Gender IQ™

Do it like a woman

You have probably heard people saying that if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters …..well, you know the rest.

Here is a woman who says it might be true and is doing it herself to prove the point. Renee Haugerud runs a billion dollar hedge fund that she started from scratch. Watch the video to find out how she overcame being excluded from the boys club and now teaches how to ‘trade like a woman’
http://tinyurl.com/6dporjv

Whilst we are talking about ‘doing it like a woman’ I am so proud of my eldest daughter for doing something similar in teaching a large Telecoms company how to move beyond unconscious bias.  A year ago she went for her first interview and was told that she wouldn’t fit in because the sales guys were big and macho and they didn’t have any other girls. They didn’t think she would make it.

She responded like this… ‘with respect, I wouldn’t sell like a guy but I do believe that I could sell and I would do it in a different way’    For having the courage to say this they gave her a ‘chance’ on a salary just above minimum wage.

My petite, feminine, gentle daughter who was the youngest  in the team last year (19) and still the only white female in the entire business (selling business to business telecoms solutions)  has just been given top sales award in the company.

You GO Jess! We’re proud

Last updated on July 7th, 2011 No Comments »

Anne Minto OBE

Recently, I was honoured and excited to be invited to the internal launch of Centrica’s women’s network. Honoured because I was the only external person invited and excited because I wanted to hear Anne Minto, Group Director of Human Resources, speak.
I am always surprised by my own perceptions of successful people. I am sure we are similar and I bet your inner dialogue is like mine and goes something like this ‘they must be different to me, more intelligent, more serious, more committed’ and then, of course, when we listen we discover that that they are just like us and the inspiration is in that lesson. Perhaps, the only difference I have heard and seen 100’s of times is that they are willing to work hard and learn from, not shrink back from mistakes.

Anne has been Group Director of Human Resources at Centrica since 2002 and before that she worked as Director of Human Resources of Smiths Group. After qualifying as a lawyer, she worked for over 13 years with Shell including a two year secondment as Director of Aberdeen Enterprise and was the first woman in Shell to be ‘allowed’ to stay on an off-shore platform in 1980. She was awarded an OBE for services to the engineering industry in 2000.

Anne’s talk was inspiring for many reasons, not least of which was her generous willingness to share some of the lessons she had learned as a woman at the commercial edge of business in a male dominated industry. Anne’s career spanned the struggle for equal pay legislation and, perhaps subsequently, was one of the first GHRD’s in a FTSE 100 to introduce equal pay audits at Centrica.

The more interesting lessons, for me, come when a person is willing to share on a personal level. I don’t say this lightly as I understand how difficult it can be to share honestly and from the heart in business. Anne’s advice to women at Centrica was rooted around a belief that ‘quota’s will come’ unless we see some dramatic improvements in the number of women on boards and the need to get more women into general management leadership roles which would give greater opportunities for women to become CEOs of a company. She advised not to ‘forget who you are as a person’ and to ‘keep your femininity and use it to your advantage’ She also said be realistic about what you can do – no one can be super woman – make sure you have the support you need around you at home to be able to fulfill the demands of both family and job otherwise you are simply exhausted all of the time.

My own belief is that unless more of us can start having these kinds of honest discussions….yes.. ‘quota’s will come’

Last updated on June 29th, 2011 No Comments »

Deutsche Bank CEO wishes he hadn’t said …

I get a lot of people saying to me …’it has all been done’ or ‘we are beyond this now’ and many companies saying that they are ‘not on board’ with discussing or cascading information on Gender IQ.

Saying that your boardroom will be prettier and more colourful when the day dawns that women suddenly appear is NOT gender intelligent.

If the CEO of Deutsche Bank doesn’t get it then I doubt very much that we are a long way down the road to equality. Why do I say this? Because Deutsche Bank make a loud noise about being leaders on gender.

Sorry, I cant agree that it has all been done, not even close.

You can read more her in this recent Forbes article

http://blogs.forbes.com/carolinehoward/2011/02/08/deutsche-bank-ceo-josef-ackerman-colorful-and-prettier-brouhaha/

Last updated on February 9th, 2011 No Comments »

Gina Rippon’s neuro-nonsense message is hindering progress

I am sure you have heard all the media frenzy over Gina Rippon’s http://www1.aston.ac.uk/lhs/staff/az-index/rippong/ assertions that we must ‘challenge neuro-nonsense about women’s brains’ ? I felt so strongly about the damage her message might do I wrote her a personal plea. Here it is. Please add your views too in the comments on this blog.

Gina Hi

I have been working with Blue Chip organisations who wish to increase senior female representation for 10 years. In that time there has been little or no progress in the numbers of women in power despite all the good policies and research.

In 2003 I began talking about the fact that men and women might be different and approach leadership differently. Not wrong, not right… just different. If they (the City) had had eggs they would have thrown them.

Since that time I have been on a mission to have my message heard. Why? Because I have had 10,000 women go through my programmes and they all tell me the same story – they are different and feel misunderstood.

I have no interest in the nature-nurture debate. Clearly it is both.

What worries me about your recent approach is that we are heading back to the good old days of ‘shhh… don’t talk about it because it causes stereotyping’ and my belief is that unless we accept where we are we cant move forward.

I have just launched this www.genderiq.tv to help organisations to move forward on this political subject and I encourage debate. I also talk about gender being on a scale of masculine/feminine leadership traits. There is no longer a need for the Thatcher stereotype of ‘bloke in a skirt’ and to avoid women having to go down this road we need to talk about differences and encourage a wider range of acceptable leadership styles.

I hope that we can speak and get on the same page. At the very least we must agree that testosterone causes different behaviour in men and women.

Last updated on October 20th, 2010 No Comments »

Surely we are beyond socialisation theory?

I don’t usually make personal comment on this blog …I reserve my rants for my blog at eve-olution!

But  …today I have to comment.

Today, The Observer published this article http://tiny.cc/mpd59  re a new book that is about to be published asserting that there  is very little hard-wiring between the male and female brain and that behavioural differences are a result of socialisation.

I have copied below a comment from the thread below the article. I couldn’t agree more ….what do you think?

‘ You seriously think that the reason for males behaving like males throughout human history (and females as females) is because they were given boys toys when kids? Such delusions! Do you think male apes such as gorillas behave the way they do because of the toys they are given too? Eh? Hilarious!

You are ain a VERY small minority in believing male/female behaviour is as it is because of social conditioning – and that includes amongst women. Why? Because of the MASSES of EVIDENCE that prove male/female behaviour differences are hardwired. Most people accept that. Flat-earthers do not.’

Last updated on August 17th, 2010 1 Comment »

Getting the right Styles of the Sexes

Last week Gender IQ and Cisco launched the results of our ‘Styles of the Sexes’ survey, which looked at the working approaches of men and women. The findings indicate that 45 percent of working women agreed with the statement ‘women have to be better than men to succeed in the workplace’. In contrast, only 26 percent of men questioned believed this to be true. Like me, these findings will not come as a surprise to many career women. But at the same time, the Society for Human Resource Management states that 74 percent of companies have diversity programmes in place. So where is the disconnect? The issue is that many programmes sidestep perhaps the most striking diversity component in the workplace: the personality differences between men and women.  Without an understanding of Gender Intelligence – the ability to respond with finesse and savvy to gender generated issues – this one topic will continue to affect men and women in every business situation.

Picture the scenario, a meeting starts and one of the male executives suggests that a female colleague be the note taker. Read the rest of this page »

Last updated on November 16th, 2009 No Comments »

Survey Results: Workplace Styles of the Sexes

The results of a survey jointly commissioned by Cisco and Gender IQ have just been published, and we have put out a joint press release today highlighting the results.  No surprise to us that the findings indicate that real differences exist in how men and women deal with aspects of their work – differences that we believe individuals and organisations need to take account of in order to get the best results they can.  You can read the full press release on the Cisco news website, where you can also download a copy of the white paper setting out the full results.

Last updated on November 5th, 2009 No Comments »

Sexism in the City

This is a very long article in the Times, but well worth a read if you are interested in the subject of gender differences in the workplace.  Is the only way for women to be accepted to be just like the men?  It would seem so.  But I enjoyed the comments best, particularly this one: Read the rest of this page »

Last updated on October 19th, 2009 No Comments »

Women mentoring the men!

Dell seem to have bought into the idea that both men and women need to adapt their behaviour and style with their new mentoring programme that helps men understand what it is like to be a woman in a man’s world.  This is a great initiative!  Read the full story in the Observer.

Last updated on October 12th, 2009 No Comments »

Is crying a sign of weakness?

Have you read this article in Fortune magazine yet?  Women cry more easily than men and that can make any of us uncomfortable.  But is the answer to deny the biological facts and ensure that women train themselves out of crying in the way that Stanley Bing believes men do:

Read the rest of this page »

Last updated on October 7th, 2009 No Comments »