Confronting biases and finding your luck surface area

Financial Executive Women (FEW)?recently brought together Morningstar’s Annika Bradley,?Jody Fitzgerald and Jamie Wickham to share perspectives on biases in the workplace and career development. The discussion was chaired by the association’s CEO Alex Tullio. ?

With a natural love and talent for maths, both Jody and Annika found themselves working in financial services – “my first experience with bias”, quipped Jody. With combined experiences of over 40 years in the sector, both leaders spoke about their experiences with biases and their career journeys.

Having your voice heard

Jody called out the communication biases so inherent in countless meetings that she has attended. It is an experience that “every single woman on this call would have experienced” where an idea is dismissed by a woman in a meeting only to have it embraced later by a man with the same idea. Women often in this situation are “just not heard”. Jody spoke about the problem being underpinned by the way women communicate citing the example of Margaret Thatcher who used a vocal coach to change the way she spoke. She also believes it is incumbent on men to really be quite conscious of women being marginalised in the conversation and to call it out when appropriate. ?Importantly though she added that it was important not “sweat the small stuff” because quite often, sometimes people are unconsciously bias, and do not intend to be harmful”.

Driving inclusion

While there was an awareness around diversity, what was also important was inclusion. It’s great to have targets, but “if people don’t feel included than it’s kind of irrelevant,” Jody says noting the earlier theme on communication biases, “if you are not being heard, than you are not being included”. As CEO of the business, Jamie acknowledged that diversity is about “good business outcomes” but it was also about “bringing people to together to share their perspectives. “We have made plenty of mistakes in the past where we have not had that those different perspectives around the room. To me it’s really important to give people that voice. Allowing people in the room that space to offer up their views is really important and acknowledging their views is honestly just common decency”.

Lady luck

There were also experiences shared on career journeys. As a lead portfolio manager for Morningstar Investment Management, Jody manages portfolios totalling $5 billion funds, but remembers her early days when she was told to “look hot” for investment committee meetings. ?Even today, Jody remains only among a handful of female portfolio managers in Australia and is seen as an oddity in the largely male dominated industry where she is sometimes jarringly considered a “collectible object”. Annika shared her experience of building an “intentional career”. Annika leads a manger research team 14 – 2 based in Mumbai. She spoke about the importance of “building a breadth of technical skills” and shared concept by the ex-CEO of Disney Bob Iger about “increasing your luck surface area. “It really resonated with me. That idea of being able to take opportunities as doors open and respond opportunistically when those opportunities come up. It really is incredibly important from a career perspective. And I think that that is certainly something that I hold dear”.?