Category: Thinking Like Empowered Women

  • Our Fear of Being Powerful

    I want to share a quote I’ve seen several times this past year:

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    “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

    Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”

     

    I thought was odd that we would be afraid of our own power.  But if you think about it, that is what we are afraid of.  It made me wonder – Why?

    I read some opinions that said that if we believe we are powerful, then we feel responsible to step forward and serve the world.  But then when we put ourselves out there we open ourselves up to ridicule, critique, questioning and possibly failure.  There is the possibility that the power we felt within ourselves can be taken away.  So in order to protect our power, we hide it – we play it safe by playing small.

    When we play it safe, we wait for the right moment to let ourselves shine but those moments don’t come often, if at all.

    For myself whenever I consider backing off and playing it safe – like every week when I write these articles about empowering women – I examine my perspective.  It is the perspective I have been taught that makes me want to play it safe.  Marianne said “There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.”  What she is saying is that we are taught to believe that if we are powerful, then we diminish or disempower others.  That however, is a Blue Zone perspective – a perspective based in male traits.

    When I want to feel powerful, confident and shine, I reject this male perspective in favor of my natural female perspective.

    As women we don’t believe in the male hierarchal perspective that says there is a fixed quantity of power and for one person to rise up another must be diminished.  We don’t believe that to be powerful, brilliant, gorgeous, talented or fabulous we have to take those qualities from others.  Instead we know these qualities originate from within ourselves and we project them outward as an expression of who we are.  So when we express our power we are saying “This is how I shine.”  And it makes us look around to others and say “Tell me how you shine.”

    To keep our female power, we must keep our female circular perspective.  When we see people in a circle, we recognize each person as an equal individual and value them for who they are.  Each person is a vital piece contributing to the whole.  It allows us to say “This is who I am” without impacting other people – we only impact the sum of the whole.  When we keep this perspective, it encourages other people to do the same.  In a circle everyone can express who they are without taking anything away from who anyone is.

    I think of a circle as a container.  Each person adds to the whole and each person’s contribution of themselves only increases how much the circle contains.  So as we express ourselves, we don’t feel our energy dissipate or be consumed.  Our power isn’t attacked with ridicule and criticism.  Our energy is captured and interacts with the energy of others.  This is why when women gather in circles they get to experience their own inherent power.

    Contrast our female perspective to how we have been taught to think about our personal power.  The hierarchal male perspective we were taught doesn’t have a mechanism to collect and contain everyone’s power.  It is about competition of individuals – winners and losers; givers and takers; risers and fallers.

    So then, why aren’t we taught to think through a circular perspective?  Because it doesn’t produce the individual heroes the male hierarchy promises us.  We have subordinated the collective energy of many in order to pursue the dream of the ideal individual who is as powerful as the collective many.  When we hold ourselves back and play it safe we are hoping there is superhero out there who is stronger, more powerful and better in every way than us.  But there isn’t.  There are only lots and lots of other ordinary people just like us.

    We always have a choice in our perspective.  We can choose to play it small and wait for the elusive ultimate hero or we can step forward with our shining powerful selves encouraging others to join us.  Every week as I write these articles I am embracing my female circular perspective and inviting other women to join me in allowing themselves to shine in hope of creating a great big circle with boundless amounts of both male and female energy.   This is what the world needs.

    Our workplaces and communities need powerful women – women who retain and act from our circular perspective. My hope for the coming year is that women learn to no longer play it small and begin to embrace their inherent feminine power.

    Empowered Women Aren’t Afraid to Shine

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  • Speaking from a Female Perspective Isn’t Sexist

    I read a post from a male friend on facebook who was upset over Carly Fiorina quoting Margaret Thatcher during the Republican debate: “If you want something talked about, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”

    Copyright: lightpoet / 123RF Stock Photo
    Copyright: lightpoet / 123RF Stock Photo

    He was angry at her for both saying it and thinking it. He thought she was being sexist against men. He was upset that none of the male Presidential candidates took issue with her. He assumed the reason they didn’t was out of fear of being labeled sexist.

    I suggested to him that they didn’t respond because from a female perspective there was a lot of truth to what she was saying and they didn’t want to step into that hornet’s nest.

    His comments reminded me once again how sensitive many men and women are about the subject of empowering women.

    The reason why is simple. We grew up with values and norms that told us how to be good and successful people. They told us how we can fit into society and find our acceptance. So we all have perceptions about ourselves that we depend on to make us feel good about who we are. If those perceptions are challenged, questioned or even if someone expresses a different point of view, it can affect how we feel about ourselves. So we naturally become defensive and protect our perceptions about ourselves.

    For many men the idea of empowering women still makes them feel very defensive. They believe that empowering women means disempowering men. This is why I love the concept that women hold up half the sky. It says we don’t need to take power from men because we have our own. But even with that there are men who grew up believing men hold up the entire sky and  will still see themselves losing half the sky.

    A former employer told me my website was “politically incorrect.” They were afraid I was offending men (potential clients) who didn’t perceive women as equal. But their perception was actually based upon their own perceptions of the potential clients. In reality the potential clients supported advancing women as evidenced by the women’s STEM and educational programs they generously funded.

    Many women don’t like that I say men and women have some differences because they define equal as being the same. To them, for women to be equal to men, means we must be the same as men. They believe that if men and women have different traits, then female traits will be rated as inferior to male traits.

    Some women say I bring back the stereotypes if I group career women and stay at home mothers together as women. Many people still perceive them as two very distinct types of women with very little in common.

    Much of this sensitivity exists because our society still highly values traits we classify as male. We were taught to equate success with male traits. Therefore, we haven’t thought there was much value in exploring the traits we classify as female or understanding the characteristics unique to women so we can find their value.

    Going back to my facebook friend, his perception comes through his pure male perspective. He never worked with a woman as his peer – he only understands women from the perspective of his personal relationships. Therefore he has no experience to draw on in order to understand the how women think and work in a business or government environment.

    I suspect his real problem with Carly’s quote was that it threw off his perception that she was a man in a dress. For the first time he saw her as a woman with a female point of view. That made him very nervous. Then using the rest of his perceptions he evolved her into being “part of the sexist divisive liberal culture.” That allowed him to dismiss her and protect his comfort zone.

    The reality is that he isn’t ready for a female President because he has no concept of what that would mean.  He has no idea how a woman acting through a female perspective would be different from a man.

    Margaret Thatcher, Carly Fiorina, Hillary Clinton and many other women know men through society’s male perspective and through their own female perspective. It is from their female perspective they make statements like “If you want something talked about, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”

    It can be shocking statement to men who haven’t heard women in a professional setting express themselves through their female perspective.  But the truth is professional women make these comments all the time – amongst ourselves.  Kudos to Margret Thatcher for openly expressing her female perspective.

    Making men like my facebook friend comfortable with a female perspective requires exposure and experience. And we obviously still have a long way to go. Like my male peers through the years, he has to learn first-hand that a female peer doesn’t diminish him in any way. Women help men like him along when we openly express ourselves through our female perspective. That doesn’t make us sexist or divisive and we shouldn’t stop speaking just because someone throws out those labels. Their intent is to stop us from expressing ourselves so they can remain safely tucked in their comfort zone. But we are much stronger than that and we will continue to speak from our female perspective.

     

    Empowered Women Express Their Perspective

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  • Are Male and Female Brains the Same or Different?

    Recently I read a blog that announced there was no difference between male and female brains.  The author was too anxious to state that men’s and women’s brains are the same and therefore men and women are the same, that she missed some important information.  She didn’t read the study herself but got  her information from other articles and unfortunately passed on bogus information.14119586_m

    The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science examined male and female brains as a whole.  “Our study demonstrates that, although there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain.”  The study didn’t conclude that male and female are the same.  It stated there are sex/gender differences.   What the study does is debunk the myth that there is a dividing line with male brains on one side and female brains on the other.

    This study also doesn’t contradict another study also published in the PNAS in December 2013 by Ragini Verma an associate professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania medical school and her colleagues.  They researched the differences in the connections within the brain between males and females using 949 youths from 8 – 22 years of age.  Their research revealed differences in the connections between male and female brains.

    The male brain has more short front and back connections that are within the same lobes or in the same hemisphere. These front and back connections exist on both sides of the brain. The female brain however, has more long connections that go across from one hemisphere to the other. Females also have connections that go from one lobe on one side of the brain to a different lobe in the other hemisphere.

    They also conducted a behavioral study which also produced pronounce differences between the sexes. The behavioral study supported how different brains connections affect behavior.

    This study may provide a scientific and neural basis as to why males and females excel at different tasks. Male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action. Female brains however are designed to facilitate communication between the analytical and intuitive processing modes.

    What I found fascinating about this study is that it states that because female connections go across brain hemispheres, women actually process information both logically and emotionally. So, women are logical but the added dimension of emotions gives us greater insight and understanding. Women can achieve a deeper and more thorough understanding of a problem or situation and therefore work with a team of people to come up with a better solution. That’s a very powerful skill to take into the workplace.

    Like the other study, the brain connection study help debunk some myths. I still hear women say women process information emotionally (right brain) and men process information logically (left brain). This leads us to believe that there are distinctly different male and female brains where female brain connections are all on the right side and male brain connections are all on the left. These studies prove that wrong and should hopefully put to rest the idea that women are emotionally neurotic because we don’t use the logical and rational left side of our brain. It also debunks the myth that men purely rational.

    This brain connection study also showed that the divergence between male and female brains began in youth and widened significantly into adolescence and adulthood. From youth to adulthood male brains connections consistently ran front to back. Female brains connections however continued to change, changing what parts of the brain were connected.

    The study didn’t draw any conclusions as to why there are different connections in the male and female brain. It couldn’t conclude to what degree the differences natural or the result of how we are raised.

    When we read these studies or articles about studies we want to be careful not to draw drastic conclusions like the other blogger did. In science there is never a “they are all the same” or a “they are all different” answer. Scientific findings fall under a bell curve. So there are many similarities between male and female brains but they are not exactly the same. Likewise there are many similarities amongst female brains but they too are not all the same.

    We are only beginning the gender research to explore our similarities and differences so we are far from any conclusive results. And even when we get there, we probably won’t discover any dividing lines, only tendencies that fit under a bell curve. But that is what makes each of us unique.

     

     

  • What Makes a Woman Less Feminine?

    I have two questions for you.woman forklift

    What makes a woman less of a woman?

    And

    What makes a woman less feminine?

    Do you see them as the same question or as different questions? How you answer that depends upon how you define “feminine.”

    I looked up “feminine” in many dictionaries and found two definitions.

    The first definition is: Pertaining to a woman; Characteristic of or unique to a woman; Whatever pertains to a woman.

    The second definition is: Having qualities traditionally considered suitable for a woman.

    This second definition is what makes us distinguish between being a woman and being feminine.  It makes us rate women’s femininity.  Examine your perceptions about the relationship between being a woman and being feminine:

    • Is a woman who is married more feminine and more womanly than an unmarried woman?
    • Is a woman who is a mother more feminine and more womanly than a woman who has no children?
    • Is a woman who wears dresses and heels to the office more feminine and more womanly than a woman who wears slacks?
    • Is a woman who has a career in interior design more feminine and womanly than a woman who has a career in computer coding?
    • Is a woman who studies physics and becomes a high school teacher more feminine and more womanly than a woman who studies physics and works in aerospace?
    • Is a woman who operates a cement truck and decorates cakes for a hobby more feminine and more womanly than a woman who is in marketing and competes in weight lifting for a hobby?

     

    When we use the second definition of femininity we empower the stereotypes.  So we need to ask ourselves – Does a woman’s decisions about whether or not to marry or have children really impact her femininity?  How about her career choice?  Or the activities she engages in her free time?    Is one kind of woman really “better than” another kind of woman?

    As women, we should never question if how we live our life impacts our femininity, makes us less of a woman, or an inferior woman.  However, this requires us to break our ancient link between role and gender which society programs into all of us.

    There is an ancient concept called the Doctrine of Two Spheres.  It states that men and women, due to their biological makeup inhabit two distinct and separate spheres.  Men inhabit the public sphere of work, politics, law, business, commerce, academia and finance while women inhabit the private sphere of domesticity, child rearing and religious/charitable work.  The doctrine presumes that our separate roles and spheres are entirely natural.  This means men and women are naturally completely different.

    The doctrine also prescribes that men and women have no overlapping or shared traits.  In order to the define “male” and “female” traits, we consider the role of each gender in their sphere.  Men have all of the traits necessary for a successful career.  Women have the traits necessary for creating a home, raising children and engaging in charitable and nurturing pursuits.  This is the foundation of our stereotypes.

    The Doctrine of Two Spheres is deeply engrained in our society.  Today we acknowledge that men and women have some overlapping traits but we still maintain the separate spheres and roles.  So if you distinguish between being a woman and being feminine this is why.  Even the feminist movement didn’t move us beyond this belief of separate spheres.  It is why we make a distinction between women with careers and women who are stay at home mothers and still have conflict between which is better and which is right.  It is why we read all those articles telling women to act more like a man in order to be successful in business.  It is why we hear women who have successful careers say “I am more like a man than a woman.”

    To me the Doctrine of Two Spheres should join the Stereotypes in the trash can.  We have long proven that women can be fire fighters and men can be nurses.

    When we throw both away then we won’t distinguish between being a woman and being feminine.  We create a wide, varying and diversified definition of being a woman.  Every woman is feminine.  Without qualification.  Without rating.   When women can welcome and embrace all women in all roles without judgement then we achieve equality.

    I want to see all women aspire to be who they truly are and live their life according to who they are without judgement on their femininity.  True female empowerment comes from being true to who you are, whoever that turns out to be.

    Empowered women are feminine.

    Please share your thoughts and engage other women in our discussion

  • Women’s Number One Advantage in the Male-Dominated Workplace

    Recently I had a discussion with an older retired woman who started her career in engineering in the 70’s. She spent her college days and most of her career as the woman in the room. Shortly into our talk she brought up how her male colleagues would drive her nuts. It wasn’t how they acted but how they thought and did their work that frustrated her.Woman Assembling Puzzle

    When the male-dominated workplace has a complex task, it breaks the task down into smaller pieces and distributes the pieces to individuals to complete. The workplace assumes that if each person completes their task correctly then when all the pieces come back together, all the pieces will miraculously fit together. Those of us who have worked extensively with men know that never happens. We wind up with pieces that changed their shape and no longer fit. This creates crises as we do a lot of rework to make the pieces fit.

    The reason this happens is Autonomy. The male-dominated workplace encourages men to complete their task based upon their judgement. So men do their task based upon what works from their perspective. They forget their task is connected to other tasks and has to fit back into the bigger picture.

    This problem is further compounded when men aspire to have expertise. Expertise is how men gain status in the male-dominated workplace. But in order to increase their expertise, they continually narrow their focus as they dive down deeper and deeper into the task. As they dive into the depths of detail, they continue to break things apart until they get individual, stand-alone parts. Men in STEM are very good at doing this and this is what my friend continuously dealt with.

    Now that her colleagues had all of these individual little parts, they had to assemble them back into the big picture. This is where her male colleagues struggled – there were too many pieces and too much detail for them to connect.
    We always hear that to understand the big picture you have to be removed from it, to look at it from afar. And when we do that we will sacrifice detail. In order to understand and see detail we need to narrow our focus, see fewer parts. This is a male perspective – a perspective that is not good at multi-tasking, forming relationships, creating connections and working in groups.

    This is what drove my friend nuts. She could take her male colleagues’ detailed, individual pieces and assemble the big picture. But what frustrated her was that her male colleagues argued that she couldn’t do it. But she could because she was thinking like a woman. She remained focused on the big picture, connections and relationships. As the men broke the tasks down and created pieces, she naturally thought about how the pieces fit back into the big picture.

    This is a significant difference between men and women. Men break things down to increase individualism. Women join things together to create groups and big pictures. And because we can maintain a high level of detail across multiple tasks, we don’t have to sacrifice nearly as much detail as men when we create the big picture.

    Think about a mother who has to get her kids out the door for school and herself off to work in the morning. She understands how all of the morning activities have to fit together. She knows which kid has to be in the bathroom first and what time they have to be out by so the next kid can use the bathroom. She listens for the shower to stop running by 7:10, so she knows if they will have time to eat breakfast. She continuously listens for noises and checks the clock to monitor their progress. She knows her kids have to be out the door no later than 7:40 in order to get to school on time. And while she is managing her kids, she is also getting herself ready for her day, taking care of the pets and keeping track of her husband and his needs.

    The skills a mother uses to manage her home are directly transferrable to the workplace because workplaces function with a lot of simultaneous connected activity. This makes the workplace complex. Complexity is the opposite of Autonomy and the Achilles heel of the male-dominated workplace. Women work well with Complexity because our multi-tasking, attention to detail and group focus allows us to connect numerous pieces and parts back into the big picture. We have such a good relationship with Complexity that I think of Complexity as women’s BFF in the male-dominated workplace.

    When our male colleagues want to express their Autonomy and reshape their piece, we say “No” because we know how it won’t fit back into the big picture. When a piece needs to be reshaped, we immediately think about how it connects to other pieces. We know reshaping one piece will have a ripple effect requiring other pieces to be reshaped. Our brains are capable of managing this. We practice it every morning before we even come to work.

    This is why women make fantastic managers. We don’t expect all the pieces to just miraculously fit back together. We follow up to see how our employees are progressing because we need to maintain connections. When we see someone working independently, off doing his own thing, red flags go off in our minds. That person must get reconnected to the group and fit back into the big picture.

    The male-dominated workplace however likes to see people working independently because it associates independence with competence. But Complexity ended that association – independence now creates inefficiency, rework and chaos resulting in crisis management. Workplaces that allow men to work autonomously will struggle and ultimately fail. Complexity makes all of us rely on our colleagues to do their job right so we can do our job. All tasks are intertwined. All tasks are connected.

    Complexity now dictates that what is most important in completing a task is how efficiently all the pieces fit back together. This requires female traits.

    As Complexity increases in the workplace, female traits will be needed more and more. Our superior ability to work with and manage Complexity is the single most important trait women bring to the male-dominated workplace.  And the trait that gives us a significant advantage over men.

     

    Empowered Women Know They Are the Best Managers of Complexity in the Male-Dominated Workplace.

  • What Does Abstracts in Action Mean?

    Woman Integrating

    What do I mean by Abstracts in Action and Abstracts in Action?

    When we discuss what men and women do when assigned a task, we hear that men take off into action while women start talking and building relationships.  We get to action later.

    We learn to associate action and getting things done with men.  Men do tangible things and women – well, we have nebulous abstracts whose value is difficult to measure and quantify.

    But don’t women also act?  The women I know work, they work really hard.  They get things done better and faster than their male colleagues.  If I need three things done well in the next hour, I will assign it to a woman, not to a man.

    What Abstracts in Action means is that women forget about our action.  Instead we identify with ideas that are abstract in the workplace – talking, building relationships, nurturing, feelings and empathy.  We became associated with making everyone feel good not with getting things done.  As a result, the male-dominated workplace didn’t see our value.

    For years women were associated with Kumbaya moments because ironically, we couldn’t communicate how when we put abstracts into action we got big results.

    The two abstracts I put into action the most in the workplace are communicating and relationships but I use the active version of those terms.

    Instead of “communicate,” I use “coordinate.”  I don’t just talk to Bob and John, I coordinate what Bob and John are doing.  If I don’t coordinate their tasks, Bob goes off in one direction, John in another.  By coordinating their work, they each know what they have to do so the bigger task comes together properly.

    Instead of “relationships” or “building relationships,” I use “integrate.”  And this is so powerful!  Tom is working on a task and when he is done he will pass his work to Marie who will use it to complete her task.  But what typically happens?  Tom formats his work according to what works for him and Marie spends a day reformatting it before she can do her task.  She is then late getting her task done. The male-dominated workplace looks at Tom’s and Marie’s task as two individual activities but they aren’t.  There is a relationship between them.  Therefore, Tom’s work has to be integrated into Mary’s.  Tom must do his work so it can slide perfectly into Mary’s.

    Men can identify with coordinating and integrating work because it is similar to their “directing work” which they see as taking charge.  So even if we don’t interpret coordinating and integrating work as taking the lead, men do.  They see it as tangible action that gets things done.

    Did your workplace go through a period where “synergy” was the buzz word?  Did the idea come and go?  If so, it was because there weren’t female abstracts in action to keep it going.  Synergy requires coordination, integration and two other abstracts in action – collaboration and teamwork.

    It is up to us as women to decide how we perceive ourselves in the workplace.

    We can put our Abstracts in Action with talking, building relationships, nurturing, feelings and empathy.

    Or, we can put our Abstracts in Action with collaboration, synergy, teamwork, coordination and integration.

    But it is only when we put our Abstracts in Action that the male-dominated workplace will recognize us for making things happen.

    Empowered Women Put Their Abstracts into Action

     

    Leave your comments and share on Facebook and LinkedIn – Let’s spread the word about who empowered women really are!

  • Are You Part of the Male Hierarchy?

    I hear from a lot of women who don’t feel as powerful at work as they want to be.  They feel like the male hierarchy shuts them down or holds them back.  I understand exactly what they are talking about.  However, I don’t let my male colleagues and their hierarchy affect me.

    How?  Why not?

    Because I don’t consider myself part of the male hierarchy.

    If we use the perspective that women hold up half the sky then, men and women are side-by-side partners.  We have true equality.

    On the men’s side, the men gather themselves together in a line.  Sometimes the line is horizontal and they line up with labels – first, second, third…last.  Sometimes the line is vertical.  We think of this as a pecking order using labels – Alpha, Beta, Sigma…Omega.  Whether they line up horizontally or vertically, men can only see the men who are adjacent to themselves.

    On the women’s side, we gather in circles.  In our circles, everyone is visible and everyone has a voice.  Everyone can talk to everyone else.

    Now imagine the male vertical line next to the female circle.  From any position in the circle, women can look around the circle and see all the other women.  They can also look up and down the vertical line and see each and every man.  Because we gather in a circle we are not limited in our access to anyone – male or female.

    I have always had this perspective, even when I was in the Air Force at the very beginning of my career.  I never felt that I couldn’t talk to the Wing Commander because…ooohhhh…he was at the top of the organizational hierarchy and I was close to the bottom.

    I always made the distinction between the organizational hierarchy that identifies roles and responsibilities and the vertical male hierarchy.

    Men don’t make this distinction – they inserted their vertical male-hierarchy into the organizational hierarchy.  Decades ago when women entered the workplace we accepted their merger.  So, of course we don’t feel empowered – paternalism put us at the bottom of the male hierarchy.  And it doesn’t matter where we are in the organizational hierarchy we feel less empowered than our male peers because the male vertical hierarchy diminishes us.

    But who said we had to accept their merger?  Why can’t women keep their perspective?

    As women, we can go into the workplace and put the organizational hierarchy into our circular perspective.  We can visualize everyone in our workplace sitting around in a circle.  I can talk to anyone and understand their role and responsibilities to the workplace.  I can share what I do and understand how our roles come together for the benefit of the workplace.  That includes the top guy.

    I decided early in my Air Force career that it was more important for the top guy to have all the information he needs to do his job well, than to empower the male vertical hierarchy.  If I was sitting in a meeting (along the wall because I wasn’t important enough to sit at the table) listening to a discussion and I had a valuable piece of information that the Wing Commander needed and no one was mentioning, I presented it.

    Now, according to the male vertical hierarchy I should tell my boss, who then tells my Squadron Commander, who then tells the Group Commander who then finally tells the Wing Commander.

    But what are the chances that the Wing Commander gets the information?

    Nil to none.  And that is the huge problem with the male vertical hierarchy – it doesn’t communicate well and it doesn’t communicate timely. As a result, poor decisions are made or the results are never as expected.

    However, as a woman visualizing all of us sitting in a circle, working together, looking out for each other, with no ego to feed, I feel an obligation to speak up and make sure the Wing Commander has the information.  Because I speak up, a better decision is made and better results are produced.  Those better results benefit the Wing Commander, Group Commander, Squadron Commander and my boss.  So now they are all very happy and I get lots of pats on the back.  And they forgot all about their hierarchy because I made them look good.

    What empowered me to speak up was my female circular perspective.

    What would keep me quiet?  Seeing myself at the bottom of the male vertical hierarchy.

    Because I don’t make myself part of the vertical male hierarchy, I feel empowered and my workplaces perform better.  And for those of us who work in project environments, our circular perspective is the correct perspective – the linear perspective is one of the greatest sources of inefficiency.  When working in projects, we must include men into our circles.  And men love our circles because they can have a voice their hierarchy doesn’t allow them to have.

    Have there been men who want to put me in the male vertical hierarchy and push me to the bottom?  Of course.

    I’ve talked about being locked out of the Penthouse Suite of the All Boys Club even though I was more deserving of membership than most of the men in there.  And when they shoved me out the door, they expected me to take the express elevator to the basement.

    But I didn’t.  Because in the Purple Zone and in the female half of the sky there are no elevators!

    So, I just sat outside the door and waited – because I knew eventually a beer delivery was coming and that door was opening.  And in spite of what women are told about bringing coffee and lunch to the guys, if delivering beer gets me back inside, I will deliver beer…I will personally hand a beer to the most prominent man in the suite and introduce myself.

    Our empowerment begins with our perspective.  We don’t have to be part of the male vertical hierarchy – it is a male hierarchy.  We are women.  In my book I will expand on how men are equipped to deal with their hierarchy in a way women aren’t.  So, if men want to limit themselves by living in their hierarchy in their part of the sky, then that’s their business.  It means nothing to me because I choose to keep my female perspective.

    As women we gather and interact in a circle.  We keep our circular perspective because it empowers us to see ourselves as equal to men – all men – from the Omega to the Alpha.

    And if women want to sit in a circle, burn scented candles and hold hands while singing songs of love, peace and harmony, we can do that too.

     

    Empowered women are not part of the vertical male-hierarchy. 
    Empowered women work through interactive circles. 

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  • Female Traits – The Key to High Workplace Performance

    I haven’t written any blogs lately because I’ve been consolidating all of my ideas into a book.  It turned out to be more involved and comprehensive than I expected.  Now that I am in the editing stages, I am focusing on a central theme – How women’s natural traits are the key to achieving high performance in the workplace.

    This is a message we seldom hear.

    Instead society is still caught up in the stereotypes and the idea that men excel in business – the way men do business is the way business should be done.  But as I say in my book my first impression of the male-dominated workplace was pretty much “What the Hell?”  I saw chaos and crisis management all around me.

    I knew I could better and I did.  And the reason I did better was because I used my female traits.  I am very proud to say that I always outperformed my male colleagues.  I say this, not to brag, but so women know – Our traits bring tremendous value to the workplace!  Any workplace that balances male and female traits will outperform a workplace that only uses male traits.

    And what is so amazing, is that when we start using our traits, performance soars immediately.

    As some of you know I worked in an extremely male-dominated environment.  When I started, the workplace was on course to lose $7 million.  In 10 months, we were turning a nice profit of $3.2 million.

    How did I achieve such a miraculous recovery?

    I empowered all the women to use their female traits.

    Of course I know my profession extremely well and that is important.  But after trying to work through my all-male management team for three months and getting nowhere, I switched my attention to working through the women.

    The women who were project engineers, project coordinators and project administrators became the leaders.  The women led my male managers.

    No one can tell me that female traits are not powerful. Been there, used them, got the results!

    So, all of this advice that tells us that to be successful in the workplace we have to act like men, needs to go away.  It is time for society to accept that women hold up half the sky.  We bring our own unique traits to the workplace and add to what the men are already doing.  When men and women work in balance with each other, then we hold up the entire sky.

    As I’ve written my book I refined my list of male and female balancing traits.  Why my book is taking me so much longer than I expected is because I am discovering how all traits interact with each other.  It is not just about each set of traits balancing each other but a group of female traits working to balance a group of male traits.  It is really pretty amazing.  And I am in awe of how powerful women really are.

     

    Male
    Female
    BLUE ZONE
    PURPLE ZONE
    PINK ZONE

    Autonomy

    		 Group

    Tangibles in Action

    Abstracts in Action

    Task Expertise

    Multi-tasking

    Done!

    Done Well

    Line
    Balance 

    Circle
    Ego Protection

    Dispensable Ego

    Train

    Teach

    Stress Limits

    Stress Endurance

    Power Over  Change

    Adapt to Change

    Offensively Aggressive

    Defensively Aggressive

    Energy Restraint

    Energy Projection

     

    For women to come into their own, we have to start by embracing who we really are. We should be proud of who we are.  We are not weak, powerless or inferior in any way.  We just haven’t been taught how to apply our traits in the workplace.  That, I promise you, will change.

     

    Empowered Women Know Their Value!

     

  • Staying Positive in the Male-Dominated Workplace

    The greatest female trait is our projection of positive energy.  But for women working in the male-dominated workplace it sometimes feels like our ability to do that is being shut down.  For reasons we don’t quite understand we feel under attack.  Sometimes it is the things our male colleagues say to us that logically shouldn’t upset us but emotionally do.  It is as if we know we are trying to enhance the workplace but they don’t see it, they don’t understand, they just don’t get it.  Sometimes it is an outright statement that they don’t want to hear from us and our point of view.  It makes you want to crawl into a hole so you withdraw.  Then when you do, it seems the men get mad at you.  And it makes you wonder- what they want from me?

    Your male colleagues want your power to project positive energy to overcome whatever negative feelings they have.  They want you to make them feel better.  Sound convoluted?  It is!

    Men understand that women project positive energy and they need that from us.  So anytime we are not doing that they get nervous – they want to know what is wrong.  They wonder if they are the cause. If they believe they are, many of men have a hard time knowing how to fix it.  Because men don’t have a lot of experience working with women, they may reference back to their wives and/or girlfriends and that makes it worse because now they are projecting personal feelings into a work relationship.  They want to fix you, turn the fountain back on again but don’t know how.  This is where we need to learn how to do it ourselves and quickly because if we remain withdrawn, then the men will become defensive and suddenly you become the problem.

    We hear that women are unfairly criticized at work and wonder why.  This is why.  If men aren’t seeing positive energy flowing all the time then there is something wrong with us.  If we could be perky all the time men would be happy. I wish I could be perky all the time but so often it seems that the positive energy I put out into my workplace quickly dissipates and I feel like I am continuously trying to fill an empty void.  It is draining.  And if I am not careful I get depleted.

    Women need to constantly monitor their energy level and how the energy is flowing.  I dream – I fantasize – about those days when I come to work full of positive energy and give bit of it to the workplace and I see the workplace growing in its positive energy.  I dread the days when the workplace depletes me and I go home, try to recharge but can’t fully do it so I go back to work with less energy than the day before.  That cycle keeps repeating until I feel like I am running on empty all the time.  When this happens the question becomes if this is the right workplace for me.

    I will write a lot more on this topic because I am fascinated by it and I think it is the most ignored topic of women in the workplace.  I talk about Autonomy being critical to men in the workplace, well our ability to project positive energy is just as important to women.  This isn’t about giving men what they want, it is about empowering the essence of who we are, the most powerful part of ourselves.  Remember True Womanhood and its first virtue of Piety?  It said women shine a bright light out into the world.  They were right!  They also said that women couldn’t take that bright light into the male-dominated workplace because it would be destroyed.  That makes sense to me – I completely understand what they afraid of.

    So learning how to maintain the proper flow of positive energy from our source, through ourselves and out into the workplace is a female skill we need to get back in touch with.  Luckily, I think my friend Kat’s mission in life is to teach us how to do this.  Much more to come…

     

    Empowered Women Know Their Positive Energy Changes the World

  • Women Hold Up Half The Sky

     

    Recently I came across some essays written by Barbara Spraker that speak to the power of feminine energy based on the Tao concept that women hold up half the sky.

    She writes:

    “So claims an ancient Chinese proverb – “Women Hold Up Half the Sky.”  This amazing image doesn’t describe women sitting under the shade tree while men hold up the sky.  It doesn’t suggest women are competing with men to hold up the sky.  Not at all!  What it evokes is a picture of women fully bringing their unique gifts to the task, bringing their ways of holding up the sky.”

    Wow!  I find that so powerful.

    She goes on to discuss that through wholeness and completeness there is a commitment to the greater good.  “This greater good requires us to ‘let go’ of our ego and lay claim to our deeper personal power, rooted in our unique gifts, perspective and passions, as well as to our place in the universal wisdom stream.  This path enables us to understand that while we are individuals doing our work, our role in the sky is not about ego, it is about the common good.  So we ‘let go’ of comparison and competition and listen inside for that place where our unique contributions are called for.  When we are centered in our personal power, we are connected – connected to our highest vision, to others with whom we share our task, and to the continuum of wisdom and insight that is our birthright.”

    Again I find that very powerful.  It reminded me of the True Womanhood ideals of the 19th century and the first virtue of Piety which stated that women shine a bright light out into the world to balance the dark world created by man.  In True Womanhood, Piety empowered women to stand up for the greater good – they too, believed that women held up half of the sky.

    I find it interesting that ancient and more contemporary concepts acknowledge the power of female energy to balance male energy but our current culture has abandoned finding any value in female energy.  We have forgotten that is through female energy, we arrive at the greater good.  We believe that acts from ego will overpower acts towards the greater good.  So we tell women, that to find power, they need to adopt male energy and habits.  We teach that male energy overpowers female not that they work in concert with each other to achieve something greater.

    Barbara’s essays discuss Yin (female) and Yang (male) energy and their dynamic nature – how one flows to the other, how when Yang rises, Yin ebbs until the energies naturally change and Yin rises and Yang ebbs.  When working together, the ebbs and rises are gentle and natural.  She says “So those who are ‘holding up the sky’ are engaged not in holding tight to a pillar, but are engaged in dynamic, interdependent, co-creative dance – in relationship with colleagues and with the sky itself in its continual changes.”

    “And it is not just women.  The other half of the sky is held up by men.  This doesn’t come to the world as a new idea.”

    Taoism teaches that the Yin and the Yang are interdependent and continuously act on each other creating unity.  But Western culture has favored Yang energy for several centuries.

    • “Rational thinking (Yang) is of greater value than intuition (Yin)
    • Competition (Yang) is superior to cooperation (Yin)
    • Science (Yang) is more trusted than religion (Yin)
    • Initiative (Yang) is superior to responsiveness (Yin)”

     

    As a result, there is a disconnection, a separation of self from the whole.  This again goes back to what I talk about with men and autonomy.  Too much Yang energy results in autonomy.  It also results in “an energy that is assertive, externalized, hierarchical, oriented to power over others and which routinely uses force to achieve desired results.”  “Yang energy incorporates a belief in ‘objectivity,’ an assumption that ‘I’ am outside the system, able to observe what is happening rationally, with clear perception, and make judgments untainted by personal bias or emotion.”

    This is what my article Why Men Don’t Teach Employees To Problem Solve was about.  Men detach themselves from the workforce and come up with solutions on their own.  Because they are not part of the system, they believe they can make better decisions on how the system should operate.  This detachment serves to increase status and position in a hierarchy used to exert superiority over others.

    Yes, the male-dominated workplace is full of Yang energy which is why it doesn’t function well – it is working with only half of itself.  For every rise, there is no balancing ebb.  With no Yin energy to counteract the rising Yang energy, Yang energy keeps rising until it crashes back down.  If you think about every major crisis in the past few centuries and you will find Yang energy that went too far.

    This morning I was talking to my financial advisor about the oil industry and he said that the oil price peaks and crashes are inherent to the industry.  I said – that’s because it is the most male-dominated industry on the planet.  the construction industry has the same problem.  Male dominated industries or companies that have unbounded Yang energy wind up going through periods of feast and famine, great rises followed by great crashes.

    This is the greater good women can serve – bringing more Yin energy to prevent those great crashes.  We can maintain a natural balance.  We do this through creating the connections – through integration and coordination of Yang actions.  By creating connections, no one is allowed to stand outside the system – they become part of the system, part of the whole.  Ego is kept in check.  As the whole gains in energy, the greater good, the better results are achieved.

    As a woman, you will feel the balance of Yin and Yang working naturally together.  You will feel and intuitively know when they are in balance.  Likewise, I suspect most women, especially those in any STEM industry know how a workplace that is out of balance feels.

    But instead of correctly this imbalance, women are mistakenly being told that what feels wrong is their female energy.  As a result they are abandoning their feminine power and adopting too much masculine with the belief that male energy is more valuable or dominates over female.  Barbara’s second essay Women Hold Up Half The Sky: That’s Hard To Do When Your Feet Are Bound discusses how women have bound their own feet and are holding themselves back.

    “In this second essay we will confront some of the profound ways Yin energy has been dominated, discounted and silenced, and also consider what is required to shift that reality.  Other authors have engaged this topic, to be sure, but often as an attack on the dominant reality, and ironically, reflecting the same consciousness which they are challenging.  This ‘us versus them’ perspective is counterproductive to the healing and regeneration that is needed in the world today.”

    “To put it plainly, this is not about men silencing women.  This is about the beliefs woven into our cultures so deeply that they are usually subconscious.  Men, as well as women, suffer from the insidious assumption that one half of the citizens of the world is more valuable than the other half.”

    “Women as well as men must awaken.  As long as we ignore the profound nature of the silencing, our efforts to bring our gifts to holding up the sky will be inadequate.  We will not have the patience or persistence to step into our power.  We will not have the boldness or the courage or the creativity necessary to step up to our responsibility as full, first class citizens of the world.”

    Barbara brings up a point that I never thought of before in how we hold up the boy or the man as the standard.  We tell girls they can play soccer just as well as the boys.  We can achieve xxxxxxxx just as well as men.  It is a subtle message brought that is rooted in an historically patriarchal society that values male energy more than female.  As women we have subconsciously bought into this belief and that is what we must awaken to.

    Her second essay tells us to:

    Open our eyes and to see what we desire.

    Open our eyes and to see our own path.

    Open our hearts and feel – to feel the pain of the silencing we have felt for centuries.

    Open our will and act.  “To follow our inner wisdom and give our gifts with joy and compassion.  Part of seeing is recognizing that we are not helpless to help.”

    “We are ‘caring for our bound feet’ every time we accept other’s expectations of us without thinking, every time we fail to speak our own truth with respect, every time we make excuses for not acting on our own values, and every time we avoid responsibility for the health of our community.”

    I enjoyed Barbara’s essays and am including the link to them as well to a Ted Ed about Yin and Yang.

    As I have written more and learned more through this website, I’ve come to realize the first battle women must conquer is believing in themselves – that female energy is just as powerful and important as male energy.  Women have to believe that empowering their female traits in the male-dominated workplace is their key to success.

    I keep coming back to this issue because I know I can write about all of kinds of situations you will find in the male-dominated workplace and give suggestions on how to deal with them, but the advice does no good unless you truly believe that your feminine energy is powerful enough to deal with them.  You must believe your strength lies in your womanhood.  Once you believe in your power, then you can live up to your moral obligation to serve the common good.

    Women Hold Up Half The Sky by Barbara J. Spraker April 2008

    Women Hold Up Half The Sky:  That’s Hard to Do When Your Feet Are Bound by Barbara J. Spraker January 2009

    The Hidden Meanings of Yin and Yang by John Bellaimey

     

    Empowered Women Hold Up Their Half of the Sky

  • Your Attitude About You Is Critical in The Male-Dominated Workplace

    The blog-o-sphere is full of articles right now telling women how unfair the male-dominated workplace is towards women.  We hear about how much harder we work but get fewer rewards, pay and promotions.  We hear that women are viewed as abrasive and bossy.  We hear that if we are not bossy, then we are timid and don’t project self-confidence.  We hear that if women are confronted about their “poor behavior” we respond emotionally and irrationally.  We hear that our male co-workers manterrupt us and take credit for our ideas.  We hear that we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

    The overall message out there is that the world is working against women.  The more subtle message is that we are victims of the male-dominated workplace.

    My message to you is that you are not a victim and that you cannot view the male-dominated workplace as being against you.  If you do you will never get anywhere!

    I know all of the difficulties of being a woman in the male-dominated workplace.  This past week I was reminded again that I’ve never had the title of Sr. Project Manager even though I have carried 5 large projects at once and been in charge of a $100 million project which by any industry standards warrants the title of Sr. Project Manager.  While I was carrying the 5 projects, I had the company check my pay against the other Project Managers of my level and found that I was the lowest paid by 20%.  I was not compensated with a pay increase but only an additional stipend while I worked on those projects that brought me up to par with the average pay of my male colleagues.

    I’ve even been given a bonus of a pedicure and manicure for myself and my daughters while all of the men got trips for their families.  I had the same manager distribute the graphic write-up of a sexual harassment complaint to other managers who stopped him from including it as an attachment to a larger complaint to a client.

    I’ve been back-stabbed, front-stabbed and sabotaged by younger male colleagues overly-eager to take my job.

    When the young men take me on and try to take over my job, I’ve learned to step aside and tell them to “go ahead and give it a try.”  Each and every one of them has come back with the same words “I didn’t realize how much you do!”  I take my job back and in return I get their respect.

    I can empathize and share all kinds of stories with women who want to show that the male-dominated workplace is unfair.  But I never let that hold me back.  I didn’t let it affect my attitude about who I am or what I can accomplish.  I didn’t let it erode my self-confidence.  I know what I can do, I know that being a woman in a male-dominated workplace is an advantage – that I can outperform any of my male peers using the techniques I talk about on this website.

    It’s all about attitude.  I heard something on TV today about how men need to change.  I don’t believe I can wait for men “to get the message” and change the workplace. (I will be retired and buried before that happens!)  My attitude is that I and we, as women, already have the power to change the workplace – we just have to choose to exercise it.

    Choose your attitude.  You can be a victim, a passive bystander or a leader.  I have always chosen to be a leader and I believe all women can be leaders in the male workplace.  I believe the male-dominated workplace needs us to be leaders.  And I also believe we will be rewarded.

    In my career I have not focused on how I was treated – I focused on performance, making things happen and providing results.  This is why I figured out how as a woman to out-perform my male peers, in ways that are difficult for them to match.  My attitude is that no one can take away my accomplishments.  Oh, and yes early in my career a jealous manager decided not to write me up for an award.  My response to him was “I didn’t do all that I did so I could get a medal.  And not getting a medal doesn’t change what I accomplished.”  I own my accomplishments, they give me confidence in what I can achieve and that is what matters.

    So, please don’t buy into the whole the workplace is unfair to women mantra.  If you do, it can easily become an excuse that deters you from leading your workplace.  Believing you are helpless is how you hold yourself  back, fail to speak your truths, fail to live up to your values and fail to be responsible for the betterment of your community and workplace.  And as a woman in the male-dominated workplace, your responsibility is to project positive energy and provide leadership so the workplace becomes fair and so those who perform are rewarded and recognized for their accomplishments.

    Empowered Women Don’t Allow Negative Attitudes Deter Their Leadership. 

  • The Misperception of Selling Your Idea in the Male-Dominated Workplace

    There are more articles going around about how women don’t speak up in the conference room – but this time there is a new twist.  Now we are being told of new perils if we do speak up – we are viewed as being too aggressive and we will be looked at disfavorably.   So what’s the latest message? – We are damned if do and damned if we don’t?!

    I wonder if this latest finding is because women took the last bit of advice – that women should jump into the fray – be just as aggressive as the men in the room in getting their ideas heard.  Since people don’t like aggressive women (or men) the unfavorable feedback is not unexpected.  I am still curious about the background (actual experience in the male-dominated conference room) of the people who write these articles because having your ideas heard in the conference room is a minor career goal.

    Being the “idea person” is good, but what really counts, is being the person who implements the good idea – being the leader who puts the idea into action and makes the larger objective happen!

    In time no one remembers (or cares) who came up with idea – what they remember is who achieved the objective.

    When you are in a conference room and the guys are being loud, voicing their ideas it not just so the boss will say “Bob that is a great idea – you get a gold star.”   It is because they want to be selected to be in charge of  implementing the idea.

    In the logic of the male-dominated workplace, your male peers believe that if they can fend off their competitors they will be chosen to be the leader.  In their minds the leader has to defeat competitors so that is why they are so loud.  But this is NOT how empowered women should think.  This is NOT what empowered women do.  Empowered women stay out of the Blue Zone!

    Empowered women understand that leaders are not chosen, they do not wait for permission –  they just do it.

    This is why I wrote my articles on the Power Seat – so you bypass all of the aggressive behavior (“manterruptions”) and go right into being the leader in the conference room.  And the great thing about the Power Seat is that it you don’t have to come up with the idea – it is a perfect technique to “bro-opt” back the men!

    I have always chosen the projects I want to lead.  I hear about a new objective and I start formulating my execution plan long before the meeting.  I have already subtly picked everyone’s brains and rounded up the best ideas.  That way when I pitch “my idea”, I have Bob’s, Jim’s and George’s ideas incorporated into my plan – I have them on board with supporting my plan.

    Leaders have the execution plan.  And that doesn’t require aggression  – it is having confidence in yourself a leader because you used the Purple Approach to develop your plan.  And you know your plan will work much better than any plan developed in autonomy by your male co-workers.

    And one more thing – advice from my friends -on how to stop “manterruptions” in a meeting.  Just invite a woman over 50 to the meeting.  When a young man gets loud and interrupts we have no problem saying in a commanding voice with a stern glare “Excuse me!  Someone is speaking and you are being rude.  Please wait until she is done THEN you may speak.”

     Empowered women know that having an idea is good, but implementing good ideas is how they build a career in the male-dominated workplace.

  • Pearls of Wisdom

    When I entered the Air Force many years ago, I was told that I needed a “Sponsor” to help ensure my rise through the ranks.  My Sponsor should be a higher ranking officer who was upwardly mobile.  My Sponsor should also have a Sponsor who was a well-connected senior ranking officer who is on track for General’s rank.  The trick to the system was picking the right line of Sponsors.   At the very top of the officer ranks there were rivalries and the senior officer in your sponsorship line could instantly fall out of favor or lose status to a rival.  If either of these happened, the entire line of sponsorship would suffer the consequences and once bright careers would be dead in the water.

    The whole concept of sponsorship was to work the politics of the merciless up-or-out system.

    In addition to a Sponsor, I also needed a Mentor.   Sponsors and Mentors may not be one in the same.  Mine were very different.  The job of your mentor was to teach the ins and outs of doing the job.   My first mentor was my supervisor and his career was in the toilet – but – he knew everything about everything!  He mentored two of us and we got exposed to…well…the stuff you don’t see if you have to worry about politics.  He was a cowboy who took risks and also took the hits as they came.

    I always say that I wish everyone could have the same experiences early in their career as I had in mine.  I learned soooo much!!!

    But this system that I first learned was inherently male.  (more…)