Women: Learn to Shout About your Successes!

By Inge Woudstra

It seems to come naturally to men, but why do women find it so hard to celebrate and promote their achievements? Do we need to re-assess our value and self-worth?

A 2017 LinkedIn analysis of millions of US members found that men brag far more than women do when talking about work achievements. Even if they had the same job, women would include 11% less of their skills on their profile than men.

Research shows that women underestimate their own performance.  One study found that men are 60% more likely than women to say they are qualified for a job even if they have the same credentials.

None of this would be a problem if employees were assessed objectively. However, often a promotion or allocation of a high-profile project is based on reputation.

Why is it so hard to boast about achievements?

I believe boasting is hard for women because the girl-culture they grow up in is different from boy-culture. Girls aren’t supposed to boast. If they do, they are ostracised by other girls.

From a young age, girls bond by confirming each other. When they have finished a drawing they will say, “Look at my drawing. I hate it. It’s so rubbish.” Another girl is then supposed to respond by saying, “No way! It’s brilliant, I love it!”

Grown-up women do it too. “No, you really don’t have to be good at singing – none of us is – we would love you in the choir.”

There’s a constant chorus of women underplaying their capabilities.

In contrast it’s completely normal in boy-culture to boast about achievements. Boys get respect from other boys when they shout, “I made more goals than you!”

When boys are taught boasting isn’t nice, they learn to boast in more subtle ways. For instance, I heard a six-year-old boy say, “I don’t want to boast, but I did beat him yesterday.”

It’s not surprising that it’s hard for women to learn to boast about achievements. They’ve been led to believe that it’s wrong!

The #1 tip when you need to boast about achievements: change your perspective

So, what can you do? The most powerful technique that has worked for me and for many of the women that have been to my talks is to change your perspective.

Rather than boasting because you want to impress others, ask yourself how it would help others if you would talk about your achievements?

When asked, men say they want to hear about achievements because they believe these show passion and knowledge.

Your colleagues want to know what you are good at. That way they know what problems you can help solve.

Your line manager needs to know what you have achieved, so they can put you forward for new challenges and boast about team achievements.

Once you start thinking about helping rather than impressing, it gradually becomes easier to share information about your capabilities and achievements.

How to make it work for you:

To make it authentic for yourself,  you need to do this the right way. Start by listing a number of achievements that you are, secretly, proud of.

Next, listen to how men and senior women boast; how do they let you know that they are incredibly good at what they do? Then experiment with dropping your successes into conversations too. Boast about your achievements.

“When I worked on [insert high-profile project here], it was just as you say….” or “A good example of what I’m talking about is when I worked on [x transaction] and we did…”.

But it’s not just women that can make a change. Colleagues, both male and female, can help by highlighting achievements of women.  Organisations can also help by designing more objective and transparent promotion systems where it is less important to shout about your achievements to get ahead.

Until then, do it your way, but do it!

What is your Superpower?

By Rina Goldenberg Lynch

Recently, we’ve been exploring whether those of us who don’t fit the company mould can still succeed by being themselves, including those who lead differently, like Gareth Southgate.

Today, I want to make the case for embracing what makes us different and knowing that – far from being ‘misfits’ – we actually have a ‘superpower’.

I take inspiration from a NY Times article written by one of the many women who found herself to be the ‘only’ woman – in fact the only black woman – in her team at work.   The article talks about the pro’s and con’s of being the only one, and gives us tips on how to make it less lonely.  It reminds us that each of us has something special to contribute and  to regard our team/organisation as lucky to have that contribution.

But I want to take it one step further.  I want to encourage you – if you feel different from the rest for whatever reason – gender, ethnicity, sexuality, height, cultural background, singledom, sense of humour… truly, whatever the reason – to own the characteristic that makes you feel that way and treat it like your superpower.

Think about it: some of the most well-known people – from Grace Jones to Ed Sheeran  to Rebel Wilson to Mr. T – have cultivated their ‘difference’ as a strength.  OK, these people are outliers.  In addition to their ‘difference’, they also have oodles of talent.  But that doesn’t change anything.

Can you think of someone you know who stands out in some way and yet, you hardly notice it because they are comfortable in their skin?  Instead of hiding whatever peculiarity they might have, they feed it with humour, ease and comfort.  Their distinguishing characteristic becomes part and parcel of who they are and lifts them above the rest.  I’ve seen it with people who are overweight, people who are much shorter than average, people who are not academic and heavily-accented people.   When you meet them, you might notice their distinguishing characteristic, but once you’ve had a conversation with them, you don’t see it any more.  They simply become a person who is funny or witty or interesting or popular.  You see them as someone who, instead of wearing their difference as a burden, wears it as a mark of distinction.  What many might consider an unfortunate feature has been turned into a badge of honour.

How does this work?
It’s simple, really.  When we bow to society’s pressure to conform, anything that sets us apart from the ‘norm’ makes us feel excluded.  So we quietly hide it (by wearing heels if we’re short or stooping down if we’re tall), or downplay it (by mumbling through a complicated sentence or omitting references to unfamiliar yet well-known authors) or we exaggerate our behaviour (by boasting about a successful friend or buying excessive rounds of drinks). Of course, people still notice what we’re trying to de-emphasise.

When, however, we bring our ‘oddity’ to the fore and treat it like it’s the most common feature on earth, what people see is our confident personality and us – not the very thing that’s different about us.  They perceive our peculiarity as our superpower – not because it is, but because we treat it like one.

Why is this important?
We live in a society that is rapidly evolving; one that needs the contribution of every individual – no matter how different.  We can contribute greatly to this evolution if we are comfortable with what makes us different.  Only then can we confidently talk about our authentic experiences and bring our whole selves to work.  Only then will our contribution form part of those creative solutions that every organisation desperately needs.  This is where the true benefit of Diversity is.

When I was young, one of my teachers told us that we must learn to love ourselves before anyone else can love us.  That continues to apply today:  if you respect yourself – warts and all – others will respect you in the same way.

And when that happens, the world can be your oyster indeed.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy reading The Threat of Righteousness

Let’s hear it for authentic leadership!

Guest blog by Rebecca Salsbury

Like many people, I found myself watching England play Italy in the Euro 2020 final the other week. I love the drama and excitement of live sport, and most of all, I enjoy drawing parallels between team and individual sport and other parts of life, especially leading and managing teams and people.

Throughout the ups and downs of the match, the surreal and emotional minutes after the match ended, and the press conferences in the following days, I was most fascinated by the performance of Gareth Southgate, the England manager. I watched his reaction on the side line and noticed the contrast between his reactions and those of his opposite number, Roberto Mancini. Southgate’s expressions barely changed throughout the whole match – or in the press conference he gave on the Monday.

Is it possible for us to succeed if we don’t ‘fit the company mould.’?

Consider your image of football managers and head coaches – does Gareth Southgate fit the mould, the stereotype?

The answer to this is changing; in 2021, more and more leaders, including in sport, are (finally) recognising that a different form of leadership is not only acceptable, but gets results.  Southgate and his team are themselves an example of this evolving change.
This acceptance is new, however. Consider other examples of football managers over recent years and decades, and the (perhaps exaggerated) stories
of dressings down, so-called ‘hair dryer treatment,’ and public outbursts of emotion on the touchline.

During the Euro Cup Final, Roberto Mancini’s gestures, body language, and facial expressions left no doubt how he felt about what was happening on the pitch!

What sets Gareth Southgate apart then, and why might he be a role model for a new sort of (football) manager?

Several dimensions of emotional intelligence could answer that question; Southgate majors in resilience, goal directedness, reflective learning… but what makes him comfortable breaking the mould in football is his authenticity, and the confidence that comes from being true to himself. He speaks openly and articulately of learning from past mistakes and failures, and the perspective that’s given – in particular, he stresses the importance of ‘lived experiences’ which informs a perspective that one can come through difficult times, and recover from setbacks. Resilience is a critical ingredient for being true to himself.

How to Become an Authentic Leader

Authenticity is threatened by a fear of failure or criticism by others. Southgate’s career is marked by times when he was subjected to severe criticism – he was ‘reviled’ at times, as a player.  Having learned from his own experiences, he reflects as a manager that it’s unrealistic to remove all fear, and a certain amount of fear drives performance, but he helps his team not to be consumed or inhibited by a level of fear which may prevent them from showing what is possible. In press conferences, Southgate’s realism comes across as modesty – for which he’s also been criticised, as if he’s setting the bar too low. Actually, he explains, he is deliberately seeking to reduce pressure on the players, which helps them manage their fear and their performance.

Southgate knows that his authenticity, and his values as a person and as a manager, build the culture in English Football. In his press interviews and in-depth podcast episodes, he speaks at length of the importance of behaving consistently with the expectations he has of the on- and off-field members of the whole team behind England. Journalists are busy trying to describe what’s different and what might be fuelling this new pattern of performance that fans have enjoyed during this Euro campaign.

Paraphrasing football clichés: at the end of the day, it’s who you are that shapes your motivation and performance, and the culture in your workplace. Because of his authenticity, it seems easy to trust that we know what kind of person Gareth Southgate is. I’d say he’s making a new mould for coaching in football and (hopefully) more generally, for leadership.

What parallels can you draw for developing authenticity as an existing or future leader?

Rebecca offers training and development on Inclusive Leadership.  Contact us to find out how you can work with Rebecca to develop your organisation’s leaders to be more authentic and more capable of improving inclusion in their teams.

If you liked this blog, you will also enjoy The Outsider Mindset.

We Need To Talk About Language

Guest Blog by Dr Maame Afua Nikabs

We already have laws to protect us against bias related to gender, race, disability, ethnicity and so on, but what about language? Have you ever thought how language bias impacts our judgements and decisions? Inclusive language is something we should all be talking about if we want to place the accent on greater equality.

 

What is bias?

Bias is the brain’s way of simplifying information, meaning that everyone has bias, either positive or negative. Although bias is not inherently bad, it can easily lead to discrimination against marginalised groups in the workplace and affects how we interact with other people. The Equality Act (2010), provides legal protection against nine projected characteristics: race, age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, sex, pregnancy and maternity, disability and religion or belief.

However, there is no explicit mention of language, even though many people face obstacles in their careers based on aspects of their language, such as their accents.

What is language discrimination?

Language discrimination is discrimination against people based on their linguistic identity or language use. Examples include accent bias, interactional bias, and exclusive language. Research suggests that all people, and therefore also recruiters, have specific social associations with certain accents and voices. This can influence judgements of competence. According to the Accent Bias Britain project, language bias can impede career progression at three stages: pre-interview, interview, and post interview.

Pre-interview

Studies undertaken in the United States (Bertrand & Mullainatha, 2004) and the United Kingdom (Wood et al., 2009) show that language-related bias can even be exercised before a person has had the chance to speak: CVs with names commonly associated with ethnic minority groups receive significantly fewer replies from potential employers than identical CVs with typically white names.

During interview

In an interview situation, unconscious or conscious language discrimination can arise in numerous forms, including accent bias, bias via conversation structure and response, and the use of inclusive language.

What is accent bias?

Accent bias refers to the snap judgements and social stereotypical assumptions we make about people when they speak. Numerous studies have shown that a ‘posh’ or standard (Received Pronunciation) accent is likely to be judged as more intelligent than a working class or global majority (ethnic minority) accent in the UK, even though a person’s accent derives from their social background, not their intelligence.

Bias via conversation structure and response

Another type of language-related bias evident in both interview and workplace interactions is bias via conversation structure and response type. This results in bias against ‘different’ communication styles, evidenced by negative interviewer responses such as lack of nodding, change of topic, interruption etc.

This bias is also displayed in non-verbal cues and inconsistent feedback during interviews such as eye gaze, smiling, backchanneling, facilitative overlap vs. awkward interruption, and casual remarks and cultural references. In the workplace, employees who have different ways of speaking are often ignored when they speak up.

Post-interview

The effects of language bias extend beyond the interview stage. According to a report by the Social Mobility Commission (Ashley et al., 2015), even in cases where these effects are overcome (or absent) in interviews, they may persist in the workplace. Accent bias and interactional bias and can result in:

  • Isolation from colleagues
  • Subtle impediments to career progression
  • Processes of both other- and self-exclusion

Inclusive language

Inclusive language is defined as “language that avoids the use of certain expressions or words that might be considered to exclude particular groups of people”. This covers language used in emails, social media marketing, job ads, websites, and all forms of communication. Language is fluid, and connotations and meanings of words change quickly. It is therefore important to prioritise the application of inclusive language principles and practices rather than learning specific appropriate phrases.

Why inclusive language?

Language is a powerful tool, and a growing body of research highlights how people are affected by labels used towards them. Additionally, inclusive language is believed to be important for business success. It can increase creativity and improve employee performance in the workplace.

Guidelines

Below are some best practices and guidelines for communication:

Race and Ethnicity

The fluid and dynamic nature of language has resulted in varying reference terms associated with race and ethnicity and this makes it often challenging and confusing to use inclusive language. As Hult and Huckin state: “The best rule of thumb is to call people by whatever term they prefer, just as you should pronounce their personal name however they want it pronounced.”  

Beyond individual preference, there are some important general points to remember in terms of race and ethnicity in language. It is always good to avoid the use of race or ethnic slurs or outdated terms. It also best to avoid the use of minority and use international or global majority. Also use names of a country instead of a continent (e.g. Ghana rather than Africa), because being more specific helps to avoid stereotypical bias.

Gender & Sexuality

Many of the above recommendations help with careful language around gender and sexuality as well. In the trans community, for example, people use different terms to describe themselves (e.g. trans, trans woman, or transwoman) which have different connotations. Similarly, some people indicate their preferred pronouns, and these should be noted and used. It can be complex and confusing, but awareness and open discussion is important. Inclusive terms such as ‘assigned sex’, ‘everyone’, ‘colleagues’, ‘they’, ‘them’, ‘workforce’, ‘folks’, ‘team’ are preferable to biological sex, generic pronouns, opposite sex, ‘guys’, ‘lads’, ‘gents’, ‘ladies’.

Disability & Neurodiversity

The APA Manual of Style also recommends using “emotionally neutral expressions” when describing people with disabilities: “a person with AIDS rather than an AIDS victim, a person with emphysema rather than a person suffering from emphysema”.

Therefore, it is more appropriate to use terms such as ‘people with disabilities’ or ‘people diagnosed with schizophrenia’, rather than using essentialising labels such as ‘the disabled’, or ‘schizophrenics’. However; ‘autistic people’ is sometimes preferred in the community over ‘person with autism’. Once again, an open approach to respectfully enquiring about preferred terms can be useful. Other problematic terms are ‘wheelchair bound’, ‘suffering from’ and ‘special needs’.

Religion

It is common practice to use ‘church’ to refer to any place of worship. Use ‘place of worship’ or ‘house of prayer’ if unsure. Here too, it is important to pay attention to labelling/terminology or categorisation. This is because the association of labels with particular meanings can be exclusionary or misclassify people, e.g. assuming Indians are associated with Hinduism.

Accent awareness

The Accent Bias Britain project conducted research into whether training interventions have any effect on reducing differential rating of people based on accent alone. They found that, due to the low levels of awareness of accent as a form of bias, simple awareness-raising significantly reduced recruiters’ reliance on accent for information about competence. They recommend showing recruiters the following brief text before interviewing:

Recent research has shown that, when evaluating job candidates, interviewers in the UK may be influenced by the candidates’ accent. In particular, they tend to rate candidates who speak with a “standard” accent more favourably than candidates who speak with “non-standard” accents. This is an example of “accent bias”. The focus should be on the knowledge and skills of the candidate, not their accent. Please keep this in mind when assessing the suitability of candidates. 

The web resource also offers a free 15-minute interactive tutorial on accent bias for potential recruiters: https://accentbiasbritain.org/training-for-recruiters/

Conclusion

It is important to be mindful of the following: context, the person you are talking with and the setting. Also, don’t be afraid to ask.

“Inclusive language is more than replacing specific words with more acceptable terms: it’s about changing long-held attitudes and habits we don’t think twice about, but that the youngest of children, who are just learning to speak and read, hear over and over”.

References:

Accent Bias Britain: www.accentbiasbritain.org

The Wannabes Who Redefined Feminism for a Generation

By Melissa Jackson

Role models can be the driving force in shaping a young person’s ambition. It’s a quarter of a century since “girl power” entered the lexicon and changed attitudes from “could do” to “absolutely won’t take no for an answer”. July is Make a Difference to Children month and a perfect opportunity to explore the importance of strong role models, especially for young women.

The Spice Girls may not be the obvious choice of role models for young women, but when they burst onto the world stage 25 years ago, with a spade full of outspoken attitude, they brazenly shook up the status quo and encouraged teenagers, tweenagers and everyone either side to tear down the establishment and re-write the rules of possibility.

I remember work colleagues with young daughters saying they’d been transformed; ready and able to stand up for their rights in the playground in a way that they’d never done before. They had synthesised the pop quintet’s red-hot, rebellious energy and executed it to their advantage.

I know that those daughters channelled girl power to inflate their self-belief and pursue successful careers; their Spicemania heroines had made their impact.

This includes 39-year-old Kirsty Osborn, who totally embraced the Spice Girl phenomenon, along with her teenage school friends.

She said, “Before the Spice Girls came along, it was all boy bands and girls went to concerts to see boy bands. The Spice Girls created a pathway for girl bands.

“They made you believe that girls could do anything and that you could be anything and that bands weren’t just for boys.”

She loved the idea that the Spices each gave themselves a distinguishing personality, highlighting their own differences and individual characters. This was approvingly novel and refreshing.

She said, “As young girls, you could identify with them.”

She believes that they played a huge part in challenging the kind of stereotypes that pigeon-holed girls and women into believing they could only be successful in one category.

“I was really sporty and that’s all I thought I was really good at,” she said.

“But then Sporty was athletic AND in a girl band. Baby was shy BUT she was singing in a group. They stopped people labelling you like a jam jar.”

Female role models are the catalyst to motivate ambition. If we can’t look up and see women who have been successful, we are less likely to be successful ourselves. The presence of women in leadership positions and the opportunity to network with them is vital to help motivate women to advance in their careers. Seeing is believing.

They also embolden us to take a stand in other areas of our lives, as evidenced by a handful of activists who’ve raised the bar for firing a shot at complacency.

In the 21st century, Soma Sara – the founder of Everyone’s Invited – has been a power broker for a new generation of young women. Again, underscoring the importance of not taking “no” for an answer and having the confidence to stand up and be counted. The organisation is a platform for girls and young women/men to highlight cases of sexual assault. Soma felt that the world needed to wake up to the realities that were being swept under the carpet.

It’s been a liberating and life-changing experience for those damaged by unwanted sexual advances and a chance to be taken seriously, where previously they had not.

In a world where there are more men named John in CEO positions in FSTE100 companies than there are women in top roles, we need all the visible role models we can get.

Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg has been hailed a true role model for children; nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, she started a worldwide movement that kickstarted mass protests about climate change and launched international debate about the issue.

Recently, Dame Sarah Gilbert, who co-designed the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, was given a standing ovation on Wimbledon Centre Court. It follows on from her earning a spot on The Times’ “Science Power List” in May 2020 for her pioneering work on the Covid-19 vaccine. What an achievement.

And on another sporting note – and while we’re rebooting after UEFA Euro 2020 – let’s raise the stadium roof for the Afghan born Danish football player Nadia Nadim. The 33-year-old was just 11-years-old when the Taliban murdered her father, prompting her family to flee to Denmark. She’s played for the national team 98 times and scored 200 goals, while studying to be a surgeon. Oh, and just for the record, she speaks 11 languages and is on the Forbes list of Powerful Women.

All I can say is, “Zig-a-zig-ah.”

Active Voice: Six Secrets of Happiness

We’re sharing with you the six secrets of happiness from the author of Dancing by the Light of the Moon, Gyles Brandreth. You may recognise a few and some others might be utterly new – in any case, we hope they contribute to more frequent moments of joy.

  1. Be a Leaf on a Tree.  Be you – an individual – but attached to part of a larger whole that’s growing/thriving.    This could be anything from being in  a choir or a reading group or anything where you are part of a community.  
  1. Cultivate a Passion.  Do something you LOVE,  something that sustains you,  but that is not work related !
  1. Break the Mirror.   Stop thinking about yourself,  look UP and OUT.   Those who look to the world beyond themselves tend to have more faith in life.
  1. Live in the Moment.   Focus on what’s happening in the here and now and relish it, focus on your senses
  2. Don’t Resist Change.  We should from time to time rock the boat and embrace change.
  3. ‘Be Happy’:   As the Dalai Lama said: ‘ Choose to be optimistic  – it just feels better.”

Sexism and the Queen Bee Effect

By Rina Goldenberg Lynch

I went for a walk with a friend the other day.  She is an engineer in a construction company and has struggled with her female boss for years.  Prompted by my questions, she relayed the following story:  her female manager – one of the most senior women in the company – has been described by many as a bully.  She finds ways to belittle other women, including my friend, and put down their achievements.  Instead of offering support, her manager has reduced my friend to (private) tears on countless occasions  contributed to a gradual erosion of her professional confidence and, ultimately, driven her to resign.

Before having decided to resign, my friend had addressed the situation with HR and has eventually been moved into a different reporting line, but she continues to hear similar accounts from other women – and the negative impact of the previous working relationship left such a bad taste in her mouth that she wasn’t even able to make a positive fresh start with a new, very supportive female line manager.

This, unfortunately, is not an isolated story.  I hear stories of female bosses who are unpleasant, denigrating and unhelpful.  Women who, instead of propping up and developing their female team members, put them down and block them from progression.  Women who, instead of changing the playing field to help other women succeed, actually block the provision of support, sometimes even denying something as fundamental as a formal women’s network.

So I have to ask the question:  assuming that we all start out as reasonable, likeable people, how does it come to this? Why are there senior women who would rather pull up the ladder behind them, so to speak, than help others achieve similar success?

Why do some women become unsupportive of other women at work?  The answer: decades of sexism in male-dominated work environments. 

Women like this are derogatorily referred to as Queen Bees.  The term describes women who have achieved success in traditionally male-dominated fields and distance themselves from other women in the workplace in order to succeed. These women tend to view or treat female subordinates more critically, and refuse to help other women progress in order to preserve their unique senior position.  These are the women for whom Madeleine Albright so famously predicted that ‘special place in hell’.

 

But we should not blame the women.  We should look at the system that nurtured them. 

Research has already shown that the pressure of behaving in a certain way once the most senior levels of an organisation have been reached, make it difficult for women to support other women.  While men are rewarded for supporting women’s initiatives, senior women are penalised for doing so and are socially discouraged from it.  It is also thought that women who distance themselves from other women are more likely to succeed in a male-dominated environment.  As a result, instead of helping other women, many female leaders do the opposite.  This behaviour has many negative consequences, not only on subordinate’s levels of confidence and morale, but also as role models to other women.  More junior women often cannot relate to this behaviour.  As a result, they cannot see themselves progress in the organisation, which leads to loss of talent in the pipeline.

Three things that organisations should do to wipe out Queen Bee behaviour:

When a company is made aware of Queen Bee behaviour, there are a number of things it can and should do:

  1. Identify the culture that promotes this type of behaviour and address it at the source.

A simple culture diagnostic at the right level of seniority will reveal the underlying sexism that is causing women to adapt more male characteristics.  As companies do not benefit from diversity of thought when female leaders assimilate into a male culture, it should be a priority to address these issues straight away.  A well-conducted diagnostic will not only highlight the cause but will also suggest solutions in how to address and change this cultural problem.

  1. Actively encourage senior female leaders to support other women.

It will be important to have senior female role models who are supportive and nurturing.  These women should get involved in mentoring other women as well as sponsoring staff networks and events.  Note that senior women should not be the only ones doing this; instead, they should be part of a healthy mix of senior leaders speaking with the same voice on this subject.

  1. Address the specific cases with coaching and other relevant interventions.

When a company promotes a person who bullies another, it sends the wrong message to everyone.  There should be measures in place to deal with people who put down others, regardless of whether that person is a man or a woman.  This kind of behaviour is unacceptable and counter-productive to the efforts of most companies.

Every time I hear a story like this, I’m astounded that things like this still take place.  But then I remind myself that sexism has not disappeared from our society yet, and so long as there is sexism in the workplace, we can expect women to develop this Queen Bee syndrome, undermining all other efforts that are being made to support and develop the female pipeline. One step forward, two steps back? I hope not.

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If you would like to discuss how to identify systemic sexism within your leadership pipeline, talk to us about our Inclusion Diagnostic.

How to Bridge our Differences at Work

Guest blog by Joanna Gaudoin

Our upbringings impact us more than we think, ultimately shaping what we consider “normal” and “how things should be done”. However, I often think too much emphasis is put on our differences as humans being down to culture. It can be too often used as an   excuse for not making the effort to work together and embrace our disparities. Differing “culture” can too easily be made a scapegoat.

I do a lot of work with clients on their challenges working with others, whether it is the boss that someone seems to have a continually strained relationship with, other senior people who never support someone’s proposals or the team member who can’t be motivated to pull their weight and fulfil their potential. There are some common themes. Yes, cultural differences can play a role, both in perception and reality but they are neither the whole “cause” nor the whole “answer”. Even if they were, the ways to tackle relationship difficulties wouldn’t really differ.

Being able to navigate “office politics” positively and build productive professional relationships are essential skills, in my view. None of us works in complete isolation (even during a pandemic). We are made to relate and have dependencies and interdependencies with other human beings so it isn’t an issue we should deprioritise – for the sake of our careers, the organisation we work for and our own happiness and wellbeing.

Here are my top five (very simple) tips for improving your relationships. You’d be surprised how rarely they are used but when they are, my clients see a marked improvement in their working life:

  1. Make time for relationships: we are not machines. If you only ever engage with someone when you want something from them or to respond to them about functional tasks, no real relationship will be built. Be human and listen to what people are really saying!
  2. Have in mind that we are all different: the whole premise of the useful and easy to read book Surrounded by Idiots, by Thomas Erikson, is that very few people in the world, if any, will think exactly the same as us about everything and behave the same as us in every situation. Therefore, with most people we will have frequent moments of not understanding. This has implications for how we engage with people and communicate.
  3. Remember we are in different situations; when thinking about how to engage with people, putting yourself in the other person’s shoes is imperative. We might want to share every glorious detail with our line manager about the big problem we have resolved. But is it really relevant or a good use of their time? We need to acknowledge what is useful for someone else and our motivations for wanting to do something a certain way.
  4. Consider how you react: It’s very easy to react based on an immediate emotion we feel in the moment. This is rarely a good way to go. If you need to, ask for time to consider what someone has said to you (there’s often pressure in our society to react immediately, which is not always a good thing) and consider your reaction based on the outcome you want to achieve, whether that relates to the situation and/or the relationship.
  5. Have the difficult conversations when you need to! Few would say they enjoy difficult conversations, but if a situation is either going to reappear anyway or cause ongoing resentment that could impact how you engage with someone, it is best to confront the situation. I could write another article on this topic alone! Think about how and when you start a difficult conversation.

How can you employ these tips? I’d suggest you start by considering your key relationships and scoring them so you can see which ones you need to work most on. Think honestly about which relationships you make an excuse for, whether it be differing culture or something else.

Behaviour change doesn’t happen overnight, so I’d suggest working on one or two changes at a time to forge longer-term habits.

If you liked this blog, you might also enjoy Eight Ways to Mitigate Stress and Build Resilience.