Boardroom Ready Women: How to Deliver Business Results and Still Sparkle

By Sue Jefferson and Raymond Aaron

This book gives aspiring women leaders in business, insights and practical tools to overcome the very common hurdles they typically face inside the workplace and out. Providing techniques that will transform middle and senior level females to become exceptional leaders, deliver strong business results and thrive with a healthy career/life balance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781772771237

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

What’s missing?

Unconscious barriers

Why you, now?

Why me & my model?

The C.A.R.B.O.N. way to transform to Sparkling Success ©

Unconscious barriers—in others and in ourselves

So, what’s missing? Why this book? Surely there are lots of books about business leaders. There are definitely plenty of books about such leaders in general. In fact, I calculated an interesting statistic when I was searching for women in the workplace books: they accounted for only 1% of all leadership books, which told me something. Some of those titles are Bitches that Fight, Hardball for Women, Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, 133 Mistakes that Sabotage Women Themselves, and then the list offered soft porn titles! Well frankly, I haven’t found many of those helpful, especially without changing me into Superbitch or Billy No Mates. I wanted to be a leader but keep being Me and gain practical tips on how to succeed with ease. What was I missing? I found that some of the books were written by fantastic women leaders; however, because these women leaders are usually at the pinnacle of a company, or already in the CEO role, it’s not often easy to relate to them.

I believe, and I have seen it and done it myself, that there are actions that you can take at every level in an organisation to develop yourself to be a better leader and boardroom ready. Boardroom ready does not mean you will be a director or a partner in a business, or that you even want to be, but it will enable you to perform better in the role that you are in; it will enable you to enjoy the role that you are doing more and more; it will enable you to have more fun and balance with your loved ones; and generally live life to the full. Balanced needs and your career play a clear and positive role in your life. I created the model—The C.A.R.B.O.N. Way to Sparkling Success ©—based on my experiences and learning from what I have seen others do. You can apply it at whatever level of business you are at.

The most surprising response to this model I have found when running my Boardroom Ready workshops is that, based on positive feedback, companies have wished to roll it out to the men in their business as well. Because today, people are looking at different ways to work in business, to be a leader, to be successful and stay happy in today’s working environment. It is applicable particularly to the women, the next generations of men and women coming through the workplace and even some of my 50+ year-old colleagues, who have already benefited from these tools in the boardroom.

I believe that much of the conscious bias facing women in business has genuinely gone as leaders rationally realise that females can contribute fully in the workplace, in all disciplines. There are still some dinosaurs, young and old, who don’t believe this and their behaviours are unacceptable. Ultimately, their businesses will fail as the best talent, male and female, will choose to work elsewhere and the leaders’ blinkered views will extend to their misdirected market understanding and customer actions.

Increasingly, many leaders now have their own daughters and wish to ensure that they are not compromised in dated working cultures. However, I equally believe that today we face a certain amount of unconscious bias as leaders unintentionally hesitate to promote females to the highest levels. This is due to a variety of deep-seated beliefs about what women want or emotional concerns about business or team disruption, resulting in leaders instead seeking to stay with the status quo.

Whilst there remain unconscious biases and barriers in boardrooms today, particularly if they are quite male orientated, you shouldn’t let that be an excuse for what’s holding you back. In my experience from women in my workshops sharing the barriers they see, 80% of the solution lies within each of us. We are the one holding ourselves back, and with this simple toolkit you can push through all those barriers. Really, there is nothing stopping you.

So, enjoy the book and the explanations of the model. Use it like a tool kit: dip in and out of it as often as you like with what you believe you need now; but keep it by your hand and do not let this become a doorstop because you’ll have missed an opportunity.

For free bonuses of practical exercises and diagrams that bring the model to life, do go to my website, www​.boardroomreadywomen​.com.

Why you, now?

Maybe you’re wondering if this book is for you and, if so, is it the right time? Is it too early or too late? Maybe you’re reading this because you are starting out on your career and you’ve heard stories that you either have to be a bitch or stay in the middle ranks, overlooked for opportunities. Perhaps this does not feel like you. It’s not what you’ve worked hard to achieve, just to reach this point. Or perhaps you’re reading this because you’re midway through your career. You’ve been progressing and you’ve now realised that you’re becoming stuck. You are not progressing as you were, you are actually seeing some colleagues move ahead and be offered positions that are not even being discussed with you or considered for you. You are wondering what’s missing for you and are looking for moves and new stimuli?

Perhaps you’re reading this because you already have a successful career, but work feels like a battle with colleagues rather than collaborative teamwork? Have you reached a senior level but now feel there is something missing for you? You are not as fulfilled as you were; you worry that you are compromising and missing out on family life because of all the demands of work. You are just hoping that maybe there is an answer to have both without trying to be superwoman and exhaust yourself?

Well, the good news is that whilst those are all too common scenarios they are all easy to overcome by implementing the tools from this model.

Imagine a future when you look forward to going to work. Of course, you will face challenges; however, through conversations with colleagues or your team, you will make huge strides every day. People will be empowered to do things and deliver incredible results for you that they wouldn’t have believed possible. They will be inspired by how you work with them.

Visualise a scenario where you have a conversation with the HR Director saying they’d like to consider you as a director or partner and want to discuss it with you. You hadn’t even thought about being ready for such a move, but they’d spotted you and the difference you were making.

Just picture yourself enjoying work and arriving home in the early evening, having conversations with your partner and your family about the day they’ve had. It’s positive, there’s laughter, you realise you’re instinctively encouraging your children towards their own dreams and goals, developing them just as you do with your colleagues at work. They are seeing possibilities and you’re an encouraging force supporting them.

Now wouldn’t you rather have more days like that? Would you like to feel energised when you get up in the morning? If so, I’m sure you’d agree that there is a need for some practical tools that actually show you how to work slightly differently, turn on the tap that unleashes the energy and impact that you have at work and the impression that you give to others. You are still full of energy, enthusiasm and conversation when you come home.

So, how about applying a different way of working, a different type of thinking and particularly a different type of conversation? It’s not something taught in standard training programmes or through your professional bodies.

Translating my experience and techniques into a model is how I created the C.A.R.B.O.N. way of transforming ourselves to Sparkling Success ©. You can obtain the full colour visual of the model at www​.boardroomreadywomen​.com.

Why me & my model?

Let me briefly tell you about my story.

Picture me working as a marketing manager in a multinational many years into my marketing career, growing at a pace, regularly promoted and thinking I was well on my way to achieving my goal of being a director. On this particular day, I was having my annual performance review with my female boss, discussing the background to my achievement of some incredible results. At the end, I decided to ask her if I could create slight flexibility in my hours one day a week so I could see my son who, aged five, had just started school. I wanted to actually see him run in and out of school once a week, see his face myself at that moment, see how he was settling in and enjoying it—not just relying on the childminder’s feedback. I proposed starting an hour later and finishing an hour earlier once a week and making this time up during the other days.

The response from my boss took me by surprise. With her arms folded and a frown upon her face, she said, You have clearly demonstrated that your family is more important than your career, and you will go no further in your career or in this company. Hmmm! Well, that’s not exactly what I expected to hear and it took the floor from under me. I thought I was doing everything right by working hard, delivering results and receiving great appraisal feedback. I thought I was a super woman because I had given birth (on time), was back to work after nine weeks with my son in childcare, delivering business results every year and always present because my career was important to me. My husband was very supportive of my work and commitments so I thought, How could I get a reaction like that?

It actually put me into a frenzy because I thought I’d have to work even harder in order to be recognised and achieve my ambition of reaching the boardroom. So, I worked longer hours, I was more demanding of people I worked with, but equally faced the fear that my job and career wasn’t as certain as I thought it was. It made me start to question my own capability. What else did I need to do to succeed? I stopped speaking out as much when I saw both opportunities and risks in the business. I no longer became the pioneer of change or proposed bold initiatives.

I did secure the unprecedented step at that time of reducing my hours (and pay) by 20%, working flexibly on Mondays and Fridays so I could see my son running to and from school and attend shows and sports days, creating the best feelings in the world. However, the impact of that conversation meant I lost my mojo for work. I decided on a change in roles, moving to a different boss and leading the new area of category management. This was completely outside my specialist area but I applied my tools for creating shared goals with Sales, Marketing and Retail customers. Through a different way of listening and an awareness of how I showed up with others, I was able to understand everyone’s unmet needs, identify business opportunities that significantly exceeded our company size and encourage my peers, my team and our customers to pursue them.

In just a few years, we were achieving amazing results: we doubled our market size, took brand leadership in two years and were voted best brand supplier in our industry. A different environment and a