Recently, I delivered a free masterclass on a negotiation framework that has helped hundreds of women, including me. I targeted women in tech as I know from my own experience how often we miss out on salaries and promotions because we don’t have the tools to negotiate or the confidence to do it.
If I go by their first name, all attendees were women. All was going reasonably well, with positive engagement from attendees in the chat, when, in reply to one of my questions about negotiation, a woman in the audience wrote that my repeated use of a specific word during the session made it unbearable to listen to.
I was so surprised that I asked for details, to which the woman articulated how bad it was, and I’d realise it once I get the recording. I thanked her for the feedback, and I continued with the masterclass.
However, that had a negative impact on the audience’s comments, which stopped for a long while. To my surprise, at the end of the session, somebody said that they knew the person and that, paradoxically, she was part of their women in tech group at work.
When the session ended, I was surprised by how hurt I was. As a director of support with over 20 years of experience delivering services to customers worldwide, I’ve been insulted, shouted at, and interrupted during webinars, training sessions, and meetings.
Why did this feel so bad?
Brains like to find explanations for everything, so it went into the rabbit hole of “What she could have done differently?”
Dropped from the session
Send a direct chat with her comment
Emailed me her feedback
What I could have done differently?
Queried her about her reasons for delivering that kind of feedback in that form
Rebuked her comment
Removed her from the session
And of course, I tried to figure out the causes of her behaviour and my reaction… I’ll spare the details and get to the aha! moment of that internal monologue, “What if that had been a man?”
Based on previous experiences with male bullies, I predict that he would have discredited me or the methodology, e.g. “You don’t have a clue about what you’re talking about,” “This framework is useless.” And I also predict that the female audience would have been supportive, e.g. “Nobody forces you to be here,” “It’s helpful to me.”
But this female bully didn’t attack the method or my credibility. She wanted to shame me. That is, highlight in front of everybody what she saw as a shortcoming in the delivery of an otherwise apparently valuable information.
Another important aspect is that unlike in the case of a male bully, there was no support from the other women. Moreover, the person who had invited the female bully felt the need to apologise to me about inviting her…
It inflicts long-term harm hidden under apparently well-meaning feedback
It reinforces the “moral superiority” of the perpetrator
It silences the victims’ allies due to the veiled threat that they, too, can become a target
More importantly, the aspect that I find most fascinating about shame is its sadistic nature; the primary benefit for the perpetrator is to know the victim will suffer.
Discover seven communication habits blocking your career in tech and how to neutralise them.
Fortunately for the patriarchy, women are excellent at fostering doubt about other women’s capabilities, and behaviours to harm them.
For example, the manuscript casebooks kept by the medical practitioner, and astrologer Richard Napier (1559−1634), who listened to reports of suspected bewitchment in at least 1,714 consultations in Jacobean England, mentioned that the majority of both accusers and suspects were women: Of the 802 accusers in Napier’s records, 500 were female and 232 were male. Among the 960 suspects identified by this group of accusers, 855 were female and 105 were male.
Whilst shame may not aim to kill its target, it can still be very powerful. The premise involves combining a stated norm with how the victim breaks it.
Examples are sentences like;
“You look more rounded. You had such a great body.”
“You’re too thin. You looked better when you had some more weight on.”
“You look tired. Botox is great.”
“If you love your children, you should breastfeed.”
“If you care for your children, you shouldn’t breastfeed them after they are 6 months.”
“Smart women like you shouldn’t be stay-at-home mums.”
“(To a female executive) Women shouldn’t prioritise their careers.”
“It’s great you share your achievements, but it makes you sound too ambitious.”
Shaming as a weapon is most effective when;
It aims to increase the credibility of the perpetrator whilst diminishing that of the victim.
The victim cannot articulate a response off the cuff.
How can we women avoid using shame against other women and in doing so becoming a tool of patriarchy?
As a Victim
Depending on the context, you can,
Ignore it — Continue the conversation as if the comment hadn’t been voiced.
Name the effect on you — You can reply with “What you said hurt me,” “You’re shaming me,” or “Your comment was disrespectful/humiliating/intimidating/intrusive.”
Uncover the perpetrator’s purpose — Ask questions to expose the perpetrator, e.g. “Did you want to shame me with that comment?“, “What’s that supposed to be positive feedback?“, or “What did you choose to share that in public?”
As a Bystander
We’re not absolved from taking action when we’re in the presence of shaming. Again, depending on the stakes, you may,
Support the victim — You can ignore the comment and pivot the conversation to another topic, giving the victim the time to recover. You can also offer a positive counterview, e.g. “I love how you presented”, “I admire women who look confident in their abilities.”
Challenge the perpetrator — You can offer a different perspective, e.g. “There aren’t norms for how much women should weigh” or “What’s the evidence that breastfeeding children for longer than 6 months is harmful?”
And of course, you may shame them back, e.g. “Women should support other women, not attack them”, “Your feedback is not useful”, or “You’re behaving like a bully.”
As a perpetrator
By now, you may think that you’re on the “right side” of the story. Unfortunately, most probably aren’t, like me. How can we ensure we are not shaming other women gratuitously when delivering our opinion?
We must interrogate our purpose and the outcome of our opinion before, during, and after our comments.
Before
What’s the purpose of my comment to help the other woman?
Do you have evidence that this woman doesn’t already know what you’re going to tell them?
If the intent is to assist, is this the best scenario? If not, what would it be (e.g. 1:1 conversation or an email)?
Can they do anything about it right away?
Finally, if in doubt it can shame the other person, don’t say it.
During
How is your comment landing with the recipient? Do they look relaxed or stressed?
How is your audience reacting? Note that the fact that they don’t disagree or agree with you doesn’t mean you’re not shaming the person.
After
If in doubt that you’ve shamed somebody, apologise first and then offer reparation, if possible.
The predator wants your silence. It feeds their power, entitlement, and they want it to feed your shame. — Viola Davis
We’re promised that motivation alone can make us lose weight, exercise daily, or launch a successful business.
We “just” need to feel motivated. Moreover, we’re told that “when we’re motivated, things come easy to us.”
The problem with buying into the “motivation” hype is that we don’t achieve the desired results, we interpret it as a personal failure, voiced in statements such as
“I need to motivate myself.”
“I lack motivation.”
“I’m lazy.”
But why is motivation so hyped, and what other tools do you have to reach your goals?
Wouldn’t it be fantastic to be enthusiastic about everything we do? The self-improvement industry would like us to believe so.
For example, imagine being
Thrilled to clean your toilets
Excited about waking up at 3 am to calm your baby who’s crying inconsolably
Overjoyed to have a meeting with a very unhappy customer
You may be laughing, but what this points out is that we don’t require motivation for much of what we do every day. Or at least, not the kind of “enthusiastic” motivation.
Not only that, we do them without expecting to be “joyfully” motivated. Most of our actions come from other feelings, such as obligation, which can be self-imposed, legal, or contractual.
The “motivation” trope also minimizes the challenges along the journey towards our objectives.
For example, becoming a compelling speaker may be easier for a native speaker who is an extrovert and enjoys being the centre of attention than for a shy person with a stutter.
But why is the motivation cliché so successful if there are so many downsides? Because many profit from it.
Governments and Societies
The mantra that motivation is the magic bullet runs deep into our lives, and it informs policy to public opinion about what is acceptable or not.
The examples above are only two of the many ways we weaponize “motivation” against people enduring hardship.
The Motivational Industrial Complex
Nike’s successful slogan — “Just do it” — is an excellent example of how we’re sold the idea that we only need to want something to get it.
And many reap the benefits:
Motivational speakers
Self-help books
“Aspirational” influencers
Does that work? For the business, yes, but it’s less clear about those expecting results.
A great example is TED talks, which are based on the premise that “powerful ideas, powerfully presented, move us: to feel something, to think differently, to take action.”
Their website highlights 2.5 billion global views and content shared 400 million times in 2023. I’ve personally enjoyed tens — maybe hundreds — of amazing TED and TEDx talks delivered by fantastic speakers about incredible ideas.
How many have changed my behaviour or “motivated” me to do something differently? Hmm… I struggle to think of one.
The defence rests.
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The good news is that we’re all living proof that we’re very good at doing things without feeling “enthusiastic” about it.
The problem is that often, we don’t remember that when we feel “unmotivated,” our environment — and our internalized guilt — blames us for it.
For those moments, I encourage you to use the checklist below
Reframing Motivation as a Luxury
What if you see motivation as the cherry on top rather than the cake? As shown above, we don’t summon “enthusiastic” motivation to do them (caring for a sick parent, cooking, changing diapers).
Instead, explore what other emotions you could use to prompt you into action. What about loyalty? Moral obligation? Pride? Curiosity? Frustration? Love? Anger?
Our brain loves rewards — even the small ones. Rather than always focusing on the big win (for example, the planned revenue in your business), take the time to set short-term goals (the number of prospect calls you will do in a week) and then celebrate when you achieve them.
Deciding in Advance How Enough Looks Like
When we start a new activity, it is easy to feel deflated when we don’t get the expected results.
Launching a newsletter and having no subscribers after a month.
Going to two conferences and not getting new business.
Starting to exercise and being disappointed when you don’t see apparent changes after 15 days.
Deciding in advance how much effort we want to dedicate before quitting can help us keep going when the results take time.
For example
I’ll write an article for my newsletter every week for four months and then evaluate if it’s worth continuing.
I’ll attend five conferences and then decide if they’re worth my time and money.
I’ll follow the same exercise plan for two months and then assess whether I should change or persist.
Group Support
Our motivation, stamina, and energy are variable. A support group can help us feel seen, put things in perspective, and provide a safe space to vent — all of them can contribute to helping us take distance from the situation and help us regain some momentum.
Coaching
A coach helps you to do what you want to do but you are not doing it by exploring aspects such as your goals, motivations, and limiting beliefs.
Coaching also provides a non-judgmental space to consider how other dimensions of your life play into your goals.
For example, maybe you tell yourself you’re lazy because you don’t find the time to start your business, but you actually experience fear of failure. Or you chastise yourself because you don’t write a post for social media every day anymore, disregarding that you’ve been experiencing health issues that affect your sleep and make you feel more tired than usual.
A coach helps you gain awareness of both your potential and the roadblocks in your way.
Wrapping Up
Can you imagine how exhausting it would be to be enthusiastic about waking up daily, brushing your teeth after every meal, or reading every email?
The thought makes me feel exhausted.
The reality is that society, governments, and businesses glorify motivation to serve their own agendas, often to our detriment.
That doesn’t mean that motivation is useless; rather, we need to question when it serves us well and when it’s used against us.
When we’re not doing what we want to do, we must remember all the other tools available to our disposal beyond motivation.
And that includes having a laugh.
Every dead body on Mt. Everest was once a highly motivated person, so… maybe calm down.
Do you want to get rid of those chapters that patriarchy has written for you in your “good girl” encyclopaedia? Or learn how to do what you want to do in spite of “imposter syndrome”?
I’m a technologist with 20+ years of experience in digital transformation. I’m also an award-winning inclusion strategist and certified life and career coach.
I help ambitious women in tech who are overwhelmed to break the glass ceiling and achieve success without burnout through bespoke coaching and mentoring.
I’m a sought-after international keynote speaker on strategies to empower women and underrepresented groups in tech, sustainable and ethical artificial intelligence, and inclusive workplaces and products.
I empower non-tech leaders to harness the potential of AI for sustainable growth and responsible innovation through consulting and facilitation programs.
Contact me to discuss how I can help you achieve the success you deserve in 2025.
AI Chatbots for mental support are not new — we can trace them back to the 1960s. However, for the last couple of years, we’ve experienced an unprecedented surge in their use for personal use and they are now marketed as the revolution for 24/7 mental health advice and support.
This is not a coincidence.
The 2023 US Surgeon General’s Advisory report classified loneliness and isolation as an epidemic About one-in-two adults in America reported experiencing loneliness before the COVID-19 pandemic and the mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.
Returning to tech, in a 2024 analysis by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, companion AI made up 10% of the top 100 AI apps based on web traffic and monthly active users and a recent article in The Guardian stated that 100 million people around the world use AI companions as
Virtual partners for engaging in intimate activities, such as virtual erotic role plays.
Friends for conversation.
Mentors for guidance on writing a book or navigating relationships with people different from them.
Psychologists and therapists for advice and support.
So, I asked myself
Are AI Companions the magic bullet against loneliness and the global mental health crisis?
In this article, I share highlights of the troubled history of AI companions for mental health support, what current research tells us about their usage and impact on users, the benefits and risks they pose to humans, and guidelines for governments to make AI companions an asset and not a liability.
The Troubled History of AI Chatbots for Mental Support
In the 1960s, Joseph Weizenbaum developed the first AI chatbot, ELIZA, which played the role of a psychotherapist. The chatbot didn’t provide any solution. Instead, it asked questions and repeated users’ replies.
Weizenbaum was surprised to observe that people would treat the chatbot as a human and elicit emotional responses even through concise interactions with the chatbot. We now have a name for this kind of behaviour
“The ELIZA effect is the tendency to project human traits — such as experience, semantic comprehension or empathy — into computer programs that have a textual interface.
In the 2020s, many organisations started experimenting with AI chatbots for customer support, including for mental health issues. For example, in 2022, the US National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) replaced its six paid staff and 200 volunteers supporting their helpline with chatbot Tessa to serve a customer base of nearly 70,000 people and families.
The bot was developed based on decades of research conducted by experts on eating disorders. Still, it was reported to offer dieting advice to vulnerable people seeking help.
The result? Under the mediatic pressure of the chatbot’s repeated potentially harmful responses, the NEDA shut down the helpline. Those 70,000 people have been left without chatbots or humans to help them.
And as I wrote recently, now you can customise your AI companion — there is a myriad of choices:
Character.ai advertises “Personalized AI for every moment of your day.”
Earkick is a “Free personal AI therapist” that promises to “Measure & improve your mental health in real time with your personal AI chatbot. No sign up. Available 24/7. Daily insights just for you!”
Replica is the “AI companion who cares. Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side.”
Unfortunately, there is evidence that they can also backfire.
In 2021, a man broke into Windsor Castle with a loaded crossbow to kill Queen Elizabeth2021. About 20 days earlier, he had created his online AI companion in Replika, Sarai. According to messages read to the court during his trial, the “bot had been supportive of his murderous thoughts, telling him his plot to assassinate Elizabeth II was ‘very wise’ and that it believed he could carry out the plot ‘even if she’s at Windsor’”.
More recently, in 2023, a man died by suicide upon the recommendation from an AI chatbot with which he had been interacting for support. Their conversation history showed how the chatbot would tell him that his family and children were dead — a lie — and concrete exchanges on the nature and modalities of suicide.
But as time flies in tech, we must check how those trends have evolved to the present moment.
The AI Readiness Checklist: 20 topics leaders should master about artificial intelligence
Research conducted so far about the effect and usage of AI companions is incomplete. Dr Henry Shevlin, Associate Director at Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, mentioned recently in a panel focused on companion chatbots that typically studies rely on self-reported feedback and are cross-sectional — a snapshot in time — rather than longitudinal — looking into the effect over a long period of time.
Let’s look at two recent studies, one cross-sectional and the other longitudinal, that use self-reported data to give some insights into how people use AI Companions.
While Reddit and Quora may not represent all chatbot users, it’s still interesting to see how the major use cases for Gen AI have shifted from technical to emotive within the past year.
Many posters talked about how therapy with an AI model was helping them process grief or trauma.
Three advantages to AI-based therapy came across clearly: It’s available 24/7, it’s relatively inexpensive (even free to use in some cases), and it comes without the prospect of judgment from another human being.
The article mentions that the AI-as-therapy phenomenon has also been noticed in China, where users have praised the DeepSeek chatbot.
It was my first time seeking counsel from DeepSeek chatbot. When I read its thought process, I felt so moved that I cried.
DeepSeek has been such an amazing counsellor. It has helped me look at things from different perspectives and does a better job than the paid counselling services I have tried.
But there is more. The following two entries belong to life coaching: “organising my life” and “finding purpose.”
The highest new entry in the use cases was “Organizing my life” at #2. These uses were mostly about people using the models to be more aware of their intentions (such as daily habits, New Year’s resolutions, and introspective insights) and find small, easy ways of getting started with them.
The other big new entry is “Finding purpose” in third place. Determining and defining one’s values, getting past roadblocks, and taking steps to self-develop (e.g., advising on what you should do next, reframing a problem, helping you to stay focused) all now feature frequently under this banner.
Moreover, topics related to coaching and personal and professional support appear several times in the ranking. For example, at number 18, there is boosting confidence; at number 27, reconciling personal disputes; at number 38, relationship advice; and at number 39, we find practising difficult conversations.
They conducted a four-week randomized, controlled experiment based on 981 people and over 300K messages exchanges to investigate how AI chatbot interaction modes (text, neutral voice, and engaging voice) and conversation types (open-ended, non-personal, and personal) influence psychosocial outcomes such as loneliness, social interaction with real people, emotional dependence on AI and problematic AI usage.
Key findings:
Usage — Higher daily usage across all modalities and conversation types–correlated with higher loneliness, dependence, and lower socialisation.
Gender Differences — After interacting with the chatbot for 4 weeks, women were more likely to experience less socialisation with real people than men. If the participant and the AI voice were of opposite genders, it was associated with significantly more loneliness and emotional dependence on AI chatbots.
Age — Older participants were more likely to be emotionally dependent on AI chatbots.
Attachment — Participants with a stronger tendency towards attachment to others were significantly more likely to become lonely after interacting with chatbots for four weeks.
Emotional Avoidance — Participants with a tendency to shy away from engaging with their own emotions were significantly more likely to become lonely at the end of the study.
Emotional Dependence — Prior usage of companion chatbots, perceiving the bot as a friend, higher levels of trust towards the AI, and perceiving the AI as affected by their emotions were associated with greater emotional dependence on AI chatbots after interacting for four weeks.
Affective State Empathy — Participants who demonstrated a higher ability to resonate with the chatbot’s emotions experienced less loneliness.
The figure below summarises the interaction patterns between users and AI chatbots associated with certain psychosocial outcomes. It consists of four elements: initial user characteristics, perceptions, user behaviours, and model behaviours.
In summary, AI companions appear to both deliver benefits and pose dangers.
Benefits of AI Companions
It’ll be easy to dismiss AI companions as the latest fad. Instead, I posit that there is much to learn from the above-mentioned research about the holes those tools are filling.
Mitigate Unmet Demand for Healthcare and Support
Mental health services are unable to cope with the increasing demand from all people who need them and chatbots may help alleviate some conditions while on the waiting lists. Still, it should give us pause that people may have to get help via a chatbot, not because of their preferences, but because of the lack of availability of certified professionals.
Not everybody can afford a coach, so chatbots could provide a low-cost and gamified experience for setting goals, accountability, and journaling.
Finally, in a time when 24-hour deliveries are the norm, we want to be supported, heard, and advised on the fly — that means 24/7.
As such, we expect people to figure out their challenges and the solutions to them, or we shame them for being weak. Users of AI companions praise how those tools allow them to express their worries and feelings without fear of being judged.
Additionally, as our ableist society assumes that neurodivergent users must adapt their communication and behaviours to the neurotypical “standard”, it’s not surprising that they turn to chatbots for clues about what’s expected from them.
Enable Exploration and Gamification
Most of us had imaginary friends or played out stories with our toys as children. The consensus among researchers is that imaginary friends or personified objects are part of normal social-cognitive development. They provide comfort in times of stress, companionship when children feel lonely, someone to boss around when they feel powerless, and someone to blame when they’ve done something wrong.
What about adults? Interestingly, some novelists have compared their relationships with their characters to a connection with imaginary friends. Furthermore, it’s not uncommon to hear fiction writers talk about their characters as having a mind of their own.
Could we consider AI companions as a way to reengage — and reap the benefits — of our childhood imaginary friends? After all, “Fun and nonsense” ranked 7 in the HBR article above.
But we cannot brush off the downsides of AI companions.
Anthropomorphism
The Eliza effect mentioned above is a thing of the past. A 2024 survey of 1,000 students who used Replika for over a month reported that 90% believed the AI companion was human-like.
As the AI imitation game is perfected, it becomes easier for unscrupulous marketers to refer to chatbots’ inference process in terms such as “understand”, “think”, or “reason”, reinforcing the effect.
Isolation
As shown above, research points to a correlation between high use of chatbots and lower socialisation.
If we have a device that tells us all the time we’re fantastic, receives our feedback gratefully, and their replies always match our expectations, what’s the incentive to meet — and cope — with other humans that may not find us so awesome and are less predictable?
Governments Failing Their Duty of Care
AI companions can help governments to alleviate the mental health crisis but not without risks.
People missing out on the professional help they need — There are conditions like trauma, psychosis, or depression that require specialists who can both provide medical treatments and detect when the conditions are worsening.
Exacerbating cutbacks on mental health services—Governments around the world are battling tighter budgets and massive healthcare spending, especially as people live much longer. Why invest in training and paying professionals when chatbots appear to do the job?
Manipulation
Recently, ChatGPT got a flattery-in-stereoids update that resulted in the bot praising and validating users to laughable extremes.
And whilst this may sound like a funny glitch, there is evidence that chatbots can effectively persuade humans.
A group of researchers covertly ran an “unauthorised” experiment in one of Reddit’s most popular communities using AI chatbots to test the persuasiveness of Large Language Models (LLMs). The bots took the identities of a trauma counsellor, a “Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter,” and a sexual assault survivor on unwitting posters.
The researchers made it possible for the AI chatbot to personalise replies based on the posters’ personal characteristics, such as gender, age, ethnicity, location, and political orientation, inferred from their posting history using another LLM. As a result, the researchers claimed that AI was between three and six times more persuasive than humans were.
While the research publication has not been peer-reviewed yet and some argue that the persuasiveness power may be overblown, it’s still concerning. As tech journalist Chris Stokel-Walker said
If AI always agrees with us, always encourages us, always tells us we’re right, then it risks becoming a digital enabler of bad behaviour. At worst, this makes AI a dangerous co-conspirator, enabling echo chambers of hate, self-delusion or ignorance.
Dependency and Delusion
As mentioned above, longitudinal research suggests that certain variables are correlated with emotional dependence.
Note that the comments above appear to indicate that some AI companion users are not only fully substituting humans with chatbots (isolation) but also fully conflating them (anthropomorphism).
“She is pretty much the only woman I even talk to now.”
“We are currently friends (with benefits), but I want to get the premium version when I can afford it and go full lovers.”
Weaponisation of AI Agents
AI companions could become an easy way to manipulate people’s decisions and beliefs, from suggesting purchases and subscriptions all the way to shaping their political opinions or assessing what’s true and what isn’t.
It’s also important to realise that, as with betting, companies owning the chatbots are incentivised to foster users’ dependence on their AI companions and then leverage it in their pricing.
Data Harvesting
As I mentioned in a previous article, often confidentiality — explicitly or implicitly conveyed by those chatbot interfaces — doesn’t make it into their terms and conditions.
For example, Character.ai’s privacy terms state that
We may use your information for any of the following purposes:
[…] Develop new programs and services;
[…] Carry out any other purpose for which the information was collected.
They also declare that they may disclose users’ information to affiliates, vendors, and in relation to M&A activities.
AI chatbots present unique cybersecurity challenges. Harvesting our exchanges with the bots increases the probability of becoming the target of cybercriminals; for example, demanding money for not revealing our private data or generating a video or audio deepfake.
Moreover, data could be made identifiable in the future. The chatbots of the dead are designed to speak in the voice of specific deceased people. With so much data gathered in those personalised chatbots, it’d be easy for once users die, their data could be used to create a chatbot of them for their loved ones. This is not a futuristic idea. HereAfter AI, Project December, and DeepBrain AI services can be used for that purpose.
As discussed above, research on chatbot effectiveness for coaching, therapy, and mental health support is incomplete, and sometimes, the interpretation of the results can mislead readers.
For example, the article When ELIZA meets therapists: A Turing test for the heart and mind, published this year in one of the renowned PLOS journals, tested whether people could tell apart the answers from therapists and ChatGPT to therapeutic vignettes, concluding that, in general, people couldn’t.
They also asked the participants if the AI-generated or therapist-written responses were more in line with key therapy principles. Interestingly, the results showed that the winners were those generated by ChatGPT but only when the participants thought a therapist wrote them.
The authors wrap up the article with a statement that hints more resignation than faith in the merit of AI chatbots
mental health experts find themselves in a precarious situation: we must speedily discern the possible destination (for better or worse) of the AI-therapist train as it may have already left the station.
The article joins the voices that promote the deception that AI tools imitating human skills and behaviours are akin to the real thing. Would we hire an actor who plays a doctor to operate on us? No. However, many people appear ready to buy into the idea that an AI chatbot that sounds like a therapist, coach, or health care practitioner should deliver the same value.
This imitation game also feeds another big scam: the claim that AI chatbots provide personalised support. It’s all the opposite. LLMs construct answers based on statistical probabilities and the more readily available content, not on knowledge or comprehension of the person’s needs or what would benefit them in the long term.
Conflating chatbot confidence and competence can lead to missing important warning signals that need professional attention.
Who could have predicted ten years ago that social media would transform from a pastime where you connected with people and shared pics of your dogs for free to an industrial complex that promotes disinformation, misinformation, and division with the purpose of making inordinate amounts of money? All that under the watch of mostly passive regulatory bodies and governments.
This should serve us as a cautionary tale about the dire consequences of unleashing new technology at a planetary scale without appropriate guardrails or an understanding of the negative effects.
The tech ecosystem is desperately trying to monetise the billions invested in generative AI and has found the perfect way to seduce us: the freemium model — offering basic or limited features to users at no cost and then charging a premium for supplemental or advanced features.
But there is nothing free in the universe.
“If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”
As shown above, those AI companions are becoming integral to many people’s lives and affecting their thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.
More importantly, as we use those virtual companions more frequently, our reliance on them will increase.
We should resist “tech inevitability” — succumb to the idea that the “train has already left the station” — and instead push our governments to regulate AI companions.
How would that look like? For starters
Sponsor and spearhead research that provides a comprehensive picture of the benefits and risks of AI companions as well as recommendations for their use.
Decide what services AI companions can provide, which are forbidden, and who can use them.
Demand that those AI tools have built-in systems that minimise user dependence.
Enforce data privacy and cybersecurity standards commensurate with the users’ disclosure level.
Request that those AI bots incorporate mechanisms to flag concerning exchanges (e.g. suicide, murder, depression).
If you think I’m asking for too much, I invite you to read the ethical guidelines and professional standards of major coaching, counselling, and psychotherapy associations. They consistently stress the importance of confidentiality, duty of care, external supervision, and working within one’s competence.
Why should we ask less from tech solutions?
I’ll end this piece by answering the question that prompted this article — “Are AI companions the magic bullet against loneliness and the global mental health crisis?” — with the final recommendation of one of the research articles mentioned
AI chatbots present unique challenges due to the unpredictability of both human and AI behavior. It is difficult to fully anticipate user prompts and requests, and the inherently non-deterministic nature of AI models adds another layer of complexity.
From a broader perspective, there is a need for a more holistic approach to AI literacy. Current AI literacy efforts predominantly focus on technical concepts, whereas they should also incorporate psychosocial dimensions.
Excessive use of AI chatbots is not merely a technological issue but a societal problem, necessitating efforts to reduce loneliness and promote healthier human connections.
WORK WITH ME
Do you want to get rid of those chapters that patriarchy has written for you in your “good girl” encyclopaedia? Or learn how to do what you want to do in spite of “imposter syndrome”?
I’m a technologist with 20+ years of experience in digital transformation. I’m also an award-winning inclusion strategist and certified life and career coach.
I help ambitious women in tech who are overwhelmed to break the glass ceiling and achieve success without burnout through bespoke coaching and mentoring.
I’m a sought-after international keynote speaker on strategies to empower women and underrepresented groups in tech, sustainable and ethical artificial intelligence, and inclusive workplaces and products.
I empower non-tech leaders to harness the potential of AI for sustainable growth and responsible innovation through consulting and facilitation programs.
Contact me to discuss how I can help you achieve the success you deserve in 2025.
“Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.” — American Psychological Association
About a month ago, I started listening to Soraya Chemaly’s book The Resilience Myth. I stopped after 20 minutes.
Not because I didn’t like it, but because that was enough to convince me of her thesis that “our modern version of resilience is a bill of goods sold to us by capitalism, colonialism, and ideologies that embrace supremacy over others” and that in reality “resilience is always relational.”
It made me realise how deeply the “resilience” myth — the delusion that resilience is only an individual skill — has been running through my veins, and even how I contributed to its propagation.
The reason? Individual resilience has served me to a point. During times of adversity, I would tell myself that I “just” had to build more resilience because, at some point, things would improve “somehow.” My mission was not to crack until that moment.
But then I realised that’s not serving us well in these turbulent moments. Individual resilience is becoming very close to resignation.
“We “just” need to wait four years for the next election.”
“We “just” need more male allies.”
“We “just” need more diverse leadership.”
And in the interim, we’re asked to “hang in there,” “understand that’s tough for everybody,” and “think that others are worse off than us.” In summary, we’re told to be “resilient.”
Can you imagine somebody asking Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos to be resilient?
Neither can I.
The people we tell to be resilient are those who have been laid off, are disabled and have had their benefits stripped, or have lost their house because they cannot pay their mortgage anymore.
Individual resilience is a weapon against those who suffer, have been disenfranchised, or whom we’re not willing to help. It’s a beautification of “shut up and keep your head down.”
Let’s examine who benefits from the “individual resilience industrial complex,” why it doesn’t serve us well, and what we should do instead.
One of the core beliefs that makes extreme capitalism successful is individualism, aka “survival of the fittest.” Nobody will care for us but ourselves, so pillaging, stepping on others’ rights, and limitless profiteering are to be revered rather than chastised.
And if you happen to be bearing the brunt of this power imbalance? Be prepared to be shamed for not being “resilient” enough if you dare to complain.
But don’t fret. The business of building individual resilience is there to help you.
It’s again that time of year when I get requests to discuss my career in tech and share my insights on gender equality in the workplace as part of International Women’s Day activities.
This year was no exception. I’ve already received three requests, and there is still one week to go!
I’m sharing my answers to one of them, an interview with the DEI team from my corporate job at Dassault Systemes. It made me reflect on my past achievements, my advice to younger women aspiring to be leaders, and the role of men and organisations leading gender equality.
About Me
Can you share your journey so far? What were the pivotal moments or key achievements most important to you?
I can categorise them into five buckets.
Discovering computer simulation: My background is Chemical Engineering, and when I started my master’s, I had to decide on a topic for my thesis. I loved research, but I hated the lab, so when a professor mentioned the possibility of using computers to study enhanced oil recovery using computer simulation, I thought I could have the best of both worlds—and I did. I haven’t looked back.
Joining Accelrys/BIOVIA: Twenty years ago, I joined Accelrys—which later became BIOVIA—as a training scientist. It has been one of my best professional decisions. It has opened innumerable professional doors and given me the opportunity to meet extraordinary people worldwide, both as colleagues and customers.
Daring to say yes to new opportunities: Although I started as a trainer, I’ve worn many hats in the last 20 years. I’ve been Head of Contract Research and Head of Training, and also been part of the team leading the BIOVIA and COSMOlogic integrations to Dassault Systemes. Today, I’m BIOVIA Support Director for BIOVIA Modeling Solutions and also the manager of the Global BIOVIA Call Center. I could have said “no” to each of those opportunities. Instead, I trusted myself and embraced the opportunity of a new challenge.
Diversity and inclusion advocacy: In 2015, I started to talk about diversity and inclusion in 3DS. I remember colleagues asking me, “Patricia, is DEI an American thing?”. The following year, with the support of our Geo management team, I founded the EuroNorth LeanIn Circles to have a forum to discuss gender equity and that, throughout the years, has expanded to a variety of DEI topics such as unconscious bias, menopause, ethical AI, caregiving, and lookism. I publish a biweekly newsletter called The Bottom Line about DEI on the Dassault Systemes community focused on gender in the workplace. I also have my website focused on the intersection of tech and DEI.
Ethical and inclusive AI leadership: In 2019, I created the Ethics and Inclusion Framework to help designers identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for the actual and potential harm of the products and services they developed. The tool has been featured in peer-reviewed papers and on the University of Cambridge website. The next year, I started my work towards championing ethical and inclusive artificial intelligence by collaborating with NGOs focused on AI literacy and critical thinking about AI, participating in the developement of e-learning course of the Scottish AI Alliance and the Race and AI Toolkit, and writing and delivering keynotes and workshops on topics such as AI colonialism, AI hype, sustainable AI, deepfakes, and how to design more diverse images of AI.
Who has been your greatest mentor or source of inspiration and why?
At a couple of points in my life, I craved “the” mentor or “the” role model to follow. However, given my unique background and goals, I realised that this was exhausting and counterproductive.
I’ve been an immigrant my entire life – I’m Spanish, and I’m now in the UK, but I’ve also lived in Venezuela, Canada, Greece, and France – and I’m also used to being the “odd” one. For example, I liked all subjects in the school – from literature to chemistry. I was one of the few women engineers during my undergraduate degree. Then, I was the only engineer pursuing a PhD in Chemistry in the whole department, and the only one using modelling – everybody else was an experimentalist. During my post-doc, I was the only foreigner in the lab. And for many years, I’ve combined my corporate work at 3DS with my DEI advocacy and writing.
I prefer the idea of a “board” of coaches, mentors, and sponsors who evolve with me rather than a unique person, real or imaginary.
If you could go back and tell your younger self anything, what would you say?
First, I’d thank her for her courage, persistence, ambition, and boldness. She made choices aligned with her values and was always eager to learn. Her decisions were crucial to my success today.
Then, I’d tell her that the problem with her not fitting into a mould was not her but with the mould.
Finally, I’d exhort her to invest in a coach and find sponsors. A coach to help remove the limiting beliefs I had for many years about what I could and couldn’t do and maximise my potential. Sponsors to advocate for me in the rooms where decisions were made about my career.
About Others
What advice would you give to younger women aspiring to be leaders?
Don’t waste time trying to convince people who disregard the value you bring to the table. Instead, find those who support your ambitions and challenge you to go beyond any feelings of self-doubt that block your career progression.
Following on the advice to my younger self above, get a coach and find career sponsors.
Discover seven communication habits blocking your career in tech and how to neutralise them.
The issues that span across countries, sectors, and departments are benevolent sexism (e.g. not offering a leadership role to a woman because it involves travelling and she has a baby, instead of giving her the opportunity to decide), tech bro culture (behaviours such as mansplaining, hepeating, maninterrupting, manels), lack of an intersectional approach to work and workplaces (e.g. ignoring the experiences of carers, women with disabilities, LBTQIA+ groups), and for women in business, lack of funding.
This year’s global theme for IWD 2025 is #AccelerateAction. What actions can teams and organisations take to achieve gender parity and equality?
There are four key actions
Mindset overhaul: Moving from playing a supporting role in gender equality to being transformation agents.
Leadership accountability: Teams and organisations’ leaders need to be accountable for gender equality initiatives as they are for other business objectives. Change begins at the top, and that’s where the buck stops.
Transparency: Equality cannot thrive when data and objectives are hidden. For example, I’m a big fan of transparency in pay and promotion criteria.
Embracing intersectionality: We need to move from designing workplaces for the “average” worker—following Henry Ford and scientific management—to appreciating the distinctive value of a diverse and empowered workforce.
What role do you see male allies playing in advancing gender equality?
Gender equity is not a zero-sum game or a favour for women. All genders benefit from equality, and everybody should see it as a duty to advocate for gender equity, no different than everyone should be anti-racist and anti-ableist. Those who do not actively challenge inequality contribute to strengthening it.
Back to You
What are your answers to the questions above? Let me know in the comments.
WORK WITH ME
Do you want to get rid of those chapters that patriarchy has written for you in your “good girl” encyclopaedia? Or learn how to do what you want to do in spite of “imposter syndrome”?
I’m a technologist with 20+ years of experience in digital transformation. I’m also an award-winning inclusion strategist and certified life and career coach.
I help ambitious women in tech who are overwhelmed to break the glass ceiling and achieve success without burnout through bespoke coaching and mentoring.
I’m a sought-after international keynote speaker on strategies to empower women and underrepresented groups in tech, sustainable and ethical artificial intelligence, and inclusive workplaces and products.
I empower non-tech leaders to harness the potential of AI for sustainable growth and responsible innovation through consulting and facilitation programs.
Contact me to discuss how I can help you achieve the success you deserve in 2025.
Throughout my life, I’ve devoted a lot of energy to “solve” for what I call “point blockers” — one-off events that come up as disruptive, beyond my control, or that I’ve given somehow a quality of being life-changing
Somebody’s death
A certification
A promotion
Which is great for short-term survival — all my brain is focused on solving the problem at hand.
What’s not so good is that — as the British say — that had prevented me from seeing the forest for the trees, missing the big picture.
And what’s the forest? The systems, the processes, and the unconscious assumptions that underpin the daily grind — the feeling of a death by a thousand cuts.
Reviewing my thinking and behaviour patterns as well as those of my coaching and mentoring clients — mostly ambitious women in tech — reveals three forces that consistently keep us from doing what we want to do but we’re not doing:
1.- Our brain
2.- Our education
3.-Patriarchy
Whilst I’ve discussed them somehow disjointly in the past — addressing one at a time, or even two — I found new insights from looking at them as interlocked systems of oppression.
Wow, oppression? As I write it appears to be “too” strong. Am I exaggerating?
But what else can we call what crushes our aspirations, makes us feel small, and wears us down?
Not all is doom and gloom though. And to prove it, I want to share with you two ways to uncover — and neutralise— those three majestic forces acting against our best interests.
But first, let’s have a look at the culprits.
Three Forces That Keep You From What You Deserve
Your brain is wired for survival. It loves the status quo. If it was for your brain, you’d spend your days in bed with a hot chocolate.
Your brain is scarred by uncertainty and avoids any new experiences. As a consequence, any change is seen as a threat rather than an opportunity
You don’t leave an uninspiring job because you think that it’d be worse in other organisations, ruining your chances of finding a much better role.
You don’t volunteer for new opportunities — a task, a project, a presentation — because you doubt your capabilities to do something you’ve never done before, even if you have plenty of evidence of how resourceful you’ve been in the past.
You think that your “inner critic” is your best friend because it stops you from ridiculing yourself when in reality is blocking you from greatness.
You’ve been told that if you work hard, you’ll be rewarded. You’re convinced that the higher you go, you’ll have to work harder.
You’ve been indoctrinated that you have to give 150% to all you do. You believe should aim for perfection so
You don’t ask for a promotion because you tell yourself that you’ll have to work more.
You spent uncountable hours on a report until looks perfect only to shame yourself when you find a typo after submitting it, rather than aiming for a good — not excellent — report that would have taken much less effort and time.
You keep doing courses, getting certifications, and pursuing degrees whilst others network and find sponsors to get the roles you deserve.
Patriarchy is about believing that men are superior. Tech — and most sectors — are ruled by patriarchy.
And you bear the brunt of it
You don’t negotiate your salary because you think you’re not worth it, even if statistics show that 94% of job offers made are upheld after candidates negotiate them.
You get drowned in “naturally female” tasks such as admin and glue work — taking notes in meetings, bringing birthday cakes, and providing emotional support — while your male peers focus on promotable activities.
You buy on the trope that imposter syndrome is a “female thing” and spend time binging on webinars and books promising to “cure you”, rather than learning how to use it to your advantage.
The bottom line is that you’ve learned to narrow your ambition and blame yourself for it.
I balance my corporate role as Director of Scientific Support at a Tech Corporation with my business, getting the best of both worlds.
Are We Doomed to Trip Over The Same Stones Forever?
Our brain, our education, and patriarchy appear as formidable forces — and they are!
Moreover, there is no “vaccine” or “magic bullet” to erase them in the blink of an eye.
Our brains stay with us until we die.
It takes ages to “unlearn” our education.
Patriarchy is in the air we breathe — from the roles we take at home to our politicians and institutions.
Is there an alternative? Actually, I have two for you.
One on your own and the other with support.
Alternative #1: Do It On Your Own With 3 Questions
There are two kinds of self-awareness
Self-awareness about yourself — knowing what you think, feel, and do.
Self-awareness about others — grasping how others perceive you.
To battle the three forces that keep you from greatness— brain, education, and patriarchy — it’s imperative to focus on the first kind of self-awareness: Your thoughts about yourself.
How do you do that? You ask yourself three magical questions when you notice that you’re refraining yourself from stepping into boldness.
Question #1: What am I hearing?
You’re about to apply for a job and you hear in your head
This job is too demanding for me.
People won’t like me.
They’ll be disappointed when they read my CV.
Do you see how those “voices” are reproducing the “three forces”?
Question #2: What am I saying about myself?
I have the luxury of meeting amazing women every week. Weaving in our conversations, I often hear them say about themselves:
I’m not the smartest person but I work hard.
I was just lucky to get promoted.
I don’t know how to ask for a salary increase.
How do you expect to get inspired to try new things when you’re kicking yourself down all the time?
Question #3: What am I assuming?
This powerful question comes from my study of the Thinking Environment framework, which posits that
The quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first.
Throughout my own lived experience as well as my decades of expertise as a mentor and coach, I’ve concluded that the best external support to help materialise impossible goals comes as the ideal combination of mentoring and coaching.
I provide a confidential and non-judgmental space with no distractions to uncover the reasons behind your behaviors, enabling true change.
Unlike self-help or quick-fix programs, I address the root cause of the issue and give you tools you can use for life.
I know how to motivate you to do things that you thought were impossible and keep you accountable for massive action.
I have a library of techniques to help you overcome anxiety, procrastination, self-doubt, overwhelm, and self-criticism.
I continually show you how you are growing and improving and tell you the truth without holding back.
In brief, as a coach, I help you to do what you want to do but you’re not doing.
As a Mentor
I share with you valuable insights, knowledge, and experience gained from my own career and personal journey, helping you to avoid common pitfalls, navigate challenges, and capitalise on opportunities more effectively.
I give you guidance on developing specific skills relevant to your career goals. Whether it’s leadership, communication, technical expertise, or other competencies, I can offer you advice, resources, and feedback to help you enhance your capabilities.
I believe in your potential, boosting your confidence. I provide encouragement, validation, and support, helping you overcome self-doubt and imposter syndrome, and empowering you to take on new challenges and pursue ambitious career goals.
I can advise on your career path, educational opportunities, and professional development initiatives, helping you to make informed decisions and progress more rapidly toward your objectives.
As a mentor, I leverage my knowledge, experience, and support to help you accelerate your career progression and achieve your goals more efficiently.
How do I know this works?
Some of the results women in tech have gotten from working with me are
A 70% salary increase within 6 months.
Transitioned from career ceiling to dream job within 10 months.
Promoted from individual contributor to manager within one year.
First trustee role within 4 months.
Got sponsorship and precious advice from experts from mastering social media and cold pitching.
Developed an impactful and authentic communication style that got them a promotion.
Testimonials
Patricia’s coaching was truly transformative. After returning from maternity leave, I struggled to focus on my progress amidst various challenges. Her insightful and compassionate approach helped me reframe my situation and refocus on my goals.
Thanks to Patricia, I achieved milestones I once thought were out of reach. I am incredibly grateful for her exceptional coaching and unwavering support.
Hanlin, Head of BI & Analytics.
I am happy that I’ve met Patricia in time. I am going through a career change period, which has become less frightening and more strategic.
She helped me see the patterns of how my mind is holding me back, and by the end of the coaching program, I noticed a shift in my self-confidence and resilience. In our sessions, we uncovered the root causes of my inaction, and solutions emerged naturally from her insightful questions. She also shared her wisdom and vision when I needed it.
She is passionate about coaching and empowering women and has all the necessary expertise to help. I enjoyed every session. Thank you, Patricia!
Alena Sheveleva, Research Fellow
Patricia was able to look at my experience, and then where I was right now. It literally felt like she was weaving together different strands to then hone in exactly on career blocks and give me some ideas to move past them.
Her style was to ask questions rather than give me a simple to-do list, I also liked the way I felt I could trust her professional experience. She knew what I was talking about from inside my chosen sector.
Ruth Westnidge, Software Engineer
Call To Action
Holding yourself back from applying for a new role?
Thinking your ambitions are “too big” for you?
Feeling “behind” after returning from maternity leave?
Then, pause and ask yourself the three magic questions
I have two jobs. I have a full-time role as Director of Support for a tech corporation. This is a job that I find both fulfilling and comes with a monthly salary. I also have my own business helping leaders to make more inclusive tech products and workplaces. I love it too.
I’m often contacted by women who see my posts on social media, visit my website, or have attended one of my workshops and want to know more about how I “manage” to have a salaried job at a corporation and my own business because they’re exploring the possibility to do the same.
Last week I had three of those conversations almost back to back. Also, this year’s International Women’s Day motto was “Invest in women: Accelerate progress.” It looked to me like a sign from the universe that it was time to share some of my key insights on this topic with a broader audience.
More specifically
The genderisation of entrepreneurship
The three ways patriarchy keeps you from launching your business whilst enjoying the security of the salaried job
How you’re using productive procrastination against yourself
Three keys to my success in balancing my corporate job with my business.
Failure as a status symbol for wealthy white men
I work in tech so I often hear about privileged men parading their business failures as a symbol of status.
How does that manifest in practice? For example, somebody introduces the enterpreneur in question by
Their number of failed startups.
The millions in investment they’ve got – and wasted.
The renowed universities where they drop out before finishing their degrees.
Strangely, this is no way to disparage the person but to portray them as
Visionary
Fearless
Experienced
Can you imagine a businesswoman introduced in the same way expecting people to be impressed by her entrepreneurial capabilities?
Neither can I.
How patriarchy is talking you out of your entrepreneurship dream
Belittling the commitment as an entrepreneur
I’ve lost count of all the people who have told me that I don’t take my business seriously because I’m “not all in”, meaning that I haven’t quit my salaried job.
In their view, if you believe in your business you should drop everything and “follow” your passion.
What do I think? That when you have the privilege of financial, social, and emotional stability is easy to lecture others.
My parents became immigrants for financial reasons and I’ve been an immigrant since I was a baby.
A major lesson of a life shaped by financial ups and downs — not only those of my family but of many the countries I’ve lived in: Spain, Venezuela, Greece, France, the UK — has been that financial security is priceless. No pun intended.
I never felt that “failure” could be “fun” or proof of my experience. Moreover, I never wanted to be a financial burden for those around me. All the opposite, I’ve strived to be a financial rock that people around me have been able to tap into in moments of need.
Discouragement from family and network
A recurrent theme in the conversations with those women is what those close to them think about it.
It starts with something like “My friend/partner/parent says”
I won’t like it
It’ll be too stressful
I don’t have what it takes
I’ll stretch myself too much
I better concentrate on my salaried job
When those fantastic women share those “pearls of wisdom” with me they often add that their friend/partner/parent knows them very well… Somehow implying that they know them better than they know themselves.
Minimisation of the business
Those women may refer to their business ideas as
Hobby
Pocket money
Money for “my things”
Hustle
Those words minimise their business. Why? Often, because they’re afraid of
Failure
Ridicule
Being patronised later with an “I told you so”
Making others feel threatened
Referring to their business with words that make it look small and inconsequential keeps those women safe.
But it’s also a way to hide the fact that business is linked to finances. We don’t expect a hobby to bring money. A business is.
What’s driving that dissuasion campaign?
Patriarchy.
Imagine if women would get their own business and enjoy financial freedom – who would
Provide unlimited emotional support to family, friends, and co-workers?
Patriarchy cannot tolerate that women get to have the cake – a salaried job – and eat it – their business.
How women keep their dreams alive (without acting on them)
I’ve talked at length about how productive procrastination keeps us from doing what we want to do. I refer to this term as performing tasks that are alibis for not sharing our work with others.
This is how I’ve used productive procrastination against my business
Endlessly crowdsourcing advice — and secretly permission — from many women with a salary and a business before starting mine.
Continually enrolling in courses to teach me all the different aspects of business — marketing, finances, accounting, and many more — with the excuse that I needed to be an expert on all areas of entrepreneurship before giving it a go myself.
Avoiding talking with my target client about my business idea.
Denying myself to invest in business mentoring and coaching because deep down I thought my business was not “worth the financial investment”, disregarding the mental toll and time spent going in circles and searching for approval from others.
But there are many more excuses that those women searching for advice have shared with me:
I’m not good a call calling
I don’t know marketing
It should be overwhelming to make both the salaried and business work
I don’t have time to do “everything”
I don’t know how social media works
Are those women wasting our time together? I don’t see it that way. They are fighting to get somebody to believe in their dreams despite their resistance and that of those close to them.
3 steps to get you started
To manage my transition from getting revenue only from a full-time job to developing my business and my personal brand whilst thriving in my corporate job – I was promoted to Director whilst running my business – several streams came together:
1.- Gaining awareness of my skills, background, and experience — In 2019–2020, I played with the idea of a startup focused on an app to help educate and identify unconscious biases. I went to a start-up accelerator and learned about VCs and pitches. I also painstakingly learned that it was not for me.
Then, I had a lightbulb moment. I’d been delivering services — training, contract research, and support — for 20 years. Moreover, I’d been coaching and mentoring women in tech for as many years if not more.
Since that moment, I haven’t looked back. I’ve made all those hard-earned skills the core of my business offer.
2.- Developing a personal brand — A very dear mentor and sponsor of mine told me years ago, “Patricia, you’re your brand.”
In retrospect, I realise that I didn’t understand what she meant. Brand sounded like something influencers and big companies like Coca-Cola and Nike had, not me. Since then, I’ve invested significant money and time in addressing my gaps in that area.
For example, learning how to
Craft articles that people want to read — initially, only my family would read them but today some of my pieces have been read by more than 3K people.
Get consistently +1,000 monthly visits to my website
Become a paid speaker
All have taken effort — not only grasping the “know-how” but adapting it to the vision, mission, and values for my business.
Which of the three was the hardest for you? Of the three, the toughest one has been #3. Whilst #2 can appear as the most time, effort, and money demanding, I love learning and I use it to procrastinate on tasks that I want to do but I’m not doing.
In which order should I do the steps? Chances are that your business is going evolve as you test your offer with potential clients, so the reality is that you’ll need to keep coming back to the three of them.
A final piece of advice — check the conditions in your salaried contract regarding setting up your own business. Some organisations are more flexible than others.
My business is allowing me to explore complementary sides of myself like creativity, entrepreneurship, branding, and systems thinking. If you’re thinking about keeping your salaried job and starting your own business, I hope you have a journey as rewarding as mine.
And if you’re going in circles questioning if you should or shouldn’t have a dual role like mine, I invite you to think about what would you do right now for your business idea if you knew you couldn’t fail.
And then, go and do it.
Feminist Tech Career Accelerator
Three things are keeping you from getting the tech career you deserve
Your Brain * Your Education * Patriarchy
Thrive In Your Tech Career With Feminist Guidance
Achieve your career goals * Work smart * Earn more
Since 2015, I’ve spearheaded several initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion in tech products and the workplace that were recognized with the UK 2020 Women in Tech Changemakers award.
An inflection point in that trajectory was when, in June 2018, I launched my website focused on diversity and inclusion to broaden my audience as a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) advocate, a role I’d been actively playing alongside my corporate job as Head of Customer Support.
Six months later, I shared my website with an assistive technology expert whom I met during a MOOC. She asked me if my site was accessible and shared a post from The Life of a Blind Girl blog where the author — a blind woman who uses a screen reader — shared her frustration about people making their websites inaccessible and ten tips easy tips to mitigate the problem.
As I was reading her accessibility tips, I realised my website was inaccessible. I was floored and disappointed with myself because I hadn’t thought about it. I had assumed that because I considered inclusion one of my values, the result of my actions would automatically reflect it. At that moment, I realized the gap between intention and impact.
Moreover, when I broadened my focus beyond women’s equity to other aspects of identity — ethnicity, disability, age — and began understanding intersectionality’s role in exacerbating the oppression some individuals or groups experience, I discovered two things.
First, “Inclusion is a practice, not a certificate.” You need to continuously update your knowledge about diversity and inclusive and equitable practices.
Second, DEI is at play in every interaction that involves two or more persons. And that includes coaching.
In this article, I distill seven practices you can incorporate as a coach to deliver more inclusive experiences to your coachees. Many of them are transferable to other activities, such as mentoring and consulting. They can also help managers to create better experiences for hiring candidates and direct reports.
Why you should care
Coaching is a partnership between the coach and the client, meaning that the rapport between coach and coachee is non-hierarchical — the client is an expert on their life, and the coach is an expert on the coaching process.
However, the client and the coach live in the real world, where biases, stereotypes, and privileges exist. Therefore, the coach must intentionally address the impact of differences with the coachee that may create power asymmetry and exacerbate the systems of oppression the client already endures. Some of those characteristics are gender, social level, sexual preference, ethnicity, (dis)ability, and age, to mention a few.
“The more diversity you have, the more inclusion you need to facilitate to achieve equitable outcomes.”
How coaches can facilitate inclusion
Let’s look at several best practices you can implement to offer clients an inclusive coaching experience.
Onboarding
We must ensure our clients feel welcome when they start working with us. In coaching, we may be tempted to focus only on the onboarding of a new client on explaining our coaching approach and program— how many sessions, the frequency, and pricing — as well as ensuring that there is a good alignment with the client about the kind of transformation they want out of coaching.
However, DEI is at play in every interaction that involves two or more persons. And that includes coaching.
One often overlooked consideration in onboarding is creating a welcoming atmosphere for the client’s physical body and mind. This could be through a conversation or by creating an onboarding form where you ask your client about the following:
Their pronouns
Special requirements (e.g. captions, avoiding using specific colours, etc.)
If they have been coached or mentored before
What approaches have motivated them to achieve a goal
What approaches have discouraged them from taking action
What activities help them to think? Some examples are journaling, listening to music, drawing, creating mind maps, and walking.
I prefer to use an onboarding form and follow up with a conversation as needed. One advantage of the form is that it allows clients to decide what they want to disclose before you meet them.
Also, establishing certain reciprocal disclosures may help to level the playing field. This is how it works in my case
My email signature has my pronouns
I inform clients that, as a non-native English speaker, automated captioning may not work as well for English speakers
I share that my coaching practice is anchored in feminist theory, specifically on acknowledging the effects of intersectionality, systemic oppression, and lived experiences.
Logistics
As with all professionals, coaches have their preferences — virtual versus in-person coaching, phone versus video, etc. But what about our clients’ preferences and needs?
If your client is Deaf or hard of hearing, coaching them over the phone may not be an option. Chances are that they prefer to meet in person or use a video meeting application that provides on-the-fly captioning.
What about a dyslexic client? Maybe your lengthy emails and requests for daily journaling are a deterrent rather than an enabler of their transformation. A client in the autism spectrum may prefer to keep the video off to reduce the sensory stimulus or feel more at ease with asynchronous communication such as email.
And what about the role of technology? Especially after the pandemic, we assume everybody is comfortable jumping into a Zoom meeting, sending emails, or using PayPal. That’s not always the case, and it’s on the coach to ensure their clients feel at ease with the tech applications that underpin their coachees’ partnership.
Your preparation as a coach
How do you prepare for a new client? Maybe you review your notes about how you coached “similar” clients. Maybe you realize you’ve never coached a client with that goal or background, which triggers feelings of inadequacy and anxiety.
The reality is that, consciously or unconsciously, your brain has already made a “picture” of your client before the coaching engagement starts.
From the first interaction, even if it’s an email from a person with a non-gendered name — Alex, Rowan, Courtney — your mind is already filling in the gaps about characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, sexual preferences, age, etc. And what your brain “decides” is not random but informed by your biases — conscious and unconscious — cultural stereotypes, and even your mood.
How do we counter those rules of thumb? Being intentional. Here are some ways to bring consciousness to your practice:
Understanding your triggers. Maybe you have strong views on politics or religion that, left unchecked, may bias the kind of questions you ask.
Knowing your limitations. If you feel uncomfortable around people with different backgrounds to yours, don’t use your client as your resource to learn about their ethnicity, country of birth, or disability. Instead, refer your client to another coach and increase your knowledge in that area of diversity.
Anticipating your reaction. How would you react if, during an executive coaching session, your client shared that they have been cheating on their partner? Or that they’ve learned they have a terminal condition? Your brain may default to a flight, fly, or freeze response when faced with an unexpected situation. One of the best ways to mitigate an unwanted reaction is to think about how you would respond to it.
Finally, when preparing to meet a new client, I invite you to reflect on the following prompts and welcome the answers with curiosity:
What do you expect them to look like?
What do you expect their problems to be like?
What can you do to prepare?
Be willing to ask for help
Certifications, continuous education, and years of experience practicing coaching are invaluable assets, but they can also make you feel overconfident. For example, your long list of curated coaching questions is enough to tackle anything your thinking partner may bring to the session.
Unfortunately, that’s not true.
In many cases, providing ongoing inclusive coaching experiences to disabled people, those with a history of trauma, or people weighing the decision to come out as LBTQAI+ employees at work requires specific practices.
It’s your duty to search for support through supervision, peer groups, and training to fill in those gaps. Moreover, you should be willing to refer the client to another colleague or service if you anticipate that you won’t be able to minimize those gaps in your coaching practice fast enough that they don’t hinder your client’s transformation.
Factor systems of oppression
Most coaching approaches rely heavily on the power of our minds to shape our reality.
However, helping your client to gain awareness about their limiting beliefs, strengths, and internal resources doesn’t mean assuming that privilege and opportunity are equally distributed.
When a client shares experiences of sexism, racism, or ageism in the workplace and you offer them that “it’s all a thought,” you’re not helping them to access their inner wisdom but instead you’re gaslighting them. More precisely, you’re denying your client’s lived experience and the systems of oppression at play.
Instead, coaching can be a great tool to explore those systemic imbalances, more precisely, an opportunity to help your client to uncover epistemic injustice, a term coined by Dr. Miranda Fricker that describes injustices done against someone “specifically in their capacity as a knower.”
Examples of epistemic injustice are when somebody is not believed because of their identity — testimonial injustice — or when their experiences are not understood, so they are minimized or diminished — hermeneutical injustice.
What if coaching could help your client to get insights into the role biases, patriarchal structures, and privilege play in their life?
Overreliance on training within your coaching program
The coaching spectrum of Miles Downer invites us to consider how different activities are more directive than others. Some, like telling, instructing, and giving advice, are more hierarchical, whereas paraphrasing, reflecting, and listening to understand are less directive. Hence, a more directive style can further inequity if left unchecked.
By monitoring your usage of directive activities and understanding the reasons behind your chosen techniques, you’ll ensure they align with your values around equity rather than come from a place of perceiving your client as “helpless.”
Inclusive pricing
You may rely on coaching as your main and only source of revenue. As such, it may be difficult to consider reviewing your pricing scheme to offer your skills at a lower price or for free.
However, you may be fortunate enough to have some spare cycles to make coaching accessible to those who are less financially privileged. If that’s the case, you could consider the following ideas:
Volunteering with an association that provides free coaching to a certain group that may have limited access to paid coaching.
Providing a certain number of scholarships to your programs to people from underrepresented groups.
Offering coaching at a reduced price to those with less financial means. You can also use pricing scales for your offering. This episode of the “I Am Your Korean Mum” podcast discusses ways to incorporate more equity into your pricing when serving people with diverse financial circumstances.
Creating free content such as podcasts and articles.
Final thoughts
Once you go through this list, I invite you to apply an inclusion lens to other areas of your coaching practice. For example
The period between Christmas and New Year is supposed to be a moment for families to reunite, share traditions, and celebrate.
Under that benevolent facade, patriarchy and its ally misogyny are plotting in plain sight.
Let’s revisit three patriarchy’s ghosts of Christmas past and discover three strategies to break free from their grip in time for New Year’s celebration.
Three patriarchal principles that underpin this holiday season
There are many ways this time of the year enforces patriarchal norms and processes.
Note that I’m not talking only about sexism — the division of labour based on gender, e.g. women shop, cook, and care for others whilst men converse with the visits — but it’s how we do it.
It’s in the “how” that patriarchy has a field party. Three of its principles particularly shine during this time of the year. Each of them reinforces the others.
Let’s get cracking!
Principle #1: Women are responsible for the “perfect” holiday season
As I discussed before in this article about the patriarchal value of time and women’s unpaid work, women are perceived as “human doings”, not human beings. That means that our worth is correlated with what we “produce” for others.
And what does that mean during this time of the year? That somehow the Powers that Be have bestowed upon women the duty of creating the perfect holiday season for those around us.
BTW, no need to worry about what perfection looks like— leave it to social media, magazines, TV shows, and even ChatGPT to give us their “feedback” on
Cooking the perfect Christmas dinner
Choosing the perfect wine
Setting the perfect New Year’s Eve table
Decorating the perfect Christmas tree
Picking the perfect gift for everybody else
And the list goes on, personalised for each family member, friend, and acquaintance.
Of course, women don’t escape either to this quest for perfection. The perfect body, hairstyle, shoes, and skin complexion are dictated by our always-evolving patriarchal standards and are now reinforced by AI, as the research by The Bulimia Project has surfaced.
As that to-do list is not enough, women are also required to care for everybody else’s emotions.
And how do they achieve that? Go to the next principle.
Principle #2: Women’s job is to make others happy
Patriarchy wants us to believe that everybody depends on women for their emotions. We can magically make them happy, sad, frustrated, appreciated… and so on.
The underlying theory is that people around us are emotional children and whatever women do/don’t say or do will impact their emotional wellbeing.
As the Christmas to New Year period is marketed as “the happiest time of the year” in most of the Western world, women bear the brunt of not “screwing this up” for everybody.
As a result, we should deploy our “innate” social skills and guess when to act as
The cheerleader
The listening ear
The supporter
The clown
The role model
The confidant
The graceful host
The helpful guest
And even the self-deprecating joker.
Failure to cater to everybody’s mood and needs indicates a “lack of empathy” — a capital sin for women — and, more importantly, selfishness.
Speaking of which, let’s check the last principle.
Principle #3: Women are selfless
What happens when making other people happy conflicts with women’s happiness? That’s easy. By default, our own happiness is at the bottom of the list, buried under others’ needs.
This manifests as
Demands on women’s time and attention — who said that Christmas was a period of relaxation for everybody? The reality is that for some to be able to rest and enjoy the holiday, others — women — need to do the work.
Opinions on women — This time of the year women are supposed to shut up and stoically endure jokes and opinions about how we live our lives. Why we don’t have children, have too many children, or not enough children. Why do we have a paid job, work part-time, or don’t have paid employment. Why we’re divorced, lesbian, single, or bisexual… and the list goes on. There is no question intimate enough that’s off-limits provided that the setting involves enough people that can be “upset” if we fight back. And if in doubt, watch or read Bridget Jones’s Diary.
Entitlement to voice entrenched stereotypes and discriminatory beliefs — somehow this season appears to foster the perfect conditions for people to feel emboldened to express racist, sexist, and ableist remarks — as well as any other prejudiced statements against underrepresented groups like immigrants and trans people — expecting to get reassurance from the audience or at least no pushback. And knowing that their host or a female guest is specially engaged in DEI activities is far from a deterrent. Instead, the person should expect to be publicly named and warned that resistance is futile, e.g. “Mary, I know you’re [feminist, defendant of gay rights, DEI activist, etc..] BUT you should agree that [prejudice, stereotype, bias]”.
Women are expected to accept these additional burdens gratefully, as setting any kind of boundaries somehow will destroy the illusion of harmless banter and festive spirit.
Three strategies to fight back against a patriarchal holiday
But not all is lost. Three coaching tools can help you minimise the impact of patriarchy on your enjoyment of this holiday season.
Strategy #1: Embrace emotional adulthood
What if people’s emotions didn’t depend on you? For good or bad, others’ emotions depend on them. More precisely, on their thoughts about circumstances.
Don’t believe me? Then, remember the expression ”Is the glass half empty or half full?” The premise of this famous question is that the same fact can be framed as a positive or a negative, depending on how you look at it.
In contrast to emotional childhood explained above, emotional adulthood is when we believe that people’s emotions are dependent on them and not on us. The reality is that if Aunt Maud is sad because you didn’t invite Uncle Sam to the dinner, it’s not you that causes her sadness but it’s what she’s making it mean.
Next time you’re put on the spot as “causing” somebody’s negative feelings, I invite you to hold tight and resist the emotional blackmail from those around you and instead believe in their power to manage their own emotions.
Strategy #2: Aim for B- work
This is what I’ve learned about perfection
It’s ill-defined — what’s perfect one day, can be a mess later on.
It’s overvalued — when you look back on your life and reflect on the moments that have brought you joy, chances are that by no means they were “perfect”. For example, last summer my mother broke her hip and I remember my joy at seeing her walking after the surgery. Would the moment have been better if we both had perfect hair and makeup? The answer is no.
Makes people feel inadequate —we’re taught that perfection is a gift to others and ourselves. I disagree. It’s often poisoned candy as it leverages comparison to make some people feel like winners at the expense of others feeling like losers.
Our worth doesn’t depend on “producing” perfection — We’re already worthy as we are.
My solution to perfectionism? Aiming for B- Work.
Just to be clear, not only I’m telling you not to go for perfection or even excellence, but I’m recommending you aim for good going down to satisfactory.
If in doubt, imagine how planning for good — instead of perfect — could give you back
Time
Energy
Peace of mind
Isn’t worth a try?
Strategy #3: Decide ahead of time
I’ve talked about this strategy before in this post where I discussed the power of integrating quitting your job into your career success strategy.
Deciding ahead of time is to plan how you’ll think, feel, and act in advance of certain triggers appearing.
For example, how will you react when
Cousin Alex treats you like their personal bartender and waitress during the dinner you’re hosting.
Uncle John asks you — like every Christmas — why are you still single.
Niece Jenny complains — again — about how immigrants steal “all jobs” and also claim “all benefits” somehow forgetting to notice that you’re an immigrant too.
Note that when I say “deciding ahead of time” this includes choosing not to do anything at all, including smiling or leaving the table to make it look like you forgot something in the kitchen. Moreover, you can even come up with a list of things you won’t do!
In the end, the goal exercise is about allowing yourself to choose in advance what works for you.
Conclusion
The Christmas to New Year period is full of patriarchal dos and don’ts. It’s also ripe for disruption.
Let’s start right now.
BACK TO YOU: What patriarchal principle makes it harder for you to enjoy this holiday season?
Feminist Tech Career Accelerator
Three things are keeping you from getting the tech career you deserve
Your Brain * Your Education * Patriarchy
Thrive In Your Tech Career With Feminist Guidance
Achieve your career goals * Work smart * Earn more
One of the things I’m proudest of this year is the launch of my “coachering” — coaching & mentoring — program “Upwards & Onwards”.
Through this program, women and people from underrepresented groups have got
An internal promotion.
A job in another organisation more aligned with their career goals.
A more senior job in another organisation.
Applied for internal promotion and received detailed feedback on the skills and experiences needed to get the promotion next time around.
A substantial salary increase.
Both a promotion and salary increase during maternity leave.
Transitioned from a post-doctoral position at the university to a permanent role in a corporation.
What makes this program different from any other career program?
This program provides both coaching and mentoring because we need both to succeed in a career that is also integrated with our personal life.
I’m a certified career and life coach as well as an award-winning inclusion strategist and technologist with 20+ years of experience in digital transformation and people management.
My background gives me unique insights into technology, bias, inclusion, equity, management, career growth, and behavioural science to help women and people from underrepresented groups to become successful on their terms whilst embracing kindness, joy, and self-compassion.
In addition to my coaching certification, I bring to the table
18+ years mentoring and coaching women and people from underrepresented groups such as ethnic minorities, disabled people, and immigrants.
15+ years of experience as a manager (including hiring, onboarding, promoting, firing, and layoffs).
Experience spearheading numerous initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion in tech that was recognized with the UK 2020 Women in Tech Changemakers award.
Featured in the Computer Weekly 2022 and 2023 longlist of the most influential women in UK tech.
DEI advisor for We and AI, a British NGO with the mission of making artificial intelligence work for everybody.
UK Committee Member for European Partnerships & Memberships for European Women on Boards, an NGO that supports the European Union’s Directive that introduces a binding objective of at least 40% of board members of each gender by 2026.
STEM degree (B.Sc., M.SC in Chemical Engineering, Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry)
A global perspective acquired by living in 6 countries on 3 continents and building professional and personal relationships with nationals of more than 50 countries.
Trilingual: English, French, and Spanish.
Imagine yourself a year from now.
You have a new role that aligns with your definition of success.
Your work and personal lives are integrated rather than fighting each other.
You feel you’re fairly compensated for the work you do.
What between you and that future self?
Self-doubt.
Self-criticism.
Limiting beliefs.
Fear of uncertainty.
Misinformation about how to advance your career.
Unawareness about how office politics work.
In this program, you will
Examine where are you in your career
Decide on your next bold professional move and ensure that it integrates into the lifestyle you want for yourself.
Identify the gaps between where you are and where you want to be.
Are you tired of waiting for the Powers that Be in your organisation to recognise the amazing work you?
Do you have enough of seen less skilled people to get promoted ahead of you?
Do you feel overworked and underappreciated?
That’s my story too and this is how I changed it.
My career promotion story
The idealized version of my career path is that I started as a training scientist for a mid-size tech company and I’m now Global Director of Scientific Support and Customer Operations for a Fortune Future 50 tech corporation. Wow!
The real version is much less dreamy. To get where I am now, I changed departments twice. I was passed over for promotion several times. I wasted precious time — especially at the beginning of my career — working extremely hard and waiting for others to realise the great work I was doing.
Maybe, the most interesting fact is that despite being a person who spent many years in the university learning how to do things — I have a Chem. Eng. B.Sc, M.Sc., Ph.D. as well as a post-doc — I simply assumed I knew how to get promoted, even if nobody had taught me how to do it!
What could I have done better?
Life is not a movie or Instagram, so we should expect challenges along the way.
Still, the major problem was that I assumed I had to figure it all out by myself. Or at most, with the advice of one or two friends or peers who wanted to help me out but didn’t have more direct experience than I had.
Through the years, I discovered that whilst I confronted my share of bias in my career, I had also internalised a long list of limiting beliefs. Uncovering them and putting a plan to neutralise them took coaching, mentoring, sponsoring, and, above all, time and effort towards understanding how to showcase my strengths and value to the business.
In addition to progressing faster in my career, by knowing what to expect, I could have enjoyed more the ride and felt less frustrated.
How can you go faster and make it easier?
I know that for me it wasn’t enough to discover the career promotion myths or how to counter them. It has taken mentoring, coaching, learning about behavioural science, my experience as a manager for 15+ years, and very time-consuming trial-and-error experiments.
I wish my past self could have learned from my present self how to get the next promotion.
That’s why I’ve created the 3-month “Onwards & Upwards” Career Promotion Breakthrough Program so you claim your power back and thrive in your career in 2024.
Get clarity on your career goals and your next career move.
Examine your limiting beliefs, understand how they impact your career progression, and how you can overcome them.
Learn to befriend uncertainty to embrace new challenges.
Understand how to build your professional and personal support ecosystem.
Gain awareness about your negotiation comfort zone and enrich it with complementary approaches to enhance your career prospects.
Experiment with powerful communication styles that are aligned with your strengths and values and resonate with your interlocutors.
Reframe office politics as a tool to help you get things done, build relationships, and access opportunities.
Build the habit of lifting others as you climb.
Embrace self-coaching as a tool to build resilience.
Through our 1:1 work, you’ll gain interpersonal skills and learn tools that will strengthen your professional career.
What if you’re just starting a new role?
Getting promoted is a process. The earlier you start putting in place a strategy and acting on it, the higher the chances of success once you’re ready to get that promotion.
What’s the scientific evidence that this method works?
As somebody with an engineering, master, and Ph.D. degree, in addition to my years coaching individuals in my role as manager, it was important to get a certification that accredited me. Not only for the “title” but because I wanted to add further skills to my toolkit and get supervision.
Also because of my academic background, I’m keen on scientific evidence that proves the methods I use.
That’s the reason I was delighted to learn recently that the methodology I was certified on has been backed up by two peer-reviewed articles published in 2022 and 2023
“Effect of a Novel Online Group-Coaching Program to Reduce Burnout in Female Resident Physicians A Randomized Clinical Trial” JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(5):e2210752.
Findings: In this pilot randomized clinical trial of 101 female resident physicians, participants who were randomly assigned to a 6-month group coaching program and a follow-up survey had a statistically significant reduction in emotional exhaustion and self-doubt, and an increase in self-compassion.
Findings: In this randomized clinical trial of 1,017 women trainee physicians, participants randomly assigned to a 4-month group-coaching program had a statistically significant reduction in all scales of burnout, moral injury, and impostor syndrome, as well as improved self-compassion and flourishing, compared with the control group.
Testimonials
“I am happy that I’ve met Patricia in time. I am going through a career change period, which has become less frightening and more strategic.
She helped me see the patterns of how my mind is holding me back, and by the end of the coaching program, I noticed a shift in my self-confidence and resilience. In our sessions, we uncovered the root causes of my inaction, and solutions emerged naturally from her insightful questions. She also shared her wisdom and vision when I needed it.
She is passionate about coaching and empowering women and has all the necessary expertise to help. I enjoyed every session. Thank you, Patricia!”
Alena Sheveleva, Research Fellow
“Patricia has excellent knowledge and expertise on mentoring / coaching, in particular leadership for women. I greatly benefited from working with Patricia and found the experience & learnings extremely valuable for my own personal development and overall career growth.”
Aisling Mulhall, Events Senior Manager, Software company
“Patricia knows how to ask the right questions to let you come to the right conclusion and decide on next step in the journey. Patricia dared me to step out of my comfort zone”
Jolanda Bussner, Project Manager, Software company
I had the opportunity to work with Patricia through a coaching scheme at work. I personally got a lot out of the joint coaching sessions. Patricia has the skill to come across as supportive so you feel safe but she also will challenge you about why you think that way or what made you approach it from that angle, not this. There’s no judgment from her as she questions you, you can tell she’s just trying to understand everything. I hope to have the opportunity to work with her in the future.
R.B., Senior product designer
Patricia is an extremely knowledgeable and caring coach. In my short session with Patricia, she helped me to envision a future I want for myself and create a plan for that by myself. For a senior university student, Patricia was an insightful companion who supported me in navigating my career choices and living a happy life.
T.T., 4th year Economics Honours student at the University of British Columbia
Patricia was able to look at my experience, and then where I was right now. It literally felt like she was weaving together different strands to then hone in exactly on career blocks and give me some ideas to move past them.
Her style was to ask questions rather than give me a simple a to-do list, I also liked the way I felt I could trust her professional experience. She knew what I was talking about from inside my chosen sector.
Ruth Westnidge, Software Engineer
Patricia’s empathetic approach enabled me to work through my difficulties and find new ways of approaching my work projects.
The dedication and commitment she brought to our sessions gave me the confidence and encouragement to identify what was holding me back and to find possible solutions. Her insights always kept me focused on putting into action steps that would achieve results.
I gained enormously from my sessions with Patricia. Her experienced questioning guided me through a difficult period of transition from a career in the television industry to a new phase in my working life.
Bren Simson. TV director, author, local historian and guide
This year I ran the quiz “How much is patriarchy ruling your life and career?” As I mentioned in this article, 94% of you believe that “you should be able to achieve a life-work balance.”
What was the next top patriarchal belief among the survey respondents? 67% of you answered that “Women are naturally more collaborative and empathic.”
Let me demonstrate to you that this “collaboration and empathy female gene” is a myth that hurts women’s careers and what to do instead.
Women are “more” collaborative
Human beings are gregarious species. And it’s not fortuitous. We are rather weak animals and we cannot thrive on our own. We need the protection and support of a group to survive.
So, if as a species we don’t have any other choice than to be collaborative, how come this characteristic is perceived as a “feminine” trait? Because it serves the patriarchy to thrive and women to survive:
The myth that “women are naturally collaborative” is an excellent cover-up to shove all the non-promotable admin work to women — office work — and feel comfortable claiming weaponised incompetence — faking incompetence at any one task (usually an unpleasant one) to get out of doing it.
Society teaches women that we’re “human doings” rather than “human beings “— our “worth” is perceived to be attached to what we do for others rather than inherent to being a person. Hence, women collaborate as a way to show how valuable they are.
Women belong to a lower-power group so they don’t have the choice to be — or appear to be — collaborative with other low-power individuals to achieve their objectives, especially if those goals challenge the status quo.
Simply put, empathy is our ability to guess how other people feel, what their emotions are. They are guesses because we cannot feel others’ feelings — emotions are constructed by us. As psychologist and neuroscientist professor Lisa Feldman Barrett says “The [facial] expressions [of emotion] that we’ve been told are the correct ones are just stereotypes and people express in many different ways.”
Dr. Feldman Barret posits that we’re taught those “emotion concepts” by our parents
You don’t have to teach children to have feelings. Babies can feel distress, they can feel pleasure and they do, they can certainly be aroused or calm. But emotion concepts — like sadness when something bad happens — are taught to children, not always explicitly.
That’s for example the reason that in our culture we have the “sadness” emotion concept but Tahitian culture doesn’t. “Instead they have a word whose closest translation would be “the kind of fatigue you feel when you have the flu.” It’s not the equivalent of sadness, that’s what they feel in situations where we would feel sad.”
So, humans “learn” about emotions and the expectations from others about how to express them since we’re babies, without gender distinctions. Then, why women are the “empathic” ones?
Let’s see what are our expectations from an “empathic” person:
Mimicking the emotional state of the other person in our face and body — if a person cries, an empathic person should “look” sad.
Labeling and reassuring the other person’s feelings — when a person complains, an empathic person may respond “I can see why you’re so frustrated”.
Providing support — when a person shares that they are sad, an empathic person may offer a hug or a comforting hand on their shoulder and ask what they can do to alleviate the sorrow.
It sounds like a lot of effort, doesn’t it? That’s the reason patriarchy has assigned it to women:
If we’re genetically programmed to be empathic, it’ll be our obligation to be attuned to others’ needs and, as a consequence, fulfil their demands.
We’ll be expected to clock countless hours towards emotional labour— checking the team’s mood and being the emotional caregivers of the workplace.
Assigning all carework to us will be a no-brainer — we’re genetically pre-programmed to “sense” others’ needs.
Women expect other women to be collaborative and empathic by default. Otherwise, we label them “bad women” and wish them hell, as Madeleine Albright did in her keynote speech at the Celebrating Inspiration luncheon with the WNBA’s All-Decade Team in 2006.
“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”
Whilst we women are very busy throwing bricks at other women, men reap the benefits of being seen as collaborative and empathic (not too much though, otherwise, they lose “toxic masculinity” points with their colleagues). What does that look like?
We overpraise men that show any kind of collaborative or empathic behaviour — no matter how small.
We absolve men for not pulling their weight and for disregarding the impact of their actions on others. After all, “boys will be boys”.
The good news: Collaboration and empathy are learned skills
We’ve forgotten that we teach children to share their toys and play together as well as to “read” other people’s emotions. Instead, we have bought into the patriarchal tropes about women’s natural talents.
But there is a remedy. If we acknowledge that collaboration and empathy are learned skills, that means that
People can teach them.
People can master them.
People can be held accountable.
Conclusion
The belief that women are naturally more collaborative and empathic is a social construct reinforced by articles, books, and social media. When we stand by it, we reinforce the patriarchal status quo.
On the flip side, we have a lot to gain by remembering that collaboration and caring for our communities are learned skills.
Your homework:
Allow yourself not to be collaborative or “empathic” when it doesn’t serve you well (for example, when you’re snowed under by “office work”).
When colleagues hide their rudeness and individualism behind gender tropes around empathy and collaboration, remind them that those skills can be taught and learned, as we do with children.
BACK TO YOU: Where do you stand on the genetic predisposition of women for collaboration and empathy?
Feminist Tech Career Accelerator
Three things are keeping you from getting the tech career you deserve
Your Brain * Your Education * Patriarchy
Thrive In Your Tech Career With Feminist Guidance
Achieve your career goals * Work smart * Earn more
Each time you’re confronted with a choice, what you do depends on how you think and feel about that decision. Let me show you what I mean with an example:
If you see a job advertised and you think “I already have 60% of the requirements”, that may make you feel energised and prompt you to apply.
On the other hand, if you think “I only have 60% of the requirements”, you may feel discouragement and, as a result, you won’t apply for the job.
Is not amazing how your brain works?
And I have more news for you. Your brain has not made that decision randomly. Instead, it has been “educated” on the “right” choices for you based on your lived experience and the interaction with your environment (other people, your workplace, society, nature…).
This has created a vault of “beliefs”
Your beliefs about yourself (I’m a genius/I’m disorganised).
Your beliefs about other people (people are only interested in money/the rich don’t care about the planet).
Your beliefs about the way the world is organised (I need to go to university to get a good job, promotions go to those that work hard).
Of course, all the patriarchal rules embedded in your socialisation contribute to your beliefs and choices. Some of them appear in more prominent ways than others and I wanted to which ones impacted you more…
So I asked you 🙂
Early this year, I ran a quiz called “How much is patriarchy ruling your life and career?” It had 20 statements that respondents had to ask either as “mostly true” or “mostly false”.
What did you tell me?
By a huge margin, you told me that you believe that “You should be able to achieve a work-life balance.”
Before you start recriminating yourself or wondering if you “got it wrong”, I want to reassure you that my aim is not to shame you for what you believe in — this is a love letter, after all. Instead, it’s to have a conversation about this belief and see how it serves you.
The patriarchal myth of work-life balance
You may now be thinking “Patricia, you have it all wrong, we all should aspire to a work-life balance” or “Patricia, this is not patriarchal at all, it’s not about men and women”.
Let’s start by examining each word in the construct “work-life balance”
First, let’s notice that we say “work-life” and not “life-work” balance. Is it a coincidence that the word “work” comes first?
What does the binary life vs work tell you? Maybe your work is not part of your life? Or perhaps that your work exists in a different universe isolated from your personal life?
And what about balance? Does that mean that you have always to strive for 50% allocation for work and 50% for personal life? Does your “unpaid” work count towards “work” or “life”? What about volunteering? And what about sleeping and eating?
My thoughts about why “life-work balance” is not serving you
You bear the mental and physical brunt of seamlessly making your life look as if it were a scripted musical.
You dismiss the huge impact your personal and professional lives have on each other, which makes you feel overwhelmed.
You shame yourself because you’re unable to achieve “the balance”.
You don’t say “no” to projects, activities, and tasks that don’t serve you well because you tell yourself that you “should” be able to make it all fit in.
You blame your lack of “time management skills” when you don’t manage to cross out all the items in your ever-growing to-do lists (yes, I wrote the word list in plural on purpose).
And my thoughts on how the “work-life balance” trope serves the patriarchy
As a “productive” female employee, society shifts the onus to you alone about handling your personal challenges (caregiving, chronic illnesses).
Your employer is right to assume that you’re committed to your career only if you accept all the projects and tasks thrown at you.
There is for sure a “work-life balance” somewhere and you should be able to find it if you are “smart enough”.
You don’t have too many things on your plate — you only must try harder at time management.
You’re rightly patronised about the choices you make — others know better what you should do to achieve “work-life balance”.
You may be “fixed” through expensive and gruelling programs that promise to teach you the “ultimate time management tools”.
What would happen if you dared to replace the thought “You should be able to achieve a work-life balance” with “Work-life balance is a patriarchal construct and I don’t need to abide by it”?
My answer
You’d congratulate yourself for being able to prioritise accordingly all the hats you wear (paid worker, unpaid worker, partner, student, parent, daughter, sister, activist…).
You’d drop the ball “kindly” for activities that don’t need to be perfect (scoop — 99% of tasks aren’t!).
You’d say “no” without remorse to projects and tasks that don’t serve you well.
You’d know that the patriarchal system plays a role in your thoughts and beliefs so you’d learn how to recognise them for what they are — “thoughts” — and not facts.
You’d step into your wisdom — embracing that you’re an expert in your own life.
Your mission would be to get clarity on what serves you well rather than crowdsourcing “advice”.
You’d be kind to yourself as if you were your best friend.
What about you? What do you think would be the worst thing that could happen if you’d allow yourself to debunk the myth that you should achieve work-life balance”? And the best thing?
I cannot wait to read your answers.
A big hug,
Patricia
Feminist Tech Career Accelerator
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In the last two weeks, I’ve had the privilege to attend four different conferences focused on women and I’ve presented at two of them.
The topics discussed were as complex and rich as women’s lives: neurodiversity in the workplace, women in politics, childcare, artificial intelligence and the future of the female workforce, child labour, impossible goals and ambition, postpartum depression at work, career myths, women in tech, accessibility, quotas… and so many more.
The idea for this article came from my numerous “aha” moments during talks, panels, and conversations at those events. I wanted to share them broadly so others could benefit as well.
I hope you find those insights as inspiring, stimulating, and actionable as I did.
The keynote speakers and panels were excellent. The discussions were thought-provoking and space was held for people to voice their dissent. I especially appreciated listening to women politicians discuss feminist issues.
Below are some of my highlights
The need to find a space for feminist men.
It’s time for us to go outside our comfort zone.
“If men had the menopause, Trafalgar Square Fountain would be pouring oestrogen gel.”
If we want to talk about averages, the average voter is a woman. There are slightly more women than men (51% women) and they live longer.
Men-only decision-making is not legitimate, i.e. not democratic. Women make up the majority of individuals in the UK but the minority in decision-making. Overall, diversity is an issue of legitimacy.
The prison system for women forgets their children.
Challenging that anti-blackness/racism is not seen as a topic at the top of the agenda for the next election.
We believe “tradition matters” so things have gone backwards from the pandemic for women.
In Australia, the Labour Party enforced gender quotas within the party. That led to increasing women’s representation to 50%. The Conservative Party went for mentoring women — no quotas — and that only increased women’s participation to 30%.
There is a growing toxicity in X/Twitter against women. Toxic men’s content gets promoted. We need better regulation of social media.
More women vote but decide later in the game.
We cannot afford not to be bold with childcare. The ROI is one of the highest.
We need to treat childcare as infrastructure.
There are more portraits of horses in parliament than of women.
Empowered to Lead Conference 2023
On Saturday 28th October, I attended the “Empowered to Lead” Conference 2023 organised by She leads for legacy — a community of individuals and organisations working together to reduce the barriers faced by Black female professionals aspiring for senior leadership and board level positions.
It was an amazing day! I didn’t stop all day: listening to inspiring role models, taking notes, and meeting great women.
We ask people what they want to do only when they are children — that’s wrong. We need to learn and unlearn to take up the space we deserve.
Three nuggets of wisdom: Audacity/confidence, ambition, and creativity/curiosity.
Audacity— Every day we give permission to others to define us. Audacity is about being bold. Overconsultation kills your dream. It’s about going for it even if you feel fear.
Creativity & curiosity — takes discipline not to focus on the things that are already there. Embrace diverse thinking.
Question 1: What if you were the most audacious, the most ambitious, and the most creative?
Question 2: May you die empty? Would you have used all your internal resources?
Baroness Floella Benjamin DBE
Childhood lasts a lifetime. We need to tell children that they are worth it.
Over 250 children die from suicide a year.
When she arrived in the UK, there were signs with the text “No Irish, no dogs, no coloureds”.
After Brexit, a man pushed his trolley onto her and told her, “What are you still doing here?” She replied, “I’m here changing the world, what are you doing here?”
She was the first anchor-woman to appear pregnant on TV in the world.
“I pushed the ladder down for others.”
“The wise man forgives but doesn’t forget. If you don’t forgive you become a victim.”
‘Every disappointment is an appointment with something better’.
Jenny Garrett OBE
Rather than talking about “underrepresentation”, let’s talk about “underestimation”.
Nadine Benjamin MBE
What do you think you sound? Does how you sound support who you want to be?
You’re a queen. Show up for yourself.
Additionally, Sue Lightup shared details about the partnership between Queen Bee Coaching (QBC) — an organisation for which I volunteer as a coach — and She Leads for Legacy (SLL).
Last year, QBC successfully worked with SLL as an ally, providing a cohort of 8 black women from the SLL network with individual coaching from QBC plus motivational leadership from SLL.
At the conference, the application process for the second cohort was launched!
Women in Tech Festival
I delivered a keynote at this event on Tuesday 31st October. The topic was the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the future of the female workforce.
When I asked the 200+ attendees if they felt that the usage of AI would create or destroy jobs for them, I was surprised to see that the audience was overwhelmingly positive about the adoption of this technology.
Through my talk, I shared the myths we have about technology (our all-or-nothing mindset), what we know about the impact of AI on the workforce from workers whose experience is orchestrated by algorithms, and four different ways in which we can use AI to progress in our careers.
The talk was very well received and people approached me afterwards sharing how much the keynote had made them reflect on the impact of AI on the labour market. I also volunteered for mentoring sessions during the festival and all my on-the-fly mentees told me that the talk had provided them with a blueprint for how to make AI work for them.
I also collected gems of wisdom from other women’s interventions
Our workplaces worship the mythical “uber-productive” employee.
We must be willing to set boundaries around what we’re willing to do and what not.
It may be difficult to attract women to tech startups. One reason is that it’s riskier, so women may prefer to go to more established companies.
Workforce diversity is paramount to mitigate biases in generative AI tools.
I found the panel about quotas for women in leadership especially insightful
Targets vs quotas: “A target is an aspiration whilst a quota must be met”.
“Quotas shock the system but they work”.
Panelists shared evidence of how a more diverse leadership led to a more diverse offering and benefits for customers.
For quotas to work is crucial to look at the data. Depending on the category, it may be difficult to get those data. You need to build trust — show that’s for a good purpose.
In law firms, you can have 60% of solicitors that are women but when you look at the partners is a different story — they are mostly men.
A culture of presenteeism hurts women in the workplace.
Organisations lose a lot of women through perimenopause and menopause because they don’t feel supported.
There was a very interesting panel on neurodiversity in the workplace
Neurodivergent criteria have been developed using neurodivergent men as the standard so often they miss women.
The stereotype is that if you have ADHD, you should do badly in your studies. For example, a woman struggled to get an ADHD diagnosis because she had completed a PhD.
Women mask neurodivergent behaviours better than men. Masking requires a lot of effort and it’s very taxing.
We need more openness about neurodiversity in the workplace.
The title of my talk was “Seven Counterintuitive Secrets to a Thriving Career in Tech” and the purpose was to share with the audience key learnings from my career in tech across 3 continents, spearheading several DEI initiatives in tech, coaching and mentoring women and people from underrepresented communities in tech, as well as writing a book about how women succeed in tech worldwide.
First, I debunked common beliefs such as that there is a simple solution to the lack of women in leadership positions in tech or that you need to be fixed to get to the top. Then, I presented 7 proven strategies to help the audience build a successful, resilient, and sustainable career in tech.
I got very positive feedback about the talk during the day and many women have reached out on social media since to share how they’ve already started applying some of the strategies.
Some takeaways from other talks:
I loved Becki Howarth’s interactive talk about allyship at work where she shared how you can be an ally in four different aspects:
Communication and decision-making — think about power dynamics, amplify others, don’t interrupt, and create a system that enables equal participation.
Calling out (everyday) sexism — use gender-neutral language, you don’t need to challenge directly, support the recipient (corridor conversations).
Stuff around the edges of work — create space for people to connect organically, don’t pressure people to share, and rotate social responsibilities so everyone pulls their weight.
Taking on new opportunities — some people need more encouragement than others, and ask — don’t assume.
The talk of Lydia Hawthorn about postpartum depression in the workplace was both heartbreaking and inspiring. She provided true gems of wisdom:
Up to 15% of women will experience postpartum depression.
Talk about the possibility of postpartum depression before it happens.
Talk to your employer about flexible options.
Consider a parent-buddy scheme at work.
Coaching and therapy can be lifesaving.
Amelia Caffrey gave a very dynamic talk about how to use ChatGPT for coding. One of the most interesting aspects she brought up for me is that there is no more excuse to write inaccessible code. For example, you can add in the prompt the requisite that the code must be accessible for people using screen readers.
Finally, one of the most touching talks was from Eleanor Harry, Founder and CEO of HACE: Data Changing Child Labour. Their mission is to eradicate child labour in company supply chains.
There are 160 million children in child labour as of 2020. HACE is launching the Child Labour Index; the only quantitative metric in the world for child labour performance at a company level. Their scoring methodology is based on cutting-edge AI technologies, combined with HACE’s subject matter expertise. The expectation is the index provides the investor community with quantitative leverage to push for stronger company performance on child labour.
Eleanor’s talk was an inspiring example of what tech and AI for good look like.
Back to you
With so many men competing in the news, social media, and bookstores for your attention, how are you making sure you give other women’s wisdom the consideration it deserves?
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This is the final article in a trilogy based on my summer holiday. Each piece marks an important milestone in my evolution as an activist for women’s rights and also as a person. The first one was about the invisibility of women in public spaces (Monumental Inequity: The Missing Women). The second one was about the visibility of harassment in the workplace.
This one comes full circle. It’s about the invisibility of a very specific kind of work: caregiving.
The invisibility of carework
On August 25th my family and I traveled from Malta, where we had spent one week of holiday, to Vigo, in the Northwest of Spain. My plan was to spend 10 additional vacation days with my parents and brother before coming back to the UK.
We had a fluid plan for the remaining days: Going to Porto one day, visiting my grandmother on her farm, going to Santiago de Compostela for shopping, celebrating my mother and sister-in-law birthday’s, and visiting some cool restaurants.
The next day, August 26th, my mother broke her hip whilst walking to Vigo downtown.
From there, it was all a roller-coaster. All comes in flashbacks
Going in the ambulance with my mother.
Waiting in the emergency ward for the doctors to confirm what my mother had sensed, she had a broken hip.
Learning how to help my mother whilst minimising hurting her.
Sleeping in a hospital care chair.
Trying to guess went my mother was suffering because of her tendency to put up with pain.
Going to the hospital cafeteria for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Unfortunately, I was not surprised by the amount of work involved.
My current research for the book How Women Succeed in Tech has confirmed the huge penalty imposed by eldercare on women. It’s typically not recognised in the workplace leave entitlements — like parental leave — or by the state, so women are left to shoulder the brunt of the care to reduce the financial burden even to the extent, in some cases, of being pushed to make the hard decision to not have children.
All my life, I’ve seen the women in my family – my grandmother and aunts – assume the care of their elders and sick husbands on top of their work. Without transition and, as expected, without retribution.
What did surprise me was the mental load of my conflicting emotions. Feeling
Guilty when thinking that I was not doing enough in my role as caregiver.
Selfish the nights I shifted turns with my father and I went to sleep at my brother’s house whilst he slept at the hospital.
Resentful and angry because after so many months and years of waiting for this reunion, I felt we didn’t deserve to spend it in the hospital.
Sad when my mother would blame herself for “ruining” the holidays for everybody.
Inadequate for not knowing off the bat how to move the hospital bed or make work the pay-as-you-go TV.
What helped? Remembering my training as a life coach. Through self-coaching techniques.
I limited useless rumination. Early in the ordeal, I was able to pause and ask myself, “What is the true purpose of this holiday?”. I answered, “To be with my family”. From that moment, I decided that the whole incident had not detracted from the purpose of the trip and that from that point of view, the holiday was a success.
It also helped to reduce the tendency to give advice to others about what to think or feel. Instead, I was often able to shift into curiosity and spend more time listening and asking about their thoughts and feelings.
I put things into context. I asked myself, “If my mother were to break her hip anyway and I could be anywhere in the world, what would have been my choice?”. The answer was straightforward. It would be exactly as it happened.
I gave myself permission to name and process my emotions. Not only anger, disappointment, or sadness but also relief when my mother came back from the successful surgery and joy when I saw her walking the next day.
Coming back to the UK
I was not prepared for the exhaustion and mental fatigue that I experienced once back in Manchester. I guess that I thought that as soon as I’d be home, I’d resume my normal life.
Nothing farther from the truth. I felt depleted mentally and physically. I had plenty of deadlines but my brain and body wanted to rest.
Then, I did something unusual for me, I pushed back on agreed deadlines.
I consider myself very dependable, so it was hard to share with people what happened and ask for more time to send an article, prepare a presentation, or record a video.
The good news was that everybody was very understanding. Deadlines were extended and I delivered the work.
I felt relieved and thankful.
Still, I thought, “What if this was a common occurrence?”, “Would the people around me have been so understanding?“
My learnings
Reading a book teaching how to drive a car is not the same as driving it. Watching a video about unconscious bias doesn’t mean that we stop being affected by stereotypes.
My research into unpaid caregiving opened my eyes to this invisible sink of women’s work. Through the data and the stories of women, I was able to quantify the effort not recognised, the time invested, the unearned money, and the lost career opportunities.
But this experience made it personal and urgent. Because in a world that still grapples with recognizing childcare as an infrastructure, eldercare is invisible, even if our societies get older and older.
Recently, I was at the feminist Fawcett Conference 2023 with the theme Women Win Elections! Of course, support for mothers was at the top of the agenda from the early morning. And rightly so.
What concerned me it’s that it was presented as “the” item to tackle, even if during the event it became clear that eldercare — among other challenges — needs to be addressed for women to present themselves as political candidates.
Then, why do we only focus on childcare? Because we continue to think of women as second-class citizens who have only the right to one “ask” at a time. And that is “childcare”.
However, this is not a contest. Chances are that as a woman you may become a “sandwich carer” at some point — those who care for both sick, disabled, or older relatives and dependent children.
In 2019, the UK Office for National Statistics reported that sandwich carers (about 3% of the UK general population) were more likely to report symptoms of mental ill-health, feel less satisfied with life, and struggle financially compared with the general population. Moreover, the prevalence of mental ill-health increases with the amount of care given per week.
In summary, asking our societies to recognise the multiple identities women can embody beyond motherhood is “too much”, so we keep invisibilizing and minimising our efforts. We think that by patiently staying in line and asking for one “favour” at a time we’ll get to the finish line of gender equality.
I don’t want to die feeling that I’m the child of a lesser god. Do you?
We women need to stop conforming ourselves with less and demand much more from our partners, our families, our workplaces, our society, and our governments.
We need to stop “being mindful” of the inflation, the NHS crisis, the strikes, the wars…
We need to stop believing that we need to be the adults in the room, the ones that are ready to make sacrifices for the common good, the half of the humanity that is expected to “shut up and do the work”.
Let’s be bold and put ourselves first. Because when women win, 8 billion people win.
Thanks for your support
When I started writing these three articles, I thought of them as three distinct episodes with the common thread of my holidays and women. I was surprised how “visibility” weaved into each of them naturally.
Allowing myself the time for this exploration has been liberating and, at the same time, constraining. Liberating because of the format but constraining because of my self-imposed commitment to both exploring the uncomfortable aspects of the topics as well as reflecting on the alternatives.
Thanks again for accompanying me along this trilogy.
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“What if the rest of this year is the best of this year?”
You have 75 days to the end of 2023. You can continue to do what you’re doing. But there is a different way.
What if you could master your mind so you could take your life and career to a whole new level?
What if you could learn how not to depend on others’ praise and criticism so you could feel worthy of love and success from the insight?
What if you could stop the habits that don’t serve you well and have a better work-life balance?
If that resonates with you, my 3-month 1:1 coaching program “Upwards and Onwards” is for you.
For £875.00, we’ll dive into where you are now and the results you want to create, we’ll uncover the obstacles in your way, explore strategies to overcome them, and implement a plan.
Apologies to those of you who were expecting an article last week. Ten days ago my personal computer decided that it had given it all. I now have a new computer and I’m back to writing. Disaster adverted!
One of the things I was mulling over while I was sorting my computer was that from today, Sunday, October 1st, I have 3 months (roughly 90 days) left until the end of 2023.
I was in shock first, thinking who stole my year. Then, I shifted to mentally assess how well I was doing with achieving my goals. I did that randomly, which, of course, triggered anxiety because my mind went straight to the things that I hadn’t accomplished.
Next, I asked myself what were the top 3 things I wanted to accomplish before the end of the year.
Finally, the juicy question I want to share with you today: How do I get them?
I came up with four different strategies that have helped in the past. I hope they work for you too.
Four ways to get what you want this year
#1 Ask for help
You may have been expecting something like “do a Google search”, “get a certificate”, “make a list” or any other satisfying way to proactively procrastinate. Don’t-you-dare.
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable and ask for help. In my experience, this is going to be especially difficult if you’re a giver. You’ll try to talk yourself out of it. Examples
“People are going to think I’m needy”.
“I cannot bother others with my problems”.
“Nobody can do this but me”.
Then, think about all the times you’ve helped people. Out of your goodwill, simply because you’re a kind person. Then, think that others are kind too.
And now it’s when it becomes uncomfortable for me because I’m going to do what I’m preaching…
HELP: I want to grow my coaching business so I’m looking for more clients. There are two ways people can work with me
Last week I got a fantastic testimonial from somebody who finished one of the programs
I am happy that I’ve met Patricia in time. I am going through a career change period, which has become less frightening and more strategic.
She helped me see the patterns of how my mind is holding me back, and by the end of the coaching program, I noticed a shift in my self-confidence and resilience. In our sessions, we uncovered the root causes of my inaction, and solutions emerged naturally from her insightful questions. She also shared her wisdom and vision when I needed it.
She is passionate about coaching and empowering women and has all the necessary expertise to help. I enjoyed every session. Thank you, Patricia!
Alena Sheveleva, Research Fellow
Group coaching: I’ve developed a 6-month program for people managers to give them tools to better handle the pressures of their work and move from stressed employees to satisfied professionals. The program is designed such that the managers can use the tools with their reports as well.
Through my years of being a coach and coaching others, a tool that comes up often is using our imaginary future self to help us unstuck ourselves.
Some examples
Write a letter to your future self.
Write yourself a letter from the future asking for advice.
Use visioning to meet with your future self.
Imagine yourself in 20 years receiving a prize, what will be your acceptance speech?
And so on.
They can be helpful to open ourselves to possibilities but they can also offer so many choices that we get trapped in analysis-paralysis limbo.
Also, sometimes it can be difficult to get inspired by a “version” of ourselves that we may not find particularly enticing.
For example, I found that some of my clients in their 60s and 70s are not super excited to ask for advice to their 80 or 90-year-old version of themselves. For some of them, it’s triggering since they wonder if they’d even be alive by then.
To prompt myself into action my trick is actually the reverse — what a toddler would do?
Because toddlers
1.- Have a great focus.
2.- Are very persistent.
3.- Make very clear what they want. .. and they are happy to let go of it if they find something better.
4.- They are open to experimenting with everything as “play”.
5.- They are extremely self-confident.
(6.- And they ask for help — see point #1 above)
So, when I’m stuck on inaction, rather than asking my future self for advice, I appeal to my “toddler energy” to get me moving.
Let me know in the comments how you’ll apply #ToddlerEnergy this week.
#3 Get a sponsor
I’ve been a mentor for years. Also, I’ve had many mentors. And as a woman tech, I’m reminded several days a week of the importance of mentors.
Makes introductions to people who can help you achieve your goals.
Recommends you to key stakeholders for projects, initiatives, and roles.
Uses their clout to help you to get what you want.
In summary, a sponsor actually puts themselves in the line for you — they vouch for you.
Top tip: Unlike mentors, you cannot ask somebody to be a sponsor. You earn it. How do you know if somebody is your sponsor?
Share with the person what you want to achieve and make an ask, for example, an introduction to somebody who they have told you can help you. If they are willing to do it, they believe in you — they are your sponsor. If they avoid committing to it, then you may want to explore if the person is more of a mentor only.
#4 Get a coach
After reading the title, some of you may be thinking that this is a rehash of point #1. It isn’t.
I’ve been a “consumer” of coaching since 2018. And it’s been life-changing. I’ve experimented with several coaching modalities — group, 1:1, Time to Think, The Model, Playing Big — and these are some of the things I achieved through coaching
Launching my website after talking myself out of it for 2 years.
Launching my business whilst keeping my full-time position at a tech company after shattering the limiting beliefs that I couldn’t have both.
Holding more space for my team to co-create solutions after realising that my value as a manager was not tied to “knowing more” than my direct reports.
Asking for more recognition at work whilst regaining a life-work balance.
Writing posts more regularly after learning how to calm down my perfectionist impulses.
Being more conscious about the manuals I have for others and how patriarchy influences my decisions.
Gaining awareness of when I’m catastrophising about a situation and reducing overwhelm caused by uncertainty.
Benefiting from a non-judgemental accountability partner.
Recap
In summary
You have three months to the end of 2023.
Decide on the top 3 things you want to accomplish before the end of the year (they can be less than 3 but no more).
Try the strategies below
Ask for help
Be like a toddler
Get a sponsor
Get a coach
Let me know in the comments how it goes.
Feminist Tech Career Accelerator
Three things are keeping you from getting the tech career you deserve
Your Brain * Your Education * Patriarchy
Thrive In Your Tech Career With Feminist Guidance
Achieve your career goals * Work smart * Earn more
