Women Can Be the Architects of the Future of Work

We often refer to the “future of work” as if we’re waiting for the next episode of a television series. Yet before we see a season of equality, women will need to be in the writers’ room. Without the energy, ideas, and mobilizing capacities of women, business will continue to be business as usual. By influencing how people think and talk about an issue, women leaders give organizations the tools to act, models of the possibilities, and incentives to action.

Simply having more women at the top isn’t the goal; the real business impact doesn’t happen through representation alone. The keys to change are found well beyond the boardroom, at all levels of the organization, and the tools for change must be intentional and strategic.

Women Create Consensus for Change

At the recent Forbes Summit on the Future of Work, the participating chief experience officers emphasized that managing change is the key to survival. Many mentioned that women are ideally suited to lead in new ways. For women to seize this opportunity, they must have an intentional strategy to enlist and mobilize others to realize their vision of a new workplace.

Women leaders have the capacity to create the conditions of agreement that sync up company culture with rapidly shifting conversations in the culture at large. But to be change agents, they must frame goals in ways that get everyone nodding in agreement. They must have an intentional consensus-building strategy to enlist and mobilize others in their vision of a new workplace.

The next step for organizations is to create tools, venues, and frameworks that allow people to build new solutions. Women leaders must find ways to show (not tell) what success looks like—even resistant male leaders have trouble arguing with a beautiful vision. And finally, they must create the incentives that will move entrenched actors to change their behaviors.

Influence isn’t something you earn, nor is it something you have. It’s something you do. And every woman in the workplace can be a change-maker. Having felt the press of the glass ceiling at some point in their working lives, women mid-career are especially motivated to discover their influence. They seek, too often in vain, a professional development approach that goes beyond the skills necessary to be effective in the current system. They want agency, they want to have a say in the change that’s coming, and they want to matter more.

Women Have No Shortage of Confidence—They Lack Support

The concept of imposter syndrome is too often falsely cited as an obstacle to women’s advancement. Imposter syndrome is a red herring. Rising in a competitive environment isn’t easy for anyone, but data shows that men and women relate differently to the competitive environment of the workplace. Yes, women underestimate themselves but not in the way most people believe. It turns out that men and women are equally confident in their skills. 

In fact, most women think they could do their manager’s job better than it’s being done now. The difference lies in how women think others perceive them. Women don’t believe they will be recognized for their mastery. They don’t suffer from imposter syndrome; they simply expect, from experience, to be treated as imposters.

When organizations support their persuasive efforts, women can exercise influence far beyond what they imagine today. When we at Bonfire ask our members “What are your associations around influence?” we hear mostly negative associations: “narcissism,” “social media personalities,” “manipulation,” “bragging.” Even the positive associations suggest the assumption that it’s about the individual persona: “charisma,” “personality,” “persuasiveness,” “magnetism.” 

Here’s what we know: Influence isn’t about star power. It’s not about individual charisma or personality. Influence is about creating the conditions of agreement. It’s the process of intentionally shaping the attitudes, norms, and behaviors of one’s environment to create change.

Women Leaders’ 4 Steps to Persuasive Power

Negotiating a workplace that wasn’t built for women requires an intentional set of strategies that have been proven the world over in the context of social change. Four strategies reflect how women can best influence change in the workplace:

• Frame ideas. To lead, women must shape the debates that will determine the future of work. They must change the way people think and talk about the issues at hand. This is done by generating narratives, identities, and values that unite surprising bedfellows under a single banner. This step toward building consensus appeals to underlying values rather than superficial opinions. Storytelling or powerful infographics are more effective at framing the debate than raw data, which too many women mistakenly believe confers more credibility. 

• Align people. Once people are nodding in assent (a big win), it’s time to create processes for people to act together. It does no good for people to agree if they can’t get things done. You can align people by creating dedicated spaces (on or offline) to plan actions. To prepare for culture change, organizations can offer frameworks that help people understand protocols for action. Think how the recycling program across America created simple rules to help people move toward separating garbage, which is now the national norm.
• Model solutions. This is about showing, not telling. We need to see the future to believe it’s worth the effort to get there. What does it look like? Who else is doing it? Where can we see something working that gives us confidence that we, too, can do this? Images that subvert conventional associations go a long way toward changing mindsets. For example, seeing women firefighters and football players, same-sex couples with children, and mainstream advertisements with interracial couples can arguably have a more profound effect on normalizing change than supportive discussion or policies.
• Create incentives. To create change, smart leaders shift the cost-benefit ratio for actors to behave in new ways. Understanding what motivates different people in different ways is a powerful key to change. Too many leaders assume that what motivates them is what motivates others. That is rarely the case. When it comes to women making change, it’s also important to ask what’s being rewarded in the current system that stands in the way of shifting toward new behaviors. For example, if speed is the mantra of a company or a team, that directly militates against the kind of curiosity and deliberation required to involve new participants and produce new outcomes.

Human nature doesn’t change; people do. Kurt Lewin, the father of social psychology, is quoted as saying that “if you want to understand something, try to change it.” The reverse is equally true: If you want to change something, you’ll need to understand it.

The strategies listed here have been used for generations of social activists, political strategists, behavioral economists, decision scientists, and media executives to understand the world so they can exert influence effectively. In short, these are tools for those who move mountains, and it’s high time we move some mountains when it comes to women in the workplace. 

Rachel Bellow is the cofounder of the Bonfire career development program for midlevel women and a consultant on influence strategies for social change. Employers engage and empower diverse talent through Bonfire events, small-group work sessions, and online study. For more information, visit bonfirewomen.com or Bonfire on LinkedIn or Instagram.

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