I’ve been tracking research on women in leadership for over a decade now. It started when I first began coaching and wanted to get smart on leadership in general. I kept coming across intriguing articles on the good impacts women had on organizations when they were in leadership positions. The research told me that some of what I thought were liabilities in my own leadership style were actually benefits. I’d never heard this before, from mentors, colleagues or business magazines. So I started exploring more deeply.
It turns out that when research challenges stereotypes, we learn things and expand our thinking. Ten years later I’m still learning.
We now catalog the most important research on women in leadership in the Guide to Women’s Leadership and update it about twice a year. Thanks for my colleague, Jennifer V. Miller we keep this extensive documentation pretty current. The guide now includes 109 citations in four categories and 27 subcategories :
The Facts on Women in Leadership
Mentoring Tips
Coaching Tips
Personal Brand and Career Advice
Updates to the Research on Women in Leadership
This time we have a pretty meaty update. Here are the main additions and updates to the Guide as of September 2022:
Although public boards of directors have made strides in female representation, this progress in public companies is not matched by large privately held organizations, 49% of which have zero female board representation.
Women looking to get into the most senior management and executive level roles benefit from cultivating smaller and deeper networks of women that provide peer mentoring on how to work effectively within business cultures that often stereotype women and present other obstacles.
Many efforts to help women get into leadership—promoted by both women and men with good intentions—often focus on fixing the women instead of shifting the culture in ways that would hold men more accountable for their behaviors.
Lots of interesting stats from AAUW on the women and the pay gap, including how it affects women of color in disproportionate ways.
Because humans carry gender biases with them everywhere they go, such biases become pervasive in the culture, even making their way into the systems we create, such as artificial intelligence and personality tests, both of which we rely on for gender-neutral information.
Females vying for CEO job face greater scrutiny from their boards, taking on more assignments prior to being considered and with boards taking 30% longer to vet a women under consideration
Obviously there’s a lot out there! We’re sure to miss some good references so if you know of any research you think we should include, please contact us and let us know. View the entire guide and download a PDF version with all the most recent research on women in leadership ====> HERE.
Free Advice for Mentoring Women
Tropes and truths to help mentors and proteges navigate workplace biases and outdated advice.
I was so happy to reconnect with my friend Carolyn Bruna on her MMC show “It’s a Woman’s World” to discuss some of the challenges professional women face in the workplace, including the office housewife, the imposter syndrome and setting boundaries.
“InPower Women” on “It’s a Woman’s World – MMC”
[00:00:00] Musical Intro
[00:00:16] Carolyn: Welcome to It’s A Woman’s World, where we’ll meet achieving women, making a difference in our community. I’m Carolyn Bruna.
[00:00:23] Our guest is Dana Theus, the Executive Coach and president and CEO of InPower Coaching.
[00:00:29] Welcome Dana. It’s great to have you on my show again. I actually had to look it up. You were on my show back in 2012, exactly 10 years ago.
[00:00:38] And you were also a speaker at the power conference that I started for business women in the greater Washington area to network and learn. Luckily we’ve remained friends through the years and somewhat connected. I follow you online and your business has thrived, and I hope you catch my show now and then. And truthfully, I invited you so we could catch up.
[00:00:58] Dana: Well, it’s so nice to be back and it’s so nice that you’ve been bringing women’s voices to the world for this long.
[00:01:03] Carolyn: Oh, thank you, Dana. Thank you. Actually, I’d like to ask you to please introduce yourself to our viewers who might not know you and tell you what you’re doing now and what are some of the exciting, new things that you’re working on.
[00:01:14] Dana: Well, I’m an executive coach and I work with leaders. I specialize with female leaders, who are looking to make a difference and achieve career success by being their authentic selves. I come out of a tech marketing background, so I have a lot of insight into various sizes of organizations and such, but my specialty is really working with women leaders.
[00:01:34] And the new exciting thing that I’m doing is bringing women together, women leaders together in community on my website and, and through my social media. So I’m really jazzed about that.
[00:01:45] Carolyn: Yeah, that sounds exciting because right now, because of COVID and people being so isolated, the community is what everyone wants.
[00:01:52] That’s great. Mm-hmm. You know, you’re such a successful businesswoman, Dana, did you have models when you were starting out or who inspired you?
[00:01:59] Dana: You know, I always struggle with that question because I actually did not have great role models. I had mentors who mentored me about how to do my work. But I didn’t have great role models. I didn’t work… I never in my professional career until the very end before I went out on my own. I never had a female boss or any women in the organization above me. So I really didn’t have female role models. And a lot of the men weren’t particularly role models. So I pretty much learned by doing and was just inspired by people who were their authentic selves in their work. I figured there must be a way for me to do it too.
[00:02:34] Carolyn: Mm-hmm yeah. Experience is really one of the best teachers as they say yep. For our topics today, we’ve selected two, actually the office housewife, which I truthfully had never heard of and the imposter syndrome, which I do know a bit about, but have not delved into it in detail. You said also you’d bring in setting boundaries and you have takeaways, many takeaways that women can learn from right now. So how about if we begin with the office housewife. Please define office housewife for us and tell us its history and usage and business.
[00:03:08] Dana: Well, this is a, it’s a relatively new term to me. I’ve discovered since hearing it, I think 2018 is the first time I read it in an article from the Harvard Business Review, but it was based on some research that was begun in 2010. So relatively speaking, it’s new, but the idea is what it was focused on. This research was focused on. What are promotable tasks or promotable work work, and what is non-promotable tasks and work.
[00:03:32] And is there a gender difference in who takes on those tasks and activities that put you up for promotion, and those who take on work that doesn’t put you up for promotion. And what they found is there are such things as non promotable tasks, work that is necessary to the business, but not mission critical.
[00:03:49] It doesn’t bring in the money or put out the product sort of thing or file the taxes, et cetera. And that women tend to volunteer or are voluntold to do these non promotable tasks two to three times more often than men. Sometimes this looks like just keeping the kitchen clean, the office kitchen or copy room clean, you know, so when guests come in, they’re not embarrassed to be shown those things.
[00:04:12] And sometimes it’s about onboarding new hires or going on employee listening tours. And women tend to do this more in the research more recently, they’ve also found things they call emotional labor, which tends to fall into this non promotable task category. And this can be spending time, mentoring employees, spending time with employees who are troubled, taking on and building employee wellness programs, all of which is really important.
[00:04:35] And, and it’s not to diminish the value of it. But to point out that the way you get promoted into more and more senior positions is by delivering revenue and brand recognition and new clients and products out the door. That’s what you get promoted for. You don’t get promoted for these other things.
[00:04:51] And for women who have that task balance out of balance and struggle with why am I not getting promoted? This may be a reason because you’re taking on these non promotable tasks, which we, the media has put in this category of being the office housewife.
[00:05:05] Carolyn: That’s so interesting. Right? I had never heard about that before in that label office housewife, but I guess I think a lot of women can relate to the idea of not getting credit for their emotional labor and having others expect them to do the cleanup work.That is so true. I think I actually did much in my early career now that you’ve mentioned it.
[00:05:27] Dana: Yeah, I think we all did. And I will say too, this is also part of a larger trend of why women struggle to get into leadership positions if they want them, which is that in addition to taking on this kind of the less valued work in the office they’re often mentored into the kind of
[00:05:43] professions and careers that are less likely to get promoted into senior levels of leadership. For example, women are 45% more likely to go into human resources and CEOs are almost never recruited out of human resources roles. So there’s the task list of what’s promotable and what’s not. And then there’s also
[00:06:03] The work profile, you know, the career profile of the kind of person who’s more likely to get into leadership versus those that aren’t. So not every woman or man for that matter wants to be in a senior leadership position, but for those who do you know, they have to be thinking about. Not only the work they do day-to-day, is it promotable, but also is the career trajectory they’re on gonna get them promoted to the kind of work that they wanna do and lead ultimately where they wanna have the biggest impact.
[00:06:31] Carolyn: Oh yeah. Interesting. And I imagine that promotable work is different in different areas of business where women and men are working. Is that true?
[00:06:41] Dana: Absolutely. Absolutely. I’ll give you just a simple example from my own background. I came out of marketing, which is not typically one of those careers that get you into the, the, to the CEO’s chair anyway.
[00:06:51] But I learned early on that, you know, there’s digital marketing and then there’s brand marketing. And if I wanted to get ahead in digital marketing, I had to produce results that were measurable. If I were gonna get promoted, I had to be able to point and say, look, I got a 45% higher conversion rate than the other guy or than the previous campaign.
[00:07:09] But if I wanted to get into sort of brand and PR promotion opportunities. I had to come up with an idea that made the CEO and the board go, wow. You know, mm-hmm so, so like the, the, the, and that’s a specialty oriented thing, but, but in every industry, in every company and every role, you know, the things that could get you promoted is different. So you really have to understand for yourself and where you are in your career. What, what is promotable. What is less promotable. Let’s put it that way.
[00:07:36] Carolyn: Right? Right. Well, how would one, you figured it out on your own or did you watch the men being promoted and see the things that they were doing? I’m just curious about this.
[00:07:46] Dana: That’s an excellent question for myself. I did start just watching really carefully. Like what got people ahead and what didn’t, but I’ll be completely honest with you. I needed a coach. I didn’t have a coach. I didn’t even have a great mentor towards the, you know, the, when I was a vice president, you know, and kind of getting up there, I didn’t really have a great mentor.
[00:08:04] I went out on my own. I became a, you know, a consultant that has a, yet a different yet. It’s not about getting promoted. It’s about surviving right. And getting business. And then I became a coach and when I became a coach, about 10 years ago, I started looking back on all these dynamics, not only through my own experience, but through my client’s experience.
[00:08:21] And that’s when I started to really see and read the research and, you know, kind of get smart about this, like, what are the dynamics in the workplace that can help you achieve your goals and, and what can’t and read research like this and such. I wish I could say I had it all figured out when I was in the workplace, but I had to come to it much later.
[00:08:40] Carolyn: Yeah. Well, I think that’s probably what all of us have, but I’m curious about, did you actually get a coach? Did you have coaches? Did you hire a coach cuz for other women who are in these positions, should they hire coaches? Is that something that you would recommend
[00:08:54] Dana: Well, being a coach, of course, I’ll say yes.
[00:08:56] Carolyn: Oh, right, exactly. Forgot you are . Yes.
[00:08:58] Dana: But, but I will say so back when, before, you know, like 30 years ago, when I, when I was earlier in my career, the people really didn’t have coaches like CEOs had coaches, nobody else did right today. A lot more people do. And it’s becoming that people are beginning to understand that we all need somebody outside ourselves to be a champion for us.
[00:09:18] Not. The sense of going and getting us a job, although that’s great, those are sponsors, right. But we all need another voice that kind of balances we can think out loud with. And that balances the, on our voice in our head. Sometimes it’s too critical. Sometimes it’s too positive. You know, we all, we all need another
[00:09:35] voice to kind of help us figure out, well, what are we doing well, where are we growing? Where can I put my energy right now to get the biggest bang for the buck? You know, that’s what coaches do. So everybody needs one, I think.
[00:09:46] Carolyn: Yeah, actually, no, I agree because I really feel I started when you did, or even earlier, I’m afraid and we didn’t have coaches back then.
[00:09:54] And I don’t think I had role models either, and I wish I did. And now I really feel it’s very important to have coaches. So let’s go on. We were talking about the office housewife and I was wondering, has a pandemic made things better or worse for women in the workplace worse.
[00:10:13] Dana: No question. The pandemic put greater expectations and requirements on women to, you know, be there for the kids that weren’t going to school to be there for, you know, family members that were struggling with illness, you know, the, the disconnections in the, in business and our world, you know, a lot of that
[00:10:30] pick up work fell on women and including the emotional labor in the workplace of employees who were struggling there are several studies that show that women at all levels, particularly leadership levels picked up a lot of that emotional labor to try to care for employees. Many of whom were, you know, Very stressed, if not traumatized in the early days of the pandemic in particular and the numbers show it, you know, women left the workforce at like twice the rate of men.
[00:10:54] And they are burning out even most recently, maybe six months ago. The last data I saw showed that women are burning out about 10% more often than men. And during the depths of the pandemic, it was much higher than that. So we have a bit of a deficit to come back from when it comes to
[00:11:10] pandemic recovery. And I think awareness of these kinds of issues I’m talking about can help women, you know, decide how do I wanna come back? You know, what is it that I’m gonna do to make sure my comeback is successful for me. And doesn’t lead me to more burnout.
[00:11:23] Carolyn: Right. We have two minutes. So I want to ask about boundaries for this at the end of the first half.
[00:11:29] I think some women struggle with these boundaries and you have some information about that. How women can work through or make boundaries. We make them, and then we break them. I believe you were saying to me. So explain that.
[00:11:43] Dana: Well that’s a huge topic. So I’m gonna try to contain it for the moment to this office housewife concept is that if you, if you realize that you, this may be you right, mm-hmm, the first thing you have to do is figure out, well, what is in my situation, what is promotable versus non promotable work?
[00:11:58] What is it? And get clear on what is promotable? And what you wanna be promoted into cause like I said before, depending on where you are and what you want, what you have to do to get promoted into what you wanna be doing is gonna be different. So find the place where those things overlap, that becomes your priority.
[00:12:14] Sort of like, okay, this is what I’m gonna do. This other non-pro promotable stuff, cleaning the kitchen or going on the employee listening tour. I’d like to do that. Many women do like to do these tasks and there’s nothing wrong with it. We all have to do some. But you can draw a boundary and say I’m willing to do some, but , A, I’m not willing to jeopardize the things that are the highest priority for me and my organization.
[00:12:33] And secondly, those non-pro promotable tasks. I will do my fair share and I will let other people do their fair share. If nobody else picks up that ball, I don’t take responsibility for it. So I draw a boundary and I say within that boundary is what I want to do and have to do not only to get promoted, but to do my job well.
[00:12:51] And I will do that with integrity. And beyond that, I don’t take responsibility for that. I don’t take responsibility outside this line. Boundaries like this are kind of magical. They create choices for other people. They say, okay, you can count on me for this. You can’t count on me for that. And we do it wrong
[00:13:09] most of the time, we usually say, I’m not gonna do that, but that doesn’t give anybody any choice. It doesn’t give them any information. It just tells ’em what you won’t do. But the minute you flip that around and say, here’s what I will do. You can count on me for this. Everything else is kind of up to you guys to figure out.
[00:13:23] Now you’ve created a boundary that creates choices for other people, and that can be very empowering to you and to them. So you can put that in any context, you can use it at home with your family. You can use it in any relationship. You can use it at work but it can be really, really powerful.
[00:13:40] And when we stick to those boundaries, we train people. You can trust me inside this value boundary. I will deliver this outside of that. It’s not a matter of not trusting me. It’s a matter of, I never committed to that. So either somebody else picks it up or you and I negotiate a specific commitment outside that boundary.
[00:13:55] Otherwise. You know, it’s on you. Not on me.
[00:13:59] Carolyn: Yeah. Oh, I love that. I love your takeaways, especially the boundaries. That’s really great. Make these boundaries and stick to them and present them in positive terms. That’s great.
[00:14:19] Welcome back to It’s a Woman’s World. We’re speaking with Dana Theus who told us about the office housewife in our first half. And now in our second half, we’re gonna delve into the topic of imposter syndrome and its boundaries. Dana, would you please define the imposter syndrome and as it’s used in business, tell us about that.
[00:14:39] Dana: This was the first evidence of it I found was in some research in 1978 which I remember by the way I was alive I was just graduating high school. And it was gender based research that found that women more often than men had a belief about themselves that was out of sync with their actual achievements.
[00:14:58] So women were more likely to have doubts. About their abilities that were out of sync with what they’d actually achieved in the world than men were. And it tends to lead to this. So they feel like I’m a fake, you know, the world thinks I’m this great thing, this vice president, this big accomplished person, but I don’t feel that good.
[00:15:18] And it, and it’s kind of fed by and leads to feelings of vulnerability, potential shame, if not shame feeling not enough and like nothing I can do can ever be enough. And these feelings are dangerous. , they’re not sustainable, particularly if you wanna keep taking on more responsibility and, and achieving more and making more money and having a bigger impact on the world.
[00:15:41] And, and, and a lot of women kind of get stuck in this mindset and they believe it’s who they are as opposed to men who also experience the imposter syndrome, but are more likely to feel like it’s related to their circumstance. And this is true of a lot of self-beliefs, but, but men are more likely to say, wow, I, I am in this new situation
[00:16:00] I’ve never been in before. I kind of feel like a fake cuz I’ve never done it before. Let me dive in and figure it out. And then they kind of get over it. Whereas a lot of women just think I am an imposter, no matter what I do and that’s debilitating and, and very, very hard mindset to get out.
[00:16:15] Carolyn: That is amazing.
[00:16:16] And I had not heard of that. Well, I guess I heard of it, but I really didn’t know much about it. It’s really annoying that women have been labeled that too. And we have to learn how to handle these things and, and that… go ahead. I’m sorry.
[00:16:30] Dana: Well, it is, and I think it’s. We all, men and women, internalize a lot of the messages we get from the outside world, particularly when we’re young.
[00:16:37] Oh. And women tend to get more messages saying, play it safe sometimes for very good reasons. There’s recents little girls need to play it safe sometimes, but we tend to get more messages that Are more judgemental than boys who tend to get more messages, like get up, you can do it, keep going.
[00:16:53] And you know, that kind of cascades throughout our entire life. And if we’re not careful, we don’t counter these messages. It can really lead us into a mindset like this where, you know, we’re, we’re constantly doubting ourselves.
[00:17:04] Carolyn: Yeah. Yeah. Does the imposter syndrome make women more susceptible to taking on the non-pro promotable work that we were talking about in the first half?
[00:17:12] Dana: I, I think it’s probably part of the dynamic and, and I say that because a lot of the imposter syndrome is exacerbated by taking on risk and you know, men who experience the imposter syndrome, particularly experience it at high levels. You know, if you’re gonna be the CEO , if you’re gonna be, you know, take on a lot of risk.
[00:17:30] Man or woman there’s the possibility you’re the, the price of failure is higher. So, your self-doubt has to be lower. So imposter syndrome is facilitated by taking on high risk. Well, if women which many of us are kind of are programmed with some of these thoughts, right? From the beginning.
[00:17:48] In part, because you know, the outside world is saying, well, appropriate feminine behavior is not to take compliments to push it away. Right. Well, if you’re not taking compliments, you’re not letting it in. Well, of course you feel like, well, that’s not real. That’s not really me. They don’t know me. They don’t know how bad I am.
[00:18:01] Right. We get into these kinds of habits. Well, then we don’t feel comfortable taking on risks. We don’t ever learn how to take on risk, particularly when we’re younger. And so we are more likely to wanna go into a career field or take on work tasks that are lower risk, and we go back to promotable versus non promotable tasks, promotable tasks
[00:18:20] are promotable because they’re higher risk. They have a bigger impact on the business. I can get promoted if I make my sales quota or I achieve my business development goals. And there’s a higher risk if I don’t. So I do think that there’s a relationship that women who are kind of caught in the imposter syndrome mindset are, are more, are less comfortable taking on risk.
[00:18:41] But when they learn to manage risk and they learn to stay in their stretch zone and, and learn to, to, to, you know, live into their possibilities and their potentiality. Then they, they, they learn how to manage the imposter syndrome becomes part of their success. And this is true for men too, as we get outside of being trapped by the imposter syndrome and learn to let it stimulate us to grow and to change and to, to learn how to manage risk and succeed.
[00:19:07] Anyway, that’s when it becomes a skill and it becomes an ally in, in our quest, you know, to become our best.
[00:19:14] Carolyn: Yeah, I like that a lot. So, my next question is a little follow up on that basically. I guess I want to ask you how can women handle the imposter syndrome? And I do agree with that. Not taking risks when we are younger, right?
[00:19:27] Dana: Yeah. And, and I do think that’s changing a little bit, the younger generations, you know, I think are willing to take on more risks, which I. All in favor of but I, but I think, you know, the way to handle it, regardless of where you in your career or how much or little you are encountering, this is to the extent you feel like your self-perception is out of sync with how the rest of the world sees you, which is a lot of where the imposter feelings come in.
[00:19:48] You know, the first thing to do is do an audit. What does the rest of the world think of you? try to find out, ask mentors, ask people you trust, get a, a, a trustworthy view. Of your reputation and yourself. And then this is the, this is the key part. This was a critical piece for me. When people are willing to give you compliments and say, well, you should take credit for X, Y, and Z.
[00:20:08] You gotta let that in. You can’t push those compliments away. You have to say, okay, they believe it. To tell them they’re wrong is rude. And to ignore it is denying myself important information about who I am and what I am achieving. So I’m not gonna push away compliments anymore. I’m gonna let them in.
[00:20:26] I’m gonna, I’m gonna believe they’re true and feel like, what would it feel like to believe those compliments are true? And when you do that on a regular basis, you will become more confident. It really does help but then you’ll also get some information about judgements people make about you that are either, you know, part of their biases or part of their personality, quirk, or maybe you’re in a toxic environment.
[00:20:47] I had a client who did this, who, who, you know, she was so organized and some of the people in her organization said, oh, she’s an alpha cuz she’s still organized. You know, And a bunch of other people are like, no, that’s actually a good skill. And she just had to say, you know what? I’m not gonna listen to that feedback.
[00:21:02] That people who think that, because I’m organized, I’m an alpha and trying to dominate them, cuz I’m not, you know, you just gotta screen that stuff out the stuff that’s, it’s just not true about you. And then there’s something left. The things that are left are places you aren’t growing. Maybe you’re not so good yet.
[00:21:16] Maybe you’re still figuring out. Maybe you’re not even sure you wanna do. And in that space, that’s left. When you’ve taken credit for what is due, you’ve screened out the stuff that you don’t want is not true. It it’s, it’s not relevant. You’re left with a basket of stuff you need to be working on and it, and maybe you have legitimate self doubt there, but then you gotta start working on, well, how do I get good at this?
[00:21:37] So I’m not doubting myself, you know? And then you build confidence in that zone. That’s your stretch zone. And when you just keep working on your stretch zone, you just keep taking things. You don’t know how to do and learn how to do ’em and that makes room for more things. You don’t know what to do.
[00:21:51] And pretty soon that’s your skillset. You are comfortable in your discomfort zone and you now have a skill that will help you grow in your career. But also as a person and to me, that’s where, you know, that’s the, that’s the butter zone. That’s the place to be all the time and the skill to learn both for career and just for personal fulfillment.
[00:22:10] Carolyn: I like that a lot, the skill to learn. And I do know that I, as well as you, were taught not to learn to accept compliments, I’m only slowly learning through the years. I’m trying now to believe the people who say that they believe something about me is positive. Right, right. Yep. Exactly. And you try, fail, succeed and believe.
[00:22:31] Great takeaways. Mm-hmm . Yet, if it’s easy for women to struggle, why do they, why do we still struggle with the imposter syndrome? But you did mention some things, but just a quick little summary there.
[00:22:47] Dana: I think that’s a $64,000 question. And I don’t know the real answer.
[00:22:51] Other than that, I don’t, I do think a lot of it is internalizing those external voices that wanna tear us down and there are a lot of women out there who are just rewiring that dialogue in their head, you know, like we all have an inner critic, but we also have an inner champion. You know, we have inner voices, especially when we let in those good compliments, we have inner voices that can strengthen us.
[00:23:12] We just have to start listening to them and put them in dialogue with each other. Believe it or not, the voices in your head are just sit ’em down and have ’em talk to each other and you’ll learn a whole lot and get a coach and you’ll really learn a whole lot.
[00:23:22] Carolyn: There you go, promote yourself. Of course you should.
[00:23:27] actually, you’re a wonderful coach and I see amazing things about you online and your work. So I believe it.
[00:23:34] Dana: Thank you.
[00:23:34] Carolyn: Is there something else that I should ask you that I haven’t yet?
[00:23:38] Dana: I don’t know that this is a question you haven’t asked, but I will put it this way. You know, we all are in, we work and succeed and fail in relationships with other people.
[00:23:47] And going back to that kind of core concept of boundaries we own part of that and other people own part of that. And for all of us, whether it’s on the office housewife or imposter syndrome or anything else, when we kind of, when we own our part of our contribution to the success and the failure of, of everything that we’re part of.
[00:24:04] And we take responsibility for our part of it. We really do give other people a gift and empower them to take responsibility for their part. And that’s, you know, our part is what we control and when we really commit to ourselves to do that and draw the boundary and don’t take responsibility beyond that.
[00:24:21] Carolyn: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:22] Dana: It can have a very powerful effect for ourselves, professionally and personally, and, and re kind of naturally reorder relationships that we have with the people around us in a way that’s very healthy for us. So, okay. Take that principle and put it into effect.
[00:24:36] Carolyn: Yeah. Dana tell people how they can get in touch with you.
[00:24:39] Dana: So you can go to InPowerCoaching.com, That’s the easiest way.
[00:24:46] Carolyn: Okay, great. And is there something else you’d like to highlight about your own business and InPower Women?
[00:24:51] Dana: Well, I mean, I do one on one coaching, but I’m also, I’ve launched an InPower Women Mastermind Community for women on the leadership track in upper middle management and beyond.
[00:25:01] And I would invite anybody who’s, you know, knows a woman in leadership or who wants to be in leadership or is a woman in leadership to come check it out at InPowerCoaching.com.
[00:25:09] Carolyn: Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I love masterminds, they’re relatively new to me as well, but I’ve been in a few and I think they’re fabulous.
[00:25:17] Dana: There’s actually research that shows that men benefit career wise from broad networks, women benefit from broad networks and narrow networks, deep relationships with other professional women, because we don’t have enough role models.
[00:25:30] Carolyn: Ah, yeah. Great. Well, thank you. We’re just about to end now. I hope you’ve enjoyed meeting our guest, Dana Theus, as much as I’ve enjoyed catching up with her.
[00:25:39] What did you learn about the executive housewife and the imposter syndrome that you’d like to share? Let us know. We’re womansworldtv@aol.com. Remember, it’s a woman’s world. See you next time. I’m Carolyn Bruna.
Here’s something fun. I found the original video I made with Carolyn ten years ago, about power, when I’d just started my InPower Women initiative. I still like 100% of what I said!
I feel like we’ve been in “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 101” class for decades now. Starting more than 30 years ago organizations first funded the “D” (diversity). Then when those programs didn’t diversify workforces enough, they added the “I” (inclusion) and more recently the “E” (equity) to bring racial and gender balance into their leadership ranks. Now we’re talking about the “B” (belonging). Yet the lack of true diversity, equity and inclusion in our workplaces and leadership remains.
An emphasis on welcoming diverse minds and bodies into leadership is still very much needed. Diverse board representation remains low and among executive team numbers it’s even lower (women’s representation 15-28%, ethnic minority representation 13-17%, with executive team numbers lower than board members). Improvement in these numbers recently has been glacial.
Given that gazillions of dollars have been poured into Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives to create more diverse workplaces, the return above isn’t all that impressive. What gives?
There are plenty of true DEI primers available so I won’t reiterate all the research that tells us about systemic barriers, unconscious bias and the limited impact of performative allyship, but I will summarize what I observe from both our research and the interpersonal dynamics I pick up through coaching many female and underrepresented leaders. I especially want to highlight a few dynamics I think are underappreciated by the White majority in leadership. Knowing these issues can make us better DEI allies to those around us no matter where on the ladder of privilege and inequity we personally hang out.
You can’t change what you don’t see and can’t understand
As a leader, you should be aware by now that unconscious bias is real. While bias awareness should be a part of every DEI program, I’m still surprised how many people don’t understand that it applies to them, because everyone with a mind experiences it. The more you deny it the more you do it, and to live in a diverse and inclusive society we all have to become more conscious of our subconscious stereotypes and work to correct them.
The fact is that our brains were built to sort and judge things, especially people. Millenia of evolution have shaped our brains into highly effective social sorters and judgers, in ways that don’t always align with our conscious values. To create a fair society and workplace, this bears some examination.
By labeling this normal human characteristic of our brain physiology “unconscious bias” we’ve taken some of the stigma out of its previous verbal cues as conscious prejudice and various “-isms” (i.e., racism, sexism, ageism, ableism etc.) Yet this labeling has also made it easier to excuse those who don’t want to do the hard work of:
becoming mindful of how their subconscious operates
aligning their subconscious responses and reactions to others with their conscious values
While there’s no simple trick to mindfulness, much less using it to root out your unconscious bias, I recommend a process from The Racial Healing Handbook of interrogating your racial socialization (i.e., how you learned about race/gender etc.) and rebuilding it as a way to think about surfacing your own biases and changing them to better align with your values.
When you go through a process of becoming conscious of the ways in which your own unconscious biases put you into the mix of DEI problems in your organization, you start to see how subtle, context dependent and interpersonal inclusivity has to be. Yes, there must be structural change in HR policies and practices to remove barriers to DEI, but these structural barriers were created to reinforce the personal world views of the leaders who put them in place. If you want true change it has to start with the leaders’ worldviews and mindsets. This means you.
Structural changes will have minimal effect unless you change your own mindset and, importantly, interpersonal style. Why? Because whether you accept the responsibility or not, as a leader you are a role model and you model cultural norms. In workplace cultures, norms reliably trump rules, which makes you very powerful indeed.
An infatuation with the extremes opens the door to blame and shame
When you become aware of the subtleties of interpersonal inclusion, and take responsibility for the ways you participate in it, this awareness makes it harder for you to project inequity problems onto others. Tracking and changing your own biases, you quickly realize that nothing is black and white (literally) and that the most impactful work gets lost when the extremes are battling it out noisily all around you.
Sadly, our broader culture is losing its tolerance for the more moderate, middle way in many areas of life and work. And when we elevate the extremes at the expense of the murky middle we allow for blame and shame behavior to emerge.
Guess what squashes efforts to bridge the divides that keep us from finding true diversity, equity and inclusion? Yep. Blame and shame (BS), from both extremes. This kind of BS just encourages everyone in the culture to:
project the problem onto other people
avoid our own responsibility to change
drive us into our corners to lick our wounds without engaging with people with different perspectives than ours
Basically, a BS culture is very opposite of what’s needed to encourage true alliances that diminish stereotypes and systemic DEI barriers.
So lose your tolerance for the extremes and invite others into the middle, where the work is hard and the rewards are great.
Healing our cultural -isms requires healing ourselves first
Once you’re on the path to evolving your unconscious biases into conscious behaviors that align with your values, you begin to see how out of alignment many of your behaviors are with the values you hold most dear.
The most common disconnect here is the value of RESPECT. Once you learn to see how your behavior, including small microaggressions born of your good intent, can be unconsciously disrespectful even when you consciously intend it to be kind.
Here’s an idea I’d like to see included more often in programs purporting to further diversity, equity and inclusion goals: we all believe we’re respectful, yet I observe that when it comes to respecting people who are not like us, we’ve tripped into one of the only weaknesses of The Golden Rule. Treating others as you wish to be treated is great advice when others are like us. When they are not like us, a modified version may be more appropriate: “Treat others as they wish to be treated.”
A mindset that allows you to learn how others experience you, and learn how they want to be treated by you (i.e., how you can genuinely show them RESPECT in a way they will feel respected), requires that you center the others’ experience instead of your own.
Centering others is really hard.
We are designed to be the center of our own universe. When we’re like those around us, centering ourselves in a cultural context naturally centers them as well. But it simultaneously “others” those who are not like us until we expand the center to include them, or shift the gravitational center to their context entirely.
Here’s the hardest part. Centering others requires that we be authentically and emotionally secure in our own identity, cultural awareness and biases. And becoming emotionally and authentically secure as a human being requires healing wounds we often don’t even know we have. When it comes to race and gender in particular, every one of us (yes, all of us) carries hurts, guilts and festering, unaddressed anguish. Step one in moving beyond these wounds is to acknowledge that they exist. Beyond that, it’s just work to address them, let some go and evolve your identity to incorporate what’s left behind.
It turns out that efforts to bridge the divides between racial divides, gender expectations, ageist attitudes, sexual orientation beliefs and all kinds of other barriers to DEI requires people to participate in the bridgebuilding who are addressing their own interpersonal biases and healing their own wounds. This requires multiple safe spaces, for people who share the same healing journey and for those whose wounds challenge one another.
Here’s the key implication to successful DEI efforts, one we too often ignore at our peril: people who are processing their own pain struggle to engage effectively in healing a divide with others who’s simultaneous healing process triggers their own. I’ve experienced this myself in coming to terms with my own White privilege (still a work in progress). In several encounters with Black people, my unprocessed guilt made me extra sensitive to their righteous anger at White people, and in those moments I was not able to be my best self, even though I tried. Later, having developed a better understanding of where I bore responsibility for abusing my privilege and where I didn’t, I was able to be more gracious and understanding in similar interactions.
By contrast, when those well into their own healing come together to support each other instead of trigger each other, they can build bridges together. But crossing it must still be a healing journey for everyone.
Changemaker, heal thyself.
Allyship requires two-way relationships and agreement
Once you’re productively in bridge-building mode across racial-ethnic, gender, generational, neurodiverse and so many other divides, things get interesting. The term popularly used to describe how people, especially White people, should participate in bringing down DEI barriers is “allyship,” advocating that White people (and White Men especially) must ally with marginalized and underrepresented groups.
But most allyship descriptions I’ve come across in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 101 programs try to tell White people what they should do, as though they are so powerful that by engaging some individuals to simply change their behavior they can undo centuries of systemic oppression.
Sorry, White people, we’re not THAT powerful. Thinking that if we change all by ourselves the whole system will change is centering us and violating that RESPECT principle by excluding from the solution the very people we want to help. True allyship requires building alliances, “negotiated” agreements about how all parties will behave in support of each other. It requires relationship, dialog, give, take and some level of sacrifice and change by all parties. And when it comes to DEI issues, the underrepresented and marginalized people have sacrificed enough. White people need to step up here more than ever. Let’s start by uncentering ourselves. When it’s hard you know you’re doing the work.
You can’t fake it
Finally, all this work is just so hard–and perceived as so tangential to most organization’s missions–that it’s easier to throw bazillions of dollars, a Chief Diversity Officer and some public relations at the problem.
“Checked the diversity box! What’s next on the agenda?”
We have a word for this insincere and ineffective kind of DEI initiative: Performative Allyship. Because we have a word for it, we can now see it. And because we can see it, we can hold others accountable to not choose it.
Don’t be that leader. Move beyond Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 101. Refuse to check the box. Start down the intra-personal journey to diversity, equity and inclusion across our divides. Do the hard work to become a better person and you’ll be removing barriers for others along the way. Win-win.
InPower Women’s Mastermind
We don’t Mastermind your business. We Mastermind YOU!
Women in the workplace are struggling against burnout and career interruption as they recover from extra burdens placed on them from the pandemic. (See comments for details.)
As a woman, this feels like an uphill climb and to the mentors and allies who want to help them it can make you feel helpless.
But unless we find ways to help women who want to stay in the workforce, companies will continue to struggle with Employee Retention and poverty rates for women (including many single mothers) will remain higher than for men.
What can any of us do?
Ask a woman what conditions would allow her to stay in the workforce and contribute her best? Help her negotiate to get what she needs. Tell her what she’s doing right and tell her when it’s enough
Check your own biases to make sure you’re not part of the problem (asking women to fix themselves is not the solution to systemic and interpersonal bias) Believe in her and tell her that you do.
Keeping women healthily engaged in the workforce requires personal and systemic change, for all of us. And when we do it, women bring their commitment, creativity and spirit to help us all succeed. What have you got to lose?
How have you helped a woman succeed? Share your experience in comments below.
Much is written about how few women make it into the top leadership positions. The reasons are complex and multilayered, so there is much to write. But I consistently find several mentoring tips for women both maximally effective and minimally understood when I talk to women pursuing leadership positions: DO HARD.
On its face, this advice is pretty simple: stay in your stretch zone and learn to master feelings of uncertainty, discomfort and periodic failure while you learn and grow. This can be more challenging for some women than men, which is actually a dynamic that is written about often (e.g., imposter syndrome). But what’s less often explored is WHY it’s so important for women to overcome their culturally ingrained reservations about taking on big challenges, and how to do it authentically in our modern business culture.
The truth is that regardless of your gender, race, personality type or upbringing, leadership is hard. The leaders who are leading now, who are selecting their replacements for the future, are keen to spot talent that knows this, who takes on “hard” with enthusiasm, and who succeeds more often than not. A woman may have to overcome unconscious bias to be selected, but if she isn’t viewed as someone capable of “doing hard,” she’ll never get the shot at it at all.
So if you want into leadership, it’s never too early to take on “hard” and learn to succeed at it. This will look different at different points in your career, and the path is not always a straight line up the ladder. Below are the career development mentoring tips for women I never received, and which would have dramatically reshaped my own career and that of many other women I’ve helped along the way.
Women are often accused of being risk averse. Like men, some are, some aren’t and overall women are no more risk averse than men. Women do tend to pay a high price for failure and work harder for success, so it’s understandable that they do not seek opportunities to fail as eagerly as the men who are more likely to be given “a pass” while learning to manage risk.
Learning to manage risk, in your business and in your career, is a leadership skill that is learned in your stretch zone. The mentoring tips for women here are that your goal is to learn how to stay in “the butter zone” of your stretch zone, the place where you’re exploring risk, stretching and learning without exposing yourself (or your business) beyond your risk tolerance.
Mastering your stretch zone to become friends with risk is not the same as taking a stretch assignment once in a while, it’s a way of working that ensures you’re always operating in your stretch zone in one way or another. It means you’re always pushing yourself to take on and mitigate risk, learn from failure and hone your instincts for success. You don’t have to wait until you’re managing a team or company to stretch yourself and learn about risk. You can start day one in your career.
What risks are you taking now?
What responsibility is stretching you to learn and grow?
How can mastering this level of risk and learning set you up for success in your next assignment or the one after that?
Focus on these questions and check in on them weekly and monthly. Pretty soon you’ll be comfortable with the discomfort of your stretch zone.
Broaden Your Career Experience
In addition to learning to manage risk, to become a trusted senior leader in an organization, you have to develop knowledge and competencies outside your functional expertise. This helps you to develop your executive mindset, which focuses on the holistic and strategic success of the entire organization, not just your piece of it.
Practically speaking, women tend to find (and are mentored into) a typically female career path in various overhead functions such as human resources, marketing and customer care. While these areas are certainly important to the healthy functioning of any organization, they are very rarely the talent pools from which CEOs and top executive leaders are chosen.
Rather than being a sign of sexism it’s important to see this dynamic as one that identifies the kind of knowledge and experience needed to run a complex organization successfully. CEOs need to understand the nuts and bolts of revenue generation and revenue and expense balancing. Particularly in commercial companies, experience managing a profit and loss business line is critical.
This understanding opens up a clear opportunity for women to more proactively seek experience in the kinds of roles that do lead to executive and CEO appointments, such as general management (P&L responsibility), business development/sales and technical fields.
Even for women who do not specialize in such “leadership-critical” fields, they can seek broadening assignments that allow them to gain knowledge and experience outside their area of specialization. Such experiences make them more appealing candidates for leadership positions in their own field, as well as open doors for career change.
How many functional areas do you have experience in?
What projects or roles can you take that will broaden your understanding of the business and the industry?
How can you gain experience managing large budgets and/or profit and loss business lines?
It’s never a straight shot to the top. Take your career “sidesteps” with intention and use them to expand your understanding of the business, and yourself. And pass on these mentoring tips to women early in their career, with room to explore before picking their primary path to the top.
Commitment to a Mission without Self Sacrifice – Moving Beyond the Inner Critic
I spent three years interviewing founders and CEOs of small businesses. I asked every person what made them successful through the ups and downs of leading a business from nothing to something (of which there are many). Looking for patterns in education, background, values and demographics, I could find no commonality except one. The single, consistent success characteristic for these top leaders was a total unwillingness to give up in pursuing a purpose outside themselves and their immediate families. This strong mission focus kept them coming back from what others considered defeat, survive bankruptcies and market setbacks, overcome personal failings, doubts and mistakes.
Everyone has an inner voice which helps us become more self-aware and to help us evaluate our performance and improve. This voice is sometimes a champion and sometimes a critic. It will come to no one’s surprise that women’s inner critic voices are usually well developed, if not overly developed. This too often leads women to hold themselves back, give up and burn out.
While there are many strategies to reshape and reframe our inner critics to become useful facilitators of personal growth and development, at some point we have to get out of our heads.
It’s a good idea to take on your #innercritic. Learn when to talk back to it and when to listen to it. But don’t forget to get out of your head and act. Via @DanaTheus ⇐ Click to Tweet
A key driver in leadership success, to help us overcome obstacles both internal and external, is to lean into a mission that matters, without sacrificing ourselves in the process. Committing to a vision of a better future, which is specifically defined for external people and organizations, can help us become willing to fail, be imperfect and get over our personal deficiencies in service to a greater good without becoming martyrs.
Many men have been acculturated, especially through stories of military campaigns and participation in team sports as kids, to identify and motivate themselves with an external mission set, for which they train and prepare themselves to overcome hardships. Girls are less likely to be encouraged into such strong, group and societal-level mission sets. Their acculturation is more likely to be that of helping and serving individuals and more likely to include a belief that sacrificing themselves personally to help others succeed is not only acceptable but preferable.
There is nothing wrong with either of these models for purpose and mission, however to succeed in organizational leadership, a healthy focus on external, group-level missions is vital. It operates as a natural incentive to help us get past our personal doubts, become willing to learn from failure and invest in our own resilience so we have the reserves to keep going when times get tough.
What purpose drives you to take personal and organizational risk?
How does your current work move you closer to achieving your personal mission?
What is so important to you that you will invest in yourself in order to make it successful?
Leadership is hard. When you develop the habit of “doing hard” in your career, you can hone yourself into the person who can and will lead others to success. Be kind to yourself along the way, but do hard to achieve great things.
And if you’re working to help reduce gender inequality in your sphere, please give share these mentoring tips for women that may help them see their career challenges in a new light. And thank you.
The worst feeling in the world is standing up to make a high-stakes presentation and hearing the voice of your inner critic or the imposter nattering in your ear. It can be deflating and it’s almost always anxiety-producing.
If you’re not careful the Imposter Syndrome will undermine your performance and credibility before an audience that needs to know how good you are.
There are lots of deeply introspective ways to reprogram your inner voices to support you, but in the moment you’re under pressure, who has time for all that?
Here’s a quick tip. When you hear your inner voice casting self-doubt, do this:
Don’t fight it or even pay attention to it. Remember why you’re there and who invited you to this table. Let their faith in you be real. “If they think I can do it, I believe I can do it.”
After all, when you’re playing a high-stakes game, a lack of faith in yourself is a lack of faith in everyone who genuinely believes you should be there.
You just have to let their faith carry you through the end of the event. And if it’s successful, allow the success in. Take credit for it. This will quiet down your inner voice of doubt.
Over time, this little trick will help you move beyond “fake it ‘til you make it” confidence strategies and build up an authentic belief in yourself that is always present.
Try it!
What are your tips for managing the inner critic? Share your ideas in comments below.
Large scale change, a new software system, a culture change initiative or a new business investment can create havoc for those unprepared and major opportunity for those who seize it. In this discussion with Brand Transitions expert, Donita Prakash she shares some of the change management secrets she’s learned working with Fortune 500 clients navigating mergers, acquisitions and other large scale changes. Takeaways include:
insight on what’s really going on in the executive suite behind the scenes
strategies to use major change to catapult your career
tips for surviving the stress
Scroll down for 38 min Video, Audio and transcript.
See below for audio file and full transcript.
Listen to Audio File
FULL TRANSCRIPT OF “Change Management Secrets: Leading (and Surviving) Large Scale Change“
(please pardon automation-inspired typos)
[00:00:00] Dana Theus: Hi everybody. This is Dana at the with InPower Coaching and I’m here with Donita Prakash with Brand Transitions. And we’re gonna be talking about the unique dynamics of large scale change today. with a particular emphasis on the kind of things that we anyway, don’t see, talked about enough sort of those undisclosed dynamics of organizational change and what you can do if you’re leading it or just surviving it to, to get underneath the change and be a, and have it work to your advantage. So I want to introduce. Donita I’ve known Donita way too long. As a matter of fact, I was going back through your LinkedIn Donita. I think maybe you were at AOL when we met or maybe you had just left.
[00:00:41] Donita Prakash: Yeah. maybe right about that time.
[00:00:43] Dana Theus: Exactly. And through Acumen and everything, like we’ve, we’ve been friends and colleagues for a very long time and this is a conversation you and I have privately a lot, and I’m glad that we’ll be having it, publicly and also in our women’s mastermind next month as well.
[00:00:57] And Donita, I’m going to let you introduce yourself and brand transitions, but I will say that through the entire time I’ve known you, you have been one of the most creative thinkers. And even when you’re not in a startup, Company, you have a startup mindset and like me, you seem a little addicted to change, which is pretty cool. I like that. But you’ve managed to make it into a successful career. So why don’t you give us a sense of, of who you are now?
[00:01:23] Donita Prakash: Yeah. Thank you, Dana. And I’m just thrilled to be here and love talking to you and, will be excited to share some of this, that, like you said, we’ve had private conversations about before a larger audience.
[00:01:36] So I’m the CEO of brand transitions. We turn mergers and acquisitions actions into bottom line success when people have to migrate brands. And what that means usually is the company names are changing, right. Because one company has bought the other. They retire that other company name, but often it’s product names are also merging and melding and being recast in the marketplace.
[00:02:03] So we do program management and strategic communications around all that change and have been involved in some really large scale efforts and have learned from our clients who are the brand and marketing leaders in these organizations.
[00:02:18] And you know, something else you do though. I don’t know if you do it officially through brand transitions, but you’re very active in the innovation community.
[00:02:26] Oh yeah. That’s my side hustle. I actually work in some local universities. George Washington university and George Mason university, and done a little bit with university of Maryland in their innovation program. So I instruct on lean startup and how you use customer discovery to learn about your customer before you invest a lot of money in a startup.
[00:02:49] Dana Theus: Now who knows actually, that’d be an interesting conversation point for us to talk about, which is sort of the, the, the lean startup concept and change, you know, because like with like agile development and technology, you know, there’s this kind of merger of traditional change concepts with these newer fresher approaches to development. And doing cool stuff. So I hope we get into that.
[00:03:11] So first, so Donita what’s like the biggest change you’ve ever been part of, like what was characteristic of that?
[00:03:18] Donita Prakash: Sure. So one of the first engagements I received on this topic that kind of led me to establishing a whole consulting firm focused on it was Gartner’s acquisition of corporate executive board.
[00:03:34] So Gartner bought corporate executive board for 2.6 billion. I was brought on board by the brand leaders. Of the firm to, to essentially digest that, that acquisition and integrate the various,
[00:03:49] Dana Theus: Did they give you a really big bottle of Tums?
[00:03:51] Donita Prakash: That’s how it felt some days. For sure. and you know, those are two pretty big organizations had been competing in the market. So that, that makes it challenging when your competitor buys you. Right. And you now have to be part of the bigger. Flow. And to some extent they were purchased because of some of their innovation, but some of the things also you know, were felt that it was done better in the, in the mothership and sorting all that out was part of our, our challenge.
[00:04:22] Worked across 18 different business units. It’s it. Wasn’t just marketing it. Wasn’t just slapping a logo on new materials. It was, you know, let’s get in the weeds of the trademarks and which ones are we gonna keep and which ones go and how do you do all the legal stuff and merge them together? How do you change signs on buildings around the world?
[00:04:44] So it was a huge project. It took 18 months to, to complete, and even some of that, you know, certain products were on a longer lead time. So quite a big deal, lots of great interaction with the teams, working with the, both the CEB team, as well as Gartner and getting them all on the. Same page fun and exciting.
[00:05:06] And I, I loved it so much, as I said, I’ve gone on to make my firm all about this, this type of work and brought other people on board. And,
[00:05:15] and so just, just to paint the picture of like, in the situation where there’s an acquisition or a merger, as opposed to a, a more isolated change that only affects, you know, part of the organization.
[00:05:25] Dana Theus: One of the things that is interesting, and I, and I’m curious about your perception of this, which. So there are all these, there are multiple changes going on, right? So operational integration and and you know, human resources, integration and asset integration, financial integration, marketing, and identity integration.
[00:05:42] All those things are kind of happening in parallel. And you you’ve, you’ve kind of been owning the marketing and identity and external communication piece. Is that the right place to put you on?
[00:05:53] Donita Prakash: Right. So I, I typically get involved with the brand and like I said, I work with the brand leaders who are typically marketing.
[00:06:00] Sometimes it’s a CMO directly, but it is it sort of is, and. All about brand is everywhere. And so typically there is a team who’s focusing on the financial integration and there’s certainly many teams focused on the operational integration, but all of those almost always have brand touchpoints.
[00:06:21] And so. In select ways you weigh in like, Hey, you’re going to update the invoice and bring all the invoicing together, make sure it’s got the new brand. And maybe here’s the new message. If there’s a message on that invoice, you know, for example the brand leaders were busy in the meantime, trying to figure out, you know, what’s our new message.
[00:06:40] Now we’re this much bigger company. How do we accurately describe ourselves? And the whole fact of why we bought them was to have bigger market share, to get more mind share within the C-suite. So whole new messaging structure around who the company was had to be developed. And it wasn’t developed out of the gate.
[00:07:01] You know, it was kind of changing the wheels on the bus while it was moving. And as those pieces started to come together, We would continue to roll those out as we were you know, managing the program of, of change that was going on within the firm.
[00:07:14] Dana Theus: Well, and, and this is, so this is getting me ahead of where I thought we’d be at this point in the conversation, but yeah, I want to bring it up, which is now you and I both come out of marketing.
[00:07:24] So we have a communication centric lens on a lot of things. Right. However, the point you’re making, I think is really critical on multiple levels that. In my experience, you know, when there is change the underappreciated aspect of it, that when it’s surfaced becomes actually part of the glue, that brings it together.
[00:07:43] But when it’s not surfaced, it keeps driving us apart is the fact that it is an identity shift. You know, and, and like you’re talking about is like, okay, so we have a new logo. Great. But it has to be everywhere, which means, you know, everybody doing an invoice, everybody’s sending an email, everybody, you know, all these people that are doing things, all the boxes that get shipped, you know, like everything, the company touches that creates the experience.
[00:08:08] The brand experience of working with the company has to have an identity shift. And a lot of the times we think of it as a logo and it really is much, much deeper than that. So I’m, I’m curious about your experience of those deeper layers of the identity?
[00:08:20] Donita Prakash: Well, I was going to say maybe this is that place where kind of the small startup and the bigger company, I mean, CEB and Gartner were almost equals, so it was a little bit different and maybe the CEB people came in with a little more corporate mindset.
[00:08:36] But when, what I have seen is when a bigger company buys a smaller company, And especially in the tech world software companies, you know, it’s all about culture these days, right? As a company starts up and starts to grow, they’re building that emotional loyalty with their employees and their customers about who they are.
[00:08:56] And. To disrupt that by saying, Hey, we, you know, new company has now bought us and we are now new company is very disruptive emotionally, right? Like you have been trained. And it’s the whole reason you’re at this company is because you just love the culture and you love who they are. But the opportunity, the flip side is now you have, they bought you because you are innovative, right.
[00:09:21] And you have that opportunity to bring that in to a larger organization with more scale. Which is exciting in my opinion, but can be hard, certainly.
[00:09:32] Dana Theus: Yeah. And I, I have several clients actually, who are, have gone through this over the last year. You know, being purchased as either the innovative part of the company. Actually, I think they were all purchased to be the innovative part of the company. I could be wrong on that. And there’s a lot of cultural resistance that, you know, you get one message, which is we want your innovation. We want all your new ideas. You guys have such good energy. You know, we, we, you’re doing great things in the market. We want that.
[00:09:57] And then you hit this buzz saw of not , you know, not invented here. That’s not the way we do things, et cetera.
[00:10:03] Donita Prakash: Right. Or stop using your credit card to charge your expenses. And now you have to apply, you know, like, you know, now there’s a process, right. You know, It feels like, oh, this is this doesn’t align with the innovation I signed up for.
[00:10:17] But you hit on the note, which is kind of like real estate location, location, location, change management secrets are just communication, communication, communication. Like, you know, you can screw up almost everything else, but if you get the communication. You’re in a much better place. And that goes for how you’re communicating with the customer, but then you also need to employ, communicate with the employees before you communicate with the customer.
[00:10:44] And you need to keep that in lockstep. And sometimes in these complex mergers and acquisitions, you need to do it at a product level because customers have. Certain loyalties around certain product features and the sales teams are organized such that that aligns. And you just, the, the comms plans are very complex if they’re done right, frankly.
[00:11:07] And that’s part of what we help people figure out.
[00:11:10] Dana Theus: So, so let’s, let’s dive into that for a minute because I think this is, I think what you said is absolutely true, even if it’s not a. Merger and acquisition, you know, you’re just, you’re bringing in a new software system or you’re going to launch a new product or, I mean, there’s a lot of changes that are disruptive, even when it’s not company wide and communication is always key. What, what would you say are the underappreciated aspects of communication that are commonly done wrong? That if we just, if there are just a few things we could do, right, we’d make this all better. I can a couple, but I, but you’re the expert. You’re the one that does this day in and day.
[00:11:43] Donita Prakash: So, well, some of the, I just learned from my clients for the most part, but I have a recent case where it was a, a larger SAS software firm buying a couple of smaller ones. We came up with a framework that I thought worked really well. So one was let the employees know. Before the change happens to them.
[00:12:04] Like, don’t be reactive. Make sure if they’re, you’re going to change their email address or something, you know, you’re going to make them log into a different system, make sure they know in advance. And that it gets echoed. Like one email probably isn’t enough. You need to put it in D various places where they might see it and have their manager reinforce it, et cetera.
[00:12:23] Like. Nothing like, you know, frankly, one on one communication to make people, make sure people know what what’s happening and why it’s important, framing it in how to do their job better is usually the best way to do that. So how is this change going to make your job better, easier, you know, your career. More productive, you know, your career path, bigger, whatever the benefits are.
[00:12:49] You really have to hone in on that and make sure you lead the communications consistently around that. Here’s why we’re doing it. We’re reminding you here. Why are we doing it? And here’s what’s going to happen. And then finally having a consistent voice. So. Sometimes when one company buys another, like all the leadership leaves, but pick one person who is still trusted within the community that you’re communicating with and have them be that voice of change.
[00:13:18] And so if there’s an email campaign of three messages to make sure they know about the change, have it be that person consistently, I think that’s a simple.
[00:13:27] Dana Theus: And I want, I want to pull out something else you said, which I think so putting my coaching hat on and also thinking about organizations I’ve worked with from an OD standpoint, organizational design, through change sort of thing.
[00:13:39] Something that, you know, speaking now to the executives who are usually the ones doing this, is they like to think, well, you know, we’ll just decide and then sure. We’ll tell them it’s coming the week before it comes or we’ll tell people it’s coming and then, and then they’ll just go do it. mm-hmm and they forget that these are real people and that those managers, like you’re saying the manager reinforcing it is critical, but for the manager to actually voice it and say, yeah, this is important.
[00:14:04] They, they have to have processed that. Change themselves. Some. Right. So, so they, they have to have not only gotten an email themselves the night before, but you know, they have to have had a chance to ask questions, a chance to give feedback a chance to say, well, you know, the way you’re talking about doing it would be better if you did it this way.
[00:14:23] Right. or else, they don’t really feel like they can represent the change effectively. So too often, and I’m thinking of one organization in particular, everybody below the executive suite just said it was like this constant lobbying of. Do this, do this every week, you know, we’re gonna do this differently.
[00:14:39] And the next week the executives say, well, how come it’s not done yet? And then three things have come over the wall since. Right. And they never really engaged that middle level. Who were the people that everybody else was looking to to say, what does this mean? And, and. , you know, how should we do it in the middle?
[00:14:54] Level’s like, we don’t know. We just get the same emails you do two days before, right?
[00:14:58] Donita Prakash: Yeah, I think it does really depending on the size of the change, it does really help to have sort of a change committee. And, different parts of the organization represented in one place. So you can vet some of those, like vetting, the communications is half the battle too.
[00:15:17] Like let’s draft it, but then let’s run it by the managers. Right. Did do they, is this the right tone of voice? Is this telling the benefits enough? You know, is it too long, too short? You know, I do think there’s sort of an. A current emphasis on speed, over quality, which comes back to bite people sometimes in that, you know, what you were describing, you know, just get it done, right.
[00:15:41] Like just get it done and let’s throw it out there. But there are definitely are ramifications to that approach.
[00:15:46] Dana Theus: You know, something else is made me think a lot of the times we, we think of communications at the end, we’ve made all the decisions. Now, somebody you marketing go communicate it.
[00:15:56] And in reality, when you have like that vetting process, you vet the communications, things can come back up the stream. Right. Either some, some are substantive like, oh, we didn’t realize it was going to have this effect. Maybe we should make a different decision. And sometimes it’s, it’s less substantive, but more, you know, emotional and, and related to how you communicate it.
[00:16:18] But the point is when you factor that vetting process, Of the communications. You often pick up a whole other dimension of how to actually do the change mm-hmm and, and it becomes a, a resource in the change process, but, but not if you treat it as like the, the tail wagging the dog
[00:16:34] Donita Prakash: Yeah. A hundred percent.
[00:16:36] And. You know, when I think about the various projects that our company’s been involved with quite often they get rescheduled for, for good, valid reasons, right? Like this group’s not ready yet, or, Hey, we’re going to impact sales. And the sales plan of this year, that’s too much of a risk let’s delay, the change part so that we can deliver on the revenue plan that we committed to in order to then change next year, essentially. So it’s quite common. I think that just what you said once you are involving the people that matter, you start to hear certain consequences that were not originally envisioned and you needed to plan for and, and revise the plan.
[00:17:16] Dana Theus: And maybe, maybe that’s a good bridge into the question of innovation and resistance to change, because a lot of the time that process like the, oh, wait, we didn’t see all the ramifications. Let’s take another look. A lot of people. Look at that and say, well, that’s, they’re just resisting the change. Or people are like, dang it. That’s not, that’s not the plan we had, but if you take an innovation mindset, you’re kinda like, wait, okay, it’s a more fluid reality where you just learn more information.
[00:17:41] Let’s adjust our thinking to this new level of information, same process, let’s delay somewhere, you know, for a good reason, same process, but a much different feel when you’re looking at it as we’re off schedule versus this is let’s innovate and adapt and, and adjust.
[00:18:01] And you know, we, we did this, this is, this is what’s happening, you know? Oops. A few things are falling on the floor. Does that mean we have to change what we’re doing or not? Or can we adjust in a different way? So, absolutely. And you’re right. It’s, it’s sort of how you frame it, right? If you just come in and say, no, well, this is not possible.
[00:18:23] You know, you guys. Are trying to do things too fast versus, Hey, here’s the ramifications, here’s the risks, right? Here’s the rewards and here’s the risks. And right now we think on balance, maybe the risks are too high and we might want to reevaluate dates or, or approaches, frankly. And what’s a level of success that we’re trying to go for.
[00:18:45] Dana Theus: But, but in this context, what is your philosophy about resistance to change? You know, Everybody says people hate change. People hate change. I, I’m not sure. I believe that.
[00:18:53] Donita Prakash: Yeah. I mean, honestly, every team I’ve ever worked with and we’ve seen across these clients if, if people are in the group, that’s trying to enact the change, then it’s a whole new goal.
[00:19:07] Right. And people like to complete goals. So I think it’s the. Making sure people are on board with the goal. And that again, all about communication beginning, mostly at the executive level, Hey, we’re coming to your department for this. Like, who’s your person, you know you know, make sure they’re on board with why this is important.
[00:19:26] But getting that team buy in really helps, I think. And then they kind of are the advocate. Deeper into the organization, as they’re working with their individual teams in order to make something happen. So I actually see less resistance to change. I see more people missing the opportunity of change. I think that’s maybe a. One of those under discussed opportunities out there in a change.
[00:19:52] Dana Theus: You think missing the opportunity, cuz it’s not presented to them in a way that they can see the opportunity or they just kind of don’t look for it or both.
[00:19:59] Donita Prakash: I think again, we’re talking about the situation where maybe it’s a smaller company that’s been bought by a bigger company.
[00:20:05] The smaller company point of view might be again because they’ve been emotionally sort of trained to be. Very passionate about their small company culture. It’s harder. They come in sort of with a, you know, oh, this is going to be bad kind of viewpoint, a kind of negative viewpoint, but really any change is a huge opportunity to, you know, shine your light, you know, make recommendations.
[00:20:31] That’s what every company is hungry for is how can we do something better? You know, we just bought this company. Because of their innovation, you know, bring me the innovation. And that means people need to be able to feel comfortable taking the risk to recommend new things or even to call out issues.
[00:20:50] But again, you always want to partner that with, well, what’s your recommendation.
[00:20:54] Dana Theus: Yeah. And I, and I think too, the, one of the biggest dynamics that I see under discussed and underappreciated. That often appears as resistance to change, but I don’t think is, is when, they hear, well, we want your ideas, you know, we, we want your recommendations and then people say what they think and they don’t feel heard now. Sometimes they are heard, they just not agreed with and it’s not all about you getting your way. Right. but, but, but quite often, they’re not really heard. They’re allowed to speak, but that’s not the same as being heard. That’s not being, that’s not the same as saying, okay, so what you’re saying is this, and this can be happening either on interpersonal level or an organizational level.
[00:21:36] So this is the feedback we’re getting. Here’s how we have processed it, how we’re thinking about it, what we’re taking in, what we can’t take in, you know, all of which, let’s the people who are allowed to speak to say, oh, wow, I really was hurt. Just because they didn’t do everything I wanted. doesn’t mean I didn’t have an impact.
[00:21:52] And a lot of the time. That can be part of the vetting process of the communication. It can be part of the initial change design. There’s a lot of different ways you can decide what will change, but engage people and how to communicate it or how to roll it out in a way that allows people to be heard. So that being heard piece is, is at all levels, organizationally and interpersonally just constantly. just shoved aside. Yeah. And yet it can make all the difference in the world.
[00:22:17] Donita Prakash: And the one rule you there is a rule which is, don’t ask people’s opinion if you’re not going to act on it. Right. And so that’s like a big, no, no. And. Something that we are constantly challenging. You know, if, if there is gonna be some solicitation of input, then make sure that you have a plan to act on it.
[00:22:37] Dana Theus: Right. Which isn’t
[00:22:38] the same as doing what people tell you they want you to do. Right. Which is a lot of people hear they go, oh, well, if I have to act on it, that means I have to do everything everybody wants. It’s like, no, you just have to listen and respond to take the good ideas.
[00:22:50] Donita Prakash: And report back, right. And report back, you, you hit on that, which is tell people what’s happening with that input. Even if it’s we put these in a parking lot, cuz we just can’t get to ’em this year.
[00:23:01] Dana Theus: Yep, exactly, exactly. Sort of one other thought on that, and I’m curious as we sort of move to closing. So if people have specific questions, please, please raise your hand talking about these, you know, communications tips.
[00:23:14] Like if you’re leading a change or you’re managing a change management secrets and communications tips. One of the things that I think is a part of the. Under appreciated aspect of the identity shift is it’s one thing to say, well, the company is shifting its identity, but the people have to shift their identity too.
[00:23:30] Sometimes it’s because they have a new title or a new reporting structure. But oftentimes they may have the same title and same reporting structure, but that brand on their email or their business card, if those still exist, you know, You know, like, like there is an identity shift that people need to process.
[00:23:46] They have to come to have understand the meaning of the new brand, the new role, the new market presence, you know, whatever it is. So, so what are your top communications tips? for getting people into their new identity and, and new way of thinking about whatever the change was.
[00:24:05] Donita Prakash: Yeah. Some of the best practices I’ve seen is there is an acknowledgement of the fact that, there’s a new, personal brand is, is what we tend to call it.
[00:24:17] Right. That goes to how do you represent yourself? And. To your exact point. You need to know what to say. And so giving people sort of the, the speaking points is very important, especially in sales, right? Because they’re the ones talking to the customers, but you really want to offer that up to everyone.
[00:24:35] Like, and I think many companies today are having innovative use of technology where they do a brand video. Right. Which gives you those speaking points. They. They do some recordings of employees going from, you know, here’s what we used to say to here’s what we say now. So they actually invest some resources in making sure that is widely communicated across the new, bigger organization of, Hey, here’s how we talk about ourselves now.
[00:25:03] And that’s not to be taken lightly. That’s how you transfer that brand equity and get that bigger. Bang in the marketplace because you’ve invested, you’ve invest millions in your branding, right? You, if you’ve invested in it, you want everybody to use it and all your employees are your sales people at, at the end of the day because they represent you out there in the marketplace, regardless of what their role is.
[00:25:25] So. One, one thing I wanted to jump in, I know it’s the last few minutes, but you had specifically about managers. I think managers have a special role in doing a couple things, one inspiring trust. So we all, you know, have a low level of trust these days for organizations, but often the people to people, stuff is the high level of trust.
[00:25:47] Continue to do what you say you’re going to do is, is really important to inspire trust in your, your employees be humble, which means in my opinion, be open to new opportunities. Like maybe it be invented here. Like maybe you should challenge that. Maybe there’s a new process that might be better. And then finally for everyone be bold, like, as I was saying, make recommendations, be proactive.
[00:26:12] If you think you’re going to lose your job. The what’s the downside of you taking a stand and trying to be an innovator, right? Like you get some practice doing that. But frankly you’ll get noticed and you’ll probably not lose your job, right. Because you’re a thinker. So those three things would be mine advice.
[00:26:28] I, well, the last one would be bold.
[00:26:30] Dana Theus: I think that that’s always good advice but I think during change, you know, it’s really, there’s a lot of incentives to put your head. You know, there’s a lot of incentives not to do the thing or bring attention to yourself. And yet when things are fluid, that’s when the organization needs people to kind of stand up and say, you know, not only innovative, but also just.
[00:26:53] Stand for whatever decisions have to be made, you know, and not run away from conflict and discomfort. And so it’s an opportunity to become recognized as someone who gets that and can think at that higher level and can manage discomfort and uncertainty, all of which are leadership characteristics.
[00:27:10] And if you think about it, In the day to day of business, there are fewer opportunities than there are during change to be seen as someone who can manage an uncertainty. And so in some ways it’s the best environment to stand up, not just to be seen, but to prove to yourself and to gain the skills of.
[00:27:28] you know, managing in chaos and, and not needing to know all the answers to, to be able to produce results and get things done.
[00:27:35] Donita Prakash: Yeah. A hundred percent. And those are the skills we all need in this future world of work, you know everything’s getting pushed down to the individual level and you got to make your plans and, and make recommendations like a manager, even if you’re not, frankly.
[00:27:50] Dana Theus: Yeah.
[00:27:51] And, and if you’re worried about losing your job, come up with. I call it the plan B you know, like your plan B list of things to do like, well, if I get fired, if I quit tomorrow, what would be the first 10 things I’d do? And if you have that in your hip pocket, it kind of frees you a little bit, not to take stupid risks, but you know, to be thinking more freely like, well, I have a plan.
[00:28:10] If, if I lose my job, I, I have a, I have a way forward.
[00:28:13] Donita Prakash: I love that. Yeah.
[00:28:15] So it’s a little, a little less scary. Well just so I think we are officially done with all the points you and I had planned to talk about. And I’m curious as to whether there’s folks on the line. Who are wondering about applying these principles to specific kinds of change, like, you know, a, a new product launch or a reorganization there’s a lot of change around reorganization that I think a lot of these principles apply to.
[00:28:39] Equally. And sometimes we just think, well, we publish a new org chart but it needs to be communicated. You need to think about the ramifications. You need to involve people and get the managers conversant about what this change is going to mean to, to other people. So if anyone has any specific questions or thoughts, now’s the time to offer them or share them or ask questions.
[00:28:59] And so Donita, I’ll just ask you this one last question while we Wait. Oh, it’s Jasmine. And I’m just going to put the question out there for maybe Jasmine has an opinion on this too. which is, are there any gender dynamics that you experience about change that are worth us talking about?
[00:29:16] Jasmine Lamb: Well first, thank you so much for this conversation. It’s really interesting. And I really am grateful, Dana, that you just brought that point up of when we’re maybe talking about smaller change than a whole merger. But just change within the organization that, that.
[00:29:34] We live in and that is happening right now in my department by adding an additional person. And that’s, who’s Haley, who’s also listening here. And I just wonder if you would speak more to that point, because I think that, This, conversation’s helping me think about some of the communication steps that we are going to want to take as a department in even the coming weeks, to start to help, especially our leadership team, understand how the changes in this department is going to impact them because there’s lots of things where they used to come to me for something.
[00:30:07] And now they’re going to need to go to Haley and it’s going to be like, there’s going to be confusion about who should, who should be at the table. And also just you know, new relationships forming and I just would love to hear any other kind of tips you have for that kind of internal change process, where all everybody’s aware this has happened.
[00:30:25] And yet I think most of them have not thought at all about how it’s going to actually impact them, besides the people who are actually getting a new supervisor. But outside of that, I’m, I’m my guess is people haven’t really thought about how this is actually going to be a pretty big change that they’re going to experience.
[00:30:39] Donita Prakash: So one, one thought I have Jasmine is, goes back to one of those principles around communicating. How does bringing a new person on in your department help your clients, your internal clients do their job better. Right. So making it in context of what’s the win for them. And then maybe if you need to communicate within your own department similarly, and maybe it’s a different when you know, how is, is this helping them do their job?
[00:31:09] Dana Theus: Yeah, I think that’s a good one. And I think the other thing is so there was one thing to send out the email and say, Haley’s here. Welcome Haley. You know, this is her job description and here’s her title and, and and, and. You have to do that. And in that context, as Donita says, it’s an opportunity to sort of say why this is great.
[00:31:28] It’s also an opportunity for you to provide a vision of your department. And how it’s evolving, you know, to, to, to reframe and reestablish how they should see, not just her or you and her, or, you know, the individuals, but your whole department and what you’re capable of with, with this new headcount.
[00:31:47] But I do think so it’s a great opportunity to kind of re articulate reticulate everybody’s identity. But then when it comes down to like, well, who should they call? And things like that. There’s probably, you know, 10 different meetings that Haley will go to instead of somebody else. And, and, you know, you’ll be shuffling around the responsibilities and you can list all those 10 things.
[00:32:08] But frankly, one of the best things to do is just to, to find out like, what are those things that they usually. Would go to you for, or somebody else that now they’ll go to her for and just call that out and say, you know how you usually call me with this kind of problem and this kind of problem, and this kind of problem.
[00:32:23] Now I want you to call Haley and they’ll go great. And then they’ll forget, and they’ll call you and you go, remember how I told you that now for these kind of problems you need to call Haley . So you, you just, you know, be patient say, okay, you know, And once they’ve, they’ve been reminded a few times, it’s kind of like learning a new piece of software or they something on your software menu changes and you keep doing the wrong thing three times.
[00:32:44] And after three times you realize, oh right, this is the menu item I have to go to. It’s like retrain it’s muscle memory, you know, and you have to be patient with that. And you can use it particularly with senior management as an opportunity to reiterate how. Oh, well, you know, now Haley can, is now able to do this so that I can do this, or somebody else can do this and use those as excuses to remind them of the bigger shift that’s happened.
[00:33:07] But in reality, it’s just changing the muscle memory, you know, one person at a time, hopefully several times.
[00:33:13] Donita Prakash: Yeah. I mean, sometimes we feel like we’re repeating ourselves, but again a brief second and in their mind about your departmental changes is going to be forgotten. So I would just, you know, it’s just like brand recognition, like seven times.
[00:33:29] You need to tell them seven times. I think it’s the same on any kind of change. You have to keep reiterating it and, and reinforcing.
[00:33:36] Dana Theus: Yeah. And that, I mean, going back to the communications principle in general, those of us who make the change, we’ve been thinking about it for months, maybe years, you know, this is, this is very old hat to us.
[00:33:47] By the time we started communicating it. And we forget that other people haven’t been spending that same amount of time and energy on it, and we just have to be patient while. Come back around and consistent, we have to be consistent. So if you want them to go to Haley for something instead of you, but then they come to you and you’re like, oh, I can just do that.
[00:34:05] You’ve just untrained them again.
[00:34:07] I don’t know if that answered your question, Jasmine.
[00:34:09] Jasmine Lamb: Yes, that was incredibly helpful. I really appreciate it.
[00:34:13] Dana Theus: You’re welcome. Anyone else have a specific question? I am curious, donate if you had any of those any thoughts on the gender dynamic?
[00:34:21] Donita Prakash: Actually, you know, I did think long and hard about that.
[00:34:23] I can’t point to specific examples, but I will say there are role differences. There are definitely departments in corporations that are more testosterone fueled. I would say just to call out like maybe legal finance, and I think it’s because they’re busy managing the risk of an organization. And so they’re.
[00:34:46] Kind of there maybe of any more change resistant, right. Because you don’t want to mess with the revenue stream or the legal risks. And, and their job is to be the watchdogs of that. So it’s not so much that they’re male or female, frankly, but I, I just feel like they kind of come in guns blazing sometimes when there’s change, they didn’t know about.
[00:35:09] And, you know, even if it’s the first meeting where we’re trying to explain the change, but. I think the way to get past that resistance is to Alli align with them and be their advocate, which is what I’ve found has been really useful is like, Hey, I know you’re trying to get to X. I’m gonna help you get there.
[00:35:26] And you’re gonna have to spend less time on trying to. Communicate why that’s important because I’m gonna have your back basically. Mm-hmm .
[00:35:34] Dana Theus: Yeah, I, and I had a similar reaction in the sense that I, there, I don’t see a huge gender dynamic in the sense. There, there are, there are men and women, both who are very excited about change, and there are those who are not excited about change.
[00:35:47] They do tend to express themselves differently often as we often do, and many things. And just any, any. Any stereotype that a woman has to deal with anyway, is it change is an opportunity either, either turn that stereotype away or to reinforce it for, for women in particular. So that’s, that was kind of, my takeaway was like for women, it’s an opportunity to, if people think you’re gonna be resistant to change.
[00:36:11] Don’t be, you know, show up as yeah. Bold and more solution oriented, and it can be an opportunity to reframe your personal brand. That was kind of my takeaway on that point.
[00:36:20] Donita Prakash: One thing anecdotally I’ve seen is I tend to see women leave more in the case of a merger acquisition, like. To, to leave. And I’ve I’m, I don’t know the reason there.
[00:36:34] But it may be that they feel less empowered to make those changes or to, to come in with recommendations. And that’s one thing I’d like to change. Right. You know, that’s my, the whole thing about be bold, like, you know, make recommendations you’re as informed as anyone about your role. You know, own it and trying to make the change, at least before you, you give up and leave.
[00:36:58] Right.
[00:36:59] Dana Theus: That’s an interesting observation. I have probably anecdotally also seen that. And I don’t know if this is exactly why, but I do notice that during change, there’s a lot of competitive dynamics, musical chairs kind of thing. And some women don’t feel like they can win.
[00:37:15] And some people, some women don’t win because if there’s an old boys club aspect to it and so that they, they feel like their better option is just to leave. And I think that’s very personalized, but I do think it’s real. I do think it’s real, all those things.
[00:37:28] Donita Prakash: Yeah. I tried to find some stat, but I couldn’t find any actual
[00:37:32] Dana Theus: Yeah, haven’t seen any either.
[00:37:33] So good thing. We brought it up now. There we’re a stat on the interwebs All right. Well, thank you so much. Don’t need it for your time. I’m looking forward to taking this into private conversation in our mastermind next month. And I will make sure that wherever this video is posted, there’s connect, you know, links to your website and, and to you. And I want to thank you for your change management secrets and years of friendship and more interesting conversations.
[00:37:53] Donita Prakash: Thank you Dana. Really appreciate it and love to keep going on this conversation.
[00:37:58] Dana Theus: Good. Take care. Everybody care. Bye.
When you’re being considered for a promotion, major contract or new opportunity, what makes you stand out? Your sparkling personality, and even your reputation, will only get you so far.
The core truth is that clients, hiring managers and recruiters will scan your package looking for accomplishments. And the ones that make them say, “Whoa!” are the ones that advance you to the next stage of evaluation.
Accomplishments are the bones of your professional story to date, and they expand (or contract) the scope of what people believe you’re capable of in the future.
So how expansively will people see your future based on what you’ve accomplished so far? How have your accomplishments defined your career to date?
This can feel daunting, but the good news is that you only need a handful of really good ones, spaced out over time, to define your personal brand.
So if you haven’t just landed a huge accomplishment, it’s time to focus. How soon can you accomplish something big, that matters and that benefits people who matter?
Share your tips for achieving big things in comments below.
Everyone has moments of low self-confidence, Imposter Syndrome and performance anxiety. Why do some people move through them while others get stuck?
Well, for one thing when the inner critic gets noisy, it feels terrible, and all too easy to shut down or freeze up (or both!). None of which is good for your career and business success.
So here’s a little tip when you’re feeling unsure in your career, lean into your personal mission.
Missions call to us. Because they matter so much to us and others, they bring to the surface the courage we need to press on in the face of possible failure. They remind us it’s more important to try and lose than never to try at all.
Unsure of your personal mission? Time to get working. Your mission will come to define your personal brand and always be handy, waiting to pull you past disappointment.
I learned of the imposter syndrome early in my career at a women’s professional meeting, and through the years I’ve come to understand that the imposter syndrome is not just for women anymore. Way back when, the speaker on the podium described the phenomenon she said many women experience, and I immediately recognized the inner voice I constantly heard telling me, “You don’t belong here, and the minute they discover that you don’t deserve to be here, they’ll shame you and kick you out. Save yourself the embarrassment and shrink down so no one notices you… or just leave now!”
Listening in a large crowd of women nodding their heads, I felt seen and experienced a sense of validation. But I also suddenly felt vulnerable and exposed. Because, while I was relieved I’d discovered that this feeling had a name, it also became something I felt helpless to change. I chalked it up to something I’d have to learn to live with as a woman in professional circles.
Over the years I came to find that almost every woman I met, actively participating in the workforce or not, experienced some form of the imposter syndrome. It didn’t always stop us from succeeding, but it took its toll on us all psychologically, causing unnecessary levels of stress and anxiety, particularly when operating in our stretch zones.
Imposter Syndrome: A Feature (Not a Bug) of the Human Psyche
While I’ve come to see the imposter as a friend and ally, helping us navigate the discomfort of our stretch zones, until very recently I considered it largely a function of the female psyche.
So imagine my surprise when I began to hear men admit to encountering this voice of doubt! Both privately and publicly, I’ve begun to notice men owning up to the imposter syndrome in articles, podcasts and personal conversations, and it’s now clear to me that the imposter syndrome is not just for women.
Overall I think men jumping on the imposter bandwagon is great because it means:
The imposter is a feature of the human psyche and that women are not more “broken” than men
Men seem to experience it differently, and in so doing demonstrate strategies to overcome it
Men are beginning to role model new levels of vulnerability, which can take the shame out feeling less confident for women and for other men
When I hear men talk about their imposter feelings, they almost always quickly follow it up with how they moved on, which I hear women verbalize less often. Many men share their imposter as a success story, “I felt uncomfortable but pushed past it,” while women tend to share it as a core dynamic beneath their lack of confidence.
I think that the “I pushed past it,” attitude men express can feel a bit inauthentic to many women, for reasons I speculate on below, but overall I’m glad they’re speaking up. I do believe that imposter feelings are normal human reactions to operating in new environments with higher risk levels, particularly when you haven’t had to work with a new level of risk before. You feel over your head because you are. So I appreciate men who own up to this fact and show how it doesn’t have to get in the way of learning to manage our inner voices while also learning to manage greater risk and success.
How the Imposter Syndrome Plays Differently with Unconscious Bias and Cultural Stereotype
While I’m encouraged that men and women both experience this inner world of self-talk, I am very aware that they seem to experience imposter self-talk differently.
I think it’s important to note that while we all have an inner voice of doubt, that is not the only voice in our heads. We also have inner champions, allies, saboteurs and more. What I find most interesting about how women and men experience the imposter is that it provides insight into the ways internalized stereotypes can make us stronger or more vulnerable.
Based purely on personal experience with both female and male clients and colleagues I notice that men don’t tend to believe the imposter as “everything that is true about me” in the same way some women do. In my experience, women are more likely to feel helpless, as though the imposter is part of their core self, whereas men have been conditioned to believe it’s a passing state. And men’s self-talk response to noticing the imposter is in alignment with this, in essence, “This feels bad right now, but I can get beyond it.”
I once heard an interview with a former CEO of a major, Fortune 10 company. He bragged about how as soon as he took on the CEO role he started experiencing imposter syndrome all the time. He said that every morning he’d just look in the mirror and say, “You can do this!” until one day he proved to himself that he could, and his imposter quieted down.
Listening to this I found myself feeling that this strategy would not have worked for me at all. It would ring false, and thus would bring to the surface for me more cynicism and doubt. Then again, I realized, I don’t really recall many external voices in my life telling me, “You got this” when it came to taking on big professional challenges, especially early on. I recall most people expressing surprise that I wanted to take on a professional risk, or concern that I would be putting myself or my family at risk financially by doing so. The subtle message was, “It’s safer to play small.”
And this tracks with my experience of what women and men encounter in many workplace cultures. Following cultural stereotypes that reward high-risk plays from men more than women, men are often encouraged to go for the gold while women are more likely to be cautioned to think twice and avoid setting themselves up for failure.
I must be clear that this is not always true for every man and every woman, but for me and many of my clients, the Imposter gives voice to these external forces by internalizing them so they pop up to plant seeds of doubt at the most challenging times.
So how can we keep the Imposter from tearing down our confidence completely?
The good news is that the Imposter Syndrome need not make us feel helpless. It turns out that we all have an inner critic that knows how to get our attention, but we also have other voices we can call on to help us manage it.
I particularly enjoyed the advice from an MIT Sloan lecturer to learn to manage your inner voices as part of the journey to develop your leadership skills. Here is what her advice boils down to:
acknowledge that your inner critic’s voice is not “your truth”
engage your “inner champion” to remind you that you’re human and resilient
turn to your “inner editor” for constructive criticism you can act on
The truth is that when you take on high-risk responsibilities for the first time you ARE an imposter, but only until you prove yourself. Those feelings of anxiety are there to help you pay attention to what you’re learning while you develop in your stretch zone, so that you do actually prove it–to yourself and everyone else! With greater awareness, self-compassion and mindfulness you’ll more quickly learn what you need to know to succeed, and your imposter feelings can fade away as that truth about you fades away too.
These lessons are just as important for men as for women to internalize so I’m really glad to see that the culture in general, and men more specifically, are picking up on the fact that the imposter syndrome is not just for women.
FREE PDF 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.
