The Quiet Revolution of Women

A 1978 study of accomplished women, which became known as the Imposter Phenomenon, revealed behavioral patterns indicating a lack of confidence. Women at that time felt they were tricking others into thinking they were smarter than they actually were.

They also believed their promotions were due not to their ability but to luck and timing. Women carefully calculated every move, including how they expressed themselves, fearing that others would realize they had given them too much credit.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, women who chose to work often felt they had to emulate men in order to achieve success and be accepted into the corporate world. They wore traditional, dark-skirted suits with shoulder pads.

Women also adopted a masculine communication style, getting into verbal arguments and discussing sports. Women who have a drive for success still deal with stressful situations related to their careers, but their needs have evolved.

They seek challenges to show off their skills and to avoid boredom. They also want to establish clear career paths, and they want the ability to communicate in a manner that will ensure others take them and their ideas seriously.

Women feel entitled to receive job satisfaction and opportunities; they will move on if the current organization does not support their needs. One should not mistake this sense of entitlement for laziness.

High-achieving women work hard to attain their desires. There are five drivers of both success and difficulty for modern, high-achieving women:

1. Extreme confidence. This positive attitude compels women to work hard for what they want; however, it may lead them to work too hard and to take on projects that are too difficult.

2. Constant need for new challenges. Women seek to meet their needs with successive accomplishments, possibly leading to frequent job changes without careful planning.

3. A strong drive for recognition based on performance, not gender. Women are more concerned with proving their own unique abilities, rather than those of females in general. This attitude may cause others to perceive them as harsh and insensitive.

4. Work is their life's blood. High-achieving women might only feel pleasure from their accomplishments in the working world. They might lose sight of the big picture and become disconnected from the rest of the world.

5. Experience is the best teacher. Learning comes easily and quickly, but this ability could lead women to believe they are self-sufficient, rejecting the advice and support of others.

Since the mid-80s there has been a profound change in working women, particularly those who are high-achieving. They no longer leave their professional personas at work; they are stronger as individuals, and their careers define who they are.

While this is a significant advancement from working simply to cover financial obligations, it has left many ambitious women unable to separate themselves from their work. This change can be attributed to four major shifts in society.

The first is the widespread teaching of self-esteem. From the time they are toddlers, women have been taught they can do anything and their opinions matter.

Not only are they instructed not to rely on others, but they are frequently told they are better than their peers. This teaching has resulted in a generation of mentally strong women who are so obsessed with their quest for excellence they push themselves too hard.

The increase in competitive sports for women has also been significant. Sports have taught women to fend for themselves, both mentally and physically.

Another factor is the growing number of women holding advanced degrees, which increases their earning potential and available job opportunities. The final factor is the positive support women now receive.

Their predecessors were not expected to excel in the work environment. Now, people believe that women can work and also be good at it.

This article is based on the book "Wander Woman." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

Success in the Training Industry

While organizational leaders understand the importance of training, they often wrongly assume that training automatically results in improved performance. The training industry has struggled to demonstrate success in the past because organizations measure the quality of training and not the resulting impact on performance as the indicator of training's effectiveness.

The training industry borrowed its fundamental concepts from higher education. The industry boomed in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of corporations hiring externally to meet their growing training needs.

In response, training companies watered down their models to a "one-size-fits-all" approach. Training models fail when the training does not align with business goals, and misguided measurement processes do not represent return value--the primary benchmark for which training should be measured.

Measurement should focus not on the training itself but on the resulting impact on employee performance. True corporate learning can only occur when employees take ownership for their learning, an internalization that distinguishes learning from training.

In order to reach employees and influence such ownership, corporate trainers must connect with employees through experiential instructional methods, allowing trainers and employees to find a common ground. As a result, employees will feel ownership of their new skills and motivation for continued learning.

Malcolm Knowles, the father of adult learning theory, advocated for learner-centered instruction, where the instructor is a facilitator instead of a lecturer. He believed ownership of the learning process was central to learning, a departure from traditional instructional theories of "leading the learner."

Knowles's theory evolved into the action learning model, resulting in a learning system that begins with a shared experience, engages employees with corporate strategy, and leads to reflection, learning, and new application. The new application, which ends in a new experience for learners to share, completes the action model.

Trainers are called to recognize learning research, realize that adults have different learning styles, and adapt training models to interactively engage and motivate employees. Additionally, they are encouraged to take responsibility for transforming their traditional models of training into learner-centered models to extract a greater ROLI.

This article is based on the book "Corporate Learning Strategies." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

Animal Spirits and Their Effects

Animal Spirits dissects standard economic theories and demonstrates their failure to account for human emotions, even though emotions have a large impact on the economy. Traditional economic theory operates under the assumption that individuals act rationally and make economic decisions based on purely economic reasons.

These economic theories are widely accepted by professional economists and are utilized in governmental policy-making. Unfortunately, traditional economic theory does not examine how the economy behaves when individuals make rational decisions based on non-economic reasons, irrational decisions based on non-economic reasons, or irrational decisions based on economic reasons.

In the quest to make economics a more scientific and calculable study, economists have largely left out the single largest influence on the economy: the animal spirits of human emotion. All animal spirits fall into one of five different categories: confidence, fairness, corruption, money illusion, and storytelling.

All of these categories have strong effects on the current economy, and their influence must be taken into account when creating government policy and making economic predictions. Ignoring the fact that human emotions affect purchasing and financial decisions only serves to create policy that will not hold up to these constantly-changing animal spirits.

By accepting and understanding these emotions, however, economists and policy makers can create more effective policies and plans. These policies and plans will not be permanent, however, and should change according to the cultural, economic, and emotional climates of the time.

For example, when banks stopped becoming mortgage holders and just became mortgage initiators, policy did not keep up with this change. Traditionally, banks would approve individuals for mortgages and then hold the mortgages themselves.

Because they held the mortgages, it prevented them from writing mortgages that people could not afford because they did not want to end up with the property or losing out on mortgage payments. Then, in the 2000s, banks began to sell the mortgages they had to other financial institutions.

These financial institutions did not know about the fiscal standing of the mortgages they held because the banks had divided individual mortgages into parts and sold the different parts to different institutions. Because of the large signing fees the banks earned when they approved individuals for mortgages, and the fact that they planned on selling the mortgages after they were signed, the banks approved people who could not actually afford them.

Because policy did not take this into account, the real estate bubble grew and eventually crashed once the individuals who received mortgages they could not afford began to have their homes foreclosed upon. This is just one example of the many ways in which animal spirits can affect the economy.

This article is based on the book "Animal Spirits." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

Clarifying Intent

A very important aspect in the art of convening is defining the desired result or intention of the meeting. This step is necessary because if a leader does not fully consider the intention of a meeting, the intentions can be confusing or conflicting.

The biggest challenge conveners face when trying to define their intent is doubt. Doubt can manifest itself in the form of fear.

It is important for a convener to be fearless when examining their intentions and to consider how those intentions align with who she is by asking the following questions:

• What are my intentions? 
• Are they in line with who I am? 
• How will we relate to one another? 

By clarifying intentions, meeting leaders identify motives or desires that might distract them or others from the primary goal. It takes patience, but conveners should try to look past their immediate conclusions and try to examine their deepest intent.

Armed with the knowledge of their true intentions, conveners will have confidence and energy to pursue the next steps toward authentic engagement. One good way for meeting leaders to do this is to sit down and write for at least 30 minutes.

They should first ask themselves, "Who am I and what am I doing right now?" Then, they should take that self-knowledge into consideration while writing down an intention for their next meeting or gathering.

This article is based on the book "The Art of Convening." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.