Undoing Our Subconscious Programming

Women make highly effective leaders. Decision-making with empathy is regarded by many as the most important skill in leadership, and improves team performance. Women score better than men at improving business performance and employee engagement. We have consistent proof that having more female leaders in businesses boosts the bottom line. Yet the Pipeline’s Women Count reports show again and again that the magic ‘tipping point’* of having more than one in three of executive roles filled by women is only rarely achieved.

‘Women sit on the back benches, unnoticed and unfulfilled,’ says Lauren Paton of her own experience. ‘And I was sick to death of seeing it.’

Lauren Paton, a former head of marketing at Amazon, has taken the perhaps surprising step to leave that leviathan of global corporate life to found her own business as Unleashed Coaching + Reprogramming. She did this in the firm belief she could help women who have been held back far too long by societal stereotyping, a lack of confidence and perhaps their own perfectionism. She now coaches women to be leaders, and as we say, ‘proudly ambitious’. Fittingly enough this broad-ranging discussion was sponsored by Santander, a firm which just recently came a proud second in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index 2022.

Can you ever ‘undo’ your social programming? Do you do ‘report-talk’, or ‘rapport-talk’? Limiting self-belief often affects women’s confidence, resilience, sense of value and of course their ability to ask for a promotion.

In this highly interactive session for WIBF, Lauren explained why she feels it is genuinely possible to free yourself from these gender conventions.

She asked the audience to share examples of ‘rules’ that women are expected to keep to – rules that it is worth identifying and questioning in advance, so you can respond appropriately. The audience’s answers were varied: ‘Don’t be shrill’ (has a man ever been called shrill?), ‘be nice’, ‘don’t be too loud’, ‘be more confident… but not too much’, ‘be passionate… but don’t be dramatic’.

The event also explored the many other ways our subconscious is primed to draw back from centre stage. Fewer than 4% of films, she pointed out, include a conversation between a group of three or more women (measured by the so-called the Bechdel Test – see note below). Meanwhile, Disney told us that girls just needed a prince. Snow White became a dutiful housewife to seven men. Children in the UK of today may not receive as many of those very fixed gender messages. However, most of us of working age grew up with society showing us men as doctors, women as nurses; men as pilots and women as flight attendants - and bankers as men who look and act like Michael Douglas.

It all sounds very bleak, but what can be programmed in, can be de-programmed out.

She suggests:

• Be curious, ask questions and don’t be easily satisfied with poor answers

• Ask yourself, how am I complicit?

• What better habits can I cultivate?

Guests were asked to reframe some damaging assumptions via positive assertiveness. Told you are ‘too challenging’, for example, you might be able to respond firmly that your confident approach has often helped the company find effective solutions to problems.

Scroll down to watch the event playback.

Lauren has offered some free training to WIBF members: Become the Female Leader of the Future.

This will cover:

> What talent makes the female leaders of the future

> The secrets to leading from a place of authenticity

> How to keep your confidence up and your momentum powered, even when things get rough.

Link: www.BeUnleashedCoaching.com/wibf

* This ‘tipping point’ is the point at which businesses start to see the business benefits of female leadership.

Note: For those interested, further reading about media gender equality in current children’s TV favourites is available here. The Bechdel Test is a theoretical litmus test that measures female presence in fictional media. To pass, the film or show must meet the following criteria: 1. It includes at least two women, who 2. have at least one conversation 3. about something other than a man or men.

It’s surprising how many films don’t pass the test.

References

BBC ‘Firms with more female executives ‘perform better’ (July 2020), BBC.com.

Corinne Post, Boris Lokshin, and Christophe Boone Research: Adding Women to the C-Suite Changes How Companies Think, (April 2021) Harvard Business Review.

Stephanie X. Hu, (2020), Toxic Royalty: Feminism and the Rhetoric of Beauty in Disney Princess Films, InquiriesJournal.com

Women Count 2021 https://execpipeline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Women-Count-2021-Report.pdf

 

Bloomberg’s Gender-Equality Index

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