sphinxx blog

It’s no secret that I’m no domestic goddess.  It’s not that I wouldn’t like a Better home and garden; it just doesn’t rate high enough in my priorities.  But around this time of year, for a very brief moment, instinct kicks in and from no-where comes an urge to spring clean.

So on the weekend I discovered all manner of things that had been stashed, stowed and stored away behind closed doors til I “found the time” to deal with them.  The booty included several packets of flower seeds I had bought intending to plant last spring!  I was weighing up whether to plant them or not when my neighbour dropped in.  His comment?  “You might as well, they’ll have more chance of growing in the ground than in the packet”.

Good point.  And what’s the point?  Well, perhaps you have business cards that stay in your purse when you’re at networking events (or worse still back in the office on your desk!)  Or perhaps you’ve been sitting on a great idea or initiative, but you’ve never planted the seed in your workplace to allow it to grow and bear fruit.  You know what you should do, but you just don’t make it happen.

Truth is you can hold onto your seeds, but they won’t do you much good til you sow them, water them and nurture them to maturity.  Only then will you have the chance to celebrate the harvest.

You can only reap what you sow.

One of the most rewarding aspects of my sheEO role is interviewing leading women for the sphinxx Take the Lead program.  What a gift and privilege it is to hear first hand the experiences and learnings of Australia’s most senior female leaders.

Last Friday I interviewed Margaret Haseltine, GM of the Mars food business in Australia.  It made my day!  Here is a woman responsible for not only 400 people, but also an entire manufacturing site from procurement through to sales, and what is her advice on leading such a diverse range of operations and teams?  Let your personality shine on and into your leadership role. 

Margaret herself achieves this through a very deliberate decision to engage and embrace her people, and to inspire them to be the best they can be.  Through her open encouragement of emotion at work and her desire to see people grow, she has increased engagement and created an environment where people trust one another and really want to come to work every day.

Which brings me to the point – are you being “you” at work, or have you moulded yourself to fit to some other image of the acceptable norms of  leadership?  If you are changing your behaviours and concealing your personality and passion, how is this manifesting in your work performance and job satisfaction?

The real you is unique and powerful and perfectly “good enough” to succeed at every level.  So ladies, believe in yourself, and shine on.

Over the federal election campaign already?  Then let’s focus on the other votes you cast every day - your voting rights as a consumer.  Consider this: almost every dollar you spend is via an organisation that has competitors and substitutes for its products and services.  If it’s true that women influence 80 per cent of all household spending, then think of the opportunity this gives us to influence leadership composition. 

Currently only 3 of the top 200 public companies in Australia have a woman CEO.  And in the 2006 EOWA census, a whopping 40% did not have even one woman executive manager.  The list is expansive and readily available - so would you boycot these companies in favour of the ones with women at the top?

It would not be difficult for us to spend our money with women-friendly organisations, like the EOWA Employers of Choice for Women.  And if we are serious about gender equality in leadership, we must take a stand and exercise our votes. 

One-by-one, they will add up to a collective roar that demands to be heard. 

I attended a Network Central luncheon event yesterday hosted by Kim McGuinness. Kim established the Business Women’s Breakfast series in 2004 which has since expanded into a range of networking events that cover all manner of topics. It was not so much the official agenda of the day I’ll remember from the day, but rather Kim’s grace under fire when things didn’t go quite to plan.

The audience who had invested significant time and money to attend the working luncheon were at a loss when the guest speaker went into melt down, but not Kim. She held the audience beautifully as she relayed anecdotes of “emos” and the younger generations, and the implications for employers if we don’t build a strong sense of community within and beyond our workplaces. Kim’s focus on children as our future employees was a take I had not considered before.

The audience was captured by Kim’s stories as she led us through a series of anecdotes that were filled with emotion, sincerity and challenge. A wonderful case of emotion at work at its finest.

Congratulations Kim on building a fantastic network and for mastering sphinxx leadership.

Leon Gettler runs the Business Blog for the SMH and The Age and last week published a post on the back of the USA Small Business Administration report “Are male and female entrepreneurs really that different?”

Read the full report and you’ll see some interesting findings around what the perceived differences are between male and female entrepreneurs, and in particular their motivations and mind sets for setting up shop.

Accompanying Leon’s post was a photo of Richard Branson, and a question to readers:  Are male and female entrepreneurs that different?

Of course males and females are different, even when it comes to being entrepreneurs.  But what really ran through my mind was why did Gettler choose Branson to illustrate his point?

Sure, Branson is universally acknowledged for his success and entrepreneurial spirit, and he is also a white, Anglo-Saxon, middle aged male.  Is it an assumption, a stereotype or an expectation that to be successful this must be the case? 

A look at the Forbes 400 world billionaires shows a quarter of the top 25 do not fit this mould and there are many women too who have achieved great entrepreneurial success.  Oprah Winfrey and JK Rowling, amongst others, have also amassed celebrity status.  So why the blokey photo?

Stereotypes – no matter how sublime – have a significant impact on motivation.  As we know, there are very different demands placed on all working women as compared with men - including estimates that up to 75% of working men with children have a stay at home partner, while only a handful of working women with children share the same luxury.  So logistically it’s a harder slog for women than for men at the top of the tree – whether employee or entrepreneur.

If we agree that role models matter, then as a community we need to influence thinking around the stereotypes of success.  Next time you need a case study for entrepreneurial success, remember Oprah, JK, Martha Stewart and the late Anita Roddick, all self-made millionaire and billionaire entrepreneurs who have done it themselves. 

Do you really think we can make women the pinup photos of entrepreneurial success – have your say here.

My 13 year old niece has been visiting from interstate with her best friend.  It’s been an education!  But an interesting event took place between the two of them over a foul chess maneuver which left me thinking. 

It turns out one had allegedly failed to call a “check” and what followed soon evolved to a lengthy debate on who was right, who was in the wrong, the rules of chess and the possible remedies.  On and on it went.

About 5 minutes into the discussion I felt my mother’s voice welling inside of me.  I was about to interject with mum’s infamous “that’s enough!” to restore “harmony” in the household when I was struck like a bolt out of the blue. 

The girls were behaving exactly as any leader would expect of their followers: there was no bad language; no temper tantrum; no name calling.  Just a good debate by the “wronged” on the facts of the case, what rules had been broken and what result should flow.  So why bring it to a premature and unresolved ending, when they clearly were willing and able to reach a resolution (which they went on to do)?

It occurred to me that had it been my nephew and his mate, I would probably not have batted an eyelid.  Boys will be boys.  Yet for the girls, I had a notion of what was “appropriate” under my watch and I was ready to respond accordingly.

I wonder if this conditioning flows on to our professional lives, as I so often see senior women failing to stand their ground on issues they know to be well founded.  Whether it’s fear of being a dissenting voice, a lack of confidence, or a perception of how a lady should behave, there are many women out there who struggle with this.

Yet we are educated, intelligent women with knowledge to share and passion to give.  So don’t hold back.  Stand your ground and stand out as a leader.