Tag: Yin and Yang

  • 4 Ways To Explain the Unique Value of Women

    4 Ways To Explain the Unique Value of Women

    Many women don’t understand the real and tangible value women bring to the workplace.  For centuries we were led to believe that the all-male workplace functioned just fine without us.  The proof is in all of its accomplishments.

    Thanks to men, civilization has advanced technologically, industrially and philosophically.  All the tangible things in our lives and all the principles we live by are due to men!

    Collage of inventions, a bridge, space shuttle on top of a 747, vary large array antenna, the U.S. Capitol building, the cityscape scene, an aircraft carrier, an oil refinery, cell phone and calculator

    That sounds wonderful…until we look a little deeper.

    Behind the scenes is a messy, chaotic, frustrating and often destructive process. The truth is that the male-dominated workplace doesn’t function very well.

    Throughout my career, I discovered over and over again, the value of being a woman working with men.  My male colleagues needed my female ways of thinking and doing things.  Over the years I came up with a few analogies to remind myself of the value and power of my female ways.

    Analogy 1:  Swiss Cheese

    My first analogy describes how men really work.

    Men want us to believe all their work is solid and complete.

    A wedge of parmesan cheese.

    But it isn’t.

    In reality their work is Swiss cheese. There are holes in everything they do. 

    a wedge of Swiss cheese

    These holes are what create chaos, incomplete work, rework and unintended consequences. 

    Men are taught to be the one who brings the Big Cheese. As women, we’re told to compete with men to bring the Big Cheese. However, it’s very hard to compete with our male colleagues’ boldness and brashness. To them losing to a woman is unacceptable so they gang up on us.

    Early in my career I learned not to compete with them, even though I knew I had a better plan or could do the job better.

    I took a different strategy.

    I looked at their plan or job and compared it to mine. I was looking for all of their holes; all the things that wouldn’t work out right. I then focused on figuring out how to fill in their holes.

    So, when their work didn’t produce the expected results, I could stand up and be the one with all the solutions. I was the one who could fix things. This got me recognition. And when our performance soared, I got the credit.

    No one cared who started the project.

    They only cared about who delivered the results.

    Over time I discovered that men couldn’t fill in the holes themselves, no matter what they did or how hard they tried. I witnessed all my workplaces adopt management initiatives to improve performance.

    Eventually all of them failed.

    The holes could only be filled in by women’s Pink Zone traits – the way women think and work. 

    A wedge of Swiss cheese with all the holes filled in with pink circles

    When women fill the holes, we create wholeness. And wholeness is the only way to achieve the sustained superior results our workplace wants.

    Looking for and filling in Swiss cheese holes proved to be the most powerful tool I used in my workplaces. I transformed so many ideas, plans and practices and made enormous impacts. My male colleagues kept asking, “How does she do that?”

    My answer was, “I think like a woman.”

     Analogy 2:  Cupcakes and Cake Slices

    Since my work was always project-based, teamwork was very important.  But in men’s concept of teamwork, all parties aren’t of equal value.  There has to be an MVP.

    There are men who want to prove, “I can deliver this project!”  They give the rest of the team permission to back off and ride his coattails. Team members willingly sit back either because they’re relieved to escape responsibility or they believe they aren’t as valuable. So, they wait for the MVP to deliver that big, beautiful chocolate cake that they can all get a slice of.

    A cupcake decorated with white frosting and a candy pink flower with a lit candle on top

    But in the end, all he delivers is a cupcake that celebrates him.

    As women, we need to think of teamwork as a dessert bar where there are many different kinds of cake slices.  As women, we find it hard for us to choose just one cake. We want to bring a slice of every cake back to our table to sample. We want to appreciate each of them for their unique qualities.

    That is what teamwork is.

    Slices of a variety of cakes that then make one whole cake

    It requires everyone to come to the table, everyone to participate and everyone to emphasize their unique characteristics.

    Analogy 3:  Women Hold Up Half the Sky

     

    A marble statue of Atlas holding up the world

    Atlas holds up the world all by himself. He doesn’t need the help of anyone, especially a woman. We’re taught that the workplace is the same. Superior men accomplish great things and don’t need the help of women.

    The foundation for this belief is the Doctrine of Two Spheres. It says men naturally inhabit the Public Sphere and women the Private Sphere. This of course, harkens back to the old stereotypes that see male traits as superior to female traits.

    The concept of the Doctrine of Two Spheres. On the left a man is standing in a circle with a blue outline and an office building in a background. On the right is a woman standing in a circle with a pink outline and a house in the background. The two spheres are separated by a chasm.

    Consequently, for women to have any value in the workplace, we must adopt male traits and compete with men. Women must take a piece of work away from men or men have to surrender it to us. This is how we will achieve equality.

    However, there is another concept:

    Duality

    Duality refers to two contrasting elements that coexist. They don’t exist in competition or in conflict but rather in a complementary relationship. I think of the value of women in duality with men through the Chinese proverb that says:

    Women hold up half the sky.

    But given our indoctrination as to the nature of men and women, we still see them as distinct and separate. We also want an empirical measurement to ensure there is equality.

    A man on the left half standing in front of a picture of a blue sky and a woman on the right half standing in front of a pink sky

    However, that isn’t Duality.

    In Duality, men and women aren’t separate.

    They are opposing forces who interact and work together in harmony.

    A variation of the yin- yang symbol with one half being the sun and one half being the sky

    This means women don’t have to compete with men. We don’t have to take from men and men can’t take from us. We are inherently equal.

    We each have our own half of the sky – our own way of thinking and acting. We need each other to perform our duty of holding up the sky. Most importantly, the sky isn’t complete and whole unless we lift up our half.

    This brings me to my final analogy.

    Analogy 4:  Yin and Yang.

    I use Yin (pink)and Yang (blue)to represent women and men as two complementary halves of the whole.  They are connected opposites who continually interact and influence each other, creating a dynamic environment. 

    Yin and yang symbol where instead of black and white, the colors are pink and blue representing how men and women interact in harmony with each other.

     In this symbol we often miss noticing Yin and Yang are not represented as a solid color. Yin has Yang’s blue qualities and Yang has Yin’s pink qualities. This is because women and men aren’t different species. We share human qualities.

    As individual men and women, the size of our complementary qualities can vary. Some of us have more, some of us less. How much we express also varies by our situation and environment.

    Yin and Yang are not static within themselves or together.

    As connected opposites they both influence and respond to each other. They work in harmony where neither is stronger or weaker than the other. In their dynamic relationship, they continuously balance each other and create balance within their environment.

    More importantly, their harmonious, balanced interaction creates Wholeness.

    Wholeness is where we find sustained, superior performance.

    When men and women interact, work together and influence each other, we become comfortable expressing our complementary traits. We change each other, so we are no longer solidly Pink and Blue.

    Even though we remain predominantly Yin or Yang, we transform into our own unique shade of Purple.   

    We find, balance, harmony and Wholeness within ourselves.

    Yin and yang symbol where instead of black and white, the colors are two shades of purple representing how when men and women interact they change each other and find wholeness within themselves.

    Empowered Women Know They Are One Half Of The Whole

    To learn more, watch these YouTube videoes:

  • Women Do More Than Create Balance

    www.123rf.com 75183174

    When we talk about how women influence the male-dominated workplace we often say that women create balance.  But that isn’t very impactful and it doesn’t portray the full power of women.

    When we think of women balancing men we equate it to men going too far and women tempering their efforts.  It creates the perception that men are the driving force who get things done while women apply the brakes and slow them down from 120 mph to 90 mph so they don’t crash and burn.

    This concept of balance doesn’t portray women as an equal driving force who can also get things done at 90 mph.

    We also think of balance in terms of pendulum swings.  For a while the pendulum swings in one direction.  But then it goes too far causing things get out of balance and no longer function properly.  In response we then swing the pendulum in the opposite direction…until it goes too far and we decide to swing it back in the opposite direction.

    When the pendulum is swinging upward we think we are making progress and accomplishing great things.  We push the pendulum to greater heights and greater extremes.  We forget that we will eventually push the pendulum too far and cause it to come crashing down amongst turmoil, chaos and negativity.

    This drive to extremes and the resulting cataclysmic crashes are causing us to associate balance with high drama.  But balance isn’t about drama.  It is about two forces of equal strength and importance continuously interacting and influencing each other so they produce a steady state of harmony and equilibrium.

    We find this type of balance in the concept of Yin and Yang.

    When men and women apply Yin and Yang to themselves, they recognize that they are each one half of the whole and need each other for balanced action.  As we picture the Yin and Yang acting on each other we see them rotating in a circle.  Yin and Yang each take turns being the driving force that pushes them over the top to create the rotation.

    Their rotation is gentle, peaceful and very efficient.  There is none of that clumsy wasted energy we find in pendulum swings.  Acting together, Yin and Yang build up energy and increase their momentum without falling out of balance.

    If you read Jim Collins famous book Good to Great you remember him talking about the flywheel effect.  He described the way the flywheel begins rotating as “a cumulative process – step-by-step, action-by-action, decision-by-decision, turn-by-turn of the flywheel – that adds up to sustained and spectacular results.”

    But what he doesn’t say it that the flywheel mimics Yin and Yang interaction – it requires women to assert themselves as full equals in the workplace.  Without women helping to complete the rotation, the flywheel becomes nothing more than a pendulum.

    This explains why flywheel companies like Circuit City couldn’t sustain their results and came crashing down.

    Many companies avoid the crashes by moderating their pendulum swings.  But this won’t create sustained and spectacular results.  That is why we need to stop thinking about balance and start thinking about working in wholeness.

    Wholeness is a much larger concept than balance.  Wholeness has the power to hold everything together and create unity.  It doesn’t allow Yang to disregard Yin as it goes off to act independently or put itself first.  Wholeness reminds Yang that its actions affect Yin and will cause Yin to act in response.  Yin’s resulting actions will then impact Yang.

    Wholeness creates a complete circle so an entity’s negative actions always come back to them.  Likewise so do their positive.  Therefore, wholeness inspires people to act positively.  And it is only through positive action that we can achieve sustained spectacular results.

    Where we have gone wrong for centuries is believing in the great myth that men have the miraculous power to create wholeness all by themselves and therefore have incredible power in comparison to women.  Consequently women have been demanding men to give up half of what they have and give it to women.  But in reality men only have their half of the whole and only one half of the power.

    Women’s half has been sitting off to the side patiently waiting for women to recognize it, realize its value and put it into action.

    Men cannot put women’s half into action.  Women have to act on their own volition and do this themselves.   That after all is what equality and empowerment really are.

     

    Whether or not we continue to function through wild pendulum swings or begin functioning like the flywheel is completely up to women.  Because at this point, the power to create wholeness lies entirely with women.  It depends on whether or not women recognize their inherent equality and put it into action.

    Empowered Women Choose to Assert Their Half of the Whole 

    To learn more about how women create wholeness checkout my book. 

     

     

     

     

  • Seeing and Believing In the Equality of Women

    What value do women, bring to the workplace?

    For centuries the accepted answer was “None.”  Even today most of us can still only give a vague answer.  We hear that companies with more women perform better but we can’t specifically state why that is.  Without a clear answer, women don’t know how to leverage themselves at work and companies don’t have an incentive to proclaim “We need to hire and promote more women!”

    The reason we can’t define the value of women is because we are still influenced by old ideas.  Most notably is the Doctrine of Two Spheres, which most of us probably never heard of even though we know its effects.

    The Doctrine of Two Spheres states that men and women, due to their biological makeup naturally inhabit two distinct and separate spheres.  According to the doctrine men naturally have traits suited for the public sphere (politics, law, business, commerce, academia and finance) while women naturally have traits suited for the private sphere (domesticity, child rearing and religious and charitable work).  This doctrine determined that male traits set a superior standard in the workplace and female traits are of little to no value.

    Back in the 20th century when women first went into the workplace to work on par with men, we didn’t question the validity of the doctrine.  We didn’t declare women’s equality by saying “Female traits are just as important to workplace success as male traits!”  Instead we sought women’s equality on the basis of equal rights and equal opportunity – giving women the right and the opportunity to go into the workplace and achieve the superior standard set by men.

    Without the declaration that female traits are just as valuable as male traits, a woman couldn’t work on par with men by acting like a woman.  To be equal she had to be perceived as being the same as a man.  She had to leave her female traits behind in the private sphere and adopt male traits for the workplace.  She could have the body of a woman but she had to think and act like a man.

    Many, many women still think this way.

    The consequences of this have been enormous for women.  We perpetuated the perception that men are superior and women inferior in the workplace.  We made women choose between their femininity and having a career and financial security on par with men.

    This choice keeps women out of many industries, jobs and professions, especially the highest paying.  It is a major contributor to the wage gap.  It leads women to conclude that they can have a career but they can never go as far or achieve as much as their male colleagues.  It is a significant reason why women aren’t advancing in the workplace.

    This is why any effort to advance women has to start with throwing the Doctrine of Two Spheres in the trash can.  We have to stop comparing women to men, stop telling women to copy men and stop believing that the way men do things in the workplace is the best and right way.  We have to stop believing women will obtain equality when we measure up to the standards set by men.

    This is how I began my engineering career.  Like many women, when I started my career I had high expectations of my all-male workplace.  However, it took me only a few days to say, “What the Hell?  I thought you guys knew what you were doing!”

    All around me I saw was chaos, crisis management, stress and lots of inefficiency.  Any concerns I had about measuring up to my male colleagues immediately vanished.  I saw lots of things that I needed to fix if my workplace was to meet my standards.

    I quickly realized that the way my male colleagues worked always felt incomplete – it was as if there were a lot of “things missing” in everything they did.  At the time I couldn’t quite articulate what was “missing” so I began using the term “Swiss cheese” to describe how they “functioned” and “completed” tasks.

    To fix my workplaces I didn’t copy my male colleagues or compete in their discussions.  Instead I listened for and looked for what they weren’t saying or doing.  I looked for the Swiss cheese holes.  Then I asserted myself and filled in the holes.  Filling in the holes felt obvious and completely natural.

    It also made our performance soar.  It made me wonder why millions and millions of men armed with their superior traits never figured out how to fill in the holes like I did.  We had the same education and experience.  There was only one difference between us – I was a woman.

    Could it be that as a woman I brought unique and valuable traits to the workplace that men couldn’t?

    After many years and many workplaces I concluded the answer was – Yes!

    I discovered that it was the combination and interaction of male and female traits that made workplace performance soar.

    To understand how this works we only have to look to the Yin and Yang concept we are already familiar with.

    Unlike the Doctrine of Two Spheres which divides male and female into two static and separate spheres, Yin and Yang are connected opposites.

    Yin and Yang continually interact and influence each other.  Neither is superior or inferior.  Each controls the other and both need the other to create a harmonious whole. 

    Yin and Yang allows men and women to be different but still remain full equals. 

    But it is really the concept that men and women together create wholeness  that is really important.

    This is what I picked up on when I began working.

    My male-dominated workplaces weren’t whole.  They were full of Swiss cheese holes because they didn’t have any women.

    I came along and provided the missing other half.  By asserting my female ways of thinking and doing things I made my workplaces whole.

    The significance of this is enormous to all workplaces and companies.

    It  means they are all under-performing.

    This is especially true for all those heavily male-dominated STEM industries who work from the premise that male traits are the right traits for their industry.  But watch the movie Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.  Listen to how many times the word “chaos” is used and how often the men talk about their stress and frustration.  This occurred because they were working with only one half of the whole.

    Workplace that function in wholeness, achieve greater performance while also reducing stress, frustration, chaos and inefficiency.  That is the beauty of working in wholeness.

    So let’s answer the original question: What value do women, bring to the workplace?

    Women make the workplace WHOLE. 

    This is why  workplaces with more women  perform better.

    Empowered Women Understand They are One Half of the Whole and Essential to Every Workplace

     

    To learn more about the value of women in the workplace and how we create wholeness, checkout my book.