Student Global Leadership Conference 2021: Empowering Women As Leaders, by Eve Alcock

Hello and welcome to our final episode of the first season in the Student Global Leadership podcast series. Today we're pleased to re-introduce Eve Alcock and her session titled Empowering Women as Leaders. We first met Eve on the Changing Leadership panel in episode 3, but she also presented her own individual presentation which was a conference favorite. A key disclaimer, there are 3 one-minute breaks starting at the 18-minute mark which allowed conference participants to participate in the activities as part of the discussion. If you want to skip ahead or don’t need a whole 60 seconds, just fast forward about 1 minute. 

 What an interesting and inspiring session, with some key thoughts not just for women but for everyone. Eve hosts her own podcast called  Rise Up which we’ll link to in our show notes if you want to hear more from Eve. And with that, we wrap up the first season of the Student Global Leadership podcast series. Stay tuned for more podcasts from FIE around leadership, study abroad, internships, and best practices. For now, a fond farewell from all us here at FIE.

Eve Alcock - Rise Up podcast

Transcript

Victor:

Hello and welcome to our final episode of the first season in the Student Global Leadership podcast series. I’m Victor Mellors with FIE, and today I’m pleased to re-introduce Eve Alcock and her session titled Empowering Women as Leaders. We first met Eve on the Changing Leadership panel in episode 3, but she also presented her own individual presentation which was a conference favourite. A key disclaimer, there are 3 one-minute breaks starting at the 18-minute mark which allow you to participate in the activities as part of the discussion. If you want to skip ahead or don’t need a whole 60 seconds, just fast forward about 1 minute. Here’s Eve.

Eve:

Hi, my name is Eve. I'm currently an analyst at the Clean Air fund. But I spent the two years prior to that leading the Students Union at the University of Bath as the SU president. This session is about empowering women as leaders. It's called empowering women as leaders a recipe for success. So let's get started.

So this session has three overriding aims. Number one is to identify predictive factors in leadership emergence. Number two is to nurture those predictive factors. And number three is to empower women and also non binary people to pursue leadership positions. I want to note for any men viewing that hopefully this will also be enlightening for you, especially in being able to spot areas where you can be an active ally to women and non binary people. And there'll be an opportunity to ask me questions at the end.

So before we begin a little bit of background, I guess, I originally created this presentation in 2019, for students at the University of Bath. And when I looked at it again, I noticed that my emphasis was overriding Lee on winning women to overcome existing barriers rather than empowering them to dismantle those barriers. And so I was putting quite a lot of the onus on women to change or navigate the system, rather than putting a highlight on how the system was oppressive in the first place. So what I've done is altered to talk about this in a positive frame about predictive factors to leadership emergence, rather than barriers. So removing the responsibility on women themselves to overcome the barriers. And like I said, for men watching, hopefully, you'll be able to help dismantle some of this barriers as well.

It's also worth noting a lot of leadership research has been done by men and is based on a male westernised version of leadership. So I love this quote from a book that I'm reading called mediocre at the moment, it says we've all been instructed to value and strive toward the white male version of success. And so I guess I'm here today to say, redefine leadership for yourselves.

And hopefully, this presentation will provide some practical advice to help you on your way to doing that. So first, a little bit of context to set the scene of the predictive factors.

As I said, my experience of leadership comes from my two years as president, and I might come across as quite confident now. But that wasn't always the way. So when I was thinking of running for an officer position in the Students Union, I was originally going to go for community over president because I wasn't sure whether I could go straight for President and I thought maybe it would be more realistic to go for community first and then president the year after.

And I had a conversation with one of my male friends, actually, he was working at NUS at the time. And I was saying, Yeah, I'm not sure how confident I am to go straight for President. And he looked at me and he said, Eve, of all the people that talk to me about wanting to run for president of our students unions, the people that always doubt their ability to do so are women. And that gave me a massive kick up the ass to go for the thing that I wanted, and not let my self confidence kind of hinder me on that. When I was in office, I definitely experienced things that I wouldn't have experienced if I was a man and comments on what I was wearing, or makeup and stuff. I was told in all sincerity by actually a guy that, for all intents and purposes was was an ally most of the time, and that he could see I was working my little socks off, which I just don't think would be said to a man in the same position.

Often, for women, I think when they experience rage, or anger or frustration, because we're conditioned not to express those things, and the way it manifests is sometimes just to cry or get very emotional. And so if I was in a meeting where I was really frustrated by something, I would start to look and sound like I was on the verge of tears, which, in certain scenarios, I think made people perceive me as a sort of emotional or hysterical woman who couldn't deal with the stresses of the job. And I think women experience heightened scrutiny compared to men. And I definitely experienced that in my role on social media. And just this week, you will have seen Matt Hancock's handling of COVID contracts was found to be unlawful in court. And yet actually the majority of the media coverage was still about Meghan Markle.

And obviously there's a heavy angle of racism on on that as well. So just another example of that double standard between men and women when it comes to scrutiny as well. And so that's sort of, I guess, the context that I am speaking from my experience.

And so hopefully this presentation will help us navigate that system, but also just be unapologetically ourselves and redefine leadership, how we want to.

So women are often damned if they do and damned if they don't. Leadership competency is usually associated with stereotypically masculine behaviour. So when women adopt stereotypically masculine traits, they're seen as un-feminine.

So if you take angler Merkel's leadership style and presentation for example, stereotypically masculine presentation, she wouldn't be considered as feminine as such stereotypically feminine behaviour, on the other hand, is often associated with in competence. So, you might remember this video of AOC dancing on a rooftop while she was at university. And it caused sort of meltdown amongst some traditional conservative men and in the US, the idea that someone could simultaneously do that and be very sort of feminine and her presentation and her dancing and also be a serious and powerful and assertive representative.

Furthermore, the same behaviour present presented in a man and a woman is often evaluated more positively when it's attributed to a man than a female. So, for example, what's considered strong for a man might be called domineering, or overly aggressive for a woman. And you might have seen the video of Taylor Swift talking about how this language plays out in the music industry. If a man makes a decision about his career direction, he's caught strategic. When a woman does it, she is referred to as calculated. So again at that double standard, cropping up in in the way that women are and lead.

Historically, again, research has shown that success and likability positively correlated for men, but negatively correlated for women. So the more successful a man gets, the more likeable he becomes, the more successful a woman gets, the less likeable she becomes.

So it feels kind of like the odds are stacked against us. But things are changing, and there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be gunning for what you want to do. So what are the factors then that predict leadership emergence, and how can we nurture them?

So we're going to look at attitude, self confidence, and network as key practical steps to leadership. And research shows that these factors predict leadership emergence, because of existing societal sexism, and misogyny, factors, like attitude and self confidence have been found to be more prevalent in men. But thankfully, they are factors that anybody regardless of gender, can nurture and build. So for each factor, we'll go through them one by one, I'm going to give you one minute to do an activity that helps nurture that factor. So you're going to need to entertain me, whilst I give you the minute to do each one. And please do them where where you are, because that way your start on that journey of nurturing. So to do those things, you'll need a notebook nearby, a pen, and your phone. So make sure you have those things. And then you can fully engage in the activities to nurture each of these factors over the next 25 minutes or so.

So let's start with attitude. It feels like a weird word. But by attitude we just mean whether or not we can envision ourself as a leader. And a lot of that comes down to representation. So research by Kolb in 1999 indicated that attitude towards leadership so whether we envision ourselves as a leader was a stronger predictor of leadership emergence than masculinity. So society tells us that leadership equates to seniority, leading a country being a politician or the CEO of a company. And given that world leaders and politicians and CEOs have historically been not just predominantly male, but predominantly white, cisgendered, straight and middle class. It's no wonder if we don't fit into those boxes, we find it less easy to see ourselves as leaders so that attitude is less prevalent in us.

From birth, we're given dolls to play with and when we're kids, and we consume media that depicts traditional gender roles of women, and the UK Government, just recently, you might have seen published a stay at home advert for COVID-19. And the figures in the house were or women doing chores or looking after children. So that kind of messaging is everywhere.

And whether we see ourselves as leaders comes from having women role models, who are also leading that we can look up to and follow in our footsteps, because it helps if we see someone like us in that position. So for the next 60 seconds, I'm going to just show you a slideshow of a range of women who are all leading in lots of different ways, and redefining what leadership looks like. And during that 60 seconds and music's going to play, I want you to write down on your notepad, who are your role models? and answer the questions, why do you look up to them, and what makes them good at what they do.

So let's go. 

So all these women on the slide, and the people that you've written down on your notepads, they all started off exactly where you are now, exactly where you are now. And they all have role models of their own to aspire to. And there's clearly a desire within all of you guys watching to be some kind of leader, otherwise, you wouldn't be here at this conference or at this session. And there's no reason why you can't be like these people. And you'll also end up being a role model for the next generation as well. So hold those people in your heads on your journey. Because that will help bring out that attitude that envisioning of you as a leader, or where these people are now.

So, okay, we're imagining ourselves as leaders, that increases the chance that will emerge as leaders. But there's also another ingredient, which will increase the likelihood even further. And that's self confidence. So in Kolb's regression model, if you add self confidence to attitude, it substantially improves the model's ability to predict leadership emergence.

When it comes to self confidence, for me, honestly, the best advice I ever got was fake it till you make it, which sounds kind of counterintuitive, but it's the best way to kind of propel yourself forward to becoming super self confident. And you don't have to feel confident all the time. I think there's a myth that leaders are always confident, which actually dehumanises them because it means that we can't see their vulnerability. You have to feel confident all the time that it can really help if you portray yourself as confident. And so let me show you some ways in which this can manifest.

So here we have an infographic showing reasons why men and women didn't apply for a job. If you have a look at the first and the third reasons. If you look at the difference between men and women who answered this. So the first one says, I didn't think they would hire me because I didn't meet the qualification. So I didn't want to waste my time and energy. So some women 40% 46% of men said that that was a reason why they didn't apply for the job. And then if you look at the third reason, I didn't think they would hire me it's it's I didn't meet the qualifications. And I didn't want to put myself out there if I was likely to fail 12% of men, but 21% of women, and the difference there is confidence, right? So I don't want to waste my time and energy. And I didn't want to put myself out there if I was likely to fail.

Shows really starkly that difference in self confidence. And Sheryl Sandberg for all of the critique of her works as a quote. It says women systematically underestimate their own abilities. And so what I often tell people is over us overestimate your ability. Because if you're systematically under estimating it, in order to kind of overcompensate and overcompensate, bring yourself back to a realistic kind of standing over estimate how good you are. And then then you'll probably be be accurate in your estimations. A crazy stat 57% of men negotiate their salary when they leave University and only 7% of women do crazy and that is about self confidence and feeling able to negotiate in the workplace. And then also men attribute their success to themselves as individuals and their skill, whereas women attribute it to other external factors around them. So I couldn't have done it without my team, or the stars just aligned. And wasn't it lucky? Instead of saying, actually, yeah, that was me and my skill. And we see this play out in language as well. Whether we intend it to or not, our language can cause us to come across as less competent or confident. And sometimes we don't even realise that we're doing.

So sometimes we show tentativeness through putting the word just in sentences. So I just wanted to check in and see, or I just think that I think about the difference between someone saying, I just want to check in and see, and I wanted to check in and say, or the difference between I just think, or I think it's really subtle, but significant in how you how confident you're coming across. Similarly, we offer expressed doubt in our sentences saying, does that make sense? Or am I making sense. And I used to do this all the time. And we do it with good intent intentions, because we want to check in with the other people around to make sure that we've been clear, and they they get what we're saying. But the problem is, is that it, it implies that you think that you've been incoherent when you might not have been at all. And then finally, people use qualifiers all the time. So I'm not I'm not an expert, but and this can undermine your position before you've even stated your opinion, and is something that women do a far higher frequency than men in in same sort of meetings about this. So the key with language is not to wait until you're confident enough to stop using this sort of language. But actually, you can alter your language first, and then it will give off the confidence and assertiveness that you might actually have. But your language can be undermining you in a way that you don't notice.

So again, I'm going to give you one minute to come up with the ends to these sentences for yourself. And I'm going to ask you to say them out loud to yourself confidently and without hesitation, no umms, no qualifiers. If you start to say it hesitantly repeat it. And you have to like pretend you're lizzo feeling good as hell, and deliver it with assertiveness and conviction. And it'll feel really uncomfortable. It's going to feel arrogant, but it will start to change the way that your brain perceives yourself. And you can trick it into believing what you're saying. So for example, for me, I would say I like who I am, because I am empathetic and passionate. I am really good at writing blogs and articles and achievement that I've had in the past has been being elected into office by 18,000 students. And I've been told that I am a good public speaker. So I'm going to give you one minute to think of your answers and say them out loud, confidently and assertively.

Sure, that felt super weird and awkward. But essentially, they're just affirmations. And the more you say them psychologically, the more you'll start to subconsciously believe them. And it changes how you view yourself, how you hold yourself and how you present yourself.

So finally, then the last predictive factor is network. So we had attitudes and self confidence that are things that broadly concern us as individuals. But the role that your immediate community and network also has a crucial role to play on your leadership, emergence, and also your leadership success. So because of the dominance of men in senior positions in society, they are often well networked and well connected with each other. So the old boys network refers to the social and business connections of predominantly privately educated white men. And a report by the equality and human rights commission found that nearly a third of the UK biggest companies largely rely on their personal networks to identify new board members. And when those companies are populated largely by men already, and they're looking for the right fit candidate, which often means just looking for someone who looks and sounds like themselves, that cycle of unconscious bias ensues. And it's often those people those same kinds of people that are filling all of those positions. But it's useful for those men to have that network because it gets them into those places. I'm sure you've seen news coverage of the COVID, like PPE contracts, and who those contracts went to. And it's largely the personal and social and political networks of senior male politicians in the UK Government. So a prime example of how that network acts.

It's also important to highlight, I think, something called the myth of scarcity here. So the myth of scarcity tells us that there's only room for a few women as leaders at the top. And it causes women to compete with each other, much harder, faster rate than men competing with each other. So when really actually what we need to be doing is building each other up. It's men that benefit from this myth of scarcity because it causes us to tear each other down and to compete, when actually there is room for all of us. And I was chatting to someone about this session recently, and about networking, and how important networking is to build that network. And they said to me, I hate networking have always been bad at it. And then I realised it was false networking, that I was crap at. I have hundreds of colleagues across the years tonnes of them women, who I lean on, who lean on me who share ideas and raise me up. Most of my clients are women, most of my works, support network are women. And I feel like a lot of our leadership comes from that. And so I thought that was an amazing little paragraph that just shows when we think of networking, we sometimes think of like, contrived, false and pressurised sort of schmoozing, and it feels really disingenuous, but actually, it's just just about who you surround yourself with, and who helps you on your journey both professionally and personally.

So with that in mind, then the final minute task, I'm going to ask you to do three things, or at least plan to do three things. Number one, send a text to a woman in your life and celebrating who she is and encouraging her out the blue randomly number to send a message to a woman who don't know particularly well, but would relish relish a conversation with whether that's because you liked their work, you want to find more about the career journey, or you just think they're a brilliant person, and reach out for coffee with them like a virtual coffee, you know, put it in for half an hour so that if the conversation is awkward, you can get out after half an hour. But just put yourself out there, because people love to help other people. So think of someone you admire, ask them for coffee. And then thirdly, send a message to a woman who might be at an earlier stage on their journey than you, him you might be able to help out with opportunities or advice and and check in with them and see how you can be of help to them so that you're helping then at work as well. So I'm going to give you a minute to do those things. Brilliant, you're well on your way to building and strengthening your network if you've managed to do those three things.

So there we have it. Three tangible things that you can actively and intentionally nurture to support you on your journey into leadership, whatever that might look like for you, whether that's traditional leadership, or trailblazing, in your own way on your own terms, attitude, envisaging ourselves in that position, using our role models, self confidence, so the way that we view ourselves the way that we speak the way that we hold ourselves, and network, building up a community around us that can support us and guide us on our own respective journeys.

That brings me to the end of my presentation. Thank you so much for having me. Please do reach out to me on Twitter, if you would like to, I'd love to follow some of you and continue the conversation. And feel free to check out a podcast that I have called rise up, and it's on Spotify. And Apple podcasts has about seven episodes, all interviewing various different women in different fields and sectors about their journeys towards leadership. And in the meantime, I'd be delighted to answer any questions that you have. So thank you.

 Victor:

What an interesting and inspiring session, with some key thoughts not just for women but for everyone. Eve hosts her own podcast called Rise Up which we’ll link to in our show notes if you want to hear more from Eve. And with that, we wrap up the first season of the Student Global Leadership podcast series. Stay tuned for more podcasts from FIE around leadership, study abroad, internships, and best practices. For now, a fond farewell from all us here at FIE.