How do we inspire through first impressions?

This weekend, I was lucky enough to watch the England Lionesses win the European Championship at Wembley. As you can see from the photo, I was joined by two of my kids and one of their mates.

My kids are football mad, they play all the time but this was their first experience of a live match. Their first time seeing the pitch as you walk through the crowds, celebrating their first goal, conceding their first goal, the roar of the crowd. As an avid football fan myself, I can promise you that you always remember your first.

That first impression will stay with my son and daughter forever, so thankyou to the lionesses for inspiring my daughter and educating my son. My generation and others before have not had the opportunity to live through this particular first impression.?I am incredibly proud that their first game was an England match and even more so that it was an England ladies match. They cheered for every player, sang every song and fell in love with the sport even further.

I then started to think about first impressions in the context of gender norms in the workplace (it was a long journey to and from the game!). How many young men, or young women walk into their first interview to meet a senior male, or read up on the CEO who is male, or are managed by their first boss who is male? These first impressions?must?subconsciously set an expectation of what is possible. There must be an impact on ambition and there must be an impact on confidence, maybe even self belief. At Wembley on Sunday, the opportunity to say to my daughter “that could be you one day” and the subsequent smile and twinkle in her eye felt different. It felt like a true belief.??Of course gender is not the only hurdle to success but there’s more we can do.?

Just like the lionesses have inspired my kids and plenty more across the world, I have, we have, as business leaders a?responsibility?to do the same in the workplace. As a kid you often hear the phrase “the world is your oyster”, we have a unique opportunity to make sure that my daughter and your daughters know that the world is indeed their oyster too. In my opinion this can’t be a women-only topic, as I’ve written above it’s just as important for my son to have female role models as it is for my daughter.

?Some personal opinions:

• ?I’ve often found in business that high performing females are encouraged into mentoring schemes and paired with senior females. It’s just as important for high performing males to be mentored by senior females.?
• Women cannot have their careers punished for choosing to have families (this applies to same-sex relationships). Choosing to have children should not get in the way of promotions, opportunity and progression.
• With the new hybrid working model that most companies have adopted, it’s arguably the biggest opportunity in the history of the workplace for companies to proactively adapt to support family life (male and female).?

This experience helped me realise the responsibility I have personally to create more opportunity and belief from first impression to last impression, both inside and outside of the workplace. A good friend who I discussed this topic with posed the question 'Can you be what you can't see?' It's up to us to ensure that opportunity, self-belief and ambition looks the same to everyone.

To conclude, an open question to the Dads, Brothers and Uncles that are reading: If your female employees were your Daughters, Sisters or Nieces, would you be confident that they are sufficiently inspired to fulfil their potential based on their first impressions of your business and subsequently at each stage of their career journey? What would you change for them?

#womenempowerment #lionesses #womeninbusiness #leadership #womenchangemakers #allyship