Rana Nawas: (00:00)
Hello ladies and gents, hope you’re doing well. Today’s episode was recorded live last season, so about a year ago now. I interviewed Marshall Goldsmith about a book that he had co-authored called “How Women Rise: The 12 Habits Holding Women Back.” Now, everybody who’s listened to that episode has told me that it’s one of their favorites because it’s full of things that they recognize in themselves and actionable tips they could take on board. And so this year, when the Emirates Literature Foundation rang me up and invited me to interview, on stage, Sally Helgesen, the co-author of that book, I was really excited. And so here we have it, my interview with Sally Helgesen about how women rise, live onstage, at the 2019 Emirates Literature festival. So let’s get into it.

Rana Nawas: (00:58)
My name is Rana Nawas and I’m a mother of two and wife of one. My mission is to help professional women thrive. I do this in five ways. Yes, I have five jobs. I do keynote speeches and workshops on a variety of topics. I’m a Consultant to corporations on gender parity. My fourth job is a pro bono role that I take very seriously; I’m the President of Ellevate Dubai, which is the largest business women’s network here. We do two networking events every month. And finally my fifth job is also a pro bono role that I take very seriously; I am the Host of When Women Win. It’s a podcast I created, again, to help professional women thrive. We do this in two ways. On the one hand, we shine the spotlight on amazing women doing great things and on the other hand, we give women and men all over the world access to these female role models to hear from them, be inspired by them and learn from them.

When Women Win reached number one across the Middle East and is now listened to in 144 countries. I try hard to drive each episode to practical tools that the listeners can take away. Few books make better material for the show than how women rise. This book is full of practical tips and tools, so much so that last year when Sally’s co-author was passing through Dubai, I grabbed him and brought him on the show. Even though he’s a dude, I just had to use my platform to spread these ideas. They’re that powerful. So I’m delighted to have this role today, to interview Sally here at the Literature Festival and help bring these insights to you.

Without further ado, Sally Helgesen is a bestselling Author, Speaker, and Leadership Coach. Forbes magazine has called her “the world’s premier expert on women’s leadership” for the last 30 years. Her mission has been to help women leaders around the world recognize and act on their greatest strengths. Her most recent book, How Women Rise, became the top selling title in its field within one week of publication. Sally’s previous books include The Female Advantage and the Female Vision. Her book, “The Web of Inclusion: A New Architecture For Building Great Organizations,” published in 1995 was cited in the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books on leadership of all time and credited with bringing the language of inclusion into everyday business. So would you please welcome Sally Helgesen.

Rana Nawas: (03:33)
Sally, I read How Women Rise in literally 24 hours. I was hooked and I’m excited to get into it with you, but first a question about context. We know that today’s corporate structure is not designed to help women reach their full potential, right? It was designed 60 years ago by men for men and it’s a self-reinforcing system so it rewards the same behaviour. People hire and promote “mini-mes” and penalize different behaviour, you know, anyone who goes against the grain, for example, when women lean in. So we know that it’s not the women we need to fix, rather the system. Why would you write a book that focuses on fixing the women?

Sally Helgesen: (04:15)
Rana, I believe my experience and working with women around the world for the last 30 years has taught me that women can have an influence on the structure and culture of their organizations when they get into position of authority and influence. In the book, How Women Rise, Marshall Goldsmith, my co-author and I, really focus on the behaviours that are most likely to get in the way of successful women as they seek to move higher. So, I believe whatever we can do that moves impediments to women reaching their full potential, is going to be the most effective way we can address culture and structure. In addition, to which I think is really important and I think this is one of the reasons why women rise, is having so much success all around the world. I think it’s very important to focus on what we can control and if I move into a position, I can’t necessarily control the culture or the structure of the organization, but I can control my own habits and behaviours in a way that make it more likely that I’m going to be able to reach my full potential and have strategic influence over the organization that changes it in a positive way.

Rana Nawas: (05:40)
Thank you. Before we get into the 12 habits holding women back, I’d like to pull out some major themes that resonated with me personally. Could you tell us about the speaking up double bind? This is something that people ask me about all the time and I’ll let you tell the audience about it.

Sally Helgesen: (05:57)
Well, we’re all familiar with the speaking up double bind and that’s the idea that organizations expect anybody, who aspires to a leadership role, to use their voice and to speak up, but that often when women, especially when they’re in cultures that aren’t used to having women in leadership positions, use their voice or say something that’s direct, say something that is strong or has influence, it doesn’t land that well. “Well, she certainly speaks her mind,” is something that I personally have heard; “you’re not afraid to speak your mind.” “No, I’m not!” The least effective thing that women can do is to let themselves be manipulated and stopped by that kind of response or feedback. You may want to calculate it; is my tone a little too aggressive? You know, should I have said that in a slightly different way? All of that’s fine. You know we need to consider our audience. We need to consider who we’re speaking to, but I think it’s always a mistake too because we get some kind of pushback such as, “well, you certainly seem like you’re quite ambitious,” in a way that that sounds negative. If we let ourselves be intimidated by that, it will never change because I know from my own experience. I’ve been in situations and all the work I’ve done in the last 30 years has really come out of my own experience working in corporations in the 70’s and 80’s. But, in my experience, people get used to things. So, you might get a response where somebody will say, “well, you seem to have no trouble speaking your mind. I’m not really sure I’m comfortable with that.” Give them a little time, they’ll get used to it and pretty soon, they’re not noticing or they’re saying something to you like, “you know, one thing I really like about you is you speak your minds. Stick with it, keep at it.” Yeah.

Rana Nawas: (08:01)
Okay. Are there other “damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” things going on in corporates? Like, if you don’t speak up, you’re not adding value. If you speak up, you know, you’re penalized for it and for performance appraisals. What about other things?

Sally Helgesen: (08:18)
Yeah, I think that those communication things are the primary ones, where you really find that “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” But there’s another one that I think is really important and this becomes problematic for women. And I’ve seen this often where there’s an expectation for women, often, not always, that when you’re complimented for something or somebody says you did a great job, the expectation is that you would say, “oh, my team is wonderful, or I have a great boss, or the company is terrific,” so that you’re absolutely unable to accept any credit for it. I think that can really be very problematic. Of course it’s good to be gracious. And of course, if somebody else was instrumental in your success on something, it’s good to give them an acknowledgement. But it’s not healthy for you, for your reputation or for your visibility to always and almost compulsively give credit away. Now again, sometimes when you don’t do that, when you say a simple “thank you, it was quite hard,” somebody might go away and say, “you know, she’s not very generous.” That kind of expectation I think can be problematic. So, it’s really important for women to develop a comfort with being able to say “thank you” when they’re complimented for something.

Rana Nawas: (09:54)
Competence versus likeability. So, the research says that women are not allowed to be both competent and likable at the same time while men don’t have to make that choice. Is that true? And if so, how do we handle it?

Sally Helgesen: (10:05)
Well, I think you handle it by not backing off. I think that not being so fearful of what other people may say and getting comfortable with the idea that at first, if people see you as highly competent, they may, for some reason, not necessarily, like you. Don’t get into a thing where you’re trying to adjust all your behaviour to please them. Someone doesn’t like you; not everybody is going to like you. That’s how the world is. I’ve certainly learned that from working with my co-author Marshall; that his concern about everyone perceiving him as the most likable person in the world is at about zero. So it’s been helpful to me.

Rana Nawas: (10:55)
Right. What struck me about the 12 habits is that a lot of them are rooted in strengths as well.

Sally Helgesen: (11:04)
Yes, all of them.

Rana Nawas: (11:04)
All of them. So two sides of the same coin. For example, when we start our careers, we’re conscientious about building expertise, but then we end up overvaluing expertise and falling into the perfection trap. So how do we recognize when strengths become weaknesses?

Sally Helgesen: (11:19)
First of all, what you bring up, I think, the template of this book, the underlying guiding idea of this book, is taken from Marshall’s book – he wrote an international bestseller called “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There,” about the behaviours that get in the way of successful people as they move higher, with the idea that the behaviours that serve you well early in your career cannot serve you, necessarily, as you move higher. So I thought the template was brilliant. However, what I noticed, not surprisingly, given that Marshall’s coaching basis is about 80% male, that some of the behaviours weren’t exactly behaviours that are a problem for women. For example, the first one in the book was learn to apologize. Are you kidding me? I work with women who can’t open a door without saying, “oh, I’m sorry…”

Rana Nawas: (12:23)
I just got coaching, right before we came up here on stage, “you’ve got to stop saying sorry.” I didn’t even realize I was doing that.

Sally Helgesen: (12:26)
Yeah I told her that!

So, Marshall: “stop talking about how great you are”. Do you think that’s a problem for most women?” Not in my experience. So I said to him, you know, let’s collaborate on a book about the behaviours that are likely to get in the way of women as they move to a higher level. So, what this is really about is what may serve you. You’re being very precise and correct, you’re investing a lot, being a likable person, being perceived as a modest, humble and wonderful person who’s a great colleague and supporter. Those kinds of behaviours may have gotten you where you are, but they are not necessarily going to be the most effective when you are at a senior leadership level. You need to hold people accountable for what they’ve done. You need to have some ability to assert what your boundaries are in order to protect your time. And you really need to be invested in spending more of your time thinking big picture, thinking strategically and then being very precise and correct in managing all the details. So, that’s really the idea; that you need to be aware that the things that served you well may be problematic as you have different expectations at a senior level.

Rana Nawas: (14:11)
Right. So we’re about to get into the habits. Quick question first. Has anyone in the audience read the book yet? Oh, fantastic. Already? Excellent. I don’t know if we’ll have time to cover all 12, but not every habit will apply to every woman. Of course, in your 30 years as an Executive Coach, which of the habits have you seen exhibited the most by Senior Executive women?

Sally Helgesen: (14:35)
Well, there’s a difference between the habits I see most exhibited by women who aspire to a senior level and the ones that are most problematic at the senior level. So the habits that are most likely to trip you up on the way up are some of the communication habits. The minimizing in terms of your language and your gestures, constantly saying you’re sorry falls into that or offering too much information, which can make you hard to be understood, especially if you’re in a very male organization that values a crisp tone, too much background, too many words. You know, studies show that women use an average of 20,000 words a day, whereas men use an average of 7,000 words a day. So if you’re using your 20,000 words, they may not be like “what is she talking about?” They may get lost in the shuffle. So those are the kinds of things that can be problematic at sort of a middle range on the way up. So can overvaluing expertise. And that’s a really important one because when you overvalue expertise and just getting better and better at the job I’m doing is going to automatically translate into me going on to the next job. And it often doesn’t because the person who goes on to them, that next job, was also building visibility, building connections where you’ve got your head down and say, ‘I’ve got to get better and better at this job.” I was talking about overvaluing expertise a couple of weeks ago at a law firm that was in Atlanta, Georgia. And a woman came up to me afterwards and said, you know, you’re talking about overvaluing expertise and it’s the first time I’ve understood something and this is where we all don’t want to be. I spent 14 years of my life as a lawyer learning to write the best brief in the world. And it got me nowhere in terms of partnership,” because she was so invested in that, she didn’t build the relationships and she didn’t build the visibility of which people thought, “why take her out of writing briefs? She does a fantastic job.” So, she got stuck there for 14 years. That over-investment can really keep us stuck.

Rana Nawas: (17:02)
Okay. Let’s zoom into a few other things if we could. You mentioned habit one, the reluctance to claim your achievements. Why do we do that? And how can we self-promote? A question I get asked is how can I self-promote safely so that I’m not perceived as…well you know…

Sally Helgesen: (17:21)
Well, first of all, you can’t always manage perception. So you don’t want to be overly involved in feeling like there’s going to be a perfect way that I can talk about my achievements and absolutely nobody is ever going to be offended because I do that. That’s not going to necessarily work. But what I’ve seen be most effective is to present your achievements as information that could be valuable for someone else to know. I was working as a Coach and Advisor with a team of women Engineers in Silicon Valley, and there, one of the women had said, “you know, I went to my performance review. One thing I think I’m really good at is building relationships. And I’m kind of a go-to person in my unit. But when I got my feedback from my boss, he said, you do excellent work, but you don’t know enough people. You’re not connected enough and you need to get better at that.” And she said, “I went away from that performance review feeling like I’d been kicked in the stomach because the very thing I felt that I was best at, he didn’t recognize.” So she said “I was going back in the unit, do I not belong here? Maybe I shouldn’t be in engineering. I’ve certainly got to transfer out of this unit.” And then suddenly she realized how would he know? She’d never told him, he had no way to… He wasn’t monitoring who was in her office and who she was connecting with by email. So, she came up with a plan where every week she sent him no more than a two line email that just said, this week I connected with X, Y, and Z. She said she felt like a fool doing it, he was going to think, “why is this woman sending me an email every week telling me who she talked to?” She said, “but I decided I had to let him know that it was really important.” And after about six weeks, he came up to her and said, “thank you so much for the emails. That is information I need to know.” So when we get into a situation where we’re thinking, oh, I don’t want to seem like I’m self-promoting, so I’m not going to talk about that, think about whatever that is, as information that could be valuable for someone else to know. If you’re thinking of it as information rather than self-promotion, it kind of takes some of that fear and reluctance about it and you can see that you’re providing a service for someone.

Rana Nawas: (19:57)
And we love providing services for others.

Sally Helgesen: (19:59)
Yeah, exactly.

Rana Nawas: (20:01)
Habit number two is connected to this. This is about people expecting others to notice your achievements. I like the way Marshall said it: “do you think there is an achievement God watching over you, thinking, oh, you’ve done great work and telling the world about it?” That doesn’t happen. So how would you deal with that?

Sally Helgesen: (20:20)
Well that behaviour is expecting others to spontaneously notice and value your contributions rather than necessarily articulating them. And this is often something that women have an issue with. I did a big survey in partnership firms and I asked some of the senior women (who have the potential to be partner), this was for another thing, what are the younger women best at and where did they have their biggest challenge? And their answers were very consistent. They said what they’re best at is doing high quality work. They’re so conscientious. They dot every I and cross every T. they really show up very invested in their work. What they’re worst at is getting known for their work, for that visibility. And when I would ask the less senior women “are you good at this?” They would say, “Oh no, I’m not very good at it.” “Why not? What holds you back?” I would hear two responses. The first was, “well, if I have to act like that, jerk down the hall to get noticed around here, then no thank you.” So either you had to be like the most obnoxious person in the organization or you just kept your mouth shut. The second was, “I believe that if I do great work, people should notice” and they probably should and in a perfect world they certainly would, but that’s not the world we live in, especially now when people are so busy and even distracted. So, it’s very important, as we were talking, about to find a way to bring some visibility and you want to ask yourself, “am I expecting people will notice me?” And if I’m not, “do I have a plan?” And if I’m uncomfortable, “can I engage an ally or a supporter or somebody that I’m working with to let people know?” Also, that’s a perfectly normal and an adequate way to have other people serve as your champions and talk about what you’re trying to do.

Rana Nawas: (22:34)
Habit number four is one that resonated personally, which is the building, but not leveraging relationships. First of all, how do we fix that?

Sally Helgesen: (22:49)
Well, this is something I’ve been aware of for some time and a colleague recently emailed me the first piece of research, that I’ve seen, that really confirmed my observation. My observation is that women, and we know this from the research, are often very skilled at building relationships, but women may be reluctant to engage the people that they have relationships with, to ask them for a favor tactically and job related or strategically career related request. Women are often reluctant to do that. And again, when I asked, you know, are you reluctant? People say, well, I want people to know, I really value them as friends or I don’t want to be seen as a user. So it sets up kind of an either or. There again, you know, that you either just build relationships, but you don’t necessarily engage the people you know to do things or if you do engage people who you know to do things then you are being perceived for as a user…for me, and I’ve always had this issue for being a very nice person and I want people to know that I value them for themselves, I had a long professional relationship with my co-author Marshall Goldsmith for probably about 25 years before we did this book. And then as I thought about this, what I thought was a brilliant idea of taking his template, but looking at it for behaviours that got in women’s ways, I was held back from asking him because I thought, “oh, he’s going to think I’m trying to use him. He’s going to think I’m trying to use his fame, his 1 million LinkedIn followers and his big advances he gets for books. He’s going to see me as a user.” So, I was inhibited from asking for that for quite a while because I didn’t want it. And then suddenly I thought, well maybe he would see this as being of value for him. So I finally suggested it to him – a mutual friend had actually raised it, so then I swooped in and said, yeah, let’s do this. He loved it and he saw it as an opportunity to really extend his brand with women and to raise his profile as somebody who, you know, understood what women’s challenges were. You know, this is a big deal right now. Men in professional situations, for the most part, want to be perceived of as women’s champions. So his perception was I dumped this incredible opportunity in his lap, to be able to extend, build and broaden his brand. So, in other words, what I was doing was I wasn’t really thinking of myself as someone who would be providing value to the other person by engaging them. The piece of research that I referenced came from a German study that was done and it said that women tend to have much less effective networks than men because, in the words of this study, “they seem to have a moral prohibition on engaging people to be able to help them.” So it was real confirmation on that. But one other thing I want to, because I’m very interested in this subject, I was reading a book that had the delightfully direct title of how to get people to do things for you. A lot of very interesting information in there, but one of the things it said is that the primary reason people do things to help other people is because it makes them feel good about themselves, that’s what they’re getting out of it. So then I thought, well, you know, so any woman who is reluctant, put in your mind, why would I deprive this person of the opportunity to feel good about themselves by making this request?

Rana Nawas: (27:12)
I love it. I love it. Great!

Sally Helgesen: (27:14)
Yeah, thank you!

Rana Nawas: (27:20)
Well this is a big one that actually doesn’t afflict me; the disease to please. So tell us more, Sally.

Sally Helgesen: (27:27)
Well, the disease to please is that desire, that belief that everyone should think you are a wonderful human being, emphatic, a great listener, a great champion, a great supporter of them. And this is a behaviour that that can be a classic behaviour that can certainly serve you well early in your career, very well because people like you and you tend to earn high marks from the people you work for. But when you get in a position of more influence and authority, when you’re overly invested in pleasing people, it is going to trip you up every time. You’re going to have a hard time holding people accountable for what they’re supposed to deliver on. And often, you see pleasers helicoptering in and doing other people’s jobs for them because they don’t want to hold them accountable because if they did, then they might not be the most likable person in the world. Another thing, and this can get in your way all up and down, if you’re a pleaser, you will often find yourself letting your boundaries be violated, saying yes to doing things that you really should say no to because you don’t have the time or whatever it is, isn’t going to be particularly helpful to you and just take up a lot of time. So, you’re going to have problems in those ways. And one of the things that I find, also with this need to please, is that it’s one of those behaviours that affects you at work that can often affect you very badly at home as well, because you’re trying to please everybody at every moment and make sure they’re always happy. Now, again, it’s not advocating to being unlikable, but it’s thinking about if you are aiming for a position of influence and authority, you are going to need to hold others to account. You are going to need to be clear about what your own boundaries and help other people respect those. So being overly invested in “do they like me?” is not necessarily going to be helpful.

Rana Nawas: (29:46)
Well, how do you say no in a professional context? What’s a tool for a woman…?

Sally Helgesen: (29:51)
It’s hard for everybody. And it’s not just everybody, but I think that we really wanted two things: of course we want to really look at our schedules and see that we’re not overloading ourselves, something I’m pretty bad at, so we want to be able to do that. When we’re invited to do something, say, “okay, why would I do this? What does it serve? How does it serve what I’m trying to achieve?” When I work with women and I do coaching, when I do workshops, we spend a lot of time on getting very clear about what their intention is right now, their intention for the next year and their intention for what they want their career to unfold as over the next few years. And once you’re very clear about your intention and you can articulate it and you’re comfortable speaking it, then you have a much better way to evaluate what you might want to say yes to because you can say, how is this serving? What I really want to do, what I want to achieve, what I want to contribute, does this serve it or not? And if it doesn’t, then you can be pretty comfortable in saying, “I really appreciate that opportunity, but I don’t think I’m going to take that on right now.” It doesn’t have to be that you’re so overwhelmed or you can’t possibly do it, it can be that it just doesn’t serve what you’re trying to get to right now.

Rana Nawas: (31:29)
Or you just don’t want to.

Sally Helgesen: (31:32)
Well, you don’t want to.

Rana Nawas: (31:32)
I’m going to bring it back in with a few rapid fire questions Sally. Are you ready?

Sally Helgesen: (31:35)
Yes!

Rana Nawas: (31:36)
All right. What is a question you wish people asked you more often?

Sally Helgesen: (31:40)
I wish people asked me more often why I feel as optimistic as I do about the prognostication for women going forward, especially in global companies or as entrepreneurs. And the reason that I am optimistic is that for over 30 years, what I have watched is that what used to be defined as women’s leadership skills, you know, building strong relationships, comfort with direct communication, leading from the centre rather than the top and web-like way, all of those have become more recognized as mainstream desirable leadership skills in global companies. It used to be very different. Companies were very hierarchical and saw no reason to necessarily challenge that model. The technology has challenged the model. And I think we’re in a time where a lot of the skills that women bring, once we can articulate them and really have confidence and recognize them, are the skills that organizations need. You know, watching this kind of confluence has filled me with optimism.

Rana Nawas: (32:59)
Are you still working on any habits yourself?

Sally Helgesen: (33:01)
So, yeah. I’m working on the perfection trap. I tend to over prepare for everything. The book, anybody who’s read it, starts with a story that was really my own story about getting a wake up call on perfection. I was working with my co-author Marshall, this is way before this book was even a gleam in anybody’s eye, and we were co- presenting at a big defense contractors women’s conference up in Providence, Rhode Island, together. I arrived and I was nervous because I was presenting with Marshall. He was a big deal. He got great scores. Plus, it was a huge conference and I felt a little uptight. So, there was a dinner the evening before and I said, “no, no, I’ll just stay in my room and prep,” you know. So, the usual cesar salad and sparkling water alone in my room as I endlessly went over my notes and what I was going to say. And so I felt really prepared. And I went down the next morning to the lobby, there was a client and there was Marshall, who’d flown in light the night before, wearing cut-offs. And, Marshall said, ‘oh, I forgot my pants. I don’t know where I lost them somewhere. We’ll have to drive around. We can find some J.Crew or something on the way to the event. I’ll get some khakis. Not a big deal. It doesn’t matter what they’re like, I’ll have something to wear.” So client said, “oh, okay, let’s do that.” And we did that, found some khakis and then we got to the venue and it was oddly laid out, this huge group here (points to show), and there were two bathroom doors here (points to show). And so he goes, “oh, I got to go to the bathroom. I gotta go to the bathroom.” He goes in the bathroom, everybody can see him and he made his way to the ladies room. So I guess apparently, he never seen a purse hook. And he walked his head on, came tumbling out the door onto the floor. Now I’m thinking, okay, first of all, I have nightmares about speaking and forgetting my pants. Secondly, this is not the way I would want to introduce myself to 300 people rolling on the floor going, “whoa, I don’t know what happened. Oh, there was something sticking out in my head.” And we went through the day, it was really interesting and that kind of ended with him getting a beep (this was pre-cell phone), “oh, sorry, I gotta leave. I got my flight time wrong. Oh well, you’re in Sally’s capable hands. Have a great workshop.” So, you know, everything you did was slightly screwed up. But he was fabulous. He was fabulous. He had fun with the audience. He had, you know, games. He was playing with the audience and at the end they gave him a standing ovation even though he was running out on them early. And I soldiered on, you know, kinda kept with my notes and everything. At the end, I did a really good job. I did a good job, not going to over play it. And I got polite applause. When I got on the plane, I thought what just happened there? You know, I was perfect. He was so far from perfect. They loved him, they liked me. How did that work? And one of the things I realized as I thought, you know, that audience of 300 women is probably filled with many perfectionist who know what the stress of trying to be perfect is like. And they saw me modelling that and it wasn’t much fun to see. So I thought, you know, I need to think less about being overly prepared so that I’ve got every single thing in place and think more about the experience people are having and giving them something to really react with and have fun with in that way. So it was a really good wake up call for me that, you know, being the perfect student, having all my notes ready, knowing everything I was going to say and having memorized my talk wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to go.

Rana Nawas: (37:20)
Yeah. Thank you, Sally. Well, I have some concluding remarks but first, can we please give Sally a round of applause?

Rana Nawas: (37:34)
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