Do mentors pass down their biases? ?? Let's fix this in 2023 ??

Happy New Year! ???Here are some resources to help women and men rethink how they talk to and about women in the workplace. Also, January is mentoring month, so it’s a good time to level up your knowledge and strategy for empowering younger women! ~ Dana Theus?

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USING MORE INPOWERING LANGUAGE WITH WOMEN

The way we talk about, and to, women can either INpower them, or DISinpower them.??

And there are a lot of "truths" about women in the workforce that have baked in some pretty DISinpowering truths that reflect many unconscious biases.

Women deserve better mentoring than they often get

Sadly, many of these disempowering truths are actually handed down to us by mentors we look up to. Why? Because our mentors have biases, too!

For experienced?women who mentor other women, many of these truths actually WERE the truth when they began their career. Unfortunately, by failing to update their own perspective, they perpetuate many of the cultural biases that create barriers for women to succeed in the modern workplace environment. They also sometimes hold themselves back by not taking the opportunity to reframe their own experience in a contemporary context.

For many?male mentors?passing on such truths, they often think they’re being sensitive and understanding of the special challenges their female proteges experience. Compared to other men who don’t acknowledge gender-specific challenges, such mentors deserve credit for trying. However, like the female mentors passing on outdated assumptions about why women struggle to get into leadership, these men are simply baking in barriers to women’s success.

?Check out some of the tropes and truths we can reframe to INpower ourselves and other women

I've identified 9 tropes and truths we need to rethink. Check them all out below. Here's one of my favorites:

• TROPE: You must work twice as hard for half the credit.
• TRUTH: Working twice as hard just earns you more work.

And there's more that cover executive presence, Imposter Syndrome, "never cry at work," how to get a raise, women's natural strengths -- and more. Read them?all here.

Know someone who could use help updating old tropes about women in leadership??Send them this guide .

NEXT MEETING: JANUARY 18th @ 12pm EASTERN - Join us for an uplifting session where we’ll reframe the tropes women hear about how to succeed with truths that inspire and inpower us! [Mastermind Zoom]?

NEW FEATURE for 2023:?Speed Peer Mentoring - bring a challenge you want help on NOW - Join Us!

ANNOUNCING: MENTORING WOMEN: TROPES & TRUTHS [1 page PDF]

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POWER TAKES FOR JANUARY MENTORING MONTH

Thank Your Mentor Today

January 27th is Thank Your Mentor Day and we bet you have at least one person who has helped you grow into the professional you are today. Here’s a fun?list ?of 25 famous women who share how their favorite mentors influenced their lives. How has someone in your life made a difference? January is a great time to thank them!?Gratitude ?is an inpower skill.

Seeing Potential in Someone That Doesn’t Look Like You

As some of our masterminders have noted in previous meetings, formal organizational mentoring programs have their drawbacks. This HBR?podcast ?describes barriers to doing mentoring/sponsorship programs at scale.?First, there’s the “forced” feeling which comes from being assigned to a mentor, which removes the organic nature of connecting with someone who you can relate to. Secondly–proteges crave mentors and sponsors who look like them. They want to hear stories and advice that shows they, too, can succeed. Of course, this is often a challenge because women and people of color aren’t well-represented in senior ranks. So, mentors dole out “advice I wish I had when I was younger” that may not always be applicable. And if the advice feels inauthentic to the protege, both parties may doubt their ability to succeed as a team. Here’s a great suggestion for the proteges who are receiving “Trope-y” advice. Instead of feeling helpless in the face of generic and not very applicable mentoring input, offer some reverse mentoring and say, “This feedback is very typical of the kind of feedback a lot of women get. It’s not specific enough.?What does it look like when?I’m?doing it right?”?

Selecting a Mentor: Use This Important Filter

“Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless.”~ Goethe?

You may not get to choose a formally assigned mentor. But you can always foster relationships with folks who can help you grow. When vetting potential mentors, consider that person’s expertise in the industry as well as their influence and power in your organization. Although you may gravitate to someone who makes you feel safe, don’t make that your only filter. You should also consider mentors who can help you understand what kind of “promotable ” work assignments, as well as the bona fides and political capital, you need to help you secure opportunities.?Research ?shows that career trajectories are often linked to a mentor’s accomplishments – bringing to mind the old adage, “hitch your wagon to a star.”

What If More Women Mentored Men?

We’ve reported before that?some men are hesitant to mentor women ?due to a fear of #metoo backlash. Citing similar dynamics,?researchers ?posited an interesting hypothesis: what if we flipped the script and had more women take on the role of mentoring men? The study authors argue that there’s a huge piece missing from the discrimination discussion: the positive benefits to organizations and society if more women were put into roles mentoring men. Combatting gender bias isn’t just an issue of building awareness. Instead, organizations need to break the cycle of ingroup/outgroup barriers – of which male/female is one of the most entrenched. What’s needed is interaction to break down stereotypes. The study authors say that the established pattern of an older male leader mentoring a younger female protege is potentially fraught with challenges. But what if experienced women mentored younger male proteges? It’s largely an academic question at this point because most of the mentoring studies lack sufficient data from female mentors, and there are still too few women at the top. However, for senior women who want to break cultural barriers in their organizations, this is something actionable you can take on for yourself. Would it work at your organization?

One thing is clear in reviewing the resources above, effective mentoring is more complicated than older people telling younger people what they did to succeed when they were younger. Want some help distilling it down to apply in your own life and career??Join us in the January 18th??mastermind call where we’ll discuss strategies for how women can get the mentoring they deserve!

NEW! INPOWER MENTORING TOOLKITS

MENTORS: Want to be a better mentor to younger women?

?PROTéGéS: Want to help your mentor better support you to become the authentic feminine leader you know you can be??

Here are two new toolkits I’ve put together for mentors and their female proteges to help them maximize their potential to work together. Here’s what’s included:

• Mentoring basics
• Templates to help establish a formal mentoring relationship
• Guidelines to help establish informal mentoring relationships
• Women’s leadership topics and resources to stimulate powerful discussions between female and male mentors and their female protégés

Feel free to share these resources with anyone you know who wants to better empower women through mentoring. MENTORING WOMEN TOOLKITS

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LATEST INPOWER BLOG POST

Replacing Tropes for Mentoring Women with the Truths They Deserve

For decades women and their mentors have worked together to solve the puzzle of how to raise more deserving women into leadership positions in all kinds of organizations. This focus on mentoring women has contributed to great progress elevating women into leadership, but there is still a long way to go in facilitating effective mentoring and sponsoring of high-potential women.??

After experiencing a number of organizational cultures myself as a leader and coaching women on the leadership track for almost a decade, I’ve come to the conclusion that too often mentoring that simply passes down experience from previous generations, from women and men alike, unintentionally bakes in some of the barriers the mentors faced in earning their way into leadership positions. I believe that to change the cultures that create barriers for women, they and their mentors together, must level up their collaborations and better navigate biases to women’s workplace progress.? CONTINUE READING

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I hope you’re ready for a powerful 2023 with InPower Women. Looking forward to sharing your success with you in the months to come!

InPowering Powerful Women,

?

Dana Theus

Executive Coach

InPower Coaching

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