Forbes: Why Women Leaders Are Leaving Their Jobs At Record Rates

One New Year’s resolution (for me) was to try and blog more as I am conscious I am being less reflective on things I read, webinars I attend, podcasts I listen to, etc. We will see over the coming months if I manage to keep the blogging up or not!

With International Women’s Day not far away, it was interesting to see this article from Forbes.

Obviously, I am at risk of being shouted down here but, in my opinion, there are a few things in this article I thought I would reflect on:

  • “leave their jobs to get their needs met” and an increasing gap between men and women – are differences between men and women’s needs still so pronounced?
  • “the economic and personal pressure is higher on women than ever before” – this sounds like a big claim but it may be the case – see my thoughts in the paragraph below*
  • “burnout as the main reason” – again, is this not a universal issue? What is happening in corporate America!?
  • “harassment and microaggressions” perhaps answers the question in the last bullet along with “lack of flexibility” and “limited advancement opportunities”. All of these reasons can, of course, be issues for groups beyond women and the suggestions listed – such as “flexible hours” and hybrid work really should be the minimal for most leadership roles in a modern environment.

*Ultimately the issue for all households (whatever the gender) is that we have gone from a situation where many households could get by on one salary (my mum, for example, missed several years of work including a spell of around only 0.2FTE and later my dad was made redundant and had years of part-time work before retirement) to most families needing two FTE salaries to get by. This leads to political issues – for example, whilst President Biden might expect a good run into the election based on a (relative to other countries) strong economic position we are instead in the situation where memes like the below are rife.

The reality, of course, was very different for many people. However, the point about purchasing power of the masses versus the “1%” is clearly a major issue in many countries. Where women are being expected to fulfil traditional roles alone plus economic pressure then clearly there will be severe “economic and personal” pressure (as mentioned in the article – see bullets above).

The conclusion of the Forbes article includes “if companies want to retain valuable talent, they need to create an equitable workplace where women can thrive”. I think it is fair to say we can simply rewrite that as “if companies want to retain valuable talent, they need to create an equitable workplace where everyone can thrive”.

Where should managers/L&D draw the line?

I recently saw the below on Reddit:

All in all, the above “course”/”webinar” sounds pretty terrifying. Clearly there are big macro-economic issues at play in the (US) labour market but surely no manager or L&D team should consider that the kind of snooping to identify “warning signs” is morally acceptable – no matter your opinion on unions.

Having read a lot of union-related material from c.1900 for my undergraduate dissertation this really sounds like we (or perhaps western capitalism) have regressed in many industries to the “them vs us” mentality of the past. Therefore, those with good workplace environments, strong career development opportunities and high engagement/satisfaction really need to be vocal to show we do not need to revert to the negative and combative approach. There are enough bad things going on in the world, and real challenges to face, to not be fighting internally in our organizations and managers/L&D need to focus on achieving goals not fostering surveillance cultures.

Are you a problem solver or a solution seeker?

I might be very late to the party on coming across this interesting question – mentioned on the McKinsey Talks Talent podcast episode on “Human-centered AI: The power of putting people first” – but I just wanted to make a note related to it.

There is a good article on the topic over on Medium and I will not repeat the points made.

The article’s explanation of the question reminded me of arguments around information seeking behaviours and “knowing” versus “knowing where to look”. Nothing much else to add but an interesting one for issues such as capturing tacit knowledge and the nature of collaboration in different organizations.

In defence of counterfactual history

A recent podcast, an audio version of an article from The New Statesman, once again brought me to the topic of counterfactual history:

I am a big fan of counterfactual history (aka “virtual history” or “what if?”). This goes back to my time as an undergraduate history student and a module at my university that was made up of a series of counterfactual history scenarios, the assessment for the module being to write your own. In hindsight this was the most useful module in the degree as it developed the skills and habits for other modules, including empathy with the historical subjects, problem solving, thinking about alternative scenarios, challenges of cause and effect, etc.

Overall, that module stays with me as a transformational learning experience, even if historians are snobby about history that is not “real”. In many ways it was a fun, safe, space to consider the skills of history – a subject where you tend not to have labs or simulations offering such experiences.

Reflections on Guy Wallace’s “A Considered Response – Q&A with Leonard Houx”

This post is going to pick up some of the interesting bits from this recent conversation (recorded via Zoom and available on YouTube):

Leonard and I were in similar Higher Education circles a decade or so back and he has always been a good person to follow on social media, he was also excellent on the Learning Hack a while back. Guy is, of course, a “must sub” YouTube channel for L&D folks.

Just some of the bits I liked from this conversation (apologies if I’ve captured anything wrong):

  1. The odd UK ignoring of “instructional design” in preference for “learning design”, albeit with little clarity why.
    • I picked my MSc at the time as it was the only postgrad in the UK that specifically said it was doing ID and not LD or something else.
  2. Around 9:45 – “the mark of a true profession is consistency of terms and definitions” (Guy quoting from a past speech he heard).
  3. “Technology” should be application of science – not talking about the digital, online tools, etc.
  4. Sex Ed. vs Sex Training.
    • I’m going to borrow this from Bob/Guy for the difference between education (more general) and training (practical application, practice, etc).
  5. Lack of consistency in language difficult – never going to happen?
  6. Nothing new at conferences etc – partly as need to support always incoming people
    • I’ve previously suggested L&D conferences/shows could try and have “tracks” for more intro and higher-level things.
  7. I’m always amazed how both Leonard and Guy are able to recall authors, presenter names, etc. Whilst I read a lot of ID theory in my masters I am terrible for recalling a lot of this information – even though a lot is embedded in my practice. For example, I always forget it was Richard Clark with the 70% stat for SME knowledge.
  8. “Task set”
    • The never ending need to push performance-orientation!