Tits and teeth!

Quite the phrase, isn’t it. And sadly, one I’ve heard far too many times. 

 Its origins lay in theatre land – when that’s what was needed to hook your audience in. Now, it’s been adopted as slang and used to refer to woman who are just there to smile at the important man in the room and hope that this will help sway him. Pretty girls with nothing intelligent to add. 

Now I’d rather much rather be writing this blog post about how to implement an insight practice in to your business or how to be an effective leader when you’re a born nurturer, but the sad truth is that we have a long way to go before we can shake off the tits and teeth label. Far too long! 

 

Let’s try and quantify that, shall we?

The World Economic Forum recently updated their Global Gender Gap report and forecast that we won’t see gender parity for 135 years.

Now I appreciate that you may be thinking that is of course terrible, but it’s hard to relate to those global figures, surely the UK is right up there in terms of our progress? Sadly, the UK doesn’t even make it in to the top 20, not only that, but we’ve gone backwards, meaning that we are back where we were in 2006! 

And what about our industry? Women do quite well in marketing, no?

This is where it gets interesting – The DBA (if you haven’t heard of them, I’d encourage you check them out) and pretty much every industry body agree, that on the face of it, there is a much better balance when looking at overall male / female employees in design centric / marketing roles. However, when you dig down into it, you start to see that those numbers don’t hold when you look at the seniority levels within those businesses. Yep, you guessed it – the glass ceiling. In the early part of our careers, we match men job for job, but from around 30 that tails off. As we go off to start families and then stay at home or accept part time as we need to be the primary caregiver, our male counterparts continue to rise through the ranks. Resulting in only 32% of businesses having women in a business leadership role, and for our talented creative ladies, it makes for even more grim reading. Only 11% manage to make it to Creative Director, falling to a pitiful 9% for Executive Creative Director. 

Now, with that intro you might be thinking I’m going to go all Germaine Greer or Alanis Morrissette on you (hopefully you all know who they are!) But don’t worry, I can assure you I’m not a man hater or an extreme feminist, and this isn’t going to be story about how my career has prevailed in a triumphant battle of woman verses man. Just a few simple (and completely unrevolutionary) ideas, that any one of us can apply and push ourselves on to that 32 (or 11) %.

 

  1. There’s strength in numbers

I don’t think I’d have been able to progress up through the ranks of one of the best agencies in the country, as a mother to two small children had it not been for their commitment to gender parity. Everywhere around me, there were strong women leading projects, teams, the agency. 

Don’t get me wrong, I still had to work very hard, but doing it in a place that provided the same opportunities and support to women as they did to men, made it much more worthwhile.

Now I admit, finding these businesses is quite hard (see stats previously mentioned) but not impossible. So, whether you’re thinking about making a move to a new business / agency or working with a new client – take a look at the leadership / senior management and wherever you can, work for / with businesses that have female representation at that level. It’s usually a good indicator of the type of business they are and that you have a good chance of being taken seriously. Naturally, I’m in awe of the women who go first, but that doesn’t mean we all have to do that – there’s strength in numbers. 

2. Get your inbound strategy on

There’s no getting away from the fact that often, men are the ones shouting about their achievements and getting noticed for it. This confidence in their own abilities influences the ones around them and usually gets them where they want to go. They don’t actually find it any easier than us by the way, as humans we all get that horrible knot in our stomach when we have to stand up and say we’re good at something (for us Brits, it’s even worse). The only difference is, men don’t care so much about that feeling, where us women would much rather avoid it altogether – so we do!

But it’s not about shouting louder, or even shouting at all. Let’s apply our marketing brains to this. The scenario I’ve just explained is essentially an outbound strategy. You continue pumping out your messages about how good you are and what you have achieved until the right person hears it and converts. It is a time-consuming strategy and doesn’t always deliver ROI. The nirvana is a solid inbound strategy, right? Creating demand for what you do, so the leads come to you. This theory can be applied to our careers, you just need to find your niche and use that to influence. 

Something that’s helped me with this recently is a book called Key Person of Influence, by Daniel Priestly. He breaks down his influencing strategy into 5 key best practices and shows you how to improve each of them. You can get the book for free, and he also runs regular webinars and workshops. I’d encourage you all to at least follow him on LinkedIn and consider getting the book. It’s not just for business owners, it’s for anyone that wants to learn how they can progress and ultimately, influence.

  1. Finding mentors. 

I appreciate this is business advice 101. But still, so few people actually manage to get this in place. Now, I must be clear here for anyone not working for themselves, a mentor should NOT be your line manager. Your line manager is paid to support your development both in the execution of your role and your wider professional development. If you’re not getting that, you should be raising that internally, not looking to a mentor to provide that. And if you are managing someone but you haven’t been given the tools to know how to do this for them, you also should speak up – you now have a duty of care to your team and their careers. 

Lecture over! 

I’ve had several mentors over the years, both male and female. Some have helped me through a short period, some have been on for the whole ride, and I’ve never paid for any of them. I think it’s a bit of a misconception that you must sign up to a formal programme and pay someone to talk to you. Obviously, there is a place for that, but I don’t believe that’s your only option. There is a huge amount of people that have reached a level in their career where they have both the time and / or the inclination to help others, they’re just waiting to be asked. 

Also, mentorship doesn’t have to be something that last years, it can be short and effective if there is a key challenge to focus on – don’t be afraid to leapfrog off the experience and knowledge of others. This isn’t school anymore; we don’t have to learn everything we need to know from scratch on our own. Take the tried and tested methods, put your spin on them and get going. 

So, if you have someone in your network already that you admire, who’s done some of the things you view as successful and believe they will challenge you – go for it, reach out. At the very worst they will say no, they don’t have time. But they will be flattered and no doubt as soon as they do have time, you’ll be first in line. 

  1. Make a life plan

Do you know that you are twice as likely to achieve your goals if you make a plan and track your progress? Also, multiple studies have shown that having a plan can really help develop confidence within yourself, because what you are striving to achieve is in pursuit of something else, rather than what may initially seem like self-serving goals. Cue stomach knots getting a little bit looser!

Anyone reading this working for themselves will be saying ‘hmm yes, I already have a plan’ and if you’re in a business, you may be thinking – yep, I already know I want to be Marketing Director by the time I’m 35. But is that actually what success means to you? What about you as humans? For me, success is not just defined by what level we get to, or how much money we make, it’s about what contribution we can make to solving problems that are bigger than us, it’s about what kind of mother I can be and how I want to spend my time. That’s where a life plan is different – work is just one equal part of it, alongside finances, family, health and wellbeing, and hobbies / holidays or treats to name but a few. There are lots of free templates you can use if you hop on to Google. But I urge you all to do one.  

We all want more women to break through that glass ceiling, but so often for those women that do, it is at the expense of too many other things in life. Let’s redefine what success means and create a generation of women leaders who are so much more than a job title. 

So, as I said, I don’t think much of the things that have helped me progress my career are revolutionary or new, more often than not, it’s the simple ideas that work best.

      • Find those businesses that already value the contribution that women can make – there is strength in numbers.
      • Don’t shout louder, demonstrate your skills, generate demand, and get your inbound strategy on.
      • Find a mentor and use their experience and skills to advance your career, you’re not stealing it, they’re giving it to you for you to apply to your context.
      • Make a life plan and measure your progress.

I only really figured out what I truly wanted after doing this last step thanks to my wonderful friend and mentor, Nicky Walker. Which is both great, and sad. I wish someone had suggested this to me a long time ago. However, I now know exactly what I want, what success means to me, and how I’m going to achieve it. I’ve shown myself the compassion and kindness that I’ve always strived to show others and now I’m embarking on a new chapter of my life, founding a new agency, with the best of the 11%. 

Being seen as good humans, and not just tits and teeth.