by Guest Author | Jun 28, 2023 | Gender Equality, InPower Women Blog, Women in Leadership
If you’re a woman in leadership, chances are you’ve experienced workplace discrimination due to your gender, even if you’re not aware of it. More likely, you were aware of it (especially if you’ve experienced sexual harassment) and were trying to ignore it so it doesn’t get in the way of your ability to keep your job and/or be taken seriously.
Gender discrimination has been in the news a lot lately, thanks to the fact that women have been in the presidential race more consistency, transgender kids (and their parents) have been standing up for their rights, Fox News lost their sexual discrimination suit to Gretchen Carlson, a brave young woman at Uber who called out her experience and, of course, the #metoo movement. But even though society has at least acknowledged that workplace discrimination exists (which is an advancement we owe to Anita Hill), it still happens far too often and most of us feel powerless to stop it. That’s where we’re wrong. Here’s what we can do.
First, Learn To See Workplace Discrimination And Harassment and Find a Female Mentor
For me, harassment and discrimination were things I was viscerally aware of when it happened. I remember when my male colleagues would point at my breasts with an off-hand comment about my buttons, put their hand too low on my back as they ushered me through the door or teased me to see if they could get me drunk and sleep with them the night before my big presentation to “prove women couldn’t handle their alcohol.” In those moments, the world shifted a bit as I realized I wasn’t “one of the guys,” and it brought up anxiety related to a non-work-related assault in my childhood.
I handled it in a variety of ways.
I quit a college internship rather than subject myself to more discomfort. I ignored their touches and tried to walk through doors after them, and I didn’t sleep with them and handled my presentation with professionalism, despite a serious hangover.
At the time, I don’t think I told anyone about these things that made me uncomfortable. In college, I thought I was alone. At work, I was worried my boss would think I was a troublemaker, trying to take down powerful men. At home I worried my husband would believe I was flirting at the office. But the fact that I remember them means that at least I noticed them. How many more situations did I ignore to the point of not noticing them at all? I don’t recall any of my female colleagues sharing these kinds of incidents with me, though I’m sure they all experienced them as well. And if they had told me, I’d probably have advised them to ignore it like I had.
The U.S. Army has an interesting policy to place women in units where there are more senior women in the chain of command. This ensures female service-members and civilians at lower ranks have a female they can approach about experiences that make them uncomfortable. While this sometimes limits women’s ability to be posted in various positions as the placement of women in all units is still slow, it’s a reasonable approach to ensure women never feel alone and always have someone who may share their experience to turn to.
What I would’ve given for a female mentor; someone respected in leadership, who could have created a safe space to help me and my colleagues realize we weren’t alone and that what we experienced wasn’t okay. Someone to talk to HR with me if something was egregious and champion a shift in the culture instead of an adherence to policies and fear-based norms.
But I didn’t have such a mentor, and as a result I’m not sure I handled any of my experiences particularly well.
Of course, when I was experiencing workforce discrimination, there were no women in leadership in my company. Short of all-out rape, there were few corporate policies that I knew of that could protect me. Heck, Anita Hill was giving her testimony during my most formative corporate years in the workforce!
Discrimination and harassment make everyone feel powerless. Find your power anyway, we’re depending on you. – Click To Tweet
Second, Activate Women Leaders In Your Company
Today, there are many rules and laws that try to protect women and men from workplace discrimination and harassment, but as this reframing article in Fast Company suggests, “company culture crises are often a product of many small failures,” and if you’re a woman who’s made it into a leadership, you are either part of the problem or part of the solution when it comes to these small things. It is still too easy, as Susan Fowler’s experience at Uber demonstrates, for Human Resources (HR) to treat sexual harassment issues as a function of compliance rather than culture.
Here’s the thing. If you’re a woman in leadership, I KNOW you’ve experienced workplace discrimination and sexual harassment in some form. I KNOW you’ve pushed a lot of those experiences aside to get where you are today. I KNOW you have power in your organization and you’ve become “okay” with the little games you have to play to maintain that power. I KNOW you probably believe to some extent that this is “just the way things are.” I KNOW you are fine rocking the boat when arguing over spreadsheets, but are less comfortable on matters of discrimination lest you be viewed as “part of the problem.”
But I also KNOW you care about your company culture and you care about the younger women trying to get ahead without having to go through what you did when you were younger. So if you’re a woman in leadership, please read on and consider what you can do to start a shift in your company culture.
What level of leadership do you have to have in order to make a difference? Well, if you define leadership the way I do, as having an intention and acting to bring it to fruition, we’re all leaders. Here are t things you can do to begin shifting the culture in your company, no matter where you rank in the pecking order:
- Deal with your own triggers around this issue. Yes, you have experiences that still make you uncomfortable to think about, much less feel. But this avoidance isn’t helping you or anyone else deal with these problems. Learning to detrigger the unhelpful emotions related to the discrimination and abuse you’ve experienced – anger, fear, anxiety, guilt – is the single best investment you can make in yourself and your career. Do it now.
- Find women leaders in your company who will agree to meet and have safe dialog. No matter what level you are in, you can approach women above, alongside and below you and invite them to meet and discuss their experiences in a safe space. Choose a private place and set a simple rule: LISTEN FIRST.
- Let each person speak while everyone else listens.
- Validate what the person said by repeating what you heard, without judging what was said.
- Let someone else speak about their experience. Listen. Validate. Repeat. If someone tries to tell the speaker what they should feel or should have done, even with good intent, please gently ask them to stop as this implies judgement. This kind of safe space merely requires listening and acknowledging. It’s a special gift women can give each other, but it takes some of us a little practice to learn not to share our own experience before the other feels validated or give advice to try to “fix” the problem.
- Invite the most senior women you know to form a special team to approach HR. There is strength in numbers. Even though you are all worried about rocking the boat with other male leaders, banding together signals to HR and to those same male leaders that this isn’t a “his word against hers” situation, and that you’re identifying cultural trends that need to be addressed, not trying to single out individuals for retaliation. Tell HR that you’re not seeking retaliation but a serious look at the company culture. Suggest steps such as:
- Building a coalition of male and female leaders to advise HR in the process to understand and shift the culture of the company.
- Create cross-gender teams of employees to explore what kind of discriminatory or harassment behaviors exist in the culture and suggest solutions.
- Conduct a third-party audit of how workplace discrimination and sexual harassment policies work in the company and will they support a cultural shift away from discrimination and harassment.
Now, you and the HR team may be feeling helpless in the face of the fact that workplace discrimination is usually deeply integrated into the business culture, even if sexual harassment isn’t. And how often does culture change? Not often enough, true, but cultures do change, and they are much more likely to change for the better if you treat anti-discrimination efforts as a change initiative instead of a legal compliance issue.
So get smart about how to change. This isn’t just the right thing to do for all the women (and many of the men) in your company, it’s the right thing to do for your career. Change is here to stay and the best leaders will learn to master it.
InPower Women’s Mastermind
We don’t Mastermind your business. We Mastermind YOU!
by Guest Author | Jun 27, 2023 | Coaching Advice, People Skills, Personal Mastery
Personal power (InPower) is not something we’re born with, it’s something we master – like learning to balance on one foot – as we progress on our journey to lead change in the world. First we master it for ourselves, and then we use it as we work with others, helping them access it personally and in a group, together applying it in combination with external power to change the world for the better.
InPower is not easy to see, like external power is, but it is easy to feel. Lucky for us, we humans were given some sure-fire indicators of when we are in and out of our personal power to help us diagnose and correct our InPower stance. Most of these indicators are emotional, but before we can master our emotions and what underlies them, we must learn to read the signs of emotional reactions and biases we may not even be aware that we have. Why? Because although we may not know of them, we telegraph them constantly to those around us, and thus others are often even more aware of our emotional state than we are. This is by definition an out-of-power place to be in.
Our internal understanding of ourselves, affirmed or enhanced by others’ reactions to us, are key indicators our state of InPower balance – or wobble.
Language is an indicator of your InPower stance
Words and language have many gifts to give us besides the ability to communicate with each other. We use language to communicate with ourselves, too, interpreting the sensory and emotional impressions of our reality. When you catch yourself talking to yourself, this is often what you’re doing – processing your reality. Unless you talk to yourself at the expense of others, it’s normal and good. And, if you pay attention to your language, it will provide you insight and power over your subconscious InPower stance. As you practice obtaining and maintaining InPower balance, your language – internal and external – will begin to shift and change, becoming not just an indicator, but a source of your power.
But first you must learn to “hear” yourself from an InPower perspective and listen for your InPower and out-of-power voice. In another post we’ll talk about what you are saying, but for now, just learn to listen to how you are saying it.
Listen for Powerless Words
You’ll be surprised when you pay attention–to yourself and others–how often people use language to pull themselves back, shrink and otherwise try not to stand out. Yes, the nonverbal aspects of communication matter a lot. When you’re hunched, crossed armed or downard glancing you’re putting off a “I’m not powerful vibe.” Most people tend to focus on these more visible signs of confidence. However, verbal patterns can undercut even the most powerful physical stance. Start making a mental note of every time you hear others say these words to tamp themselves down. This will help you start to listen to the ways you’re doing it too.
- just
- like
- um
- unnecessary apologies
I know it’s controversial in some quarters, but I also believe that the uptalk ending of a sentence and the vocal fryy typically signal to others that you’re not taking yourself seriously. I do believe that if you completely own your power you can get away with verbal signals like this, but most of us don’t. And even those who do also know how to code switch to use them for effect sometimes, but not always. If you can really own and control your verbal patterns, go for it. But if they own you, learn to master them instead.
Using Power Words
When you speak – to yourself or to others – your choice of words can quickly tap you into your current power stance. Power vocabulary is positive, specific and declarative. Out-of-power words are passive, imprecise and qualifying. Here are some examples:
| POWER WORDS |
OUT-OF-POWER WORDS |
| I am |
I think I am, I will try to be |
| I will |
I should, I could |
| Bring this back to me by Tuesday |
(nothing) or Send it back soon |
| We will |
We won’t, maybe, how about if |
As a side benefit, positive speech – especially self-talk – helps reduce stress so you get a two-fer!
Language is an easy-to-use women’s power tool
Language is an important indicator of your InPower stance, but it may be especially important for women. A study by Dr. Judith Baxter, The Language of Female Leadership, recently examined language in senior executive and boardroom meetings for power patterns. While the study looked specifically at differences between how women and men use language, it identified a trend in women’s tendencies for out-of-power speaking. Specifically, the study identified a specific type of out-of-power language called “double-voice discourse,” wherein someone says a self-deprecating phrase before voicing their thought, for example, “I know I’m not the expert, but….” or “I don’t want to speak out of turn, but….”
While both sexes use this verbal pattern, women do it more often. As Dr. Judith Baxter’s research documented, double-voice discourse occurs when the speaker prejudges the audience’s response and qualifies their initial statement accordingly. “Correct me if I’m wrong…” is an example of this.
From a four million word sample, Dr. Baxter found that women were four times as likely to use double-voice discourse than their male counterparts. Ladies, this looks like a simple fix, doesn’t it? Watch your language and gain back as much as four times your power.
In the next post I give examples of power language in common use to counter any tendencies you have towards using powerless speech patterns, and insight into how to turn your words around into power words.
Learn to communicate with confidence with executive coaching for women.
InPower Women’s Mastermind
We don’t Mastermind your business. We Mastermind YOU!
by Guest Author | Jun 24, 2023 | InPower Women Blog, Leadership, Women in Leadership
By: Kathryn Sollmann, 9Lives For Women Founder
You’re just starting out in your career—or working in a summer job or internship to boost your resume and give you an edge after graduation. Either way you’re now on your personal path to leadership—not lost at the bottom of the totem pole.
What does it mean to be a leader today? Are only certain women destined for leadership? I asked expert Stephanie Rogen, who is at the front lines of leadership development and passionate about helping young women of all personality types reach their full personal and business potential.
Q. Is the definition of leadership changing for women?
A. The definition of leadership is changing for everyone and the news is good for women. As our economy continues to globalize, as the world gets “flatter” and as technology continues to change how we work, leadership is evolving into a relational rather than a hierarchical activity. We’re transitioning from command and control to facilitative and collaborative leadership that works across teams, time zones, cultures and disciplines. What we think of as “soft skills” are becoming critical to leadership– and early career women, generally speaking, are comfortable and adept leading with these kinds of skills and abilities.
Q. Some women are natural leaders. They were the sports captains, the leads in the plays and the class presidents from a young age. Is leadership predetermined and part of your DNA–or something you can cultivate?
A. Yes and yes! We all have personalities that can predispose us for certain roles, but as leadership becomes less about position and more about influence, creativity and relationships women can step into leadership roles and develop their personal leadership styles in ways they may find surprising. The key is to leverage your assets in ways that advance your brand of leadership. Introverts, for example, can be tremendous leaders because of their ability to empathize, listen, reflect and think strategically. Similarly, “creative” types who may not espouse “management by numbers” are nonetheless critical in a world where we’re solving problems we’ve never seen before. It’s often the creative types who ask the questions and test assumptions in ways that traditional “business” leaders might not. Today we need innovators and leaders who can see and approach problems from a variety of perspectives.
Q. When we think of leaders, we tend to think of strong, powerful, assertive people who speak easily before crowds and generate a lot of attention and enthusiasm. Are there quieter, more reserved–but equally successful–leadership personas?
A. Charisma will always have value, but as I’ve said, quieter and more reserved leaders bring much–even more–to the table. Leaders who listen well, collaborate effectively, and seek diverse opinions and contributions often make better decisions overall. Furthermore, quiet leaders understand and embrace the value of introspection, reflection and deep learning. These leaders are deeply thoughtful and tend to see “the big picture” and patterns within systems that others do not recognize. The key for “quieter” women is to learn how to speak up when it’s important, to learn how to frame personal views persuasively, to cultivate a personal narrative that “brands” leadership in an authentic way, and to develop the confidence to act.
Q. There are still relatively few women at the leadership levels of most companies. Do you think not enough women are chosen–or too many women choose not to be leaders for family reasons?
A. Again, yes and yes. At most companies getting more women in leadership positions is a complex issue. There are societal and organizational/structural barriers to a woman’s rise to leadership, and there are individual and lifestyle factors that come into play as she makes career decisions. There is no single solution for women as a whole, but individual women can adopt a mindset that increases opportunities to lead in any setting. And every woman can approach her life in phases and stages—making it possible to return to formal positions of leadership in the work force by cultivating networks, and focusing on learning and development continuously. My view is that women should always practice and embrace leadership values–in family life and personal relationships, in civic engagement and volunteerism, and in professional endeavors. Leadership is a way of being and you can always choose leadership!
Q. Do young women today feel it’s possible–or too much of a stretch–to reach senior leadership levels?
A. Young women believe in their own potential and are as ambitious as ever. They enter the work force with high expectations and are as educated and prepared as their male peers. What they lack are models for leadership they can aspire to and sponsors who put them into the pipeline at critical points in their own development. This is particularly true in STEM professions (science, technology, engineering and math) and in professional services (like investment banking and law). The absence of models and the lack of support becomes critical when young women begin to integrate life choices like family and personal responsibilities into their decision making. This is why we see many young women “opting out” or down shifting their careers. They don’t see the road before them so they lower their expectations, sideline their ambitions, or make wholesale changes out of the corporate world.
Young women need a new vision for leadership and they need to be connected with women leaders who they can relate to with ease. But young women also need to learn how to identify leaders in positions of power or influence who can help them, and reach out strategically for sponsorship and mentorship. Finding those people is a skill set that all women leaders must develop with serious intention. With that support, leadership possibilities open up dramatically.
Q. There’s a lot of cynicism about today’s leaders. Other than the usual platitudes of, for example, honesty and integrity, what do you think are the leadership attributes young women should cultivate?
Women need to cultivate a few core competencies that will increase their sense of viability (self belief: I am a leader) and put them on track to leadership. Chief among these are empathy (and related facets of emotional intelligence), the ability to speak up and self advocate, political and strategic savvy (and political is not a bad word!) and the ability to solicit, integrate and learn from feedback. If women develop these skills in concert with the functional and technical knowledge they need to excel in their roles, they can lead–and they can help make decisions and shape policy in ways that are ethical, sustainable and effective. The research proves that companies with representative female leadership on their boards outperform (return on investment and return on equity) similar organizations with less diversity in governance and leadership.
Q. When you talk to young women today, who are the leaders they admire?
A. Young women today admire other women and men who have found ways to lead, exercise power and influence, and still honor their own deep personal values. Young women in particular admire leaders they can connect with and relate to: they want to be understood by these leaders and they want to understand them, too. Millennial and Gen Y women value the “greater good”: they value leadership that aspires to some social purpose or value, whether or not the organization is “for profit”. Women want leadership that looks different from traditional models: innovative, creative and collaborative leaders are high on their list.
- Don’t assume that you’re a follower. Anyone of any personality type can be a leader.
- Take inventory of your “soft skills”–e.g., communication, interpersonal, and motivational skills–and see how they can advance your leadership.
- Learn by example: take careful note of how leaders in your school, community or office inspire or turn off you and your peers.
This post was originally published on 9LivesforWomen. The post is based on an interview with Stephanie Rogen, an expert in leadership development and strategy. Stephanie is a consultant and executive coach to schools and not for profits (www.greenwichleadershippartners.com) and Leadership Advisor to The White House Project (dedicated to igniting the leadership of women in business and politics – www.thewhitehouseproject.org).
InPower Women’s Mastermind
We don’t Mastermind your business. We Mastermind YOU!
by Guest Author | Jun 22, 2023 | Career Development, Coaching Advice
Years ago, I was a Mary Kay consultant and I was in the team of this amazing regional director, Gloria Mayfield Banks. She was – and is – a truly inspiring person and one of the biggest names in Network Marketing. I should have kicked some serious butt being in her group, but I was a half-hearted Mary Kay consultant. My calling was simply elsewhere. However, I attended the weekly meetings and I learned how to sell. This came in handy years later when I was building my business network.
One of the lessons I learned was that you need to build your Mary Kay business by selling to strangers. Your friends and family won’t buy from you. They will want what you sell for free and won’t take you seriously as a consultant. They see you “in your box”, as their sister or friend.
She was right. I booked more parties by walking up to strangers asking them to host a Mary Kay event than I did from family and friends. Honestly, they never booked a party or bought much besides some lipsticks.
What I didn’t realize was how true “being in your box” is beyond Mary Kay.
People you just met vs. people you know
People you have just met take you more seriously than people you have known for years. Why?
People who know you have already put you in a box. They have defined who you are, what you do, what you’re like, and how you operate. They met the previous version of you and know that person well, but they don’t know the you of today.
Sometimes we forget that every moment of every day is a change opportunity. Some of us take advantage of it, some don’t, but we all embrace a good amount of change yearly. Most of these changes center around personal growth and unfortunately, most people don’t notice when you’ve made incremental changes in embracing your personal power, like being more comfortable with yourself, or feeling more peaceful and at ease. (All required to be a successful leader.) Most people notice big physical changes like weight gain, loss, or hair color changes. Or massive personal shifts like a sudden belief in God.
So to get credit for how you’ve grown and changed with the people who know you, it takes a little effort.
People who know who you were, don’t always know who you are. – Click To Tweet
How do you redefine yourself to people you know?
I’m struggling with this now personally and professionally as I reach out to my business network. I recently read Lori Darley’s book, Dancing Naked, which has helped me rethink how I see myself and communicate the change. In one section, she was talking about her own career transition from being a dancer to a coach.
“I discovered I was telling myself I was a dancer-turned-coach, instead of a coach. I was telling myself other coaches had more experience and credentials than I did. That may have been true, but why was I so hung up on what other people were doing? … Then I practiced consciously setting those stories aside. I wrote out new stories for myself, opened myself to new possibilities.”
Lori Darley, Dancing Naked, p.101
Our past helps us become who we are today – no doubt. But sometimes we allow our past to define our present, and that can be problematic for growth.
So to bring others up to speed with the current you, you need to reintroduce people from your past to the new you by providing them a summary version of your journey from who you were to who you are.
How do you do that? Here are some approaches I have been using that could help.
Remember the last time you actively worked with your colleague. Start your story – logistically and emotionally – there.
Think about where you were job-wise, personally, and emotionally when you last saw or worked with that person. Then look at where you are now. You need to provide that person with a summary of your journey from when you last saw them to now. Provide the logistical updates (moving, job changes), the social and personal updates, and the emotional updates (personal growth). The personal growth updates are probably the most important – yet overlooked – updates that help someone to quickly get reacquainted with you and understand your current capabilities.
Updating people about your accomplishments doesn’t mean anything if you don’t update people on how you have grown as a person.
People forget that we all grow and need a reminder.
It is easy to update people about new jobs, ventures and accomplishments. It’s like repeating a laundry list. It is harder to update people about your personal growth and the value you can bring to an organization now. Share stories about how you grew from where you were to where you are now. Feel free to relate mistakes you made and what you’ve learned from them.
To prepare for these conversations, choose 3-4 key stories that best illustrate your personal growth. Try to use transformation stories. For example, you were a new manager, had some challenges, and then maybe got great reviews for being a compassionate manager. The story I share is that as a consultant, I received a lot of criticism for not being responsible for generating revenue. I decided to stop being a consultant and work for a company to do that (I helped them generate lead revenue that got reported to the CMO). During the story, I share the fear and excitement of what that meant.
Be specific. Be vulnerable. Show emotional growth.
Share your stories – successes and failures. Focus on sharing what you learned.
Include 1-2 learning stories in your growth story collection. I like to share the story where I got laid off from KPMG and couldn’t find a new job for 2-3 years because I couldn’t let go. I wasn’t a failure. It was a turning point and I learned a handful of lessons from the experience. And by sharing this story, I connect with others who are experiencing something similar.
The next time you contact a former colleague, remember that they know the you from 2, 5, or 10 years ago. They may read the accomplishments in your LinkedIn profile, but that doesn’t mean that they will see you as the leader you have become. Help them see that by sharing your journey with them. They will start to take you seriously because you are breaking down that box they put you in and they are learning about the current you. You are getting re-acquainted, almost like meeting someone for the first time.
Updated: Originally posted December 2016
InPower Women’s Mastermind
We don’t Mastermind your business. We Mastermind YOU!
by Jennifer Miller | Jun 21, 2023 | Emotional Intelligence at Work, EQ & Soft Skills Research
InPower Coaching believes that successful organizations are made up of successful people. That’s why we focus on how emotional intelligence (“EI”), or “EQ” in individual employees creates a more productive and enjoyable work environment.
There is an abundance of research that studies EQ. As a leader, HR manager or organizational development practitioner, it’s not easy to stay on top of the latest research, so that’s why we’ve compiled our EQ at Work and Soft Skills Research Index. We created this index to help you sift through the many excellent research efforts devoted to the study of emotional intelligence in the workplace. Our index represents what we believe to be the most useful and relevant articles and research studies for professionals like you—people who are tasked with developing the talent in your organizational enterprise.
Taking a Deep Dive into Emotional Intelligence Research
Over the past few decades, a growing number of academic researchers have studied emotional intelligence (and its various derivatives) and have concluded that, yes, being emotionally aware does contribute to workplace success. The body of research is quite large; if you want to view the extent of it, we suggest you visit the The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. This research-based organization, which was founded in 1996, has a limited membership. Yet its membership includes many of the most notable researchers on the topic of EI, including Reuven Bar-On (credited with coining the term, “EQ”), Richard Boyatzis, Cary Cherniss, Vanessa Urch Druskat, Daniel Goleman, Kathy Kram, and Peter Salovey.
The Consortium’s website is a treasure trove of information. But as with all treasure-hunting, there is indeed a bit of a “hunt” required to find the information you seek. Here’s a quick run-down of how to make the most of this information-rich resource.
EI Consortium List of Scholarly Articles
This is a comprehensive list of scholarly emotional intelligence articles in the academic community. With eighteen different categories of research, from “Emotional Intelligence in Teams and Work Groups” to “Emotional Intelligence and Construct Validity,” this is the mother lode of EI research. The challenge is that most of the articles referenced are links to the research abstract. If you want to see the full research, you typically need to download the report and pay for it. Here’s a tip: if you see a research title that intrigues you, trying Googling the title of the research. Sometimes the research authors provide a PDF of the full research free of charge.
Freebies
The Consortium provides free reports for download on topics such as “The Business Case for Emotional Intelligence” and “Do Emotional Intelligence Programs Work?” You can also download selected article reprints from consortium members who have written books or scholarly articles.
Videos
There are several video vignettes under the Videos tab on the website that feature consortium members discussing EI topics and giving TED Talks. If you want to dig a bit deeper, check out the sidebar that contains links to additional videos (some of which direct you to external sites.)
If you are looking for academically sound research to support the talent development efforts for your enterprise, the EI Consortium is an excellent place to start.
You may also enjoy InPower Consulting’s Emotional Intelligence at Work page. Look for more insights into some of these studies, and new ones we find, in the months ahead, including tips for how you can use them in your everyday work!
Want to stay on top of our EQ@Work updates and posts? Subscribe today!
Check out the resources in the InPower Coaching EQ at Work and Soft Skills Research Index.
Rewriting the narrative on women and power
by Guest Author | Jun 20, 2023 | Change Management, Corporate Culture, Emotional Intelligence at Work, Featured
If you were in charge of your corporate culture and knew it needed fixing, would you fix it? Certainly anyone in charge of change management would want to say yes to this question, but as anyone who is actually in charge of corporate culture knows, it’s harder than it looks.
I like to think of corporate culture as the de facto unconscious mind of a group of people, because much like the unconscious of an individual, it’s hard to pin down and even harder to shift or change. We may want to stop loving ice cream, but our unconscious associations of ice cream with good times and physiological craving for the serotonin boost it gives us drives us to want it after every meal, even though it’s more calories than we need. We may want to stop gossiping about people who don’t seem to fit in, but we do it anyway, to bond with each other and because bonding with others just feels good, even though it can hurt others’ feelings.
The difficulty of shifting corporate culture is challenging when an organization finds that it needs to change “how we do things around here,” for example to reorganize or implement a new software system. As research by CEB last year shows, most companies need to initiate such large change management goals quite frequently. CEB and others have also shown that the key to making such changes “stick” is for middle management to adopt the changes. In essence, for large-scale change to take root and become the de facto way the organization works, it has to seep into the collective unconscious of middle management.
Too bad middle managers are so stressed out with so much change that sometimes they don’t change at all.
Middle Managers Are the Key to Change
It turns out that middle managers are the critical link in any organization, especially those undergoing change management. We tend to believe it’s the executives that drive things, but while they can make decisions and allocate resources, it’s the middle managers— those who are two to four levels below the execs on the org chart —who actually do the work to use the resources once allocated. And how they do it matters.
Any executive who’s ordered a change and turned away only to find things haven’t moved even an inch a week later knows the helpless feeling of needing to rely on the management tiers beneath her to know this is true.
Middle Managers Are Under Pressure And Get Less Leadership Development
But middle managers have it rough. They have requirements and edicts coming down on them from above, and problems and issues rising up to them from below, leading most of them to feel squeezed in the middle. This is why middle managers tend to be more stressed than either independent contributors or executives.
As an executive coach, I get to see this stress first hand, in both executives and middle managers. I see the toll it takes on their productivity and fulfilment. I can tell you that human stress is the same no matter who’s experiencing it. But here’s the catch: I see almost debilitating stress more often than not with middle managers. Executives are given permission to deal with their stress on the company’s nickle more than most middle managers.
From a company point of view this makes sense. Coaching, be it for stress relief, communication skills and productivity enhancement, in particular, is not cheap. Thus the expense is easier to justify for a few executives who have broad authority and impact than for a larger number of middle managers with more diffuse impact. The problem is that this leaves that oh-so-important tier of people in the middle unsupported in the ways that are most likely to help them manage change successfully.
And this is the catch for those in charge of change management, corporate culture or both. The people who are critical to successfully implementing change have the least capacity and company support to absorb and embed it into the culture.
There Is Hope!
This problem has dogged me since I began coaching, not only because of the impact coaching can have on the culture of an organization, but also because my clients in middle management seem to soak up the benefits of coaching so much more deeply than many executives. Executives often attribute their success to the way they lead today, while middle managers (especially millennials on the rise) are at a more malleable point in their leadership journey, more apt to experiment and change their personal styles. But it’s harder for these people who can make such an important impact on their organizations to access the services of an executive coach without company support, which most companies won’t fund.
But where we have an intention to solve a problem, we usually find a solution. I’ve been exploring strategies for group coaching to support change management over the past several years and have discovered some formulas for success. I recently had the opportunity to share some of this success in a webinar for Talent Connections, who kindly allowed me to post it on InPower Coaching.
Learn more about how to bring soft-skills and change management skills to your middle managers.
Rewriting the narrative on women and power
by Guest Author | Jun 17, 2023 | Career Development, Leadership
We hear “be a good listener” a lot, but how does listening help you develop your communication skills? How do you DO it anyway? We really enjoyed Mary’s practical advice for how to lead more effectively by listening and communicating more clearly. – InPower Editors
Being a great listener isn’t easy – and being the core of communication it is most important. Without listening, talking is just more noise. And we hear enough messages during the day as it is.
This is the second lesson I learned in the Art of Influence that got me to significantly change my approach to management.
- Lesson 1: Mothering isn’t a Management Technique
- Lesson 2: Influence and true leadership is communication, listening and understanding
- Lesson 3: Influence others to move blocks out of the way
- Lesson 4: Appearance really does mean a lot
Lesson 2: Influence and true leadership is communication, listening and understanding
After my experience with the momma duck/baby duck statue and the VP, I learned more about how to influence people to do what’s needed. As a project manager and consultant, I had to motivate a number of teams that I didn’t directly manage to help me on my projects. I couldn’t dictate deadlines – I had to negotiate them, which required communication skills. The teams needed to understand why a date mattered and why the project was important – what it contributed to the business. Once the teams understood this, everything fell into place.
But if someone voiced a concern to me and I interrupted her – even though I believed I understood what she was asking for – she would tell me that she didn’t feel heard and assumed that I wasn’t open to help her. It was a valid point. I changed my behavior and stopped trying to interrupt to make my points – listening to respond – and started listening to understand. It made a huge difference in my interactions with my team – and helped me build an extended team that I didn’t directly manage and only influenced. And people were more open to listen to me if I listened to them first. It was an easy trade.
It definitely isn’t easy to do. I work on my listening and communication skills every day, consciously remembering during conversations to pause, stop focusing on what I’m going to say next, and hear what the person I’m talking to is trying to communicate to me through words, voice tone and emotion. It can change the dynamics of a conversation in minutes and builds a deeper understanding between two people, allowing both to influence each other. Very powerful.
Listening is just as important as talking to communicate and influence others. – Click To Tweet
- As Stephen Covey advocated in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Seek to understand, then be understood.”
- Allow influence to be mutual by listening
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
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by Dana Theus | Jun 14, 2023 | Career Development, Coaching Advice
Do the words “fresh start” or “intention setting” come to mind as a new school term approaches? What would a fresh start mean for you at work?
At the start of the school term, students often get a list of what to pull together and how to prepare. We as adults at work need to take a look at that for ourselves.
Let’s take some time to review where you are with your career intentions. They may need some freshening up.
First Things First. Check In With Yourself.
Are you one of those people who keep their head down working? Then one day you wake up and realize the situation isn’t working anymore? Now you feel stuck or desperate.
When I left my corporate job, employees repeatedly asked me, “Is there something we should know about?” (When the HR manager leaves voluntarily, it makes employees edgy.) My consistent advice is, “Pay attention and stay current with yourself.”
Notice your health. How is your sleep? Do you find it hard to stay focused? Do you still light up at the prospects of certain types of projects or assignments? Are you meeting deadlines? Look for changes in your habits. Are others commenting on changes?
If things are all good, now check in with your career goals. What is your intention for the near-term and long-term? Are you moving toward that? If you answer, “I don’t have an intention,” or “I haven’t made any progress,” we’ll address that in a minute.
How Are You Performing Now?
Employees ask me for help with their career intentions. Many want more responsibility, visibility, or advancement. I always like to start with where they are.
I remember when the HR manager at work authorized the funding of my Master’s in HR. He emphasized to me that it was important for me to “grow where I was planted.”
I had never heard the phrase before, but I got it immediately. I’d better deliver on the job at hand — not that I had a history of not doing my job. He wanted to remind me I had a job to do while I was earning this degree. Got it.
How are you delivering? Look at your objectives for the year. Where are you on those?
If your company doesn’t have a system to prompt intermittent reviews, initiate one with your boss. Be ready to discuss where you are. Be ready to assess whether the objectives need adjustment. What would you recommend to your boss? How would you recommend this?
Be sure to ask your boss to weigh in with their view of your performance. You might hear something like, “I think you are doing moderately well.” Ask what an excellent performance would look like from their perspective. Don’t let the opportunity pass to make sure you understand each other. Check your assumptions.
Reflect On Your Own Intention
Now that you have some foundational steps out of the way, ask yourself about where you want to go.
There are times when you just want to get through the year. You may have one big project or many. You may have your head down getting work done. At times like this, it’s important to know how this work is serving your career. This type of year can serve you by allowing you to:
- Develop a new skill.
- Practice leading a team or part of a project.
- Learn to delegate effectively.
- Improve your collaboration skills.
- Learn about another part of the organization.
Even if it’s “one of those years,” simply determining how it is serving you can help you stay focused and make more of your intention. At the right time, you can then speak to how this year’s work supports your intent to take more responsibility, advance, or shift the type of work you are doing.
You Don’t Have a Career Intention?
I remember being asked early on in my career what I wanted to be doing in 5 years. I felt so inadequate not being able to answer the question. I found later that I was not alone. It works differently for different people.
I continued my work for a few more years, and then I became clear on my intention. During those years I grew and developed. I learned how to prioritize, make decisions, influence others, how to be resourceful and how to be a team player.
Those types of skills can serve you on many fronts. If you are struggling with a career intention or goal, try to identify how what you are doing now will serve you long-term, no matter what.
I’ve heard plenty of people tell me they just want to keep doing what they are doing – even if they are mid-career. This is okay, and you need to understand all sides of this.
For instance, I served an employee community of research scientists. It was safe to say that many of them wanted to keep doing this throughout their careers. At the same time, each would grow in their ability to influence and lead others. They may take on more responsibility.
Understand that your employer expects you to grow and develop throughout your career. This happens even if your occupation doesn’t change. In fact, your same level of performance that at one time was good can be viewed as sub-par if you do not continue to grow. You don’t want to be in this situation.
Whatever your situation, if you are at a loss for your career intention, talk with someone you trust. Talk with someone who knows your work and respects it. Ask them for ideas. It can be as simple as working on collaboration, teamwork or influence skills.
Follow your interests. Ask others you admire how they developed certain skills. Do whatever it takes to create a spark so you can remain fulfilled and contributing.
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
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How to Avoid the Most Common Career Mistakes
by Dana Theus | Jun 10, 2023 | Career Development
Many women think they are not leading, and yet they are. Why? Because they are setting their intentions, achieving them and making the world better as a result. We’d like more women to know how to be bold at work. Not to get the credit (though, you should take credit that’s due you!) but because when you’re being bold, you’re living at your edge and developing greater capacity to make a difference. Read this inspirational post about bold leadership from Dana, and choose to lead boldly. – InPower Editors
We often give advice to leaders, “Be bold!”
Why?
Here are the typical reasons for being bold that I hear:
- You’ll get noticed
- You’ll move faster forward (failing and succeeding both)
- You’ll get outside the box
All good reasons!
But here’s why I want you to be bold: you’ll develop the habit of stretching yourself.
Being bold will help you be more intentional
Most of us move forward in our lives in a rather jerky fashion. We make a change (intentionally or otherwise) and then spend a lot of time dealing what just happened.
If you’re going to lead something, however, jerkiness will backfire on you – personally and with those who choose to follow you (and yes, it’s always a choice in the end.) Jerkiness leads to exhaustion, more miscommunications and more unintended consequences.
Yes, there is an ebb and flow that we need to create when we spawn new initiatives and then absorb the change and keep moving. However, when being bold is your habit; you are living on the edge of what is new and what is old; what you understand and what you don’t; what works and what-you-don’t know-if-it-works yet.
And to do these things successfully, you learn to think more precisely about what you want to create before moving forward to make it happen. Such intentionality is a core success factor for every leader. And better yet, being intentional can reduce your stress. How? You decide ahead of time what you can and can’t do, you commit to less in order to make more happen.
Being bold isn’t about being brash, it’s about thinking about what matters and moving with intention and focus to make it happen.
When you’re bold, you learn how to be comfortable with discomfort
When you learn how to be bold at work and live on the edge of your experience, you need to learn to master discomfort and fear. Why? Because being bold brings the bravest of us into our stretch zone, which is by definition out of out comfort zones.
Operating more often and more comfortably in your stretch zone, you learn to respect the warning bells without letting them stop you. You learn how they sound when they’re right to hold you back and when they’re baseless. We humans are never perfect interpreters of those clanging bells, either personally or organizationally, but as leaders we must be better than most at learning when to heed their guidance. And when not to.
When you’re living on the edge of bold, you’re stretching yourself and getting to know yourself better all the time. And most importantly, you’re expanding and moving closer to your highest potential.
Great leaders are expansive. Their leadership is a result, not necessarily of what they’ve experienced, but of what they learned from what they experienced.
- Are you learning everyday?
- Are you taking risks right on the edge of your comfort zone and watching what happens with a critical eye, determined to do it better next time?
- Are you constantly creating “next time” opportunities?
- Are you interpreting your experience so that others around you can learn as you learn?
If so, you might just be leading. Learn how to be bold at work and then keep it up!
Examples of being bold at work
Sometimes we imagine being bold to look a lot like bragging. Throwing ourselves out in front of everyone and saying “look at me!” It can, but it does’t have to. Being bold is just:
- doing something that is important
- something that will make a difference
- something that makes you uncomfortable because you’re learning something that will help you make an even bigger impact in the future.
This can look like:
- putting your ideas on the table earlier in the meeting, instead of at the end when most things have been decided
- choosing to accept people’s criticism when it’s well founded and making changes to your ideas or yourself
- putting a new idea no one has mentioned up for discussion
- going for a job that you feel you’re not ready for, but you’re excited about and willing to learn to do
- challenging people, respectfully, about their ideas that you believe you can make better
Being bold at work isn’t always what we think it is. Explore and expand yourself by trying new ways to be bold and teach others how to be bold at work, too.
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Guide to Women in Leadership
Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel in higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.
Updated: Originally posted March 2014
by Guest Author | Jun 9, 2023 | Career Development, Coaching Advice, Featured
We welcome Dr. Marcia Reynolds back to the site to provide insight into ways of understanding and releasing your emotional triggers. Learn about Marcia’s book, The Discomfort Zone and how to turn discomfort into a leadership asset. – InPower Editors
How to Tame Your Emotional Triggers
No matter how friendly and caring a person you want to be, your brain has you doing and saying things that aren’t so kind when your emotions are triggered. The brain responds to stimuli long before your conscious brain can choose. Your immediate reactions often produce bad results and then instead of trying to undo what happened, you quickly find reasons to justify your behavior.
For example, you get very angry because you can’t find a report you were working on. You blame the company for giving you insufficient space, the cleaners for moving things around on your desk, or your boss for giving you a stupid task or deadline. You ignore the reasons you are tired, why your patience is thin, and why you misplaced the report in the first place.
“The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible,” wrote essayist Hannah Moore in 1881. The act of rationalizing is so quick, the best you can do is to recognize when it occurs and choose to consider what else could be causing your reaction.
Take these 5 steps to help you tame your emotional triggers:
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