Real Talk: Conquering Gender-Based Discrimination in the Workplace
Welcome to Real Talk with Loeb Leadership, a safe-space webinar discussion series as part of our dedication to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Women often face discrimination in hiring, promotion, and compensation. This usually comes in the form of pay inequity and/or lack of representation in leadership and senior roles. Double standards and implicit bias can further exacerbate inequities in work-life balance, mentorship, career guidance, and receiving feedback. Our Real Talk panel will engage in an open and interactive dialogue identifying the challenges and offering strategies and practices that participants can utilize in their workplace to begin the process of eliminating gender-based discrimination. Join experts from Loeb Leadership and guest panelist Melissa Swanepoel, COO of video game company, FarBridge.
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today for our real talk session on conquering gender-based discrimination.
We have a couple guest panelists with us today who we're going to have everybody introduce themselves. Unfortunately, David Robert, our regular panelist was a little under the weather today and wasn't able to join us, so we wish David a speedy recovery. To start us off, I'm David Sarnoff. I'm the director of strategic partnerships and an executive coach with Loeb Leadership. For those of you joining for the first time, Loeb Leadership is a management consulting company that does executive coaching, management and leadership training and development, culture consulting, as well as retreat work and diversity, equity, inclusion. Start us off, Joy, would you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you?
Absolutely. My name is Joy Stephens and I am the diversity, equity, inclusion subject matter expert for Loeb Leadership, as well as a public speaker, webinar facilitator and executive coach.
Hi everyone. I'm Tamara Fox. I'm head of consulting for Loeb Leadership, and I'm also a health and wellness coach. Excited to be here.
Thank you. So hello everyone. My name is Natalie Loeb. I am the founder of Loeb Leadership, a certified women-owned business. And David, thank you so much for inviting me to join this conversation today. Certainly I've had my own journey growing a business as a female leader. I'm also the co chief executive officer with David Robert, who unfortunately couldn't join us today, and I also lead our coaching business here at Loeb Leadership. So I'll be bringing that lens to the conversation today. Thank you for having me.
Hello, I am Fritz Galette, senior consultant with Loeb Leadership, and I also have a background in clinical psychology and I'm also a therapist. So I bring that background plus a systems overview look at things. So I'll be listening to today's conversations and jumping in wherever I can help and being quiet when I should be.
Yeah, thank you so much for welcoming me into this conversation. My name is Melissa Swanepoel, I am the COO at FarBridge, which is a video game studio that is sort of half based in Austin, Texas, but we are a remote workforce currently, so we're all over, scattered, delightfully. And I have worked in the video game space for coming up on almost a decade, and before that I did over a decade in live television broadcast, film, independent film, all of those sort of creative media narrative outlet situations.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you so much, Melissa, and welcome. So to start things off, I'd like to get Joy into the conversation. And Joy, when we talk about gender discrimination, I think if we illustrate it, makes it a little easier to understand. So if you could share some key examples that demonstrate gender A, discrimination exists in our workplace, and B, what does it look like when it happens?
What are some examples that demonstrate gender discrimination in the workplace?
Joy Stephens:
Okay, so I'll start with just a little bit, I like to go into my history, so a little bit of historical background. Gender discrimination exists in a lot of industrialized nations and it ties right in with patriarchy and misogyny, chauvinism, et cetera, where women were seen as accessories to a man's life. And when they started to enter the workforce, largely what we've seen in the United States, it started after World War II where women replaced a lot of men while they went off to war, and then when they came back we got problems. So one of the easiest ways to get someone to stop being a problem for you is to insult them, to belittle them, to demean them, to make them feel unwelcome, et cetera. But there's also, specifically around gender, there also plays a very gross sexual aspect to that too, where a lot of the laws that are on the books now around anti-harassment came because women were not safe from sexual assault in the workplace. And I'm talking in the offices.
If anybody remembers the phrase from Hollywood, the casting couch was a real thing. We've seen the whole Me Too movement. So all of this comes from a desire to either possess or dispossess a woman in a work environment. And so there are a lot of extremes that I could go to, I mentioned the casting couch. But on a more subtle basis, because a lot of times things don't get eliminated, they go underground. And so there's a lot of subtle gender based discrimination that happens now, like not paying women the same because
even though 51% of American households have a woman as the major breadwinner, the idea still persists that when women start a family, they won't want to work, or they won't need as much, or their contributions are not as strong, or as much as, a man's.
And that goes from, don't worry your pretty little head about these things. Oh, you're bossy for a woman.
A lot of the aggressive, manish, there's a lot of things that they'll say about a woman that sticks up for herself in trying to secure her own future. I could spend the next hour giving you examples, but that's just a few of them.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Joy, one of the examples as you were speaking came to mind for me, particularly in the legal profession. I once saw a female partner who was the lead on a trial team, who came in to take a deposition and somebody from the adversary team thought she was the secretary and said, "Dear, can I get a cup of coffee, please?" And she was running the show. And then that person thought nothing of it when they were told that's a lead attorney on our side.
Joy Stephens:
Right. And on top of that, in a lot of those instances, if she had stood up for herself and said, "I'm the lead attorney over here and I will not be getting your coffee." Oh, she's so mean and evil, and why is she so harsh? You just called her 15 levels down from where she currently is, wouldn't you react the same way? And that reaction is admissible. Anger is completely acceptable from a man in a corporate setting. Defensiveness, standing up for yourself or just being firm and not backing down is seen as unacceptable from a woman because they don't want to expect that from you.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you, Joy. And I just want to let the audience know, we want this to be as engaging and interactive as possible. Please utilize the chat, share your experiences, questions, comments, and the panel will respond. Would anybody like to react to some of the things that Joy said?
Natalie Loeb:
I could just weigh in a little bit as I'm listening and thank you, Joy. Again, I just love listening to you. From my lens or I guess my experience, starting this business as a female owner, for years I was on my own and obviously I am a female and I was always talking to clients. I remember particularly when the business grew and I got to go to my first business development meeting with a male. And I remember having that meeting with two males. And I remember the male I was with, I started the conversation because I was talking about the business, but as soon as this colleague of mine opened his mouth, the other two males never looked at me again and only looked at him and only asked questions to him. And I remember... So that was something I had to start navigating right there in that world, realizing like, wow, it really does make a difference that I'm a woman leader.
“I started the conversation because I was talking about the business. But as soon as [he] opened his mouth, the other two males never looked at me again, and only looked at him, and only asked him questions.”
I never really noticed it before because this gave me the opportunity to do it, noticing what happened when I was in the room now with a male colleague and now I was really being dismissed or not looked at. So I felt it myself. I experienced it and I thought, ah, I have to figure out how to navigate this. Just to fast-forward, years later, I still find myself in situations sometimes where my voice may not be heard or I feel it's not being heard when I'm there with other male colleagues or something might be dismissed. I've found over time, I use that as an opportunity now to sort of question what's happening in the room there or asking, "Is anyone else noticing what I'm noticing right here?"
Because as a female leader, I've had to learn how to notice it, and I sometimes don't think, whether it's intentional or unintentional, it happens. Sometimes it might be intentional, sometimes it's very much unintentional. But I think that we certainly ... It's there. It's there. And I think as males and females, the more we're both recognizing it and noticing it in the room and then being able to address it is going to help us all move forward. So just a thought on it.
David Sarnoff (DB):
And Natalie, you and I shared an experience several years ago traveling to DC and we were in line to check into the hotel, and I went first to the counter and as the woman's checking me in, she said, "Oh, do you want a key for your wife?" And I said, "Oh, that's not my wife. That's my boss."
Natalie Loeb:
My boss.
David Sarnoff (DB):
And we did a LinkedIn post about that that got a lot of reaction. So Tamara, I'd love to bring you in at this time because as Joy and Natalie shared, gender discrimination shows up in various forms and levels of severity. What can organizations do, what strategies or policies can be implemented to promote gender equality and to reduce discrimination?
Tamara Fox:
Absolutely. Well, most employers, based off of their size, have the basic requirement to have anti-harassment policies. And some are required to have EEO policies, again based off of their size. But policies only matter as much as managers are trained to enforce and enact. So oftentimes too, I see with employers, they roll out these huge handbooks, but nobody actually knows what those handbooks mean. And two, for the employer to actually take it to the next level, train their managers, here's what this means, here's what an anti-harassment policy means, and here's what your obligations as a manager are when it comes to this policy. Here's what you do, here's how you have those conversations.
Oftentimes those policies won't even hold up in court if your managers aren't trained. So somebody will have an EEO claim or some type of claim come up against an employer, and then when they go through the litigation with it and they find out managers haven't been trained or employees didn't even know these policies existed and weren't trained on these policies, judges will throw out those handbooks, because they're like, "You can't just throw documents at your team and not tell them about it." So it's going above and beyond just implementing policies. It's actually bringing those to life through training and education is one way another way.
Another way, a lot of states, so I live in Colorado, Colorado is one of these states, but there is many states now enacting equal pay or pay equity laws in which you can't pay people differently based off of gender. And so I've encouraged, and I've worked with employers where I say, "Even if you don't have to follow pay equity laws, you should." And getting pay equity audits or going through pay equity practices and creating fair and equitable pay practices, salary bans, compensation models, I mean, it's a lot of work. It's a heavy lift. You typically need compensation consultants to help with that. But then you have a true structure in which you're working with, so then if one person comes to you and says, "Hey, I want a $20,000 raise," you have an answer for that instead of, for example, giving a male a $20,000 raise because he voiced it and asked for it, but then forgetting about the other three females who are in that same position.
So policies/training and really creating bigger pay practices, salary bans, pay grades, even for smaller companies. I often see smaller companies get tripped up with this of, well, we have these two people in this position and person A has been here six years longer than person B, and they don't really know how to pay them because of tenure, experience. So again, there are ways to really create some structure and make it not difficult. It's easy to keep it simple and not overcomplicate it, to ensure that pay practices are fair.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thanks so much, Tamara. Would anybody like to build off of what Tamara just said? So pivoting to Dr. Fritz. So Fritz, Tamara laid out some policies and programs that could be implemented. But from the perspective of raising self-awareness for all stakeholders of an organization and just being mindful and sensitive to words and actions based on gender and gender discrimination, what can just individuals do in order to be allies in this space?
Fritz Galette:
Let me jump right in and just start off with the couple words you just said there, being mindful, being conscious, being aware. A lot of what's come up is a result of our culture having woven into it a lot of discriminatory practices. Think of any application you fill out, historically, what was your ... male female, that was the discrimination you had to make. Nowadays, people are thinking about that. So the work we have to do is, and it's ongoing and it's continuing, it's about people, practices and policies. I'm echoing David Roberts who usually says that, which is we have to become conscious and mindfully aware that these things occur. That mistake that's happening at the counter, that's my boss, not my wife, or paying people differently. A lot of us have these things woven into our being, consciously and unconsciously, implicitly learned from examples over and over again.
So the only way we're going to change that is through interventions that are about revisiting and revisiting this work because we all have, the psychologist in me will say we have a conscious mind. And there was a time in the past where people were consciously discriminating and they still are. And now there's a time that we're still in and we always probably will be, where people are unconsciously responding to their implicit learnings and making decisions based upon that. Let me give you an example.
Recently I had to visitor flurry of doctors. I was talking to very intelligent, liberal-minded people, both men and women. Everybody assumed my doctors were men, all of my doctors were women. We all make those assumptions.
So we have to be continually working on asking one another, "Is anyone noticing?" And then creating safe spaces for us to talk about that, where we can talk about what we're noticing. So Natalie, you mentioned that, anyone noticing that when I speak, people respond to me a certain way, but when this male colleague speaks, it's different. We need to have this in the workshops, seminars and dialogue groups, I do dialogue groups, where we work to create those spaces where people can feel safe enough to talk about what they're noticing, the blind spots they see that no one else can see.
Joy Stephens:
I was just going to say it only takes two generations for something to be the way it's always been done. And so we forget what came before, we forget what we could be, and we accept whatever reality was there when we were 5, 6, 10 years old as that's just the way it is, there's no fighting the system. And that sort of language that we speak to ourselves, speak to our friends, well, what are you going to do? All of that, we take our own power away, so to speak, because we start to believe the hype. Well, there's nothing we can do. Well, it can't be helped. It is the way it is. None of that is true. We only believe it is because we've heard it before and we started to believe it and potentially perpetuated ourselves. I know that before I became the enlightened person I am now, I've said those things before to people, I'm better now, but it does take some personal growth and some courage to break that generational curse, if you will. Also, I wanted ... Oh, go ahead.
Melissa Swanepoel:
I just wanted to add to that, that there's this really powerful allure to the way we've always done things, and that's because of survivor bias. Your brain literally looks at, “These are situations I've encountered before, and even if they weren't perfect, I survived, my friend survived, my family survived, so this must be fine.” But you're not looking around and seeing the spaces that would've been taken up by people who would've made it through those gates if those gates had been less selective or less discriminatory. And so it's very difficult for us to look around and see the people who aren't there and who should be there and who would've been there.
And so you really find this sort of seduction of the comfort, of like, oh, I'm comfortable. I made it through okay, that's fine, that's fine. And if you don't start asking that question, even in interactions that you might have day-to-day that you're like, "these are very normal interactions, if you don't bring this lens of curiosity of like, could this be different? Could this be better? Could more people be in this conversation or in this room? You are missing out on these opportunities to find better paths forward even if they are new, and therefore a challenge to the system, both internally and socially.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Melissa, if I could just ... Tamara, did you want to jump in? I can't hear you, Tamara.
Tamara Fox:
Sorry, I was muted. Yeah, I wanted to weigh in on that. It's also a comment we got in the Q&A, I think it ties into what Melissa just said nicely. The comment we got, thank you, from the audience member is about how it's interesting how women are inherently involved in HR because of the emotional aspect, yet sometimes aren't taken as seriously in other management areas such as IT, finance, et cetera, due to experience. So it's just what Melissa, to kind of tie off what Melissa was saying, is challenging that comfortability of women don't always have to be HR. Yes, women do historically, I mean, I've been in HR most of my career, most of HR roles are held by women, and then you look at IT and finance, those are dominantly male roles. And why is that? Is that right? Is that wrong?
So how do we challenge that, again, to what Melissa was saying, instead of this is how it's always been. Or how do we ensure some diversity within our HR teams, within our IT teams, within our finance team to ensure we're capturing the right participants, the right members within that team instead of, oh, we only have male applicants for this IT role. Well why is that? Why aren't we attracting females? Or we only had female applicants for this HR role. Why is that? Why aren't we attracting ... So it's both as well. I just wanted to tie into that.
David Sarnoff (DB):
No, thanks, Tamara. And you gave me some direction there on the follow-up with Melissa, about industries that are male dominated and how that impacts the women who are there, but with respect to pipeline initiatives or are we only recruiting from the same schools. We have that conversation over diversity with respect to underrepresented communities, and I think a lot of the same practices and strategies could apply here as well. But Melissa, what are your observations and how would you counsel leadership in order to affect change?
Melissa Swanepoel:
I think if you're hoping for change to happen, hope is not enough. You have to actively seek it out and you have to be willing to put forward those sort of first shaky steps, if they are the very first steps that you are taking or your industry is taking or your company is taking. And you have to be okay with it feeling like new unbroken territory or unmapped terrain, which is uncomfortable. Starting a company is difficult and challenging and scary and rollercoastery enough without wondering if you're also being, quote, unquote, "a terrible person" at the same time.
But by inviting that sort of introspection and being like, from day one, we want it to feel like this. We want to know that this is different from the way things have been before because looking at the way that things have been before, they're not good enough. They might be good enough for people who've never been harmed by that system, but they're not good enough for anyone. Because even people who think that they haven't been harmed by the status quo, have been because they have been limited in what they think progress can look and feel like, because the fullness of society, of humanity hasn't been allowed to participate, hasn't been invited to participate to the same degree.
And so some concrete things that you can do, because that all sounds very nebulous, but some concrete things that you can do are look at your leadership teams. If they all look the same, if they all think the same, if they all decide or act the same, if they react the same in scary situations like, "Oh, we got a scary email," and everybody has the same idea of how to respond to that email, it's time to bring in some difference of opinion. And you get difference of opinion through difference of experience, and experience is a marker of diversity. When you lead different lives, you come up with different viewpoints and it diversifies, not just in terms of DEI, but it allows you to have resiliency against different threats or problems that might arise. So you want to make sure that you have that diversity in terms of viewpoint.
If you are looking to attract candidates that don't have precedent at your company yet, you have to find specific ways to include candidates similar to the ones that you want in visible roles of leadership that are not tokenized. You need to have women in positions of power if you want women from the outside to look at your company and go, "That's worth the risk."
Because there have been companies that I wanted to work at in my previous life, that I looked at and I thought, "Do I want to be the first woman there?" …No.” That feels unsafe, and safety is huge. If you don't see yourself represented in the tableau of a company, there is an implied feeling that your best interests won't be presented or upheld.
You have to make the visual message of your company, ‘people will be safe here, and by people, we mean everyone.’
And lots of people don't think that they make decisions based on safety when it comes to where they're going to work or who they're going to work with. But if you don't see yourself represented in the tableau of a company, there is an implied feeling that your best interests won't be presented and won't be upheld either. So you have to message that. You have to make that physically, put forth the effort to make that part of the visual message of your company that people will be safe here, and by people we mean everyone.
Natalie Loeb:
Just want to add, I'm listening to everything. Gosh, Melissa, thank you for sharing that, and it all makes so much sense. Sometimes I've looked at ... I think it's important when leaders will think about their lives. And I know a lot of leaders probably have daughters, probably have sisters, probably have people in their lives that they want them to be successful and have the doors open for them too, and they expect that it's going to happen because of the world that we're living in. And the fact is is that it's not going to happen unless we help that happen. And there are some of us that are in roles of leadership now that really have to have these conversations and point out where it's not happening so those doors can be open and available for this young talent that's waiting to take on these roles.
So when you said them, Melissa, I do look and I see is there a woman there? I want to go there. If they're not there, there's a lot of talent that's looking the other way. But sometimes just thinking about it for yourself and you look in your own life and you say,
"Yeah, I have a really talented daughter or niece or someone that I know is going to rise and make a difference in the world, and is the world going to be open for her?" So maybe as my leader in my role, in my organization, I have to do what I can personally to make sure that those doors open a bit wider. Make it personal, it is personal. And so that's another way to think about, gather the courage to do what we need to do to.
Melissa Swanepoel:
I want to add on, everything what you just said, perfect. The make it personal, yes. So I recently spoke to somebody at an industry gathering who had had a series of things happen. We'll keep it very vague. But in this situation, they experienced a meeting in which somebody made some insensitive gender-based remarks that were not over the top terrible, but were enough to let you know, they're like, oh, people still talk like that when it's closed door and they think they can get away with it. And so the conversation we had was like, well, how would you have reacted if X, y, Z person was there? How would you have reacted if they weren't there? All these things. And the thing that I wanted to impart in this conversation was when men who think of themselves as allies, who are allies, who are trying to do the good work and who are succeeding most of the time in doing the good work of I'm standing up for people, I am shutting that conversation down when I realize that it's there.
They might be not always catching on quite as quickly, but all that stuff. But we had this conversation of would you have made such a big effort to shut this down if there had been no women in that room? And the person was like, "Yeah." And I'm like, because I want you to think that when you allow a joke or a comment like that to be made around you, even if it's not targeting your gender or your skin color or your cultural heritage or anything like that, if you are completely unharmed by this thing happening, you're not because you are, at that moment, choosing to let someone who does think and act that way think that you are in alignment with them. And when you message that to the person who's already making gender discriminatory remarks or anything like that, they think that they've gained an ally, you will find that the people that you are interacting with will shift over time if you permit that behavior around yourself.
And that is harmful to you, if you allow yourself to be acceptable to that crowd, that is harmful to you in the long run and potentially in the short run, depending on how quickly consequences happen. But you have to make it personal. If somebody makes a remark around you that is discriminatory or ableist or gender denigrating, any of that stuff, if they make that in your vicinity, even though you aren't the target of it, if you don't do something about it, if you don't say, "No, thank you, that's not how I want to be talked to or that's not conversation I want to hear," even something as neutral as we don't talk like that, any of that, make it personal. It's such a vital thing, you have to make things like this personal, even though they don't actually apply to you, they do, you're just not seeing it yet.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you so much, Melissa. And Joy and I last week facilitated a couple workshops on performative verse authentic allyship. And intervening in the moment, especially when the target is not in the room, is probably one of the most important times to do that, for the reasons that you and Natalie stated, because it also communicates what's acceptable here. And if nobody's going to intervene or stand up, then by omission it's considered acceptable communication. So in light of what everybody said, I'll put this to the panel and the audience, would love the audience to respond as well.
How can you communicate to leadership that something needs to be done, particularly when leadership thinks everything's fine?
Quite often we're brought in at a couple management levels below the executive team or the senior leadership team. And when we do have those conversations or do some 360 interviews, we don't have a problem here. Again, as Melissa said, it's fine for me, but they don't have the empathy or the self-awareness to see how words and actions are impacting others. So who would like to start?
Tamara Fox:
Okay, so I love that you said that because oftentimes I'll have leaders tell me that it's not an issue and that they treat everybody fairly and they don't think about gender. And I get all of those exact remarks of, “that doesn't happen anymore. This doesn't happen anymore.” And one place that I typically tell leaders and managers to start is be a fly on the wall in the conversations with your employees, between employees. Because if employees are ... that's typically where I see it the most, and it's leaders not stopping it, managers and leaders not stepping in, and they're enabling the behavior instead of changing the behavior. Especially at the lower levels within the organizations, because those are the levels within the organization that typically have the least amount of experience, the least amount of education, and the least amount of training within these topics.
So if those individuals are the ones engaging in any type of inappropriate behavior, especially I've seen a lot of male dominated workplace, I used to work with cannabis, I've worked with a lot of restaurants, in kitchens, and I've worked with a lot of manufacturing, construction, it can turn into, they make a lot of very inappropriate jokes and a lot of them are centered around gender and the supervisor doesn't say anything, just listens or walks by and doesn't know how to react. So again, it goes back to that training. If you're training your managers to step in, they're creating that culture and they're not sending a message that we tolerate this behavior here, like Melissa was saying before, and it comes from the top. So typically the leaders at the top will say, "Yeah, it's not an issue." Again, whether it's that lack of self-awareness or it's that lack of education and training.
Joy Stephens:
I want to just touch on that before I forget my thought. So one of the issues that I've always tried to encourage leaders to understand is this type of work, including everyone, making everyone feel comfortable regardless of their gender, age, race, et cetera, is not on that person to dig out space for themselves. It is on the leadership to clear a path and to make it easier for them. Telling me, as a Black woman, telling me to fix racism, I can't do that because I'm not the racist one. I need the people who have the problem to understand they have a problem. And that also goes into what Melissa said about the survivors bias and what Tamara was just saying around them not noticing or not paying attention at those higher levels. That is the height of, hang on, this is going to be a triggering word, privilege.
It is the height of privilege when you don't have to worry about a problem, because it's not your problem.
And so you go blithely on with your day or with your goal, your project, whatever it is, whatever your priority is. And this is low priority because it doesn't matter to you today in this moment, but it matters to somebody in your organization today, in this moment. And by you ignoring it because I got other things to do, you're basically saying whatever I'm doing is more important than your safety, your dignity, your livelihood. And if that's the message you want to send, don't be surprised when you get high turnover at those lower levels because they are seeing this message from you, I hired you, I want you to work, but I don't want to care about you. And that very much, over the last two, three years, has become very prevalent.
A lot of people think that folks were leaving, doing the great resignation because they didn't want to go back into the office. That was the straw that broke the camel's back, because they had a year and a half to sit at home and think, do I want to be treated the way I've been treated? Working from home allowed them to rest from all of the microaggressions that they got on a daily basis, and then you want me to go back into that office and risk my life in 2021? You must be out your mind. I'm not doing this. I've learned what it feels like to value myself and I don't value being mistreated in this role anymore. And so now you've got people having to learn quickly how to care for their employees at every level and how to make sure they stamp out leaders that are abusing their power.
That doesn't always mean something drastic. Abusing your power can mean you don't do performance reviews until the end of the year because you don't worry about it, you got something else to do. And then at the end of the year, you fire a couple people and they should have known ... The way that we can haphazardly steamroll people, run over them, run over their needs, their desires and feelings, et cetera, treat them as just another number and then wonder why that number left the company and took all of their experience and all of their training and all the money we spent onboarding them, took it with them. So I'm saying a lot, I'll let anybody else jump in [inaudible 00:34:38].
David Sarnoff (DB):
If I could bring Fritz in because I know Fritz soaks everything in and has his unique lens. So Fritz, if you could just share some of your observations and how you would advise leadership or somebody to approach leadership to get them to engage on a more significant level to address the issue.
Fritz Galette:
Thank you for that. One of the things that I'm talking to leaders is I try to understand their motivations. I try to get a sense of what makes them tick. I try to get a sense of whether they believe in things. Like Melissa, when you were talking, the Martin Luther King quote came to mind, "A threat anywhere or injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." And a lot of leaders may not be cued into that. They're living in an individualistic mindset where they're just worried about themselves or their bottom line or their company. But a lot of leaders, when I get them into thinking about what legacy they want to leave behind, what meaning they want to leave behind, what impact they want to have on the world, I get them into thinking in a more collectivist standpoint from a perspective that the people that are suffering, who are not me, but I have the privilege of seeing that their suffering is there, but I don't have to do anything about it. Can we get them to start to care? Can we start to increase ...
And it's been amazing to see a lot of leaders, they actually do respond to that. First you have to meet people where they're at. And if they now start to go from a place of why, I used to just think of myself and how it was affecting my career or my company, my bottom line, but I'm now seeing the higher turnover. I'm seeing the cost that it's having on our company. I'm seeing the impact it's having on society. A lot of people really do want to do good and they just didn't know how. And so, Melissa, when you were talking about it not being represented in the world, this work can be incredibly draining because we're constantly walking out there creating visions for people. And Joy is nodding her head. And Natalie, we get together, we talk about how draining it is, but we're also comparing notes and talking about the vision and the narrative that we're sharing and we're giving each other hope.
And so with leaders who might be completely disconnected to this stuff, I have these kind of real, just get in the weeds with them in their garden, in their world and figure out what makes them tick, meet them where they're at, and then start to have this conversation. And they're like, "What if we do something different? What if we do this?" And then it's the case examples and it's the narratives and the stories that we all can share. And having a bunch of people at that table of a diverse group is where you get that diversity. That's where you get that depth of spirit, that knowledge, ancestors. I can go on and on, let me stop.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you. Natalie, I'm curious if you had a coaching client at a manager director level who was being impacted by this issue, how would you coach them to escalate it to the senior leadership team?
Natalie Loeb:
So just to back up a little bit also, and I will answer that question, I want to share a quote too. And so the quote I want to share is Maya Angelou's quote, I just looked it up so I could get it right. "Do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better, do better." So in my experience, and I'm really happy to say this or report back to everyone around this, although again, I know we talk about this a lot on our team, I do find that when we speak with leaders and we have these conversations, I will say eight times out of 10, people want to do better. They do want to do better. They don't necessarily ... it's all that unconscious, unintentional, wherever it's coming from pressure. But we get to be in that fortunate position of being able to say, "Can we talk about this?"
Or they bring a pain or a need to us, and we get to dig in and we get to see what's going on, and then we get to gently coach them, coach leaders around or ask questions and get them curious so they begin to understand what's going on and then guess what? They know better and then they can do better. So I do have hope around all of this. I really do. I think that people, a lot of folks get stuck about having conversations with leaders. So now go to your question to me, Dave. You're saying if I was coaching a female leader who was feeling uncomfortable, what might I say? Actually, it's a tough question to answer because there's so many things that are individual about it. I coach some female leaders that are feeling very much so that because the way they behave is very similar to the way they behave as a man, but they're getting called out about it because they're a female.
So we have to talk about what's the culture that they're in? Do they want to remain in that culture, and if so, how do we navigate that so you can be successful and be mindful of your behavior, what's working for you and what's not, and what are they willing to adjust? And some are and some aren't. And these are rich conversations that females think about all the time. It really depends at the culture that they're in. I have some female leaders that say, "Stop this female leadership crap. I'm a leader. I'm not a female leader. I am a leader and I want to be seen as a leader like any other person, male or female, and what is it that I need to do to be successful here?" And so then we'll talk about what that looks like for them. Again, really keeping in mind what the culture is that they're working with within their firm.
So it is really very individualized. I will say this, if I can turn it, what I know works is it any leader that is willing to demonstrate confidence and belief in a woman and show them and say it out loud and just say, "I know you got this. Go for it. How can I help her support you in any way?" You're going to get a lot of bang for your buck on that. Because there is, I don't even want to call it this imposter syndrome thing, everyone doubts, male, female, but particularly when someone shows faith or belief in somebody, and particularly perhaps maybe females when maybe there is a struggle in the culture, you're going to do them a huge favor and you're going to help launch them and be able to be successful and find the courage to do what they need to do. So I'll come from it from that place, because I think leaders really make a difference in terms of how we can encourage other women to be successful.
Joy Stephens:
I want to put a fine point on that. Just encouraging women, it's exactly what you're saying. Giving them that boost to their confidence, their sense of self. You got this, I've seen you do it, I know you can do it, et cetera. But then also spouting that with other people that may doubt, that don't know as well. I know she can do this, when they're talk about being in the room where it happens, I advocate for her in this role. I know she's got what it takes. She's the perfect person to do this, et cetera. Versus just telling her, tell everybody else to help, it's something that Melissa has mentioned before from the sport of curling, yeah, smooth that ice in front of them so that it makes it easier for her to move forward, instead of just putting energy into her and making her clear the way, help her clear the way.
Natalie Loeb:
I can't tell you how many female leaders that I have coached, and they do seem to pay more attention in my experience, I don't know, I haven't done the research on it, but some of them will actually score pretty high on their EQI assessments on empathy, and then they think there's something wrong with them and they go, wait a second, I'm high here, I don't see it around me. It seems to be helping me. It's helping build business. It's helping me, but I'm not noticing it, is something wrong? And they're really confused.
So my point is who we are as individuals, we all have strengths. If you notice that strength, and we're talking about gender here, you notice a strength in a gender and it's working for that person, notice it. Give them the courage and make them understand, keep going with it. And yes, we have to learn how to pull it back when it's not working in a certain situation. But particularly I've seen it a lot around, in the female agenda, questioning these skills that they have, what they are strong at, and for some reason they're not noticing it in the entire organization, now they think there's something wrong with them. There's something right with you and that confidence to keep going.
Melissa Swanepoel:
Yeah, I would love to hop in on this thread and just also say thank you so much, Joy and Natalie, so far, yes, snapping along with you. That is excellent stuff.
Joy Stephens:
Thank you.
Melissa Swanepoel:
One of the things that I've noticed, both in terms of coaching teammates, but also the phenomenon of the emotional networking that women do in business or in industry, where they're not just networking in terms of, oh, let's close a deal or let's develop a new client relationship together or anything like that. But there's also this sort of co-coaching that women offer each other in a networking style, but almost like a safety net. Everybody's heard of the whisper network. This is the dark edge case of it where, oh, we really need to address the situation, which is a safety concern. But there's also this sort of, just in general, a safety net of if you go to a conference and you're one of 12 women in a sea of men, you're going to notice, you are going to clock every woman that you see and you're going to be like, "There's more than one of us in this room. Okay, there could be more, but at least I'm not alone."
And one of the things that this sort of ... it benefits from the fact that women are culturally cued and directed more to be emotionally aware of their surroundings because we're supposed to be caretakers traditionally. And part of that is both assessing what people want and anticipating needs, but it's also a safety issue. You become really attuned to your environment and you're like, "Something feels off in this room." And if you lock eyes with another woman, you can tell she's also feeling like, "Shall we go? Let's have an excuse. Let's go to the bathroom and talk this through," kind of thing.
Every strength is also a weakness. If you put somebody who's really emotionally intelligent and they're picking up on everything in a room where everyone's quiet, they are going to pick up on the what's not being said the entire time, it's going to tear them apart inside because they're not supposed to know this. They're not that smart. They shouldn't be there. They didn't really earn their place. They're the diversity hire or they're the token higher, all of these things. So that tears you down from the inside and it become this weakness, where you're in these spaces and you've earned your place there, but you feel as if you sort of lucked in or you were brought in as a pity token or something like that. And that is caustic, both to the soul and to your ability to show up as a fully agencied individual who's capable of making decisions and standing by them and having that sort of self-esteem. You trust yourself in different situations.
And so that's one of the places in which having this high emotional intelligence that's sort of really expected of women and really benefited from by companies, because women will know when something's wrong or they'll pick up on the vibe a lot faster because the vibe impacts them directly. If everybody else is upset in the office, that is a danger signal to women. And so companies do benefit from this, but it can just as easily switch over into this weakness, like this thing that's actively harmful to women in the workplace. And the only thing that I have found that is even remotely good at combating this weakening effect of that, is you have to be in community with other women who are willing to talk about this. And then you have to bring men who are trustworthy about emotional intelligence, to bring them into that once you're ready and be like, "This is what's going on. This is how that feels. Let's have a conversation. Let's have a larger group conversation about this."
Because if you don't talk about this weird nebulous thing that's never really been a consideration before, because for a really long time it was almost only men in these industry positions, in these business positions. And now you have an influx of people who've been trained to see the world entirely differently, and they're bringing that expertise because it truly is expertise, emotional expertise. They're bringing it into this company and people are like, "Why are you inventing problems? Why are you seeing things that aren't there?" And it's just like, no, they're there and they're visible. And if you support people through their emotional experience to be able to come to very solid conclusions and useful actions that are derived from these situations, you will benefit so much, but you can't do it alone.
Fritz Galette:
Melissa, you were just reminding me. Deanna Troi, anybody know the reference from Star Trek? She sits to the side of the captain and when she feels something in that series, the captain stops everything and pays attention. She can feel something happening a universe away. And we need those spaces, when you bring that quality, that intuition into a space, that you have a space where when you open your mouth, when you make a motion to say something, someone's paying attention and invites you in, as opposed to remains in their own zone and shuts you out.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you. Thank you so much, Fritz. And again, to the audience, please, we welcome your questions and reactions. I'd like to pose to the panel one more question before we start doing key takeaways. Joy and I have discussed this topic quite deeply and we talk about where gender discrimination can come from a person of the same gender. So with respect to appearance, ability, whether or not we belong, how would you advise somebody whose feeling and experiencing that discrimination from someone who's like them?
Tamara Fox:
So I think we need to take a step back though and help everyone level set and understand that when that happens, it's kind of like the mean girl mentality. I know that the movie Mean Girls came out quite a while ago, but it's that mentality of ... it's typically where I've seen it, it's like two women against another women saying things like, "Oh, she doesn't get it." Or saying just inappropriate things about that person, either because threatened by them or they're new or they're unsure about them. There's some level of uncomfortability with that person that creates this commentary and this dialogue that's not only inappropriate but discriminatory.
So I think it's helping ... one, this is where it's the culture that they're in. So if people are making those comments, regardless of female to female, male to female, female to male, whatever it is, their culture is enabling and allowing them to do that. Somewhere in their organization, typically somewhere at the top, they're seeing that that behavior is okay and it is acceptable to behave this way. So I know David Robert always says, he's not here, we keep quoting him because he's not here, but he always says, "Your culture is telling a story. What is that story? Or what do you want that story to be?"
So if you're allowing or enabling that type of commentary to engage or that type of mean girl behavior to go on and nobody's stopping it, even somebody else, the other woman, if there's two women with another woman making comments about another woman, by one of them not saying something and stopping it, they're enabling it and allowing it to continue.
Joy Stephens:
I want to add too, but also I want to read the comment that just came in on this topic, said, this might sound out of bounds, yet it's also generational. A lot of those with a lot of tenure didn't come from this current culture and are perfectly okay with the idea that men are made to do certain things and so are women, and it's melding of those two that can sometimes be challenging. I would agree with that. I do think that there are, you will see more internalized sexism in older generations, not because they woke up and said, "You know what? I'm going to oppress myself." But it was a survival tactic. They were essentially behind enemy lines and had to behave as such to survive in an environment that was openly hostile to them. And so when they would see someone else come in that looked like them, someone of the same gender, they're going to try to give survival technique and they're going to admonish, don't do this, do this because this is how I survived, and I'm trying to help you understand how to stop ...
Now as the generations have gone on and as society has changed, a bit more accepting of different things, some of the tactics are outmoded, but it's still coming from a place, and this is why you have to understand the person you're talking to, is coming from a place of, I think I'm helping you because this is what I needed when I started 10, 15, 20 years ago. And so I'm trying to give you advice based on my reality. Understanding that can also help bridge that gap, but that also doesn't mean that it is only exclusive to the older generations because I still see it across all the isms, ageism, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia. I still see it in the younger generations because again, this is their reality, how they were raised, things they grew up with. But a misunderstanding of what feminism is, what womanism is, what gender equity is.
There's been, I would say, conscious blurring or muddying of the definitions of a lot of these things that make people think they don't want to be a feminist because that's a bad thing. And so we have to be able to address that sort of thing as well. And again, there's still some people that think I'm helping you by telling you, body shaming, you shouldn't wear that. Hey, why are you telling me that? So a lot of it can come from a place of thinking they're right. And this goes into education, understanding, getting them to see something beyond their narrow view so they understand how what they're saying, with the best of intentions, is very harmful.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you, Joy. Go ahead, Melissa.
Melissa Swanepoel:
Just to add on to the thread with Joy, which excellent, all of the things. One of the mechanics that's at play sometimes, where maybe this person isn't trying to be helpful, but they are still trying to do something that they think is right. But usually people in that sort of moment can conflate something that is right with something that protects them and keeps them safe. And we've all heard the sort of truism, like the safest place when you confront a bully is beside them or behind them. So you're either on the side of the bully or you're not being seen by the bully. You don't want to be in front of the bully. And in this case, the bully is the system or gender discrimination or internalized misogyny or any of these things. These things are the bully and the safest place is on the side of the bully.
So like, oh, I feel uncertain in a world that is changing and therefore I need to find a way to make myself feel more certain. How can I do that? There are longstanding hierarchies that have social capital that I have attached some of my self-worth and a sense of identity to. So if I uphold these things by targeting people who are failing to meet the status quo that I'm comfortable with, then I will reaffirm my position in society. I will reaffirm my position in circles that adhere to the same hierarchical worth systems that are important to me. And so even though I'm causing harm to these other people, I am bolstering my own safety by spreading rumors about a female colleague because I don't like the way she looks, or she got a promotion and I didn't. And now I have to make that about something unsavory rather than just the fact that she got a promotion and I didn't.
It's a lot easier to preserve your sense of standing in a situation like that. And when I say easier, I mean it has a lot less personal pain attached because a lot of the time people are avoiding looking at those systems and how they've contributed to them, because the realization will be incredibly painful. And there's a lot of work, there's a price tag that comes with awareness that we are not socially encouraged to seek out. We're not really told it's really worth it to lie awake at night and wonder about the thing you said three years ago and then feel terrible about it for the next three weeks because, oh God, you didn't consider the implications. That's not fun, brains don't like pain, but it's worth it in the long run because you start contributing to systems that are building people up, that are encouraging the full actualization of individuals.
And the more that you get to work with people who have done self-searching, self-seeking and self-growth, you start to actually become part of a community that is really full of full individuals, and that is a future worth pursuing, both at the individual level, at the social level, at the company level, at the country, at the world. Bringing as many people to a sense of fullness and then working together is going to land you in a far better square down the future than if you just persist in upholding these systems that make you feel safe in the moment.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you. Thank you so much, Melissa. As we're coming up on the hour and this hour flew by for me, I hope the same for you. I'd like to give everybody an opportunity to just give us one key takeaway or observation before we close out. Tamara, would you like to start us off?
Key Takeaways
Tamara Fox:
Sure. Mine would be don't be oblivious or don't be not aware that there's still this issue pursuing in the workplace and figure out what it is and impact that on either a micro, macro level, depending what you can do based on your position.
Natalie Loeb:
Yeah, it's funny, as we're listening, you probably can't see it, but right behind me, there's a sign that's followed me into all of my offices for I don't know how many years. And it says, she believed she could, so she did. And so I just want to say that's something that I had, that made it happen for me. But I will say I didn't do it alone because I had a lot of males in my life that believed I could do it also, so I did. And I couldn't have done it without a husband, without a son, without male business coaches. And so together, we can all get there together. And so that piece about showing others that you believe in their potential and believe in what they can do and give them that opportunity can go a long way. So I hope we all get those opportunities.
Fritz Galette:
The sign of a civilized society is one where we're in tight community, sharing our knowledge of diversity an our education with one another. This conversation, this last 60 minutes is why I wake up in the morning, to have them. A theme for me, Melissa, you just grabbed onto it, which is community, community, community. It allows for when it's tight and it's when people are talking to one another and feeling safe enough to talk to each other and notice, it allows for the things that happen in the shadows not to happen anymore. So thank you. Thank you all for what you said.
Joy Stephens:
I would just add, I want everybody that's listening to remember every day, every day you wake up with the opportunity to help someone or ignore what they need. And so every day choose to try to help someone, especially for someone that doesn't have the attention, the platform, the power, the clout, et cetera that you have. And that's how you can continue to be an ally in the moment. Every moment, and we've discussed this before, is either building trust or breaking trust. How can you continue to build trust every day? And if you get it wrong yesterday, get it right tomorrow. But every day try to be the person and encourage other people to be that type of person that speaks up when they see any sort of injustice.
Melissa Swanepoel:
I'm going to borrow Natalie's phrase from earlier and just double down on it. Make it personal. If you don't have community connections yet, if you're not sure yet what to do or you're not in connection with others who can guide you, the first step is to make it personal and to make it matter to you. And when you do that, you will begin to find those connections will become foregrounded to you. They will start to pop out in your everyday life, and that is the first step.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Very well said. Thanks for closing us out. Thank you so much to our panel. Thank you to Lindsay Millan, our producer, and thank you to our audience. Please feel free to reach out to us at loebleadership.com, connect with us on LinkedIn. We love follow-up questions, and if you want to continue the conversation, we're happy to do that. Thank you everybody.