Latest / SisterSmart Leadership / 9: How Women Need to Lead Differently (And Why We Need to Stop Acting Like Men to Earn Promotions) with Mary Shapiro

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9: How Women Need to Lead Differently (And Why We Need to Stop Acting Like Men to Earn Promotions) with Mary Shapiro · SisterSmart Leadership

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If you're a female leader in the corporate world, you have undoubtedly
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noticed that things are different for you than they seem to be for men.
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It's not your imagination or a conspiracy theory that your
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brain thought up as an excuse.
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There's social science that explains how we got here and how we can
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move forward into a new future.
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One of the experts on gender in the workplace is Mary Shapiro
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from Simmons University.
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And we are so lucky to have her here today to talk about her work.
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So I hope you love hearing from her as much as I do.
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I'm Jill Avey, a career success coach, and this is Sister Smart Leadership, the
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show that explores how women can rise from director to vice president and beyond
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by fully leaning into their feminine energy as their biggest advantage.
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Let's get you one step closer to the recognition and promotion you deserve.
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So please welcome with me.
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This is Mary Shapiro and she is a fellow at Simmons University Institute
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of inclusive leadership and she has 30 years of experience in gender studies
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and really understanding both from a consulting background and from a teaching
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background of what the differences are for women in the workplace, as well
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as she's doing a lot of consulting these days on both with executives and
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teams and on an organizational basis.
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So she really covers the spectrum of issues and is looking at inclusivity,
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across the board, but we get the pleasure of getting to hear from her today about.
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Women's issues and is we're particularly going to talk about how how the gender
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roles relate to executive presence.
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So I'm pretty excited about this conversation.
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So with that Mary I would love to hear from you.
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Um, what are some things that come to mind, off the top of your head
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when you think about executive presence and women together?
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Thank you for asking me that question because that elicits a lot of emotion
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and energy in what I think about that.
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Years ago, I was asked at Simmons to start teaching a course on executive
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presence and I immediately bristled at the, at the request, because it
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seemed like only women we dealt with a lot of executive women coming into
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our programs, and a lot of women were getting dinged on their performance
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appraisals for not having executive presence, and I kept thinking, "Do men
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get dinged for executive presence?"
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And the answer at least 20 some years ago was that, no, they really didn't.
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So I kept thinking this has to have a gendered element to it.
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And so I kept thinking of what was the, what was executive
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presence code for, right?
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And so I really kind of spent a lot of time taking a look at that.
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And I, I kind of deduced that it meant, well, for women, you're supposed to be
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more confident, but you can't be cocky.
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And you need to be more assertive, but you can't be shrill.
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And you need to be more commanding, but you can't be bossy.
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And so I thought this, the whole concept of executive presence really put women
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into this double bind of how do I exude presence, which has been conflated with so
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many masculine attributes, and yet we know that organizations promote on confidence
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and presence, oftentimes over competence.
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So it really wasn't.
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It was a dilemma.
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So I had to take some time and really kind of wrap my arms around it and how
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I started thinking about it is that presence is really all about what do
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you want people to think about when they see you, listen to you, think about you.
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And it's your core, which is all your values, your morals, your
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ethics, your foundational piece.
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And then wrapped around that as your acumen, all your
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knowledge, your experience all the skills that you've developed.
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And then wrapped around that is really all about what I call the externals.
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Physically how you look, how you come across, the behavior, the tone of
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your voice, what your office looks like, what your background of your
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Zoom looks like, all that kind of stuff adds up to projecting ideally
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something that you want other people to think about when they think about you.
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So that's how I, I, I wrestled with my own demons about thinking about presence.
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So where did that lead you?
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Well, what was interesting is that, you can read a lot of the research around
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executive presence and what I came away with was a couple things that I felt
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like particularly relevant to women.
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One was this concept of what's called attribution theory, which is
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for you to enact leadership and be perceived as a leader, you have to
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not only think about what am I doing?
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But what's happening in the environment around me?
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Because women forever have been socialized to point inward when they fail.
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Oh, I screwed up.
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I wasn't really good.
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I knew I wasn't going to be competent, all that kind of stuff.
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Point outward when they succeed.
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So it's, oh, it was the team effort.
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I couldn't have done it without the full team, all that kind of.
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Fine.
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Men, on the other hand, are socialized very differently, and they're socialized
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to point inward when they succeed.
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Oh, I'm the greatest.
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And point outwardly if they fail.
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You didn't give me enough time.
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You weren't clear on your directions.
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You didn't give me enough resources.
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It's always, pointing externally.
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And again when I talk about men and women, I don't...
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Certainly don't assume all men do it one way, all women do it another way, because
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there's a lot of variation in each of those groups, but it's just basically men
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and women as kind of social members, kind of what society says about them, right?
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So you're saying that we're learning these things from a very young age and that
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that's in our culture more than it's just us as an individual of how we were raised
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in our particular family and situation.
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Absolutely.
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I mean, one study showed that by the age of four, little girls
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have learned to point inward for failure, and that's just horrifying.
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I have a four year old granddaughter and I'm like, no,
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I can't let this happen to her.
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But it's all through the media.
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It's through teachers.
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It's through family members.
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It's Everything around us just tells us as individuals, what we, as people
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who present as women versus people who present as men, what they can
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and cannot do as individuals, but then also certainly as leaders.
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So, yeah, we're absorbing all that all the time.
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I really see that play out in my coaching practice.
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And I mean, even in my own life, I've definitely felt that way too.
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And, and you see the guys definitely not take on as much of that.
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Intrinsic.
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Yeah.
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The attribution.
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I have a great comic for anyone who's still kind of going, I'm
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not really sure about that.
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And if you can think of the first frame, it's a woman.
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Probably good post COVID trying to put on jeans for the first time and her and
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she goes, Oh, I got to go on a diet.
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And then you have the second frame and this man trying to put on jeans probably
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for the first time since COVID and he goes, something is wrong with these jeans.
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And that actually happened in my house.
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That's right.
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Definitely.
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I said, Oh, I
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need a new pair.
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It wasn't anything wrong with him, you know,
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Yeah.
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But what, by something's wrong, I got to go on a diet means I don't
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get to go shopping for the new jeans.
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So there's something wrong there, but, but it really does reinforce
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the idea that we have to always think of leadership in two contexts.
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One is what does society tell us about leadership?
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And then what does your own organization tell you about leadership?
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Because some organizations may be very different than
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what society says in general.
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And then others may replicate because we're all members of this society.
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We've both men and women are getting all these messages that
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many organizations replicate.
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The concept of what's happening, who can be leaders, and most of the messaging
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is men can and who can't be leaders.
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And most of the message is that women can't.
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We can dive in a little bit about what society says.
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Does that make sense?
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First, I want to point out though, something that I think
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is really interesting is that we all get these messages.
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So even women propagate some of these stereotypes and some of these biases.
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Yes, absolutely.
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And sometimes it's women.
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I think we all probably have a woman in our career path that actually
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was more rigid in what she thought you could do or not as a woman and
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reinforce the social norms more severely than even her male colleagues.
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Yeah.
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So we can, we can, we have to really, watch another woman and just go,
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Hey, she's leading and not impose what we have heard that society
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says what she can and cannot do.
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And sometimes we're our own worst critics,
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right?
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I mean, for clarity sake, men have their own set of stuff and often women will
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find it distasteful when they see a man cry, even though we encourage them
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to have feelings and things like that.
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And so it definitely goes both directions for sure.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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Okay.
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So what are some of the other things that some of the other biases that come in?
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So what I wanted to kind of map out is some of the history and the research
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around how we've gotten to where today, even in this current year, messages from
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society still overwhelmingly conflate masculine traits with leadership
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and they and that leaves women with feminine traits going, Okay, how do I
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enact leadership as a result of that?
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So there's two factors that kind of have really significantly played in.
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One is who we have researched and we put out in history as leaders.
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And then two is who we see in leadership today.
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So historically, even though there's been always leaders, the actual research
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about leadership really didn't start beginning until about the early 1800s,
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and the scholars at that time kind of looked around and they saw who
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all was in leadership and it was all men, and they came up with a really
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snappy title for a theory called the "great man" theory of leadership.
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And the idea was that what was these great men would really
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drive historical outcomes.
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And so they looked at what were the traits that were required to
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be a leader in the early 1800s.
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And not surprisingly, it included things like it was always good
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to have a good family name.
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So that was one.
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But the other was you had to be decisive and autocratic
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and aggressive and ambitious.
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And all these traits that enable these rulers in the 1800s to
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fight each other and to take more territory and to dominate everybody.
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And that's kind of the great man theory of of leadership.
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So you fast forward through years and years and years.
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And some of those traits have stayed sticky in terms of how we
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still describe leaders, right?
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But the other thing that I just wanted before I get back to talking about some
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of the traits is we don't even need to talk about the second factor of when
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you look out into today's society who dominates in the leadership fields, right?
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Even though women have made a lot of progress, you still
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look at the Fortune 500.
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You still look at the members of Congress.
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You still look at even many of our leaders in civic organizations and nonprofits
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and even in the leaders in academia oftentimes are still men, so that just
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even that is a subtle message that tells young girls moving into thinking
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about what they want to do to see that leadership isn't something that is really
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available to somebody that looks like me.
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So that the absence becomes a very strong message as well.
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Yeah.
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And I've noticed that even in heavily female roles like nursing or marketing,
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even when you get up to the top, then it turns to men in the leadership roles and
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it's still the same as everywhere else.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I mean, you go to your kid's grade school and the principal is a man oftentimes.
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Everyone else are women that are doing all the teaching and the
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heavy lifting of actually educating and taking care of our kids.
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So yeah.
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So I, I did want to share a couple things around the traits because as a
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listener to this, you should be thinking about what traits would you use to
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describe yourself and your leadership?
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And by thinking about that, as I talk about kind of how those traits have
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shifted or not shifted over time, you'll start getting a picture of how
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no wonder I struggle with, whether it's a certain group of people or like.
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Jill, like you said, I might struggle with women if I have a lot of masculine
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traits or so it will give you an indication of how much in alignment or
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non alignment you are with these general social messages that are coming to us.
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So if we start back in 1974, a scholar named Sandra Bem basically had a
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list of 60 some traits and she asked hundreds of people, and then thousands
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of people and since then it's broadened out even more, which traits are more
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desirable for men or women to enact?
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And what she found
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As leaders?
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As leaders.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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And what she found is that women were expected to be affectionate, sympathetic,
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gentle, sensitive, supportive, and kind, and men, it was more appropriate.
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It was more desirable.
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That was the language.
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She used the more desirable for men to enact traits, like being
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competitive, daring, adventuresome, aggressive dominant, right?
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And so
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very different.
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Those are really different feelings about, the culture that you
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would create if you were that type of leader there, they're quite.
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Very different.
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Yes.
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And she had actually hypothesized why that difference and she was saying that
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it was because at that time, it was only 4 percent of middle managers were women.
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So this is 1974, less than 50 years ago, 4 percent of women were middle managers.
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And so she was hypothesizing that the reason why people conflated those
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particular traits with men or women was because of the roles that they were in.
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And so because men were more likely to be in a leader role inside an organization,
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those were attributes and traits that were necessary for them to be successful.
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And then the other traits, the caring, the compassionate, the empathetic, those types
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of traits, were really needed for the majority of women that were home taking
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care of children, taking care of the home.
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Now it's really important to note that at the time of her initial research
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that women of color were much more into the workforce and were much more
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frequently in breadwinning roles.
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Her initial research were on primarily white Americans.
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And yet even those women of color were not in those leadership
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positions in the middle managers.
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So.
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They're probably doing a lot of those more masculine traits in order to be able to
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be successful in the workplace, but it still wasn't seen as desirable for them
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to do that because that was, crossing into what men were supposed to be doing.
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So she had hypothesized that as the mix of what men and women do in terms
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of the roles that they play, rather than being like these polar opposite
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traits, more and more traits would become what she called androgynous,
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meaning that they would be desirable for both men and women to execute.
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And so there wouldn't be a penalty that of a woman's doing, being a competitive,
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being competitive, for example, it would be seen as not appropriate.
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Right.
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So I wanted to find out whether or not 50 years, almost 50 years later.
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So in 2015, I did a study of about 600 women at a Simmons University
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conference and asked them essentially the same question that Sandra Bem did.
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Here's a bunch of traits.
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What's more desirable for men and what's more desirable for women?
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And so we think that we would have come a very long way since 1974, 50 years ago.
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I mean, leadership has changed a lot since then.
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Yep.
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And 50 percent of middle managers were now women.
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Now at the time, 2015, still only like 3 percent were CEOs.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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So that's the next frontier.
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Right.
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But you were mostly talking to middle managers in this?
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Yes, I was talking to mostly middle managers and upper middle managers.
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But again, they were reflecting on the messaging that they heard, right?
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They didn't necessarily believe that, for example, my findings found that yes,
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men still need to be risk taking and ambitious and assertive and aggressive.
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And women still needed to be cooperative and friendly and warm
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and kind and things like that.
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It wasn't necessarily that they believed that, but they just said, this is what
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society is telling me is more desirable.
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So what you just said is that.
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I know.
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In 50 years, it really didn't change.
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No, no.
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The only, only a couple traits moved to androgynous and those traits included
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three masculine traits became more androgynous, meaning that women can do
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being decisive, disciplined and rational.
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And then only one feminine trade moved to androgynous and that was loyalty.
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So, yes.
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So there were several takeaways.
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One, I was really sad to see that in 50 years time, there wasn't that
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much of a shift and, listeners can be thinking about kind of what are
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all the messaging and what's the source of that messaging, right?
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And you look everywhere and there's still this very competitive, assertive,
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super masculine some people call it toxic masculine on one side, way at the one
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extreme, not that all men execute that.
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And then on the other side, women are still expected to be nice and
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passive and relationship focused and taking care of, I mean, I don't know
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about you, but I get overwhelmed over the number of advertisements about
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beauty products and things like that.
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And that's still the domain, primarily for women.
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I have a couple of takeaways from, from the, the research that I did.
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One is that definitely leadership, as you said, Jill, is still
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conflated with masculinity and it's primarily white masculinity.
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And white masculinity is not saying that all white men do it this way.
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It just says in general, the culture, that is dominated, the messaging is dominated
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by White men, but the concept of white masculinity says, all right, yes, if
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you're going to be a leader, you need to be competitive, assertive, aggressive,
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a risk taker, all those types of things.
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The other message is that it's not.
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The message isn't, okay, if I'm a woman and I want to be a leader, I should take
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up more masculine behaviors and I should hide my own feminine behaviors because
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you can imagine how that turns out, right?
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And we can all think of women, whether it's, in our own organizations or in
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the public face that have taken up really significant masculine behaviors
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and they tend to not be successful.
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Yeah.
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And I think that's an important point because in, in my era, a lot of the
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women that, that I came up with, that's what we did to be successful
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was we I was in sporting goods and, I can kind of hang with the guys,
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and I was kind of a tomboy anyhow.
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And so that, that did sort of work for me, but, and I, and I
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even thought that I would bring that into my executive coaching.
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And then I realized as I started to do my research as a coach, I realized.
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No, no, no, no.
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There's a whole other way.
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And then that doesn't, that doesn't work because you're not
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bringing your authentic self.
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Right.
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And you're not bringing your actual talent.
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You're trying to put on a facade and then you don't build trust as
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well because they could tell that they're not getting the real you.
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Right.
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And as well, you're not performing as well as you could because
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it's not the real you either.
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That's right.
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That's right.
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And exactly to your story, Because you were an athlete, there's all
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kinds of research that talks about, that being a competitive athlete
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helps to prepare you for leadership.
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What I was going to say is...
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You probably have some masculine traits that you're very comfortable
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with and who are authentically you.
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Yes.
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Yet you also may have what are traits that have been, named as feminine
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traits that also are comfortable to you.
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And that's exactly where I try to get individuals to get to is to look at, and
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this is including with working with men, it's the goal should be to know what your
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strengths are and to tap into the full portfolio of potential strengths, even
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those that have been kind of earmarked as masculine and earmarked as feminine,
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is that you will be more successful as a leader the more you go, all right, given
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a particular situation, I need a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
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And that's going to allow me to be successful.
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And that's exactly what a subsequent study was.
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I was so intrigued when COVID 19 hit and the media immediately started
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talking about how, Oh, look at these countries where there are female leaders.
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The countries are doing so much better in terms of avoiding COVID
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deaths and minimizing hospitalizations and all that kind of stuff.
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And as much as I was ready to go, yay, go women leaders.
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There was a part of me that also went well.
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Just because they were a woman that enabled them to be successful
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or was it something else?
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And what I found, even though I'm still, always ready to root for women leaders, I
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found that what was happening with like a Jacinda Ahern in New Zealand or an Angela
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Merkel in Germany is that they were doing very task masculine focused behaviors
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being really aggressive of shutting borders, putting all kinds of restrictions
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on things that's very masculine take action, take care of the task, but
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they were also enacting many feminine characteristics of talking to their
24:00
populations and talking in a way that was encouraging and we're going to get through
24:06
this, and we're all in this together, so they took care of both getting the
24:10
job done but then also Taking care of the people that were getting so severely
24:15
impacted by this terrible disease.
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So, so it's really that them using both of those.
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That's really great to hear that perspective.
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I wondered, I was watching that really carefully myself and I was
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wondering what the real that what the outcome was because I was You
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know, it changed over time as well.
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Yeah.
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Yep.
24:34
Yep.
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We also did a study in the United States to see what was happening here.
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And what was interesting is that gender again, didn't play out
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where, Oh, states that were led by female governors did better.
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That wasn't the case.
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It was states where the governor executed both on the task, but then also
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took a care, took care of the social emotional needs of the people, which is
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oftentimes, seen as the domain of women, they were the ones that did the best.
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So it could have been men doing that.
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And it could have been men too.
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Yep.
25:05
Yep.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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So the other place where we get messaging is our organizations.
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And it's really important to recognize that inside our organization,
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there's a culture with rules of what does leadership look like?
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Who can enact it?
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Who gets rewarded for enacting it?
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Who doesn't get rewarded for enacting it?
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And it's really important to recognize that no one started an
25:34
organization with the explicit intention to disadvantage a certain
25:41
percentage of the workforce, right?
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So no, it wasn't a bunch of guys sitting around going, all right,
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let's set up norms of how do we reward behavior here in a way that's going
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to not let women lead or contribute.
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That intentionality was never there.
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And yet,
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Even if it might feel like it sometimes.
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That's right.
26:03
That's right.
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You might feel like, oh, yeah, there's some plotting against me, but it really
26:08
is more likely that the organization just started with people that may have
26:12
been from one homogenous identity group, like men, and no one sat and said,
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Okay, how do we want to run meetings?
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How do we want to, do all these other types of things, but nevertheless
26:26
norms develop that worked for them, that made sense for them.
26:30
Yeah.
26:31
If you look at our largest organizations that all were kind of building in the
26:36
50s and the 60s, it was run by lots of men and oftentimes very much men
26:42
that were coming back from whether it was Korea War or or Vietnam.
26:47
And they brought that kind of military command and control top
26:50
down people at the top, make the decisions and push them down.
26:54
And that continues in many organizations to this day.
27:00
And the challenge then is how do you, if you don't look like the people at
27:04
the top of the organization, how do you wind up being able to lead when
27:09
the organization is saying, yes, leadership is very masculine focused.
27:14
It's decisive.
27:15
It's aggressive, all those types of things.
27:17
And in your wheelhouse, you may have a lot of feminine behaviors that really
27:23
add value to the organization, but it's invisible or it's misinterpreted
27:29
and it's not seen as leadership.
27:30
So that is always the challenge that we as women inside organizations face.
27:36
Yeah, exactly.
27:38
And so how can we suss out if we have potential to be able
27:41
to move up in our organization?
27:43
What are the cues that would tell us which type we're in?
27:48
Yeah.
27:49
This is where I started out with asking listeners to think about how
27:54
they attribute their successes and their failures is before you say,
27:58
okay, I'm not successful because I'm incapable is to, to exactly as you're
28:04
saying, Jill, pay attention to what goes on inside your organization.
28:10
And one is pay attention to what happens in your performance appraisals.
28:15
One organization that was trying to get couldn't figure out why they had
28:19
50 percent women at, the entry level.
28:21
But then as they went up, there became fewer and fewer women.
28:25
And one of the, one of the words that they found that was only on women's performance
28:33
appraisals was the word abrasive.
28:37
And so it's starting to pay attention to the words.
28:42
this is why the executive presence piece was such a, thorn in my side
28:46
because that was always the, the, all right, well, she's abrasive.
28:49
So she needs some executive training, right?
28:52
Executive presence training, right?
28:54
As opposed to, well what is she doing that's abrasive?
28:58
And.
29:00
That same behavior, how would it look like if a man did that behavior?
29:05
And oftentimes it was the, she was persistent.
29:09
She kept bringing up her idea because she knew her idea was really good or,
29:14
and she wouldn't take no for an answer.
29:16
Well, for somebody else in a different body that might have been seen as
29:20
leadership and somebody with a strong vision and commitment and passion.
29:24
And so paying attention to what constructive criticism that you're getting
29:30
in your performance appraisal is one.
29:32
The others.
29:33
I mean, the most obvious is to look at who your leaders at the top are.
29:36
And as much as some people want to go, Oh, it doesn't really matter
29:40
that that representation issue.
29:42
If you can't see yourself at the top of the organization, then most likely
29:47
that means that people who act like you do don't get promoted upwards.
29:54
So that's another piece of it.
29:56
And then the other is just kind of looking at what are some of the expectations
30:01
and these are the norms for how do we work together inside an organization.
30:05
So for example, if at a meeting, is it okay, who gets heard?
30:12
How does airtime get allocated?
30:14
Is it a fight for airtime?
30:16
Do people just talk over each other because whoever is the loudest voice win?
30:21
Those are all attributes that are again, conflated with masculine, loud and direct.
30:28
And that oftentimes people as a woman, wouldn't even be able to follow those
30:34
rules because she would be seen as pushy or bitchy or something like that.
30:39
One really good example also, and then I can stop talking about organizations.
30:44
Is what is the pace and the timing of work?
30:49
Because originally when it was mostly men in professional
30:54
work, work could be 24 seven.
30:58
Even though they didn't have emails back in the day and all that kind of stuff,
31:01
but there was that you were available to come into the office and men would
31:05
go into the office seven days a week.
31:07
And it was that coming into the office was proof of your commitment.
31:11
And it worked because you had probably a stay at home wife who was taking care of
31:17
the rest of your, of your life, right?
31:20
Those same expectations.
31:23
If they're still happening in your organization, it doesn't work when
31:27
you've got either two working parents, or you've got as a single mother
31:34
and you can't be available 24 seven.
31:37
So if those expectations are still happening, that really is an indication
31:42
that this is a very masculine environment that is asking you to put work above
31:49
everything else because work is the domain of men and everything else is the domain
31:54
of women and we're not valuing that.
31:57
I think that's really a big one these days because we do have, so many, of
32:03
those two kinds of households with single women and, and two working parents
32:07
where getting all the other stuff done, whether it's, child care or elder care
32:13
or, whatever else is going on I swear sometimes pet care can be enough too.
32:17
And, but, we just aren't, we aren't available and, and then to set boundaries.
32:23
Now we're seen as not loyal and we don't care about our careers and,
32:27
things like that and not having that trade off be respected for what it is.
32:32
Yeah.
32:33
Some organizations are actually very intentionally trying to change that.
32:38
So, one organization that worked with Simmons was a big pharmaceutical company.
32:43
And because they were global, they had the expectation that for you to
32:46
get to the executive vice president level, you needed two years of
32:51
expat work somewhere in the world.
32:54
And that worked when you had primarily men.
32:57
And they had what's always called the trailing spouse, which was a woman who
33:01
might not have a career or had a very secondary career and could move the
33:07
household, take care of the children, get the dog out of quarantine that had to be a
33:12
quarantine for whatever, and took care of the rest of the life of the, of the man.
33:16
So he could, as an executive, get that expat experience.
33:20
As soon as this pharmaceutical is recognizing, we can't get women
33:24
to do these expat positions and that was impeding their ability
33:28
to move up in an organization.
33:30
Women were saying, my husband isn't going to let go of his career to go for
33:34
me to go work in France for two years.
33:37
or I'm a single parent and who's going to take care and get my kids integrated into
33:42
this new school system and everything.
33:45
And so what this organization did to their credit was figuring out, all
33:49
right, we still want this international experience, but we're going to put it
33:53
into these little bite sized things.
33:55
So people would go, still a burden, still a challenge, but executives would
34:00
go for three weeks somewhere and then come back for a month or so, go back
34:06
for three weeks, come back and didn't do a full two years work, but got a good
34:12
sense of these different world cultures that the organization had to work in.
34:16
So creativity on the org's part, in order to be able to take a, what was never seen
34:24
as an intentional challenge for women.
34:26
Let's, let's put this barricade up, but nevertheless, it served us.
34:30
As a barricade for women.
34:32
Oh, that's fantastic.
34:33
That's great.
34:35
Now, you have a framework of how to navigate some of this.
34:40
Yes.
34:41
So, a big part of, we can wait for organizations.
34:46
To really systematically try to figure out what's impeding women's progress inside
34:52
their organizations and many organizations legitimately want this to figure this out.
34:58
But what I coach women to do or anyone who is different than the majority culture
35:07
inside an organization is to recognize that by you trying to execute leadership.
35:14
One is that you're challenging what I consider a very narrow
35:19
definition of leadership.
35:20
It's all these things over here that we've been saying, right?
35:23
And what we're trying to do is Change one on one, a person's idea around leadership,
35:30
or it might be one on a department or a team or ultimately an organization,
35:35
but to expand who can do leadership and what leadership can look like.
35:42
So I counsel the idea around If I'm going to lead, I want to lead from my strengths.
35:49
I want to figure out out of this whole portfolio of potential ways of leading,
35:55
which ones are I'm going to take on in this moment for this situation so that I
36:00
can be successful so the organization can be successful team successful, whatever.
36:04
Sometimes it might be a masculine behavior.
36:06
Sometimes it might be a feminine behavior.
36:08
But either way, it's important for us to make sure that what we do is
36:12
that we're essentially putting what I call a verbal frame on our actions.
36:17
And it's essentially explaining what you're doing.
36:20
And by doing that explanation, you are broadening people's narrow
36:25
definition of leadership that we've all evolved to as a result of all the
36:29
socialization that we've gone through.
36:30
So it's called name, explain, and claim.
36:34
And basically naming is I'm going to tell people what I'm doing, and then
36:40
I'm going to explain why I'm doing it, because oftentimes my strategic
36:46
intent may be misinterpreted.
36:49
For example, I might be trying to have people involved in a decision through
36:54
a consensus decision making process.
36:56
And because masculine wise, we're supposed to be decisive, me asking
37:01
for input may be seen as I'm incapable of making the decision myself.
37:06
So it could be mis, I may be misinterpreted that I'm incapable of
37:10
making the decision, or, oh, I'm just asking people because I want people
37:14
to feel good about the decision and feel like they've been included, as
37:19
if those are necessarily bad things, but at any rate, so I'm going to
37:22
explain the why am I doing something.
37:25
And then that way and then I'm going to name and claim what
37:30
the intended beneficial outcome is that I'm, I'm seeking.
37:35
So let me give you an example.
37:37
So there's an upcoming contract and that needs to be finalized with the
37:41
vendor and it's going to be critical to your company or your team or your
37:46
supply chain for five years, right?
37:49
So you could as a leader, make the decision all by yourself, but instead
37:54
you want different people from different parts of that are from different functions
38:00
or whatever to come together and wrestle with this contract, come up with a agreed
38:05
upon terms so that we can make sure that the contract meets all of our needs
38:12
doesn't have any unintended consequences were stuck with it for five years.
38:16
So I might need to say something like, we're ready to finalize this contract
38:21
that's worth 2 million and it lasts five years you are all going to have to live.
38:26
with the terms of this contract for that time.
38:29
So to make sure that we have the most airtight contract possible, with no
38:35
unintended consequences, no unhappiness that, oh my gosh, this isn't working
38:40
for our group, I've invited you all here to pick apart every clause based
38:48
on your own functions perspective.
38:51
And then We're going to come to an agreement on what
38:54
this contract looks like.
38:56
So it seems like, Oh my gosh, so much extra work.
38:59
Why can't I just invite people and say, Hey, we're going to talk
39:02
about the contract, come on in.
39:04
In many cases, we can just do that because people already get who you are
39:09
and they already see you as a leader.
39:11
But this name explain and claim framing can be really valuable when you're
39:18
dealing with new people that don't know who you are, that don't know that you're
39:21
a fabulous leader and or for people that you feel like, Oh yeah, they, they
39:27
think I'm too nice or I'm too squishy or I'm all the other weird words that
39:32
oftentimes women's leadership gets.
39:35
Attributed to.
39:36
So yeah, so thinking about putting this verbal frame on top of doing
39:40
good leadership, picking which, trait you should enact in order
39:43
to fill to meet your your goals.
39:46
And then putting this verbal frame on it.
39:49
Yeah, that's fantastic.
39:51
I, I've seen this work with my clients as well.
39:54
And I had one client who was working at this tech startup and
39:58
she, she'd worked for several other huge companies and she kept getting
40:02
told that she didn't lead right.
40:04
And she needed to lead like the guys did.
40:06
And so she would end up quitting because it didn't work for
40:10
her to try to do it like them.
40:12
But it worked really well for her to do it her way.
40:14
And, she was on her third job when she started with me and she
40:18
wanted this one to work because she really liked this company.
40:21
And so through my program, she was able to get the naming and explaining part
40:26
down and, and claiming that as well.
40:28
She, she did this whole process without having those words for it.
40:31
And.
40:32
When she could start to understand herself, what she was doing
40:36
and why she was doing it, then she could communicate that out.
40:40
And it resulted in her getting promoted twice in one year.
40:42
And all of a sudden, so much more respect for how she was leading her team and why
40:48
it was running so smoothly rather than that being maybe a fluke or, who knows
40:53
what they were attributing it to before.
40:56
Yep.
40:56
But that's a great example also of taking the risk to be authentic,
41:03
but then helping other people to see how your authentic leadership
41:08
is actually going to be successful in terms of reaching the outcomes
41:12
that the organization wants, right?
41:15
And it's not that you're criticizing is, when she's being told you, you're
41:18
not doing leadership right, it would have been great if she had asked,
41:22
well, what does right look like?
41:24
And is that something that As a woman, I can do, even though that makes it
41:29
for a really challenging conversation or an uncomfortable conversation or
41:34
it could be, I'll try that and you can let me know how it was received.
41:40
But it is you not criticizing others, but saying I need to do it
41:44
in a way that makes sense to me.
41:46
And it's authentic to me because Jill, as you started off.
41:50
The segment talking about how that's how we build trust how other people come to
41:54
trust us because they know who we are.
41:56
And we're leading from that, from the, from where we are.
41:59
Absolutely.
42:00
I love that.
42:01
Oh, I could keep talking for another few hours with you, but I
42:05
know that we have to let you go.
42:06
And so thank you so much for discussing this with us and, and to bring your name,
42:13
explain and claim framework as well.
42:15
And so much background in history.
42:17
I love, I love going back to the 1800s is to see how much of our
42:21
culture is still actually operating on these things that have come from,
42:26
these there's through lines from hundreds of years ago and culture's
42:29
deep and it doesn't change easily.
42:32
And, and we're all working to, to do that.
42:34
So thank you so much for all the work that you do with Simmons and.
42:38
It's been a pleasure to have you here with us.
42:40
Thank you.
42:41
So it's great to talk about this because I am so, so I just feel
42:45
like it's, we're going to change leadership one person at a time, right,
42:49
we're going to expand leadership.
42:51
That's, yeah.
42:52
Great.
42:53
Thank you,
42:55
So if you want to improve your executive presence, let me know in the comments
42:57
if you can relate to any of these issues that Mary and I have been talking about.
43:02
Have you ever been told or heard of another woman being
43:04
told that you are too abrasive?
43:06
How do you balance your feminine and masculine leadership traits?
43:10
And what can you name, explain, and claim in your company?
43:15
Let us know in the comments if you're joining us on YouTube.
43:17
and If you'd like to learn more about how to increase your executive
43:20
presence, download our executive presence guide for women leaders, 10
43:25
strategies for commanding the room.
43:27
Each one is something that you can implement today.
43:29
And the link is below in the show notes as well.
43:32
If you want to dive deeper into women's leadership and how to
43:35
move up in your career, subscribe either on YouTube or wherever you
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43:40
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43:44
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43:58
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