Throughout our career, we continuously learn about our management style, how we lead others through interpersonal communication and how we cope with stress and other workplace challenges. Becoming more self-aware gives us great leverage in consciously exhibiting the type of behaviour that gets us where we want to be.
Seeing ourselves clearly does many things:
- It allows us to control impulses and select the most appropriate behaviours,
- It shows us how to avoid reacting in negative and potentially self-limiting ways,
- Knowing our strengths and limitations makes us more understanding of others,
- Gaining an understanding of issues reduces conflict in us and at work.
Our perceptions represent the way we see how the world works and they also strongly influence those we live and work with. Catalyst, a
Three decades after droves of women started business careers, and at a time when fifty percent of all managers and professionals are female, women still comprise fewer than three percent of Fortune 1,000 CEOs and just eight percent of Fortune 500 top earners in the
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Women are severely underrepresented in leadership positions across industry sectors. The glass ceiling remains unbroken.
Every corporate culture has ingrained biases where management attempts to maintain the status quo. This cultural immunity to change is especially difficult for women being denied promotions when the leaders of the company don’t realise they are doing it. If men don’t think women belong in corporate leadership positions, they can create subtle male resistance in work environments where women find it difficult, if not impossible, to move up.
Since male executives have shaped the culture at most companies over time, women are at a disadvantage when it comes to gender-based differences in communication styles. A report, "Women and Men in U.S. Corporate Leadership: Same Workplace, Different Realities?" by Catalyst found that 81% of women said that "adopting a style with which male managers are comfortable" is an important or very important strategy to advance one's career.
Communication styles rooted in childhood training or unconscious beliefs can be tough to change. A first step is becoming aware of how you talk at work. Here are some pitfalls that men and women especially, can encounter in the workplace:
- using too many words to deliver serious messages,
- downplaying your contributions,
- using vague language,
- phrasing statements as questions,
- using an upward inflection at the end of statements, which indicates doubt.
Working with a mentor or a business coach will help any business executive to be clear on the communication style appropriate at their level within the company and to confidently practice this style so they will be heard at work.
People who solve any serious challenge are the ones who change the way they think about themselves.
They convince themselves that they can change, and they do change. Believing comes first, then change, not the other way around.
With thanks: John Agno, “When Doing it All Won’t Work: A self-coaching Guide for Career Women”
