by Charles Plant | Jun 14, 2013 | Leadership Development
I’m wading back into the issue of women business leaders again, partially because of Ontario’s desire to balance out the boards of directors of companies by requiring public companies to set targets for the number of women in senior roles. But what if women don’t want to be directors and in the C Suite?
I thought of this because of an ad in Thursday’s Globe for Rotman’s Directors Program (Calgary graduation) that showed pictures of graduates and only 11 out of 44 graduates were women. In Toronto it was 12 out of 51. I’m sure the Institute of Corporate Directors doesn’t have a quota on women students so maybe women just aren’t as interested in being directors as men.
Women make up only 37% of admissions to MBA programmes, 24% to EMBA programmes and only 42% to undergraduate business programmes. Maybe women just aren’t as interested in business as men.
However women do make up 48% of law school graduates and 47% of medical school graduates. Maybe women find law and medicine more interesting than business.
Maybe we should stop trying to impose one set of values and demand equality when that is an unrealistic objective.
by Charles Plant | Jun 13, 2013 | Leadership Development
I’ve been pondering this issue of being able to think and communicate under pressure. It comes up on lists of things leaders need to be able to do to be effective leaders. If we’re naturally no good at processes such as these when we’re under pressure, then what will improving them do. We’ll just suck a little less.
So instead of learning to think under pressure, perhaps what we need to do is remove the pressure. Obfuscate, delay, prevaricate, walk away. Anything that enables us to slow down and think through the logic and emotions of the situation, instead of having to try to think and communicate more clearly in the heat of the battle.
You might not be able to do that in public speaking or other fixed events but all other interactions that are pressure filled leave room for procrastination as a way to deal with choking.
by Charles Plant | Jun 11, 2013 | Leadership Development
While there is no fancy term for it like Glassophobia, an inability to think or speak when under pressure is much the same as the reaction people have to speaking to an audience. This is choking. The thing is though that you need to be able to work effectively under pressure to succeed nowadays.
What’s happening is that in pressure filled situations, the brain’s processing power which is known as working memory is depleted. Working memory is located in the pre-frontal cortex and is used for temporary storage for information relevant to whatever it is you are doing.
When working memory becomes overburdened, people lose the brain power they particularly need in pressure filled situations. This is what happens when you choke and I think its affect is even greater for people who have to speak publicly when they are not used to doing so.
I bet you never thought you would get a biology lesson when you started reading this blog but I thought if you understood why you choke when you do, it might alleviate the pain. I have a habit of choking when I need to remember someone’s name. So if I run into you on the street and look flummoxed, it’s just because I’m choking and can’t for the life of me remember your name.
by Charles Plant | Jun 10, 2013 | Leadership Development
Getting off controversial topics for awhile, I was reminded on the weekend about one woman I’ve worked with in the past who is enjoying an excellent career but is desperately afraid of public speaking. And there’s even a word for it: Glossophobia.
Unfortunately these days, if you want a career that progresses into senior management you’ll have to get good at this, no matter how distasteful it is.
There’s lots and lots of stuff on the web on why this occurs: fear of failure, inability to be vulnerable, self-doubt. I was even reading an archaeological perspective on the subject wherein people are afraid to rise up in a tribe for fear of being kicked out and thus not being defended and ending up being eaten by sabre toothed tigers.
The thing to remember is, no one is thinking about you anyway. They’re all too busy thinking about themselves to waste time thinking about you. If you don’t believe me, wait 30 days after you’ve done a presentation and ask anyone there what they thought of your presentation.
Chances are, unless it was the worst one they’ve ever seen or the best, they won’t remember a thing you said or how you said it. But if they happened to ask a question at your presentation, they’ll remember what the question was, how smart it made them sound, and how everyone was in awe of their brilliance.
So stop worrying about public speaking. There are no sabre-toothed tigers anymore, even if some of your co-workers look like they are ready to tear you limb from limb.
by Charles Plant | Jun 7, 2013 | Leadership Development
I’ve spent the last couple of years trying to figure out what leadership is, what conditions support good leadership and how people learn to be leaders. I’m continually surprised by what I learn and think this is a marvellous topic because it is so complex and so rooted in human dynamics.
Until this week I hadn’t thought about whether women are or are not better leaders than men. Frankly it had never crossed my mind to think of the issue but thanks to Rob Ford and other male-dominated scandals, I waded in fearful of the minefield and potential backlash.
I have been trying to boil down leadership to a common set of conditions under which all sorts of behaviours can be exhibited. In previous posts I had identified leadership as meeting follower needs for vision, to be cared for, to understand and be understood and to be motivated.
I have been debating with myself and others recently as to whether leadership is all emotional and was leaning that way until this week. I’m now of the opinion that leadership is the ability to use a balanced set of behavioural, emotional and intellectual skills to get things done through other people.
And this is why women make better leaders than men. Women make better use of behavioural and emotional skills than men do. While we may have equal intellectual skills (although a number of women I know will debate this), I think that most men would agree that women are more in tune emotionally and exhibit better behavioural control than men do.
I used to say that men have no emotions and now know this to be misstated, men just don’t understand their emotions, they frequently lack emotional intelligence. And this hampers our ability to be better leaders.
