Tag Archives: #InclusiveLeadership

Theft of the Mind: When Women’s Ideas Become Men’s Triumphs

Smiling woman with big mirror in nature. The mirror is in front of her body reflecting nature, so it's like she was transparent.
Photo by Kalpit Khatri.

Generative AI — and more precisely ChatGPT and text-to-image tools like Midjourney — have prompted a flurry of strikes and pushback from visual and writing professionals. And rightly so.

The reason? Book authors, painters, and screenwriters feel that’s unfair that tech companies earn money by creating tools based on scrapping their work result of many years spent learning their craft. All that without acknowledging intellectual property or providing financial compensation.

They say that this is “the first time in history” this has happened.

I dissent. This has been happening for centuries — to women. Let me explain.

There are three reasons that typically come up to explain why there haven’t been more women artists and scientists through the centuries:

  • Women have been too busy with children and house chores to dedicate time — and have the space — to scientific and artistic pursuits.
  • In many cultures, men have been priorised to go to school and university over women.
  • To avoid bias against their work, some women decided to publish their work under a male pen name or to disguise themselves as men

But there is a fourth cause. When women’s outstanding work has been credited to a man. So although the work itself may have won a Nobel prize or be showcased in museums, libraries, and galleries, it has been attributed to a man instead of the rightful female author.

​Hepeating​: When a man takes credit for what a woman already said

Let’s review some unsung sheroes of science and art.

Science and art — a land with no women?

Let’s start with science

What about art?

Not enough? Mother Jones has put together ​an insightful timeline of men getting credit for women’s accomplishments​. Some gems

  • In the 12th century, “Trota of Salerno” authors a gynecology handbook, On the Sufferings of Women. However, until the end of the last century, sholars falsely assumed Trota was a man.
  • In 1818, “Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein anonymously. Her husband pens the preface and people assume he was behind it.”
  • In 1859, “after 10 years working with engineers to design signal flares, Martha Coston is listed as “administratrix” on the patent. Her long-dead husband is listed as the inventor.”
  • In 1970, “forty-six female researchers sued the magazine Newsweek, alleging that male writers and editors took all the credit for their efforts”.

And the uncredited others

  • ​Healers and midwives ​— Women were the original healers, using herbs and remedies to cure alignments and help with deliveries, contraception, and abortion. As no good deed goes unpunished, a lot of them would end up burning at the stake. How much of our current medicine is based on those uncredited healers?
  • Brewers — From the earliest evidence of brewing (7000 BCE) until its commercialisation, ​women were the primary brewers on all inhabited continents​. But who do you picture in your mind when you think of a “brewer”?

Our gendered standards of excellence

Above I shared some examples of women’s extraordinary work stolen by others (or conveniently forgotten).

But the problem runs deeper because we’re educated to consider men’s contributions extraordinary whilst than of women’s ordinary.

  • Let’s take parenthood. A woman takes her children to school — it’s her job. A man takes his children to school — he’s a dedicated father and a beacon for other parents.
  • A woman leads a project — she’s organised. A man leads a project — he’s a project manager.
  • Women are “cooks” and men are “chefs”.

And the list goes on…

What to do differently?

Let’s start acknowledging good work by women — and I’m very intentional when I say “good” and not “stellar” work.

At the same time, let’s stop glorifying each little thing a man does. Is really setting up the washing machine such a big accomplishment?

But how to overcome millennia of indoctrination?

Five years ago, I published a post showcasing a ​6-min TED talk from Kristen Pressner​ where she explained a practical technique to double-check our gender biases. It’s called “Flip it to test it!”

It’s a very simple method: When in doubt, flip the gender and see how it lands.

In practice

  • Would you praise John for taking his children to school if instead was their mother, Jane?
  • Would you diminish the role of Rita leading a project as simply being “a good team player” if Mike had led the project instead?

In summary, let’s purposely acknowledge the good work of women around us. We cannot overdo it — we have centuries to catch up on.

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Let’s finish the year asking for what we want!

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From the Bible to the Football Field: Harassment in the Workplace

Black and white photo of young man covering his face with his hands.
Photo by Santiago Sauceda González.

This week my article comes with a little delay because I spent the weekend in London attending the Fawcett Conference 2023 with the theme Women win elections! and celebrating my birthday.

And now, back to the post.

As I mentioned last week, this is the second of a series of three articles based on my summer holiday. Each 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 focus of this one is on the visibility of harassment.

Visibility

On August 20th I was on holiday in Malta with my family. I’m not a football fan but it was impossible to visit the webpage of a Spanish or English journal and ignore that the Women’s World Cup final was scheduled for that day between the two countries.

I didn’t watch the match but I kept checking the results as I was walking through the streets of La Valetta, Malta’s capital. And I was happy when I learned they had won. (To be honest, I would only have been mildly disappointed if England had won instead, after all, I’ve been living in the UK for 19 years).

Then, I read about the president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) kissing one of the female Spanish football players during the medal presentation.

I couldn’t believe it. A kiss on the lips in front of everybody? The cameras broadcasting the event? It couldn’t be…

So I searched the image. And it was there. 

What happened next was textbook sexual harassment in the workplace. 

The abuser

Once his victim dared to express that she didn’t like the kiss, the president of the RFEF followed the typical pattern that a perpetrator of wrongdoing may display when confronted with their behaviour: Deny, Attack, and Reverse the Victim with the Offender, which is referred to by the acronym DARVO.

  • He denied that it was harassment.
  • He accused others of seeing harassment where there wasn’t.
  • He consistently refused it was his fault.
  • He claimed he was the victim of a witch hunt.

The cherry on the cake? The defense tactic that never dies: “I have daughters”.

How many times have we heard abusers claim that having daughters automatically rules out that they can be harassers, rapists, or murderers? 

What about the others?

  • The RFEP stood by their boss, even releasing a note that analysed the positions of the body of the female football player to imply she was the one kissing him.
  • On 25th August, the president addressed the RFEF in an in-person event. Instead of resigning, he complained of being the object of a manhunt and confirmed he’d continue in his role. The attendees applauded, including other top bosses of the RFEF and the coach of the female football team.
  • Hardly any male football teams denounced the issue and only a few male players supported the female footballer.
  • The UEFA, the FIFA, and many other federations closed their eyes as much as they could.
  • Even after the RFEF president resigned, the female players had to continue to exert pressure to get the reforms that they’d been asking for years.

Harassment has a long tradition

Is sexual harassment in the workplace new? And is it really hidden?

Before #MeToo, there was the American attorney and educator Anita Hill. In 1991, she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about Clarence Thomas’s sexual harassment when he was appointed to the US Supreme Court. Her testimony has been credited with raising awareness of workplace sexual harassment.

But almost a century ago, actresses Shirley Temple and Judy Garland had already endured sexual harassment in the workplace at the ages of 12 and 16, respectively. 

Before the 20th century, women were seen as “property” so rather than complaining about sexual harassment, their “owners” (fathers, husbands) asked compensation for “damaging goods”. Historian Ed Ayers shares an example in this interview: “There’s an 1858 case … the father sues his daughter’s employer — she’s 14 — for getting her pregnant, and thus losing her income when she has to quit and have the baby.”

In her book Ain’t I a Woman, bell hooks opens our eyes to the sexual assault Black women underwent during slavery. It was either comply or be punished. 

Would you be surprised if I told you that we have records of sexual harassment in the workplace happening 3,000 years ago? The Book of Ruth in the Bible is dated around 1160 and 1100 BC. One of the pivotal moments in the Book is when Ruth becomes a gleaner in Boaz’s field. He instructs his workers not to molest her (Ruth 2: 7–9, 15–16). And whilst the Catholic Bible in English may leave doubts about what “molesting” means, the text was originally written in Hebrew and many Bible scholars have found sexual overtones in it

Basically, Boaz knew his workers were predators and he decided to spare Ruth by explicitly telling them not to molest her. How kind of him! What about other women? What about instead firing them?

Boys will be boys…

Willful blindness

Back to the football drama. 

This was not the first time the now ex-president of the RFEP was involved in a story of sex at work. In 2020, there was money expensed towards an off-site work event run in a cottage that he later referred to as a “ paella with girlfriends” and his uncle and ex-cabinet manager as an orgy.

Years ago, the Spanish female footballers had already reported that their coach forced them to keep the doors of their rooms open until midnight so he could check by himself that they were there. He also would check their bags when they were back from shopping and, if they went out, they should inform him where they were going and with whom.

Sounds familiar. When we look at #MeToo or the sexual harassment lawsuits at “tech bro” companies (Tesla, Uber, Google) they want us to believe that those things were happening behind doors, that only a few knew, that there was no evidence.

The reality is that in all cases

  • Evidence was there for everybody to see it all along but nobody cared.
  • That having visual evidence didn’t result in automatic sanctions to the perpetrators and restitution for the victim. Abusers were still given the benefit of the doubt and victims were badmouthed.

We have in Spanish the saying “No hay peor ciego que el que no quiere ver.” There is a similar saying in English, “There’s none so blind as he who will not see.” There is a legal term for this

In law, willful blindness is when a person seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally keeping themselves unaware of facts that would render them liable or implicated.

Wikipedia

Stopping willful blindness towards sexual harassment in the workplace

I was in Malta when the story started. I went to Spain with my family where the drama was played on TV 24–7. I came back to the UK from holidays and it’s still ongoing.

Although the RFEF president finally resigned, the story is far from finished for the female player who endured the harassment. There are several lawsuits underway.

Once again we have proof that whilst women continue to be seen as second-class humans, no evidence would be enough to finish sexual harassment and gender violence. We’ll continue to excuse perpetrators and find a rationale to blame victims.

Whilst I like to believe that indeed #SeAcabo (the hashtag they used to protest and means “It’s finished”), the reality is that it isn’t. It’s not a matter of “visibility” or “awareness”. 

So, what’s the cure for wilful blindness to sexual harassment in the workplace? Forceful accountability.

How does that look in practice?

  • First and foremost, let’s look at the evidence.
  • Let’s stop finding comfort in justifying a 3,000-year status quo where sexual predators take advantage of the asymmetry of power in hierarchical work relationships.
  • Let’s stop finding exculpating rationales for the perpetrators.
  • Let’s stop placing the onus on the victims to shatter our biases about who’s credible and who isn’t. 

It’s a lie that eradicating sexual harassment at work is about the perpetrators and the victims. It’s about the workplace’s culture we all contribute to — what we decide to see, what we choose to ignore, and who we believe.

Which workplace culture are you supporting right now? Is it one of difficult conversations and zero-tolerance? Or is it one of being forgiving and forgetful?

I know which one I’m supporting. I won’t be a bystander. Will you?

Next

Thanks for accompanying me on this journey. The final installment of this trilogy will focus on caregiving.

Work with me:  My special offer

You have 75 days to the end of 2023. You can continue to do what you’re doing if that’s serving you well.

But if you’re not reaching your goals in spite of overworking and overdelivering, 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 inside?
  • 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 and explore strategies to overcome them; and we’ll implement a plan to help you become your own version of success.

Contact me to explore how we can work together.

90 days to the end of the year: Four strategies to achieve your 2023 goals

Image of an analog alarm clock with a picture of a girl superimposed giving the impression that she's trying to climb the numbers in the clock.
Image by ThePixelman from Pixabay.

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. 

And finally, I calmed down.

I started by remembering all the things I’ve done and especially thanking my past self for writing a post before the summer compiling my achievements to date.

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

One-on-one: I have two programs. The first focuses on becoming your own version of success The second is geared towards helping people who have experienced — or are experiencing  — hardships to move forward again and face life in a more healthy and sustainable way.

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.

If you’re interested or you know somebody who may be, please connect with me.

Ufff. I did it. I asked for help.

#2 Be like a toddler

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.

Let me tell you a secret: Get a sponsor.

Whilst a mentor is somebody who talks to you about their career and gives you advice based on their experiences, a sponsor is somebody who talks about you in rooms where you aren’t present (yet).

A sponsor

  • 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

  1. You have three months to the end of 2023.
  2. 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).
  3. 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.

Work with me

Contact me to explore how we can work together

Why performative inclusion thrives? Because it’s a win-win billionaire industry

Torso of a woman in a blue suit covering her face with a big white square piece of cardboard that has drawn on it a happy face and a flower with the colours of the rainbow.
Collage by Patricia Gestoson from Images by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay and Sharon Pittaway on Unsplash.

I’m back after a hectic and unpredictable summer break. More about it soon.

In the meantime, I want to share with you an article that I published in the economics journal The Mint Magazine about the industrial complex behind diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives and who really gets the benefits. In it, I uncover the economic and strategic interests behind the “fixing women” programs, unconscious bias training, and allyship overload.

The great pretenders

In 2013, the then-chief operating officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, published her book: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. It was a cultural phenomenon that prompted discussions about women and their professional ambitions as well as the additional barriers they had to surmount to get to the top compared to men

The book also reassured organisations that it was not their responsibility if they didn’t have enough women in leadership. It was the women’s fault. They were not leaning in, not putting themselves out for a promotion, they were not confident enough. As a consequence, the “fixing professional women” industry boomed. 

An indicator of this boom is the exponential growth in Google searches for imposter syndrome since 2015. Increasingly, workshops, programmes, and newsletters have been relentlessly targeting women in male-dominated sectors like tech and finance with the promise of giving them confidence as a means to reach leadership positions. A peek into the publishing industry proves that imposter syndrome has also colonised our bookstores in the last few years.  

However, unconfident women alone couldn’t explain the whiteness of executive and board teams. So training in unconscious bias came to the rescue. It was appealing to organisations because again it focused on individuals rather than on the organisation’s processes and culture. Moreover, it exculpated leaders too, who could blame their “primitive” brains for the inequities in the workplace.

Workshops, programmes, and newsletters have been relentlessly targeting women in male-dominated sectors like tech and finance with the promise of giving them confidence.

It was a marketing success. In 2017, McKinsey estimated the annual spending in the US on unconscious bias training at $8 billion. This despite researchers reporting in 2001 that training initiatives focused on changing employees’ attitudes and behaviours that reflected more subtle forms of discrimination and exclusion rarely led to the desired long-term changes.

Ironically, as most organisations made those trainings optional, the typical attendees were employees bearing the brunt of unconscious biases – women and people from underrepresented groups – which reinforced the obvious conclusion: unconscious bias training was a lovely ticking box for organisations because it was quantifiable in terms of money spent and number of events but let key stakeholders get out of jail free.

Unfortunately, it didn’t result in the effective diversity and inclusion game-changer that we were led to believe it would deliver. This was not a surprise since it rested on the premise that learning about unconscious bias and its impact on decision making was enough to solve it, while ignoring that by design, most of our mental processes are unconscious. Even Dr Daniel Kahneman, who was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on heuristics and biases, has been vocal about his inability to keep his unconscious bias in check

Diversity training needed a revamp and the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 brought a revival of the word “allyship”. In 2021, Dictionary.com named it the word of the year.

This “allyship continuum” is very attractive to organisations and leaders. First, it reinforces the lack of accountability at the senior level by equally distributing the responsibility of building inclusive organisations among all employees .

In the Global North, “allyship” and “allies’ are words that bring memories of the World Wars, being on the right side, and sacrifice. In the workplace, it has become an all-encompassing term for framing the interactions between a person in a position of privilege and a targeted person or group. From simply becoming aware of oppressive actions on less privileged groups, to deploying institutional change to tackle the discrimination of protected categories, all can be considered an act of allyship.

This “allyship continuum” is very attractive to organisations and leaders. First, it reinforces the lack of accountability at the senior level by equally distributing the responsibility of building inclusive organisations among all employees . Second, it’s self-congratulatory. Under a premise that we could summarise as “every little helps”, it enables us to embody the identity of an ally with minimal effort. Finally, it reiterates the belief that diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) are under-represented group problems that allies can help to mitigate from the margins.

And allyship training excels at marketing. Some of its promises are building empathy, addressing biases when they arise, and even helping those suffering the burden of discrimination to stop complaining about microaggressions and instead listen without getting defensive – a big relief to human resource departments.

But overpromising is not the only problem. Our obsession with rebranding all DEI strategies as allyship also waters down powerful initiatives by drowning them in a sea of sameness. For example, recently, the Mayor of London office announced that it is investing £1 million in an allyship training package available to every secondary school in London to educate and empower young Londoners to take a stand and help prevent violence against women and girls. The package – a teacher’s toolkit titled, Ending gender-based violence and abuse in young people’s relationships – doesn’t contain the words ally, allies, or allyship. Still, the mayor’s press office felt the need to rebrand it as allyship training. 

Regarding effectiveness, the key problem is that reported measures of success are typically based on people’s perceptions of themselves – or others. Research shows that men are worse allies than they think. For example, 77% of executive and c-suite males think that most men within their organisation are “active allies” or “public advocates” for gender equity but only 45% of women at that level agree. This gap in perception increases at lower management levels.

Is tackling imposter syndrome, reducing unconscious bias, or promoting allyship useless?

Would replacing allyship with a different word boost the commitment of employees and organisations to make workplaces more equitable? Suggestions abound: advocate, champion, co-conspirator, co-liberator – the list goes on. Moreover, is tackling imposter syndrome, reducing unconscious bias, or promoting allyship useless? I posit that they are mostly a distraction from tackling systemic inequalities at work and the responsibility of leaders to drive those changes. 

For example, whilst we throw money into addressing underrepresentation or making privileged employees feel good, the UK gender pay gap has increased by 3.8% from 2021 – black African, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani women earn, respectively, 26%, 28%, and 31% less than men and disabled employees earn a sixth less than non-disabled workers. And organisations dodge responsibility for the fact that 50% of women who take a tech role drop it by the age of 35 or that 20% of British businesses get away with lacking policies to support LGBT staff.

How do we move away from sympathy for the hardships of under-represented groups to embedding equity in organisations? How can we escape the trap of DEI-washing?

Organisations need to shift from the comfort of snapshot statistics such as annual diversity audits, to measure the progression of women and underrepresented groups through the ranks.

For example, asking themselves how they can attract brilliant women in their 20s and keep them until they retire, and realising that’s much more than thinking about maternity leave. It involves mapping the journey of employees such as a neurodiverse, female software engineer until she becomes chief technical officer, or a black, nonbinary person joining as a junior sales manager and reaching vice president level. This will uncover blockers to accessing opportunities and career progression within the organisation and provide insights into the initiatives needed to overcome them. 

Individuals are not off the hook either. It’s paramount we teach people how to transgress boundaries such as gender, ethnicity, class, age, or disability to achieve the collective gift of freedom. Building inclusive and equitable workplaces is a practice, not a certificate.

As Aboriginal elder, activist and educator, Lilla Watson, said, “If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” 

QUIZ: Patriarchy and You

How much is patriarchy ruling your life and career?

We believe that we make choices based on logic and objective criteria.The reality is that the patriarchal rules embedded in our socialisation often decide for us.

This 3-minute quiz will tell you how much patriarchy impacts your life and career choices.

Mid-year review 2023: Savouring my DEI wins in a world not made for me

As an inclusion strategist, I always have the impression that I’m behind. The inspiring Audre Lorde – who defined herself as “black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet”- captured my feelings very well in the following quote:

“Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.”

Audre Lorde

So much to do and so little time!

I also find it difficult to reflect on and savour my accomplishments. Although DEI and women in tech are topics where many people doing an amazing job, the progress is slow or sometimes akin to a Whac-A-Mole game, the moment you think an area is improving, then something else pops up.

For example, I was very glad to see that the Black Lives Matter movement had put DEI are the forefront and that many organisations were prioritising it. But the relief has lasted only for a while. With the redundancies in the tech sector and the inflation, the roles related to DEI are the first bearing the brunt of the layoffs.

Unlike in my corporate job, my “identity” as an inclusion strategist has much more fluid KPIs. Part is paid work and part is probono. It’s also a match-up of several areas: coaching, public speaking, and writing, to mention a few.

So, what’s enough? Is savouring successes a path to conformity? 

Comparison

We are told that comparison and feedback make us better. That without criticism, we’ll all be slackers and underperformers.

And that’s reinforced every year when we commit to annual goals, KPIs, and scorecards. 

We’re told that we need to do more and better and that the path is to continuously measure ourselves against others — and surpass them. Only then, we can be sure we’re doing our best.

The problem that is not often discussed is how this drives dissatisfaction, frustration, and disappointment with ourselves.

“Comparison” comes often in my coaching sessions. Amazing individuals that create and deliver impactful work feel that they’re not enough when they measure themselves up against others — colleagues, family, friends, influences, and even random people on social media.

I tell them that I see comparison at three levels:

  1. Upward social comparison  — When we compare ourselves to those who we believe are better than us.
  2. Downward social comparison — When we compare ourselves to people who we believe are worse off than us.
  3. Comparison to ourselves — When we compare ourselves against a version of our persona.

Upward and downward comparisons typically provide either transitory self-esteem boost— e.g. I’m better than individual X — or in the long run, generate emotions like jealousy and envy — my career hasn’t progressed as fast as that of colleague Y.

But comparing to ourselves is not the panacea always. And that became clear to me last week.

Savouring our wins

I joined a journaling virtual session focused on mid-year reflection. It sounded harmless but I was dreading it — a little bit like when you know the medicine you’ll take is going to be bitter. 

My brain catastrophised about all the things on my “2023 to-do list” that I hadn’t accomplished yet. Still, I saw the value of joining the session because I thought it helped me focus and prioritise activities and tasks during the last part of the year.

In hindsight, I see that I went to the session thinking about comparing myself with an aspirational version of myself that I imagined on January 1st, 2023.

And that became clear during the first 10 min of the session. The facilitator asked us to focus on the past 6 months and think about what we were most proud of, what we had to celebrate. We were urged to look for all kinds of accomplishments and experiences — big and small.

Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded…

Audre Lorde

So, instead of comparing myself to that idealised version that I had set at the beginning of the year, I was asked to go back in time to January 1st, 2023 and compare myself to that version of Patricia.

And that did the trick. By comparing my current self with that of 6 months ago, I was able to see progress without judging myself. We were given less than 5 minutes but I couldn’t stop writing. 

Writing

Podcasts

I did my first podcast of the year! I was a guest on the podcast “Ophelia On Fire!”. In the episode, I talked about 

  • Self-worth vs Confidence
  • Confidence vs Competence
  • Strategies to avoid our feeling of confidence holding us back in our careers

Talks

Coaching

  • After a 6-month training and passing two exams, I’ve got certified as a life coach by The Life Coach School.
  • Following my impossible goal for 2023 of coaching 50 women and underrepresented people to get the promotion they deserve, I’m happy to report that I’ve already coached 42 of them towards getting the professional recognition they merit.

Book

I’m writing a book about “how women succeed in tech worldwide” for which we run a survey worldwide. Last June, we reached the milestone of 400 responses from women in tech living in 50+ countries.

If you’re a woman in tech, you can still share your experience by answering the 7-min survey here

Testimonials
Patriarchy instructs women to downplay our achievements, experiences, and skills. That’s why I find testimonials from clients a way to fight against that indoctrination. 

  • I created a page on my website to collect clients’ testimonials.
  • I was especially touched by four of the testimonials I received this year

Over 6 coaching sessions, 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 focussed 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

I participated in the Ada’s List coaching programme, a 6-month development programme for women and non-binary people in tech at Citizens Advice. We focused on leadership, diversity, equity and inclusion within technology and ways to develop your career. We shared insights and challenges, discussed different approaches and identified opportunities to learn and develop.

Sarah Gallacher, Product Manager, Citizens Advice

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 joined our Feminist AI and Digital Policy Roundtable discussion in April and presented her view on “how do decolonize AI with feminism”. I am impressed with her deep insights from the various, socio-technological perspectives of AI that she backed up with professional and personal experiences. Highly recommended speaker!

Alexandra Wudel, Co-Founder & Geschäftsführerin FemAI GmbH | Political Advisor | Speaker | MBA

Back to the journaling session, the effect of writing this laundry list of accomplishments was cathartic

As for the rest of the session? The usual. We were told to come up with our list of priorities for the year, identify the barriers, and look for enablers.

My takeaway? Whilst comparing ourselves to our future selves can help us think big, it can also lead us to burnout and permanent dissatisfaction.

Back to you

Put a 5 min alarm on your phone and give yourself permission to pause and journal about all the things you’re proud of in the last 6 months.

And then, savour them.

“You are the one that you are looking for.”

Audre Lorde

Let me know in the comments what 2023 accomplishments and experiences you celebrating.

QUIZ: Patriarchy and You

How much is patriarchy ruling your life and career?

We believe that we make choices based on logic and objective criteria.The reality is that the patriarchal rules embedded in our socialisation often decide for us.

This 3-minute quiz will tell you how much patriarchy impacts your life and career choices.

10 Promotion secrets revealed: The poison of well-meaning advice

Suprised woman.
Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay.

I’ve been a mentor for many years and I’ve had the privilege of receiving advice from fantastic mentors. 

But I’ve had also tons of bad career advice. Advice that has derailed my professional progression, robbed me of opportunities to stretch myself, and fostered patriarchal thinking.

The problem is that because it comes from well-meaning people around us, we’re conditioned by patriarchy to think others know better than us, and we’re trained to want to be liked — to “do as we’re told” — damaging our career in the process.

Here are my top 10 pieces of bad career advice and what to do instead so you save yourself time, energy, and frustration.

[Bad career advice #1] Women don’t help other women

This is patriarchal advice at its best. Are you really saying that 4 billion human beings won’t help their own group?

Yes, there have been some women that have hindered my progression or didn’t help me when it could have made a massive difference for me….

BUT

I’ve found many other women that have supported my career progression, made warm introductions, amplified my work, and highlighted my achievements and skills in rooms where I was not present. They have been my mentors, coaches, and sponsors.

What to do instead? If you’re a woman, connect two other women in your network that would benefit from knowing each other.

[Bad career advice #2] If you do a great job, you’ll be promoted

I have bad news for you: doing an impactful job that deserves a promotion is not enough to get promoted. That’s a sad truth that I’ve confirmed over and over throughout my career and from people that I’ve mentored, coached, and sponsored. It’s also well-documented in leadership books and articles.

There are multiple reasons for that. Some of them are:

  • Others may not be aware of your work.
  • They may be aware but don’t understand what it takes to deliver those results.
  • They may know about your work but don’t remember it at the promotion time.
  • Maybe only your manager knows about your achievements.
  • You deliver great value on key initiatives that are perceived as “one-offs”. That is, the value doesn’t fit the “typical” checkboxes for promotion.
  • Your work has reset the baseline of what people expect from you: You consistently deliver fantastic work so, by doing so in each project, you’re perceived as not doing anything “extraordinary” worth of a promotion.
  • You are perceived as a “commodity” worker: The business believes you won’t leave.

And there are many more.

What to do instead? Two actions you can start implementing right now to visibilise your great work:

1.- Record your wins — For example, create a “win folder” in your inbox to record your achievements, including those that appear “small”. That especially includes positive feedback from customers and colleagues. This information will be invaluable at the annual assessment time.

2.- Socialize your wins — Make your manager aware of your achievements… and everybody else that can support your promotion or may raise an objection about it. That includes your peers and especially other senior leaders in the organisation.

[Bad career advice #3] If you minimize your work, you’ll be more likeable and get promoted

Since I was little, I was taught by society to minimize and diminish myself and my contributions at each opportunity.

If they’d say “You’re intelligent”, the answer was “I work hard”.

To a professor telling me “Great work, Patricia”, I’d reply, “It was easy”.

Even to somebody praising how well a dress looked on me, I’d learned to reply “Really? It was not that expensive”.

And this pattern of diminishing my contributions and work continued through my early career. I felt the “right” answer to somebody acknowledging I had done great work was something like “It’s nothing”, “Anyone could have done it…”, or “Thanks but…”.

I also learn to caveat my comments with “I’m not an expert”, even if I was, because I internalised that otherwise I won’t be liked.

What’s the problem with that? I’ll answer with another question: How are you going to build a case for your promotion if you keep minimizing your contribution during the year? You cannot spend 365 days deflecting every praise on your work and then pitch during the annual and mid-year reviews that you’ve done outstanding work.

What to do instead? When somebody compliments your work, simply reply “Thank you” or, even better, stress what was the most difficult part. E.g. “Thanks. It entailed non-negligible strategic thinking/collaboration among teams/risk-taking. I’m glad to hear the project/initiative/presentation met your high standards “.

[Bad career advice #4] Everybody knows you want to be promoted

Nope. The world doesn’t turn around you!

During my academic years, the path was very clear. I was studying Chemical Engineering to get a diploma in Engineering. The same with my Master, and Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry. I didn’t need to spell out my goals. They were clear to everybody and that made it easy for people to support me, mentor me, and coach me.

Then, during my post-doc, the goal was much more fluid. It was like being in limbo. People assumed I wanted to be a professor at university — that’s what everybody wanted in the lab but I was not sure anymore… And then I knew that I wanted to work for a commercial company. Still, because I didn’t tell anybody, none knew, and obviously they didn’t think to recommend me if a commercial opportunity came along.

I did get a position to work for a company in France after my post-doc but it was all on my own. I had to look for open positions and apply to them. No warm introductions or help to prepare the interviews. Still, my post-doc advisor was very supportive once I asked for a recommendation to finalise my hiring at that company… I wish I’d communicated to him my intentions earlier.

I learned my lesson. Since then, I’ve been transparent with my managers about my career goals and where I see the next step for me. This kind of conversation helped me to understand the gaps between my perception and theirs about my career ambitions.

What to do instead? Spell out exactly what you want. Do you want to be promoted? Do you believe you deserve it? Say it. Explicitly. Don’t simply say “I want to be promoted” but “I have now the skills, achievements, and experience to be promoted to Sr. Support Engineer”, “Operations Sr Manager” or “Principal Software Engineer”.

And if you haven’t started to discuss it with your manager, don’t leave it to the annual review. Bring it to your next 1:1 meeting!

[Bad career advice #5] If you go after a promotion, you may let other people down

At one point when I was looking for a job early in my career, I reached out to quite a lot of organisations with my CV. One of them replied that they wanted to hire me. The position was not starting until several months later but I was over the moon.
 
About a month later I got the previous message, I was contacted by another of the organisations to which I’d applied. They were also interested in my CV. What’s more, they were even a better opportunity than the one I had accepted.
 
I was torn. I didn’t want to let the first organisation down but it was such a good opportunity…
 
 I reached out to my only mentor at the time and she told me I should be cautious. I didn’t want to be known as somebody that was untrustworthy… Long story short, I declined the second offer.
 
 In the very long run, all went well with my first option but I regret that my decision was based on “not letting others down” and not on “this is the best choice for me”.
 
What to do instead? Every time your brain goes into the “I may be letting others down” rabbit hole, question if you’re letting yourself down instead. Also, I invite you to examine the long-term effect of your decision. In my story, the decision was life-changing for me — it affected my career path — whereas for my employers it would have been an inconvenience but definitely, it wouldn’t have changed the organisation.
 

Get the other 5 pieces of bad advice — and what to do instead — when you join my newsletter where I share fresh thinking about inclusion, tech, professional success & systemic change through a feminist lens. Sign here to receive the guide “10 Pieces of Bad Career Advice and What to Do Instead”.

PS. If you’re already subscribed to this blog and want the guide “10 Pieces of Bad Career Advice and What to Do Instead”, get in touch and I’ll send it to you!

How patriarchy teaches you to talk yourself out of what you want

Patricia Gestoso delivering a talk in front of a screen that reads: Career vs Patriarchal version. Under career, there is a workflow that starts with goal, plan, people, implement, and ends with achieve. Under the patriarchal version, the workflow starts with play small, magnify obstables, do one test, judge ourselves, and ends with conform.

In May, I delivered a talk to the University of Manchester at the EDIA Colloquium “Women in Science, Industry and Academia”.

The title of the talk was How Patriarchy fosters your Perfectionism, Self-criticism and Self-doubt and what you can do about it”. To my surprise – and maybe yours – the title was not suggested by me but by the organisers of the event after reading my posts.

During the keynote, I shared with the audience how I talked myself out of launching my website focused on the intersection between technology and DEI for three years.

Reasons I gave myself:

Lack of role models: I hadn’t met yet anybody that worked in tech – I was senior manager of support at the time – and had a personal blog about diversity, inclusion, and equity.

Perfectionism: As a non-native English speaker, I catastrophised about the possibility to have a typo on the website or that my grammar may not be flawless.

Validation: The patriarchal structures had educated me that my worth was dependent on validation from others. I was concerned that people in my network and at work would see me as “less” for having a blog.

Credibility: I have a Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry but not in HR or DEI. At the time, I felt my lived experiences as well as my work advocating and spearheading diversity and inclusion initiatives weren’t “enough” to grant me permission to write a blog about DEI.

How did I overcome all those obstacles? I’d love to tell you that I “cured” myself by repeating in my head “Fake it until you make it” or “Be confident”. But it was not the case.

I had to do the work against two powerful enemies.

The first was my brain, that’s wired for survival and hates anything new. My brain knows me well so it would always throw me “thoughts” to discourage me to pursue a stretching goal.

The second was patriarchy, which is an even mightier adversary. Through the years, it has built for me a big encyclopaedia called “Good girl rules for Patricia”.  In it, it’s carefully detailed the very few things I’m allowed to think, feel, and do and all the other things I can’t even dream about because “good girls don’t do that”.

Among the patriarchal rules that are extremely successful at minimising women and people from underrepresented groups is the idea of the “role model”. It’s the perfect self-fulfilling prophecy.

Take women in tech.

Society says “Women need more role models in STEM”. That causes women to think that they need a role model to have a career in tech. And if they don’t find it, they abandon the idea because “you can’t be what you cannot see”. Not only that, if you’re indeed a woman in tech that has succeeded, society imposes on you the “obligation” to act as a role model on top of your full-time job. This can go all the way from agreeing to be the company’s speaker at STEM events to sponsoring the female employee network. All that whilst the men around you prioritise their careers.

How convenient, isn’t it?

That’s the reason that I told the audience that instead they should cherish the opportunities when they don’t have a role model. That means they are creating original work. That means they are trailblazers!

Moreover, I invited them to think about being role models themselves and have impossible goals. In my case, I want to be a role model of what’s possible for an immigrant woman in tech.

In the end, I shared with the audience a tip and a quote

The tip is that you need to learn how to move whilst feeling fear. There is no “imposter syndrome” vaccine. Fear will always be there when you attempt greatness, when you disrupt the status quo. The trick is to acknowledge it and explore the techniques that will suit you to still go ahead in spite of the discomfort.

The quote is

“If someone is unhappy with your life, it shouldn’t be you”

Brooke Castillo, Life Coach School

BACK TO YOU: How are you talking yourself out of doing what you want?

PS.

Do you want to get rid of chapters in the “good girl” encyclopaedia that patriarchy has written for you? Book a strategy session with me to explore how coaching can help you to become your own version of success.

Are You Falling for Weaponised Incompetence at Work? Here’s How to Stop

Senior Caucasian man holding a blank empty banner covering his mouth with a hand, looking shocked and afraid because of a mistake.
Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash.

I’ve written in the past about how women – especially non-White women – are expected to do the office housework: Those administrative tasks that are important for the business to keep moving but that are undervalued and not likely to result in a promotion.

And last week I learned that office housework has an ally: Weaponised incompetence.

Definition:

Weaponised incompetence or “strategic incompetence” as it’s sometimes called ― is the act of faking incompetence at any one task (though usually an unpleasant one) to get out of doing it.”

Examples:

  • Your partner claims they are “not good” at household chores so you do them.
  • Your family says that they are rubbish at planning, so you get stuck with organising family gatherings.
  • Your roommate consistently does a poor job at cleaning the toilet so you step in and do it yourself.

But it’s also alive and well in the workplace.

How do you identify weaponised incompetence at the workplace?

By the task

They are typically mundane tasks or activities perceived as low-value – taking the minutes, planning office events, handling conflict among colleagues, or soothing unhappy customers.

By what they tell you

  • You’re praised by how well you do the task, e.g. “You’re naturally good at taking notes during the meetings”.
  • They make you responsible for their faked incompetence and delegate the task to you, e.g. ” Remember last time how bad it was when I did it? You’re so much better than me at this”.
  • They say they don’t know how to do it, e.g. “It’s so difficult to update the Excel spreadsheet with the new leads”.

By what they do

Some strategies to deal with weaponised incompetence

  • Recognise you’ve been manipulated.
  • Communicate the patterns you’ve noticed.
  • Set boundaries AND STICK TO THEM.
  • Leave them on their own to figure things out
  • Coach them through doing the task themselves.
  • Take the opportunity to start a discussion about how valuable is the task, who should be doing it, and how it should be rewarded.

Are you a “perpetrator” of weaponised incompetence?

It’s also important that women – and people belonging to other protected categories – check if we are using weaponised incompetence against other people. For example, as I mentioned above, non-White women are expected to do more office housework than White women.

We, White women, need to step up and help break the cycle rather than reinforce it.

The first step is awareness.

  1. Look at the low-value tasks you convince yourself “you’re not to be good at” or that you don’t want to learn.
  2. Reflect on the reasons why you don’t want to learn to do them or why you think you’re not good at them.

Next, think about to whom you deflect that task.

  1. Is it always the same person?
  2. Is there a reason why the task shouldn’t be rotated among other people?

If it’s always the same person and the task is not core to the person’s role, step up and break the cycle of weaponised incompetence.

Final reflections

During an insightful discussion, Rose Cartolari challenged the use of weaponised incompetence as an expression that may further the divide between the giver and the receiver of the action. Instead, she offered the less violent and loaded term learned helplessness for reflection.

The American Psychological Association defines learned helplessness as “a phenomenon in which repeated exposure to uncontrollable stressors results in individuals failing to use any control options that may later become available. Essentially, individuals are said to learn that they lack behavioral control over environmental events, which, in turn, undermines the motivation to make changes or attempt to alter situations”.

I wonder if a term like strategic helplessness could be used instead of weaponised incompetence. I love to get your feedback on the comments on this expression.

BACK TO YOU: What do you do when co-workers use weaponised incompetence to get you to do low-value/unpromotable tasks?

A gift from me to you

Are you interested in discussing how setting boundaries can help you achieve your professional and personal goals?

Then book a free strategy session with me.

What women leaders want: A fresh perspective on retention strategies

Bar chart with the title "if you considered leaving the workforce in 2022, which of the following would make you more likely to stay?". Feeling more valued is at the top with 74%, increased pay second with 60%, and promotion to a higher level of responsibility is the third with 41%.
Results from Chief’s Make Work Work survey.

I’m so tired of bland business advice about how to retain women in leadership positions

  • Talk about the purpose.
  • Given them flexibility.
  • Build an inclusive workplace.

Why bland? Because it’s not a strategy, it’s the minimum.

That’s why it was so refreshing to read Chief‘s article “What women leaders really want at work

Chief’s “Make Work Work” survey of 847 Chief Members, all of whom are women at the VP level or above and who collectively manage $220 billion of the U.S. economy found that – surprise, surprise – there’s a massive disconnect between what companies think women want at work versus what they actually want. To be honest, that’s not a big surprise for me. Already in 2019, I wrote about the disconnect between HR and millennial women on the top reasons why those women leave companies.

So, what’s at the top of the wishlist for those 847 female leaders? In other words, if they considered leaving the workforce in 2022, which would make them more likely to stay?

Feeling more valued – Recently, I read in a community of women in tech a post from a female VP that is routinely expected to play the “secretary” for the exec team: Writing minutes, sending reminders… How valued do you think she feels?

Increased pay – Who would have guessed that women want to be paid as much as White men?

Promotion to a higher level of responsibility – Another shocker! I was sure women don’t care about promotions…

What retain women executives? In order of priority

1.     Power

2.     Money

Is that so different that what male leaders want?

Quiet quitting and rusting-out

So what happens to those that remain in their jobs and don’t get what they want?

In the last six months, there’s been a lot of chatter about quiet quitting. As per Forbes, “burned-out or unsatisfied employees put forth the least amount of effort possible to keep their paychecks”. Whilst for some this is a euphemism for lazy workers, others have made the case that quiet quitting can also be understood as refusing to be a workaholic and instead strictly delivering the work that matches your role and remuneration. But it’s not the only option.

Last week, I learned a new word rust-out: the condition of being chronically under-stimulated, uninspired, and unsatisfied at work

In an article in Stylist, Sharon Peake mentions that “rust-out is also more likely to affect women than men due to the unique workplace barriers that women experience, such as the double burden of paid and unpaid (domestic) work. This often leads highly capable and experienced women to return to work part-time, working at a lower level of responsibility after maternity leave, or even opting out of the workforce.” Moreover, “it can cause employees to ‘doom loop’. that is, repeat unhelpful stories about ourselves.”

In my post Join the conversation: How has mansplaining impacted your life? I mentioned the importance of having words to explain and validate our experiences.

I can finally name the experience of all those fantastic women that started with me in tech years ago and that were given unappealing part-time jobs when they came back from maternity leave, without access to the plumb assignments that lead to career progression.

Their organisations had condemned them to rust out in their jobs.

3 things we should unlearn from COVID-19

Finger clicking on a button that has the inscription “31 December 2019”.

Figure adapted by Patricia Gestoso from this image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay .

(7 min read)

Imagine you go into a one-week change management training with the expectation is that when you are back to work you’ll reassure everybody that there is no need to change. How does that sound?

Actually, this is what’s happening right now. We’ve been in a change management boot camp for 3 months now, at the cost of $2-4 trillion US$ (UNCTAD, Asian Development Bank), but most leaders keep using sentences such as “back to normal” and “resume”, or simply they have gone hiding. Do they really believe we can all go backwards in time to 31 December 2019? Are they lacking the creativity and energy to be the catalyst for a different future miles away from their vision four months ago? Or are they simply patronizing their citizens and employees by thinking that if they keep insisting on going forward to the past, we’ll all close our eyes to our individual and collective experiences during this crisis?

If it’s the latest, it’s not working.

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Inclusive leadership in the time of the coronavirus is also worrying about food and toilet paper

Picture of the empty shelves in a supermarket in England. Picture taken on 14th March 2020 by Patricia Gestoso©

Picture of empty shelves in a supermarket in England. Picture taken on 14th March 2020 by Patricia Gestoso ©.

(3 min read)

Last week, I asked a colleague how her recent transition to remote working was going on. Was her internet and VPN working ok? Did she get access to the docking station, screen, and mouse from the office? Was she proactively taking breaks?

Her answers reassured me: Yes, yes, and yes.

She also told me that after finishing her work at 6.00 pm she rushed to the supermarket to only find broccoli and Brussels sprouts. We made fun about how some people rather starve than eat certain food. It also made me realize that I’ve failed as a leader.

The scarcity trap

The picture that accompanies this post it’s how the supermarkets looked like where I live a week ago. It’s how they looked all this week too. And this weekend as well.  Me too, I’ve felt the pain and stress of visiting 3, 4, 5 supermarkets to gather the basic food and toiletries I needed.

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