Voice At The Table

A national shortage of lorry drivers has prompted some – women included – to consider a career change to gain an HGV licence. Trucking has entered the national consciousness and the driver shortfall means there’s never been a better time to steer towards a new career. But you don’t have to get behind the wheel to engineer new opportunities, the possibilities are endless. If you’re considering a change of direction, we show you the way to shift gear.

1. Assess your interests, values, and skills. Review past successful roles, volunteer work, projects and jobs to identify preferred activities and levels of expertise. Determine whether your core values and skills are addressed through your current career.
2. Brainstorm ideas for career alternatives. Research career options and discuss your core values and skills with friends, family and networking contacts. If you’re having difficulty coming up with ideas, consider meeting with a career counsellor for professional advice.
3. Check out job options. Conduct a preliminary comparative evaluation of several fields to identify a few targets for in-depth research. You can find a wealth of information online simply by Googling the jobs that interest you.
4. Set up a job shadow (or two). Shadow professionals in fields of primary interest to observe work first hand. Spend anywhere from a few hours to a few days job-shadowing people who have roles that interest you.
5. Take a class. Investigate educational opportunities that would bridge your background to your new field. Consider taking an evening course at a local college or an online course.
6. Upgrade your skills. Look for ways to develop new skills in your current job which would pave the way for a change. If your company offers in-house training, sign up for as many classes as you can.

And if you’re still deliberating, a recent survey of career changers, carried out by Joblist, found that those who had switched jobs were overwhelmingly happy with their decision. Those who took the plunge expressed a range of positive outcomes, including:

Happier – 77 per cent

More satisfied – 75 per cent

More fulfilled – 69 per cent

Less stressed – 65 per cent

What are you waiting for?

Need to talk to someone about a career change?  We have a number of career coaches who could be right for you.  Talk to us first.

By Rina Goldenberg Lynch

Today, I want to explore who inspires me and why.  More specifically, who are the women in my life who have inspired my actions and what makes them so inspirational?

Of course, the answer is a long list (of not just women!) – those I’m close to and those I don’t know at all.  Given the nature of our work, I share with you the few women who came to mind almost immediately.

Caroline
There’s Caroline Criado-Perez who single-handedly took on society and its institutions for leaving out women from just about any process designed for society at large, as she sets out in her book Invisible Women.

Tinna and Lisa
There are Tinna C. Nielsen & Lisa Kepinski who developed the uniquely-helpful, practical way to become more inclusive in the workplace without really trying.  Their ‘secrets’ are set out in their book called Inclusion Nudges and is, in my opinion, mandatory reading in this discipline.

Tarana
There’s Tarana Burke who founded the #metoo movement in 2006 and then waited for history to unfold and start righting its many wrongs.

The common denominator
As I reflect on the deeds of these women, it strikes me that they do have a lot in common.  Perhaps these commonalities are some of the building blocks of inspiration.

Courage
All these women have courage!  Courage to do something that requires them to swim against the mainstream current; courage to stand up and say something that’s going to make them potentially very unpopular and disliked (and we know, as women, how difficult that is for us); courage to stick to their positions and to continue voicing them loud and clear, irrespective of any personal cost.

Passion
They also have passion!  I’ve always admired people who have a singular passion for their chosen field.  Early in my career, I had a colleague who was a tax lawyer.  While most of us thought of tax as a rather mundane topic of conversation, this man found it exhilarating!  He spoke about tax law with such passion, it almost made it riveting!  He found ways to look at it that breathed life into the dry subject.  His love for the topic oozed out of him.  So much so that, when I heard him speak about tax, I felt I could almost befriend it.

I sense the same type of passion for their area of focus from these three women.  They’re whole-heartedly devoted to it.  So much so, that they continue to evolve their topic in newsletters, further books and other publicity that helps us gain clarity and understanding.  In this way, they manage to bring to us information that we might not have otherwise encountered, and inspire us to take action.

Pragmatism
Finally, all three are creatively pragmatic.  Perhaps not intentionally, each of these women found a way to package her expertise into something that has universal appeal and allows us to engage with it.  From highlighting women-focused organisations (such as a business that makes cycling saddles designed for women’s anatomy or a charity that works with Councils to design common spaces with girls in mind), to making something as difficult and elusive as Inclusion simpler, more practical and, therefore, more achievable, to coining a simple phrase/hashtag that highlights to the world many of the wrongs that have been perpetrated against women in the workplace.

Each in her own way,  these women inspire me to alter the way I see life, the way I raise my children, the way Voice At the Table supports its clients.  In this way, I hope that my inspiration can be converted into concrete benefits to those with whom we interact.

What about you?  Who inspires you and what are their character traits?

If you enjoyed reading this post, you might also enjoy reading Are We Being Cowards If We Don’t Speak Out?

By Inge Woudstra

Are you creative? Do you love coming up with new ideas? Some people are amazing at that and wake up in the morning with brilliant ideas.

That’s not me. When, as a child, I was given a white piece of paper and tasked to ‘draw anything you like’, I would struggle drawing anything at all. What to choose? My mind would just go blank, so I thought the creative gene had passed me by.

What I have learned since is that I am creative with ideas of others. I learn from looking at others. Not just one but many people. I then combine what they are doing into an idea that works for me.

That’s why I love writing D&I case studies. I hope a case study will inspire you to be creative with others’ ideas, that it will give you new ideas, and inspire a different approach to help you progress on your D&I journey.

The Meaning of Inclusion

A few months ago, I get a call from the D&I team of a large international organisation in the energy sector. They explain that the CEO has set new D&I objectives and tasked the D&I team with developing a programme that will help the company meet these objectives.

It’s their impression that the CEO and his team realise Inclusion is vital to their future strategy, but that not everyone in the leadership team seems to understand what Inclusion actually means.

Due to this lack of clarity, the D&I team – understandably – have been struggling to develop a roadmap for implementation of an impactful D&I programme.

What’s the Ask?
We are requested to run a 2-hour workshop with the Executive Committee.

The aim of the workshop is to form a shared idea of Inclusion, so that each member of the Executive Committee clearly understands what Inclusion in their company looks and feels like.

So Rina and I go to work.
In preparation for the workshop, we review the company’s existing D&I documentation and interview each of the members of the Executive Committee individually. The interviews are not only informative, they’re also designed to inspire each person to start thinking about Inclusion in the work context.  The output of the interviews helps us shape the short workshop to be relevant, impactful and effective.
Having finalised our preparation, we are ready to embark on a focused workshop.  In it, we focus on defining the company’s Inclusion Vision and Values, to align with its business strategy and future.  We also agree personal and team commitments  for the continued development of Inclusion at the Executive Committee level.

After the workshop, we hold individual follow-up sessions with each member of the Executive Committee to further clarify any ambiguities and answer residual questions.  The follow-up sessions also ensure that our 2-hour workshop is only the start (rather than the end) of the Executive Committee’s Inclusion journey.

What did we learn?

In our debrief, the D&I team shared their delight with the results: the Executive Committee feels energised, motivated and – most importantly – clear about the carefully crafted Inclusion Vision and Values statements; these statements now make Inclusion tangible for the company; and the team feels comfortable cascading the Inclusion Vision and Values – alongside a well-considered D&I programme – to leaders and staff.
In the individual follow-up sessions, we learned that the Executive Committee members now feel confident talking about Inclusion and have started to progress their individual and team commitments and actions.

While this is not the end, it was a necessary, positive step forward on the company’s D&I journey.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, lacking clear guidance from the top of your organisation, consider the following Reflection Questions:

1. Does the leadership team have clarity on what Inclusion is in your organisation?
2. Is there a shared understanding of the benefits of Inclusion?
3. Has the concept of Inclusion been broken down into tangible value statements or guiding principles that clearly set expectations for the behaviour of colleagues?

If not, you might find yourself struggling to implement Inclusion, like our client did. The strength of the D&I team above was that they realised what was missing, and were not afraid to ask for help to get that sorted.

If you think we can help – with one of our Ask Me Anything sessions (a free-of-charge 30-minute conversation) or an Expert on Tap session (individual 60-minute D&I mentoring conversations), or in any other way – consider getting in touch with us.

Guest Blog by David Levenson

I have a lot of boardroom experience and years of observing governance practice to draw upon in considering the composition of boards. I first entered a boardroom almost thirty years ago, aged 34, and since then, I have spent thousands of hours sitting in board meetings, as an executive director, NED, advisor and trainer.  I have worked on and with corporate, public sector and not-for-profit boards and I sit on two boards today.

Boardroom Bias
I have seen some of the best – and occasionally the worst – examples of corporate governance practice in boardrooms across England.  The worst examples I have witnessed include casual (and even overt) sexism and racism which is invariably excused as “banter”, and the unconscious or perhaps unthinking acts of bias which always seem to result in the same people speaking while others are ignored.

As an executive officer I saw these things, but I didn’t call them out either at the time or afterwards.  How could I do that and not put my job at risk?  How would that have helped anyone?  This is how I justified my own lack of response, my own behaviour.  But it made me uncomfortable then and it still does now.

With all my boardroom experience, I don’t stand by anymore. I don’t need to.  I speak up and out when I see behaviour that doesn’t sit well with me.  But it shouldn’t need all those years of experience.  Everyone, whether they have just joined a board or have been there for years, needs to feel they can speak up.  We are ambassadors and representatives for the businesses and organisations we serve – to our staff, our customers and suppliers and many other stakeholders.  We have a duty to uphold the values that, on paper at least, our organisations espouse.
 
Barriers of Entry
Since becoming a professional coach in 2016, much of my time has been devoted to preparing future leaders for the boardroom. The tallest barrier of entry to the boardroom is not gender, race, disability or any other such group. It is age.  Specifically, it is age discrimination against younger people who are perceived to lack the necessary experience to join a board.  This reverse ageism is not only manifestly wrong, it also makes no sense, either commercially or in terms of meeting an organisation’s purpose.

The Benefits of Younger Board Members
Let’s take a business that sells health or beauty care products online to young people, or a charity that helps school leavers who, for some reason haven’t attained basic educational qualifications get access to apprenticeships.  How can the boards possibly know if they are fulfilling their purpose, if the voices of the people they are aiming to serve are never heard in the boardroom?

Similarly, in an age when technological change is perpetual (leaving aside the need to migrate whole workforces to remote working in a matter of days, as happened last year), there is a real benefit in having board members who are up to date with technology. So as a board member, if the CTO presents a new tech strategy reliant on the latest apps and digital gizmos, I would feel much more comfortable knowing that my colleague seated next to me is a tech-savvy millennial or Gen-Z’er who can quiz the CTO more intelligently than I can.

Positive Steps
Unlike law or accountancy, there is no mandatory qualification for board members; it follows that there should be no barriers to entry, whether overt or hidden.  Some businesses and organisations have taken positive steps and now have imaginative board apprenticeship schemes or youth shadow boards.

And if diversity and inclusion is a driver for the board, consciously seeking out younger recruits will almost certainly guarantee more diversity of presence, thoughts and views in the boardroom.

If you liked this post, you may also enjoy reading Let’s Hear It For Authentic Leadership!

By Rina Goldenberg Lynch

It’s August 2021.  We’ve just finished the Tokyo Olympics, the success of which prompted us to take a look at gender data celebrations and setbacks, as well as what the future holds for gender parity across the globe.

So what do the numbers say?

Progress is of course being made!  Just take a look at Team GB:  for the first time in 125 years, female athletes outnumber males, 201 to 175.

But let’s rewind the clock back to 2015.  This is when we first started hearing phrases like ‘There are more Johns or Daves in our company than female leaders’.  The reference here is to a report that counted 17 men called John, 14 called Dave and only 7 women (of different names) as chief execs or chairs of FTSE 100 companies. Even more interesting is that there were 19 men with the title ‘Sir’ running these companies (no Ladies were mentioned).

That was six years ago. 

Perhaps we have made progress as a society, but what do the numbers look like at the top of companies these days?

According to McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2020 report, women occupied 21% of all C-Suite positions of the companies surveyed in 2020.  This was an increase of 22% since 2015 and the biggest jump across the various levels of promotion, from new hire to C-Suite.

This was good news considering that the top corporate layers have always been the toughest barriers to break down.

But then we suffered a setback.

The recent pandemic made it difficult for women and minorities to maintain their progress towards parity.  According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021,

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised new barriers to building inclusive and prosperous economies and societies. Pre-existing gender gaps have amplified the crisis asymmetrically between men and women, even as women have been at the frontlines of managing the crisis as essential workers. The hardest hit sectors by lockdowns and rapid digitalization are those where women are more frequently employed. Combined with the additional pressures of providing care in the home, the crisis has halted progress toward gender parity in several economies and industries.

The Report goes on to summarise that

Globally, the average distance completed to parity is at 68%, a step back compared to 2020 … On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide [and in approximately 52 years in Western Europe].

The Report states that 5% of working women across the world lost their jobs (compared to 3.9% of men).  It also shows a noticeable decline of women’s promotion/hiring into leadership roles, indicating a U-turn of a previous trend that has been maintained across a number of industries.  Finally, the increased strain of the so called ‘double-shift’ – paid and unpaid work of mothers tending to their children amidst school closures and limited availability of day care – has also contributed to significant mental health concerns and anxiety around job security.

A regional comparison shows Western Europe ahead of all other regions in meeting gender parity, but within it, the UK ranks 13^th out of 22 Western European countries.  We have lots to learn from our neighbours in Iceland (who rank 1^st for the 13^th year in a row), as well as Ireland (5^th in the region) and France (ranked 10^th in the region).

So, this August, perhaps we can pause to take stock within our own companies, explore why, as a country, we lag behind so many of our neighbours when it comes to gender parity, and consider what we can do about it.

If you liked this post, you may also enjoy reading Olympic hurdles that put gender equality in the slow lane.

A warm welcome to Inge Woudstra and our readers from the Big Fish Academy!

We’re delighted to announce that Inge Woudstra is joining the Voice At The Table family. Inge will be joining as COO and Principal Consultant (alongside CEO Rina Goldenberg Lynch) and is bringing with her not only her expertise but also her following from the Big Fish Academy.

Inge is a specialist in diversity and inclusion and brings over 10 years of experience working in gender balance, mostly in the tech and engineering industry. She applies her deep expertise in gender difference to develop a gender inclusive culture and gender inclusive processes, thus increasing performance. Clients she’s worked with include: Hiscox, Qualcomm, TalkTalk, OECD and the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Inge says, “I am really excited about joining Voice At The Table, as working with a larger team means I will be able to run bigger projects for clients and have a positive impact on more people. I love helping people get results, and enjoy making complex concepts tangible and easy to understand and implement.

“I am really looking forward to working with Rina and the team. Rina and I have worked together on a number of projects over the last two years and have found that we enjoy that. Rina naturally gravitates to people and culture, whereas I tend to focus on process and structure.

“That’s also why it’s so natural for me to take on the COO role. In that role I aim to bring more structure and efficiency to the back office so Voice At The Table is ready for growth.”

We at Voice At The Table are excited to see Inge join us too. She has some impressive projects to her name. She has written D&I Best Practice Guides for several industries in tech and engineering and she led on the “Closing the Gender Pay Gap” research for WISE and The Royal Academy of Engineering. She is also the author of “Be Gender Smart – The Key to Career Success for Women” and is a sought-after keynote speaker on the topic.

In addition, jointly with Rina, she developed a digital solution for embedding Inclusion in a telecoms company and founded The Big Fish Academy, training those responsible for implementing D&I.

Inge says, “It sounds impressive, but it hasn’t all been plain sailing. I had worked for Siemens and Shell for over a decade, both large corporates. Starting out on my own was a massive shift.  I thought that once I followed my passion – empowering women – I would have my dream job.  Next, I learned that when ‘women’ as a focus is widened to more general ‘inclusion’, the work I do for women is just more effective.”

“Similarly, then, I realised that bringing The Big Fish Academy to Voice At The Table makes a lot more sense, as we can serve our clients and their D&I needs much better that way.

“Work-life balance is as important to me as my work passion, so I make sure there’s enough time for my husband and teenage son. In my spare time you will find me on long walks with my two spaniels on the beach or in the Surrey hills, or rock climbing and camping.

‘I really look forward to getting to know the audience of Voice At The Table and introduce my own audience to a more varied offering of consulting and thought-provoking content.”

Taking inspiration from the spellbinding performances of the Tokyo Olympic athletes, we bring you tips and advice on how to excel in your world and be a champion in whatever you do.

1. Let go of limiting beliefs – most of us are held back by limiting beliefs. These are the negative perceptions that you have about your nature and personality. By learning to recognise and let go of whatever limiting beliefs are keeping you from becoming the best version of yourself, you’ll be able to push forward and find the person you really are.
2. Stop the fear of failure – failure is part of the learning process and gives you valuable insights that can drive you to become highly successful in life. Ask any accomplished business person and they’ll almost certainly admit to failing at something. Overcome your fears by analysing all potential outcomes, practise positive thinking, have a worst-case scenario to ease your worries, and practise setting goals.
3. Amplify your strengths – by focusing on your strengths, you’ll become stronger in those areas and more confident. It’s an essential skill for when you hit roadblocks – which are part of life. When you amplify your strengths, you remember what you’re bringing to the table, and you’ll trample the obstacles in your path.
4. Stop the negative “self-talk” – clear your vocabulary of words like, “can’t”, “won’t”, “but” etc. Self-talk is a normal process we all experience, but once it becomes filled with irrational ideas that are negative, it becomes destructive. Silencing the inner critic and putting a positive spin on things are two of the best ways to eliminate negative self-talk.
5. Create empowering rituals – the world’s most successful athletes, entrepreneurs and leaders have become the best versions of themselves. There’s one thing they all have in common: they’ve developed habits that make them great. This could be meditation, better time management or visualising their goals. The more you invest in yourself, the more you realise is possible.
6. Have compassion for yourself – be true to who you are. Stop trying to please other people or to be someone else; it’s impossible to please everyone. Once you stop “people pleasing”, you’ll regain your sense of self-worth and build up self-confidence, which are the driving forces for self-improvement.

By Melissa Jackson

Women are smashing gender stereotypes at the Tokyo games, including one set in 1894 by founder of the International Olympic Committee Pierre de Coubertin, who said that women playing sports was “against the laws of nature” and “the most un-aesthetic sight human eyes could contemplate”. What a difference a century makes; but, in spite of the triumphs, the race is not yet won on equality in sport.

When women made their Olympic debut at the Paris Games in 1900, defying de Coubertin’s submissions, there were only 22 females out of a total of 997 athletes – just 2%. Those pioneers competed across five sports, among them croquet and equestrian.

Fast forward to 2021 where 49% of competitors are women – which compares to 45% at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and 44.2 % at the 2012 London Olympics – and Great Britain has sent more women than men to the Olympics for the first time (201 and 175 respectively).

Breaking new ground, New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard made history as she became the first openly transgender woman to compete in an Olympic Games, although she missed out on a medal after failing to register a clean lift.

It all sounds so positive, but dig a little deeper and it’s not quite so ground-breaking.

GB’s Beth Shriever, who won gold in the BMX women’s race, was forced to launch a crowdfunding campaign in 2019 to raise £50,000 to secure her place at the Tokyo games, after UK Sport cut its funding for the women’s event. It was decided after the 2016 Olympics that only male BMX riders would be funded for the Tokyo Olympics.

Beth‘s GB team-mate in the men’s event won silver. Both achievements are worthy of celebration, but it feels like the decision makers got it so wrong! However, there were no sour grapes and Beth had nothing bad to say about the inequity, telling BBC Sport, “I want to be a role model, particularly for young girls so they can see what’s achievable in sport.”

To be a true role model, there has to be a clear indication that you’re valued. I hope lessons have been learned and that funding will be made available to the next generation of ambitious women BMX riders.

The German Olympic women’s gymnastics team took the initiative on challenging sexist expectations of what women should wear during the competition, by rejecting the ubiquitous bikini-style unitards in favour of full-body versions in what the German Gymnastics Federation a statement against “sexualisation.”

German gymnast Elisabeth Seitz said that wearing the unitard was a matter of choice and comfort. Isn’t that what any male competitor would do without thinking?

Although not linked to the Olympics, there has been another example of sexism in sport when the Norwegian women’s beach handball team was fined 1,500 Euros after they wore shorts – like their male counterparts – instead of bikini bottoms during the European Beach Handball Championships. They hit the headlines when pop singer Pink offered to pay their fine and Tweeted, “I’m very proud of the Norwegian female beach handball team for protesting sexist rules about their uniform. Good on ya, ladies. I’ll be happy to pay your fines for you. Keep it up.”

The European Handball Federation said it fined the Norway team for its choice of kit, during their recent bronze medal match against Spain in Bulgaria, because the players’ shorts were “not according to the athlete uniform regulations”.

Norway’s minister for culture and sport, Abid Raja, lambasted the ruling as “completely ridiculous”.

Former tennis champion Billie Jean King weighed in on the dispute, noting the disparity between the sexes in their sportswear.

“The sexualisation of women athletes must stop,” she Tweeted.

The rules clearly need to be re-purposed, allowing for teams and individuals to decide what to wear, placing a higher priority on comfort, not titillation.

The winds of change are blowing down the track, but we cannot underestimate the mental and financial investment that’s required to bring about further change… and get it over the finish line.