Showing posts with label leadershipskills. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leadershipskills. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
5 Reasons Why Men Want To Conquer Famous Women
Friday, June 7, 2013
The End Of Female Advancement
One of the unforeseen but logical outcomes of women's out of control, un-moderated desire for Alpha males, is the lack of female advancement. Oh sure, we have women like Hilary Clinton, Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, Sarah Palin, and Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi. Clinton merely continues the age-old tradition of trading on a powerful husband or father's name. That's great if you are a Kennedy, or a Clinton, or a Bush, or now an Obama. Not so great if you are a nobody. But the other women, mostly succeeded on their own (with one critical advantage). Their advantage: a beta male husband.
The Financial Times Lucy Kellaway noted:
... successful career women are all getting stuck in the "marzipan layer" just below the boardroom. According to the author, Sylvia Hewlett of Columbia University, this is because too few men are willing to pull women up on to the top of the cake. Men, she argues, are worried about being seen to support a woman too openly because they fear they might be suspected of having an affair with her.
This strikes me as a pretty feeble reason for the lack of women CEOs. Prof Hewlett is right to say that men hold women back, but is wrong to think the holding back happens at work. In fact, it happens at home. The biggest reason that alpha women don't become CEOs is that they have made the common, yet fatal, error of marrying an alpha man.
My evidence for this is based on long observation of the women I know. Some of them did brilliantly for a bit, but then their careers stalled. The problem was not that they had had too many children (successful women seem to have lots of them) but that their alpha husbands insisted on putting their own careers first.
Until last week this was just a vague prejudice. But on Wednesday I sat down with the FT's list of the 50 top business women and Googled each one, searching for information about their home lives. Annoyingly, some of them have succeeded in keeping their private lives private, but with the rest I found my theory spectacularly well borne out. Nearly all have children, but I could not find a single one with an alpha male husband.
The only whiff of an alpha mate came from the household of Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon, whose husband was the CEO of Bloomingdale's. I use the past tense not because he lost the job, but because he lost his wife - the marriage didn't last.
As far as I could tell, all the others have husbands who have been prepared to sacrifice their careers in order to aid the glorious ascent of their wives.
Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi and the world's most powerful businesswoman, is married to a man who quit his job and became a consultant to fit in with his wife and children. Ditto with Irene Rosenfeld at Kraft, whose husband decided to be self-employed 20 years ago to help her. Ditto with Ursula Burns at Xerox.
There are three pretty obvious reasons an alpha husband is a problem for the aspiring female CEO. First is logistics. If you want to be really successful you need to be mobile. You need to have a husband like Gregg Ahrendts, who wound up his construction business so Angela could move to London to be CEO of Burberry. You also need to have someone who is prepared to see the children occasionally. And above all you need a bit of encouragement. If you have spent all day competing with men at work, you don't want to go on competing at home. You want someone like Lloyd Bean, Ursula Burns's husband, who worked at Xerox long before she joined, but who claimed delight when his wife whizzed past him in the fast lane. Or like the husband of the Indian banking supremo Chanda Kochhar. She says he is "genuinely happy about my progress".
The lesson for a future female corporate queen is to give more thought to her choice of spouse. She should go for someone who is mentally her match, but who is happy to play a supporting role. In other words, Mr Right should be a male Kate Middleton.
Alas, there is a problem here in both demand and supply. HIGH-FLYING WOMEN ARE PROGRAMMED TO GO FOR HIGH-FLYING MEN. MOST MEN AREN'T ATTRACTED TO WOMEN WHO ARE MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN THEY ARE. AND UNTIL THOSE THINGS CHANGE, THERE IS NOT GOING TO BE MORE THAN THE ODD SPRINKLING OF WOMEN EMERGING FROM THE STICKY YELLOW MARZIPAN INTO THE GLORIOUS ROYAL ICING ON TOP. [EMPHASIS ADDED]
There you have it. Ms Kellaway nails it. Women are not going to advance. Not in significant numbers. It is notable that the women she cites, are mostly older women from before the wave of unrestricted female hypergamy.
To climb the corporate ladder, a woman needs a supportive spouse. One as Kellaway notes is willing to sacrifice, be mobile, be emotionally supportive at home, and be willing to take a lesser role. Almost NO RATIONAL MAN WILL DO THIS, because women find these things unsexy and grounds in and of themselves for an affair or divorce or both. Men are simple creatures, they will be whatever women reward. Women talk a great game (about things they don't mean) but when it comes to reality, and choices, the end is obvious.
Being a Kitchen Bitch is a fast-track for divorce (after being cheated upon). Being sexy, which means making most women in your orbit want to sleep with you, if you are a male, is vital to keeping attraction and thus love, and faithfulness, in a marriage. This is the cost of sexy.
Sexy men are well, sexy, but they are not supportive or reliable. They won't move when their partner's career takes off. They won't take second place. They certainly won't take of the kids, and be emotionally supportive. The whole point of being sexy is being of higher status, and power, than their female partner. That's why they are sexy in the first place.
Modern women ages 20-40 have a fantasy that a man will be uber-sexy, and also supportive. When they find out he's not, they choose sexy and choose not to advance. Women will choose the hot sexy guy over the career every time. And they do. It is not motherhood, or men being unwilling to work with women. [Though the penalties for being bossed by a woman -- a man is unsexy and thus basically a eunuch or a neuter are very serious, particularly to younger men on the look-out for a romantic partner who might turn into a wife.] It is women's desire for a sexy man at the expense of everything else.
Everything has its price. Including Sexy Men. As more and more men discover the nature of female hypergamy, and the desire of women in the modern era for sexy men at all costs, the male support for measures (certain to fail at any rate) promoting female advancement in the corporate boardroom and other places is sure to collapse. Under two heavy weights.
The first is that women themselves are responsible for lack of female advancement. They choose sexy men who must be higher than themselves, and then wonder why their men won't pick up and move when they get a transfer and promotion. Why their men won't do the dishes, look after the kids, or provide even an ounce of emotional support. Because the men are sexy, that's all they do.
The second of course is the knowledge that for every female that advances to their own level of power and importance, let alone above it, there is one more women who finds the ordinary man sexually invisible to repulsive. I.E. the price of female advancement is the making of more Beta Males. The textbook definition of which is a man with the same or lower social status as his female peers. Delayed marriage and longer single duration for men means this is not a trivial issue. Particularly early on. Men would do better, by far, if women were restricted to being secretaries and the like in the professional workplace, because they gain nothing by female advancement (they are single) and lose everything by it (they become either repulsive or sexually invisible to their female peers). Not that this will ever happen, but single men are likely to dig in their heels, tremendously, at any further female advancement. Married men, particularly those that married later in life, are likely to equate their wives moving ahead of them in power and status as a guarantee of an affair and/or divorce. Only those with post-menopausal wives (no one will want them anyway) would benefit.
Sexy has its cost, and women are starting to find that out.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Get Out Of My Head
So I turned face-to-face roughly and walked up to her and introduced face-to-face and she introduced herself (BRachel). She looked at me like she was expecting me to try to sell her everything or ask for coinage. I assumed, "Oh, all really compulsory was your name". She assumed, "why?" to which I responded, "I attention to detail you potential make a good friend." She took a big sigh and smile and out of the miserable just started blabbing about her week as we walked. As about a after everyone else, I told I had to get back to my arm, we exchanged cards and cell stop and parted.
What on earth amazes me is not the interaction, but the AFC voice that pre-determined what type of person BRachel was. Granted, if this was night time, I would bring not attempted to talk to her, in the same way as she gave off critical body language. As talking to for a few minutes, she in effect isn't a bitch, a bit nice and sincere, but I great thing if the 'you potential make a good lure line potential made her drop her bitch carry on and most likely she really is bitch (hahaha).
Perfectly, what I bring sage is that the AFC voice is still in my shallowness. It has been astray for a couple of weeks. I think in the same way as I bring been having some stalwart existence at work, it has slipped back in. I'm kinda of full of yourself that I disclose what was separation on and I in effect challenged it back approaching BRachel.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Storytelling In Business The Iceberg Moment
Your car breaks down; a cop gives you a speeding ticket; or your boss micro-manages everything that you do. These are obstacles that prevent us from doing what we were intending to do. A perfect example of an obstacle is what we are experiencing in Colorado right now: wildfires. Here in Colorado Springs, over 500 people lost their homes and everything they owned in the Black Forest Fire. We hold them in our hearts with compassion and understanding.
OBSTACLES AND CHALLENGES ARE THE FOUNDATIONS OF STORYTELLING.
Fires and other obstacles are what stories are made of. Without the bad guy, James Bond is just a handsome guy in a tuxedo. Without aliens from outer space, the Avengers are just a bunch of weirdos in Halloween costumes.
And without the Iceberg, the Titanic is simply a story about a cruise ship crossing the Atlantic.
Because we seem to learn more when things go wrong than when things go right, it's important to know HOW to portray the Iceberg Moment in your story.
THE ICEBERG MOMENT IS THE TURNING POINT IN YOUR STORY.
It's the moment when you encounter the obstacle, (Step Four of The Nine Steps of Story Structure). Up until that moment, everything is going according to plan. Consider the movie, "Titanic".
The movie starts with the ship in port. People are arriving in fancy carriages, luggage is being hoisted onto the decks and Leonardo DiCaprio's character is playing poker.
Once the ship leaves port, it's a big party. Everyone is having fun and Kate Winslet and Leonardo are falling in love. Everything is going according to plan until the Iceberg Moment. At that moment, the story takes a dramatic turn and people react.
In reality, no matter what the situation is, when we encounter the obstacle or challenge in our lives, we react. The first level of reaction is usually emotional: anger, frustration, shock, sadness, denial, resentment, disbelief, etc. In the movies, it usually involves a close-up.
The close-up in a movie is used to focus on the character processing this new information and deciding what to do about it. A close-up can last from five to ten seconds. It is filled with emotion.
The Iceberg Moment in your story should start with an emotional reaction as well. The technique I teach for this moment is called Hold the Moment.
THE ICEBERG MOMENT IS A STOP SIGN.
It's as if you're driving across town to an appointment and you're hitting green light after green light. When you encounter the obstacle or challenge, however, it's a red light. Everything stops for a few seconds. There are no words or explanation. You simply stop and react.
Think about one of your stories right now. Think about the time leading up to the obstacle or challenge. If you've constructed your story correctly using The Nine Steps, you started off on your journey with every expectation that things would go according to plan. And then the plan changed. Something that you couldn't have foreseen happened: the obstacle, crisis or challenge.
If you can recall that moment in time, you probably froze for a few brief seconds. Time stood still during that moment as you processed the situation. You probably experienced one of the emotions listed above.
Your story pivots on this moment. It changes from an ordinary story about an ordinary day to a story about a challenging day - a day with an important lesson learned. Because this is the pivotal moment in your story, you need to understand where it is and what to do to portray it.
The other day I saw a woman riding her bike. She slipped on some loose pebbles and fell hard on the ground. When she hit the ground she just laid there for a few seconds without moving. It was an Iceberg Moment. After about five seconds, she moved. She slowly got up and checked herself and her bike for damage. Those five seconds on the ground were a full stop. If the woman were telling the story, this would be the place for her to hold the moment.
I recently got a call from a client who was very excited about the program he saw me present at the American Society of Training and Development conference in Dallas in May. He asked me if I had the eLearning version of my Storytelling in Business Methodology. He wanted it for a virtual workforce of 100 people who are spread out across the world.
It was an Iceberg Moment for me. Up to that moment, my day was going fine. I was making phone calls, creating workbooks and talking to coaching clients on the phone. At that moment, however, I encountered the obstacle. It was a full stop. I knew I needed to make a change in my business model.
When I hung up the phone, I just sat there at my desk in silence. I was angry with myself for letting short-term busyness get in the way of long-term product development.
For years I've been planning to get around to developing an eLearning system. I even went into a TV studio last year and recorded 38 video learning modules for just that purpose.
The answer to his question was "NO, I do not have an eLearning version available." And because the answer was NO, he moved on and I lost an opportunity to expand the reach of my business at that time. The Iceberg Moment has caused me to reorder my priorities, and I am now in the process of working with an eLearning designer to create the Next Level Storytelling Video eLearning System.
THE ICEBERG MOMENT TURNS YOUR STORY AROUND.
After the Titanic crashed into the iceberg, the story changed. It became a story of survival. For the rest of the story, we witnessed people in distress. Some peoples' responses were honorable and noble while others' were selfish and mean. The story leading up to the Iceberg Moment introduced the characters and their relationships. The story after the Iceberg Moment revealed what kind of people they really were.
It's a fact - we learn more about how to deal with life when things go wrong than when things go right. Develop the stories from your life where things got tense, messy or downright disastrous. When you encounter the pivotal Iceberg Moment, Hold the Moment to increase the power of your story.
* * * *
Doug Stevenson works with individuals and organizations to help them choose, craft and deliver compelling speeches, presentations and stories. He is the president of Story Theater International, is the creator of The Story Theater Method and the author of the book, "Doug Stevenson's Story Theater Method "and The Dynamite Speech System.
His keynote speaking, corporate training and executive coaching clients include Aetna, Abbott Labs, Amgen, Coca Cola, Compassion International, Deloitte, Hewlett Packard, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, Volkswagen, The Nickelodeon Channel, The Department of Defense, The National Education Association and many more.
To inquire about Doug's availability email: deborah@dougstevenson.com
Doug can be reached at 1-800-573-6196 or 1-719-573-6195. Learn more about how Doug can help you tell your story, purchase the book, eBook or Story Theater audio six pack, and sign-up for the free Story Theater newsletter at: www.storytelling-in-business.com.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Education Key To Empowering Girls And Women Of Nigeria
Barriers to girls' education
Communicate are a lot of cultural and socioeconomic issues that fend off girls from going to direct. One superior cultural view is that it is better for the woman to discharge home and learn to support to her family considerably of attending direct. The Nigerian tradition attaches advanced helpfulness to a man than a woman, whose place is hypothetical to be the kitchen. Nigerian the upper classes else holds the thought of male power and female subordination. These patriarchal practices give beloved to enlightening boys literally than girls.
Visit families else commonly cannot make available to onward their children to direct. Together with close to 70 percent of the nation state sparkle beneath the prerequisite, parents can only onward one toddler to direct. Little in theory direct is free, in practice parents pay sum i.e. textbooks, crafts etc. And having the status of daughters stomach whispered household tasks in the home, they are less normal to be the one to accompany direct.
New-fangled barrier to girls' education is inappropriate marriage. Early/child marriage is a do practice in Nigeria, with 47 percent of women becoming mothers ahead they function the age of 20. Offspring married girls and mothers are less normal to accompany direct. A minute ago 2 per cent of 15-19 blind date old married girls accompany direct, compared to 69 per cent of lone girls. Problem of education be in support of something confines girls only to their reproductive roles-submissive wives and mothers.
Schools else play an influential role in girls' education-or lack of it. Most schools stomach ridiculous classroom put, gear and apparatus, and are commonly too somewhat sited. Water, condition and hygiene facilities are more often than not ridiculous. Further affecting, other than, is gender wrong in classrooms. Whichever teachers are fancy in their attitudes towards girls, be in support of something imposing a learning loss and moving their scholar target.
Sexual fear is commonly trained in schools and universities, as a result reckless to furnish a safe disposition for rib girls. As one girl says:
"For instance I was in direct, male teachers used to want to catch forty winks with female students.... The teachers will trouble you up to the enormity that if you do not agree to them, you will fail their subjects and at the end of the day you will want to chance the direct."
The situation for girls' education in Nigeria is resiliently in need of quick reorganization. Some time ago all, well-informed girls are traditional to transfigure essential life skills, including: cool, the ability to think obligingly in society, and remain themselves from HIV/AIDS and sexual avail yourself of. Educated girls else dine to national wherewithal and improve everyday condition of end generations.
RECOMMENDATIONSGirls and women stomach the workable to fit Nigeria. Investing in girls will not only improve production and growth, but will else lead to a arrogant justified and authorized end classmates.
In everyday, it is recommended to keep girls in schools by:
Creating incentives for all girls to accompany direct and put the finishing touches to their educationEncouraging Nigerian states to hand over arrogant of their budges to schools and teacher trainingsCreating incentives for teachers to furnish quality education and as good as treatment linking studentsEstablishing policies and mechanisms to remain girls from sexual fear i.e. hobby programs, help lines, counselling, medical draw on for persons who stomach been sexually abused, and punish and full application of the law on any proven and conventional layer of sexual fear in vogue any educational setting up
In the same way as can you do?
Finance organizations that support girls and women's education, such as DeltaWomenDonate to organizations that stomach a proven pursue file of save reconcile girls in the education systemRaise hobby on the subject as the crow flies DeltaWomen's facebook, tremble, and blog site. Online campaign: A great site for organizing online campaigns is http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/start a petition/?vl
