Carla Miller 00:00
Welcome to the influence and impact podcast for female leaders.

My name is Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self-doubt, become brilliant at influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. We'll be talking about all the different topics that affect you as a woman leading today. Think of it as personal development meets professional development. And I want to become the leadership BFF. You didn't know you were missing until now.

Welcome to the 100th episode of the influence and impact podcast. Now the fact that we are just hitting 100 episodes of happening having a little dance party in my office, I am something of a commitment phobe generally. So consistently, creating a podcast every week few exceptions when the reality of life got in the way, but sitting down and doing that every week has been a discipline for me and discipline doesn't come all that easily. And it has been amazing to see how well received it's been we are just about to hit 70,000 downloads, which is kind of crazy.

We have had the most lovely expert inspiring generous guests on the podcast, I have learned so much from them and really appreciate them giving their time. And it absolutely makes my day when I get the emails and messages from you saying that you found an episode or the podcast overall, helpful in terms of building your confidence, increasing your influence at work and developing your career. Sometimes I think I might run out of ideas for episodes, but then new ones come to me. So just a huge thank you to everybody. And also, I'm just gonna own that achievement, because I think it's really important for us to own when we've done things that are significant achievements. I'm not great at it, I need to practice what I preach. So yeah, I'm giving myself a virtual high five.

So for this 100th episode, we are going to do a little bit of a medley inspired by a question that I was asked at a conference last week, I presented live in real life. At a conference in Scotland last week, it was nice to get out there amongst people again, it was very weird when people were standing close to me, after like a couple of years of trying to keep my distance from people. I didn't know that well. But we had a really inspiring hopefully. And certainly I felt inspired and energised by the women in the room discussion about how women can increase their influence and impact. And we talked a lot about gender bias as well. There's some great questions at the end. And one of those questions was around how can I as a female leader, how can I support the development and champion the women in my team? How can I do my bit to overcome gender bias and give them the most opportunities possible, which I thought was the most incredible question. So that's what we're going to focus on today.

There may be some more medley episodes coming up in the coming weeks. But for this one, I've got six ways that you can champion the women in your team drawing on the previous episodes that we have done.

Okay, so let's get started with that. Now, the first and second ways come from a great interview I did with Mylene Sylvestre, who is one of the cofounders of the Women of Colour Global Betwork. She's also Publishing Director at The Guardian, we had a fantastic conversation where we talked a lot about how she developed her career, some of the barriers she'd overcome, and what she was doing as a leader to support the women that worked for her. And she is going to share with you the first two ways in which you can champion women in your team.

The first one is around sponsoring women. So we're going to talk about the difference between sponsoring and mentoring and how Mylene practically went about sponsoring the women that worked for her.

And then secondly, we talk about the gender pay gap and how she took action to reduce the gender pay gap for the women that worked for her and I just absolutely loved what she shared on that. So let's hear from Mylene on those first two ways that you can champion the women in your team If you had to give some advice to women who were in middle management roles and wanted to move to that sort of level that you're at, what advice would you give them?

Mylene Sylvestre 05:16
Something I didn't do myself, and I wish I had done is actually to get a mentor and a coach. So before, just make just don't set yourself up for failure and ask for support and training, you know, kind of devices, the development plan with your boss and check that the where the opportunities are. And then just make sure that you set yourself up with the support that kind of knowledge that will grow your confidence, basically, make sure that you feel like to be Yes, I'm ready for this. So your mentor, mentoring and coaching, I think they're great, good investment.

Carla Miller 06:00
And how did you use each of them differently? Because again, people are like, a lot of people think they're interchangeable, but they're different. But how did you use each one differently? What did you get from those two separate experiences.

Mylene Sylvestre 06:10
So the mentoring actually, I did a lot of mentoring I did, I never got an official mentor, I wish I had, but I had my boss was the kind of sponsor/mentor, he played quite a lot of roles, actually, you know, championing me and the sponsoring elements is really important as well. So you always made sure that was visible in the business, giving me opportunities to kind of step in for him and just make myself note, notice basically, senior people and the coaching, so that was suggesting, suggested to me by the development team at The Guardian, I kind of just, you know, it's really rare to take the time to do work on your the work on yourself. And it's a really brilliant investment. I just think you carve out those hours, where the focus is you and it makes you just reflect on what's happened. Think about what your hopes or fears are for the future. It's kind of it's just a really interesting process. And it's really worth investing the time and money into that, I think.

Carla Miller 07:17
And time is a big one, isn't it? So I talk a lot about how so many of the people I talk to the women I talk to you, they will think nothing of investing time and money in their team's development, but they rarely actually prioritise their own development. We’re always putting other people first all the time, we were trained to do that, but I think there's this myth that that's what great management looks like. But actually, the person at the top can leverage real change. I mean, it sounds like you've worked at an organisation where the culture has been really healthy, and that's allowed you to prorgress and stay there and grow whilst ad that not been healthy at the top, you probably would have gone elsewhere.

Mylene Sylvestre 08:00
Yes, yeah, definitely. I kind of feel I've been given opportunities I've been supported, invested in. And you know, not everyone at The Guardian, you know, it's kind of it's not just rosy, not everything is perfect, we can do better, you know, but yeah, definitely, that there's a culture that fosters that that kind of self-development.

Carla Miller 08:25
It’s still an organisation and all organisations have their flaws. I'm really interested to talk to you about sponsoring, because this is a term that's relatively new to me, like, I've lived in the UK my entire life and not really work for many international or us focused organisations, where I think they talk a lot about sponsoring. But here we've always talked about mentoring. And I think there is a little bit of a difference isn't it sponsoring? Sounds like it goes a step beyond what's your, what's your understanding of sponsoring? And how do you I know that you do proactively try and do it for other women? So what does that look like? The different

Mylene Sylvestre 08:58
The different ways I've tried to do it is, for example, doing some work. It starts with me with making sure that the women in my team are paid fairly. So I've done a lot of work on around the gender pay gap. And so in my team, it was a kind of legacy team with people who had been there for a long time, all the men were paid much more than the women at similar levels. So one of my first objective and things I really wanted to sort out was that and so I did a lot of benchmarking with the HR team. And so if you've got the data, it's much easier to build the case to say actually, you know, there are clear differences and so we did a lot of work with my leadership team sorting that out. And that kind of I see that in a way as a form of sponsoring because it was raising the profiles of the women in my team were absolutely brilliant, and had been just not kind of working so hard.

They've kind of the the amount of knowledge they had, you know, they were a lot of them were brilliant experts. But they were not in the management meetings, for example, you know, they weren't kind of doing the work, but not in the kind of in the club, the boat club. And so I changed really made a point of changing that when I joined. So I invited the second level under the management team. And it just changed the whole dynamic, there was some resistance from my senior team initially, that they it was kind of I was the only woman with my assistant, and then it was all men. And there's actually don't just think that that's not right. And we've got so much expertise and knowledge we need to bring, let's get the group bigger. And the conversation became much more interesting. The Women's felt really more motivated. You know, we followed that that salary, reduce and salary increases and promotions, which were long overdue.

That's something I'm really proud of, and that it was a form of sponsorships, that profile pros in the company. And then I've done it specifically on individuals, so maybe more junior women in the team or showing so much potential and promise and so I give them quite a meaty projects, and then make sure that the team of experts in and we have just support them in all the areas. And so it was through promoting them that also making sure that they're not exposed, you know, so that they weren't getting the support kind of mentoring from the more senior team. We've got quite a few examples of really successful success with that, which I find really exciting. That kind of just being promoted and delivering doing really well. So yeah, that's how I've done that two ways, I guess of sponsoring.

Carla Miller 11:53
Yeah, now they've had a chance to shine and the organisation can see the value that they bring, then they're able to advance within the organisation. I love how you went about that. We all need a leader. It's actually remarkably simple. But I bet a lot of people haven't actually sat down and just looked at that gender pay gap over Yeah, yeah. And it becomes about, oh, that person has been here longer or personalities, particularly in smaller organisations when actually you need to just look at the data. Yeah. Is there something unfair going on here. And as a general rule, stats tell us even if that started before they even came to this role, disadvantage in terms of starting salaries in terms of bonuses.

Mylene Sylvestre 12:42
So because maternity leave, when you miss that, you know, for if you go for a year, you missed that negotiation window, where you would get maybe a slightly bigger pay rise. So it kind of my approach was that even if it's the legacy differences, actually, it's my role to make to find a way of making the adjustment because that's fair, you know, so I felt really passionate about that. And the HR team responded, I think, you know, if you build the case, and you've got data, it's quite difficult, and I made the team or whether I was doing this, you know, so we had they had to deliver on it.

Carla Miller 13:15
Now, the third way that you can champion the women in your team comes from an episode that I did with the very inspiring and incredibly impressive Monique Carayol. Monique has a background in the NHS, and she worked her way right up to the top of the NHS. And now she spends her time inspiring and supporting other diverse leaders within that sector. Now, Monique shared that one of the secrets to her success was to get in the room where the people above her one making decisions. And she talks about how that helped her to prepare for the next level. Now she's talking about it from her experience. From the perspective of this episode, you're thinking about how you can champion the women in your team. Think about it from the other side, think how can I, as a leader help to get the women that work with me, the women in my team? How can I help them to get in the room and in the rooms that matter?

Monique Carayol 14:26
Just reflecting back a little bit maybe something that also helped me in my career journey was I was lucky enough to sometimes be allowed into the boardroom or to be allowed in the senior space. And then you realise when you're observing, you realise Oh, okay. They are talking about things that I understand. I can see some people are nervous, you know, I can see that other people are experiencing some of what maybe I fall or when you get into those rooms, you've sorted it all. You know, you don't have that and you can't go in that room until you're sorted it I realised maybe a little bit earlier in my journey than maybe the norm that Oh, okay. I think I could I could speak this language, I do understand it, I think I could go in that room and make a decision. You know, I think that that helped me actually a lot with the kind of imposter syndrome feelings that happen to recognise that oh, okay, they are more normal than what I thought.

Carla Miller 15:27
Yeah, and isn't it funny when you go in that room? And you realise not everyone in this room is really good at their job?

Monique Carayol 15:37
Definitely, definitely, definitely, you realise how much I call it emperor's new clothes. You know, that was one of my favourite sayings in my career, especially when I had a board level job. I'd be the person sometimes you'd go, What are you talking about? If everyone else gets it? Fine. I don't get it. And then you'd see everyone else nodding. And it's that Well, why didn't anyone else say that, but so much jargon. You know, so much stuff that you like you said, people who are average, but in that space, so if you're reading, and that's without flying off into another tangent, but that is exactly why I'm passionate about the work I'm doing now. Because there is fantastic talent out there. You know, who can be in the boardroom? Who can be making decisions, who can be doing what you and I are doing? And just want to encourage and support people to do that, you know, please fulfil your potential Don't be if that's what's holding you back. I feel like I want to break the doors down for everyone, you know, go in the room, you will be fine.

Carla Miller 16:42
Yeah, and I love that. And I guess this, this series is trying to show people, obviously, we can't take people into the room, but what it's like to be a person in the room and the faculty are assuming there's anyone else. I love that you asked to be in the room? How did you? How did you know? To do that? Have you seen other people asking to do it? Or you just, there's a really strategic thing to do.

Monique Carayol 17:04
Yeah, a couple of my roles that I had, were quite been in quite pressured, challenging projects. So the board would want to hear direct what is going on, you know, and it's persuading, I remember persuading my manager to let me go in the room as well, because it was almost like, you know, I really feel that I can explain this and Landis in a way that would work. And then obviously, you can stay in the room a bit longer, can't you so you can observe as well, but just trying to convince my manager and seeing your manager under pressure.

So I think some feedback I always had from my managers, as they found me very supportive, as someone in their team, just recognising, I always use managing upwards as one of my key approaches and senior manager under pressure, it wasn't trying to jump in and do their job, but almost that what can I do to help and volunteering to do some of those things really stood me in good stead. Because of what it exposed me to. I'd always encourage people to do that, you know, it may feel like extra work. And sometimes it is, but if you really want to climb the ladder if you want to get on in your career, just sharing my insights. It's something that helped me immensely to prepare for when I was in the next level role.

Carla Miller 18:21
Now the fourth way that you can champion the women in your team is to be really conscious about how you are handing out how you're distributing the non promotable tasks.

There's actually a whole book that exists on this now and but I talked about it in my breaking the bias episode, Episode 84 worth a listen to that whole episode as well but we are talking in this section about the non promotable tasks. Now this is aimed at any manager or leader and hopefully it gives you some really practical ideas. So what is a non promotable task? Well, it's time consuming. It won't be recognised as valuable. It doesn't significantly contribute to the business, and it won't show up in your performance review. It's that kind of it's, it's that helpful work. It's the organising activities, scheduling, taking notes, filling in for a colleague.

All of these are things that need to be done, but they are non promotable tasks. And why does it matter who does the non promotable tasks? Because if you are spending your time on those tasks, you have less time available to spend on tasks that will be measured in your performance evaluation or will raise your profile or will help you to build strategic relationships. And so you're unable to really fulfil your potential but because you're spending time on things that aren't helping to advance your career or your profile.

Now, when it comes to these non promotable tasks, women volunteer for them more often. So they volunteer for them. 48% more often than men do. They are asked to volunteer 44% more than men are asked to volunteer. And they say yes, more often. So when asked women say yes, 76% of the time, and men say yes, 51% of the time. And why is this? Is it because women are more helpful than men? Is it? Well, I mean, there could be any sorts of reasons. But actually, there was some really interesting research done that showed that there is a shared understanding by both men and women that women will volunteer more. So when they did the research with a group of women, women volunteered about the same percentage of women volunteered as normal. When they did research with a group of men, men volunteered, because they knew someone had to do it. And there wasn't any obvious choice looking around the room because there wasn't a woman in the room. Equally, when, when it was a group of women, they knew that someone had to do it. When it was a mixed group of men and women, it was always the women that volunteered. And then they say yes, more often, and therefore they are more likely to be asked.

So what can we do about this? Is it is the onus on women to stop volunteering so much? Well, possibly, but actually, if society expects us to volunteer and we don't volunteer, then that doesn't help us very much, either. So as if you're a manager, you can assign tasks on rotation fairly. So rather than doing that asking for a volunteer thing, and either picking a woman or a woman volunteers, because there's that awkward silence, and then eventually she goes, Oh, I'll do it. assigned tasks instead and assign them fairly. And men can volunteer more is a really, really simple thing that you can do to help even things out, you don't have to do it all the time. But don't let it always be the women in the meeting that are volunteering.

And number five, in the ways to champion the women in your team is again from Episode 84, around breaking the bias, and it's sharing a strategy that women can use to support each other in the workplace. And I think this strategy works on steroids when you're doing it for women who are more junior than you or who are, have less visibility than you. So let's find out about that strategy. The other thing you can do is something called amplification. So this came about from some women that worked with Obama. So they were working in one of the most wealthy, most powerful place in the world, with a leader who certainly appears very evolved. But they still weren't being heard in meetings, they still weren't being taken as seriously. And their contributions weren't being valued, as highly as the ones that were made by the men around them. And I think it was Michelle Obama, that said, she stopped being intimidated by those rooms or clever people when she got in them and realised that they weren't all quite as clever as they appeared. And so some of those people may have got there through being very, very good at communicating and appearing very confident and playing the political game very well. Anyway, the theory of amplification is a bit like passing the mic is basically about celebrating the points that women are making, and celebrating the women that are making them celebrating their contribution to a meeting.

So saying that was a fantastic point, or what a great question, or I think that there was some really wonderful insight there or again, I'd like to hear more about that, basically, amplifying their voice. So if you think about it, when they are speaking, what they have to say what women have to say, is just as valuable, but the volume just doesn't seem to be as loud in terms of how it's heard. You have the ability to speak with volume, so use that to send it back in their direction.

And then our final our sixth way to champion women in your team comes from Episode 87, which is all about having the career conversation now and that episode is aimed at individuals looking to have a career conversation with their line manager, but it would be super super helpful if as live managers as leaders, we were proactively initiating those career conversations for the women in our team, because as you'll hear women initiate those conversations a lot less than men do. And those conversations are absolutely crucial if we're going to work towards gender equality in terms of pay, and in terms of seniority and seats at the table. So let's have a listen to that section of episode 87.

Okay, so first of all, why do we even need to think about having career conversations? Well, because women do not get promoted as often and as quickly as men do. So for every 100 Men promoted to First manager level, their first manager role, only 85% of women are, and then the gap gets bigger. From there, to the point where, when we start with 38% of managers are women, by the time you get to C suite, it's 20%. And for women of colour, those statistics are even more depressing. And they're only represented only 4% of C suite roles are held by women of colour. So there's a big gap there. There's also a gap in terms of how well we are rated when we perform well. So women believe in a meritocracy as a whole. And by which I mean, if we work hard, keep our head down, do a good job, we hope that we will be recognised and rewarded and valued for that, and promoted where appropriate. And sometimes when you have a fantastic culture, and a fantastic line manager, that happens.

Often we are not operating with a fantastic line manager or a fantastic culture or both. And so we don't get recognised, and then we feel undervalued and start to think there's something wrong with us. As women, we feel it's a bit brazen to talk about yourself and your career rather than your work. And the issue is, men don't necessarily think like that. Men tend to recognise that it is playing the game of work to talk about your achievements and talk about what you want to do next. And so if you are working for somebody who does that, whether that's a man who does that, or whether you're working for a woman who is ambitious and driven is always really clear about what she wants to achieve. They may assume that if you are not having those conversations with them, that you don't have career aspirations that you're not interested, particularly in very masculine very corporate environments. Now, women are less likely to initiate these career conversations or ask for salary increases, we're going to talk about salary increases in another episode with someone who's much more expert on me than that. But men initiate career and salary conversations four times more than we do. And even when we do ask for more money, we tend to ask for 30% less, and we can be judged harshly for it, we have to do it in the right way.

The upshot of that is not only are we getting promoted less, and we're waiting longer between promotions, we are paid that the gender pay gap in Europe at the moment is 16%. So men are paid 16% more than women. Plus, another flaw in the meritocracy idea is that actually, we are underrated for the work that we are doing well. So if you've got a man who is making the the assessment of who's doing well, 70% of men will rate men more highly than women for achieving exactly the same goals. And confidence often gets mistaken for competence. So, for example, when men are modest, we think it's quite charming. And we assume that yeah, they're being modest. When women are modest, apparently they take us at our word and assume that we're not actually all that good about that what we're talking about. So it's an important skill for us to learn as women to be able to have career conversations where we're clear about our aspirations, and also to own our strengths, which I've talked about in other episodes as well. Now, the final point I want to talk about when it comes to the gender bias side of things is that there's been some really interesting research done on feedback, which shows that men and women tend to receive different feedback.

Now, as with all of this research, yes, it's backed up research. That doesn't mean it applies to every organisation, every man, every woman, there are always exceptions, personalities, differences, but the themes are that women are given quite vague feedback. We're often told that we need more confidence, but in a really vague way We're often encouraged to build relationships with peers. And we're not often given feedback that is useful for career progression. Men, on the other hand, are often given specific, actionable feedback. So rather than be more confident, it's like in this meeting, you could have pushed further. And this is why they are encouraged to be more strategic, they're encouraged to be more visionary, they're encouraged to build relationships at a high level. And as you can imagine, all of those things put you on a pathway to senior leadership, much more than believe in yourself more and get on better with your peers does, which is the feedback that effectively they are giving to women. Now, as an aside, all of this stuff, the confidence, the ability to speak up the ability to influence upwards and build strategic relationships, that is all absolutely caught influence and impact. And that is why I am so passionate about this stuff. But what I try and do is make sure in the podcast, I help as many people as possible. And so we're going to talk through today specifically, how to have the career conversation. Now a book that I quote, pretty frequently because it's just a really good book, which is why men at work why men at work, why men win at work, by Gill Whitty-Collins talks about the concept of looking under the umbrella.

So we if you think about it, we are all doing lots of work that our line manager isn't aware of. And the more senior you become, the more this is the case. And she describes that as basically working under the umbrella. And she was a marketing director at Procter and Gamble. And she noticed that in the conversations that she was having in the team meetings, her male peers, were always bringing up these crises that they had dealt with, or that they were dealing with. And they were always involving the most bad line manager in that situation. And she would listen to some of them and think, Well, those are just truly those are just problems and I problem solve all the time. And I I'm just capably doing a good job, I don't need to get anyone else involved. What happened at the end of the year is that even though her results outperformed the results of her male peers, she was not given as good a performance review. And her progression was not as significant. And the reason why is her line manager said, Well, your job has been easier, you haven't had to deal with the same problems that your colleagues have. And in fact, she had, she'd been dealing with them very capably, and just not making a fuss about them. And basically, she was saying all of this stuff was going on under her umbrella, and she wasn't sharing it upwards, so they weren't aware of all the stuff she was doing behind the scenes. And I think as women, we do that a lot, we problem solve, we keep achievements to ourselves. And when we are operating in environments where we're surrounded by lots of men, they are not doing the same thing.

So they are constantly putting out the message that they are good at what they do, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly. And we are not. Now if you work in a very female dominated environment, then you need to judge it carefully. Because I have seen men go into very female dominated environments act in their normal way, and it is frowned upon. And so I think you don't want to go right to the other extreme, and pretend you're a man, particularly if you are in a female dominated environment. But you do want to be able to have these conversations with your line managers. And everyone talks about great resignation, so many people are leaving, but I think one of the many reasons that they are leaving is because they don't feel like it's anywhere for them to develop within their organisation. No one's offered them a promotion, no one's offered them a pay rise, there are jobs out there at the next level paying more. And sometimes it is easier. In fact, I think it is easier to get a job somewhere else than to get promoted in your current organisation.

But that's a missed opportunity. It's a missed opportunity for you as an individual if you do actually like your current organisation and the culture there. And it's a huge missed opportunity for employers who are losing out on talented people having to pay to recruit new people having the opportunity cost of that they think it costs at least 100% of someone's annual salary in reality, to replace them. It's not just the recruitment fees, it's the loss of knowledge, the loss of relationships, that gap whilst you try and recruit someone getting them up to speed. So all of that adds up to it's a good idea to at least make sure that your line manager knows what your career aspirations are. And that's what really having the career conversation is. So I hope that that Episode compiled from a number of previous episodes have given you some food for thought about how you can champion that the women in your team. If you found it helpful, then please do share it with other leaders that you know whatever their gender, so that they too can take some practical steps to help to bring about more gender equality in the workplace. And you can also if you look on the show notes, you can also find more about the episodes that those came from.

But essentially, it's episode 70 With Mylene Sylvestre which was a women with influence interview, Episode 72 With Monique Carayol, which again was a women with influence interview, Episode 84, breaking the bias and episode 87 have the career conversation. So if you have listened to bits of those episodes, and I think, you know, I wanted to hear the rest of what was coming there, which always happens to me when I listen to many episodes, then you know where to find them. And if this podcast, or any of my other podcasts or has created some value for you, I would really appreciate it if you would share it or give it a review or a rating on whatever podcast player you listen to, because that will really help to get the word out. And I just want this brief content to help encourage and empower as many women as possible in the workplace. If you've listened to the podcast, and you want to know more about how we can work together, here are a few places you can look.

First of all, I've got a couple more freebies, I've got a free PDF on increasing your leadership impact at work, and I've also got a free masterclass on becoming a more influential leader without letting self-doubt hold you back.

So head on over to the website to book yourself a place on the masterclass or to download that PDF. There are my open programmes Influence and Impact for women at management and leadership level and Be Bolder a four week live assertiveness and confidence course for women at any level.

You can preorder my book closing the influence gap, a practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard.

You can also work with me one to one particularly if you're a senior leader, and you can hire me to work in house to do talks for awareness weeks, one of workshops, a series of workshops or to run my Influence and Impact programme or Be Bolder programme in house as a women's leadership or women's empowerment offering.

If you want to talk about any of those on my website, you can drop me an email or you can also book a quick 15 minute chat so we can talk about what you need and how I might be able to help you or your organisation so I look forward to chatting to you. Take care