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Hey there, Maureen Chana here, founder of the Mindsight Academy, neuro coach to executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, and a neuroleadership trainer using insights from neuroscience to help you deliver results by learning to work smarter, be in control of your brain, manage yours and other people's emotions, change behaviors, flourish and exceed expectations. Welcome back to another episode of Lead2 Excel Podcast. I am so thrilled to be with you today. And before we get started, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to it. And as usual, I will appreciate all your comments. So grab a cup of coffee, put your feet up and listen in. Our topic this week is one that is really dear to my heart. Because as we celebrate Women's History Month, it's really important to ensure that the discussion and conversations around women's place in the workplace in particular continues. So our topic this week is women in leadership, achieving gender intelligence in the workplace. It's a great time to acknowledge the role that women have been playing at the forefront of the global health crisis. Talking about health workers, caregivers, female government leaders, community organizers, and innovators. But with all that said, there's still a significant lack of female voices at senior corporate levels. Women remain woefully underrepresented at all levels of decision making worldwide. They only account for a quarter of members of parliament, and as of 1st January 2020, only 21.3% of ministers were women, according to UN women. And while women make up 70% of health sector workers, only 24.7% of health ministers are female. So, yes, I know we've just celebrated International Women's Day, which is great, but the conversation and the actions need to carry on. And actions more so, because if we get stuck on just talking about it, then we will keep doing this for a long time to come. Mackenzie estimates that women's jobs were 1.8 times more vulnerable due to COVID-19 than our male counterparts. While women make up 39% of the global workforce, they also account for over half of overall job losses during this pandemic. So let's start by looking at gender parity for thriving societies. UN Women argues that it's vital for policymakers at all levels to recognize what women leaders are doing and the challenges that they face to help them fully participate in building back better in a post-pandemic world. From the work I do with organizations, I know that men and women do want to work more successfully with each other, but they're really unsure how to, for fear of getting it wrong, saying the wrong things. It comes down to understanding why people that men and women deal with things such as stress, pressure, challenges the way they do. Have you noticed how women and men see the same things but interpret it differently as they often think and talk past each other? This is because we see the same things through completely different set of lenses. Some believe that women and men are not different from each other, that we all have the same aspirations and expected to achieve our goals in the same fashion. This is exactly why we're experiencing a lack of diversity in the workplace today instead of the quality breakthrough that we desire. The problem has been that women are under pressure to act more like men and less as themselves, while men are chastised for being themselves. This has unfortunately led to a lot of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and loss of authenticity. The science is now pretty clear that men and women go about the process of thinking, looking at the world and navigating their way through it in gender-specific ways. The differences are hardwired variations in brain structure and neurochemistry. Women in corporate life are expected to fit into a cultural construct that has been defined for generations by male behavior and male-specific rules, and many have had to adapt their behavior and bend to these rules. And Barbara Ennis described this perfectly in her book, and she says that despite the fact that today women make up half of middle management in pretty much every industry, the working world that they've entered has been designed for the most part by men for men. Men are by and large very comfortable in this environment and generally don't see any need for change. It's often uncomfortable for women who have little choice but to adapt to the male style of work. And this has led to many women going to work and leaving at home their natural way of forming opinions, perceptions, problem solving, and collaboration, resulting in their frustration and feeling shortchanged. But worse yet is that organizations have been deprived of the unique benefits that women can bring and equally missing out on the exceptional advantage of the collective attributes that are evident when both women and men's differences are optimized. The fact is that when women and men understand, value, and respect each other's language, it results in work that is far better quality than anything either gender could produce on their own. And this brings me to gender intelligence. Because this is an understanding and appreciation for our differences and gaining insights into how to nurture, develop, and complement these differences. There's a lot of talk about gender equality. But the fact is that men and women are different. And this is why gender intelligence is important because it's not assuming we're all alike or inauthentically modifying one's behavior and suppressing one's uniqueness, but rather valuing each other's differences when they appear. One of the complaints that I and many women have witnessed in the workplace is not feeling valued or appreciated because men often misread our intentions, misinterpret our actions, and fail to recognize our strengths. It's not that men don't want to understand, they simply don't understand how we perceive situations, our thoughts, and our actions. The same is true for us women, as we misread men's intentions and behaviors by failing to understand what compels them to think and act as they do. Another reason why gender intelligence is important is in order for this gender equity to be realized. The fear of both genders wanting to be careful in order not to say the wrong thing or the frustration that many men feel of not even knowing what to say has to be eliminated because it creates a climate where people cannot authentically engage with the other gender genuinely. So gender intelligence enables women and men to understand each other's way of thinking and acting. It exposes and eliminates any blind spots by paving the way for a more confident working relationship that does not expect both genders to think or behave alike, but rather by finding and valuing the complement in the differences. And as I said earlier, the traditional business model was written and created for men and has become so universal that no one even notices it. It's become invisible, like air is to us and water is to fish. So let's dig a bit into this science. Scientists have observed that men's brains are on average up to 10% larger than women's. They have also noted that parts of women's brains that transmit and receive messages to and from the brain and between both brain hemispheres contains more neural connections between them. In women, for instance, the part of the brain associated with language skills contains up to 11% more brain cells than the corresponding part in men's brains. This might explain why women are great at expressing themselves and have more to say about things. As a woman, I totally identify with that. It also explains why men will walk into a room and just focus on the mission at hand, while a woman would walk into the same room and notice the expression on people's faces, their body language, the mood in the room, who is sitting where, who's engaged and who's not. The woman's restless brain is constantly, subconsciously connecting one hemisphere to the other, and the same can be said for men that they are completely unaware of their fixed focus. Someone described it as men look through binoculars while women look through a kaleidoscope. The fact is that the two genders simply see things differently and hear differently. Dr. Ruben Girl says women often think that men aren't listening and that they don't care. In reality, men just have more difficulty hearing what's being said to them. Women and men's brain work differently, and that's something that needs to be embraced by every organization. So let's embrace each other's nature and stop trying to act the same. It's time for organizations to find ways that complement both genders to get rid of the stress and unhappiness this is causing so many people. And to also open and pave the way for more women to get into senior leadership roles in different organizations and governments. Gender equity is possible, but it can only be achieved by organizations consciously becoming more human and learning to value everyone by appreciating gender differences as strengths and not weaknesses. This is a great time for organizations to invest in learning how to embrace and make the most of the gender differences. I know a lot of people have done, a lot of organizations have done training on unconscious biases, but training on unconscious bias on its own is not enough. You need to know how to actually identify the biases, and you need to know what the biases are and be able to embrace the strengths and the biases and know how to eliminate the negative biases. So I hope this would really nudge you as leaders, as organizations, to start taking action. Because a lot of organizations are really missing out on the uniqueness and brilliance that women bring into the workplace. A lot of organizations are missing out on the diversity of having both male and female because the same problem, a man would see it so differently, as I've just explained, than a woman would. But with both perspectives on it, you have a great opportunity for excellence, for high performance, for great quality, for excellent problem solving, for great ideas. So it's time to have great succession plans, support women to get to the top. I just worked with a client recently who was who wants to give more to the organization that she's been working in for years and it's turned down. And I know we talk a lot about the lack of women in most senior positions, but the lack of black women in senior positions is even more dire. So it's time to really open the conversation, but most importantly, for organizations to now start taking action, doing something about it, get training for your team, but also know how to embed the training. Because I always say just giving training or getting going on courses is great, but that's just gaining knowledge. How do you embed that training? How do you embed the learning into what you're doing so it becomes tangible and impactful with results? That's the key to this change. So I hope this has given you something to run with and something to really act on. By all means, if you want to get in touch with me to really help you look at your own organization to see what we can do to really help get more women to the top, but most importantly, get make the most of the gender differences in your own organization. I'll leave my details in the description. Do get in touch. I'd love to speak to you. And I'll wrap this up for this week. Thank you once again for tuning in. And remember that if you haven't subscribed to this podcast, click on the button wherever you listen to it so that you don't miss an episode. And I would really appreciate you leaving a review. I've got some exciting episodes coming up with some interesting guests that you really wouldn't want to miss. So, in this climate, wherever you are, do remember to keep safe, look after yourself, and I truly wish you perfect health. Stay limitless, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Bye for now.