1. Does not assume they know what your personal environment comprises. Many organisations were designed by and for men. As a result, women face very different challenges and experiences.
2. Understands that organisations are not gender neutral. Traits and characteristics associated with maleness are more likely to be accepted as the norm. While many allegedly female skills are discussed and endorsed, they aren’t actually rewarded in day to day behaviour.
3. Is conscious of their own unconscious bias . . .and the organisation’s.  I was gender blind for years, accepting as the norm that senior people were usually male. What beliefs have potential coaches challenged in their own attitude to gender diversity. If they say they treat everyone the same, there may be a lack of insight into the issues.
4. Realises that men and women may be differently motivated. Women are more likely to say that they want advancement so that they can make a difference rather than so they can gain status or power. Now, that may just be what the ‘good girl’ in us thinks is more acceptable but it may actually touch on a very real difference. So a coach needs to discover what motivates the individual.
5. Questions the veracity of 360 feedback because he or she knows that labels like ‘aggressive’ are used differently for men and women and need careful exploration before setting off to remedy or tone down behaviour.
6. Is smart enough to know that none of the above may apply to you rather than making assumptions about what ‘all women’ are like because the wonderful thing about women is that they are themselves so diverse that they will all want to do everything differently!

So, choose well, engage in coaching and become the best, most authentic, all-round version of who you want to be .

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Engagement is a worldwide issue for large businesses. A 2012 Towers Watson global survey of 32,000 employees finds that ⅔ of employees are either disengaged or feel unsupported by the business. Once you realised that the truly engaged are sprinkled from the top to the bottom of the organisation you begin to wonder how companies stay in business. 26% are disengaged – the living dead going through enough of the motions to avoid detection (but then again – who is looking closely enough?) or the c.v. pedlars who just can’t wait to get out. Some of those by the way are the most senior people who talk about their ‘running away fund’ – as soon as the mortgage is paid, the children’s school fees organised, whatever… they promise themselves they’ll be off. Between these extremes you find everything from the almost catatonic, to the ones that could be boosted into highly engaged with the slightest encouragement.

Triage on the battlefield or A & E means that in an emergency you ignore those who will live or die anyway and you put your focus on those who could go either way. If you could increase engagement of the moderately engaged by even 10%, what commercial advantage could this give you? People are really complex but also quite simple. The human condition demands that in order to grow into fully formed adults we need to connect, belong, form attachments, receive recognition. Anything else leads to psychopathy. Our organisations are human systems. How do we make them humane as well? We hear a lot of theory about Emotional Intelligence but somehow behaving in an emotionally intelligent way becomes awfully difficult when you have been encouraged for years to leave your feelings at the door as you clock in. So the emotions talked about most in the corporate world are anxiety, stress, fear, frustration. The positive, life enhancing feelings like excitement, joy, love, fascination, inspiration are a little less obvious.

We also hear quite a lot of talk from senior people about their need to develop intimacy with people at work. Yet, when we work in groups with clients, every time they approach what could be an intimate moment of genuine thought or self-disclosure, some wise guy cracks a joke or uses another displacement device to avoid the fearsome risk of embarrassment. When you then put them into a structured exercise that requires to go beyond the usual mundanities of the weather, the best back roads or the budget, and give them the opportunity to engage in deep and meaningful topics, they take to it like ducks to water. Often people feel constrained about talking about  anything personal with work colleagues. Of course, professional communication should be planned and purposeful but in order to really know your people, understand their drivers it is critical to be comfortable having some of those deep and meaningful conversations in ordinary time not just when big life events intrude.

When working with leaders to enable them to become emotionally connected and inspirational, we often start with heroic leadership styles – Henry V, Tim Collins, and the like, to challenge and refresh stale, jargonised linguistics but then it always has to move on to emotional openness and self revelation. That takes guts but, when, from a position of perceived strength, they open up about their own doubts and fears they transmogrify into the type of leader people might actually want to follow.

Top tips:

1) Response contingent positive reinforcement – fancy words for ‘catch someone doing something (anything) right and tell them immediately’. Point out what strengths they were using to do it and ask them to find new ways of using those strengths. Every one gives positive feedback, but few do it well or often enough and far too many think it is the mere bread in the sandwich that allows you to tell people the bad stuff.

2) Use selective self-disclosure. A leader who looks perfect (and only you know you are not) or tries to appear perfectly in control at all times is not a good role model. Someone who copes inspires us better. Let them see some of your workings, how you got to this point in your calculations or ability to see the future e.g. I had some real doubts about this path but I overcame them because… I have had my dark nights of the soul, but now…

3) Love people to bits – that’s the White Water mantra. However awkward, difficult or different from you people choose to be, find what is wonderful, unique, special and admirable in them. Focus on that, tell them genuinely what you like and respect about them, reward steps in the right direction and ignore the ‘naughty ‘ behaviour- (works for children too!)

4) Be brave enough to allow greater intimacy. Avoid the instinct to shut down. People are capable of huge and deep thoughts about the meaning of life. See where that goes instead.

Averil, François and all at White Water Group

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• that women have jobs now. . .
• as they outperform boys at school and University , the chances might be that where fair pay occurs, they might earn more than their male partners.
• it takes two people to create a baby, yet we always hold women to ransom for childcare arrangements
• that many couples actually talk about these things and work out how they want to handle their arrangements and so it is none of our business
• the press has a bias, unconscious or otherwise, and delights in pitting women against each other – i.e. a woman’s place is  always in the wrong!

Let’s help people get over outmoded beliefs and think about how a modern successful world needs to look.

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Do we live on a ‘happiness scale’? Averil was recently a guest on Radio 5 Live, debating on happiness and well-being. With her Leadership hat on, she makes the point that people who are fortunate enough to be able to play to their  strengths at work are often the most happy – and how some of  the people we work with in the Corporate World are unaware ( until working with White Water, of course ) of how to deploy these individual strengths to their – and colleagues – best advantage. Savour the moment with Averil and Mike Newby, the happiest man in Harrogate, and in fact the UK!

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