The need for women to change the conversation

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Dr David Paul, Video Interview

This is the second video in the series recorded when Dr David was in London in January 2014. He spoke at a special evening on feminine leadership and was in conversation with Gina Lazenby. The transcript of the conversation is below. The dialogue was about …….

• the power of changing our conversations
• the personal responsibility we each need to take
• the importance of individual behaviour change – break the micro patterns!

Change is beckoning… especially at the start of 2014
Gina Lazenby opens: Just referring back to this idea of a movement, and action… the change that we want to see in the world, especially now as we are entering a new year and thinking do we want another year to be the same as before?! …… change is beckoning at every quarter, everything seems to be calling for change.  This can be very overwhelming ….. Where do we start? What do I do?  You’ve talked about the importance of conversations, those that we have in the elevator, by the water cooler. I have been inspired to use my women’s gatherings to ask the group big questions, taking the conversation beyond what the needs of the women are to now talking about what we might do or say for example, if we had the ear of the leader of our country. We are certainly having bigger conversations. You seem to be making this accessible by saying it’s just about conversations. Speak to the small approaches that we can make it to the big problems.

The small approaches that we can make to the big problem
Dr David Paul responds: Generally with change we tend to use the word “WE”.  “We need to do this. All others need to do that”. The neuroscience research is showing that the word WE needs to be changed to I.  “What do I need to do to change?”.  It’s interesting because when you change what it is you do, you disrupt your own thought patterns which causes the change and people notice that change and say to you that you’re different from last year/last time. And this is because you have broken a pattern. I said before that we need to break the rules and change the game and part of the journey for us in 2014 is not ending up in the same space as we did at the end of 2013.

I don’t want to end up in the same space and I hope that none of us do. To change that I need to change what I do every day. I’ll give you an example: when I get up in the morning because of my patterns and my efficiency, I button up my shirt the same old way every day. Or I have the same routine in the shower every day. Can I challenge you in 2014 to do it so differently that even you are surprised by it? Why? Because you are creating new neural pathways. And when you do that I think we bring about a change.  2014 should be so vastly different to 2013 …. But that change begins with me. The familiar also holds you down to the status quo.

GL: That’s the thing about the beginning of the year… Those of us who are really engaged as change-makers, we see not only a New Year but also a new epoch, a new era … there’s a hunger for change. I know the words of Ghandi, I can hear them inside my head ….“To be the change that you want to see in the world” but I am now hearing them differently, I am thinking about the small things. I don’t normally think of those but that is what you are saying … it is the small actions that WILL make the difference. They will change our patterns and our behaviours so that we think about things differently.

DP: Also Ghandi’s message is for each individual. Be the change that you want to see.  He didn’t say be the change and we ALL need to do it. It’s me, it’s I. And unless we start to do that, we are not going to see the WE. Because when we say the WE I always think that somebody else can do that.

end of Video 2 – two further videos available

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What women should do with power …

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Dr David Paul, Video Interview

Dr David was in London in January 2014. He spoke at a special evening on feminine leadership. The conversation with Gina Lazenby was recorded and edited into four parts. This is the first video in the series, with a transcript of the conversation. The dialogue was about …….

• how will women use their power when they do get to the top?
• how do we challenge the norm and change the game?
• what the age of disruption means
• how big movements start with small actions, the power of the dedicated few

TRANSCRIPT:

Gina Lazenby opens: Lots of our conversations at the Brooklyn Institute in Sydney have been about women getting in to leadership positions. One of the measurements for that has been the number of women on boards (this is the case for many countries). We are there in such few numbers, and it is the same for women CEOs.

Research shows that women on boards do have an impact. Research from Credit Suisse highlighted in The Athena Doctrine book says that large companies (with a market valuation over $10 billion) with women on their Boards outperformed companies with men-only Boards by 26% over five years.
that is a great statistic to show what women can do ….

But that is not really the game …

what you have said before is being there is not enough … what do we do with the power when we are there? One of the things you talked about is challenging and changing the norms … changing and upsetting the status quo. Is that enough for us to aim to get on to boards? … and are we going to change the game when we get there?

ALSO …..This week in the newspapers .. commentary from the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, this newspaper report referred to the Age of Disruption. Brilliant new gadgets are coming on stream that will change the way we raise money, the way we monitor our health, our home security .. all these new technologies are exciting and game-changing and it says they are a “stark challenge to established ways of doing business… the major trends at the show have major potential to upset the status quo challenging the business models of large companies and raising big questions about how government runs public services and seek to control the economy”.  This is a great metaphor for this conversation about women needing to challenge the status quo.

It’s time for women to challenge the norms
Dr David Paul responds:  You asked some very interesting questions, big questions. Changing the norm does not happen on a global scale. It happens at the level of one-to-one. And it is the power of the collective that makes the difference. So my conversation with you, as a result of what we are talking about tonight, and then your conversation with somebody else… and then their conversation … etc …… is the one that makes the biggest change. But more often than not we tend to have conversations that have no purpose apart from a discussion.

I think one of the things we need to do is rather than discussing in 2014 we need to say what can we do? What is the outcome of this discussion and every discussion then becomes a game-changer.

So that article you are talking about is where they have gone beyond discussion … they are now into Apps. So what are the Apps doing? They are actually creating moments of action, moments of Let’s Change the Game. So, for us to go forward this year I think is about breaking some of those rules. Norms are there to hold us to those rules but they have been invented a long time ago ….. It’s about breaking the rules and changing the game.

GL: One of the things that you have said to me was a wonderful phrase Radical Revolutionary Reform. I was struck by you saying that since Women got the vote, and we got together to do that, we haven’t come together as a movement of women. What I do notice when I travel is the huge number of women’s networks, organisations and communities who are gathering. There are so many more opportunities for women to congregate and connect. The woman who runs the Global PA network said that in the 1990s there were 8 to 10 women’s networks in London. Now there are more like 800+ just in London. Women are connecting globally and the Feminine Power network have had as many as 100,000 women on phone calls. in about 2010, Maria Shriver had a women’s event that was sold out to over 30,000 women in LA. There is a lot happening in this rise of the feminine. How do we create a second movement, a coordinated movement?

It’s time for a holistic movement of women (and men) all connecting together
DP: I would say a holistic movement. Some of the discussions we had tonight, each one has said we need both (men and women) …. Part of that is harnessing the energy of both and a movement is always created by a small handful of dedicated individuals. It has never happened any other way. So as impressive as 30,000 women gathering in one place is, my question would be what have they done?

GL: That is a great question!

The importance of the Dedicated Few
DP: And you don’t need 30,000. In fact, stats show. We only need 12 ½% of committed individuals to bring about a change. In this room that would be 2 ½ people. But imagine if ALL of us did it? That would make a difference. It’s not about the great movements and the great numbers, it’s about the commitment of the dedicated few. And massive change has happened because of that. Mahatma Gandhi in 1947, when the British were taxing the salt in India. He said, well let’s make our own salt. It didn’t take millions of individuals, all it took was a handful of people to say I can make my own salt. Break down the big goal into smaller pieces… the book you have to write, just start with one chapter so that it does not feel like a mountain to climb.

The key is to break it down into something small … then it is achievable.
GL: Something that stuck with me last year as a game changer was hearing the news about the government shutdown in America. It was because the Senate could not come to an agreement. Then three weeks later there was a breakthrough. Sen Mark Pryor was speaking on television news crediting a small group of women senators who had come together to create a small working group to open up negotiations and help break the deadlock. These women were from a cross party group of 20 women senators, who regularly met for pizza supper and baby showers. They had developed relationships and formed community. This is what they were able to leverage at that moment of need when all the dialogue between the male senators had stopped. Because the men couldn’t agree their communication had degraded down to insults. Nobody was able to move forward.

Women are already changing the game
So the women asked, what would it take to move forward? What are we each prepared to give, be flexible with, in these negotiations? The women Senators led this new conversation. It was great that the male senators took time to publicly acknowledge the role of the women senators. The men said they just stood back and watched the women at work, and learned from them. We women need to do more of that. It was great that the men championed this and so publicly acknowledged the role the women played.

What are the qualities that women are bringing to achieve better results?
DP: Perhaps we should ask:  What are the qualities that will take us forward from 2014 for the next six years until 2020?   What other qualities we need to bring about the global change?

Group Discussions:  What are the leadership qualities of women that will help build robust structures? It is clear that when we are in positions of power, and in quantity, we are making a difference. Recent research highlighted by the Athena Doctrine book showed that over a nine year period, hedge funds run by women outperformed those run by only men.  What are the qualities that women are bringing to achieve these kind of results?

end of Video 1 …

Why Feminine Leadership is important

I am excited to announce that I shall be working with the Brooklyn Institute in Sydney and visiting there in November to deliver a workshop programme on Feminine Leadership. And I stress the feminine approach and not just women’s leadership because it is so important for us to acknowledge that we do things differently and it is that difference which now needs to be leveraged.

Check out the short video here where I talk about the power of feminine leadership.

Maybe a corner has been turned with gender relations in Australia?

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Gina Lazenby, julia gillard, sexism in politics

I think what has happened here in Australia with the dramatic deposing this week of Julia Gillard is shameful.  Only time will tell whether this was an appropriate move by the Labour party to change their leadership (whilst serving in office, not in opposition) just weeks before an election.

Julia Gillard’s media adviser John McTernan, brought in from the UK, is quoted in Sydney’s Sunday papers as saying “Australia is 30 years behind the UK in its attitudes to sexism”. I don’t agree with that although I do think there’s some truth when he says that Australia’s misogynistic culture was to blame for her downfall.

In the article he says “Gillard has faced serial abuse as a woman on a scale I believe is unprecedented in modern politics ……

“That negative, corrosive, anti-woman rhetoric that Gillard endured for so long has damaged Australian politics, and public opinion.

“The belief that everyone should be given a ‘fair go’ runs deep, but at the same time there exists a very powerful sense of mateship, of male values and a male-inscribed culture.

“And it is the tension between these two characteristics of Australian life that is the backdrop to the abrupt end this week to Julia Gillard’s prime ministership.”

Mr McTernan said that Ms Gillard was the best parliamentary performer of her generation who was “more than a match for the men around her”, despite being a “lightning rod” for “deep-rooted misogynist forces in society“.

What I have noticed is …. there’s both more opportunity for women and an awareness of gender issues ….. while an undercurrent of anti-females also exists in some quarters.  Only in today’s papers I am reading the following three stories which highlight these opposite positions:

1 Through the extraordinary circumstances of this week Kevin Rudd has eight vacancies on his new cabinet and he is filling them with women – seemingly re-righting the imbalance and is apparently “determined  to ensure that the men in blue ties do not dominate the political landscape”. The Sundaytelegraph politics page headline screams “Rudd’s new cabinet packed with women” ….. the number of women given full ministries will move increase from nine to 11.

2 The former Swimming Australia Chief has resigned and says he feels betrayed by colleagues who worked against him. He resigned because he apparently made lewd remarks to a female team consultant.

3 Broadcaster Alan Jones has been writing another letter of apology to a QC who he had wrongly attacked on air … and this follows the apology he had to make to the Prime Minister last December when he said at a function that her recently deceased father had “died of shame”. And that was after he had had to say sorry for calling Lebanese Muslims “vermin” and “mongrels”. This is what people are subjected to on the radio here.

I think the cartoonist in today’s Sun-Herald (above) by Glen Lelievre highlights an unnerving vein here when he depicts a cartoon figure of animated Australia writing its lines in detention with “I am not a sexist country”  only to quit when the blackboard is almost full so it can read a copy of Playboy magazine …

I don’t agree with John McTernan’s comment about Australia being 30 years behind the UK because I meet so many Australian men who are extremely forward thinking in their attitudes to gender relations and rather enlightened.  What I do see here is both a drive for fairness, to support women with opportunities, to elevate women and to be very conscious of gender issues … while still lurking in the background is an undercurrent of distorted masculinity that is confused and uncomfortable by the rising power of women.

I refer back to a video interview I did with Wayne Grogan and published on the woman-at-large blog last November on Australia’s White Ribbon Day. Wayne talked about how Australian society had been engineered and only 200 years ago it was a society with more than ten male settlers to one female. That has to have an impact that lingers.

He talked of a sense of betrayal that men felt when the largely working class convict community saw the few women who were also deported here were mostly paired up with Officers leaving the men feeling betrayed by their own class. Australia is unique in its culture of “mateship” where male friendships are celebrated and valued more than anywhere else I have seen in the world. Male friendships are indeed healthy but not when they are used to exclude and support each other in diminishing women.

I think the gender debate will continue here in Australia which is healthy. It is unhelpful when male newspaper editors refer to it is as a gender ‘war’ … it’s a debate and discourse not a war but then that’s the masculine mindset going in to its competitive mode!  It is a debate that I would love to contribute to in the spirit of moving forward and creating a society led by more balanced decision-making and one that values the different contributions of men and women, and where neither are diminished. Our gender might have been suppressed but this is not about us now doing that to men. We need to stop competing with each other and find a new way of working and being together. Don’t you agree?

Australia’s first female prime minister hounded out of office

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feminine leadership, Gina Lazenby, julia gillard

The machinations in Canberra this week have certainly damaged the brand of Australia overseas. I think any right-thinking man will wonder at what their Australian colleagues have done to their country’s leader!  A newspaper quoted from a Facebook posting: “As an Aussie living in Europe, this actually looks embarrassing”.

It says something about the toxic political goings on here that even a Columbian news publication has picked up the story in Latin America and labelled Julia Gillard as the “most bullied minister in the world.”

It reports that the Australian Prime Minister “has been criticised for the size of her breasts, hit by sandwiches and she has even been asked if her boyfriend is gay.” I’m not joking. If you haven’t read about it then just take note that a radio interviewer in Perth asked the Prime Minister of Australia if her partner was gay … live on radio. I believe he has since been sacked.  Can you imagine that same lack of respect for a country’s highest office being shown in America or the UK? It would be unimaginable. What are they thinking here??

Anne Summers writing in the Sydney Morning Herald about Julia Gillard’s exit speech under the heading Bullying and Treachery are clearly the new normal says “We are now, apparently unashamedly, a country where bullying, stalking, undermining and outright treachery are not just tolerated but the new way of doing business”. It’s an excellent read.

Wow, I certainly arrived in Australia at a crucial time. I’ve been here in momentous weeks before … I recall the November 2007 election which brought in Kevin Rudd who ended the long reign of the right wing Howard government and came in on a wave of optimism, much as did Tony Blair in the UK way back in 1997.  I joined most Australians in feeling optimistic about a new order coming into being in Australia with a leader fluent in Mandarin and willing to make a long overdue apology to the first nation people here. Bravo I thought .. this looks like interesting new blood.  It did not take long for things to go pear-shaped apparently.

Instead of Rudd completing a full-term, and beyond like Tony Blair, who successfully kept close ally/rival Gordon Brown at bay for a decade, Rudd was unceremoniously deposed in 2010. This week was the moment when all the chickens supposedly came home to roost.  The media talks about people not forgiving Julia Gillard for this act of treachery when she stabbed him in the back.… we’ll never know the actual truth but personally, I don’t think for one minute she led the action. There’s much talk here of faceless, nameless men orchestrating behind the scenes … I think it was more likely that a coup was staged because Kevin Rudd failed in his leadership of the party and the knife was put in Julia’s hand because she was the deputy.

At the beginning of this week when I arrived in Sydney, I started to get up to speed with what the media and colleagues were saying about Prime Minister Julia Gillard. It seemed her government was seen as a lost cause, everybody was panicking and that by remaining party leader, she was effectively handing the forthcoming election in September to the widely despised (especially among women) right-winger Tony Abbott. The intense personal attacks on the prime minister had also escalated. They made for very sad reading – my heart sank.

Much has been written in the press this week – you can imagine the kind of media frenzy on the TV and in the papers!  Let me pick up on a few insights that come to mind.

Julia was a successful Prime Minister…
… so say many political pundits and yet she was not loved by the electorate. It’s quite bizarre how that has come about. Even Kevin Rudd said  “She is a woman of extraordinary intelligence, great strength and energy…she has been a remarkable reformer and I acknowledge those contributions”.  This was spoken at his victory speech as incoming Prime Minister after Wednesday night’s coup. Her concession speech was referred to as magnificent and “revealed the person the public so rarely saw but that her loyal colleagues clearly knew”. (Read more from Waleed Aly about her integrity).

Even though the Labour party members detest Kevin Rudd’s impossibly dysfunctional style of governance and her colleagues like and respect her, that was not enough to save her from what turned out to be only a small majority voting in favour of saving their own necks. This was to give themselves a chance of survival at the next election because according to the Opinion Polls, Julia may be a good Prime Ministers but the voters can’t see that – they prefer Rudd, even though his party says he is a terrible leader. Go figure!   This is quite an extraordinary tactic…. Julia was toppled by media hounding and the nervous addiction to what the Polls said rather than bad policies (although there will be folks here who will argue with that).

A very productive term in office:  It is worth noting that writer Anne Summer’s article speaks of 532 pieces of legislation that had been passed by both houses and that was even in a hung parliament where everything had to be painstakingly negotiated. Many pieces of legislation were ground breaking, once-in-a-generation reforms that focussed on the environment, education and disability care. Miss Gillard also established a landmark Royal Commission on child sex abuse which is having a huge impact across Australia. That, and the successful steering of the Australian economy through a global financial crisis, seems to me to suggest she did well against great odds.

Some have asked if Australia was ready for a female Prime Minster. I know many women here are devastated at the way Julia Gillard has been treated and it could easily put off other women who wish to serve in politics but who fear the sniping and denigration that was a daily game for her enemies and many media opinion formers. There is mention of her mistakes (please name me a male politician who has not made any !!!)  and the possibility that she was not ready for the office. I think she did remarkably well for being thrust unexpectedly into the position almost overnight. She is known for her poise, calmness and being unflappable in leading a team who appeared to be obsessed with their own interests and agendas.

The return of the despised hero, Kevin Rudd ..
He is famously unpopular amongst his colleagues, in fact, he was so despised that they ousted him in 2010 and promoted his deputy. The standard political joke was that “Rudd was a man you liked before meeting and Julia Gillard a woman you liked after meeting”.  (Damien Murphy SMH Fri 28th). He is known for temper tantrums and for keeping colleagues out of the decision-making process. And yet he was able to talk in the kind of sound bytes that appealed to the voters and developed a relationship with the Australian public, making a particular point to appeal to the younger Facebook generation. He looked and sounded good but when push came to shove, in everyday politics behind-the-scenes he failed to work with colleagues, in fact he made life more difficult for them.  They hated him.

‘Recycled Rudd’ scream the front pages. Has he changed and learned his lesson?
I am not so sure. He spoke the words about being a changed man, and yes, he said he had learned his lessons about decisions being better made if done collegiately (he likes to use big and unwieldy words). What spoke volumes to me was the photograph on the front of the newspapers – his wife with a gleeful look on her face and adoring smile while he quite frankly was the cat who got the cream. There was no sobriety about this moment. He had been to the Governor General’s Residence to be sworn in and taken three generations of his family for what looked like a victorious celebration.
And yet, his stepping back in to office should not have been about “him”. Wasn’t it more about him stepping forward to be of service to the Labour party and the country? In doing so he had had to break a promise that he would remain loyal to Miss Gillard and not stage another leadership challenge (like he did in March) which is what he did on Wednesday night this week. He broke his promise and engaged in what many have called ‘toxic politics’ constantly fueling rumours against the PM, some say he did this for the last three years. In my mind, there is no room there for self-congratulatory grinning .. better a sober acknowledgement of the unfortunate circumstances around him making a noble gesture to save the party from annihilation.

Where was the decency, respect and kindness when it was needed?
However, if it was all about him reclaiming the ‘leadership prize’ which many pundits were saying he cherished, then of course this display of ego was entirely appropriate. Mr Rudd certainly has a way with sound bytes talking in the House on the first day of his 2nd Prime Ministership about how he wanted to champion “the politics of hope rather than the old politics of negativity” and called on his fellow politicians to “be a little kinder and gentler with each other”. Pardon me for sounding like an anti-Rudd campaigner (I’m not) but that is like eating up the whole apple pie yourself then saying, next time we really should share the apple pie out among everyone else. A case of too little too late … it is far too late to treat the country’s first female PM with decency, respect and kindness. I think it is a tad hypocritical. The opportunity for new politics could have happened while she was actually in office and not after she has been hounded out!

Key values missing from the political conversations here:
My final observation is about the lack of honesty and authenticity and the low regard for the intelligence of voters.  On the day of the coup, Wednesday June 26th, I was co-hosting a Women’s Circle where we were discussing feminine leadership … irony I know. We talked about the front page photographs of Julia Gillard knitting a woolen Kangaroo for the Royal baby.  As an ex-PR professional myself I did feel queasy when I saw the photo on the front page of every paper.  It was taken for the Australian Women’s Weekly and I think the idea was to appeal to women.

Authenticity is missing from politics – it so badly needs some
The scene is so out of character and rather far-fetched that it makes her look ridiculous … it is more of a caricature of womanhood. In order to show a different side of Julia, to make her more appealing to women, it would have been so much more authentic to have staged a picture of her at home sitting with a cup of tea, taking a few quiet relaxed moments before the storm of the election. That would have been believable, appropriate and authentic.

This ridiculous photograph was badly advised and manipulative and I think she only agreed to it because she must have been steered slightly off-course from her own balanced judgement by the recent buffeting she had been getting. It provided huge fodder for editors to write creative headlines – one favourite of mine was “purls before swine! !

Let’s see what lessons are learned in Australia about politics and the role of women in leadership.

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

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?

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

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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

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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.