Crumbling ceilings, Commissioners and why women hold the secret to the future of work

Cressida Dick takes her place as the new Comissioner

In the end, it wasn't a sudden smash, more a gradual crumbling of the ceiling. The progress of women in top jobs has been steady but sure over the past couple of years. And so far in 2017 it feels like it's reached new levels. Theresa May has been keeping a tight grip on leadership. Last week she pulled off the virtually impossible task of snatching a solid Labour seat in the Copeland by-election. A feat not accomplished by a sitting government for the past thirty years. 

Jeremy Corbyn mystified by loss of Copeland

Thursday brought the news of Cressida Dick's appointment to lead the Metropolitan Police, ultimate bastion of male dominance. Interestingly much of the coverage cites her popularity and respect with the London police force suggesting she combines professional expertise with good people skills. 

Theresa May and Cressida Dick have something else in common. They were appointed following men who had left prematurely. Women still often get the top jobs when times are tough - when organisations feel they have run out of male choices. But this doesn't have to be bad. There's nothing like taking on something that your predecessors have failed to fix and turning it around to boost the ego. In Dick's case she's taken up the reins after the early departure of Sir Bernard Hogen-Howe. The role has become something of a poisoned chalice with few of her predecessors emerging with their reputations enhanced. 

The fictional crime world is reflecting reality with the new season of Channel 4's fantastic No Offence. This police drama has an almost entirely female cast - all the lead characters including the gangland villain are women. And not nice fluffy ones. But tough, ballsy, often flawed and sometimes unpleasant women. in other words a realistic group of people getting an important job done. And it feels no more of a 'statement' than a woman in Downing Street or running the Met. 

In the communications world, The Holmes Report 2017 has nearly doubled the percentage of women in their 2017 People to Watch index. No one commented on this - it was just seen as normal. 

But with a narrative of exclusion and smashing ceilings, perhaps we lost sight of the real goal - for it to be run-of-the-mill for women to be in charge. There's a time to fight - and a time to normalise. 

Which is not to say every aspect of gender equality is fixed.  

Some things are taking longer - and proving more persistent. Sexism certainly isn't going away. The Everyday Sexism project which I first wrote about over a year ago is depressingly full of examples - some quite horrifying - of the kind of regular sexism that women of all ages, races and religions still routinely experience.

It's a year since the government announced that large companies would have to publish their gender pay statistics. The UK PR industry is hot on the issue, with leadership bodies pushing for gender pay transparency to narrow the gap faster. But it is still better than in many parts of the UK economy.

There is still much to be done and we can't relax. But perhaps it's time to consolidate significant gains and release energy for new problems, not just recycle the old ones.

The productivity crisis in the UK workforce is accelerating with fewer and fewer people available to fill the roles needed to support the economy in the future. An ageing population is a major factor - people are retiring faster than they are being replaced. Until recently, this gap has been hidden by immigration but Brexit may crystallise this productivity gap.  Businesses need to focus on how to address this gap. There are solutions being proposed and time is of the essence. 

Bringing women back into work from career breaks on a much bigger scale will make a real difference. The UK PR industry has made progress in this area that we can share. Returnships are a brilliant idea using ideas designed for first jobbers to ease women back into roles.

Green party joint leaders

Flexitime is important.  Models are becoming more common and accepted and again PR does well with over a quarter of people working in the industry taking advantage of these options.  The Power Part Time Top 50 showcases a wide range of women and men who are working in part time, but powerful roles. In some cases that's taking a four day week. In others it's job shares.  Interestingly two of its members are Sarah Lucas and Jonathan Bartley who jointly run the Green Party of England and Wales. 

Embracing automation is key and is another important area we should engage in. It has become a negative issue, often linked in media discussion to the loss of blue collar jobs and associated disaffection with mainstream politics. But there's a real opportunity to share our work proactively with machines. Getting this right will be key to building a productive future. It's about playing to strengths.  Machines can't manage people or take responsibility and blame but computers could - and can - be taught to make a perfect flat white. 

Women should be championing this trend. Working women have long been enthusiastic adopters of new technology to allow them to work whilst being mothers and running homes. From the advent of the washing machine in the 1960s to the wealth of apps with which many working women now juggle their lives, we are adept and confident at working in partnership with machines for maximum gain. We should be enthusiastically advocating a positive approach for introducing more automation where we can to support a healthier, happier and more productive workforce. 

There are many challenges ahead. But we've made real progress and should have the confidence to use that experience to tackle new challenges, not just recycle old ones. Let's apply the same energy to these that we applied to the glass ceiling.

Egos, Equality and the death of the Super-Chicken

“These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?”

 The New Yorker

Am I the only person who is thoroughly depressed with their New Year social media feed? At every turn I am assaulted by hand-wringing posts and articles predicting the end of days .  But there's a notable lack of recommendations of action. Just endless analysis of the implications of the tumultuous global events of 2016.

I don't feel qualified to comment on whether we're in a re-run of the 1930s.  I just hope we're not.  But those doom-mongering commentators and I do agree on one thing.  Narcissists are on the increase and that's bad for business as well as bad for world security.  Where have they all come from?  Instagram, Whats App and other platforms must play a part.  Selfies have a way of making the most modest of us more focused on ourselves and the image we project.  Our love affair with reality TV must contribute.

'The Donald' is their new tribal leader. He may be the first global narcissist cross-over. He made a successful career out of developing and promoting a towering ego first in business then in reality television where narcissism is an entry criteria. And getting yourself elected against all the odds as the leader of the free world has got to make his ego hit new heights.  Anyone might start believing they're a bit special.

There's another common theme in those 2017 narratives. That right-wing populist leaders are rising because we've all got fed up with left wing liberals who don't provide charismatic visionary leadership that speaks to our priorities.  Perhaps.  But in politics as in business, our expectations of leaders have changed.  And whether we know it or not, we're reaping the results of our own habits. .


It's all about the super-chickens

Award-winning author and business leader Margaret Heffernan sheds light on this in a recent Ted Talk. She explains that  for the past fifty years modern management has followed the super-chicken theory.  It was named after an experiment by geneticist William Muir.  He took two flocks of chickens and bred them for six generations.  The first group was left completely alone.  In the second group he selected only the most productive chickens - based on egg laying - and bred them together to produce 'super-chickens'. After six generations the first group were happy, healthy and egg production had been boosted significantly.  In the second group only three chickens remained.  They had pecked all the others to death.


Margaret Heffernan: Why it's time to forget the pecking order at work



And so it is in business.  Organisations are wedded to the culture of the superstar in the belief that super results will ensue.  We aim to create the 'best of the best' and promote individual leaders with vision and charisma.

What's wrong with a bit of healthy competition?
Oh, that always makes women sigh.   Another Trump speciality, it's the bedrock of most reality TV and the rallying cry of the super-chicken.

As we can see, it turns out there's quite a lot wrong with needless competition and this path doesn't work any better for us than chickens. We know this really, but seem unable to learn from experience and find ourselves again and again bemoaning the lack of leadership choices.  Fillon or Le Pen? Clinton or Trump?  We are so hardwired, we are unable to break out. 

In response to Heffernan's Ted Talk, Reuven Gorsht, then head of Customer Strategy at SAP wrote:

"We criticize leaders today not because they are less capable than they were in the past but because we expect more than they can deliver. Our expectations of leaders have grown astronomically because of increasing complexity and the rate of change, causing our anxiety to go through the roof. No wonder the superflock is focused on killing each other. Imagine the pressure and the level of competitiveness needed just to survive".

So what's the alternative? 
Heffernan's talk cited three key common features of the most successful teams in an MIT experiment.  They were:

• Empathy - team members showed high degrees of social sensitivity to each other
• Balance - they gave similar amounts of time to all members so that no voice dominated and no one was a passenger
• Women - the teams contained more women

Not only did the most successful teams feature more women, they also featured attributes that have often been described as 'female'.  Other research supports this.  But our addiction to the superstar culture usually overrides the data. Which is worrying because we've never had a more urgent need to crack this problem. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School says:

“There’s a growing recognition that most of today’s truly important problems related to the environment, related to smart cities, related to health care simple cannot be solved without cross-disciplinary collaboration.”

Highly functional teams are the way forward and there is evidence that women tend to prefer team environments and men individual ones.  The snag is that this is usually seen as negative - driven by a fear of individual competition whereas men relish it.  Digging into this issue, I came across a a fascinating experiment which tested the choices men and women would make - individual or team - when money was involved. It showed that the women chose teamwork more often than men.  "Of course" I hear you say.  "Surely it makes sense to put more brains together.  Why limit it to one person when you could benefit from the wisdom of many". "No brainer".  But time after time, tests show that men have more confidence in themselves - and this experiment showed that the higher the stakes, the more they trusted their own judgement over that of a group.

Clearly we're not giving off the right vibes or everyone would pick teams.  So if we want to make a real change, we have to overcome this view that women pick team activities not because of the logic of the power of a group but because they are afraid of individual competition - and of being judged on their own.

As we look forward into the uncertain complexities of this year surely that has to be a sensible area for focus.  We just need to gather the confidence to call out the super-chicken and argue our preferences with confidence - as a positive choice with better outcomes.

The Boys Have It - What the Brexit debate can teach us about Boardroom success

Tory Mums Sam and Sarah at the Opening of Parliament in 2010

The forthcoming EU referendum might seem to have little to with winning influence in the Boardroom.  But this week's revelations of a spectacular catfight between two of the UK's leading political players has highlighted a key issues that holds many women back.

David Cameron was reportedly angry and hurt when his close friend and political ally Michael Gove announced he would split from the official government position to become a leading voice of the 'leave' camp. But it's not their drama that's hit the headlines - rather that featuring their wives.  Both are high profile women in their own right. At a party in February, the PM's wife Samantha Cameron and Mrs Gove exchanged four letter insults over the issue.  Mrs Gove responded later in print under her professional name Sarah Vine.   A well-known national journalist, she penned a 'more in sadness than in anger' piece putting her point of view defending her husband's decision. 

Close friends
Political arguments aren't unusual. What makes the Cam/Vine spat  noteworthy is that the two families - and the two women - have been close friends for many years.  They've shared holidays and were neighbours in West London before the Cameron's moved to Downing Street. Both their daughters attend the same London school and Ms Vine is the godmother of one of the Cameron's daughters. Since the incident in February there has apparently been no contact between them.
You might expect the two men to be distant.  But they seem to have put the issue to one side and continued their ongoing friendship. Infact in the last couple of weeks Gove supporting Cameron unequivocally over the Cameron family taxation row thrown up by the Panama Papers.
Video: Michael Gove - Criticisms of David Cameron are politically motivated - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

Why such different reactions? The media seem amazed that the women are taking this so seriously.  I'm not remotely surprised.  It's one of the key differences between men and women and one that I think really advantages men in their career progression.

Emma Gleadhill

These differences between the sexes seem to start early. Helen Rumbelow explored this in an excellent article in this week's Times. It featured an interview with Emma Gleadhill who teaches and speaks about adolescent mental health issues.  Her lectures and courses are informed by her background - most recently spending six years as the deputy head of Godolphin and Latymer - a leading London girls'
school. Rumbelow quotes Gleadhill in the article: 

"Whether “it’s nature or nurture” is up in the air, but girls do arrive at adolescence ready to make their friendships the heart and soul of their life. “All teenagers are heavily invested in fitting in with their peer group...this occurs as they transfer some of the intense childhood bond with their parents to their friends. However, boys typically arrange their friendships around a “third element” such as sport or music. Girls have shared interests too, but the friendship is the “currency”.

 “So trading secrets about who you think is not very nice, analysing other people’s behaviour, will be part of the way in which girls bond. It is very interesting the way people focus on girls as bitches. Boys are equally capable of having competitive rivalries, nastinesses and put-downs, but in terms of their intense relationships there is also that third element, which takes the heat out of that personal connection.”

High stakes
Betrayal of trust is a make or break issue for both sexes.  But for men, that trust typically isn't tied up in issues.  They naturally separate the act from the actor. They can fight and argue and utterly fail to reach consensus.  And then go happily to the pub and have a great evening.  It never ocurs to them that disagreements might threaten their relationship.  It can actually be bonding.  But women often  find it extremely difficult to separate the issues from the individuals that hold them. They vest much of their social currency directly in their group of friends.  Belonging is everything. Nothing must threaten that and this leads to conformity and agreement to maintain this.  Suppressing disagreement can easily become a habit.


I recognize this.  I think it started around the time  I moved to secondary school aged 12. I went to an all-girls boarding school and my friendship group immediately became a replacement for my family.

But even girls in mixed-sex schools living at home tend to do this by their mid-teens. As we leave education and start our adult lives most of us deepen these relationships further and so reinforce this behaviour learned in childhood. Once we hit the workplace this ingrained desire to maintain the harmony that comes from a tightly knit group takes over.  It manifests as avoidance of conflict and confrontation.  But sometimes issues need to be surfaced and avoiding them can lead to deeply suppressed anger which holds us back. I can often hear the voice in my head saying "this issue just isn't getting resolved.  I should say something".  Then my 'teenage girl' voice says "if you confront this you will be seen as negative and aggressive".  It's a daily tension for most women and not just at work.  But if you want to progress your career into senior management you have to find ways to let that inner voice out on issues that matter to the organisation.  If you consistently suppress it, you won't be seen as a future leader.

Maybe this is one of those things - like childbirth - which is just hardwired into the X and Y chromosomes.  But I think we can overcome nature by nurturing new skills.

Ask open questions
Something that works well for both sexes is asking open questions. If you find yourself  in a meeting feeling that familiar sense of frustration that comes with feeling that no one is addressing the underlying problem at hand, don't seeth silently.  Try asking the project leader questions like "what are you most confident about with this project and what most worries you? When they tell you what worries them, ask them a supplementary question like "how do you think we should tackle that issue? What do you need from me/us to help you to mitigate that risk? And then follow up with a question about expectations and results " how do you think we should measure the work? "

All these questions need to start with words like "How" or "Why do think" .. or "What if?" It doesn't matter whether you are the boss, peer or subordinate in this discussion.  Well-phrased and crucially open questions encourage honest non judgemental discussion about solving problems. They help to prevent confrontational behaviour by separating the action from the actor. And they have the additional benefit of airing key issues collaboratively that are holding up progress and helping  to move things forward. 

So next time you hear that teenage girl's voice in your head - ignore it. And feel the satisfaction of seeing problems start to get resolved.

You're fired - why women leaders hold the secret to better performance

The good Lord Sugar Huffingtonpost.com

"You're Fired!"  Lord Sugar's now infamous catch phrase is key to the success of the Apprentice.  Part of the show's popularity is its reinforcement of our deep seated assumptions about how power is exercised in business.  That to get to the top requires a tough - even ruthless - determination to remove under performers in the relentless pursuit of commercial success.

Medieval Turkish sultans killed their brothers to prevent claims to power

I believe this popular assumption is based on a myth.   We grow up believing men are more ruthless than women and that this extends to removing people in the workplace.  But in my experience male bosses are often afraid of difficult people issues.  Instead of confronting them, they become experts in kicking the can down the road,  hoping the under performer will conveniently decide unilaterally to pursue their career on the other side of the world.  An American variant on this I have observed is to hire duplicate staff as either the boss or the subordinate to do the job of the under performer.  This doubles the cost of the problem but rarely solves it, as those tricky people issues just magnify and the original issue is clouded by an increasingly complicated reporting structure. 

It's not that men can't fire people.  A new CEO will often remove people in the first months of their term - often to secure their power base and bring in their own cohort of tried and tested acolytes.

Women on the other hand almost never fire for political gain - tending to favour starting with what they have and experimenting with trying to get the right people in the right roles.  But when all routes are exhausted and it is clear under performance is the cause of the problem, they will be comfortable and confident in moving towards exiting someone.  Why the difference between the genders?
   

Whatever progress we make in gender equality in the Boardroom, these choices are not really driven by opportunity or lack of it, it is something much deeper that comes from our DNA. 

Many women get stressed by a lack of structure and clarity in the workplace, and so they will consistently strive to remove ambiguous, inefficient structures.  I think this is a major difference between men and women and isn't just true in the workplace.  When my children were small, they would leave their toys scattered around the living room.  I could not relax for the evening and enjoy a meal and a glass of wine until the room was tidy.  My husband was quite untroubled by the mess, hungry after a busy day, food and a civilised conversation were the priority and he was easily able to completely ignore the chaos around us.

Mars vs Venus

When women leaders unpick performance problems in the workplace, our approach inevitably leads to shining a light onto the core issue lurking underneath the stack of complex dual reporting.   Almost always this is someone who just doesn't fit, usually due to poor people skills.  Nine times out of ten these are the same types of people and they're always tough to get rid of because they usually have some core skill that the organization really values but they're tough to work with so they are very hard to fit into teams and projects. 

Organisations desperately need women's forensic, dogged approach to problem solving. Most of us are ready to tackle issues, however awkward, with the goal of a functional happy workplace inspiring us to carry on.  Just as we like clean homes and happy children, we want contented staff who are clear about what's expected of them and are properly supported to do their very best in well-organised, clearly run groups.

Because men don't prioritise the same things, and most leaders are men, organisations don't prioritise these skills but they should.  It's yet another area where women's natural preferences really do make for better leaders.

Regrets? I had a few.. theguardian.co.uk

Good succession planning at all levels can avoid these issues piling up and creating a drag on the organisation.  This is not, as some people think, a time wasting exercise, rather a way of making each senior staff member truly accountable for the number two players in their teams.  I have rarely seen a senior men embrace this idea. They are usually highly resistant to hiring or even identifying a credible successor.  When I have raised this in different organisations I have frequently had the 'look what it did for Tony Blair - dead man walking' speech quoted to me.  Yup, I bet Tony looks back on his time as premier and thinks that's the only thing that went wrong...

Identifying your successor isn't easy because it is like facing your own mortality.  But as with death and taxes, anyone competent knows that they will in time need to identify a new role for themselves.  We don't like thinking about moving on from jobs we enjoy and are good at.  But encouraging people to do this is the key.  Regular conversations with your direct reports about what they want to do next and sharing your own thoughts on your next steps from time to time is healthy and creates liquidity in top jobs which is a key criteria for growth.  Rather thank just box ticking, a credible succession strategy is one of the attributes of a truly strong organisation.
   

Boardroom Dandies: Why women need to up their fashion spend to compete for the top jobs

I celebrated the end of Summer by starting the autumn travel season - kicking off with my first visit to Heathrow's new Terminal 2.  I was struck by the global nature of travel - this brand  new terminal is slickly laid out to a pattern determined by those who design flat-pack airport terminals from Barcelona to Beijing. Do you think there is an app to do this? Instinctively I knew which way to go and which retail experiences to expect along the way. But kicking against the predictable, I was delighted to see a small branch of John Lewis bravely bucking the identikit trend and felt a small patriotic stir.  Perhaps we'll see these pop up alongside the branches of Mont Blanc and Starbucks that fill terminals the world over.  Spreading the John Lewis modern British vibe around the globe can't be a bad thing.  And you never know when you're going to need a good value cashmere sweater in a hurry.

Catching up on the weekend papers on the plane I came across a fascinating statistic.  Men spend more on clothes than women.

I was surprised but looking more closely the statistics reveal some insight which I recognize.  Men outspend women in their early twenties which I put down largely to boy bands and  Harry Styles in

Copyright The Financial Times

particular.  Maybe he actually accounts for this spending statistic personally. By their late twenties women have retaken the lead only to lose it again during their thirties. I assume this is the influence of getting established on the career ladder - then having babies - vomit stained YSL anyone? As the little darlings gain independence we rediscover our retail spending power, and thanks no doubt to a good dose of post children investment dressing, we're back on top by our forties.  However, from then on in the men have the upper hand all the way to retirement.

This rather depressed me but I cheered myself up with the accompanying shoe spending statistics which show women spending more on their feet than men at every age except the early twenties. Why the early twenties? Are those stats driven by incredibly expensive trainers? As the mother of one in this group who refuses to own more than one item of footwear at one time and literally wears them until they fall apart - who are these expensively shod young men?

http://www.thegentlemansjournal.com/15-things-every-gentleman-must-dies/

But back to those dapper silver foxes.  Why are they packing such a sartorial punch? I thought about the contents of my wardrobe and admit that it is worth a lot more than in was in my thirties.  But is that because I'm still working? I still spend the majority of my clothes budget on clothes for work rather than leisure - and so do the men.  All those men dominating Britain's boardrooms aren't going to work naked.  One of the beneficiaries of a male bias in the boardroom is a healthy business for the world's finest tailors.  Yes you can get a Timothy Everest suit at Marks and Spencers.  But as twenty years of expensive lunches begin to make themselves visible, every middle-aged man knows that the secret of having it all is a very good tailor, handmade shirts if they can afford it and a well cut suit.  Long before we discovered Roland Mouret and Spanx they had that problem cracked.

So come on ladies, we owe it to the fashion industry to get ourselves to the Boardroom in greater numbers.  More female spending power, boosting the bottom line of British fashion (why not?) must be a legitimate goal.  And we should indulge ourselves.  That Savile Row tailor will set your male director back a couple of big ones. That's a lot of lovely dresses.  And even designer shoes.

Stepford Husbands?

As more men take care of families, we need to hear their voices too

The volume of the global debate about “having it all” continues to grow. Many women (including me) have joined the discussion searching for solutions - if we can’t have it all, how can we at least find an acceptable balance without facing divorce, insanity or both?

But what do the men think? We have heard very little from them. There is an unspoken assumption that if women can’t have it all, their sacrifices are being made on the altar of old fashioned male dominance.  That men are still having it all and the ultimate measure of this is the glacial speed of a movement towards more gender equality in the world’s boardrooms and top jobs.



Post it notes from a stay at home dad
 http://imgur.com/gallery/C0Jaj

Receiving far less publicity but exerting a powerful influence within individual families are statistics showing that more men are taking on the majority of childcare activity.  Surveys by BT and Aviva show that numbers of stay at home dads have increased ten fold in the past decade. But many believe that employer's policies aren't keeping up with parental demand, with two thirds of respondents to the BT survey saying they don't believe their employers have sufficiently family friendly policies.

But there are signs that the 'taboo' of men acting as the primary child carer is slowing reducing and that society is increasingly supportive of the idea that women need not be the primary child carer. A Pew Research study published in the US last year found that most people reject the idea that it is bad for a marriage if a wife out-earns her husband.

 

--> When asked if they agree or disagree that it is generally better for a marriage if a husband earns more than his wife, some 28% of survey respondents say they agree and 63% disagree. When a similar question was asked in 1997, 40% said they agreed. 

This is explored in a thoughtful recent article in Atlantic  Monthly by Stephen Marche.  He argues it is no longer an ideological issue,  rather about pragmatic family choices driven largely by financial priorities.  He lobbies for society and the state to view this debate not as it is currently - framed by a small number of 'superacheiver' women but rather in the context of how to create happier families by helping to men to feel they can step up to a different role without being seen as weak. 

He points to the irony that  "masculinity grows less and less powerful while remaining iconic of power. And therefore men are silent. After all, there is nothing less manly than talking about waning manliness."

Many commentators believe that much of the recent increase in men taking over childcare is short term - driven mainly by the recession.  The combination of a tight job market and high childcare costs means it often doesn't make sense for the lower earner to keep working.  But perhaps the recent introduction of shared parental leave will change choices for the long term. Nick Clegg announced the changes at the end of last year. In 2015 parents will be able to choose how they share parental leave for the first year of their child's life.

I hope such changes give men the confidence to start taking their seat more actively at the equality table.  It seems like many of them want to - perhaps they just need encouragement to step forward.