How to Get More Women on Board

Last week the UK government launched an initiative to get more women on the boards of the top FTSE companies. The proportion of women on FTSE 100 boards has plateaued at 12.5%, having increased little over the past three years, according to Cranfield University School of Management. In the FTSE 250, the proportion is just 7.8 per cent and more than half of companies have no women directors.

Other countries don’t have this problem. Norway introduced quotas which have been met; they now have 40% women on boards. I have family in Norway and attitudes there towards gender equality have long been different. When my sister in law and I had children in the 80s the attitudes and provision of childcare in our respective countries were absolutely poles apart! Even back then her husband could take time off as paternity leave. My partner discovered, almost by accident, that there was a discretionary 5 days leave for new fathers, which he promptly asked for. He was told he was the only teacher to have ever asked for it and ribbed mercilessly by his sports teaching colleagues.

It’s Not a Woman’s Issue

There are lots of good reasons why companies should have women in very senior positions (apart from the fact that it’s just plain right!). Companies who invest in women’s development find it reaps rewards across the board (no pun intended). But not just one token woman; the real changes begin when there are three or more at board level.

It’s a Man’s World

The world of work, particularly in traditional fields like law, finance, and local government, were set up and designed in a time when women didn’t work in these industries (women have always worked!) other than in support roles. Some business practices /models need challenging to enable women to fully participate. We all take it for granted that that’s how business works, and so we try to help women fit into this model…

I believe that leads to a dissonance, a misfit for most women that often accounts for why women dip out before they reach the top (along with all the other factors mitigating against women). We need to change the model so it works for all the workforce, not just half of it. So many discriminatory practices are so embedded in working culture that many of us don’t even notice them half the time; from how jobs are advertised, language used, how recruitment and interviews work (quite adversarial) to how women are treated in organisations.

Women’s Groups Don’t Work

I have come to believe that in house all women groups probably don’t help, at least in respect of those which exist to try and change the culture to one more gender balanced. I think they work well for women in other arenas but actually, if you want to change attitudes in the workplace, everyone has to sign up to it. Women’s groups run the risk of saying to men, “this is an issue for women, this is our problem”. Which allows it to become ghettoised. In fact, it is everyone’s problem and everyone in a company needs to understand and address it.

So Why Do I Run Women’s Courses?

It’s a good question and one I have answered more fully in a previous post. Men and women are different and currently the issues for women in the world of work are very different than those of men. The overall aim of my courses is to raise women’s aspirations and give them the confidence to challenge the status quo, to push themselves. I don’t bar men from these sessions but I have written and designed them with women in mind. Generally the issues are not pertinent or relevant for men. Men and women respond differently to personal development type seminars and generally speaking women are more comfortable exploring these issues with other women.

The call for gender equality is not about pretending we are all the same. It is about celebrating that difference and not allowing one to dominate. It is valuing the different qualities which women bring to the workplace as well as those of men.

I interviewed Avivah Wittenberg-Cox a while ago. She has written two great books on gender equality ‘Why Women mean Business‘ and ‘How Women mean Business‘. One thing she said resonated very strongly with me:

“If women in your organisation are still in grey and black suits the gender issue is still very live!”

Women are not men, and should not have to behave like men to get rewarded in the world of work. Society needs both men and women in the top echelons, middle echelons, and across all sectors of society. Bring on the women!

if you’d like to find out more about my course for women on the way up, please click this link.

Direct Your Energy Where You Want Results!

Direct Your Energy Where You Want to See Results!

It doesn’t matter how many self help books you read (even mine!), how much you practise circular breathing, how much you think positively, how often you chant, focus on words on the ceiling (good grief), there is no substitute for actually doing something to get where you want to be. That means real, down to earth, honest to goodness hard work, not simply thinking about what you want to happen if only everything would come together in your favour!

Phew, that was good to say! There really is no substitute for actually getting on with it. I was asked by a journalist recently if I thought the current self help culture meant people thought they ‘deserved’ to succeed, that that there was a solution for everything and everyone should be happy all the time. Good question.

I do come across this attitude from time to time, and there is masses of information out there giving you all sorts of advice about how you can be wonderful, have a great life etc. My site is full of it too. I have a passion for helping women live their lives to the max and getting out of it what they want. You will find masses of information here to help you get going, to inspire and push you on.

But anyone who has ever worked with me knows that one of my continual questions is:

‘What are you actually going to do and when are you going to do it?‘

Add Ons

All the other things I have mentioned help, of course they do, but they are additional to actually doing something. If you want to write a novel you can make yourself an inspiring room to write in. You can read books by other writers. You can sign up to writing courses. You can buy a beautiful notebook, lovely pens. All these things may motivate you to get going, build your confidence, and increase your pleasure in the task. BUT at some point the preparation has to stop and the real writing has to begin or the book will always remain an idea.

Likewise, if you want to change your job, you could buy my book, do all the exercises, listen to the visualisation. You will have prepared yourself well and got a good idea of the steps you need to take to make those changes. Hopefully I will even have inspired you to be brave and bold. BUT you still have to go out there, buy newspapers, look for jobs, and apply for them. You still have to take the risks yourself, decide when the time is right to start your own business, go into partnership with a friend, or ask the bank for a business loan.

Focus

All of the preparation is good; I wouldn’t recommend that you jump will nilly into something (well, maybe sometimes a bit of risk taking can be energising, when we just follow our instincts! It can work.)

The problem comes when all our energies go into preparing, (or complaining) and not into doing. If you have a long held dream beginning  ‘one day I will…’ do you know when that ‘one day’ is? Certainly do all the preparing, and if you are in a job you loathe preparing now for a new one when times are better may help you through the interim period. But do give yourself a date when you will move from preparing into doing. Review it regularly. After all, you don’t want to be looking behind you muttering wistfully, ‘If only…’.

Bring In the Bling This Week!

Mid February, time for a bit of bling, don’t you think? Can you bring a bit of bling into your life this week?

Sequins

Last night I was sewing sequins. (I love how that sounds!) Yes, last night I was sewing sequins!

Don’t panic, I’ve not taken up ballroom dancing and am now sewing 1000s of sequins onto my ball gown (although that is an idea…). I was sewing them onto something I’d made that I decided just needed a tiny lift. The item was perfectly fine as it was but that tiny bit of bling lifted it into something else. The addition of a few sequins cast light where needed and made something ordinary just a little bit more special. It only added about an hour to the overall time of the project but made a big difference.

Scatter Your Sequins

And that set me to thinking about the coming week. Without really considering it too much, we’ll all probably work reasonably hard and get perfectly reasonable results. A fairly ordinary week.

But if you wanted to lift this week out of the ordinary, if you wanted to scatter a few sequins around, add some bling to your week, cast light to show case you or your work, what would that mean for you?

Would it be rising to a challenge? Making a new friend? Sticking your head above the parapet on a work issue? Signing up for a course? Wearing brighter clothes? Taking a risk in your personal life?

Think about it. Don’t worry at this stage about doing it. Just take a pause and think:

”What could I do to lift this week out of the ordinary?’

Then imagine yourself doing it.

Then imagine how you might feel after you’ve done it.

Now do it!

What are your added sequins for this week? I’d love to know if you’re happy to share!

Take a Long View

Given the job I have people sometimes assume that I have ‘it‘ all sorted. Most of the time I am pretty well grounded but nothing in life stays static and we are all learning and developing all the time. (The joy and wisdom of ageing!) You may be well sorted in your 30s then find your 40s a real challenge.

For the times when life doesn’t feel so sorted, or when you want to mull over where to next, I find it helps to take the long view. Easier said than done but I have an exercise which might help. I’ve just done it myself so can tell you it does help!

The Long View exercise

If you’re finding yourself in one of those ‘which way now?’ moments try this exercise to give yourself a sense of perspective.

Draw a time line across a sheet of paper landscape style. At one end put the year of your birth, at the other the year you think you’ll end life (Honestly, this isn’t depressing- I find it really gives me a spur to get on with life!). I, being an optimist, always put myself down as finishing at age 100 but secretly imagine I may live longer!

Divide your line into decades. If you pick 100 you’ll have a neat 10!

The first decade of your life was taken up with childhood. This is not an exercise to focus on very deep issues, so don’t dig too far. Just write childhood/school under your first decade.

The second decade in my case was still education, although I left home as well.

In my third decade I married, started a new career, had my first child and embarked on professional training. Blimey I was busy!

The fourth decade began with the birth of my second child and was when I began to consolidate my career; it also began to reveal the seed of my discontent with my chosen career.

The fifth decade involved new job challenges (promotion, secondments)and was when I made a serious life change and launched into my own career.

Now midway through my sixth decade I am making some serious decisions about my business. I don’t know what the next 4 and half decades hold for me but doing this exercise helps me to see I don’t have to make a decision in the next few days but that I do have to make a decision. If not I will drift and ‘events, dear boy, events’ will take place outwith my control. Seeing it laid out in this way both gives me time and reminds me that time is finite. If that makes sense!

It’s your life. Live it to the full and take responsibility for what you do. And be GREAT!

PS. Of course, this is not the only method I use when making decisions! I have great friends and family to talk with, I seek professional advice, I read other’s experiences and I research. But for the times when suddenly that all seems a bit overwhelming, the long view exercise is great!

If you try it, please let me know how you get on!

3 Tips for a Great Working Day!

Do you ever think you could get more out of life?

Sometimes I allow my days to glide past without taking full advantage of them. Then I get to the evening and feel vaguely dissatisfied. Yes, I’ve been working all day but I have been more reactive than proactive and allowed myself to respond to events as they have happened, rather than making how I spend my day a conscious effort.

Other days though are quite different and I get to the end bathed in a glow of satisfaction of a job well done! That is often to do with people I have encountered but it’s also when I have taken conscious control of what I am doing. In my case that means making a plan for the day, but that may not do it for you!

Here are three tips for having a GREAT DAY!

1) Think About it the Night Before
I used to work with a Buddhist monk. Each night he would meticulously clear his desk so as to leave it ‘as if he had never been there.’ I have not quite managed that (my desk would be a great study of my personality!). However, what does work well for me is taking a few moments at the end of each day to think about what I want to achieve the next day. It works even better if I write it down, either on post it notes stuck to my screen, or on my whiteboard. Don’t go too mad and make an impossible list. Maybe just list the three things that are most important.

My list for today was:

Write a blog post (tick)

Spend at least 2 hours on my ongoing project (a download version of RenewYou)

Sort out some of my Inspirational Women interviews (I have a bit of a back log!)

I don’t put down on it things that are booked into my diary, such as my discussion today with Jayne Cox. I kind of regard that as ‘cheating’ as that will happen as it’s booked in!

2) Plan Your Unimportant Time Too
Plan in a time when you will do the necessary but not over important things, like chat on twitter, answer e mails, phone colleagues, etc. Conversely have a period of time when you don’t get distracted, like my two hours on RenewYou. I plan to turn off twitter, email etc and just get my head down (although I will have a tea break in the middle!)

3) Work Out YOUR Best Time
Acknowledge when your best time is and make sure you fully utilise that to do your most important work. First thing is usually my best time so I plan that time to do things that stretch me, or that I don’t actually want it to do, as I need that extra oomph to push me along. But you may be different and use your best time to do things you love the most! It’s up to you; the main thing is to make it work for you!

How do you make sure you get the best out of your day?

What is Important in Your Life?

The advertising world is very good at telling us what we want to eat, to read, to look like, to wear, how to decorate our homes and so on. It has a vested interest in us ‘wanting’ things so it creates needs we didn’t know we had until they told us! Very few of us are immune ( I speak as someone who has just acquired a flat screen TV- yes, we are very late adopters!)

Most of this is relatively harmless (unless you buy from companies which exploit countries, employees and use child labour!) as long as in our hearts we know what really counts.

Policy, Procedures, Politics & Overload

It’s not just advertising though. In our work we can get dazzled (or dazed) by policies, procedures, promotions,  and politics and start to lose sight of the really important things in life. In the scramble to do our job well, get noticed, fight our corner, we can forget why we work in the first place, what our own bottom line is. Sometimes the higher up the organisation we go, the more disconnected we can feel with staff delivering service on the ground. This disconnect can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction which we fill by trying to do more of the things which took us there in the first place, or buying things to booster our self esteem and provide a justification for what we’re doing all day long.

No One is Immune

I experienced this myself. I started out in my social work career to make a difference, to help people have better lives. Yet the more I advanced the further away I found myself from my original aspiration and the more involved I seemed to get with minutia. It was very seductive for a while, feeling important.

My awakening came when I tried to evaluate just what contribution I was making to the very people I had started out wanting to help. It didn’t feel enough. Occasionally, despite being my own boss, it still doesn’t, and I have to go and reconnect, irrespective of whether this is a good move for my business or my purse!

I  see symptoms of disconnect sometimes when working one to one with senior managers. They can get so fixated on their own roles that they forget what their organisation is there to do, what it’s like for those directly in touch with the public or customer. For example, a while back, while acting in a consulting role, I made a comment that staff would be pleased with something we had agreed (the agreement was achieved with some hearty debate).

“Oh well, as long as they are happy” a senior manager said in a voice heavy with sarcasm, entirely missing the point. The point was not to make senior managers happy but to improve service delivery on the ground; front line staff deliver service on the ground, either through sales, or service. Unhappy, demoralised staff give bad service and do not work well in my experience. Lose sight of that and you are on a hiding to nothing.

By the same token,  your own personal satisfaction falls when you lose sight of your own personal values.

Go Back to the Floor

One remedy for managers is to get back out on the ‘shop floor’, whatever that might be. Actually go and visit staff, spend a day on the ground. get a real up to date feel for what goes on. I know one chief executive who spent a day on a public enquiry desk to better understand what staff were dealing with. It was very enlightening!

It’s a remedy for all of us, when we’re getting caught up in work battles and politics – remember what is really important to us. Keep your foundations solid.

What is really important in your life, and are you giving it the care and attention it deserves? How do you make sure that you keep yourself connected?