tonight it’s nice to see some familiar
faces around the room I’m very pleased
to share with you that several years ago
I heard that the Dalai Lama had said
western women will save the world people
in the room who know me know that just
got me really excited and I just
wondered you know what what his thoughts
were apparently he went on to say that
women in the Western world absolutely
have the freedom to move around to talk
about the excuse me have the freedom to
speak about injustice and of course
women have an ability an innate ability
to understand the suffering and the pain
of others he went on to say in this time
in the world
we need more compassion and we need more
focus on human values so as I thought
about his statement and that’s been
several years ago but I’ve continued to
look at women differently I’ve continued
to think about the gifts that women have
and how they could contribute maybe
differently at this particular time one
of the things I want to share with you
is first of all from a brain science
standpoint the Dalai Lama was exactly
right the herman brain dominance which
is part of Hermann international company
started by Ned Hermann a GE physicist
when we look at brain dominance
information we find consistently that
women weigh in on the red quadrant as
their dominant cognitive preference
doesn’t mean everybody is whole brained
but consistently with over a million
people in the data bank that’s where the
women tend to weigh in so they have
gifts in that kind of area of looking
through a lens of interpersonal more
relational more and when it says
emotional it means the ability to read
motion to read and to see pain and
suffering when we look at the where men
tend to weigh in we see that men sorry
we see that men tend to weigh in on the
blue area the upper left brain quadrant
and they tend to have more of the
factual not so interpersonal space that
they’re coming into and so that tends to
be their their perspective and their
lens through which they’re typically
looking and I want to say it’s important
that we have both very important and
what doesn’t work well is when we get
tilted too much on either spectrum and
having said that I want to say that my
talk is not a woman talk but it’s more a
human talk I think that in many ways we
need to think about more of the ways
that we can create balance and
organization both are needed those are
very much needed today so just a little
bit of a disclaimer there but what we’re
seeing in the corporate world right now
is a lot of I’m going to back for just a
minute we’re seeing right now in the
corporate world a lot of desire to
change culture which i think is very
positive
I recently work with the West Coast
company and they wanted to talk about
the fact that they had struggled to
bring women in they were a tech company
they were in crisis mode and they said
it’s been difficult for us to recruit
women too and women don’t tend to stay
when they come here even on our
Executive Board a woman may come she may
not stay they knew that 75% of their
consumers were women so it was
problematic that they didn’t have strong
representation in house and they were
not able to design for women and think
about what kind of products and women
would need and so we worked with them on
how do they better onboard women how did
they better make when
feel comfortable in their organization
they started creating some new policies
to say at least two women on an
Executive Board because what they heard
is a woman might make an idea no one
really went with it a couple weeks later
a man might make a suggestion and
there’d be eight men in the room who
would resonate with that so again women
were not feeling good about staying but
they were working diligently to kind of
address what was going on in their
organization the other changes that
we’re seeing that are really very
drastic in corporations is one of them
is ge ge has now dropped their
performance evaluation in terms of the
numerical performance evaluation and
they’ve also dropped the the scale the
the bell curve so what we’re beginning
to understand is putting people on a
bell curve is really somewhat de
motivating and maybe even dehumanizing
it’s a little bit like lining up your
children and putting numbers on them
nobody wants that and so the new
information out of the neural Leadership
Institute is really telling us people do
not feel safe and they actually feel
threatened when that happens so ge is
using a lot more of one-on-one coaching
and coaching tends to build up regular
quarterly meetings to talk about the
goals and objectives and to keep very
much of a growth mindset very much a
focus on growth with individuals and so
that this is being done now for long
enough that we’re starting to actually
see some of the results and I just saw
something yesterday that no numbers has
meant better performance because the
conversations every month we all want to
be seen and heard and we don’t want to
receive something at the end of the year
which is a rear-view kind of kind of
information we need more regular
conversations so that’s what GE is doing
a lot of corporations are doing
something similar on a coca-cola
doing the same kind of thing and they’re
really looking at that at the
neurosciences they start to change their
cultures most recently the Center for
corporate leadership and Sarika center
for creative leadership produced a study
with over 30 corporations and what they
said in their study is that companies
are looking to change four things they
want to grow cultures of inspire and
influence they want to go cultures of
less command-and-control cultures of
more one-on-one coaching
and coaches coaches and cultures where
people are talking about emotional
physical and spiritual well-being most
recently at BMW at their headquarters in
new jersey was with them and what they
were doing is very much having a focus
on some meditation people were doing
wearables that measured how much they
sleep at night and they were really
challenging leaders to think about a
more holistic way of working with their
employees so this is I think encouraging
in in the world of work the study out of
the Center for corporate learning our
corporate leadership on beg your pardon
actually the one other thing they did
say too is that most organizations now
feel like they’re in a bit of a Fuuka
environment company of you have heard
that term VUCA it’s actually a military
term and it means volatile uncertain
chaotic atmosphere because things are
changing so quickly and so how people
learn is changing how people you know
you can’t just do a class for everybody
because people have to learn different
things so there’s more vertical learning
but it’s a totally different environment
and the main thing is to make people
feel safe and in that in that vein when
we think about creating safe
environments where there’s more trust
and people feel more free to speak out
the the model that they’re using
out of the neuro Leadership Institute is
called the scarf model and the scarf
model is very much based on what we see
in the brain the very primal brain of
humans the human brain still thinks in
terms of maximizing reward and
minimizing threat and so depending on
their culture you win you can have
people feeling threatened on a regular
basis that what might be going on or you
can have people very much in a toward
state status just means we all want our
personal interpersonal status we want to
know that we’re as good as other people
from a certainty standpoint we want to
know that we what’s expected of us what
what are the expectations for us in our
role and what’s expected of us in a
meeting we don’t want to be embarrassed
autonomy means when we get some work to
do we’d really like to be able to do it
in our way and the way that we learn and
the way that we think and the way that
we put things together the relatedness
is all about really the new social
cognitive brain science tells us we all
are about being in teams and tribes when
we come together and ideas are shared
there’s kind of an alchemy that happens
that we haven’t always realized in the
past and that’s even true for those of
us who like to step away and have some
downtime and some quiet time we still
like to feel that we’re part of
something and not an outcast and then
the fairness what we’ve learned in the
brain about fairness is if I see that
you are being treated unfairly or you
are being treated unfairly at work it
makes me feel unfairly treated as well
it we have mirror neurons so we feel the
pain of others so it’s definitely not
something we we want to see we’re
starting to use some of this science
also in the classroom I just asked one
of the graduating MBA students in the
entrepreneurial program and he told me
that he came in the door with a lot of
fear he had his idea and he didn’t
really want anybody to see it
want to share it he was kind of waiting
you know just didn’t want anybody to
take it away from him but he said the
more that everyone came together and
started connecting on a more human level
we you know asked questions about where
you’re from and your birth order and
things that you know what have you ever
come in your past and what’s your most
proud moment as people started sharing
these really human things and started
connecting with each other and then did
some one-on-one coaching with each other
about ideas he said there was a moment
when the trust kicked in and people
started to feel a trust so they started
to share their ideas and when they
started to share their ideas he said
they got better and better and better
and he said that’s the reason this
cohort will continue to work together
even after graduation because we have
that sense of trust that I think is so
important to to create in organizations
so I want to talk a little bit about
cultures of fear and and they do you
know we’re seeing these great things at
a corporate level but we still have
pockets of fear in organizations that
just are really more in that old
paradigm and and kind of what that looks
like I’ll give you an example and then
I’ll give you some of the the items that
are usually present but for me I worked
in the pharmaceutical industry and I had
a you know the job my job was to create
relationships with physicians and you
know to go to the different offices
calling on physicians and about once a
month is anybody in here pharmaceutical
rep okay about once a month my manager
my manager would come and work with me
and he was just very young an aggressive
young man so he would get in the car
with me and he would have a pad and he
would be ranking me through the day on a
scale of 1 to 5 in a number of
competency so as I would go in and out
of these different doctors offices he
would be observing me and asking me
questions and following me and
and quizzing me and it made me so
nervous it made me so uncomfortable no
matter how many times he came to work
with me I was so uncomfortable the night
before and all through the day and
embarrassingly enough I know that I ran
at least one red light with him in the
car and I’m sure I’m sure he was
mortified and I know embarrassingly
really embarrassing Lee once I ran over
one of those concrete things in the
parking lot those bars like this and I
remember after that he called my car
coronary cab but he still came and
worked with me but at the time I
remember as my team members would talk
about kind of how he treated us I’ll
never forget this one of my colleagues
said I am far more motivated by love
than fear and that’s that’s how we all
felt working you know working with him
and I will say that I learned so much
from him about the kind of culture that
I never wanted to to create and so I
thank him for that
but what happens really in a culture of
fear is that it’s very dysfunctional
because people start to feel uncertain
and insecure and they’re not getting
kind of the affirmation and the feedback
that they need and so they get really
competitive with each other and they you
know sometimes people become you know
martyrs and they’re there working all
these hours and other people become
people pleasers you know they’re there
pleasing the boss and they’re all about
being you know right they’re the boss
improving everything they’re doing and
then other people take on other to
social behaviors but the bottom line is
people are competing with each other in
a very negative way and some people just
get a paralysis they’re just
uncomfortable and they get a paralysis
and I’m betting that a lot of you have
been in this situation where you didn’t
really feel very safe and so that’s
really what it looks like simon Sinek
who wrote the book why makes the
statement that in the corporate world we
could really learn a lot from the
military because the military
gives a medal to those people that rush
in and save someone but in the corporate
world we give a bonus to the person who
knocks everyone else down to get to the
top and the sepal of studies at Stanford
tell us that about 70% of the people in
those environments are disengaged so no
surprise so what I have done in my
career is worked as an executive coach
for a lot of years and as I’ve worked in
different cultures many of these same
kind of cultures going in kind of seeing
what’s going on and and working with
very senior level people sometimes sea
level sometimes the very top person and
being that second set of eyes for that
person and coaching that person and
helping them launch something new the
one thing that I see that I think most
individuals need is what I call
affirmation I think most people are
looking for affirmation and I think it’s
one of the things that can really help
in terms of in terms of growth in terms
of development and I think that we all
crave it and yet we don’t tend to give
it and if you look at if you google
affirmation what you’ll find is there
are about 450 9,000 sites with
affirmation out there but they’re for
self affirmations and I know that from a
metaphysical standpoint self
affirmations can be important and
effective but I also think that we could
be giving each other more affirmation
and so I just want to talk a little bit
about that I have a as I think about
affirmation I was working with a student
he’s here tonight in the audience she’s
fabulous and she as we were talking
through this she brought me a piece of
paper that she’s kept now for over ten
years that a professor had written to
her
and said you really need to think about
this and look at look at what you’ve
done look at this paper that you’ve
written and it meant that much to her
that she held on to it I think that
that’s the magic of it and I think
that’s the reason that I think it’s one
of the most powerful human touches we
can give for me and sometimes it becomes
prophetic you know you hear the words
and it can change your destiny it can
put you on a different track for me I on
and mahjongg I probably shouldn’t say
the Europe that makes me look really old
but in 1996 and so I lost my job and I
was devastated and I really did not know
what to do next I questioned myself and
I questioned who I was it was
embarrassing I I felt like I was going
kind of down this dark tunnel and just
trying to figure out you know the next
sales and marketing job but I had the
good fortune of meeting someone who
after a lot of questioning and spending
some time with me he said you know you
really should think about starting a
business you have a sales and marketing
background and you have counseling
credentials why wouldn’t you help people
with this very pain point going through
a transition like this and without his
words I would never have had the courage
to do it I would never have had the
courage to do it
and so soon after I did exactly that I
set up a small boutique firm and I
started calling on companies and working
with people when they were downsized and
I would be sometimes on site and I would
work with them right away to say you’re
not going to be alone in this search and
you know we’re going to look at your get
your documents ready we’re going to do
research on companies and I’m going to
make some introductions for you and but
the main thing that I did for them was
try to affirm them try to tell them
here’s what I see in you
you have this gift I dare it just and
Moore’s and the audience tonight so I’ll
share with you dev and I had a great
conversation because she was at a point
where she was saying I have all these
responsibilities and for her it was that
one question of in a perfect world what
would you love to be doing and it
allowed her to move some things out of
her space and really go to the things
that she wanted to do and so you never
know what the question is that you might
ask someone that help might help get
help them get clarity about what they
want to do and so so really an
affirmation if you look at the
definition
information is just to to make firm to
give strength and psychology tells us
that we often define ourselves based on
how other people view us so without the
telling of what people see in us that’s
good sometimes we might not know that as
much and as I said when you know that
googling it there are so many self
affirmations out there it really does
sort of validate that people are looking
for it
so I’m suggesting for your mature
consideration that you might think about
as you measure success in your life or
in your organization you might think
about making affirmations part of it and
I’m talking about the affirmation for
others three ways that you can think
about affirmations and again I’m going
to ask you to kind of broaden your
thinking about affirmations at this
point but three ways to think about an
affirmation is really the person giving
affirmation has to feel secure enough in
themselves to state the good they see in
someone else because sometimes it may it
can make you vulnerable but the idea of
stating the good you see in them and
kind of stating here’s where I could see
you using your gifts
it’s amazing how many people still
struggle with where’s the best place to
use my gifts the second thing to think
about is really the deep listening that
has to occur when you’re listening and
asking really good questions of
individuals of course what you’re
looking for them to do is find their own
aha moments but when you ask them what’s
your most proud moment in your career or
what’s the biggest challenge you’ve
overcome you’re hearing their strengths
and you’re hearing what gave them the
the best sense of accomplishment so
those questions can really help and then
the third thing I would say is just
really speaking the truth to them when
you speak the truth to someone about
what you see in them after doing this
sort of due diligence you’re pretty much
speaking directly into their soul and
they can feel that and so it feels
different they already know what their
strengths are they know but they know
you’ve seen them you’ve looked inside
and you’ve seen them so I guess when we
come back to Ken western women save the
world I think that the Dalai Lama was
really looking at all of us and saying
at this time in history the gifts of
women are really needed and I think that
Marianne Williamson says that right now
at this particular time changing the
American workforce the hierarchical
workforce of command and control to a
workforce that’s more about
collaboration and creativity might be
the spiritual dilemma or spiritual quest
of our generation and so that’s not easy
but I think women are uniquely gifted to
be able to make that happen I think
we’ve just begun to use our gifts in a
more corporate setting and ideally we
will be using them in the world at large
and so
I think do I think Western women can
save the world do we think Western women
can save the world
I think that first we have to see our
value and we have to know our worth and
we have to use our gifts and we have to
support each other thank you [Applause]
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