By Kathy Korman Frey, CHM: @ChiefHotMomma
An all-female panel will gather on Capitol Hill next week to testify about male vasectomies.
Okay, this is 100% not true.
Quite the attention getter though, ay? Well – that was to make a point. We’ll enter the realm of reality here to make some legit takeaways about:
1) Stakeholders and communication, and
2) The Good Guys that out there, today (and – yes – they are there)
So, along the lines of stakeholders and communication – believe it or not, something akin to the “all female panel” happened last week but in reverse. An all-male panel weighed in on women’s birth control on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
NancyPelosi’s tweet #WhereAreTheWomen drew attention to this stakeholder disconnect, and is mentioned in the article from which the picture – above – is sourced.
Some very 101 rules of thumb about stakeholder communication:
1. Are you respecting the group to which you’re speaking?
2. Actually stopping and thinking about #1 through any external communication of any kind (e.g., a panel).
A tip: Sometimes, it starts with internal values (believing them), then the externalization of those values is a lot easier.
Examples of folks getting it wrong:
a. Facebook’s board which includes no women. Facebook filed for an IPO on February 2. The whole reason, however, that people are all revved up about Facebook and it was able to even file an IPO is due to guess who? Women. Its users are majority female.
b. Authors / speakers siphoning off the women’s market with no expertise. Have you seen X and Y business book or show with “for women” on the end? Hey, we’re a hot commodity. But some of these folks are winging it, trying to make a buck, and have zero expertise when it comes to women. Read your book jackets and be on the look out. This trend is on the upswing.
Examples of folks getting it right:
a. Great dads. Did you know about the strong link between dads and the major role the relationship with their daughters plays in self esteem development before the age of 12? So you great dads out there with daughters: Go Dads Go!
b. Guys Who Get It in formal (and informal) leadership roles. A study of European CEOs showed that women who work in their companies are paid more. Publicly traded companies with formal programs to promote women into executive leadership were more profitable, a study showed. Countries encouraging women entrepreneurs see measurable increases in GDP (see our women’s business fact sheet for these last two studies and links – and others).
Thus, while there are some folks who are still missing the proverbial meeting….what is probably so shocking to us is that it is happening in this day and age. We expect more. And ass the Great Dads and Guys Who Get It around the globe are showing us, we should – because it works, for all of us.
Now, who did we forget?