Tag: action

Empowered Women Know Their Action Matters

Today we frequently hear “Words Matter.”

Then an emphatic response:

“Action speaks louder than words.”

This debate leaves us confused. Which is it? And why does it matter to women?

Initially as women we may be drawn to the side of the debate that says “words matter” because women are typically better at communication. The importance of Words puts female skills on par with the stereotyped male trait of Action and helps us see our equality. We are further encouraged by the old saying:

“The pen is mightier than the sword.”

It tells us that words wield power over the physical Action which has always made women feel weaker and inferior.

But let’s keep this in perspective.

The typical debate between Words and Action is philosophical and we need to concern ourselves with what is important in the workplace. Do “Words matter” there? Or is Action what counts?

In actuality our workplaces deal in both Words and Action.

Our workplaces exist to develop, plan, market and deliver a product or service to its customers. All of those require Action. When we are involved in those activities, we have timelines and budgets to meet and pressure to get our work done. Therefore,

ACTION = WORK

Our workplaces also have people who deal in words. They are typically in business development and sales. They use words to convince customers to purchase buy a product or service. We don’t always view this as Work. We see it as something less, like hype.

It is one of the first lesson we all learn in life – be leery of the sales pitch. We know it is easy to use Words to make false claims and promises; that a good salesman can use Words to make a sow’s ear sound like a silk purse. However, when the sow’s ear is delivered instead of the silk purse, customers aren’t happy. They don’t complain to the salesman because they are no longer around. Customers complain to the person who made and delivered the final product to them.

Consequently, there is often friction between the people who work through Words and the people who work through Action. The people who work through Action have to figure out how to deliver on what the Words sold. They must have the skills, knowledge and experience to solve problems and make customers happy. Therefore, they are critically important to any business.

Words can claim or promise anything. They can say the sun rises in the West then makes a sharp turn to set in the South.

Words have the luxury of being able to ignore and lie about Reality.

Action can’t. Action must deal with Reality in order to achieve an objective.

So then why do we keep hearing, “Words matter”?

Well, let’s look at who says it – the media, spokespeople, lawyers, salespeople, diplomats, and politicians.

These are all people whose business product is Words. So obviously “Words matter” to them because their livelihood and status come from Words.

Therefore, we can conclude that “Words matter” to people who sell Words. Likewise, “Action speaks louder than words” to people who must deliver a product or service.

The ultimate conclusion to the debate may be that neither Action nor Words matter more because in our workplace, ultimately it is Money that matters.

As women we can’t allow ourselves to get sucked into the debate and into believing our Words have power that actually belongs to our Action. We have to recognize the limitations of our Words.

“Words don’t change the Truth.”

“Your actions speak so loud, I can’t hear what you are saying.”

We often use Words to create awareness about a problem. However, solving the problem requires Action. For this reason, women have to move beyond the stereotypes and take the Action that delivers a viable solution.

But we are hesitant to do so because we like that our Words to offer empathy and express our feelings. We like the stereotypical way we identify as women:

Men Act, Women Feel

So, to find our equality, we elevate Feelings which means we elevate the power of Words. We dismiss the old saying:

“Sticks and stones may break my bones,

but words will never hurt me.“

Today we use Words on social media to create emotional reactions and hurt people. This proves that “Words matter.”’ Our ability to use Words to effect other people makes us feel like we have power over them. So yes, in dysfunctional way “Words matter” and are mightier or at least more practical than sticks, stones or a sword if we want to hurt other people.

However, doing good and making positive change will always require us to put our Feelings and Words into Action.

Only through Action can we correct a situation and deliver Justice.

(Notice Justice is NOT blindfolded so she sees her scales and is ready to use her sword. She is ready to ACT.)

Contrary to our narratives and the stereotypes women have a long history of taking Action and improving civilization.

Our Action helped end slavery, expand voting rights, improve health and sanitary conditions, improve labor conditions, reduce childhood mortality, win wars and secure our equal rights.

Women’s Action is powerful.

It makes our workplace, community and society better.

That is why we need to be leery when someone tells us, “Words Matter.” We need to question if they trying to sell us something. Or are they trying to dissuade us from using the power of our Action?

Remember:

History books are written about the people who believe Action matters and recited by people who believe Words matter.

We need more women taking Action and making it into our history books.

Empowered Women Take Action

To learn more, watch this YouTube video:

July 26, 2018
The Law of Physics That Applies to Men

Newton’s Third Law of Motion is:

For every Action, there is an equal and opposite Reaction

As a female engineer, I discovered there is a similar law in the male-dominated workplace:

When one man Acts, all other men must React

Early in my career, my Reaction to this phenomena was to ask: “What are you guys doing?”

To me it was wild to watch the frenzy of activity that went in all different directions as each man gave his individual response.

Why do men act this way?

They do it to maintain a balance of power and their individual status. Now as women, we’re told men aspire to have power over each other.

Not true.

Men don’t want power over each other as much as they don’t want another man to have power over them. In other words, men want Autonomy more than power.

So, when one man acts, all other men must react in a way that shows they are not subjugated to the actor. If the actor acts in a way to prove his power over other men, then expect those men to rebel.

Any man who doesn’t react is seen as weak. He isn’t a man who has a manly sense of self or self-respect. He is a submissive man who can easily be used and manipulated.

Being a woman, this law of the male-dominated workplace didn’t apply to me, so I didn’t react. Then of course a man asked in a frenzied, panicked voice “Aren’t you going to do something?”

My response was typically:

“Do what? I’m not going to react just to react. If I need to react, I will react and I will do so with the appropriate response.”

In the first couple of years of my career men’s Law of Action and Reaction created one of my biggest pet peeves about working with men:

Too many men shooting from the hip.

It drove me nuts.

When men shoot from the hip, they don’t take the time to figure out the appropriate and best response. They don’t even take the time to figure out what really happened. They just React. Consequently, they create new but completely avoidable problems. Men call this:

The Law of Unintended Consequences

I call it: The Law of IGNORED Consequences.

Resolving unintended consequences wastes a lot of time and money which is my other big pet peeve. So, out of my frustration I got very forceful at breaking the Law of Action and Reaction.

One time when I was leading a meeting something happened. As soon as the guys started reacting, I ran and stood in front of the door. As I barred the door, I said:

“Guys, STOP! You don’t know what you are doing.”

That got their attention because challenging men’s competency is always a good way to get their attention. That’s another law of the male-dominated workplace.

Before they could React to me, I would tell them:

“Do you guys even know what you are reacting to? No, you don’t. So, let’s stop and figure out what is going on so we can respond the right way and we shut him down, for good.”

You see, in the male-dominated workplace the Law of Action and Reaction is perpetual. The original actor interprets the initial Reaction to his initial Action as an Action, so then he must React. This Reaction is then interpreted by the original reactors as a new Action so they must React again. As so it goes back and forth.

This back and forth can go on and on for days, weeks, months, years…

A great example of this is the Stock Market.

Something happens. The big investors immediately make the market plunge or soar. But is the reaction the correct response? There is no way to know because there is no tangible change in the performance of a company or sector yet. They react to possibility of a change.

Then when other men see the big guys acting, they get worked up into a frenzy:

“I have to React. I have to React.”

These “Momentum Investors,” then drive the market way too far up or way too far down – far beyond a reasonable response to the situation. But this is what happens when everyone is just reacting to what everyone else is doing.

The Stock Market calls it “Volatility.” I call it “Stupidity.” There is no need for it if we stop and think about the situation.

(However, on the positive side, it does create great opportunities for women to make money if we buy low when men over-tank the market and sell high when men get way too enthusiastic.)

In the list of tangible values women bring to the male-dominated workplace, our ability to break the Law of Action and Reaction is at the top.

It is of enormous value because we can stop the behavior that leads to the creation of wasted time, money and manpower. When we stop or disrupt this behavior we can make a huge direct and meaningful impact on productivity and the bottom line of our workplace.

Empowered Women Don’t React Blindly. They Respond Appropriately.

Making a video version of this blog to post on YouTube is on my to-do list. Stay tuned…and in the meantime, watch my other videos.

April 27, 2018
Ladies – Supporting an Issue Isn’t Enough!
Recently I read through the Action Plan of a women’s organization I was interested in joining. As I read, I kept wondering:

What action I am supposed to take?

What am I supposed to do?

This is a huge problem women have.

We have ideas, principles and values. Let’s call these Abstracts. We believe that when we state these Abstracts and say we support them, we are taking ACTION.

But that’s not action. It’s just words.

Here are some examples:
- The organization supports funding of a public education system that results in the uniform opportunity for all students to master the attitudes, knowledge, and skills necessary to thrive in a competitive and changing world.
- The organization supports voter registration procedures, voting options and systems that are accessible to all, easy to administer, and have appropriate security measures to prevent fraud or technology disruptions. The organization supports Voting Options of:
  - Early voting in person and by mail
  - Traditional polling places
  - Voting Centers
That sounds great but as a member of the organization:

What do I need to do?

What is the Action Plan to accomplish these objectives?

Loving sentiment but what is the issue and the action?

The mistake women commonly make is that we think that if we put an idea out there – create awareness by protesting – then some male-dominated entity should pick up our idea and run with it. We expect them to listen to our idea and exclaim:

“That is a wonderful idea! Let’s put Jack and Henry on it. They can figure out what needs to be done and present their solution to the President/CEO for approval. Thank you so much for bringing this deficiency to our attention. We are rewarding you with a promotion, raise or monument!”

Sorry, that’s not how it works.

A year ago, I criticized an article that was bemoaning how a group of women who wanted a better maternity leave policy in their company had to spend hundreds of hours of their own personal time to build the case, present it and convince their company to pass it. By the time it was enacted, all the women involved in advocating for the new policy were past the point in their lives when the new policy would benefit them.

The long list of women who commented were outraged that the company didn’t look at its own maternity leave policy and say “We need to change this!”

They were outraged that it took so long and the women had to spend their personal time and money on the issue. They were outraged that the women weren’t even going to benefit from it so the company needed to compensate them for their time.

I was taken aback that in the 21st century, so many women still have patriarchal views.

So, my comment was:

“Welcome to the real world ladies! This is how things get done and change is made. It takes hard work and sacrifice.”

Action by Who?
Who do You want to act on the issue that is important to you?

For a while, I’ve been studying the Woman’s Suffrage movement. There’s no better example of women taking action on a specific issue to create change – because they did it without any legal rights!

This statement by Carrie Chapman Catt who developed “The Winning Plan” to get women the right to vote, discusses what it took:

“To get that word, ‘male’, out of the Constitution, cost the women of this country 52 years of pauseless campaign; 56 state referendum campaigns; 480 legislative campaigns to get state suffrage amendments submitted; 47 state constitutional convention campaigns; 277 state party convention campaigns; 30 national party convention campaigns to get suffrage planks in the party platforms; 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses to get the federal amendment submitted, and the final ratification campaign.”

They didn’t just protest and complain.

They did the hard work!

They developed an Action plan and worked the plan.

And many of the women who were the first leaders of the movement such as Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth…and the list goes on and on…never got to see their life’s work come to fruition.

After the 19^th Constitutional Amendment was ratified, Carrie spoke about what it took to achieve it:

The vote is the emblem of your equality, women of America, the guarantee of your liberty. That vote of yours has cost millions of dollars and the lives of thousands of women. Money to carry on this work has been given usually as a sacrifice, and thousands of women have gone without things they wanted and could have had in order that they might help get the vote for you. Women have suffered agony of soul which you can never comprehend, that you and your daughters might inherit political freedom. That vote has been costly. Prize it!

Her words spoke to future generations of women to remind us that the work isn’t done and we must continue to ACT:

The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer. Understand what it means and what it can do for your country. Use it intelligently, conscientiously, prayerfully. No soldier in the great suffrage army has labored and suffered to get a `place’ for you. Their motive has been the hope that women would aim higher than their own selfish ambitions, that they would serve the common good.

The vote is won. Seventy-two years the battle for this privilege has been waged, but human affairs with their eternal change move on without pause. Progress is calling to you to make no pause. Act!”

Suffragettes already gave you Fundamental Rights.
Use them.

The Suffragettes worked hard so we could participate as equals in society, government and the workplace. They expected us to assert our rights and end the patriarchy. They expected us to continue the hard work of creating change to better our family, community, workplace and government.

If we just protest and expect men or the government (primarily men) to make changes on our behalf, then we let them down. We squander our rights, empowerment and equality.

And nothing changes or gets done.

The women who spent all the hours getting a better maternity leave policy did it for all of the women in their company and to add to the momentum of better maternity leave policies for all women in all workplaces. They served the greater common good.

Women have always inspired society to aspire to higher ideals, values and principles. But to create the change that incorporates our values, ideals and aspirations into the way we work and live, requires hard work.

Whether or not we personally benefit from our action isn’t important. It’s important that our action benefits the greater and common good for all people.

Empowered Women Take Action For The Good Of All People

To learn more, watch this YouTube video:
April 12, 2018
From #MeToo to Action

After reading an article I got in a comment battle with another woman over how women should respond to sexual harassment and assault. She was very focused on offering empathy and sitting up all night with a woman who has been hurt. To her offering empathy and understanding is what empowered women do.

To me, empowered women do a lot more – they also take a stand and pursue justice.   An empowered woman, after sitting up all night listening to her hurt friend, goes out the next morning and starts the process of getting justice. She is her advocate. Sher puts her empathy, caring and understanding into action to help her friend get the justice she deserves.

Justice in her womanly form – raised sword and no blindfold.

The other woman focused on being a victim and creating a lot of energy around those feelings of being a victim. But putting a lot of energy into that state perpetuates that state. And as the author of the article also discussed it is hard not to be affected yourself by the story of others and let it drag you down.

To me, we need to put the energy towards healing and moving beyond the incident so it doesn’t permanently alter our lives in a negative manner. I think of these incidents as someone pushing you down and infusing you with lots of their negative energy. Our recovery process has to focus on working our way back up, ejecting their negativity and replacing it with our own positive energy.

I have always found that standing up for myself and pursuing justice works miracles in speeding up the recovery process.   It gets me and the energy moving in the right direction. Sometimes the justice process is swift and easy, sometimes it is really hard but you keep moving forward. If you are lucky enough to have an advocate she ensures you keep taking steps forward, even if they are baby steps.

When I feel I got the justice I deserve, I feel empowered and strong.   This is why I don’t reflect back on my career and see a long list of harassment, discrimination or unfair incidents. I see challenges and obstacles that made me stronger and more confident. They are a reminder that men don’t have power over me.

The subtext of the other woman’s comments (and what really fired me up) was that it implied that when men act inappropriately, empowered women only respond in an emotional manner with empathy and understanding. Change can only come when men decide to change their own actions. Until then, it is women’s duty to keep pouring out the empathy and understanding to other women.

Doesn’t that sound a lot like the stereotypes?

Men act. Women are emotional.

What about women taking action?

After reading many comments on many posts, it seems that many women don’t believe or don’t want to believe that women have the power to act and influence men to change their actions.

Our society is conditioned to believe women won’t act.   It believes if we give women their #MeToo moment to vent, appease them emotionally, sacrifice a few men, then eventually women will sit down, shut up and go away.

We conditioned men to believe they just have to wait it out. They don’t have to change because women aren’t going to do anything to make them change. Women aren’t going to impose consequences.

If women want real and lasting change in men’s behavior, then women have to stop just talking and empathizing. We need to act by standing up for ourselves, pursuing justice and imposing consequences.

But again, from reading through lots of comments, there are a lot of women who don’t want us to see women as actors and doers because it then makes women responsible and accountable for their own actions. In every incident they want women to be seen as innocent little lambs who are attacked by the big bad wolf in order to put 100% of the focus on men’s actions.

They don’t want us to ask “Why did you go up to his hotel room? Why did you get drunk with those guys? Why did you let him in?”

I can hear women screaming now “You want to bring back Victim Blaming!”

No.

I want women to understand the negative consequences of us denying our action, responsibility and accountability.

An innocent little lamb is like a dependent child who needs others to protect and take care of it. That image reinforces the stereotypes, the patriarchy and the subjugation of women. It is not an image of an empowered woman who exercises her equality to men.

Empowered women aren’t afraid to admit their mistakes. Fear of Blame is a guy thing because men are afraid to be vulnerable. Unfortunately they’ve transferred it to women and use it against us as victim blaming.

Men use our 10% mistake to intimidate us into not exposing their 90% mistake.

We need to get wise to this and stop falling for it.

I’m not afraid to expose my mistake and take my 10% of accountability. If anyone wants to victim blame me then my response is “I know I’m not perfect. I am human. We all make mistakes.” Then I give them the look that says “Shall we discuss your long list of mistakes?”

This attitude let me to file an 80 page complaint against a serial abuser in which I included all of my dirty laundry. Not only was the serial abuser addressed but the company instituted a lot of policy changes to prevent the abuse he doled out.

I know I keep harping on how important your attitude and perspective are to standing up for yourself (and others) and getting justice. This is why you can’t see yourself as a powerless victim.

Several years ago I was sexually harassed at work and filed a complaint. My complaint was not kept confidential. Luckily someone who received it intervened and stopped a subsequent email that would have made it public.

I was horrified, disgusted and angry. As I drove home from work, I realized I was victimized – twice. I got very upset. After wallowing in my victimization for 20 minutes I thought “What the hell do I have to be ashamed of? I didn’t do anything wrong. The man who breached my confidentiality after being instructed to protect it was who was wrong.” (My harasser was already fired.)

I realized how thinking of myself as a victim disempowered me. So I picked up the phone, called the appropriate person and got my justice.

That was the only time in my career I ever associated myself with “victim.”

I prefer to be a justice seeker and someone who always stands up for what is right. I found there is a lot of power in that.

And that probably explains why women are discouraged from believing in their power to act, their power to influence men and their power to invoke consequences.

Empowered Women Put Their Empathy into Action

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December 8, 2017
Finding the Formula For Making Coffee

I came across this story that a woman (Linda) posted on LinkedIn. It goes along with a lot of my recent posts so I want to share it with you. This is one of those stories that we like to pass on. And generally that is what we would do.

But I want to take it one (actually several) steps further, as I will explain after the story. Here is the story: (more…)

May 22, 2013