Women have well-honed noncognitive habits of collaboration; yet, many women leaders feel excluded from the conversation and use far too much brain space trying to figure out how to communicate with male counterparts or male bosses.
“It’s exhausting.” “Often I think my boss doesn’t like me. That triggers my keg of negative emotional energy and my insecurity obsessions begin.” “I worry that I am different. I worry that I am not competent.”
These are the words today spoken to me by some of the highest-performing women leaders within Fortune 500 companies. Yet, according to researchers, women are now better educated than men and have nearly as much work experience.
So, by leveraging the collaborative strength of women, how can women and men, together, truthfully communicate their biases in order to accelerate awareness and rapidly remove negatively-held attitudes or perceptions that hold them and others back?
Start with awareness
First, accelerating personal awareness is essential. This is accomplished by reflecting on one’s personal habits of thinking, the corresponding belief, the emotional reaction and finally the action or behavior.
Considering statements like “my boss doesn’t like me” and the corresponding behavior of withdrawing, blaming, working harder, toxic communication and not asking for the promotion keeps everyone stuck, practicing the same obsessive habits of worry, anxiety, anger and insecurity.
That, of course, reflects the practices of women leaders. What about their male counterparts or bosses? For men, accelerating personal awareness requires the same vigorous self-reflection.
The next step
For either women or men leaders, it is the actionable decision to set aside the thinking, beliefs, emotions and behaviors that are well-practiced, ingrained, unthinking and comfortable.
These are the habits that interfere with truthful collaboration and give rise to the biases of either feeling incompetent or acting on prejudices. Although different for women and men, both are barriers to collaboration.
Once you have taken the step to suspend your well-practiced and ingrained personal habits and practices, begin envisioning your team in its most effective mode, honestly collaborating. If this is tough for you to do, think about the real advantages you and your team can realize through the concrete actions of truthful collaboration. In other words, what’s the size of the prize?
Now, get ready to demonstrate the observable and different behaviors that clearly indicate that you are collaborating in new, different and constructive ways. Motivate yourself by envisioning the size of the prize and the business benefits.
Here are the accelerating awareness questions:
- How will you courageously and truthfully collaborate?
- What’s holding you back? What do you need to stop doing?
- What is the size of your prize?
- What three collaborative actions can you immediately undertake to demonstrate your commitment to truthful collaboration?
Next step? Observe your results.
Donna Rae Smith is founder and CEO of The Bright Side Inc.®, a transformational change catalyst company that has partnered with more than 250 of the world’s most influential companies.
