Natural Leader (Continued)

Confidence and Competence

Risk is uncomfortable, of course. How do you persuade participants to face that discomfort head-on?

Women in particular tend to have confidence issues. So I'll go around the room and ask people how many of them would like to have more confidence as a result of being in the class. Almost all of the hands go up. I say, "Okay, I'm going to make you a deal. I'm going to make you a counteroffer. I'm not going to promise to give you more confidence. I'm going to promise to give you more competence. And I'm going to ask you to look and see where confidence comes from." Then I ask how many of them think of confidence as a prerequisite -- how many of them will do something if they feel confident enough to attempt it. All of the hands go up. Then I ask them what they are confident about in their lives and how they got to be confident about those things. Whether it's horseback riding or shipping products or developing software code, they all got confidence by doing something over and over again. Oh, so then confidence is an aftermath, not a prerequisite? Bing, bing, bing, bing!

Then it hits them: They've been spending their whole lives waiting to be confident before trying something new, when they couldn't possibly be confident until they're competent. That's transformational, because it suddenly sheds light on whole arenas of restriction and impediment that have nothing to do with anything other than the context from which they're viewing the situation or their lives or themselves.

We're in the organizational- and community-leadership business. We want to enable people to lead change, but you can't lead change unless you've got a profound sense of appreciation and respect for learning. And you need to have something to aspire to that's bigger and more compelling than what you've got.

Pulling off change is one thing. But how do you make sure that your amazing work gets noticed?

Women often find themselves working in organizations where they deliver an enormous amount of value that doesn't get registered. In sports, of course, you have a very handy object called a "scoreboard." And what it does is register? It shows progress being made and value being delivered. So if you get a hit or score a run or make an out, it's registered. Organizations don't have scoreboards -- they have financial statements. And those are a very narrow picture of what's happening. So we work with women to create registers, to create scoreboards. They could be in the form of butcher paper. They could be in the form of a report. They could be in the form of an audio tape.

One participant I worked with sent out a voice mail asking her direct reports to get back to her with results that they had produced the previous month on a new product launch and what those results allowed for: What do those results make possible now in terms of the product? What can we do better or more easily? What will this product contribute to our customers? She put all of the responses on a cassette tape and gave it to the CEO. She asked him to listen to it on his way to work. He was touched by the quality of his people and by the good work that they were doing. But he also appreciated that level of insight into strategy. And he registered the accomplishments of her entire team. It only cost 99 cents for a blank audio tape -- and took five minutes. So registers can take any form. But if you don't have a register, there's no place for your work to show up. That's a big part of the disconnect with women: Their value isn't registered, so they're not moving up in the food chain.What are some other relatively easy-to-change practices that perpetuate gender inequity?

Well, in the case of the advancement of women, a lot of organizations have unconsciously perpetuated a military model of command and control. If you actually look at how those organizations are set up and how they get work done, they look a lot like the 12th infantry in Vietnam. A lot of metaphors and a lot of strategies are based on beating down the other guy and on channeling information very carefully to a small number of people.

These are the kinds of things that affect women's advancement. The criteria that companies use for selecting board members or senior executives are often based on traditional, military models: How many years has this person been in the field? Has she made her way up the ranks? They're not always looking for the most innovative thinker, or for the most provocative-but-reliable manager in terms of developing people while delivering the goods. Those kinds of criteria don't necessarily arise, so it begs the question, "Where are you looking to recruit for your board or your executive team?" And generally, I don't take issue with the fact that companies are looking for good, solid business performers. I just think that they define strong business performers through very small lenses.