Boy, are we in trouble with diversity and hearing different perspectives. While we look at the statistics of female representation in meetings in different locations and decision making venues we know things look fairly gloomy, but once you dig into the behaviors driven by the statistics the negative impact of lack of diversity multiples. 

In part 1 of this piece I talked about the basic challenges that can lead to women holding back or being overlooked in meetings and discussions. However it’s not simply a matter of women conquering their fears to overcome participation, once they do this you’ll have more voices in the room, but if you think you’re about to benefit from diverse thinking, especially a female point of view, then think again as that doesn’t necessarily follow once they have their voice. Let me explain.  

Women really want to be an equal player in the workplace. They value equality and believe that hard work should be rewarded and recognized. If only we can be perceived as ‘one of the guys’ we can be heard and achieve equality right? Wrong. Achieving ‘one of the guys’ status does not provide any benefits related to gaining insight from feminine intuition. How so? 

What percentage of a group needs to be female before a female perspective is raised on issues? Higher than 40%. While businesses are trying to get excited about increases in the number of females in the workplace they are still falling woefully short of the critical number to have a women’s perspective heard. 

In a research study, they knew from a survey that on a certain topic women held different views than men, so in a follow up study they used a meeting forum to experiment with how many women in the room were required before the point of view expressed in the survey results became a view expressed in the 
meeting. It wasn’t until 60-80% women were in the meeting that the view showed up. 

I came across that research shortly after I had been interviewing people in software development. My motivation was to examine how unintended gender bias shows up in the decision making process of software development. I interviewed men and women from different disciplines and at different  levels of seniority on the topic. The only job discipline group that didn’t admit to using personal opinions at work was research type disciplines, where it was felt that representation of unbiased data was what provided them with credibility to do their job well. However most other disciplines interviewed did say that they did bring personal opinion to discussions and decision making. They would bring personal needs to bump up feature requests, decide on what to build based on what engineering challenges they wanted to take on or skill they wanted to develop. There was one type of opinion that women said they never or extremely rarely used - it was an opinion that would identify them as a woman. The women interviewed said they are very cautious in ever raising a point of view that explicitly supports a female perspective. The justifications for this behavior included not wanting to seem different from the others and being seen as a woman, why put forward an idea when it’s not going to have critical mass support for making it on the feature list (no one wants to suggest ideas that are going to be rejected), and also one woman realized it never dawned on her to have a woman’s point of view as she’s worked so long as a ‘guy’ that she only tackled problems with critical evaluation perspective and not from her personal female experience. While I don’t think in real world situations it will take 60-80% female representation before a female perspective is heard, let’s just say it is far above the 20% that is present in many business today. 

Women account for 51% of the population and are often touted as influencing 80% of the purchasing decisions. I think it’s worth making sure a female insight isn’t accidentally overlooked or ignored. 

Let’s start with some advice to increase the amount of heard female participation in the meetings:

1. Ask questions of individuals rather than leaving it for those with the loudest voices to hold air time. And don’t just launch in the first time you try it with, “Rebecca, what do you think?”, make sure there’s a warm up question or two so Rebecca can have a mental prep time. 

2. Watch for signals that Rebecca wants to contribute she will be giving cues of wanting to participate but the floor will not provide the opening. 

3. Ask questions to insure you’re getting a well-rounded perspective on your customer from a business perspective. “Although we know product X is for men and women, is there anything in particular we need to consider for women, given this team is mostly men designing it?”

4. Let everyone know that even though decisions are being made in the room if people have ideas to share after the meeting send mail or catch ‘me’ later. Better to get the feedback a little late than not at all. In the next  meeting thank people individually for their follow ups so they feel recognized.

5. And women who are more senior in the room – it’s your job too to enable other women as well. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with their contribution, but women can also not enable other women in the same way as men operate. 

I wish I could wave a magic wand and make every woman’s voice be heard at equal volume to a man’s and that the ears listening (both male and female) heard the content with a balanced perspective and without applying a gender filter. Unfortunately I can’t do this. What I can do though is provide insight on why women experience challenges in being heard, and what we can do to increase the amplitude of our voices. I can also provide insight to the listeners on the filters they unknownly apply and the impact it can have on their businesses.

First – what’s up with us not having the courage to speak up and tell people our point of view? We don’t imagine the challenges we experience, they exist, but rather than give into to the challenges we have control over how we put our best-self forward and use our personal power and presence to move the dial in being heard more often. 
 
Imagine if at the end of the day you knew you had always contributed what you thought valuable to the business and it was heard? I wonder what percent we hold back on non-communication each day – 10%? perhaps more. It’s too much whatever it is.  
 
Do these fears resonate with you when you're in a mostly male group at work? 
- Fear of being wrong or making a mistake         
- Fear of not quite having all the facts for an opinion 
- Fear of idea being rejected
- Fear of being ignored when speaking
- Fear of thinking you’re only one who doesn’t understand something
- Fear of not following polite rules of conversational engagement and waiting for opportunity to contribute 
- Fear of being identified as a woman and not ‘one of the guys’

We so want to be certain before we speak that we can be preparing our statements in our heads before saying them – but look at the check list of fears that we have to conquer before our input is received by the group.
 
So what can we do? There is not a single answer to get us heard but there are lots of strategies we can use, especially once we start to identify what is holding us back. Here are some of my thoughts on strategies to overcome some of the fears.

First we need to get use to the idea that our idea may be rejected, hijacked by someone else, or we may be ignored, this obviously isn’t the outcome we want but simply starting to voice our perspective is a starting point. Those things can’t happened to us until we voiced something in the meeting.
Action: Don’t leave any meetings this week with your inside voice wishing it had been heard. Blurt it out and be proud of saying it out loud even if you’re ignored, idea rejected or hijacked – we’ve all got to start somewhere.

If the idea is rejected for some reason, we mustn't take it personally, its business. Lots of ideas are put forth and shot down until something resonates in the meeting. I’m not going to say that the ideas accepted are the right ones from a diversity inclusion perspective but the notion of ideas generated and lots shot-down is a skill we need to learn to experience and is not is not a response to us personally but a business response. 
Action: Experience idea rejection as part of the business process and not personal rejection. In fact
raise the number of ideas you get rejected – it’s got to go up to get more ideas to land successfully.
 
Sometimes we get hung up on having all the facts before offering an opinion so we need to develop some phrases ahead of time that can help us couch our opinion so we're comfortable. Seriously, people in meetings are always full of making ‘factual’ statements on little information, one hopes when the rubber hits the road on the idea that due diligence is done but in many meetings getting ideas out for the debate is the critical thing to do. 
Action: Consider offering statements like, “I have a hunch x and y will lead to outcome x”or “My gut says x and y will lead to outcome x” or “From what I know at this point, I think x and y will lead to x”

It happens all the time, a woman speaks in a meeting, there is a moment of silence, and then the conversation moves on like she never existed. We need to be prepared for it– I’ve it happens more commonly when I’m offering an idea that is from a different perspective (not necessarily a gender based view) or alternative solution that the room hasn’t yet considered. What I’ve found works is in that split second when I think, ‘Ah crap, I’m getting the silent ignore’ is to quickly add “What do you think of the idea – Josh?” that then put’s at least one person on the spot to answer and acknowledge the contribution. 
Action: Be prepared for the silence after you speak, and put someone on the spot to respond to what you’ve said.

Now the challenge is how to find the opening to speak in a rapid debate? This can be a nightmare – like being a foreigner from a rural area trying to figure out how to hail a cab in New York City. It can seem like there is an  opportunity coming as you listen to the conversation but just as it slows to when it’s appropriate to interject someone swoops in and takes the conversation over and marches it forward not realizing it was your turn. To use another analogy, I have found even in fast two people conversations at work that it feels like I’m running a relay where the first person runs alongside the second runner so they have speed before the baton is handed over. Exhausting yes, but the other first speaker will hand over the conversation if they see that you’re up to speed and are ready to contribute. Now once you have the baton you have some control of the pace. 
People don’t like to be seen as being rude, so while offering up an idea in a cacophony of noise hoping someone will respond, I have found attaching someone’s name to my request my offering is harder to ignore. 
Action: Use names to get a direct response and make someone accountable for responding to you.“John, I have an idea… John?” 

I have been many meetings where something is being discussed I don’t understand and waited until the meeting is over before finding out what it was. However later in my career I learned it was okay to ask for clarity on terms, definitions, etc. I like to tell myself I'm in the room because of the expertise I have, not because I know the same as everyone else. And I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in when I've asked for someone to clarify what they mean by a particular term, to find out that either others didn't understand or others had been using a different definition of the word.
Action: “Can you clarify what you mean by X?” or “I’m not familiar with X, are there others here who
aren’t familiar? Or I can follow up later on it” 
 
Okay – so now you have some action items for the week. Please speak up and share your ideas, thoughts and insights - without speaking out in meetings you are not going to be heard – it’s vital for you and your career and it’s vital for the business you work for.

What I haven’t covered today is the Fear of being seen as a woman, as something that holds us back in speaking up with a female  perspective. Businesses need to increase their awareness of realizing this is happening because leveraging diversity of opinion is how products and services will develop their competitive advantage in the future. Watch for a future post specifically on how to encourage businesses to listen to valuable diverse opinions of women, and how we need to increase our confidence of the value this perspective offers to the business and to fulfilling what we know we can contribute.