Our Turn (17 page)

The conclusion is not that women lack the confidence to apply for new positions or promotions, so much as an understanding of how hiring processes actually work, and that how you sell yourself can trump the hiring criteria. Or as the study put it, “advocacy, relationships, or a creative approach to framing one's expertise could overcome not having the skills and experiences outlined in the job qualifications.” In other words, we women are still newcomers to the game and rookies tend to play by the rules. It's no surprise that women would be
more inclined to take the job criteria as gospel: girls are raised to follow the rules. Again, in school this wins us awards and degrees, but in the work world it may well limit our careers. But it's not all on female shoulders. As that McKinsey report found, where men are often hired for their potential, women are tapped for their track record. The
HBR
report suggests that this is historical baggage too. Through the twentieth century, at least, women's past on-paper accomplishments, our certificates, diplomas and degrees,
were
our tickets in, proof that we had the credentials to operate in a man's world. But when the world now belongs to us all, when managing out is the new model and influence is the new power, when women increasingly bring the right stuff to drive innovation and success, there's good reason for everyone to fight biases in hiring. All of us need to bring a little more moxie to advocate for ourselves and our ideas—and we need to bring it now.

There's a window opening here and now, and if organizations don't adapt, and women don't act, it can close quickly. The new economy is not without its growing pains. When things are new, they can be confusing and scary, tempting companies old and new to fall back into familiar patterns of hierarchy. Institutions that are struggling to stay in control can be short-sighted. Even young, start-up firms, blossoming with progressive cultures and diverse teams of employees, can be vulnerable to old ways of doing business: the bigger these firms become the more alluring it seems to slip back into old top-down management styles and focus too closely on quarterly results and profit margins. If that happens, organizations can quickly lose sight of the people they serve and the people serving with them.

Pressures from technology and business have combined to make way for a new way of leading, but that will be crushed if we don't move before old biases and habits take hold. And they're never very far away. In March 2015, for example, the
Harvard Business Review
ran a report examining the infamous under-representation of women in science, technology, engineering and math. Other research has suggested the problem is the pipeline, with too few women interested in these territories, or that women in these demanding fields opt out to care for their families. But this report, which involved in-depth interviews with 60 women in science, along with 556 surveys of women in these areas, discovered, once again, that assumptions are dangerous. Women aren't opting out: bad treatment and stereotypical old biases are driving them out. Women in the study said they had to provide more evidence of their competence than their male colleagues, and provide it again and again—especially if they'd had children. They reported that they were expected to fit into stereotypical roles as either office mother or dutiful daughter, at the same time as they had to walk a tightrope between being seen to be too feminine to do the job or too masculine to be liked. Half the respondents reported experiencing a backlash for speaking their minds directly or being decisive.

I can relate to that. Having worked in male-dominated environments, I understand how those feelings of isolation can take hold. Many times I've offered my input or opinion in a meeting—too often as the only woman in the room—to be met with dead silence, which signalled that what I had to say was of so little value it didn't even merit a response. I learned that it helped to align with a male in the group, to say, for
instance, “I'm with Steve about this, and I also think …” By picking Steve out from the herd, I helped to turn the herd in another direction, or at least pushed them to recognize that there was another direction.

What was also troubling about the Harvard study was that it found that some women reported cold treatment from older female colleagues, who acted as if they were determined to put the younger ones through the same hellish baptism they'd suffered when they started their careers. It was as if these older women believed there still weren't enough positions for women to go around and they had to protect their turf. Yet, as we all know, that's just not the case. There may be particular fields where progress on equal opportunity is still poor, but the days of treating women as mere tokens in the workplace are long gone, given that the kinds of attributes women bring are now crucial elements of success. To create a truly healthy, innovative and profitable culture there has to be more than one or two women at the table. And the more women there are, the more women can connect with one another to advocate for women's interests. We need to see ourselves as strong in the ways that now matter most, and exercise our voice, individually and together.

[ CONCLUSION ]

Our Time

THERE'S MORE VALUE IN
being a woman in business today than perhaps ever before. That simple fact should make all women proud; increasingly it's women who are standing out as those with the right stuff to lead. The way in which business is quickly transforming has created many opportunities for women to step up as leaders and put our best selves forward. We are leaving the old ways behind, which is good because it was those old ways that created inequality. It's our turn to forge new ways of working and leading.

I wanted to write this book because I've experienced it all. I started at the bottom, with no connections and no real credentials, and now I'm here. On the way, I had wins but I also had misses, and I suffered through many moments when I was tempted to second-guess myself or fold to stale opinions and old ways of doing things. But I'd like to think that my ongoing story illustrates that success follows when you stay true to yourself.

There was nothing rarefied about my path to success. Mine was a modest childhood, and my professional start was just
about as modest as it gets. But I was always aware of my strengths. I knew what engaged me, consistently kept an eye on significant trends and was prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that came my way. In some cases, I fell into a new path, as with Twitter. In others, when it felt like something was the perfect next step, I made an effort to get the job. But, from my first position as a girl Friday on, I believed that I could meet the challenge ahead and took advantage of any smart opportunity. I hope that my story says to girls and young women like my own daughters: “If she can do it, so can I.”

As a title I chose simply:
Our Turn
. No subtitle to qualify that claim. I think this is
the
moment for women to see themselves for the leaders they can be. The digital world has made traits associated with interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence into business assets. Those qualities, once labelled and dismissed as “feminine,” are crucial to the collaborative, speak-up cultures businesses need to create today in order to survive and thrive. It takes discipline, diligence and practice to recognize such assets and build on such strengths. I confess that sometimes I would watch
The Devil Wears Prada
and wish for just one minute that I could behave as recklessly as Miranda Priestly did. What if just once I could make outrageous demands and show the world who was boss? Wouldn't it be simpler if I could throw my weight and new-found power around and not worry about the consequences? But if you throw your power around today, you might as well throw it out the window. Being an effective leader takes a lot of focus, not on your own needs, but on the needs of others. It takes dedication to something larger than yourself. Technology has made our huge world tiny. It's made every voice matter and
given every voice a way to be heard. It's turned influence into the new power, and the act of building pathways, inside and outside our organizations, the best way to channel it. And that's good news, not bad: these days, every person can use their personal capital without being chained to a desk. Going forward, the pressure is only going to mount on employers to make workplace participation and flexibility standard features if they want to keep their talent and stay competitive. Ideas, not objects, fuel the knowledge economy, which means that talented people are the true powerhouses of business.

The ideal is to tap into the knowledge economy to build a team you trust, who manage their own time, tackle tasks in their own way and exert greater control over their own schedule. Technology has given us the tools to make all that possible. In today's market, the idea of finding a good employment “fit” goes two ways. You should spend as much effort as your company spends in making sure you are right for the job, and even more on ensuring the environment is one where you will thrive. A happy life is not about striking that elusive work–life balance, but managing the flow.

Increasingly, men are looking for that same flexibility in their careers. On the home front and the work front, the roles of men and women, fathers and mothers, are slowly converging. More women are becoming the breadwinners, more men are raising children, families are changing their fundamentals in lots of different ways, and the shift is all part of a wider social revolution propelled by the up-and-coming generation of digital natives.

Change is all around us. Our ability to communicate, consume and access information at high speeds has transformed
the way we live, work and play, turning our universe into a world of customization, whether it's the music we select for our playlists, the shows we download, the unpackaged holidays we plan or the way we structure our working hours. Today's whatever, whenever, however reality has created utter upheaval in the market, breaking old business models as customers, not bosses, wield the clout that can make you a winner or a loser. Is this change intimidating? Absolutely. But it's exhilarating, too, if only for the horizons it has blown wide open. It's time to get past the bogged-down debates about how women can force change in the workplace and capitalize on the dazzling changes already afoot.

Those glass cliffs have become pinnacles from which new styles of leading can evolve. Women, who have had to struggle for position in a world that only paid them lip service, are perfectly placed to dig in their heels and stand tall.

[ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ]

One day, after giving a speech to a room full of inquisitive and energetic women, a man came out of the crowd and asked me if I'd considered writing a book. “Oh no,” I immediately responded. I'd seen books written by various men who had held the jobs I had held. “I have no intention of writing about my time at the CBC.” I couldn't imagine anything less interesting to read, let alone to write.

“No, not that story,” said the man who became my literary agent, Chris Bucci, who has guided me through to the launch of this book. The story he wanted me to write was about my experiences as a woman and leader in business today. I'd talked about my journey in life and in my career in the speech he'd just heard, and he thought that my optimistic take on the shifting tides of business and how they were creating opportunities for new leaders like myself was a story people would like to hear. By complete surprise it turned out a few editors agreed with him. I soon found myself at a diner sitting across the table from one in particular, Anne Collins, whose well-earned reputation for being one of the best in the business I found slightly intimidating. But we immediately connected over shared stories of challenging career paths with steps taken forward, sideways and back again and the lessons learned in between, and then we bonded over our discussion of “having it all” and what that meant for women in today's world. Anne, and her colleagues at that first meeting, Kristin Cochrane and Brad Martin, thought that my notion that this is the best time for women and for those of us who choose to lead differently than how we once
were led, was the kind of message that would inspire others to take up the charge.

I confess that I set out to write this book certain that my English-literature degree meant that the ideas would just flow—I mean how hard could it be for a woman who loved words and ideas to write a book? Well that was another lesson I quickly learned. As you just read, I learned long ago that even when you are championing your own best ideas, you can't be expert in everything it takes to execute them. Successful leaders know what they don't know and they fill those gaps with the most talented people they can find. And after meeting Chris and teaming up with Anne, I was lucky to partner with a wonderful writer, Carolyn Abraham, who brought my ideas and the stories of my journey together in a way I could never have accomplished on my own. Carolyn sat with me for hours of interviews over the course of a year, and put up with a multitude of late night emails from around the world as I attempted to answer her probing questions. Carolyn, a distinguished science journalist and the author of her own insightful memoir,
The Juggler's Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us
, bonded with me over shared stories of juggling family and career, laughed with me over mistakes we'd both made that proved to be valuable life lessons and got riled up with me over the injustices and unfairness that too many women face as they pursue their careers. Carolyn's careful crafting, together with hours of research by Beth Brudjn to add flesh to my ideas where they needed it, and Anne's superstar edits combined to make the book in front of you. (And thanks to Chris for timely prodding, too.) I pride myself on my ability to build great teams, and this experience, far removed from the daily trials of my work life, proved to be one of the most satisfying for me yet.