Beate Chelette's Blog: The Women's Code, page 34

Why Gender Pay Is A Core Value Issue

Big news in pay equality happened this past week. Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, announced that the $52 billion company and leading provider for sales solutions has adjusted the pay gap. They are the first company to publicly come out and say, “...we pay women the same that we pay men—we looked at every [...]

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Too Bad You’re Smart and Beautiful – You Could Have Been a Great Leader

Whether you like her or not, Hillary Clinton is definitely a leader. Poised, in control, smiling, and quick on her feet. I was grinning ear to ear throughout the Democratic debate thinking, “You go, girl!” And on the other side of the spectrum Carly Fiorina was doing a fine job, too.

The one sentence that stuck out to me during the debate was when Hillary Clinton said she wanted to tell her granddaughter truthfully that she, too, could be president one day. Now THAT is a powerful statement.

Flipping through CNN, I saw Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, five months pregnant answering questions about working women, mothers, and leadership. As much as I may not want to like her, I have to admit I was impressed. The way she held herself and what she said made her a perfect 10 in that interview.

Hold on. Did I just say I didn’t want to like Ivanka Trump?

Aha. Here I go again, falling into the same trap that we all too often fall into. Why wouldn’t I want a powerful, strong, and (may I say) gorgeous woman to stand out and succeed? What is this voice that so many of us women hear in the backs of our minds that prohibits us from endorsing, supporting, and admiring that type of woman?

This is what The Women’s Code has set out to change. While we may not always be in full control of our thoughts, the first Pillar of The Women’s Code—AWARENESS— allows us to immediately catch ourselves when we go down a road of outdated behaviors or belief systems.

You see, we women have to start with supporting each other in order to achieve true equality. (Not coincidentally, SUPPORT is the second Pillar of The Women’s Code.)

It is puzzling to me why the words “equality” and “feminism” have such bad reps. Equality does not mean that women are dumb idiots who play the victim role, regardless of what anti-feminism campaigns may tell you. And the feminist agenda is not about socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians, even though Televangelist Pat Robertson declares it so.

Women are known to be the peacemakers, the relationship-driving voices of reason, and we bring people together. So why do women have such a bad reputation?

I’ll tell you why. It is because we don’t support each other enough. We fight each other for the 2% of board positions and the 19% of C-Level jobs that are currently filled by women. We wait with eager anticipation for a powerful and beautiful woman to fall because it makes us feel better about ourselves. Sick, isn’t it?

It is time for change. It is time to change how women are viewed. Time to change the hatred toward feminism and equality. Time to educate young and old that it is not okay to throw our foremothers under the bus. All working women today stand on their strong shoulders. And, it is time for men to stop expressing their frustrations about how women’s roles have changed. Get over it!

We need to improve our work-life balance, and it would help a great deal if we received fair treatment instead of being punished for our natures. Women bear children. That’s a no-brainer. Yet, it is shocking to me how organizations and society as a whole seem to be unprepared and unwilling to provide what working mothers need. Maybe that is because it’s not the same as what men need. Women need better support systems. And successful role models, who share information. We need more women to demonstrate and talk about how leadership works for us without being ridiculed, called names, or have their reputations dragged through the mud. Women don’t want to be men and we don’t want to lead like them either. This is the decade of figuring out how to Lead Like A Lady—how to lead on C.U.E.

And before the same men jump onto the comments to tell me why I am wrong AGAIN, just think about this for one minute: Within the short 50 years we have had to figure this out, women have made HUGE strides. Just look where we are at compared to men, who have been in charge since the beginning of time. Give us a break and some time to figure this out please. We are not perfect and frankly, neither are you. It will take patience and mutual support to achieve this leadership balance and gender equality. In the end the numbers show clearly that balanced leadership brings the greatest rewards economically, financially, and personally.

If you are in the Denver area, you may want to check out the Leadership Investment’s Success Forum, an event designed to speak about how we can achieve the 50%-50% balance. With over 1200 executive women (and men) in attendance, this is the place to be on October 23, 2015.

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Too Bad You’re Smart and Beautiful – You Could Have Been a Great Leader

Whether you like her or not, Hillary Clinton is definitely a leader. Poised, in control, smiling, and quick on her feet. I was grinning ear to ear throughout the Democratic debate thinking, "You go, girl!" And on the other side of the spectrum Carly Fiorina was doing a fine job, too. The one sentence that [...]

The post Too Bad You’re Smart and Beautiful – You Could Have Been a Great Leader appeared first on The Women's Code.

Is This All You’ve Got?

It recently dawned on me that throughout history—and especially in exciting Hollywood movies—solutions rarely come from the wise old men. Usually it’s a dashingly handsome and unruly young man or woman. (The disrupter.) Disrupters are necessary to shake up established ideas and to bring in new ones. Steve Jobs said everyone needs a personal computer. We didn’t know he was right until we became accustomed to having one.

We have many choices in our lives, but let me boil it down to just three.

A. Put your head in the sand and complain about how hard it is.

 Yeah, yeah, I hear you. It’s tough. Your computer file, the one you worked on all last week is corrupted. You put all that energy and time into the project. It ruined your weekend for crying out loud! And now your boss casually says on Monday afternoon that the whole thing was canned on Friday and he forgot to tell you. Oops, sorry.

I bet you have quite of few examples of things in your ever-growing list of Sh*t That Went Wrong. Yesterday during one of my online classes for Creative Entrepreneurs, I put it this way: the older we get, the more jaded we become. Baby Boomers, Generation X’ers—have you listened to yourselves lately? So many of us are just a bunch of angry-middle-aged-white-men or disillusioned women. And we all think Millennials are the problem!

Needless to say, the self-inflicted misery, the victim mentality, the tendency to blame others is terribly unattractive and will get you exactly nowhere, except in an increasingly desperate and negative mindset. I am sorry; I wish I could tell you otherwise. But negative attracts more negative.

Hold on before you write your first comment and tell me to get lost. Yes, of course we are not all angry and disillusioned. You may not be, but many, many are. Please keep reading.

B. Pretend nothing is wrong.

 For whatever reason, women especially are prone to ignoring warning signs. Until, that is, we get a huge scare. Take two of my friends as examples. A few weeks ago they were both in surgery at the same time. One for breast cancer and a mastectomy, the other for ovarian cancer and a hysterectomy.

That shook me to the core. It’s a little too close to home for my liking. Please promise that you won’t look the other way for too long. Let’s pay attention to ourselves before we get whacked with a 2×4.

Here is my personal confession. I was going down that same road, holding up my part, saving everyone, and allowing others to deplete me (even though I know better). Then one recent day I suddenly realized my boundaries had become shadows of their former selves instead of the clear lines I deliberately drew.

If this is you, start today. Roll up those sleeves, get the meditation app (I found a great one that gets me to relaxation mode in seven minutes), put on your workout shoes, and leave the house… You get the gist. Let’s focus on making what we have count.

 C. Embrace disruptions and disrupters and become part of the movement.

 The way I see it, this is the only way to arrive at a sustainable economy and a better way to live. You see, Millennials are fed up with existing systems. They don’t want to work so hard and not receive financial compensation that is tied to the success of the company they work for. One woman said to me, “What is my incentive with my $45K annual salary to save the company more money if the $500K I saved them in the last four months alone is only considered part of the job? Why would I want to work in a place like this? I hate my job.” (Here’s one company doing it right.)

My prediction is that the corporate culture shakeup has just begun. Gender equality, equal pay, and discrimination eradication is coming. And with it comes acceptance for all people, our differences, and a focus on what each brings to the table. Yes, some will abuse this freedom, but the majority of us are good people. We must believe goodness will prevail in the end, because there simply cannot be any other outcome worth working towards.

I find that very exciting.

So you tell me, is what you do and have right now all you’ve got in you?

 

 

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Is This All You’ve Got?

It recently dawned on me that throughout history—and especially in exciting Hollywood movies—solutions rarely come from the wise old men. Usually it’s a dashingly handsome and unruly young man or woman. (The disrupter.) Disrupters are necessary to shake up established ideas and to bring in new ones. Steve Jobs said everyone needs a personal computer. [...]

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Why Men are Fed Up with Feminism

This post is for men. I know you are tired. I can tell you are fed up with constant discussions around what women want. I hear you saying, "What else could women possibly want that they don’t already have?" Women can vote and go to college, we have the same rights as men, we can [...]

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Top 5 Turn-Offs for Women

If you don’t have haters, you are not pushing your issues hard enough. I learned that golden nugget from one of my mentors, Roy Williams at the Wizard Academy. And if you are going to have an opinion about something, you should make an effort to learn about other viewpoints. Otherwise, the applicable term is [...]

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Men Versus Women – Who Is Better?

Take a deep breath. That is what I kept telling myself after my last post, which was titled “How To Avoid Saying The Wrong Thing… To Women.” I may as well have called it “How To Say The Wrong Thing To Men” because before I knew it, I was in the midst of a volatile [...]

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How To Avoid Saying the Wrong Thing

I love doing radio shows and TV interviews. Steve, a host from a station in Chicago, just sent me an email asking me to come back on his show—urgently. His new producer has not yet heard me speak about gender decoding. Steve is worried that his producer's hot new relationship could be jeopardized because his [...]

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7 Lessons I Learned from Donald Trump

Even if we can't agree on his stances, can we all admit that Donald Trump is adding a lot of flavor to the political scene? While the political arena often features color and flair, he knocks it out of the ballpark to say the least. I wrote an article last week about my feelings towards [...]

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