Prue Leith Queen of Cooking recalls her colourful life

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#LadyValNetwork, Bake Off, Prue Leith

Bake-off star and cookery legend Prue Leith entered the room to a welcome of thunderous applause from the sold-out capacity gathering at Lady Val Corbett’s women’s networking lunch at the end of November.

Prue Leith and Lady Val were both involved with The Hoxton Apprentice, a restaurant that trained the long-term unemployed. Lady Val started her Women’s Network there in 2005 holding her lunches for 7 years. This event celebrated the Network’s 14 years of successful gatherings.

It was good to hear that Prue and Val have a history, with both coming from South Africa to the UK in their youth and staying in touch over the years. In fact, this lunch event was also a birthday celebration for Lady Val’s network which started 14 years ago in Hoxton Square in a training restaurant for the long term unemployed that both women were connected to. The two women and their ventures have gone from strength to strength.

With a female speaker for a large group of women, we are looking for gossip, insider secrets and tips for how we can emulate her success. Prue did not disappoint. She turned out to be a kick-ass business woman with a winning smile, a colourful presence and in her own words a “terrible show off”!

“Business is boring” ….. but is it?

It’s interesting how as a young woman Prue got the idea that business was boring so she chose a career that she thought was more creative, fun and involved people… cooking. She was good at it growing a team of cooks, then over the next year she found herself out of the kitchen … “Guess where I was …the team were in the kitchen doing the cooking, and I was on the phone, selling the stuff and making up the menus and doing the bills and organising the restaurants …. I was in an office doing business!”  To her surprise she found that she absolutely loved it getting as much of a buzz and “smug self satisfaction” from getting the right numbers on her profit and loss as she did from preparing a big wedding feast. 

Creative with Marketing

It not only helps to be a good cook but you have to seize the opportunities to move up the ladder and grow your business whenever you can. Prue spoke of a time when she was cooking for a wealthy woman in her Holland Park home. Through the server hatch she overheard the dinner parties guests give lavish praise for the food and ask for the name of genius cook. The hostess then claimed that she had cooked all the food herself and the “little girl in the kitchen” was simply there for clearing the dishes. That little girl resisted the temptation to shout through the hatch and instead came up with a great idea. A small sweet revenge. She took her business cards and wrote on each one that this was the person who had cooked their lovely meal then slipped them into the coat pockets of all the guests. Bingo!  Shortly after, she received a call from the secretary of the Chairman of Reed publishing inviting her to cook for the directors’ lunches. He was impressed with both her cooking and marketing skills.  Be brave and seize the moment.

Evolving with age

When Prue got to her mid century she wanted to heed a different call for creativity and write novels. Owning three very successful businesses took all her time and creativity so she decided to sell them all … her cookery school, Michelin star restaurant and catering company which now had 500 employees. That’s certainly a brave shift. She opened up space for her creative writing phase but after some time decided she actually missed the buzz of business. 

You’re never too old to start again

Recalling how Lady Val celebrates a woman’s love of handbags and shoes (a regular toast at her networking events) Prue pointed out that these items are either hidden under a table on the floor or on our feet and then tucked away in cupboards. She decided to be a bit more canny and showy and choose to channel her creativity into the design of a range of colourful Prue spectacles and gorgeous necklaces .. items that already formed part of her personal brand image and are always on display! Having previously enjoyed wearing colourful and inexpensive plastic jewellery, Prue’s range is a bit more eco friendly and not based on plastic but on beautiful gemstones which also make for a more sustainable business with better margins.

So having semi-retired from her businesses in her 50s .. here she is about to enter her 9th decade and back in the business fray, collaborating with jewellery and spectacle designers. It’s never too late to take on something completely new challenge.

Older women and Invisibility

Reflecting on her own journey through the years, she has noticed that women in their 50s can feel, and also look, invisible. She encouraged women to accept the fact that older men will let their gaze land on more nubile and younger women (that’s just what they do!) and we can still have a good time. Don’t give up on yourself she said … embrace colour. 

Finding love

Prue referred to her long and happy marriage with her first husband. He was 20 years older than her and sadly he died when she was in her sixties. She has been very public in her comments about her surprise and joy at finding love again in her later years. She is going to be 80 next year and is delighting in her wonderful marriage to a man who is seven years her junior which she called “the right ratio” to much applause from the audience.  

Women can often find themselves single in later life for a variety of reasons but she pointed out that even though we might not all enjoy the love and connection of a life partner, love is still hugely important in our lives and takes many forms. Appreciating the love we have from friends and even our pets is nourishing and important. Having love and being long sustains us.

 

Recipe for success

Prue says that because she seems to do a lot, and has accomplished so much, she is often asked about her secrets for success. This is a hard one for any of us to answer but she says she can only draw on her innate optimism. She says she is upbeat in her approach to life. “I do think I’ve been lucky ……. you know, if something goes wrong, I will more likely say, it was really worth a try. I’ll do it again…. Or that didn’t work so I’ll try something else. I think much more about what I’ll do next, rather than worrying about what I’ve done wrong….And I’ve done lots of things wrong.”  It can be so easy to focus on the mis-steps and the failures and let them hold us back but Prue maintains a focus on the future which sounds really healthy. Keep your eyes forward and don’t get hung up on the past.

Embrace the colour

Her other secret is her love of colour which she says has a great deal to do with how she feels … “maybe this is because I’m busy flogging colourful specs and colourful necklaces! … but I do think that if you wear a red jacket or a yellow coat on a miserable morning you immediately feel a little happier. So I’m really for us all having colourful lives, and that means having a go with everything.”

A new career phase with Bake-Off

When Mary Berry stepped out of the Bake-Off team when Channel 4 bought the franchise, Prue, already an old hand at TV work, wondered who they would find to replace the iconic female elder stateswoman of baking … she thought “surely they’ll never ask for yet another old lady…  Channel Four always want to do something different .. a young cool black woman perhaps …But they obviously didn’t want to mess with the formula”. So she was approached and is now a key part of the successful continuation of the series.

Everyone wanted their photo taken with the Bake Off star

The big faux-pas

As the first Bake-Off series involving Prue came to a close, she recounted how she was prompted to congratulate the winner after 10.30pm. Of course we all know it is a pre-recorded programme and the winner is a very well-kept secret (and has been for 7 years) until the recording is aired many weeks after the actual event.  On this occasion Prue was in Bhutan with very spotty phone reception so when that prompting message appeared on her phone, she looked at her watch .. 10.30pm …so she sent out that famously ill-timed message of congrats to the winner. It was certainly 10.30pm in Bhutan but much earlier in the UK and the show had not yet been aired. Her assistant spotted the spoiler message and deleted it so it was only up for 89 seconds .. but that was all it took to spread like wild fire. The spoiler-alert story made headline news. Instead of having her contract terminated as she fully expected, Prue was relieved to find a compassionate response at Channel 4, particularly as ratings soared when many new folks tuned in to watch the show.  The potential debacle had another upside when the Prime Minister of Bhutan called her for a chat … congratulating her and thanking her for putting Bhutan on the map .. in the most unusual way!

That is definitely a sign of a woman who is a pure magnet for good luck!!

Lady Val’s next lunch event for women in London is February 20th

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Is power shifting for women?

Image Courtesy of the BBC

We think of power being at the top of our most visible structures …. government and large corporations. And that’s where the 80:20 balance persists and in some cases women don’t even reach the 20% number. The ratio of women to men as CEOs of the top 100 companies (FTSE) in the UK is still only 2 to 98 so that’s a proportion of 98:2 instead.

How will we ever create change? It’s coming up to a century since women were first given the vote in the UK (1918)  and I am sure they felt that the job was done when they finally achieved that but not so. 100 years later and women are still marginalised at the top levels of government (now only 3 women in the Cabinet, as of last week) and business.

The question is …. do we need to be in those top Ministerial and CEO and Company Board positions to create change and have influence? Well yes, I think so, but perhaps not entirely ….. BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour has just published their 2014 list of women who they are calling  Game Changers, the top 10 most influential women and none of them are in Government, and only one is a business CEO.

The women selected this year seem to be using their influence to challenge power. Baroness Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered Stephen Lawrence, has been named ‘most powerful woman’ and most of the women on the list are activists or campaigners. They are getting on with things outside the system, doggedly and passionately working for change.

That’s definitely something to think about. As more and more women demonstrate their skills and abilities in the public service, volunteer and social change arena, perhaps they will be “seen” and invited to change the game where it desperately needs change … inside the system.

Let’s think about what we can each get active, or more active, in ……. what cause can we take up or align to with greater energy, passion, vision and action? Women focusing on the greater good are making a difference and getting noticed.

The 2014 list in full from BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour is:

1. Doreen Lawrence, OBE – anti-racism campaigner

2. Julie Bailey, CBE – campaigner and founder of Cure the NHS

3. Professor Nazneen Rahman – geneticist and cancer specialist

4. Carmel McConnell – activist and founder of Magic Breakfast

5. Julie Bentley – chief executive of Girlguiding

6. Nimco Ali & Leyla Hussein (jointly) – anti-FGM activists

7. Dido Harding – CEO, TalkTalk Group

8. Francesca Martinez – comedian, actor and disability campaigner

9. Laura Bates – founder of the Everyday Sexism Project

10. Caitlin Moran – journalist and author

The Motherhood Penalty – the negative impact of having children

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Mothers Day, Prof Shelley Correll

 

We’ve just celebrated Mothers Day here in the UK, taking the opportunity for at least one day of the year to openly express our love and gratitude to the person who birthed us into the world and brought us up (and barring a few exceptions that’s the same person). Up and down the land restaurants will have been sold out for Sunday lunch, garage forecourts will have been stripped of flowers and the chocolate industry will have had its next huge spike in sales after Valentine’s Day. (My posting to celebrate my Mum).

It’s a pity that we don’t seem to love mothers inside the workplace (even though we’ve all had one). The commerce space and big business is apparently much less tolerant of women who have children. In my research of women, I meet so many who were advised at some point in their career (at job application or promotion time) NOT to mention, or draw attention to, the fact that they were a Mother. Why? Because it doesn’t look good to the employer.

I’ve been speaking with Professor Shelley Correll, Director of the Michelle R Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. She’s been telling me about the research that points to a Motherhood Penalty. When you look into this you begin to see that it is universal and definitely is one of the things that can hold women back from the top jobs in business. I’ve just read about a study in Israel which says “the majority of women think that appearing single and childless is more attractive” to employers.

In the USA there is a particular body of research that Professor Correll refers to which shows that mothers who work get paid 5 to 7% less per child than women without children ….  who have the same job, the same level of education and the same level of seniority. They are otherwise identical apart from having children. And the more they have, the worse it is for them financially.

The Institute’s own research also found strong evidence of bias against mothers. After seeing a resume for a job and then finding out that the person is a mother, what follows is that person is then 100% less likely to get the job.  People see “mother” and think “less committed”.  No matter what is on the profile and how relevant the information, being a mother means she looks less committed to the employer.  Watch and hear my conversation with Professor Correll on video.

So there is a perception that women may be less committed to work or have too many other calls on their time or their thinking abilities are perhaps diminished. Who knows what the real reasons are but consider this ….. what if having children and being a mother actually enhanced your capacities and in some fields, made you a better worker?

Brain changes after birthing
There’s plenty of research to indicate that hormonal fluctuations create structural changes in the brain. We know this happens during puberty so there is good reason to believe that the female brain could have substantial remodeling as a result of the dramatic hormonal shifts that happen during the three big life phases of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding in order to prepare for being a mother to a dependent child. Research presented in the Harvard Business Review in 2006, shows that rat mothers outperform virgin rats in navigating mazes and capturing prey. Could it be that a higher level of commitment is needed to ensure that the young are fed and so the brain is given better skills for more successful foraging?

Mothers have to develop an extraordinary large skill set
In addition to any hormonally triggered brain adaptations, most mothers will tell you that the skills required to run a family often far exceed anything a business might require of them. Women have to learn very quickly to organise their lives and households to a much higher degree, juggling school programmes and after school activities for sometimes several children. Mediation techniques become very refined as desperate mothers develop ways to curtail arguments and ensure that fairness and peace prevails amongst squabbling siblings. In addition, there is the unquantifiable mastery of reading a child’s needs and observing how they grow, develop and flourish in the family unit, so that ultimately, they have what they individually need to reach their potential.

Parenting is expansive, opening people up to new values
I would imagine most corporate careers don’t tax people’s capacities anything like parenting does and yet there is a tendency to completely invalidate all these skills in mothers which they develop from being a parent. And we haven’t even looked into the values shift that occurs in a human as they mature and become responsible for the well-being and safe future of the next generation, who are at home doing their homework waiting for supper.

Priorities are bound to change, as is how a person sees the world and the context they bring to the decisions they make. I am guessing a parent could in fact be a much better value employee with their enhanced capacities for empathy, superior listening skills and a greater sensitivity to the future now that they have offspring who will be inheriting the legacies of their actions.
Do you think that mothers, and parents, add more value to an enterprise?
Watch the video and hear our discussion about the Daughter Effect and the experience of men as fathers.

Is it time for a revolution … starting with feminine leadership?

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Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, lynne mctaggart, The Bond, Video Interview

I have just been reading Lynne McTaggart’s latest book The Bond. In the intro she talks about the world we have now which, post Global Financial crisis of 2008 and other significant events in the last decade, quite clearly, no longer works. It really does not serve humanity in the way it should. Right in the introduction she points out that “We urgently need a new story to live by……. We need some new rules to live by. We need another way to be.”

In a nutshell that is what our latest video is about in the conversation series between myself and Dr David Paul, a Sydney-based expert on global leadership and complex change. Because of his expertise in complexity and his gift for expressing his ideas in such beautiful, clear and simple language, David has often been called on to give advice to world leaders and senior government leaders all over the globe.

If you think about it, the problems we face today are indeed so extremely complex and go way beyond the expertise that any one single person could now be expected to provide. It’s as if the solutions are destined to emerge from many sources rather than already residing somewhere and our job is simply to find out where and who has the secrets. No single source has the answers now……. but together, using different thinking, we have a chance of bringing forth some new answers.

Lynne talks about the current world order which is failing us having grown out of three Revolutions which originally held such promise (the Scientific Revolution in the 1600s and the two Industrial Revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries). A culture of what she calls “competitive individualism” is what we have now created and this has disconnected us from a much saner, fulfilling and holistic existence.  I mention Lynne’s book here because in this video you will hear David calls for change and says that in actual fact, another revolution is what is needed now. He says we have gone so far down a path of destruction that the system is way beyond tweaking. Now, only radical, revolutionary reform will bring us back from the brink. And he feels that this next new global revolution needs to be in the hands of women who are the only unheard voice left.

I was quite taken aback when David first said this. I have had these stirring thoughts in my head for some time now … what would that revolution look like? How do we start it? If we as women take leadership, then how do we enrol the men in it for it is not a revolution against men. It’s more a push-back against a patriarchal system and masculine way that has trapped and failed the majority of men too. So even though I don’t yet know what the revolution will look like, I am clear that it is feminine leadership that is most needed to get it started and maybe see it through….

The conversation on the video is about how women are leaving middle management in droves and so removing themselves from the pipeline that supplies the most senior women to join organisations at Board level. David talks about the choices that face women and how they often opt for a work / life balance so they can accommodate the needs of family and their many roles. These choices often lead to taking a part-time option which is generally seen as giving less commitment to the corporation (in favour of family) and so is penalised by taking those women out of the frame for the top leadership jobs.

In pointing out that change is usually most effective when it comes from the bottom as a grass-roots initiative or movement, David is again challenging us to think about what we, as women, with our different thinking, different perspectives, different needs can bring to bring to the table. What new questions can we ask… what new ways of being and working can we model so that we indeed spark a revolution and so actually start to bring forth what Lynne McTaggart calls for in her urging for a new story for humanity?

I’d be interested in your responses and ideas …… I am not letting this drop. This is not a throwaway line in a conversation although it is true I could just have left it at that. But no, it is time to create change, it’s a call that I cannot ignore. Can you?  It’s time to be a leader in change and model new ways of being, living, working and leading … the feminine way. I know you have been thinking about how YOU would do things differently. It’s time to share what you are doing in your own life or enterprise or inside your corporation that is going to create this new story, this new way of working, living and being.  Men and women … we have to find a new way. Answers on a postcard please …….. email me … comment .. tweet me … let’s continue the conversation.

Love from London

Gina

What if women ruled the world – an interesting thought for International Women’s Day

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Dr David Paul, Gina Lazenby, Hillary Clinton for USA President, international women's day, IWD 2013, What If Women ruled the world

It’s International Women’s Day so if you are going to ask the question “What if women ruled the world” today would be the perfect one.In today’s BBC News magazineonline, political analyst and former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers says that this may have been a ridiculous thought at one time in history but it is now a topic that can be seriously discussed.More and more studies highlight the differences in men and women and Christine Lagarde, MD of the International Monetary Fund reflected in the BBC magazine on what might have happened during the Global Financial Crisis if there had been “more Lehman sisters than Brothers”. The outcome would likely have been different she says since “women have a very different risk-taking profile to men”with a much more questioning approach to all the end possibilities. When asked what a world ruled by women would look like she came up with 4 key observations.  There would be:

1 a better balanced world

2 more focus & concern on health & education, these are more of a priority to women

3 more peace: women bear children and somehow taking them to war is much more frightening for mothers then men

4 women will be more inclusive because we have been excluded for a long time.

Included in the Forbes List of Most Powerful Women, Christine Lagarde is number 8 in the category of the 100 Women who actually do run the world now so she is not speaking from fantasy. Number two on that same list is Hillary Clinton. She was the USA Secretary of State at the time the list was compiled (the third female to hold that high office) but if she fulfills her ambition to be President of the USA then she will take that number one spot for sure.

In the second video in the series of conversation on Feminine Leadership with Dr David Paul, we talk about Hillary and her potential ambitions for that top job. I cannot hide my enthusiasm for this scenario. If you you think about it, gender aside, there couldn’t be a better career politician who is more experienced and well-primed for this role. It’s potentially the world’s most important job and she has already been in the White House for 12 years! Nobody else has had that training and preparation with important relationships already established and in place. She could hit the ground running. David Paul follows Hillary’s work closely and says he has seen her “put her mark on the world saying ‘Let’s move forward, let’s work together, let’s be partners’ ”. That feminine approach of seeking more balanced outcomes is exactly what Christine Lagarde spoke of us achieving. Watch the video

Women who do decide to step need our support

Speaking as neither a Republican or a Democrat, my dearest wish is that she does give it a go and that we do give her a chance. It would be the closet thing to having the women rule the worldscenario start to take effect. That’s only a catchy phrase anyway because none of us truly want to wrest control out of every man’s hand, we simply want balanced leadership and balanced decision-making. Without that balance we are not going to have that game-changing shift in culture and policy that is needed to pull the world back from its current trajectory of self destruction.

In our interview we also talk about the vote last November by the Church of England which failed to back the promotion of women to Bishops. In a Guardian editorial Joan Smith writes that “the General Synod vote runs against the current of history, which suggests that women are increasingly voting for politicians who favour equality, such as President Obama.” So when we find out that half the lay members of the church who voted against were women it is hard not to be dispirited. David points out that it is really an issue of not wanting to rock the boat and challenge the status quo. “If you’re a conservative woman in the Church of England, the prospect of “pushy” women getting power is quite scary, so of course you’re going to vote against it. The last thing any traditional woman wants to be accused of is appearing confrontational” saysanother Guardian editorial.

We have to look at our resistance to the change we want! 
This is definitely where we have to create change, dialoguing together and exploring these underlying fears so that we can unite on a future that is neither about pushy women nor those who are against their own gender rising up.

It is this deep resistance to change to David says stops many women using our power …. if we had opened this doorway before then we would have taken huge steps in our cultural revolution as human beings. When women do step up as leaders, they don’t receive  respect and support, from men or women. That is a key attitude we need to change .. supporting women who put themselves forward in service of their communities and countries to make a difference and created much-needed change.
Go Hillary I say. I am behind her 100%

I’m just using the energy of International Women’s Day to put it out there for Hillary …. let’s start our quest for change with her in the top job opening the doors for many other women to follow

Do women leaders attract more criticism?

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binders full of women, Dr David Paul, Gina Lazenby, Julia Gillard speech, misogyny, One Billion Rising

I think they do, judging by what I saw when I was in Australia.

During my last visit to Sydney I had the good fortune to spend time again with leadership expert Dr David Paul. The video series I did with him last year, with seven conversations on Feminine Leadership recorded on video, were extremely popular. We continued our conversation and another six videos have been created which I shall release over the next month. (Here is the link to the blog post with all seven of the previous interviews collated together)

What are we expecting from women leaders?
More positive dialogue needed ….

Kicking off our first session in November, was the discussion about the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Of course, as the PM she will be in the media all the time but I noticed how disrespectful some of the reporting about her often is in the papers. This may be increasingly true for many heads of state in the western world (a colleague of mine talked about how the largely Republican-slanted TV news during the election coverage referred to Obama without the use of ‘President’ in front of his name which they had normally done before …).  It does seems that more is expected of this first female leader in Australia and she is attracting much more criticism.

And then came the most downloaded political speech in history!

It is one thing to be forced to debate and defend policy decisions, it is quite another to receive a deluge of personal attacks as she says she has done.  So one morning in Parliament she hit back at Opposition Leader Tony Abbot and gave the famous misogynist speech which apparently has turned out to be the most downloaded political speech in history. In the Australian media it was given quite a bit of negative reporting but outside in the rest of the world it seems it was universally applauded. And obviously more so by women commentators.

As David Paul points out, she gave chapter and verse of what she said were comments and actions that she found deeply offensive ….. this is what you said, this is how you made me feel. It is quite unprecedented for a woman leader to speak out in such a strong way. If you watch the video of her speech (and there is a full transcript too, courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald) you will see her refer to a placard that Tony Abbot apparently stood next to with the words “Ditch the Witch”. Needless to say she found that offensive.  He also suggests at some point that the unmarried Prime Minster make an honest woman of herself and on another occasion refers to the housewives of Australia doing their ironing. Comments like that are never going to go down well.

This speech followed some press reporting about inappropriate comments by a government minister and also much-talked about comments about how the Prime Minister’s father, who had recently passed away, must have “died of shame” because of how Julia Gillard is performing. You can’t quite believe that a public figure would actually say that!  I think Julia had had enough.   She took a very important topic about how society sees and treats women, and gave it a very public airing.

Many male politicians have what Julia Gillard calls “in my view such old fashioned and close-minded attitudes. I was not going to sit silent”

I don’t know opposition leader Tony Abbot – he’s a husband and father to daughters and I am sure he wants the best for them.   I think there are some underlying attitudes that are coming out which show the confusion for how women public figures and women in professional life are treated.  This also came out during Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in the USA when he talked about being presented with “binders full of women” when he was looking for more female applicants for his cabinet. That comment, and others, set off a massive furore across the USA. It was very demeaning.

Thinking that women are ‘less than’ in some way comes from a culture where throughout history, women’s rights have been secondary. How women have subsequently been treated is all on a continuum.  Somewhere in the negative spectrum is a lack of understanding and disrespect, while shift further along to the other end and we see extreme behaviour of violence and complete subjugation.

Men need to be engaged in this conversation
This month violence against women has been brought to the fore by Eve Ensler’s campaign launched on Valentines Day called One Billion Rising.  There seems to be have been a wave of action across the planet where men and women are taking up this issue to stop violence by a new kind of activism based on celebration and dancing. I definitely think this is a much more creative and enrolling way to engage men in this conversation with women. For change will not come from women setting themselves against men … violence against women, and men, will only stop when we both work together to create the cultural change needed to make violence a thing of the past.

The treatment of women by corporate leaders, politicians, law-makers, police and out on the streets is really becoming a weekly conversation in the media with the most dramatic shift happening after the horrific rape in Delhi at the end of 2012.

Time for women to take leadership in change

David Paul ends this interview with a statement about strong leadership saying that “women are just coming to knowing what that power is”. Exciting times ahead … women finding their voice, connecting with their power, bringing about change…. yes it is time for us to really understand what power we have and how we can use it to help create a balanced, fairer society and a safe world. What does it take ? .. each one of us to step up and speak out whenever the opportunity presents itself …. or to decide what opportunities we ourselves will create.

Now there’s a thought …. what opportunities are you interested in creating?

LINK for document with full transcript of the interview

Seven conversations about feminine leadership

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conversations on women's leadership, Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, women in business

During the summer (in the northern hemisphere) I published seven videos of conversations I had this year with leadership and complex change expert Dr David Paul. These conversations were extremely popular and I received a great deal of feedback affirming many of the points made.

Now I am back in Sydney again I am delighted to say that David and I met for another series of conversations talking about several topics that are currently in the Australian (and international) press about Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the publication of the annual data census on the number of women in board, executive and management positions (or the lack thereof). I have now have six videos to share with you … before I do you might like to review some of the previous conversations.

Here they are:

Number 1
The importance of feminine qualities in women leaders
David’s advice for women today in changing the world and how women politicians could be more successful and win more support

Number 2
More women needed on Boards
How women can lack confidence and doubt themselves

Number 3
We need to change the negative news reporting of women

Number 4
Women need to uncover their “gold” inside ….. to step forward and drive change
the metaphor of the golden buddha and how that correlates with women now

Number 5
Olympic Golden Girls & Yahoo’s Mama-to-be CEO show new role models are emerging
new role models emerging for women

Number 6
The century for women – we have more milestones to create!
David talks about what holds women back and what women need to do to advance.

Number 7
Why men don’t listen to women … or can’t hear them?!
Why men don’t listen to women  …… a subject to amuse or to get to the bottom of?

Why men don’t listen to women … or can’t hear them?!

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Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, men can't hear women, men don't listen to women

Why men don’t listen to women  …… a subject to amuse or to get to the bottom of?

Well it certainly made David and I laugh.

I have lost track of the number of times a woman has shared her experience of being in a meeting with mainly, or all, male participants, and has presented a new idea or provided input only to have it completely ignored. Not only that, but later on, a male colleague has put forward the same idea and had a very different response with people agreeing that it is good input and accepting it as a valuable contribution.  Women also experience the issue of being spoken over in gatherings or simply not being heard. Yes I know it is annoying but what is happening here? Why are women not being listened to?   Why do our voices get lost and why can’t men hear us?

This is not a blame-throwing conversation  …… for me it is an interesting enquiry so I put the question to Dr David Paul in our continuing conversation on feminine leadership. In this sixth video in the series, David gives a surprising response. Most women will say that men tune out women’s voices because they are not interested in what we are saying. There may be an element to that and David talks about why this is.   Surprisingly, both genders are not wired to listen (Ladies … apparently, we are not blameless!)

It’s clear to me that as we take on world change we need to work side by side with men so we have to start cleaning up our communication on both sides so that we can hear and understand each other if we are to make any progress at all.

Following what David said, I have done some ferreting around and have unearthed some fascinating research…..

I had heard about the idea that men apparently process female voices in the auditory section of the brain, which also handles music but I’d not found the source of the research. It seems the University of Sheffield have done studies where researchers played recordings of male and female voices for a test group of males.  What they found was that there were startling differences in the way men deciphered male and female voices in different parts of their brains. Their website says:  “The female voice is actually more complex than the male voice and has greater natural melody. When a man hears a female voice, his brain analyzes the different sounds, in order to ‘read’ the voice and determine the auditory face.”  In other words, when a female is talking, it’s not that a man isn’t listening to what she’s saying, it’s that he’s hearing it in a different way and processing it like music.

Ah, well that explains everything !!! ……. And yet it doesn’t quite because David highlighted other research which accounts for why older men in particular don’t hear and it is to do with aging. (Watch the video)

When you search around the web about this question of men not listening to women you will come up with some hilarious blogs from men bemoaning the fact that their wives are always exasperated with them. This plea made me laugh:   “Women have a bad habit of changing the topic of conversation halfway through the conversation – and sometimes halfway through a sentence. The woman knows she has changed the subject, but she doesn’t deign to inform the man. She then has the audacity to shake her head at the man when he says ‘What was that?’  Look at it from the man’s point of view. One minute you are talking about the color of your hair and as you are speaking you look out of the window and see a plant peeking up through the snow. It is a plant you have decided to get rid of. Out loud you say, ‘That’ll have to come out.’ Can you blame the man for saying, ‘What was that?’“.     (Thanks to Jeff Kaley on ThirdAge)

Hands up if you have ever done that ……. me! ……..  and my Mum does it too ……  it can drive me nuts 🙂  Like mother like daughter I bet you are saying? I’m thinking people in glass houses should not throw stones!  LOL

The bottom line:  I think it is clear, for a variety of reasons, that we have our work cut out, not only in trying to understand each other but to even hear each other in the first place!

Listen to what David Paul suggests as one way to improve our conversation with men. (CLICK HERE to watch the video)

Here is a transcript of the conversation on the video.
David asks: who is it that listens to the children? It’s the mother.  Fathers, who are absent because of work, they don’t know what is going on in the home (to the same extent as the mother). There are fathers who are more hands-on and who do listen, but the one who really listens to the emotions of the children and their needs is the mother.

David said that there is a biological fact which determines that men do not hear the higher registers of women’s voices. Successful political women leaders learn to develop deeper voices to add gravitas to what they say. Margaret Thatcher and Julia Gillard are two examples.

Men over the age of 45 lose the ability to hear the pitch of higher notes in women’s voices.  Women’s voices tend to get higher when they are excited, stressed or anxious. If women want to make an important point,  then they need to drop the register of the voice.

I have learnt to speak directly to a man’s face instead of making a throw away comment across the room. I emphasise just one point and make an effort to ensure that I am heard.

Women can multitask wonderfully, they can cook, they can talk on the phone, they can sort out problems,  while men have to shut the door with a do not disturb sign and cook alone.    Women need to respect and understand that difference.
When we multitask and don’t focus, the men interpret that as something not being important.  We have to be specific and direct with what we communicate.

Women tend to give out a lot of instructions. It is important not to over instruct the men:
* Make one point
* make it clear
* make it important

We have to break the paradigms that men can’t listen and women just banter.
We need a deeper understanding of how different we are and to honour and respect those differences. We must not disrespect each other so that we can have better communication. Let’s work with our strengths instead of putting down each other for our weaknesses.

Women need to work side-by-side with men.  There are centuries of learning that we need to harness so that we can actually get on.  Feminine Wisdom is a huge force on the planet:  we need to tap into this in a way that has not been tapped into before. And the wisdom of older women is an important resource on the planet.  Older women seem not to be of use to a society obsessed by youth.  What role is there for older women?

Please leave your comments and do share your take on this subject as well as any amusing stories or exasperations you would like us to enjoy 🙂    Yes it is a serious subject but we might as well have a giggle and enjoy the new insights that we discover and start applying to our lives.

The century for women – we have more milestones to create!

Tags

Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, insights, Louise Raw, Made in Dagenham movie, Madeline Allbright, milestones for women, review, Strike a Light, women archetypes

Who have been your women role models in the last century who have driven change? I wonder who your future ones will be …….in fact, what will you be a role model for?  Imagine starting out this second decade with an idea or even a tiny proposition that would profoundly change the world by the end of this century.Think back to the early 1900s. Women did not even have the vote.  According to Louise Raw, author of a brilliant women’s study Strike a Light, at the end of the 1900s there were effectively three archetypes for women …. the Angel of the Home bringing up a family; the Celibate Spinster who had not been fortunate enough to make a marriage; and the Promiscuous Prostitute who worked outside of these two realms in one of the few occupations open to women, beyond domestic service. There were no archetypes or models for “working women”.   Indeed, although women were working (as nannies, in teaching roles as governesses and also in factories) their contribution was generally inconvenient and overlooked as it did not seem respectable in Victorian society to work outside the home. Where women did work outside the home they were paid poverty wages. By the beginning of the nineteenth century work was generally seen as masculine, it was skilled and it commanded higher wages (still extremely paltry). When women worked their effort was generally downgraded to unskilled and low-waged. It took many years to achieve a breakthrough in recognising the contribution of women.

 Louise Raw’s fascinating book is an academic study of how a group of women went on strike in 1888 in east London at the Bryant and May match factory. It was national news. Although these women were self-directed, mature and made their own decision to strike (the working conditions were unbelievable and full-time pay barely generated enough money for women to feed their families) the media represented them as innocent young girls being used as pawns by reformists who supposedly told them to go out on strike. Louise researched this book to prove this theory wrong in order to give these women their rightful place in history as the mothers behind the modern trades union movement. Their successful strike provided a foundation and inspiration for the Great Dock strike of1889 which was subsequently credited as being pivotal in the birthing of the modern labour movement, but in the popular history version there is no reference to the women. These women have literally been written out of history.

In this last video interview of my series on Feminine Leadership, Dr David Paul references the movie Made In Dagenham which was another milestone for women. Wikipedia called it “a film that blatantly condemns sexism and shows, despite its mostly light tone, the real cost of fighting for civil rights”. It was a true story of the strike at the Ford car plant in 1968 over the downgrading of women’s work on seat finishing to “unskilled” and therefore lower waged. The women also found out that they were being paid a fraction of the men’s wages and so they took on the fight for equal pay for equal work.  David pointed out that the action of these brave women was a milestone in women showing their value to men.

At first nobody took their strike action seriously, after all they were only women …. that was until the factory had to close down because they ran out of seats to put in the new cars. It was a momentous struggle and finally succeeded with the help of cabinet minister Barbara Castle. Their actions paved the way for equal pay legislation which has subsequently helped women across the world.   It’s full of great dialogue …… in one scene the wife of a senior Ford manager puts her support behind the striking women, much to their surprise, saying: “I have a first class honours degree from one of the finest universities in the world and my husband treats me like a fool … don’t give up!”    There have been many ‘firsts’ and milestones for women since this event but we still have more to go.

My conversation in this video with David Paul starts by talking about the career path for men and women and how it is different because women will take time out to have children which interrupts their career flow.  David points out how women miss out on having a boy’s club network to help them up the ladder and face different ceilings that stop them moving ahead.

Madeline Allbright is an inspirational role model who created a career after motherhood. Her milestone for women was in 1996 when she became the first female Secretary of State in the USA.  Although she was ambitious at school, when she graduated from Wellesley College she was married a few weeks later and was aged thirty nine before she took her first paid job after raising her children. She had a passion for politics and international relations, and pointed out that she only got the job of Secretary of State through the intervention of Hillary Clinton, who asked her husband why he wouldn’t appoint her ………  and told him that his mother would be proud of him if he did! Madeline has said that there was more resistance to her doing the job from her own White House male colleagues than from the leaders in the Middle East who people feared would not accept a woman in the role. Since then there have been two further females in that lead role ……. one of them is Hillary herself!

David talks about what holds women back and what women need to do to advance. In these conversations David keeps calling on women to come together behind a cause.  Here he said he strongly believes this is now the century for women to really come forward and create something new …….and that women are going to take humanity to the next level of evolution …….. in a big way. He said what we do will enable men to see new possibilities for what they can do.

Conversation Transcript:….

What is it that doesn’t support women as a leader in business when they have taken a few years out  to raise a family?    David says there are different ceilings that women face in the workplace.
The bamboo ceiling is where women get into management and find it too hard so they decide they don’t want to go any higher (in the old days, blinds made out of bamboo were used as screens …).
The glass ceiling in the barrier in middle management. While the crystal ceiling makes accessing board rooms difficult (the boardroom is where everything is served in crystal).
Unlike women, men do not face these ceilings.  The barrier for men is not being part of the “boys club”. Not being part means they can miss out and not be accelerated to higher levels.
Women don’t even have a girls club!
And also there is competition by women against each other.   And women are not even nurturing each other! Competition happens because of the hierarchy in business structures which is part of the masculine  paradigm. In the hierarchy paradigm we are often waiting around for the top job, so this fosters competition.
Great film to watch:  movie “Made in Dagenham”: This is a great example of women showing men what they can do and what they are capable of ……… and how valuable they are!

David pointed out that the country would not have been so advanced during World War II if women had not stepped in and kept the manufacturing going. We took over men’s jobs.  Think about what would have happened if we women had not done that. The war would have ended differently. Women stepped in then and they can do so again …..

David said he strongly believes this is now the century for women to really come up and say:  let’s break and  shatter these ceilings, let’s break and shatter the old paradigms, let’s create something new.
Let’s unite and do something amazingly different. What Gina is doing is part of opening the doors.
Women need to say let’s connect, let’s unite, let’s fight together.
Gina points out that in our language we don’t want to use the word ‘fight’  because that is a male metaphor!
If we are not going to fight what are we going to do? Instead we are going to:
1 Collaborate
2 have new conversations
3 use creativity and intuition for new solutions
4 uniting behind a cause to create change that way.

David emphasised that the most powerful thing a human can feel is emotion – imagine if we fought with emotion –  we need unite with a passion to drive something for a greater good.

So many women are now seeking new roles, changing their own lives, and they’re deeply passionate about change and about finding a role to play in creating a new world … a role that is ours. This is huge at the moment.

We are not wanting to put men down but men / manhood does not have the answers any more. A lot of men are losing out by being trapped in a system that doe snot work for them either. The system, led by men, no longer has answers. If we need a different thinking is needed then bring on the women. This is where we women need more significant input to emerge the answers through:
1 conversations
2 gathering
3 connecting
4 working out what the answers would be

David says he strongly believes that women are going to take humanity to the next level of evolution in a big way, not just in a small step-way … in a leap!  Men will then see the possibility of what we can actually do and stop focusing on what can be done in the short term to just survive the next year.

Women need to envision what the possibility can be and inspire everyone to that vision, taking humanity to another level.   (The energy in the interview at this point is quite profound after this beautiful possibility is uttered).

Are you inspired to step forward beyond where you have already gone?
What is your role as a woman in creating change in the world?  What milestone could you be part of creating with other women?

Please leave your comments and sharings there.

I’d really appreciate it you could please share this message and video around your circle – thank you!

Blessings 🙂

Women need to uncover their “gold” inside ….. to step forward and drive change

Tags

Dr David Paul, feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, women driving change

In the latest video in the series of seven in my conversations about Feminine Leadership with Dr David Paul, David shares a great story about a golden buddha.

Apparently, in order to protect it from being taken by an invading army, someone came up with the bright idea of covering up the gold with mud. It fooled the invaders who left the buddha undiscovered and intact. It was decided that it might be safer to keep the mud covering on for a while longer ….. of course the years go by and now nobody remembers the gold underneath!

David shares this as a great metaphor for where women are now.

We have to remember to uncover our gold inside.

In our series on Feminine Leadership David and I have talked about how women hold themselves back.    Currently we have an issue with not having enough women on boards; there are not enough women government leaders.   Although the system is actually holding women back because there are many occasions when the men have to ‘give permission’ to allow women to move through; the picture is much more complex. There are things that we are doing as women that are not advancing us, or our game. We could change what we do.   I asked David what he had noticed that holds women back? (Watch the video)

David responded by asking:   Why aren’t there more women prime ministers, why aren’t there more women CEOs … yes we have a few but why aren’t we seeing more women leaders in the 21st-century?  Why is it that we don’t we see more women driving the agenda behind the scenes?
Women are nurturing, they care about the environment, the planet.  So why aren’t women a real force behind environmental issues? There are women doing that but maybe they are not getting their voices heard ….. why are they not getting the publicity?

There is another place where women could drive change: why do we still go to war these days to solve our problems? Why don’t women mobilise against war ?  We could create a women’s movement to stop war, protesting about sending our men away to war…  but there seems to be only silence.  Yes there is activity but women are doing things in pockets. We are against war but we are not organised as a group of women against war. There isn’t a women’s voice against war in sufficient quantity to make a difference. Why can’t we do something which unites us to fight something out there?

CLICK HERE to WATCH VIDEO: Women need to drive change:

The question to women from David is:  “What can you do as a movement, what can you do as a united whole?”   David points out that women connect far more easily than men. Women are always talking …. you see them in coffee shops every day.  Women get together and talk about social things ……. why can’t we use that time, that force to do something even greater than what women are doing today? That is the question for women.

David says the reason we have not been leading and driving change is because women are not united behind a cause. There are lots of causes but they are not united. It’s like we are putting out small bushfires. We are all working on separate fires, we are not united.  Why aren’t the men turning around the global financial crisis?   It’s because men have not got the answers…..  so we need to women step into the foreground and say “this is what we women have been doing…”

David then shared a story about the Golden buddha in Thailand.  When the army was coming to ransack village, the villagers covered  it in mud to hide the gold.  100 years later and with the mud still there,  everybody forgot about the gold underneath.

That is what women have done … they have hidden their gold, it’s now time to get rid of the mud covering up the gold.  Let’s bring out the gold in  women.   When I was touring Australia earlier this year I was giving talks about The Rise of the Feminine pointing out that the biggest threat to this potential shift in society is women themselves NOT stepping forward. In our own inner talk we often ask ourselves “who am I to do this?”. We have all sort of ways of holding ourselves back.   Women have used many barriers and defenses to hold themselves back. In the past we have not been allowed to do many things: it’s not been safe to speak out, many times we’ve been told to keep quiet, shut up and not to say silly things.  That probably remains within us still and yet there is a strong part of us is calling us forth to speak. We now have to listen to that stronger voice.  David says women should use our conversations to get rid of “all that mud”, let’s really think about what is covering up our gold.

David stressed that this is the of decade change. This is when we are going to cross certain lines globally and not be able to go back. The environment is breaking apart, there is a lot of evidence to say that. Unless women say this is a cause worth fighting for we are going to cross a line where we can’t go back ……. our children, the next generations, will not be able to do anything about it.

We have to be outraged and take action. Just like S A W I D (South African Women in Dialogue), we have to get into conversation to discuss what our priorities actually are.  Currently we’re not in that conversation of working out what our priorities are.  We are not thinking about how we could make time to create something better.   David pointed out that after decades of unrest, violence and destruction in South Africa,  things are changing because women are taking an interest. Women are passionate about change.  They are getting themselves heard.

It’s time to reach within, discover what our personal gold is inside and bring that forth with conscious and constructive conversation with other women about how we can drive change. Watch the interview on video.

What are you passionate about? What is your gold? What are you doing now that is driving change? I’d love to hear your thoughts after reading/watching this.