So a couple of weeks ago, one of my younger colleagues asked for advice on how she could get more involved in meetings.
When I asked her what she meant, she detailed all the stuff I talked about in my presentaphobia post as well as a whole bunch of additional issues ranging from how Asian culture expects women ‘to behave’ within the business environment through to how her clients mainly communicated in English and that was not her native language.
I immediately understood what she was going through and decided I’d do some training on the issue for the women in the office, which I entitled:
“How To Be A Bitch But In A Good Way”
[How to ask & respond to the tough questions without being intimidated]
Well, did that piss some people off.
I was informed that I had offended a number of people in the agency with the title of my training because they felt it was rude … I was advocating ‘being a bitch to succeed’ and by only inviting the agencies women to attend, I was potentially perpetuating the stereotype especially as I was a white male doing the training.
To be fair, they had a point – however in my defense, I was hoping that after nearly a year working with me, they’d know my goal would be to only help the young and talented in the office, rather than hinder … that my range and choice of vocabulary is always highly questionable and that I wasn’t advocating BEING a bitch, but encouraging people to harness the spirit of someone who wants to be heard [but in a good way].
As for why I only invited the women?
Well I’ll be doing training for the guys too, however the fact is around the World, women are faced with massive challenges and prejudices and no more is that prevalent than in Asia. On top of that, I found some photos from an Asian advertising bash and was overwhelmed by how many of the senior agency figures were predominantly white, middle aged and male – and that bothered me a lot.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the people in these photos are bad people who advocate gender and cultural stereotypes [afterall I’m kind-of one of them, even if I don’t want to be one of them] it’s just that I found it sad that the industry in this part of the World was so under-represented by people from this side of the World – especially women – and I wanted to pass on some of the lessons I’d learnt over the years to help our talented women feel more confident to express themselves [as well as overcome some of the additional hurdles they face] so their talent can shine and they can help change the make up of adland management over the next few years.
Well I did the training and it went very well.
Apart from the people who attending giving me positive feedback, the couple of people who were concerned it could come across as ‘a man dictating how to behave to the helpless women of Asia’ realised it was simply the tales of a bloke from Nottingham, passing on some of the lessons he’s learnt over the years and that he genuinely had the best interests of his colleagues at heart.
But as much as I was disappointed that anyone I work with could of thought I would fail to be sensitive to the people, gender and issues of the region, I learnt [or re-learnt] some valuable lessons from all this as well.
1/ People make instant judgements and hoping they’ll “get you” should never be taken for granted – especially if you’re still relatively new.
2/ Offensive words get all the focus, even when they’re surrounded with meaning that is intended to soften their impact.
3/ Years of negativity and prejudice overwhelm any positive historical actions or behaviour.
[Unless all your actions and behaviour are directly linked to the topic at hand]
4/ It’s important to do these things, even if it causes deeply held issues and concerns to rise up and cause tension.
5/ What you do, how you do it and how often you do it is the only thing that can make a real difference.
6/ It’s genuinely great – and healthy – when people express their concerns directly and we must continually encourage that attitude at all times and with all people.
[Which this training is also designed to help people do, without the fear of being insulting or causing anger – which I accept must sound weird coming from me]
Anyway, while many of the things I talked about in the training have been said before [by me and by others] … and many people would say it was nothing they didn’t know already … and the examples I used may sound obvious or trivial … I know from personal experience, the techniques I talked about helped me [and continue to help me] a huge amount – not just in meetings, but in how I get others to understand, influence and buy my views – so for anyone out there, especially the younger advertising women in this part of the World [it is also translated into Chinese ], I attach it for you to check out, play with and use it as you feel fit.
Hope it helps. Even a little bit.
SOME NOTES:
Slides 2-14
They are there to explain the reasoning behind the training [as detailed above].
Slides 17-22
They describe scenarios that people will hopefully – in a sad way – resonate with.
Slides 23-33
They describe the techniques to help you handle pretty much every situation – at least in terms of being able to express your point of view without fear of reprise, however contentious you may be being.
Slides 34-38
Give some challenges for you to try and practice your techniques on.
Slides 39-44
Describe some additional tips and reminders.