2 Girls, 2 Dads, 2 Tons Self-Confidence

I don’t know if there is any research on the role Dads play in developing the self-confidence of their daughters, but I’d like to share two stories on this subject. Science can take care of the rest.

The Princess of Hand-Me-Downs

We weren’t wealthy, and there were four of us to clothe, feed, educate, recreate, and more. The rich cousins had great clothes and no younger sisters. As the eldest daughter in my family, I got great hand-me-downs. And when I did, my Dad took his rightful place in the living room, seated comfortably in his viewing chair, to watch the fashion show. I, of course, was the star and only model. And he, of course, met my every entry with “Ooohs” “Ahhhs” applause and other visible signs of adoration. Never once did he show exhaustion from a hard day at work shlepping mattresses from the factory, to his truck, to his customers’ homes. He carried them on his shoulders. The same shoulders that carried me. I was his Princess, and I knew it.

Dads: Adore you daughters. Period.

They will adore you back and more. At the end of most summer days, I waited expectantly for Daddy-O to come home. I perched on the front steps and counted cars. When the wait got too long I would allot myself 10 more cars. If he wasn’t home by then, I would go inside. Ten cars later, I allotted another 20, and then…You get the picture. I couldn’t go in. I was his Girl. How could I miss that moment when my heart soared, seeing his truck coming down the street. How could I miss flinging myself into his arms as he stood at the bottom of the steps, yelling “Daddy-O is home.” I waited. I would have waited forever and then some.

Dads: Your daughters adore you. Period.

The Baseball Player

My brother is 18 months older than I am. He and my Dad played the requisite father son baseball, football, and hockey. I don’t think my brother liked it very much. I sure did. I don’t remember being invited to go or being left out. We were a three-some. The same was true for our fishing trips to the piers in Marblehead and Swampscott. Being a girl was no excuse from baiting the hook with those squishy sea worms that we cut in half first to save a few pennies.

Dads: Include your daughters. Period.

The Student

“No one can ever rob you of your knowledge.” My Dad believed in knowledge, learning and getting a good education above all else. He read. He cherished encyclopedias and great books. He had a number of schemes to upgrade our brains and expand our minds, but we weren’t the most receptive audience. During his dinner time “Word-a-day” program we managed to talk over him until he gave up in frustration and most assuredly with disappointment. On long drives he had us add the numbers on license plates. I still do that today, an annoying little habit. He wanted us to memorize poetry. I asked “Why?” but was unconvinced by his answer. “If you are ever in prison it will keep your mind occupied.” I have very little poetry stored in memory. There was the collection of classical albums for Sunday afternoon listening, and more.

When I grew up girls we not expected to have careers, but he encouraged my studies and my breadth of knowledge as much as he encouraged my brother’s. For him there was no difference in what we could do.

Dads: Feed your daughters’ minds. Period.

The Achiever

He told me I could do whatever I set my mind to do. It didn’t matter to him what that was, so long as “You do it to the best of your ability.”

Dads: Be your daughters’ cheerleaders. Period.

The Girl

Meet another Girl and her Dad. He writes a blog about her and their relationship, as well as his musings about being Dad to The Girl. You can see it here – Me and the Girl, The Girl and Me.

I So-Know him (social media) but not IRL (in real life). He adores The Girl. He sings praises about The Girl. He ponders his role with The Girl.  The Girl will be a woman worth knowing, if she isn’t already.

And here is something else of interest, the man who is the Dad to The Girl is the son of Gwyn Teatro. Gwyn is a woman worth knowing, one I am honored to have as a So-Friend, and someone I can’t wait to meet IRL someday. Soon I hope.

Are Expats More Resilient?

“Resilience” is the positive capacity of people to  survive and “bounce back” after failures and adversity. I think it is a pretty complex topic. In addition, what makes you thrive and happy, may be stressful for somebody else. However, no matter what the nature of the stress, resilience can be developed by learning adaptive coping strategies.

I am just now in the middle of move #12, going back to New Jersey, USA, after two years in Brussels, Belgium. The fact that I have been a serial expat for 20 years, between Europe, Japan and USA does not make the packing and the administrative work easier but psychologically, I feel more confident to ride the emotional roller coaster or “culture shock” most people experience when moving to an unknown city. By living and working abroad I got exposed to a wide range of unusual stressful experiences, sometimes even life-threatening, allowing me to develop specific coping strategies.

The impact of external changes on individuals such as moving to a new country, facing unemployment, switching to a new career can create stress, fear, anger, depression, feeling like a victim, confusion, decrease in performance, ineffective problem solving or poor decision making.

Are long term expats better equipped to adapt to economic turmoil, disruptions, changes, transitions and stress ?

Coping skills are very personal and usually developed by way of past experiences, which is why long term expats who have gone through many transitions develop healthy habits that add to their resilience.

What are the Key Characteristics of Resilient people?

• Ability to “bounce back” and “recover from almost anything”
• Tendency to see problems as opportunities
• Deep-rooted faith in a system of meaning
• Healthy social support network
• Being helpful in their communities
• Are prepared for the worst
• Have a balanced life
• Are confident and develop strengths to take new challenges
• Able to recover from experiences in the panic or trauma zone

How To Develop Resilience ?

1-Awareness : Identify your hot buttons. Who are toxic people in your life? What stresses you, under what circumstances and what are your emotional responses? Do you have negative self-talk? What coping strategies do you use? What activities give meaning to your life? What positive emotions do you experience when you do something your really love?

2-Be in Control: When things go out of your control, focus on part of you life you can control, such as changing your perception and perspective, exercising, journaling, talking with friends, stopping the blame game.

3-Create a support network: Deepen your relationships with people in your network, share a hobby with friends, help other people, write a blog, create your support group, use social networks.

Conclusion: Resilience grows from overcoming setbacks. It is a mind-set that induces positive attitudes and behaviors, thereby enlarging your vision of your life.

Anne Egros is a serial expat  and holistic coach who has moved 11 times around the globe working at management levels for various industries . After a 20-year international career in Fortune 500 Companies in USA , Japan and Europe, Anne has a deep knowledge of business management.

4 women, 4 continents, 1 man, 1 tweet

Foreword by Dorothy: One of the lessons I’ve learned from social media is to let go a lot of things that raise the proverbial eyebrows. Truthfully, there’s a lot of nonsense out there. However when a tweet from Grant Mason floated into my stream suggesting “MBA’s are done by blokes in their 30s and 40′s while women are doing career and mothering”  my eyebrows remained up. I felt that it would be absolutely negligent not to comment. I was soon joined by Lynne Barbour in South Africa, Kathy Korman Frey in the US and Cheyanne Ainsworth in Australia. 4 women, on 4 Continents, the topic all covered in guess – probably 4 minutes. The poor chap didn’t stand a chance!  The exchange was constructive, educational and supportive. Grant very graciously conceded that he had things to think about. He thought. He wrote… and dedicated the post to the 4 of us. The lesson? Confront one stereotypical thought at a time. Thank YOU Grant!

Hot mommas – from Grant Mason

I don’t normally stay up late tweeting hot mommas but the other night I did. It started with a typical male comment to a tweet about why there are less women MBAs. It was a warm exchange and included a great comment by @DorothyDalton that more than 3 women at any level changes the dynamic. With encouragement from @ChiefHotMomma and @lynnbarbour I started to think about the rise of women’s networks and social business. I think the two forces are ready to converge.

The next decade is a decade of social. The capability that organizations build in the next number of years will be the cultural infrastructure for the next phase of commerce and organizational development. Infrastructure in companies will not be about concrete or buildings or servers but about culture and capability of people.

With that in mind there is an untapped potential in organizations. Potential evolving from a strong vision and immense dedication that will soon transfer wonderfully into business success in the next decade. The Women’s Network.

For some the Women’s network began as a not so secret club that the male dominated workforce gave a cynical wink at. Imagining a work style Tupperware party where women plotted against the glass ceiling at times made it hard to gather the momentum and credibility needed to go mainstream. In spite of this core skills and capability have been developed that will be critical for the social business era. Consider:

1. The ability to reach out cross boundaries. Inside and outside of the organization. Women’s networks are great at this and have set a new standard of connecting across the silos.
2. Focusing on non technical development. The skills that women’s networks build are non technical. Typically the focus is on building influence, resilience and leadership not how to do a narrow technical job. These skills are fundamental to the fast changing world we are facing.
3. The ability to engage with senior leaders. Many organizations have taken seriously the development of women. While there is a long way to go, women in male dominated industries often have great exposure to senior leaders. The ability to relate and influence senior leaders is often intuitive in women. In an era where leadership will be more about influence than control this capability will also be important.

Social business will define the next decade. Leaders who can network across traditional boundaries, develop leadership in people, and influence others will be the leaders who succeed.

By Grant Mason founder of Yackstar

Doing Scary Things

I’ve never been particularly adventurous. Growing up, when others were diving off high places into bodies of water or shushing down mountains on skis, I was content to watch, with admiration and awe, as they tested their physical boundaries and pushed themselves to the edges of life.

I watched long enough, and thought about it hard enough, to come to believe that in spite of my longing for safety, daring myself to do scary things, whatever they may be, would be a necessary part of life.

I still don’t dive off high places into bodies of water. And, I still refuse to careen down the side of a mountain with skis, (or any other form of apparatus without brakes), attached to my feet. But here’s the thing. Every time I have made a bold move I have experienced something pretty fine. Growth.

Growth happened when, at forty, I decided it was time for me to move, on my own, three thousand miles away from my family and familiar surroundings to see what I was made of.

Growth happened when at forty-two, I went back to school, (a place I had never felt particularly comfortable) to find out if I really was too dim to learn new things or conversely, whether my view of myself could really be different.

Growth happened when I stood my ground in the face of disapproval from my boss and some of my colleagues and when I worked to change that face to one of acceptance.

The point is, there are all kinds of ways to be brave and take risk. I’ve learned that, for growth to happen, we are not required to always be flinging ourselves into harm’s way or hurtling down mountains. But, there are times when we are required to do our own kinds of scary things; things that make our hearts beat faster; things that bring the whisper of the inner critic to a roaring crescendo; and things that make us sweat. Growth happens when we defy all of that, when we hear the inner contrarian and do it anyway.

You may ask why should we bother? Well, I think we bother simply because we owe it to ourselves. And we owe it to the world.

What is your scary thing?

Gywn Teatro

Tapping Women’s Brainpower for New Innovative Jobs

Want more ground-breaking brainpower that top woman leaders add? Wish to expand formerly all male oriented US Coast Guards? Can you envision new job and leadership opportunities opening as a result of innovation facilitated from more and finer diversity pools?

If you answer yes to any of the above, you’ll be delighted that Rear Admiral Sandra Stosz,- first female to land a top leadership post in the US Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut – adds fresh and unique female brainpower at the helm.  If Stosz taps into her innovative uniqueness, both genders will benefit from brain powered tools within mind-bending women’s proclivities.

Top Female Brainpower Offers Benefits for All

While the jury is still out on some finer physiological gender differences, most experts now agree on the female brain’s strength for:

• Integrated sentiment and reason. Successful women use both emotion and logic – but research shows how they tend to use these mental tools differently both to solve problems and cope with stressors. Top women leaders tend to craft insights with their emotional intelligence, and then add logical action plans for mind-bending results. Everybody wins.
• Networks and collaboration. Women’s brainpower tends to trump language and communication skills, which double as negotiating tools to facilitate and articulate new and diverse talent opportunities.
• High performance minds for innovation. Research shows that women hold the lion’s share of higher education degrees since 1982. Female brains draw on more symmetric activation across brain hemispheres to embrace development from varied offerings.
• Diverse talents unleashed. Women often excel in tasks that use language processing, and tend to value diversity. How so?  Watch women leaders integrate  hard and soft skills  across both hemispheres of the brain and you’ll see a workforce solve problems from wider innovative capabilities.
• Right-brained intelligences. Women’s brainpower tends to include intelligences normally operated from the brain’s right hemisphere. They solve more problems than left-brain-workers by combining facts, images, and creative insights from insights others offer. No surprise the entire workforce  enjoys amazing solutions when women lead.

Shore up Women Leaders and Equity will Follow

Support women leaders like Stosz, and together we’ll enjoy added distinctives from mental treasure chests that cultivate novelty and offer innovation opportunities. Not surprisingly, what’s germane to female brains is also craved by men and women.  New that high-tech scientific study shows clearly marked differences between male and female’s brains, let’s draw more from women’s leadership talents to ensure multiple perspectives that equip a wider workforce for the new innovation era.

Based on research and experience, it only makes sense to capitalize more on gender differences.  Even at rest, neuro scientists Larry Cahill and Lisa Kilpatrick show how female brains differ both biologically and cognitively. Female brains at rest – communicate deeply with the amygdala  which processes emotionally influenced memories differently.

Have you seen winning visions generated and executed by women lately?

Dr. Ellen Weber directs the Mita International Brain Center, and certifies leaders across many cultures to facilitate both genders with the brain more in mind. New book, Lead Innovation with the Brain in Mind, with co-author Dr. Robyn McMaster (senior VP at Mita) is coming soon. See Brain Leaders and Learners and  Mita Brain Center

Transferable skills

I have worked all my life.

For free.

All my jobs required leadership, organizational skills, the ability to meet deadlines, and most of all, people skills.

The reasons for volunteering – as opposed to paid employment – were complicated and mainly health-related, but volunteering allowed me to be a productive, creative and involved member of society.

I’m glad I did. I need those skills and abilities more than ever.

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was a young woman and a young man. They fell in love. The young man proposed to the young woman on an old log bridge as they sat with their legs dangling over the river ambling below them. She said yes.

They married and had children. Time passed. Money was tight, but life was good. They worked, raised their kids and welcomed grandchildren; then started to watch old friends pass away. Money was good, but life was harder.

That’s where I came in.

What does my volunteer work have to do with the task of supporting my parents at this stage of life?

I’m finding that all the skills I used to lead, organize, meet deadlines and relate to others are vital now as I attempt to find my way along a path that is as rough and hilly as the road leading to the old bridge.

For example:

It took several years of on and off again encouragement, inducements, and finally a relocation, to get them switched from a doctor who was well into his 80’s (mostly blind and more than a little senile) to doctors who are competent. And if you don’t believe that encouraging older, somewhat ailing, parents to leave a doctor they have seen for forty some years requires great people skills, give it a shot. You’ll see…

I had serious doubts about his competency based on some of the past advice he’d given, but when Mum went in to talk to him about changing doctors – he gave her a physical. She’d had one three months previously, but he couldn’t figure out why she was there and missed the reason for her visit when he looked at his notes. And she, of course, was too polite to tell him. Or to point out that the prescription he offered her was for a drug that she didn’t take.

It took all my self-control not to go over her head and give him my version of a physical!

Instead I continued discussing the pros and cons of switching to a younger, perhaps female, doctor for Mum and any sex doctor for Dad. My goal is to support them without taking over, without making them feel helpless or disrespected, so I don’t tell them what to do. Instead I give them the information they need to make healthy decisions.

This requires the ability to encourage, educate and, what I call, lead from below.

I found that this leadership style was least problematic for me and most likely to achieve teamwork among the frequently very disparate volunteers with whom I worked. This skill was especially useful when I managed a storytelling guild and chaired parent councils for over a decade.

It involves discovering what groups as a whole really want, creating a plan and then implementing it. Bret Simmons refers to it as purposeful servant leadership. I highly recommend it.

Although I am only in the very early stages of figuring out what my parents want and require and I often get it wrong, fortunately my parents realize that I’m trying and my siblings are supportive.

So now there is a degree of trust, not only in my ability to solve problems, but also in my intentions. I am hopeful that together we can make our way.

I have a pitted old-fashioned square iron nail that I found in the shallows of the river, just down from where the log bridge used to span the banks. It’s one of my treasures. A talisman; it is a concrete expression of my desire to hold things together for them, to do my part, as this nail did all those years ago.

Vicki van Alstine (Honours B.A. Psychology and Sociology) was immersed in the elementary school system for many years:  teaching writing workshops & storytelling; managing a storytelling guild; and coaching writers, among other things. What defines her now however, is her desire to help others find joy. Follow her on Twitter @bubbleoffcentre

 

Book Groups: A female preserve?

Reading and gender stereotyping

I’ve always been an avid reader and have also been book club member for over 20 years. The statistics for this explosion are hard to pin down, but apparently there are over 50,000 book groups in the UK and 500,000 in the US. Book clubs are now so popular,  that celebrity endorsements by Oprah or Richard and Judy can propel even obscure titles into the best selling orbit. Many book sellers such as Amazon, even issue book club lists and  guideline questions.

I confess to being  able to devour the latest best seller as enthusiastically as the most highly regarded and critically acclaimed opus. So not unsurprisingly, the first group I joined  when I lived in Luxembourg  was called “ Books & Booze,” with perhaps not the right level of  literary focus as one might imagine, after a couple of glasses of the local Riesling. When I’m in Spain I’m a member of another appropriately named group,  “Books on the Beach.”  This is also  a relaxed affair, as titles, stained with various sunscreen factors  are passed amongst  a rather flexible membership,  which ebbs and flows according to different travel schedules of the group.  A few of us even tried to set one up via Twitter, but we were sadly let down by an erratic Skype connection.  Sixteen years ago when I move to Brussels I joined a book club and am still a member.

A female phenomenon?

One thing that has struck me, especially after talking to my friends,  is that these clubs seem to be a peculiarly female phenomenon, with the very occasional, perhaps brave, male stalwarts as members. When I explained to my son what a book group does, he looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.  Whether this is because girls are more advanced early readers than boys and this trend perpetuates into adulthood, I can’t say.  The group I’m in actually reads the books (many don’t I’m reliably informed),  although we did dispatch the latest translation of  Beowulf, which has dedicated university courses, in a mere two hours. Being in such a group obliges me to persevere with titles and authors that I may well have ignored or given up. As a multi- national group it’s great to hear the input of people from different cultures and backgrounds.  In short it stretches me and my thinking which is  always greatly appreciated and needed.

Women and fiction

So why are  book groups associated, somewhat derisively with women of a certain age reading  chic lit and Jane Austen?   The battering of  Jane Austen started with Mark Twain ” Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it” and  she continues  even today, to be caught in the crossfire of the sexes in literature, perpetuated  recently by V.S. Naipaul, who suggested that women writers are inferior to men. This is such an outrageously arrogant and ignorant statement that I’m not even going to waste time putting up a case. I will leave that to others! Happily,  we all know that there are many excellent women authors – Jennifer Egan, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, has also  just won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her book “A Visit from the Goon Squad.” I will be recommending this to my group for its next read.

Title choice

In my group,  title choice is eclectic, driven by font size and the number of pages, as we become older and busier, rather than by gender. Research suggests that women apparently read more than men with a preference for  fiction, while men  seemingly prefer non fiction. Based on anecdotal personal experience, I think that sounds about right and my group does indeed tends to veer towards fiction, simply because I personally read so much non fiction professionally .

Male book groups

However, I was delighted to read in the Telegraph that book clubs are now becoming increasingly popular with men. Perhaps we are seeing the reversal of another gender bias. Jason Pinter suggests  in the Huffington Post that publishing houses’ editorial committees, “overpopulated by women,” believe that ” men don’t read.” This leaves the male reader “alienated and out out in the cold with little title choice.” Whether that’s true, or whether men simply prefer to do other things it’s hard to tell.

I am happy, however, when any situation associated with gender stereotyping is being examined!

So who else is in a book group? What titles would you recommend?

What Change Will You Be?

What are we doing in the corporate world?

Women throughout the world are victims of violence. Many women suffer the effects of ‘passive violence’ resulting in bullying and harassment.

We can view ourselves as victims, or look at the roots of this behaviour to see if there is anything we can do. Whilst there are elements of the ‘sisterhood’ who attribute all of this to men and their inherent nature – it’s not quite as simple as that.

When women were relatively powerless in the world, it was easy for us to take the moral high ground and say “look what a mess men are making of it”. But we can’t rely on our femininity or gender to assert that we are automatically victims or innocent.

Are we contributing to the level of violence?

Before he was assassinated Ghandhi wrote about the “Seven Blunders of the World.” He felt these were the seeds that grow and bring us to the point of violence. They include:

• Wealth without work.
• Pleasure without conscience.
• Knowledge without character.
• Commerce without morality.
• Science without humanity.
• Worship without sacrifice.
• Politics without principle.

His grandson later added

• Rights without responsibilities.

We are increasing our influence and standing in the world and increasing the exercise of our rights, but to what end?

How are we using our power?

We are increasingly able to claim the rights given to us in law by the EU or the US (and elsewhere in the world), but with that comes increasing responsibility.

Are we going to use our femininity to seek rich husbands (wealth without work), which many young women think is a worthy aspiration?

Shall we emulate the men of the super-injunctions (pleasure without conscience), Shall we make money, whatever the cost (commerce without morality). Shall we get ourselves elected to key positions of power, no matter what? (Politics without principle)

Being female is no guarantee of any particular set of beliefs or morality, but as we are newly arriving in our power we have a unique opportunity to look at the world and take some decisions that just might make things better for our children, our grandchildren and others.

Ghandi said “Be the change you want to see in the world”.

So what are we going to be?

About Annabel Kaye

Annabel Kaye is co-founder of and Director of Irenicon, a specialist employment law and HR consultancy. She has a blog, writes for the Financial Mail Women’s Forum on “Balancing the Bump” and hosts a LinkedIn forum on Bullying and Harassment  She has recently taken up stand up comedy (she says the Government is a bigger joker than she is) and is doing a women-only charity performance on 6^th July When she is not working, she loves to dance Argentine tango or Savoy swing.  Follow on Twitter and on LinkedIn

WORTH KNOWING: Workplace Affairs

One drop of food coloring in a glass of water changes the color of all the other drops inside the container. The same is true for work place affairs. I am addressing affairs involving one or two parties already married or in a publicly committed relationship with someone else. One drop of such an affair clouds the trust previously contained within the group.

On rare occasions, thank goodness it is rarely, I am asked to consult to an organization reeling from the effects of the one drop – the illicit affair – that has denigrated trust. This post is not a moral position about affairs but an explanation of the consequences they create within the group, and beyond.

A Breach of Trust

Early in my training as a clinical psychologist a supervisor explained that clear and consistent boundary conditions in psychotherapy build and maintain trust, therefor the importance of seemingly small commitments, such as starting and ending on time.

Setting and maintaining boundaries is a first rule of trust in the workplace. You trust the company will pay you as promised, that your job will be there when you show up, that the company, your manager and fellow employees will honor commitments, both explicit and implicit. You, in turn, do what you have been entrusted to do.

When two people cross sexual boundaries assumed to be in place at work, they create a significant breach of trust. It is a breach that  extends well beyond the two of them. The effects are multiplied if either participant in the affair is a formal leader to the other and within the group.

Case Study

Frank and Vince are peers, senior leaders, and respected scientists in a pharmaceutical company. They have known each other since undergraduate school, were in the same fraternity, and served as best men in each others wedding ceremonies. They and their respective families are friends outside of work as well.

Marion works for Frank. They cross the sexual boundary. Everyone knows it, including Vince, who is also a devout (any religion will do).

Within months Frank is proceeding with a divorce. He and Marion move in together and are publicly a couple. As is often the case, Vince and his wife are in a position to choose whether to “go with” Frank or his wife. They choose her. Vince openly expresses his disappointment and anger about the breach of morality Frank has committed. He can barely make eye contact with Marion. Vince’s staff lines up behind him. Working relationships between the two departments suffer. Accusations fly. Some people escape the tension by leaving the department. Communications fall to a minimum. Mistakes are made. A department with a previously good reputation and excellent business metrics, begins to be known as “THAT department.”

Marion threatens legal action, stating she is being harassed for personal life decisions. Human resources and legal departments are involved. External consultants are called in.

The consultant recommends that Frank and Marion leave the department, not because of the morality or immorality of what has occurred, but because they have broken a boundary. People do not trust them separately or together. They cannot rebuild this trust. There is a hole in the container that cannot be mended. A new container is required for each of them and for the groups that were affected. Having to move on will also affect their relationship, but that is a story yet to be told, and one that I will not be telling.

The Lesson?

Best to think twice, even three or four times, about the real affects of workplace affairs.

The trust inside the container will be forever changed.

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