Be the Leader you want to see

By Susie Ramroop

Ever heard that phrase “You can’t be what you can’t see”?  I did for the first time at a conference for women in 2018. I was there as the mindset specialist, to talk on a panel about winning your inner game (the one in your head), and I nearly fell off my chair when I heard it.

This statement was being made like it was a rule, and the 200 or so women in the audience seemed to be accepting it because someone admirable was making the statement. It struck me how willing we are, as women, to take on things like this, leaving them unchallenged.

What if that belief is the reason that there is a gender gap?  What if we could park our previous beliefs about pay and a lack of fairness and we considered that our career could be exactly what we wanted it to be if we knew how to step up and play a bigger game?

My experience shows that people don’t stop believing in what holds them back until they have something better to choose. I decided to outline these choices in my book – Be The Leader You Want To See.

I believe the simplest to understand and easiest way to start playing bigger is using my ABC model:

Awareness 

What do you stand for?  How do you represent this?  To what have you dedicated your time? What are you working towards and why?  Taking the time to consider the now will expose the areas where you are being limited and allowing your talents to be capped.  Unless this is made to look extremely unpalatable you will leave the back door open, and be tempted to settle into these patterns.  A true leader looks impartially at what is, asks themselves if that is a good enough standard to live by and then makes a decision to create a bigger vision and change what isn’t working.

Bravery 

Growth doesn’t require massive leaps of faith.  The magic doesn’t only happen outside of your comfort zone.  Instead, I believe that if you nudge the edges of that comfort zone consistently enough, that it expands.  The level of bravery that is required is aligned with nervous excitement, not terror.  Those acts of bravery are so small that others barely notice, nor judge.  You only need one win under your belt before you are curious enough to see what the next brave act will generate.

Contribution 

When you are consistently intentional about growing your self-awareness and bravery, you can make an unfathomable contribution to your own fulfilment as a leader, whether you think your current job is the one for you or not. This is about creating a new perspective for your personal and professional future before the circumstances show up. It is how you make an impact. All the time you fear you have wasted, and all the pigeonholes you believe you are in, they all count.  It’s time to be tactical about how to leverage all of your experience.

If you would like to be guided through this process in a way that feels like your personal cheerleader is talking only to you, then you will love Be The Leader You Want To See; a guide for how to play a much bigger game with what you already have.  It all starts with you –you’re the only factor in your career fully under your control. Show others how great they can be by being the best version of you.

Susie’s book Be The Leader You Want To See is available now on Amazon.

The story of pink!

What do you associate with the colour pink?

Nowadays, most would consider pink to be a girl’s colour.  We’re told it’s a colour that stands for charm, politeness, sensitivity, tenderness, sweetness, childhood, femininity and romance.

So why would Voice At The Table – a gender parity and balance advocate – choose pink as its dominant colour?  Doesn’t that reinforce the stereotypes attached to women and, as such, go against everything we stand for?

Not as I see it.

I chose pink to defy the stereotype and encourage others to move away from labels.  We help people see beyond convention.  The challenge we offer is for each of us to be confronted with something that seems straight forward and learn to understand the complexity beyond.  Let’s not judge books by their covers.  Let’s read the pages in between and gain a greater understanding of people and perspectives.

Let’s start with the colour pink.

Pink didn’t start out as a colour of girls.  In fact, in the 19th century, pink was a colour associated with boys.  As red was the colour closely-associated with men, pink – a lighter shade of red – was the colour most often chosen for little men, as boys were then regarded.

In June 1918, an American trade publication even wrote:

The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.

Pink also had different connotations in different cultures.  In India, for example, pink was seen as a symbol of a “welcome embrace”, while in Japan it was the colour of masculinity and now, the colour of Spring (when the famous cherry blossoms colour Japan pink throughout).  In Thailand, pink is the colour of Tuesday so anyone born on that day may wear pink on a Tuesday and adopt pink as their colour.  Italy’s sports newsletter La Gazetta della Sport uses pink paper to stand out and awards a pink jersey to the winner of Italy’s biggest bicycle race.

In Catholicism, pink symbolises joy and happiness.

Nowadays, the colour is closely associated with women’s issues and empowerment, as well as the LGBTQ+ movement.  And of course we all would recognise the pink ribbon as the emblem of breast cancer awareness.

I am surprised at how many different meanings the colour pink conjures up, and for all these meanings and reasons, I’m pleased to peg our name to it.

Are We Being Cowards if we Don’t Speak Out?

 “Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly,” according to Ghandi.

He might be right.  After all, do we not become complicit if we witness something we know to be wrong and say nothing?

Indeed, silence can often be mistaken for approval or agreement.

Luckily that isn’t what’s happening today.  The world is speaking out loud and clear against racism.  But it took the death of yet another black American to overfill our cup of  tolerance.

What about other, less severe situations and biases, in the workplace for instance?  How do we speak out against them?

Here at Voice At The Table, when we begin to create a culture of tolerance and inclusion in the workplace, we break it up into individual inclusive behaviours – the building blocks of a culture that welcomes and values different views and experiences. Speaking out is one of these behaviours.

Speaking out in the work context doesn’t have to amount to a protest or dispute.  We also don’t need to wait until something bad happens in order to speak out.  The best way to practise speaking out is to do it gently and frequently, especially when we hear or witness something that doesn’t sit well with us.  When a colleague utters a racially-charged remark, for instance, about someone who is not in the room.  Or when others are joking about a female colleague who leaves “early” to pick up her child from nursery.  Or when the manager says that, while working from home once a week is the company policy, that policy does not apply to her team.

Setting the record straight is not difficult, but takes courage and practice.

When we speak out, it’s often best to keep the tone casual but the message serious.  Many people prefer to use humour to call out inappropriate behaviour.  I’ve heard women say to men, who had lowered their gaze below eye-level when speaking to them, “Hello my friend, my face is up here!” which is usually followed by an apology, after which the conversation moves on.

Speaking out doesn’t necessarily need to create conflict.  If we can practise being polite, cool-headed and curious about the other person’s statement or demeanour, we often achieve more than when we get upset or annoyed about it.  One could, for example, say in response to a racially charged comment “I’m sorry, for an instant I thought you said that …… is that right?”   Playing the statement back to people often gets them to think about it and hear it in a different way, sometimes differently from the way it was intended.

We have to remember that most people want to do the right thing and don’t mean to offend.  So, when we challenge people, we’re helping them understand how their words or deeds may make others feel.  In most situations, they’re grateful for us pointing out how they may have mis-stepped (yet there may be an element of embarrassment too).

Another way to speak out is to draw an inference from one situation to another.  You might say “So, what you just said is that …..   How does that work in [another scenario?]” or “I wonder whether you would have said this to me if I were a man/a white woman/a straight man/a person who is not in a wheelchair…”

Speaking out doesn’t have to be confrontational.  The more we try to speak out the better we get at it.  The better we get at it, the more we can encourage others to do it, as well, gradually creating an environment in which people feel safe to speak their minds and are encouraged to learn and grow when something they say or do doesn’t land the way it was intended.  In this way, we create a work environment in which all individuals are valued for who they are and can fully contribute with their diverse thoughts and experiences.

I hope you give it a try and do it often.

To learn more about how to communicate impactfully, especially across screens, join our virtual training with Jayne Constantinis Virtually Skilful later this month.

#UntilWeAllWin

Active Voice: We’re All Going on a Summer Holiday… of Sorts!

Summer is upon us, albeit unlike any summer we’ve ever known before. Holiday plans are in chaos – but they seem to be the hottest topic on everyone’s lips as we optimistically clamber for a ray of hope so that we may get away somewhere we can re-energise and refill our dwindling supplies of motivation to keep going. As you contemplate your (limited) travel options, we offer you some novel and inspiring tips on what you can do with your annual leave on home ground.

  • Pack a picnic and head out on day-trips to National Trust parks and gardens. There are so many to choose from that you could fill a week visiting different locations and enjoying greener surroundings.
  • Camping looks set to be a possibility as it would lend itself well to social distancing. It’s safe to assume that, along with the rest of the hospitality industry, campsites and caravan sites in England could re-open on 4th July as part of further easing of lockdown measures, although this is subject to change. A second wave of Coronavirus infections would certainly see reopening dates pushed back indefinitely. Cool camping
  • Pamper yourself (and your family) with virtual spa days. Set up the bathroom ready for a relaxing day of long baths, pampering, and maybe a facemask or two. If you’re feeling really extravagant you could always hire a hot tub. For a more holistic twist line up some yoga or meditation videos on YouTube for some deep relaxation.
  • Learn a new language. There are many companies offering free or reduced cost packages to learn a new language during lockdown. Be it French, Spanish, Italian or other. Choose your language and spend the week immersing yourself in in the words, music and food of this country. Rosetta Stone; DuoLingo
  • Get on your bike. Cycle sales have soared during the Covid-19 pandemic. The roads are definitely quieter and it’s a great way to explore new places, especially if you purchase a bike rack and drive to different destinations before swapping four wheels for two. Cycling UK
  • Cook along to a YouTube masterclass, or try an online painting tutorial. In the case of gastronomy, you could turn the experience into a Master-chef style competition with other members of your family each cooking a different dish and marking them out of 10. By the end of the week, you’ll have a winner and a broader culinary palette!
  • Raise a glass to “virtual wine tasting” – yes, you can sign up for an online session, which includes wines delivered to your door and a unique code to sign in to the video workshop. Just sit back, sip and enjoy. Companies offering this service include: the drinks business ; pull the cork; West London wine school

Is Virtual Reality Sustainable for a Contented Workforce?

By Melissa Jackson

While recently trawling through the internet, I discovered an article – written just over a year ago – which concluded that we need to build meaningful connections with work colleagues for both personal and professional happiness and success. It also (presciently) cautioned that these connections were under threat from greater reliance on virtual communication tools. And yet here we are stuck in a Covid-world where “virtual” has become a semi-permanent fixture.

The article was published by the We Work group and was based on the findings of a 2018 study conducted by Future Workplace, an HR advisory and research firm, and Virgin Pulse, a technology-solutions company geared toward employee wellbeing and engagement. It discovered that of the 2,000 managers and employees in 100 countries surveyed, 45% relied on email (among other tech tools) to communicate with their colleagues. Of those, over 40% said they felt lonely always or very often, were not engaged, and had a high need for social connection.

Fast forward to today and those of us able to work from home, have co-operatively slipped into a routine of seemingly endless video meetings, email and phone communication. Many people that I have spoken to say they seem to be working harder than ever because video conference calls demand more energy, focus and concentration than they ever imagined. They’re exhausted, but know they have little choice. Do they like them? This almost seems irrelevant.

Commenting on the survey last year, Lakshmi Rengarajan, the first director of workplace connection at The We Work Company, said, “Connection is at risk because of these wonderful tech advances. People don’t look each other in the eye anymore, and as a result, we’ve lost something.”

This probably explains why, largely, people want to return to work – to meet at the water-cooler or catch-up over a coffee or just have REAL human interaction again… there’s no substitute for meeting face-to-face and making eye contact.

“Forging meaningful relationships with colleagues doesn’t necessarily mean becoming buddies,” suggested Rengarajan.

“You don’t even need to like someone to treat them with respect and dignity. Connection allows conflict and difference of opinion to better thrive. If I am connected to you, I can tell you, ‘Hey, I think that idea could be better,’ without it being misinterpreted,” she said.

The very real fear among people I’ve talked to is that any “return” to work will not mean a return to the office per se. Companies have deduced that they may not need a fully operational office space and that virtual meetings have proved their worth both productively and financially. I know several people who, looking to the future, would feel more comfortable with a combination of home and office working, possibly leaning more towards home. Some feel they may never need to commute again and that the home office will prevail. Others see it as a chance to ask for a more flexible working pattern, citing the Coronavirus lockdown as proof that staff can successfully play their part via the wonders of technology.

It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea and the long-term effects of a shift towards a virtual office may wreak havoc on that other important consideration – mental wellbeing. As we all know, real relationships aren’t built through screens.

Don’t Waste Time Procrastinating – Focus on Communicating

Guest blog by David Frederick, Principal at Marcus Bishop Associates

David is a new member of the Voice At The Table Community, drawn in by our Tuesday@10 Series, which has been tailored to keep everyone motivated and engaged in exceptional circumstances – covering topics designed to make the best of yourself, including how to improve your performance during remote working, leading a team from your kitchen table and building stronger mental fitness during these difficult times.

Leading a team of accountants, he’s consciously structured his first Tuesday virtual meeting around the Webinar, ensuring it ends promptly at 9.55am so that he can break off to get his weekly fix.

On the series so far, David said, “It gives you a chance to focus on areas you don’t normally look at as an accountant.

“It’s about drawing the best out of people and helping my team to grow.”

He’s found the tips and suggestions shared in the Webinars really valuable in a situation where there was little time for forward planning.

He said, “No-one trains you to work or manage a team from home, so any props that you get along the way that can help the process are useful.”

 

The enforced Working From Home (WFH) experience has given David insight, from which he’s identified five fundamental principles:

  • Establish clear objectives and eliminate any form of procrastination;
  • Allow for flexibility and be ready to change as events unfold;
  • Recognise there will be greater demand upon your non-technical skills;
  • Communication is a key feature;
  • Earlier technological investment and engagement provides a helpful launch pad.

Here’s how he came to these conclusions:

Only a few months ago, Marcus Bishop Associates and its small team of accountants were working from our picturesque location inside Kingswood House in south London. Our pre-COVID-19 place for conducting business is a Grade II listed building, colloquially known as the Bovril Castle. It was formerly the home of John Lawson Johnson the inventor of Bovril.

On Thursday 19th March, we were informed that our building would be closing the next day until further notice. Prior to this sudden bombshell, WFH had only been seriously trialled by myself, due to health reasons.  It was not a familiar mode of working to the team, but here was our opportunity to try it.

 The weekend before WFH began, my thought was, “How on earth am I going to manage this new situation?”

I recall in our farewell team session that I had advised them we’d have a team conference call on Monday at 9:30am. At the time, its content was wholly unknown. Fortunately, over the weekend, a simple tripartite framework for the new uncertainty was hatched.

  • We have to navigate whatever comes our way to get through to the other side and whatever, lay on the other side was not material;
  • Our clients are going to need our real service, cash flow management, advisory services and above all business support to help them through; and
  • The team is going to need greater support if we are to achieve the above.

Suffice to say, I was going to need a miracle or something to juggle these three balls simultaneously.

One word was ever present the whole weekend, “communication”. So I placed it at the heart of our planning to overcome this period of uncertainty. There was no time for procrastination. I set out a three-part plan:

  • Communicate with the team. I planned to hold daily video conference calls with the team at 9:30, 13:30 and 17:30. Perfect, exactly four hours apart;
  • Communicate with our clients. I planned client calls to ascertain their business outlook and how we could help them. Later, as news unfolded we had to communicate regular updates to our clients. It is important to ensure clients know and feel that you are there for them in these times;
  • Communicate with our small business suppliers. I planned to call these suppliers for their business update and share information where necessary.

How was I going to get any work done, with all these new pastoral care services now in the mix? Fortunately, after the shock, surprise and novelty of home working, there was a realignment to a new business in uncertain times.

The realignment was not perfect but where does perfection exist? The lack of perfection was not material to affect our client service continuity. In fact we were still winning new work! I recognise our fortunate position, because the experience has been more traumatic and painful for many others.

Week one coincided with the aftermath of the Chancellor’s first speech, where he announced the first tranche of business support. This was the most demanding week for all of us. We were adjusting to our new modus operandi plus this Noah-style flood of telephone calls.

Since that first week, the team has adapted like a duck to water. This is a great testament to everyone. However, the team members fortunately are free of many of life’s other challenges, such as parental or carers’ responsibilities.

The team’s transition was facilitated by our daily video conference sessions with a rotation of individuals leading the session. In addition, a WFH survey helped gauge the team’s views and identify areas for improvement.

Our daily closedown session at 17:30 has seen the introduction of fun and light hearted activities to shift the focus away from work and targets.

Working from home has produced some positive outcomes for Marcus Bishop Associates:

  • It marked the end of clients submitting physical paper records to us; except in a limited number of cases determined by law. Document transfer via our portal keeps everyone safe and not exposed to any viruses!
  • Clients previously reluctant to use technology had miraculously shifted. Again, adversity was a driver for change and a killer of reluctance!
  • Face-to-face meetings can now be reserved for only those essential business engagements given our successful use of technology.

We’ll embrace working from home as part of our life-work balance but the team has suggested not as a permanent feature.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world… Let’s Steer a Course Towards Accelerating Gender Parity

You’ve seen these figures before: 100 years to close the overall gender gap, 257 to close the economic gender gap. It’s beyond our lifetime and too long to wait. What can be done to accelerate the closing of these gaps – or rather, chasms – by us, our companies and our governments?

Many countries, including the UK, are well placed to reap the benefits of their investment in female education and harness the gender balance opportunities made possible by the changing nature of work. So far, they – and we – have failed to do so.

But if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we can do things differently! We can work from home without disrupting the flow of business, we can reverse the signs of environmental damage to our planet, we can slow down, look up and ‘smell the roses’ once in a while. And, yes, we can accelerate the closing of these unspeakable gaps.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has already launched a programme with a number of countries to do just that. Suitably named the Closing the Gender Gap Accelerator, the programme is designed to pull together global and national public and private action that narrows these gaps. To date, the WEF has managed to secure commitment from nine governments around the world to join the Accelerator programme (its goal is 15 by the end of this year). Only one of the nine is a G20 country – and it is not the UK.

My point is that the tools and solutions to help accelerate the closing of these gaps are available to us, but for some reason, we are not taking the necessary steps to implement them – either on a national or more local front.

One of my worries is that the lessons we have and are continuing to learn from the pandemic will not be captured by our society. I worry that we will all return to work and life in the same way we did before Covid-19. This would be a lost opportunity; to reset our values, our priorities and our trajectories and to look at our lives from a different perspective and to realise that they could be different.

In April, I wrote about the fact that the new way in which we have started to interact with each other as a result of having to work and live from/at home has made us more empathetic, more accepting and more kind. We have reverted to what it means to be human and have injected that humanity into our work. We have become more tolerant of the daily disruptions in our work from children and pets; our “offices” show glimpses of who we are as people; we’re reconnecting with nature and with ourselves – our emotions and philosophies – as much as with distant friends and family. In other words, we’re bringing more of ourselves to work and are accepting of who that is, of us as well as our colleagues. Our managers are learning to lead with humour and be more comfortable with being less serious all the time. We care about the emotional and physical state of our colleagues and bend over backwards to help them cope.

I classify all this as inclusive behaviours. And, while we may feel that it’s not within our powers (query as to whether this is true) to persuade our CEOs and MPs to join the WEF’s commitment to accelerate the closing of gender parity gaps, what we most certainly can do is preserve how we interact with and treat each other when we go back to our desks in the office, and continue to nurture those inclusive behaviours that we have started to develop.

Inclusion leads to greater appreciation of diversity which makes programmes like the WEF’s Closing the Gender Parity Accelerators feasible and impactful.

 

Learn more about the WEF Accelerator programme and how your company can get involved.

Watch a short WEF video on the gender parity gap.

Active Voice: How to lead from the kitchen table

If you are leading a team from your new office environment – AKA the kitchen – and wondering how to stay on top of work and keep your staff engaged and productive, we have some great tips to keep you on track.

  1. Be clearer than ever about your team’s purpose. This may have changed since the lockdown, if only temporarily. A team that has a strong sense of purpose is more engaged.
  2. Be the leader you aspire to be. Be clear about how you come across as a leader; think about what it’s like to be led by you and how you’re seen as a leader by your team and try to bridge any gaps.
  3. Re-contract with your team. All our relationships with members of our team have a “contract” eg. performance expectations; emotional and physical availability; how we communicate. What does this contract look like under Covid-19 and now that we are physically separate? Especially regarding communication. There may be times when people can’t speak or would prefer to communicate by phone/Zoom instead of email to have more human engagement. It may be advisable to use an email footer along the lines of: “I’m sending this email at a time that suits me, but please feel free to respond at a time that suits you.”
  4. Adapt your leadership style to meet your team’s needs either: a) according to each team member’s style and preferences, b) according to their skills, experience and competence or c) according to what motivates them – find out by asking them what they enjoy and value.
  5. Use structure, but lightly. This will help with business planning. In the current situation, it has been established that people like structure; it helps them to feel valued. Bring structure to your week and decide which team “events” should be mandatory and which should be optional.
  6. Help the team to stay resilient. Make it acceptable for individuals to say, “I’m not ok.” It’s your job as a leader to make sure your team knows that. You can role-model your own vulnerability, talk about your feelings and what you need help on – and how you’ve coped – and encourage people to find something that works for them. However, don’t expect it to be the same as what works for you.
  7. Help manage individuals’ anxieties. Reassure people, where you can. Be transparent and honest and be upfront about what you don’t know i.e. “I’m not sure about the long-term impact of this.”
  8. Be flexible and have fun eg. organise team quizzes and encourage team ideas. Perhaps even suggest taking part in a Joe Wicks team fitness workout.

This sage advice formed the basis of a webinar in Voice At The Table’s new Tuesday@10 series.