Article
Leader and manager development tops 2025 HR priorities
1st November 2024 by Lee Robertson
Leader and manager development remains the number one priority for HR leaders as they prepare for 2025, according to a…
26th February by Rina Goldenberg
Reading time 4 minutes
What will you do to #PressForProgress?
As many of us prepare to celebrate International Women’s Day, I reflect on the meaning of its theme for this year, Press for Progress. This year, each one of us is being asked individually to act, think and be gender inclusive.
For me, gender parity is intrinsically linked to respect and inclusion and as long as we lack these two ingredients in our society, gender parity will defy us.
Let me elaborate:
I have observed on many occasions that women feel disrespected and excluded in business, having to live up to a double standard that works against them no matter what they do.
Here’s an example:
I recently spoke to a highly motivated and successful recruiter - a woman- who doesn’t mince her words, is direct in her approach and very strategic and professional. She tells me that she owes her professional success to her less-feminine nature. In other words, behaving more like men do - less emotional and personable - has yielded great success in business yet comes at a human cost. Jennifer (let’s call her) finds that, although business is good, her male colleagues don’t like her demeanour, while her female colleagues find her unfriendly and too ambitious. Stuck between two worlds, Jennifer finds it hard to fit in and feels unrealised, unappreciated and undervalued.
Jennifer is not alone. She is but one example of many successful women out there who had to adapt their behaviour to fit into a business world that was built by men for men. Having a long-term, successful career and contributing our very best is virtually impossible if we don’t feel respected and included because we’re trying hard to adapt to an environment that isn’t not natural to us.
So what can we do? There are a number of things we as individuals can do to improve this business reality.
Here are my top 3:
I remember the female head of sales who was predicted to fail as she took over a relationship with a hot-headed and ‘difficult’ client. In fact, this woman’s ability to read the client’s reactions and adapt her style of communication - a main aspect of emotional intelligence- earned her trust and respect with the client and, consequently, most of his business. Relationships like that are built on the strength of our emotional intelligence and any business that discounts EQ as a valuable form of intelligence is incurring unforgivable opportunity costs. Emotions do have a very important place in business as do intuition (that gut feeling that our brain cannot decipher that’s based on surrounding cues we pick up subconsciously), transparency and nurturing. Women have been successful using all those traits despite the lack of appreciation of them by the male nature of business. So next time you find a woman being ‘too emotional’, you may ask yourself why that is, what is the value of that emotion in business and why you yourself lack it.
We have come a long way in appreciating and respecting each other for our differences - yet we have a long way to go. When we begin to genuinely respect and appreciate our differences, we will cease to be surrounded by scandalous inappropriate behaviours, we will begin to spot undiscovered opportunities for growth and unlock the many untapped resources of our people.
Don’t you think that’s worth pressing for progress for?
Rina Goldenberg Lynch as a Gender Parity Advocate and Founder of Voice At The Table, a strategy consultancy with a focus on gender diversity and inclusion. Having worked as a banking lawyer for nearly 20 years, Rina qualified as an executive coach with the AoEC in 2014 and uses coaching in all aspects of her business, from building strong bonds with her team to understanding clients. Connect with Rina on LinkedIn, Twitter and her website.
Find out more about Rina at Voice At The Table’s IWD Celebration.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the view of AoEC.
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