Shownotes
I don’t have to be a crystal gazer to say that we have a long way to go before we achieve gender equality and even longer before we get to gender equity. This is not something unique to one part of the world, this is a reality across geographies in developed and developing countries. After decades of advocacy the only thing we can say with certainty is that there is too much talk, and very little action. And that too much talk has resulted in gender washing and fatigue amongst those in positions in power.
The consensus from speaking to women leaders across the world is that the road to equity is steep and arduous. This struggle for representation and equity is stymied by a belief by people in positions of power and some women that all is well and that women can be who they aspire too and succeed.
To throw light on some of challenges faced by women in the workplace I recently spoke with Mohana Talapatra, an ex practice leader for sustainability and ESG (at one of the big 4). As Mohana describes it - she has worked in typically type A - predominately male centric work environments in global investment banking and consulting. So it was interesting to hear her perspective on what it takes to succeed in male dominated spaces
In this freewheeling conversation we spoke about a lot of things including
👉🏾 Learning how to claim the space which we occupy and where we want to belong
👉🏾 Challenges women face in the life cycle of their careers - imposter syndrome, being excluded, negative quietness bias…….
👉🏾 Evolving leadership styles and strategies to navigating power structures within organisations. We also speak about the Queen Bee syndrome
👉🏾 Treating your career like a marathon - and being prepared for the ups and downs. Mohana uses an interesting analogy of the stock market (short term/long term)
👉🏾 Thinking like a man (🤔🤔) - especially when it comes to taking credit, applying for roles or prestige projects
👉🏾 Choosing your battles and taking calculated career risks, developing a portfolio of skills
👉🏾 The importance of work life balance
👉🏾 What organisations can do to help women to succeed
We also spoke about the people who inspire her and much more…..
If you would like to listen to the podcast, head to the links in the comments
Episode Transcript:
Sudha: Hey Mohana, thank you for being a guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast.
Mohana: Hi Sudha, lovely to be on this podcast and to be speaking with you today. I think about all the issues that are important to us in business and especially as being women in business, so very excited. Thank you.
Sudha: Me too. Looking forward to this conversation.
Sudha: So let's get started with a quick introduction. Do you have an elevator pitch? Do you have this quick thing that you tell people whenever you meet them? Because I get very flummoxed sometimes when I start giving a detailed introduction.
Mohana: No, absolutely. And that has been me also. I'm like, can we just talk about not me for a bit?
Mohana: And I just tend to gloss over it very quickly. But I think, as part of my recent training to be a coach, I'm learning that if we don't claim the space where we stand and where we want to belong, nobody's going to give us that space. So off late, I'm learning to craft an elevator pitch, but I've not gotten there yet. But yes, very briefly, I've had a 25 plus year career across investment banking, consulting, studying, working and living across the UK, America's, Asia, greater China, and now in India.
Mohana: So all in all, I've had a very multicultural studying, working, living experience, and typically all in nearly type A, predominantly male centric work environments. And most recently, I have been a sustainability and ESG practice leader at a Big Four. So that's me.
Sudha: That's so interesting. I love the experience that comes from having worked across geographies.
Sudha: I think it opens up your mind really. As someone who has worked across multiple geographies and leadership roles, do you believe that women leaders face challenges that are different to their counterparts?
Mohana: Absolutely. And I think this is a great question. Especially because now when I think back in all my roles across different regions, organisations, parts of the world, I think some things stand out as being common threads.
Mohana: And I think let me start by looking at it, right from when a woman leader comes into an organisation. And then the entire journey whilst they're there. So if I were to look at it that way, I think it starts right at the time of hiring. You know, how many a time women with equal qualifications and experiences will get hired at a level or a compensation band below that of their male peers.
Mohana: For the equivalent leadership role or position, and there is no way to contest that from the outside in, right, because you have no idea of what the internal band of the structures look like. But once you're in the organisation, you recognise and realise the disparity of it. And then it takes a long time to reach peerage, because then you're already in the system and you're going through the hoops.
Mohana: Now once hired, women are, of course, as is the experience for all of us, routinely expected to outperform on all our KPIs, just to sometimes even qualify for peerage, with a large organisation and our male counterparts. And then comes the big whopper of it all, the performance review and promotion discussions.
Mohana: And it's been my experience that I think women aren't given their due recognition most of the time. And I would say this also has to do with us a little bit, because we don't ask for it. We don't speak up about our accomplishments, about our achievements. This can go back to how the age old gender conversation and stereotyping is done at a very early age.
Mohana: It can go back to cultural nuances. I really have no idea why this happens, but this is something that is very typically seen in mostly all women leaders. We hesitate to speak up, even about our own accomplishments and achievements, right? And as the old adage goes, you don't get if you don't ask. So there is that, and I think if I had to think about a couple more other things. And then, of course, we can talk about this, is that, leadership styles? I find that it's a challenge in a way, where if you do too much either side, then you can be very easily branded as being one way or another.
Mohana: For example, you cannot be too strong or assertive a leader because then you are overcompensating for your gender. And if you have a balanced, inclusive, empathic leadership style, which is not very type A, then you could get branded as being soft and consensus seeking, in other words, indecisive.
Mohana: So where is the fine line? It's not very obvious, not very clear. And I think the other thing is also that I've seen when I have been in a senior leadership position, looking at my managers, how they've been hiring employees into the organisation. I’ve seen that one of the things is that while women often have to juggle multiple responsibilities at home and the workplace, this gives them an edge in multitasking, but it sets them back on the career track.
Mohana: And organisations typically will, of their own accord either give a woman employee less responsibility in the role or may not even hire women into roles, which demand a lot out there. And many a time, this is done leaving the woman's choice and preference out of her own decision matrix.
Mohana: And I've seen that as a woman leader when my managers have been making those unconscious biases at the time of hiring, or at the time of progressions or promotions. And I've questioned it. And I've been told, but... XYZ is at this stage in her life, and will she really be able to devote time and energy to this role?
Mohana: And I'm like, why don't you leave that conversation with her? Why don't you have an open dialogue? Why are we to assume, presume, right? So there's so many biases and they run through the entire course right from hiring to the entire tenure of a woman leader's existence.
Sudha: Agree. And none of these are small things that you can overlook. They have an impact, a snowball impact on women's careers and their aspirations, the opportunities that they have.
How would you Mohana, describe your own leadership style? And do you think it has evolved in the course of your career? And of course, as human beings, we are constantly evolving, but leadership and as we know it, what was defined as a good leader, that definition stayed stagnant for a very, very long time.
Sudha: And I think that has impacted all of us and how we behave with ourselves or with others, But I think it's changing. It's dramatically changing.
Mohana: That's again, a very thought provoking question. I think leadership that I saw about 25 years ago was a very different leadership style where it was very top down, very autocratic in a way where do as you're told, type of thing.
Mohana: And that's been evolving and changing over the years for the better, of course. As for my personal leadership style, I think it's always been involved, inclusive while collegial. And I'll be honest with you, Sudha I think I've been sometimes called out for it and not in a good way. Right, because I've been told, I'm not hard enough, or I'm not laying down the rules as much as I ought to.
Mohana: And that's been the other side of the coin in terms of being too inclusive, collegial, involved. But my personal belief system, is that I'd like to give voice to the particularly shy and underrepresented team members, by giving them platforms and opportunities to be more visible. And this is critical because I think that way one doesn't end up subconsciously discriminating against team members who might be and are equally smart and equally hardworking, but they keep a low profile.
Mohana: And this happens quite a lot, gender notwithstanding also, and this is something that I call as the negative quietness bias, but particularly women tend to have this more than men. Generally, there's a quietness amongst women that sometimes does not work for them.
Mohana: So yeah, so I try to kill that negative quietness bias right at the beginning. And another thing I do is share credit with the team always, but I take the fall on my shoulders when something goes wrong. And this is important because this is important from, building trust, it's also important from a perspective of the fact that I have your back, you're just here to do your best work possible. Go do your, play your A game. If something goes wrong, I'm the coach. I have your back. So that's the kind of messaging and the actions that need to go out to our teams always.
Sudha: Yeah, that sounds like some great advice Mohana.
Sudha: And moving from that, power structures within organisations. What would your advice be to younger female and underrepresented colleagues? How do you navigate power structures in organisations? I mean, this is like something I don't think they teach you in management degrees.
Mohana: And I think it's something that you kind of learn intuitively as you kind of go through your own journey. I can only talk about what has possibly worked for me and just from my kind of life experience is I would say just network network network, because all organisations these days are inherently matrix organisations.
Mohana: So the best way to navigate power structures is possibly to align with a few different formal as well as informal sponsors within an organisation. eople who have the opportunity to see you outside of the immediate role construct, who have the ability to observe how you deal with people, your peers, your managers, your teams, across lines of business, across geographies, across multiple clients and across different cultural dimensions.
Mohana: And that is important because that builds a lens into you, which is not a very role driven lens, rather it's a skill driven lens to you, so that I think is important. The other thing, a tactical thing that I would do is in the reporting chain, I would find out who is my manager's manager.
Mohana: So skip level and a practice leader and set up a rhythm of connecting with each such, level or layer of people proactively. So that kind of keeps everybody informed on where you stand, where they stand. And I think the other thing that I'm learning now especially now, as I am learning to be a business coach is that we talk about, or we make reference to a systemic order in organisations, in society, in life, which takes precedence over all else.
Mohana: And sometimes in order to maintain that systemic order and to navigate power structures, I think one has to be a little flexible to accommodate the big personalities which come with some of, the larger positions, which are executive level positions. And what that means is generally that somewhere one has to keep people in powerful positions involved. So even if you are fully capable of solving a problematic situation at work related to a work project on your own. It's important and I think it's advisable and a good practice in that sense to involve and inform those who matter about the situation and what you did to resolve it also, more importantly.
Mohana: So I think in a nutshell, that would be it.
Sudha: Coming to this next question, whenever I speak to women, a lot of women, professional women in India, and especially senior women, I hear that women have the same opportunities and chances as their male colleagues.
Sudha: So my question to you is, it's a true or false question, women in india do not face challenges in the workplace
Mohana: No, I think it's false and it's in big bold false.
Sudha: And what have been your experiences of being excluded, people taking credit for your work, not being promoted or being given your due, or not being allowed to be vocal or visible?
Mohana: I think let me start by taking the easier question first. The easier question would be people taking credit for your work. And I think why I say that's a easier question is because I think it's bit of a gender agnostic global phenomenon and it falls more to a power hierarchy or a power structure hierarchy, if you will - because it's been happening for decades now. The most famous one is Rosalind Franklin's groundbreaking work on discovering the double helix strand structure of the DNA, but which got credited to Watson and Crick, who ended up with the Nobel Prize for it.
Mohana: So there are many such examples throughout history in the modern world, except that that will continue to happen for a while, one can't wish that away, and it just is a reflection of the power structure. So how higher are you in the organisation, how much influence you wield and all of that. We can hope for a more equitable world in the time to come, but that's the way it is and yes, it's not something that is easy to digest. But when I put it into perspective with the fact that if the woman who discovered what the DNA strand looks like wasn't given credit for it until much, much later, then my little contributions or big contributions even if they are taken away from me, I can learn to live with that a little bit.
Mohana: As far as being excluded is concerned, I think sometimes it happens very obviously or overtly and sometimes it happens not so overtly. There are times when I have been excluded from projects, especially when I've taken holidays.
Mohana: And this is, I think something that needs speaking about because people in today's corporate world are just afraid to take holidays. Just because they are so insecure that there's another line of people waiting to jump on the prize project if they go away or disappear for a week. And it has happened to me, I won't deny it, it has happened to me more than once and I've been eased out of projects either for that project or using that as an excuse or pretext for easing me out of an important market or an important region or an important account for that matter. And then been told that you're best at hunting or incubating, so this is now critical mass and you don't need to spend your energy and time to this because we could use you somewhere else.
Mohana: And so then the question arises that am I always going to continue to incubate and build and build when do I get the chance to be handed something which is ready made on a platter and be recognised for that. So there is that, it does happen.
Sudha: It's really telling that example because we see so often excuses, they are masked in a manner as if they're thinking about you, but it's not about you, they're just masking the language in order to keep you excluded and in order to keep you down.
Self-doubt, imposter? How do you tackle it? Was there a career move that you missed because of it?
Mohana: This is a question that I think I sometimes ask myself. Big career moves, strangely, I've not really had that imposter syndrome or self doubt. I think because if I step back a little bit from myself and look at all of us in general, the...
