Get Booked – Patricia Seabright She Said 220321

Welcome to today's episode of Get Booked. I'm Hazel Butterfield. Reading and a rekindled love of books has skyrocketed through this pandemic, whether it's for escape, in search of entertainment, learning, or finally having the time to plough through the TBRs. Audible has given us the voice in our ear while we're cooking or hiding from the kids or on our many exercise walks. And here at Get Booked for Women's and Men's radio station, we love talking to authors about the books they've written, going into detail about the topics covered, the mental health and well-being elements, and giving you the extra special insight into a different book and the author each week. Today, with the incredibly relevant and not just helpful but eye-opening book is She Said by Patricia Seeberg, and Do you know what? What a time for this book to be available to us after that Zoom call with Jackie Weaver and the many, many opinions on Meghan Markle and what happened, how she was treated, and why that might have been so. Women struggle to be heard, are expected to be everything, but only in the quantities dictated to them to be perceived and received as likable. But who's making these rules? Why and how can we change these rules? In a way that doesn't mean we have to fundamentally be somebody that we're not and being inauthentic. Patricia, hi. Good morning. Yes, good morning indeed. Yeah, do you know what? I have thoroughly loved reading She Said, and you have been the topic of conversation on my female-led dog walks on the morning where we have just completely gone to town on all the subjects raised. It's been interesting. I'm glad it's provided some stimulating conversation. Oh, it's just, I mean, a lot of what you've come out with in She Said, it should be common sense but it's not, and sometimes, you know, we get so busy or consumed with what's going on that we're not utilizing our time properly, we're not using our strengths properly, and I think What you have done in this book is absolutely remarkable. I love it. And before we get stuck into the oh-so-many points I want to talk to you about, would you want to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Certainly, yeah. My background is in sales and marketing. I've probably spent majority of my career in that as my core profession. Originally, I worked for multinationals like Coca-Cola Procter Gamble. But for the last 20 years, I have worked for myself as a consultant, and I specialise in complex B2B selling. But alongside that, skills, and particularly speaking and influencing skills, which is where my passion for the book came from, really, because across those years, I've worked with very many brilliant women, but who for one reason and another have really struggled to speak and be heard. And I wanted to write the book for a long time, and and lockdown came along and I thought, well, now's the time. This is something you've written about that you're passionate about and you're very knowledgeable about. Did it just flow incredibly quickly? Well, I think I thought about it for quite a long time and I started intentionally writing blogs that I felt could form a background or a backbone, if you like, to what I wanted to write. So, you know, I guess I was building up to it for a long time. And I think though that certainly the lockdown gave me the opportunity, some space to really pull it all together. But then as I started working on it, researching it, interviewing some about 30 senior women as part of the project, it morphed and grew. And yeah, that was the part that was really, really fun. That really did flow. But it's a bit like a lot of overnight successes. They take a long time planning. I've found it's very personable, the book. It's very easy to follow, and it's not one of those books where you kind of feel like you're being schooled, if you know what I mean by that. Well, yes, I have to say a lot of my family and friends who've read it said, or my children in fact, said, "God, Mum, that sounds just like you." I like that. I was quite complimented because they actually read it, so that was good. Oh, do you know what? I've read it, every single last word, because I mean, what's interesting is I speak regularly, you know, I will talk non-stop for an hour on the radio, you know, I do outside broadcasts very regularly to thousands of people. I will, you know, do either podcasts or live radio at the drop of a hat without any planning whatsoever, and I am completely comfortable with that. However, Put me in a meeting round a table with 8 people, somebody asks me a question, and I'll go bright red. It's— well, I was reading the meeting section towards the end of the book, and it's because you're not necessarily in a position of power, you know. It's normally the chairman or the person who's been there the longest, or, you know, it's a bit like Zoom calls as well. I hate them because I never know who's going to speak next. It's kind of— It's the unknown, I guess. I mean, I've got quite a few different jobs, and I'm very different in all of them, dependent on, you know, what I think my knowledge is. I mean, there's sections in the book where you talk about how women want to be completely and utterly perfect and fully ready before they pipe up. And yet, men sometimes will wait for a half-formed idea and then just kind of run with it. And if we wait to be perfect, normally miss out on making our point. But I've always, I've always felt uncomfortable when I go into these meetings because I know full well I'm going to go red, everybody's going to see it, and it makes it even worse. I mean, it's sometimes reading, reading that part of the book where that pointed it out, it kind of made me realize it is just, it's a situation, isn't it? And it's a situation that I need to work on. And you give a lot of hints and tips in your book for all the different scenarios that women can come across. Where they might feel uncomfortable or feel like they're going to be challenged about how they can get round these stumbling blocks. And I can't wait for the next meeting to see if I can try and stop going red. I'm a 39-year-old woman and I go bright red sometimes if people ask me a really simple question. I need to stop that. Well, you know, it's interesting you say that. Of the very senior women that I interviewed for the book, I mean, I spoke to CEOs, CTOs, CIOs, a general counsel, a principal of a large college, a headteacher of an academy trust, even a bishop actually. But actually a lot of them said that they preferred presentations to meetings for exactly the reasons you outlined there, that actually to a certain extent in a presentation at least you get to speak and nobody's allowed to interrupt you for a while. Yeah. Whereas the sort of wildcard element of meetings means that they are a lot less controllable in many respects, and they can be a lot more of a bunfight. And I think typically women find that harder because typically, you know, our style is more collaborative, men's style is more combative, and there's quite often a clash there. There is a lot of research in this book as to why there are certain differences. Knowledge is power, isn't it, Patricia? Well, applied knowledge is power. Yes, okay, yeah. What I found as well quite helpful in the book is where you embrace the issues that people are potentially worried about. I mean, women do worry more about a situation, whereas, and, and how they can be perceived, because we do get perceived definitely more disadvantageously. And, um, I like how you've come up with lots of scenarios and how people can come up with ready-made phrases or responses to people. Now, it's just a case of preparing. And for those people that are listening and saying, well, why should we have to? Sometimes it's speculate to accumulate, isn't it? Yeah, no, absolutely. So I think, you know, women do worry partly because we know for sure that on the whole women are judged more and are criticized more and more personally than men. And we've learned this across our whole lives, and it causes women to self-edit. It causes women to worry and sometimes not speak at all. If they do speak, they often self-edit. They often use minimizers and qualifiers, you know, kind of, sort of, a little, maybe, perhaps, those kind of words. So yes, actually, women worry quite legitimately about about being criticised, if you like. So, and yes, you know, I do think that the key to managing meetings and feeling like you are more in control, and so, you know, less worried, less anxious, less likely to go red perhaps. But, you know, I think it is about preparing for meetings more perhaps than we think we need to. To be honest, I think that's something that men could also do more of, and get more effective meetings. So it's not just saying to women, you you know, you need to work harder than men. But to a certain extent, if you're going to be heard in a meeting, you perhaps do need to do that extra, that little bit of extra work to make sure you're ready to contribute. And you don't do that thing you alluded to earlier as well, which is to wait and wait and wait until you have this perfectly formed point to make, because it'll never happen. But if you've prepared a little in advance, you've looked at the agenda, you've thought about what you want to say what you want to contribute, you've perhaps pulled together bits of evidence or data on it, then you're ready. You're ready and you're prepared. And the other thing is, was a top tip from one of the ladies I interviewed, she said, you know, contribute early because once you've inserted yourself in a meeting, once you've made your voice heard, it gets easier. So yeah, prepare and contribute early are two very good tips, I think, for making your voice heard in meetings. I think the other point that you make in the book that I think is brilliant is to rally the allies, you know. If you're about to have somebody go on a Zoom call and you've not met somebody, do a bit of research on LinkedIn and maybe get in touch with them. Or if you're about to go into a meeting with 3 women that you know well and you kind of say, this is the point I'm going to make, are you in agreement with it? You know, if somebody tries to cut us off, can we kind of work together to kind of make sure that our points are heard and kind of stand up for each other a little bit in a non-combative way. I love that idea of just— it seems simple, doesn't it? No, it's really important. So, you know, Madeleine Albright, the first ever female Secretary of State in the US, said there was a special place in hell for women who didn't support other women. But yes, conversely, there's a strong place in heaven for women who do. I think I talk in the book a little about the BBC Women's Group. I mean, they are a really great example of how women can support other women. They came together originally as a result of the equal pay battles that went on at the BBC, but they formed into a much more holistic group, and they, they have a very active strategy of supporting each other. So whether or not that is in a meeting when they hear one of their female colleagues being ignored or spoken over or interrupted. They'll be the ones that says, "Oh, hang on, I don't think Hazel had quite finished there. That sounded really interesting, Hazel. What was that again?" Through to attending tribunals with each other, through to amplifying each other's tweets, through to supporting each other by making each other aware of opportunities. So, you know, I really like that as an example of women being proactive and positive allies for each other. But on the same topic, of course, there's quite a lot of discussion these days about male allyship, and I think that's really important because men still are in the majority in a lot of management environments, and without their support, it's going to be very hard to create gender balance. So, you know, men who are genuinely supportive of a fair and equal environment, and a more effective environment by the way, in work, they— men too can take a very active role. You know, they can call out unconscious bias and sexist comments in their colleagues, they can make sure that if a woman is interrupted that you come back to her. If they're, you know, if men or women are chairing meetings, they can take a really You mentioned Zoom, by the way. This is really important on these kind of digital formats and video platforms, that if you're chairing a meeting, man or woman, you have a huge role to play in making sure every voice is heard. And quite often what that is, is not just throwing out something and saying, 'So, what does everybody think of that?' It's more a question of going around the room and proactively asking people who are quieter, whether that's an introverted man or a quieter woman. You know, there is a real role in being an ally and making sure that you encourage and enable every voice to be heard. Men do have a part to play, and they have a part that they want to play, and it's not men v women. I don't know— men v women, should I say? I don't know whether you've heard this term before, but have you heard of misogyny sympathizers? Yes, I've recently read a book called Men Who Hate Women, um, all about the something called the manosphere, which I had never even heard of before. Um, I guess it's the same thing. There's— there are groups of men who, um, are very antagonistic towards women, and, you know, this— that's very much a man versus woman thing. But, you know, I like to think that's very much the minority, that most men, um, that actually gender balance is both fair and more way to run, you know, business, to run life, to run politics, to run anything. And most men are supportive, and some of the issues that women encounter are more due to unconscious bias than they are active misogyny. But I guess we have to recognize there's both out there. I think in terms of the misogyny I find women to be quite an issue with that as well, because as you talk about in the book, you know, we're primed to want to be liked. And I found a lot of women side with men and using more negative language towards women who are potentially stronger or like their voice to be heard more. And so they side with men to be liked more, because they're saying, oh yeah, she was a bit too brash, wasn't she? She's a bit too aggressive, she's this, this, this. But I think there's a role to play for men and for women, and I don't know how much you've come across that. Yeah, I think the— well, I suppose there's a couple of things. There's the Queen Bee syndrome, you know, that thing that Margaret Thatcher was always accused of, that, you know, certain women who have fought and clawed their way to the top of any given organization feel like, you know, they've been through the mill, they've achieved this, they've suffered whatever they've suffered to get there, and everybody else should have to do the same. And so they're not very supportive of other women. In fact, sometimes more than that, they quite enjoy the exclusivity of being the queen bee, the only woman around. And they're the type of women who are famous for pulling the ladder up behind them, if you like. So certainly some of that. But I think also what we have to recognize, and what I talk about a lot in the first half of the book, is just how strong our cultural paradigms are. So, you know, our culture and our way of thinking is ingrained habitiness that's come from millennia of men being the stronger sex, the leaders, the people in charge. And what I've realized is that culture takes an incredibly long time to change. The world is changing incredibly fast around us, technology is changing, and we think everything's changing, but actually cultural expectations of what we think it is to be a man, what it is to be a woman, what it is to be a leader, those things are changing incredibly slowly. And to your point about women perhaps not being supportive of other women, Often those cultural norms that says actually women should be gentle and kind and collaborative and caring, they shouldn't be strong and assertive and bold and determined because, you know, that doesn't fit with our paradigm of femininity. I think some women feel that as strongly as men do, and therefore they criticize other women who are not ticking the right boxes of approved femininity because they are ticking the boxes of approved leadership. I mean, I think there is a lot of unconscious bias. It's finding the difference between— well, both need to be worked on, but the unconscious bias versus outright sexism, it's very hard to kind of figure out how to attack both, if you see what I mean. There's— I mean, let's talk about the unconscious bias that's going on at the moment. For example, did you watch the interview with Meghan, Harry, and Oprah. Well, yes, I didn't want to be the only last man— last woman standing that didn't see it, so yes, I did. And there's a lot of unconscious bias. This is the exact, uh, this is a perfect example of blatant racism, sexism, and unconscious bias. Now, there's— Meghan seems to tick every single box going, doesn't she? Um, yes, yes, she does. I mean, you know, I think, um, I think unconscious bias does reveal itself very very regularly. I like the example that was in the— a few months ago when Parliament was all happening remotely, there was a headline in the Daily Telegraph that read something like, "Well, this remote Parliament via Zoom is dangerous and risky because MPs' wives and researchers can vote for them." Oh yes, yeah. And Jess Phillip tweeted back, "Oh well, I'll have to make sure my wife doesn't vote then." And she did a brilliant job of handling it, you know, making the point but making it in a fun way. But, you know, that was a great example to me of the unconscious bias, right? The assumption that men are— that MPs are men and white heterosexual men that probably have wives. So, you know, and they withdrew it very quickly, but again, it was just typical of Whoever wrote that didn't really think too hard about the implicit assumptions in that. The joys of social media. Pardon? The joys of social media and everybody being able to pipe up extremely quickly. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, things like what Jess Phillip did was great really because she called out the unconscious bias implicit in that statement. She did it in a way that wasn't male-bashing or wasn't, you know, overly heavy, but she called it out. And I think that's what I've loved about this International Women's Day theme of Choose to Challenge this week, is yeah, we need to be challenging that, because if you let those statements go, the unconscious biases will just remain for generations to come. And there are a lot of men out there who think they're incredibly woke, and the 4,000-year-old project, as you refer to a lot in She Said. There's times that I've pointed out, and there's an ex of mine who used to always tell his daughter to stop saying 'like' because it was irritating, okay, but yet his son used to use it, the same phrase, and it didn't even come onto his radar. Now You've done a fantastic section on how to deal with, how to be perceived more, and this sounds terrible, but less irritating, and to be more conscious and to be more aware of how to get our point across. Now, and although we're dealing with many different people in meetings, in work situations, wherever it is that we need our voice to be heard, and there are many people that have no idea that they have these biases in place. Yeah, no, I think that's very true. Sometimes when I've called things out in meetings, the men involved have been quite mortified that what they've said or done has been perceived in that way, and they just haven't been aware of it. So yes, I think, you know, the more you can challenge it. And, you know, I don't— hopefully, unless it's out-and-out sexism or misogyny, you don't have to challenge it harshly. But to challenge it and to call it out, I think, is something that we all do need to be doing. And to just— I mean, this is the beauty of books like this. This book isn't just for women to help them. I think it needs to be men that are reading it as well, so they can understand the different challenges and actually help them realize when they've possibly gone, yes, I have actually judged her harshly when I would normally— it wouldn't even come onto their radar if it was a man doing exactly the same thing. No, no, it is really interesting that men's perception— I did a radio interview with a channel in Ireland and the first thing the guy said to me was like, well, Patricia, you say that— I won't do the Irish accent— but he said, well, Patricia, now, you know, you say that women are heard less than men. Well, that's not my experience. Appearance of it. And I'm like, well, it wouldn't be because you wouldn't notice. But that is probably part of the problem. There was an interesting article written by Adam Gray, who's collaborated with Sheryl Sandberg on books before, when, you know, he said, yeah, you know, half the problem is that men don't even notice that they're dominating meetings. There's a— I think one of the things I said in the book, there's this great website called 'Are Dudes Talking Too Much?' And you can download this little app that if you're sitting in a meeting you can just press button A or B that will indicate whether it's a man or a woman speaking at any point, and at the end of the meeting it'll tell you who's spoken most. And, you know, I think if we all did a bit more of that, men would probably start noticing that yes indeed, they do talk an awful lot more than women. Yeah, maybe they're just not used to hearing as many women who are starting to want their voice heard somewhat more. There is now your book at the moment, it's twice the size because of the amount of pages I've folded back that I want to highlight during our chat. So let's see if we can get through as many as possible. But in relation to what the point you've just made, 'A woman must learn in quietness and full submissiveness.' Timothy 2:11. 'I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. She is to remain quiet.' That's part of the 4,000-year-old project, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, I know, and I think, you know, in deference to the Bible, I guess there's an awful lot of bits of the Bible that of course are very relevant to the culture of the history of the time, and I'm not a believer at all in judging the current moment, you know, the way we think about things now, the way people thought about things 2000 years ago is very, very different, and it's not comparing apples with pears to— it's not a fair comparison to look at things that way. But yeah, you know, if you track a lot of the history of whether it comes from the ancient Greeks, whether it comes from the Bible, whether it comes from parables or stories or oral histories or whatever, they're all about women being silent. And particularly the ancient Greeks are really interesting because ancient Greece is the foundation of a lot of Western civilization and a lot of our culture. You can trace the origins back to that. And, you know, and Mary Beard talks really brilliantly about this, that actually in ancient Greece rhetoric was huge. And in fact, you know, rhetoric, it was a consider, you know, everybody was taught it, and in fact everybody was taught it in English schools up until about 50 years ago. But it was considered the foundation of democracy because, you know, you needed to know how to talk and to influence and to advocate, and everybody had to be taught that because if some knew it and some didn't, it was unfair and anti-democratic. But it was only men, and Mary Beard talks about the fact that oratory and speaking and rhetoric was synonymous with maleness in ancient Greece, and that actually it was almost an aberration for women to speak. It was just not a feminine thing to do at all. It was all about men and maleness, and some elements of that have carried through. It's not— and when you track it through history and you look at John Knox and his monstrous regiment of women, you look at the way the suffragettes were treated, You can look throughout history and see the examples of it where there's just this implicit assumption that women should be silent. Well, you say in history, but again, as you point out in the book, all you need to do for an example of this is to get on a tube, see how women sit and see how men sit. You will see that you'll be able to fit at least 6 women in the same space as 2 men because they're they're still manspreading and taking over their domain, aren't they? And that is mostly unintentional. It's just, it's unconscious. It's just the way it is. So it's interesting body language stuff, isn't it? Because again, when we think about what are ideal male traits, what does society and culture think are ideal male traits versus what are ideal female traits, it boils down to men, big good, women small good. You know, so women tend— men take up a lot of space and that's good, that's what we want from a man, we want them to dominate the space and take up space and to be the alpha male, whereas women are supposed to be tiny and little and petite and inconspicuous and lovely and nothing else. If we're inconspicuous, we're shrinking, and when we're shrinking, we are not able to get our point across, and there are lots of different ways that you embrace this in your book about how to accentuate our points in terms of our tone, our movement, our stance, on just how to become less shrinking. I think that it's page 174 where I really loved the ideas you come up with, the whole visual reinforcement. It's not all about what we say, is it? You know, our body language is read at the same time. You know, you can have something incredible to say, but if you're not saying it with the right tone or having that stage presence or any presence whatsoever, it doesn't— it's not going to be read properly. I mean, I've been asked quite a lot in some of the Q&A sessions that I've been doing in speeches this week about, you know, how can I 'How can I convey authority without being called bossy?' And actually, I think there's a lot to be done there with voice and tone, because again, bearing in mind that voice and tone convey more of our message than actually our words do, but body language and tone can convey a certain amount of presence, status, authority, and they do it subliminally. So actually, if you hold your body in an authoritative way, if you speak with enough volume and enough conviction, then you're conveying authority without using any words. So nobody can criticize you for being bossy, for your tone or your body language. So actually, developing that is a really powerful tool for women. I did actually like your great suggestion, especially in relation to Michelle Obama and the issues that she was having right at the beginning of her husband's presidency. That's where it started, where she was asked to turn the volume off on the latest speech and actually see how she appears and how she comes across when there's nothing being heard. Yeah, no, I mean, it's something I do with a lot of my coaching clients anyway, because partly you if you do that, you start to see, do you have any particularly distracting physical habits? Like, do you always flick your hair, or do you always twiddle with the back of your hair, or scratch, or do whatever? And you notice that much more, obviously, when you turn the volume down. But actually, yes, she was told that she was tone policed, effectively. She was told that that she needed to, that she looked angry, and of course that horrible bad stereotype, this trope of the angry Black woman, was levelled against her. And while it is entirely inappropriate and unfair, the campaign managers didn't want that to be able to be used against her, so they asked her to tone it down and to alter the way she looked so she didn't look so fierce, and alter what she was saying so she didn't sound so fierce. And yet now she not only has mastered it and completely hit the ball out of the ballpark, when she was last due to speak at an event in London, I was on the waiting list. I'd phoned up to try and get tickets and I was something like 18,000th in the queue. Yeah, I know, I did the same. I tried to buy a ticket and I think the only one I could lay my hands on was something like 600 £100, so sadly I wasn't able to go. But no, I mean, one of the things I think is really interesting about that particular example with Michelle Obama, in the book I talk— when I talk about any of the tactics of how you deal with any of these things, I always make the difference between do you navigate or do you challenge. So that's been particularly interesting this week as well with the Choose to Challenge International Women's Day theme. Because yeah, you know, it's great and we must challenge, there's a lot that needs challenging, but it isn't always appropriate to challenge. Sometimes you've just got to navigate your way around it. I do think you've given lots of hints and tips though about how to either challenge it or when to step back and actually focus on what really matters. In your book, I think you've covered a lot of different scenarios and varied scenarios and how to respond, I think it's incredibly helpful. Well, great. I'm glad you found it so. But yeah, no, and as I say, sometimes there are times when you just, you just have to navigate. And that's what Michelle Obama did, right? She could have taken the attitude to go, well, I'm not going to be tone policed. I'm going to keep saying it and doing it the way I want to do it. But if she then had, if that had then created a negative effect for Barack, then, you know, she wouldn't have achieved her ultimate gains. She did tone it down, he did get elected, and now, as you say, she's so powerful, she can do and say whatever she wants in whatever style she wants. So, sometimes, and I have to say, a lot of the women that I interviewed for the book, a lot of them did say that they navigated earlier in their careers and they challenged later. So, you know, I suppose the key thing is do something about it. Don't take it, don't ignore it, don't assume that, you know, whatever it is you're in receipt of, whatever silencing pressures you feel under, don't ignore it. Do something about it. But it doesn't always have to be a head-on challenge. Well, that goes back to what I said at the beginning about speculate to accumulate, you know, pick your battles. It's very, you know, as parents we raise our children and we pick our battles. Oh, he's doing that, so all right, I'll focus on the other thing, the other element first, you know, it's a case of choosing what we need to focus on. And a point that I've been wanting to make, page 81, which is again something that women have to deal with: "The data clearly shows that men can be liked and respected, whereas a professional woman can be one or the other and will find it much harder, if not impossible, to achieve both." Now, So that is something where sometimes we have to make the choice to do one or the other and then work on the one, work on another area of our life once we've mastered the other one. You see what I mean? It's a case of choosing what to prioritise. Yes, I think it is. And, you know, I think you women can and do find ways to be liked and respected, but it's hard, hard work. You definitely have to work at it a lot harder than men. In fact, again, several of the women— I spoke briefly with Amber Rudd, and she said the same, that, you know, throughout her career, I think she was pretty well liked as well as respected, but she did say she had to work 10 times harder than men in the same position in order to get to that liked bit. And yeah, you know, that isn't fair. But if you do sometimes have to make choices, certainly career choices, you probably do have to accept at some point you're not going to please all the people all the time. And sometimes it's better to be professionally respected than it is necessarily liked. But of course, you know, if you can achieve both, then that's of course ideal. If you have the time and the bandwidth to be able to put in that extra effort. But we do have to, you know, as women, pick our battles in so many areas of our life, and there are a lot of plates spinning at one time. And I would like to point out to the listeners that I found that your book helped you prioritize these battles and how to address them more easily. Yeah, and I'm absolutely delighted to hear you say that because that's exactly what I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be a practical a practical handbook that people can think, yes, okay, right, I'm going to think about this and I'm going to prepare for it. And I'm going to— I always felt like I can't tell you or anybody else, you must say this, or you should say that, or do this. Everybody has to find ways to speak about these things, find ways to challenge in their own voice, if you like, in their own style and what they feel comfortable and congruent with. So, you know, all the suggestions were ones that said you could say this, or, you know, here's some ideas. But what I wanted was for people to go away thinking, okay, what would I actually say in that circumstance? And if you, if you do think about that, then you're ready next time, then you're ready. And again, you can make some conscious decisions. The other thing that I really wanted people to be aware of is just, just to be aware of these things that are going on around you. I think an awful lot of women, millennial women now, But my generation too, we went into the workplace thinking that there wasn't a problem with sexism anymore. You know, we thought, well, the '70s feminists have done their thing, you know, there's all this equal opportunity and employment laws that make it illegal to discriminate. And that— some of that's true, but the point is there's still a lot of problems and pressures that are there, but they are very subtle now. And you can't pick your battles, you can't even make a proactive choice if you're just wading through these problems and issues without actually realizing what they are, because they're subtle, because they're, you know, below the surface of the water, if you like, below the radar. If you don't realize what's going on at first, then you can't make any decisions, you can't choose which battle, you can't choose what to challenge if you don't actually see it. So my other real hope for the book is that it raises people's awareness of what's going on around them and they see it for what it is so they can tackle it. Well, and then, and that's making sure that there are still some people in the workplace who surround themselves by like-minded people so that they don't necessarily have to deal with these issues because the safety in numbers I worked for a company once where I was constantly belittled because I was the female, the only female that worked there. Some of the comments they came out with were unbelievable, but everybody was from the same sort of Eton-esque background, and it was just accepted because if you didn't like it, you left. Well, and sadly that is still True today. You know, I've been coaching a young lady who is in an environment exactly like that, exactly like that. And, you know, she's been brave and she's challenged and she's brought a, you know, raised it with HR, but she's finding it very, very tough. Yeah, she's not necessarily being heard and supported well enough. But yeah, she's certainly experienced those behaviours. So point of why a gender-balanced workplace is a more effective one, right? If you've got a bunch of people, whether they're a group of white middle-class men sitting around in a room, or actually, to be honest, any other group where you've got the same type of people with the same type of background, the same education, the same worldview, if you sit around to discuss any situation or problem or opportunity, you know, you absolutely need an And any enlightened leader or sensible leader would value the different points of view. And if they don't do that, then they're just not being effective. You're not seeing the problem from a holistic point of view. You're not considering all the different types of opportunities and the pros and cons of them. If you've not got different life experiences being brought to the discussion, you just haven't got a wide enough perspective. So, you know, that sort of safety in numbers of just surrounding yourself with people like you is a highly ineffective way to run anything. Well, the business in question did eventually get bought out and bought by quite a progressive company, which was good because I think half of the profits were spent on paying off any woman that did actually make a complaint about the behaviour, because I did actually insist on employing another female in the office at one point and she ended up complaining, very rightly so, because of a point that was made and the way that they treated her. I think he realized that if he couldn't run the business the way he wanted to run it, he didn't want to run it anymore. And funnily enough, sexism is getting less— less able to get away with it, should we say, in the workplace. Yes, and thank heavens for that. But, you know, people will get away with it less and less the more women feel able to speak up. There's a fantastic quote. Let's see if I can find one of my favourite quotes that you put in here. There you go. "Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it." One of my favourites. Goethe, isn't it? Yes, it just means, you know, take the next step. Put one foot in front of the other and do something, make progress. And I, you know, for women, I think the biggest thing is make progress on being able to advocate and articulate for yourself, for your career, for your business, for your causes, at whatever level you want to influence. At the very least, for yourself and your career, it's worth putting the time and effort in into developing your skills and your confidence to be able to articulate this. I've said this in a few of the speeches I've made this week, is encourage ladies to think about how much money and time do you spend on a monthly basis on your hair and nails? I know, you know, I spend— well, when you're actually allowed out of the house, that is— I spend a fair bit because, of course, you know, professional women know that they have to. Because if you don't look professional, if you don't look polished, you know you're going to be judged negatively for it. Oh yeah. So fair enough, we spend a bit of money on hair and nails, but guess what? We're also being judged every time we open our mouth in a meeting, or every time we're at an event and we speak or we do a presentation. So, you know, spending a bit of time and possibly money, or certainly time resource, on getting yourself really comfortable and confident to advocate for yourself, whether that's in meetings or presentations or both, is something I think is an undervalued skill and something that's absolutely critical for women. We need to change our mindset because, I mean, the word that you kept on mentioning there was confidence, and a huge issue for women in the workplace is imposter syndrome. We quite often don't speak up because we're surprised that we've even got to a particular position or whether we're somehow about, you know, getting away with it. I've got a friend who, she suffers with imposter syndrome and she is an incredibly successful producer. She pulls in a fantastic salary. She's always the mum of whatever company she works for. Everybody goes for her. Everybody loves her to pieces. She manages to get jobs so incredibly well. I'm like, why do you have imposter syndrome? You have proven for at least the last 25 years of your life that everything you get your hands on excels and everybody loves you. And if everybody comes to you in that business, that means that you do have some authority there, that people look up to you. So, and it's interesting that we still get imposter syndrome when we're completely smashing it out of the park. Yeah, no, I mean, it's very true. And, you know, loads and loads and loads of of very famous, very successful women— Maya Angelou, Oprah, Emma Watson, you know, the list goes on— will talk about how they've struggled with imposter syndrome. And I think it comes from the fact that this whole idea that we raise boys to be brave and girls to be perfect. We, we do have an expectation that girls are sugar and spice and all things nice, that they're and proper and they get things right, whereas boys are allowed to crash around, experiment a bit, try and fail, get dirty, fall over, get back up again, and that's fine. That's— it's again, it's these just different expect— cultural expectations of what we expect from boys and girls. Talking to one of the ladies I interviewed for the book was a head of a very large girls' school, and, you know, she said she has a whole school of girls who are terrified to fail. They're all very successful students and they all write beautiful immaculate notes on all their subjects, but they are terrified of failing and they won't try things if they think they're going to fail. And of course we all know that you learn by trying and failing and learning and trying again. Anyway, the point is that, that a lot of this, these perfection drivers that are so strong in women, it means that we're trying to live up all the time. We're trying to live up to these impossible standards of princess-like perfection, and life doesn't work like that, certainly not now. Life is moving at such a pace, there isn't time for perfection. You know, good enough is good enough. And actually, if we all told ourselves that, then we wouldn't be feeling— even these incredibly successful women wouldn't be feeling like they're failing because they're not 100% perfection. Well, but we do get judged more harshly though. I mean, you've got some incredible research within this book that if the pubs were open, this is what I'd be talking about at the bar with my friends. I'm missing the pubs and being able to talk to people. Soon, Hazel, soon. But there was a fantastic example of this on page 100 2003, where there was a, a protest and they didn't send enough police officers to help with the protests, and it kind of all went a little bit wrong. And there was some research to show that whether it mattered whether the police chief who made the bad call, whether they were male or female, and the research showed you wrote this, so you know this anyway, but I'm saying this for the listeners, that if it was a man that made the decision, the approval rating went down by 10%. If it was a woman who made the decision, her approval rating went down by 30%. So we are judged more harshly. Yeah, no, and that's one of many examples of where, yeah, women are judged much more harshly. And I think some of it is because there is an expectation that men will get it right. Men have been the leaders for the last few millennia. Women have only— there's only been a significant number of women in leadership roles for probably the last 40 or 50 years. So again, culturally, we expect men to be leaders and to get it right, and they're given, to a certain extent, as a result of that, they're given the benefit of the doubt, whereas women are still a relatively new phenomenon. So we question women inherently more, we challenge women's credibility inherently more, and we're more quick to find fault with it. And I say we, I mean society. Society finds fault with women more because they're looking for it, because it's not normal, it's not usual, it's different. And so therefore we want to almost be able to say, ah, well, 'We told you so.' And that is— interesting whether they should be there. Yeah, at a level, yes. And that is, you know, that is really tough. And that, by the way, is a huge silencing mechanism on women. We know, we've learned through hard experience, that we are much more likely to get more criticized than men. And so, you know, it encourages women to not put their head above the parapet, not to be the one that speaks up in meeting, not to be the ones that volunteers to give the presentation, because we know we're going to get this. However, if we don't put our head above the parapet, then this will continue, and again, it'll take generations to change. And with the likes of— I mean, something that's really struck me recently is what happened with Piers Morgan. I don't know if you watched the interview on where he was basically talking over a woman so that she had to raise her voice to actually get her point. He'd asked her a question, she was trying to answer it, and he kept on talking over, so she raised her voice, and he's like, 'Calm down, stop shouting,' and was making out that she was an emotional and irrational woman, where I would I was absolutely fuming. These situations, especially by people like Piers Morgan, they're kind of constructed intentionally, you know, it's clickbait, and it's demeaning women, but also, you know, women have been primed to show more emotion, whereas men have been primed not to. Yeah, I can talk at length about Piers Morgan and how awful he's been to women over the period of time. I think I mentioned in the book the way he behaved with the female government minister during lockdown, where, you know, he was berating her, knowing probably fully that— and he was holding up a paper saying, you know, how terrible this is and how awful the government was and how uncaring the government was, because it was an article about deaths in care homes in the first in or just after the first lockdown, and he was holding up this paper but she couldn't see it because she'd been told just to go on the, you know, the only-see-yourself view on Zoom. And she tried to stop his tirade to say, "I can't see what you're holding up," and he shouted, he talked over her, shouted her down, and then she smiled. And then he went after her for saying, "Why are you smiling? This isn't funny. Do you think it's funny that people are dying in care homes?" And, and again, she was smiling because what was she supposed to do? He was, he was berating her, not allowing her to talk, and, and rather than biting back at him and showing an unauthorized female emotion of anger, she smiled. And then he went after her for that. And again, the suggestion that anybody would smile at the idea of old people dying in care homes, clearly ludicrous, but that's what he said to her. And again, clickbait, but again, behaviour that just played on the fact that a woman was smiling as a response to aggression rather than fighting back. Again, you know, abusing the way that women are. So yes, I have very little time for Piers Morgan. I wish him a very happy retirement. Beautifully put. Yes, indeed. I wonder where he'll go next. Though, talking about people in the public eye, is there somebody out there at the moment that you think are just fantastic to watch? They're a complete delight, they're inspirational. Potentially somebody in the public eye, but it can be your neighbour, Yeah, well, there are very, very many highly inspirational women. I think one of my favorites right now is the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern. Yeah. And I particularly like what she's doing because, of course, she, like a lot of women, have been in receipt of equal and opposite criticism. You know, she's too nice, she's too soft, right? Okay. 'But when she is firm and assertive, she's too aggressive and not nice.' And she's had this criticism leveled at her, but she, I think, is actually managing to create a new paradigm of leadership. Because we've kind of seen this leadership thing as like, you're either strong or you're weak, you're either compassionate or you're not, you know. And it's been seen in a very black and white binary way, and I think what Jacinda Ardern has managed to do is to create this new style of leadership where those two things are not seen as incompatible. So, you know, particularly if we think back to the horrifying events in Christchurch when there was that shooting of 15 Muslims at a mosque during prayer time, She handled that incredibly well. She was incredibly powerful. She did what America are completely incapable of doing. She introduced gun laws almost immediately to outlaw guns in New Zealand. And so she was, you know, powerful and assertive in one respect. In the other respect, she was seen, you know, she was showing respect to the Muslims wearing a headscarf. She was there embracing the survivors and the relatives and, you know, showing all forms of compassion and sympathy. And yet, you know, and the eyes of the world were on her at that moment, and so she was both strong and compassionate, and that was seen as okay, and that was seen as leadership. And so what I really hope that she and other female leaders are able to do is to create— let's move away from these old-fashioned paradigms of leadership and move on to these new ones, and I think she's probably a trailblazer in that respect. Oh, 100%, and the more we see it, the easier it is for other people. The more it happens, the less it can be pointed out as being something, "Oh wow, look at that!" Just make it commonplace. Yeah, absolutely, and her, you know, the fact that she— I think it was her, wasn't it, the one that told people that the Easter Bunny didn't have to quarantine and so and did podcasts and Facebook Lives and things for children during the pandemic, as well as ones to the business community and things. So yeah, you know, I just think her style shows the best of how you harness a female empathy and emotional intelligence, but also with all the traditional strengths of leadership. So yeah, I absolutely admire her, and I wonder if she fancies emigrating. That's exactly what I was just about to say, like, can we please borrow you? She'll be like, no, I've kind of sorted things out in New Zealand, we're safe, I might leave you over there. I actually don't think the New Zealanders would let her go, they've just re-elected her resoundingly, haven't they? So, yeah, everyone say aye. Yeah, sure. Wow, I 100% agree I think she's fantastic, and if you ever just want a little bit of a pick-me-up on when you're just sitting on the sofa on the night waiting for the kids to stop arguing over the Xbox, just have a look at her on Pinterest and on Twitter and all the nice things that people put up there about her, and it's just, it's so heartwarming. I love it. We're racing through today and we've only got a couple of minutes minutes left, and I was hoping to get 3 tips on well-being for our listeners. Well, I think first of all, cut yourself some slack. Please don't try and be perfect because life is too short for perfection. Be good, you know, you can be good, you can be excellent, you can be outstanding, but you probably can't be perfect, so don't try and give yourself a break in that respect. Stop beating yourself up with negative self-talk as well. Don't be telling yourself that you can't do things, be telling yourself that you can, because that actually makes a fundamental difference to our psychology. Develop your skills to speak and be heard. You know, you might look at it and think, well, that's only a small part of what I do. You know, I'm an engineer, I'm a manager, I'm a marketing manager, I'm a this or I'm a that. Actually, the ability to be heard in public is how people will judge you. Most people who work with you don't see what you do on a day-to-day basis, so the wider organisations or groups that you belong to will only judge you by what they see of you in public, in meetings, at events, and at presentations. Though all the pressure's on us not to speak, it's even more important that we do speak. So whether you do it for yourself and your your career or whether you do it for the wider cause of gender balance, up to you. But develop your skills, develop, and that will help develop your confidence and speak and be heard. Is that 3? I'm not sure, that's probably more. I think it's about 101, I think. And it's absolutely fantastic. Do you know what, I've thoroughly loved chatting to you and I've been very excited about bringing up all the points that I've loved in She She Said and just having a good old chinwag. I just want to point our listeners over to the website as well where they can find out more about you at archimedesconsulting.co.uk. And go and get She Said: A Guide for Millennial Women Speaking and Being Heard. Buy it for your friends, buy it for both male and female. Let's, let's do our best, shall we? Indeed, that sounds fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us here at Get Booked for Women's and Men's radio station, and enjoy the rest of your day.