Qualifications Don’t Work!

Well, not on their own they don’t!

Women have a tendency to accrue lots of qualifications and experience before applying for the next step up.

Are you one of them? Do you feel you really have to know your current inside out and upside down and backwards before even thinking about promotion? Do you think that someone will notice your hard work and be fair? I.e. promote you?

Women Must be PERFECT?

If you answered yes it wouldn’t be surprising. Just think about all the chat about women and statutory quotas; the underlying thread of the nay sayers is that women who weren’t good enough might get promoted onto boards. So, should we deduce from that all men are perfect when they claim their seat on the board? I think not…

Of course qualifications and experience are good, and help in getting jobs, but don’t hang about waiting until you are perfect because in the meantime the men (who overplay their attributes and skills) will have grabbed the jobs!

You don’t have to be perfect! Good enough is good enough to start with!

Take a look at What Every Woman Needs to Know About Getting Ahead, the spark for this post. And if this is an area you’d like to develop, Speak Up is for you!

Photo Credit: Justas Cekas

Women, have you got PRESENCE?

I wrote in What Every Woman Needs To Know about an ex colleague who managed to make herself almost invisible. All without the aid of magic.

Making ourselves invisible is a natural consequence of feeling a lack of confidence. Confidence shows through in your body language, (as does arrogance, impatience, and a myriad of other things!) Women feeling a lack of confidence do not want to draw attention to themselves and some get very good at it! (Take a look at Women’s Confidence, where is it? if this is of particular interest to you)

Star Quality

Just what is star quality? Try and think of someone you know who has star quality, a presence. Often we say it’s something intangible but you can break it down; it helps if you have an example in mind. Think about a woman you admire, preferably in your field and imagine her now, walking confidently into a meeting. What does she do? And as importantly, see in your mind’s eye, what doesn’t she do?

Making an Entrance

When I’m talking about assertiveness to groups I often run through the following little drama of entering the room. First the unassertive entrance.

I peer through the pane of glass in the door and then wait a second or two. I open it slightly and then, using the smallest space possible, I squeeze myself in through the gap. With a technique worth of the SAS or a Navy Seal I hug the outside wall until I eventually come to my place where, making myself as small as possible, I slide into my seat muttering a barely heard apology for a transgression no one knows I’ve committed! I’m early so only about 3 people have witnessed my entrance and I’m able to choose the most unobtrusive seat I can!

There is a fine line between the arrogant, nay even rude entrance and the assertive, confident one.

The Arrogant Entry goes something like this – my voice is heard first outside in the corridor, loudly telling anyone in earshot that Oh Gawd, I’m 20 minutes late for yet another meeting so gotta dash darling, must do lunch, mwah ,mwah!

By now everyone is alerted to my entry so eyes are on the door which I burst open noisily and enter the room, dragging my huge bag behind me and making for the farthermost seat, inconveniencing any number of people who have to move their chairs, where I sit noisily down in my chair, tell everyone how utterly up to my eyes in important work I am, faff about getting a coffee, ask the chair which agenda item we’re on! (I haven’t had to use my imagination for this little scenario at all – seen it many times as I bet so have you). Everyone knows I have arrived and equally everyone is annoyed with me; but they do notice me and I have totally eclipsed the wee mouse hiding somewhere in the room. She has fallen into my shadow immediately and is guaranteed not to speak at all now.

The Assertive Entry. The assertive woman is probably not late because she values her own time, and respects the time of others. She will probably arrive just a moment or two before the meeting starts giving her time to settle, arrange her notes, exchange a word or two, network etc. She will open the doors plenty wide enough to walk through, walk in, look around the room smiling at colleagues she knows, and stride confidently towards her seat. She may sit near the most influential person in the room (assuming she’s not it) as she knows that most eyes will be turned that way, allowing her to take the floor more easily than poor wee mouse who is tucked away at a corner, hidden by Gerald from accounts who takes up an enormous amount of space with his electronic note book AND lap top, spreadsheets and pile of handouts for everyone present. And he’s leaning forwards, arms on the table so mouse would have to stand to be seen and there’s no danger of that!

Assertive woman does not invade other’s space but she takes up enough to be comfortable.  She pushes her chair back a little, leans forward with her arms on the table and makes eye contact around the room. She will speak early on in the meeting, possibly standing to do so, and she will not allow herself to be inappropriately interrupted by the men because she is prepared for this eventuality, (she might even have read my post on Why Can’t Women Speak their Minds in the Boardroom? or Men and Women Talk Differently)

She has a presence borne out of confidence in herself.

Do you recognise anyone here? I confess in my time I’ve possibly done all three! But I like to think as I grew in experience and confidence that assertiveness woman was my default operating mode. How about you?

Are you interested in a course for professional women? Check out Speak Up, running late autumn.

Photo Credit: Marinela Prodan

What Every Woman Needs to Know About Getting Ahead

Today’s post is prompted by the memory of working with a really clever professional woman who had got stuck at middle management. I wasn’t actually coaching her; I was at one time working alongside her and realised with surprise she was much more competent than I had realised from my initial impression. We attended many meetings together and my sense of frustration grew as she was continually passed over for more senior posts.

I’ve thought of her often over the years; I wanted her to get angry about her treatment,  do something, and urged her to challenge some of what was going on. This wasn’t her style, although as we got friendlier I discovered that she did have aspirations to rise further in her career.

Things That Hold Women Back

She embodied many of the traits I sometimes come across in my group and one to one work:

One, she was clever and competent, and had amassed quite a few qualifications. She had a lot of experience.

Two, she thought her good work would speak for itself, be recognised. She had a (misplaced) faith in the fairness of the system. What she hadn’t understood was that the system she worked in rewarded male types of behaviour and her quiet, self effacing style was never going to get her noticed. (In fairness, men behaving like her would have had problems too but I suspect that their good work would have been noticed at an earlier point). Take a look at How to Raise Your Profile in Three Simple Steps

Three, she was physically small, quietly spoken and rarely made eye contact. Think Princess Diana in those engagement photos, eyes downcast, occasionally looking up from underneath her fringe, deferring to the man at her side… (To be fair, the women I work with come in all shapes and sizes, as do I depending on the month! It was the ‘being quiet’ that is a common characteristic, at least being quiet in significant meetings). She would often arrive at meetings and it could be ten minutes before I realised she had actually taken her seat: her ability to be ‘invisible’ was amazing.

Four, she was a serial volunteer. Leave a silence long enough and she’d volunteer to do what no one else really wanted to do. And she always made the tea and took the minutes! (Read Women and Careers tip 6)

Over the  course of the next few posts I’m going to look at some of these issues and offer some advice and support. If you want to make sure of seeing them, please sign up to the RSS feed at at the top right hand corner of the page, and you’ll get them delivered straight to your inbox! And if you have some stories of your own to share, send them in, please! You can either comment on the bottom of the posts, or email me.

Photo Credit: Kata Szikora

Try My Drains Diet and Lose What You Don’t Need!

What! I hear your shocked cry, Jane, the feminist, loud and proud on women’s issues and women’s career coach is now telling us to diet! Good grief!

Well, yes I am but this ‘diet’ is much better than never eating chocolate when there’s an R in the month or consuming so much fibre that you need a portable bathroom with you! This one will make you feel heaps better, not guilty and ashamed and reduced to midnight larder raiding and self loathing!

The Drain’s Diet!

Today we’re looking at getting rid of people. No, I haven’t gone all Mafioso on you; we’re not doing anything criminal but we are going to consider shedding the people in your life who add pounds to you. Pounds of gloom and doom, or guilt or angst or low self esteem or who sap your confidence, ounce by ounce (or gram by gram!).

Take a moment to think about your circle of acquaintances, friends, colleagues and family. Some of those will be true radiators (see Do You Radiate or Drain?). Those are your healthy friends; hang onto them, love and nurture them and give back what you can. They make you gorgeous!

But there’s another group of people that are much more dangerous to your health. Lack of confidence has been frequently cited as an issue for women at work and it’s not just your career that can get harmed. It can affect all areas of your life. And some people have a harmful effect on your confidence.

You probably already know what I’m talking about. It’s those people who, as they approach, cause your spirits to sink. A rictus smile appears on your face as you attempt to be pleasant. Before you’ve drawn breath they’ve launched into their standard spiel. It’s usually an extended moan about how awful ‘they’ are but with never a suggestion that anything can or will change; they are comfortable blaming others.

Or it may be much more subtle. It may be colleagues who are very good at eroding your confidence at work by commenting, in an apparently pleasant way, on your last presentation, yet as you walk away you feel uncomfortable. It may be something like “I was interested that you thought it useful to pick up on the stock figures today; I was thinking security was more pressing but good presentation”. Damning with faint praise!

Take  Action

Sometimes these drains are members of our family, or even our boss. Now you can’t avoid those, and you probably can’t change their behaviour.

But you can change yours! And when you change your behaviour you may see a subtle change in their behaviour. You have enormous power to change how you feel about what they say, how they drain you. You can choose to slough off the extra psychological weight they try to add to you, often unwittingly.

The Drain Exercise

First you need to spend a few moments working out who the drains are. Write a list. Then think about what it is they actually do that has the negative effect on you. This may take a while but it is important to know what it is if you’re going to neutralise its effect on you.

Now you make a choice. You can take a very direct and assertive approach with your moaning folk, for example, and actually tell them that you don’t like moaning about other people as it’s unproductive a and makes you feel bad. Ask them for suggestions as to how to improve the problem (assuming there is an actual problem). Be careful not to put them down, just make reference to the moaning not to them as individuals. (Take a look at ‘How to Increase Your Assertiveness‘). Or you can choose to give them a limited amount of your time but let the comments waft over your head. Don’t get sucked into the negativity; it’s energy sapping and totally unproductive.

The confidence sappers are a different category. They are much more subtle but recognising what they are doing is halfway to dealing with it. If the disguised criticisms are made privately you can choose to smile and move on, mentally noting that you must be doing something right if they feel a need to put you down. You’re a threat somehow and generally speaking women with no talent are not seen as threats. Cripes, they’ve almost paid you a compliment!

But if they are doing this in public it’s likely a response is called for. if you stay quiet when your work is subtly criticised you leave people with that unfavourable impression. Think about this in advance and prepare your riposte (be careful though and don’t blurt out your prepared witty comeback when they haven’t actually been critical – it does happen!).

Your response can be quite simple as in, “Thanks for that, yes, I’ve done some research and the issues of stock control are really high on the agenda just now.” We women tend not to like confrontation but if we don’t respond we run the risk of being seen as weak. Don’t get drawn into a public argument but do make sure you assertively make your point, in an objective way. And actually agreeing with someone can show a high degree of confidence, if you do it appropriately. The higher your profile within an organisation the more likely you are to receive criticism so learn to deal with it gracefully and don’t let it be a weight around your neck…or thighs or midriff or anywhere!

Lose the drains and radiate!

Photo Credit: Tanya Price

How To Get People to Do What You Want!

Research into the psychology of missed appointments (doctors, dentists etc) has discovered it really doesn’t pay to be negative when trying to change behaviour.

Traditionally notices in waiting rooms read something like:

Last month we had 39 missed appointments which cost the surgery over £800 and wasted valuable time which could have been used by others. Please let us know if you are unable to attend.

These notices had no discernible effect on getting people to do what they wanted. However, when they changed their notices to something like:

Last month 90% of patients kept their appointment with us. Thank you so much!

they found that the number of missed appointments fell by 30%! Positive messages reinforcing that keeping an appointment is just normal had a very positive effect!

They also used two other methods which worked. In a non patronising way they got patients to repeat back the date of their appointment, i.e. say it out loud, and also to write it down themselves. Again this meant significantly fewer people missed appointments; they changed their behaviour.

Positive Thinking

I am not surprised at all. We know that telling someone of our intentions helps reinforce them in our minds, and that writing something down helps us do it. Which is why on my courses I encourage women to share their goals and then to write them down.

A Positive Change Exercise

Try it for yourself.

1) Write down what you’d like to achieve in the next four weeks: be realistic about how much is feasible.

2) Share your aims with a friend, talk about how you’re going to do it and add in the details.

3) Pay serious attention to the messages you give yourself. Your ‘spam’. Are these of the ‘we lost masses of money because you couldn’t be bothered to keep your appointment’ variety, or are they the encouraging ‘ way hey, brilliant you! The surgery is working well because of your efforts and consideration for others’ ? Think about it. What Way hey message would positively reinforce your good intentions?

4) Imagine yourself, in your mind’s eye, having accomplished all you want to do. Just take a few moments each day to visualise yourself being hugely successful at making those positive changes. Feeling good? Hang on to that feeling!

If you’ve enjoyed this post you might also like Three Questions for Helpful Thinking. What’s your best tip for achieving your goals?

Are You a Fox or a Hedgehog?

Do you wish you cope with change better?

We’re in changeable, unpredictable times. Sometimes it feels as if nothing stays static for long and depending on your personality this will alarm or excite you, or you may be very stoical in the face of change.

I’ve worked within many organisations and businesses undergoing major reorganisation, often where people will be losing their jobs. The effects of the change touch everyone, not just those whose jobs are at risk; inevitably sickness levels rise and productivity tails off if attention is not paid to the emotional needs of the employees.  In my experience most organisations begin with good intentions and are committed to looking after their staff but as the change process rolls on this becomes lost in the complexity of doing what is required.

Fox or Hedgehog?

Not everyone is bad at dealing with uncertainty and most of us can improve our coping abilities if  we can find an area where we can exert some control. In my one to one work that’s one of the things I’ll focus on; sometimes the only control we can have is changing how we feel and consequently how we deal with what is going on.

Foxes, it seems, are good at this.

Professor Phil Tetlock from the Psychology department at Pennsylvania University thinks there are 2 styles of thinkers: Hedgehogs are uncomfortable with uncertainty and complexity while Foxes are more able to accept that the world is an uncertain place. Foxes, he posits, use more analytical tools than hedgehogs, and draw their information from many different sources. They are comfortable saying:

“Well, this or that may happen, but I may be wrong“.

They are better at making decisions; the ability to realise they may be wrong about what they are predicting means they make decisions that will have a positive outcome taking into account all possible outcomes. They spread their options and have no problem with being humble.

How to be Good at Change

Become a fox! In essence being a fox means becoming more humble and appreciating that humanity is fallible. You acknowledge that you will make mistakes and plan for them.

Dan Gardner, author of ‘Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail‘ (Amazon link) suggests that if you find being humble difficult you sit down and make some predictions about things you think you know about. Then hide away your predictions for a few months after which time take them out and read them. This he says, will help you realise that you are just as fallible as everyone else as probably you will have not predicted anything with great accuracy.

Flexible Thinking

When times are good we tend to assume they will remain so, hence the huge shock at the economic collapse in 2008. When times are bad we tend to assume that they will only get worse. To be more fox like we should assume the good times are temporary too and be a little more cautious: this is the approach that women often take, see Neuroeconmics – Put Women in Charge. Similarly, when times are bad, remind yourself that they will get better. (I am put in mind of ‘this too will pass‘ my stock mantra)

Predictions

Gardner suggests that if you want to be more flexible in your thinking, when you have a judgement or prediction to make, write down all the reasons why you think that decision is correct. Then think hard about all the reasons why you might be wrong.  I do something similar when working one to one and it can be struggle. Try it though, however difficult. It will help you identify your biases or tendency to ‘magical thinking’; it does help you make better make quality decisions.

Be a foxy lady!

Photo Credit: Christopher Hall