The Broad Experience

'Authenticity' is a buzzword that crops up a lot in articles about the workplace. We're all meant to be in an era where we can 'be ourselves' at work. But how realistic a goal is that for women really? In this show I speak to author and speaker Sylvia Ann Hewlett, whose most recent book is Executive Presence. Sylvia says women have to find the right balance of being themselves and having the perfect combination of gravitas, communication skills and appearance to be considered for leadership positions. She talks about how to pull that off. Lauren Tucker leads her own division at an ad agency, but she says meshing her forthright personality with the workplace is no picnic, even at her level. And why should she even have to try?

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A lot of women run up against communication problems at work - everything from failure to be heard in meetings to giving orders to having male colleagues misread something they said. In this show we look at how differently men and women use language in the workplace. And we find out what each sex can do to better understand the other's style, from interrupting to taking...a while... to get to the point.

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In this show we look at how much women are still trying to live up to the stereotype of the ideal woman - and how that may be hurting our careers. You know her: she's does everything (at home and at work), she looks fabulous, and, of course, she's nice. My interviewee, management professor and author Jodi Detjen, says women's efforts to tick all the right female boxes are consuming our waking thoughts, and our careers are suffering as a result.

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For years, motherhood was considered our only job. Today, many women head back to work full-time not long after becoming parents. For some, everything goes smoothly, but for others, the return to work is challenging and confusing: they may not want the same things from their job that they did before, they crave flexibility (and can’t seem to get it), or their employer’s perception of them as a worker has changed – and not for the better.In this show we look at the transition from worker to worker-parent, find out what companies are doing to accommodate employees, and discuss how overburdened parents can make the pitch for a saner existence.

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What happens when you're a woman at work who doesn't look traditionally feminine? We meet a couple of young women who know what it’s like to look for a job when you don’t appear the way society expects. And when you’ve had experience working as both genders, you have a unique perspective on the workplace. We meet Lisa Scheps, who had great success when she presented as a male entrepreneur, but as a woman in the workplace, her career has stalled.

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In this show, we hear about transgender men's experiences of the workplace. What does that have to do with women and work? A lot, it turns out. These guys began their working lives presenting themselves as female, then transitioned, and suddenly, work was a whole different place. Despite having the same abilities, a lot of the trans men suddenly had more authority. They were assumed to be more competent. Sometimes they even landed jobs they couldn't get before.

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On this show my guest says it's not women who need to lean in, it's companies. At a time when women are 60% of university graduates, 51% of the population and make 80% of purchasing decisions, why, she asks, do most companies still expect women to change their behavior if they're going to excel in the workplace? She says it's corporations that need to adapt to the new reality. But how long will it take?

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Ask a group of women how much they enjoy networking and most will shudder. They see it as fake, transactional, not something they want to spend time on. Research backs this up: women do not connect with other people in their industries or even within their companies as much as men do, and it's hurting their careers. In this show three guests talk about how to get over the dread of networking, why it's worth engaging with strangers on a regular basis, and why it's never too late to follow up.

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Traditionally it was always men who followed their fathers into the family business. But in the last 15 years or so, the number of women joining family firms has almost quintupled. More and more daughters are choosing to go where once only their brothers did - and some are taking over the reins. But even today, women face different challenges than men when they enter family companies.

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In this show, sexuality counselor and author Evelyn Resh says many busy professional women are putting their sex lives to one side as work and kids swallow their time and energy. She wants to change that. This show is about much more than women's sexuality, though - it focuses on our ability, or lack of it, to switch out of work mode and focus on life's pleasures, whatever they happen to be.

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