Career Coaching Tips for Lockdown - Make This Month Count

Here we go again. One month of lying low, to protect both ourselves and others (I am determined to think positively about this month to keep myself and you upbeat and motivated). You may think that means you can't go do anything positive career-wise but I am determined to #makethismonthcount. At regular intervals during the next 28 days, I shall be posting career tips for professional women here so please do drop by and join me. They will be short, I promise; just long enough to have a cup of tea and a short break, all while enhancing your career.

Make This Month Count - Zoom Meetings!

Image courtesy of @cookiethepom, Unsplash

OK, please don't run away. I know we're all a bit fed up with Zoom meetings and the endless jokes about doing them in your underwear (adds a new poignancy to my Mum's favourite phrase of All Fur Coat and No Knickers, although for the avoidance of doubt, I have always been fully, if not appropriately, dressed). See Mrs Potato Head...

That said, they are here to stay for the foreseeable future so here's my career coaching tip on getting the best out of Zoom meetings.

Be Heard As Well As Seen - Speak Up.

Yes, I know you can get muted, etc, but we are going to rise above that. Weird stuff happens on Zoom. Actually, where women are concerned weird stuff happens in ordinary face-to face meetings: Zoom magnifies it.

This weird stuff (and I'm not making this up or just recalling anecdotes from my coaching; research shows this to be true) is that somehow men do not hear women's voices in the same way that they hear other men speaking.

Yes, it's a joke but it's a joke with some truth behind it. As Mary Beard once said

We have not yet learned to hear authority in women's voices.

Often when we get talked over in meetings it's because men genuinely do not hear us properly. (They also read 30% fewer facial expressions than us, so our plaintive eyebrow raising may well fall on deaf eyes, but that's another story.)

Do not take this personally (it's not you, it's them), but resolve to Speak Up. The technique that works for most of my coaching clients is to speak early on in a meeting and let them (the chaps) get used to hearing your voice. The longer you wait to speak the harder it becomes. Even you will sound surprised by your voice if you leave it too long. Finally you say something and everyone is frantically searching the screen to see who has piped up, which can be very off-putting. It needn't be anything profound, just a general greeting, or confirming what you understand the purpose of the meeting to be, anything will do. Get your voice out there early on in proceedings.

Academic Seminars

Interestingly, in the world of academia, at seminars, if women do not speak first, or are asked to speak very early on by the chair, all the women in the room make much less of a contribution than if a woman speaks first. Imagine, all that talent and expertise lost to the group.

So here's a learning point for everyone: if you are chairing a Zoom meeting, ask a woman the first question. It doesn't disadvantage the men as they will speak up anyway. Speak up early on in your Zoom meeting. You will be helping every other woman in the group. It's positively your civic duty! Let's hear more women's voices. Diversity is important.

RenewYou - Make This Month Count