea and your measure to be implemented, none of the team members will take any accountability over it (or harder to get it).

I would like to point out that a lot of people actually need to be told what to do and need a daily reminder of their priorities for them to be able to operate at their best. Even in this scenario empathy is relevant because you will be able to recognize who need more rule versus someone who just needs clarity on what’s the goal to be achieved but needs more space to deliver it and cannot work under micromanagement.

An empathic leader will try to understand why people might feel resistancy to a certain measure or to a certain situation before communicating it. Then will explain it to the team and why it needs to be done. If you know someone who will be particular resistant to it, then you can always have a one on one and ask some questions about where the resistance is coming from. Please acknowledge that you might know all the facts. Through paying attention to all the members of your team and getting to know them you will get to know or have a better view of how each and every one of them will feel, but having a deep conversation where you ask the relevant questions and activity listen will be the key. You don’t need to agree with their point of view, you just need to understand and acknowledge to them you really understand. Maybe you can even find some middle ground, or a suitable compromise that will work for all of you.

Let’s imagine a situation where a team member has noticed something is really not working and could jeaopardise a specific project. To whom do you believe it will be easier to share this information? To the “dictator” (the boss) or to the empathic leader?

You don’t know what you are missing out until you realize you were missing out!

Now more than ever where all of us have to deal with more stress than usual, either because of the change to work remotely, job insecurity, home schooling, worring about our health and the safety of family and friends it is crutial to apply empathy in all relationships. It is your job to pay attention, to listen and to make the relevant questions and know something might be wrong and act before it’s too late. We live in a world of burn out and I do believe many times it could be avoided if there was someone there to act timely. There are always signs that start to show, you just need to pay attention to it. You think it’s a waste of time? Think how much time you and the team will lose if you loose a resource at a critical time due to burn out.

How many times have you heard the classic: “My door is always open” but then the words don’t match with the actions? I’ve heard this so many times it started not to mean anything. If your door is always open, truly open you don’t need to say it as you team will know you are approachable and reach out to you when you need to. It’s how you act that matters, not what you say.

There are other types of leaders highly effective, such as the charismatic leader, which can have zero empathy and still be highly successful, however I do believe sooner or later it would start to crack out. If you don’t understand the people working with you to get there, if you don’t make an effort to actively listen sooner or later you will lose out.

Leadership is at the end of the day a balancing act between the critical skillsets for that given situation / time. And empathy is for sure one of the critical skills to be held. However, why do we see it so little?

When people are starting their careers they get used to think about what their line managers is asking and needs, so there is a constant focus on the top of the pyramid. Also quite a lot of classic leadership books would focus on thinking ahead, and establishing powerful relationships with people above you or around your level in the organization. It’s those relationships and how you manage the communication to the senior people and the decision makers that will get you promoted (most of the time). So in essence, the practice of empathy is not encouraged as it should. If you are lucky to work for a line manager with strong empathy skills you will be encouraged to do the same, but same as diversity, empathy requires constant focus and refocusing to actually be promoted within the organization.

If you are still in doubt, then let’s think about a different question: how many people do you have to loose until you realize there is a big problem that needs to be addressed? Believe it or not, a lot of organizations still struggle with this. How late is too late and can you absorb that cost? Most likely the answer will be no.

One day you are the employee, the next day you will be in the decision making seat with the power to decide on whether or not to make a business deal with your previous company. So think wisely. Empathy matters, it always did.

Further reading:

• Forbes: Empathy is an essential leadership skill
• Center for creative leadership: The importance of empathy in the workplace
• Lolly Daskal: Why the empathetic leader is the best leader

About Diversity

If this is not one of the most written topics write now then I don’t know what is. Every company in the world from really big corporations to small ones are doing something on diversity (even doing nothing is still a form of doing). Some are tackling it really well, some have a long way to go.

Same as Women on Leadership or overall Women on technology, it’s easy to fall in the trap of thinking just in terms of quotas (I wrote about it in 2016 here). For me, however, quotas are just a quick way of pretending we are resolving the problem but in reality very little actually changes. The real reason is that diversity is way more than just a number.

First let’s start with the official definition:

The practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.

https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/

To me diversity is more than just men vs women, black vs white. While I do agree if you look into the leadership of most companies this is a huge problem where it’s still dominantely white male, there is a bigger problem to be addressed. And to me that’s diversity of ideas.

Here’s my thoughts on it… the only way to trully tackle diversity is by accepting everyone from all different backgrounds and ways of thinking. There is no point in succeding at hiring from minority backgrounds if then when they join the company they are muted because they can’t bring their true selfs at work. Oh yes that’s right, unconciously we still expect everyone to behave a certain way in the office context, from the way they dress to the way they speak because also those are the behaviours and physical indicators that will help to get promoted and noticed. Have you ever heard the famous:

“You have to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, and you have to start doing the work you want to be doing.”

Austin Kleon 

Allow me to be controversial: I hate this quote (the dress part that is, I do agree with the start doing the work). What’s the hole point of trying to be diverse just to end up muting diversity. I know it sounds silly, I know it’s just clothing, but for a lot of people it’s a whole trigger to hide other parts of their personality, of their true self. Yes of course we can’t go to work in bikini and flip flops (although maybe now we can given a lot of us are working from home, but that aside). But if you can’t express yourself in the way you dress why would you even be allowed to express your ideas?

There’s a good article on this topic at the Harvard business review here.

Let’s imagine the following scenario, your company has just hired a new resource because the company believes his background will bring some new ideas into a specific department as he was working in a completely different industry to yours. On the first day he will end up assuming the international etiquette, a whole suit and tie because he doesn’t want to stand out or be incorrectly perceived as misplaced on his first day. He arrives and sees everyone in suits (albeit without a tie). As time goes by he starts to realize only the same time of ideas are heard and applauded. He starts to realize he needs to behave a certain way, speak in a certain way to belong. Because ladies and gentlement, we need to belong. That’s how we evolved as a species, by being in a gang of other looking like people. If you join a new crowd you will do whatever you can to belong too. Nobody wants to feel cast aside. Fake it until you make it they say. Can you imagine how tiring this is day by day and you are meant to give your best at work? If you’re wasting such a big proportion of the time hiding parts of you do you think you can be productive and address big problems?

If you don’t think this is hard, let’s imagine you are starting a new relationship and your other half is vegan. But as you really like him you will try to eat the same when you’re really craving for a yummy piece of bacon. (Disclaimer, I’m actually implementing vegan days at home, this was just an example). Let’s imagine you start to live together and you find the need to eat meat or junk food behind is back in order not to hurt his feelings. After a while you feel so miserable with your food choices that you end up revaluing if the relationship is even worth it.

A relationship between a company and an employee is no different. Companies are what the people inside them are. I really remember, once upon a time in my travel life, we worked with this girl who really love bright colours. She would wear a flower on her head and colourful boots. Sometimes I was writing something on my pc but I would see the boots passing by and I would know she had arrived. A lot of people in the team commented her style of clothing (in a negative way), but that also reflected in her personality. She would speak to her mind. Her fierce approach allowed her to drive a difficult team to move forward. However, probably would make it really hard for any promotion (she didn’t got any in the years I was there). Looking back I feel like travelling back in time and give her a hug for being brave to stand out, for being brave to be her true self. That must have felt really liberating!

How do you think it would feel if things were different, if you could express yourself at work either by using that colourful shirt you love, or even the brighten patterns from your childhood? Do you think that would motivate you to share your ideas a bit more? I do believe it would!

In my current company we implemented something like dress for your day which was something in the lines of: if you are just working in the office without any client interactions you could just wear whatever you wanted. For a lot of people that mean bringing some jeans or their favourite jumper. I loved it! A lot of people kept on dressing their old stuff because they didn’t had enough clothing in their closets for this new brave world, but a lot took an opportunity to wear something that felt more comfortable. If you feel comfortable then the odds are you will feel more brave to share your ideas and speak up. It’s just the start though, we need more subtle changes like this to eventually make a difference and trully embrace diversity.

I find it would be your role as a manager or as a leader to ensure that all the voices in your team are heard, not just the extroverts who tend to share their own ideas first. Sometimes it might well be the odd idea that might really drive the change you are after. If you don’t allow that idea to flourish and be heard how can you expect the company to envolve?

Even how we tend to run meetings might have a huge impact. Quite commonly you would still get together in a room with a big table and a big screen and discuss a topic. Some people would even bring the slides printed! (I still struggle with the idea of printing slides for a meeting). For some people this makes them feel exposed so they will be counting the minutes until the meeting is over and they can go back to their desks.

In my office we had a huge touch screen in the open space with some comfy chairs around and we used to do our daily scrums sitting or standing around it. Our own desks were just next to it. It felt a lot less intimidating and as the scrums were meant to just be within small groups it was a lot easier to get everyone to participate. This could well be a topic for another day, as I believe the office layout also has a huge influence on how ideas are shared and implemented.

So to conclude I would beg you all to reconsider what you are doing as a colleague, employee, manager to allow for diversity to truly flourish. Embrace uniqueness and force yourself to listen to ideas completely different then yours. Might you, you might even learn something new.

Would love to hear what you think about this topic and your thoughts on how we can truly embrace diversity at work (and even in our lives).