Men dominate 75% of conversations and decision-making in groups.
___
You are at a big networking event in New York City. The room is bright and filled with well-tailored men engaging in great conversation. Confidence fills the air.
Suddenly, a beautiful woman walks into the room with her long hair, shining eyes, impeccable makeup, flowy knee-length red dress, and stylish heels.
She looks around and begins to walk towards a small group of other women.
Now, what did you visualize here? Did you see a powerful, successful woman that you want to meet to attain some business insights? Did you see a beautiful woman that you undressed with your mind and want to only connect to ask her out on a date?
Gentlemen, you may not be aware of what happens to women in networking events. If you are reading this article, then I am certain that you are one of the good men. I just want to help you see the big picture and empower women in these situations and others. It is not only for their benefit, but it is to your benefit too.
The Current State of Affairs for Women
If you are honest, you know it is hard for anyone to walk into a room full of high-powered business people. It can be intimidating for women to talk business with a group of male executives.
In an earlier example, I exemplified the woman at the networking event. Her intent is to be professional and not come across as “flirtatious.” In addition, she wants to have a sense of uniqueness, which results in her fashionable look. Unfortunately, her confidence escapes her. So, she is more comfortable connecting with other women, which means that she will miss out on opportunities to connect with men.
Although, when a woman does summon the courage to connect with men, she is often shut out from the male dominated conversation and perceived as a sex object instead of a businesswoman.
In a fundraising effort, Kathryn Minshew (Co-Founder of The Muse) had to carefully temper her attitude. “The more comfortable I am being nice, calm, and sweetly aggressive, the better I seem to do,” she says. “But it’s a difficult balance between coming off as strong enough to lead a company, but not so strong that you’re perceived as a bitch.”
One major key to success in any field is confidence. Unfortunately, when surrounded mostly by men, women often lack confidence due to extra scrutiny.
Sharon Rowlands told Fast Company that after her appointment to CEO of Thompson Financial, she felt that her ideas were criticized more than those of her male counterparts – even men who had less seniority than her. When men judge women so harshly, it lessens their confidence, ultimately lowering their chance of success.
Another factor is something called “mansplaining.” When a woman wants to share an idea amongst male colleagues, she may find herself being interrupted in a patronizing way. Studies show that men dominate 75% of conversations and decision-making in groups. They also state that women are more likely to be interrupted while talking. As a result, women often find themselves being talked over, cut off, and forced to listen.
A fear of failure is known to be a strong inhibitor for women entrepreneurs, who are looking to seize opportunities (2014 GEM Global Report). However, women tend to be even more conservative and risk-averse, when it comes to making important decisions for their businesses. While this can lead to a better risk-adjusted return for women CEOs, it can also hurt women, according to Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary.
How to Support Women and Benefit From It Too
Fortunately, learning from your past failures is the fastest way to excellence, according to The Talent Code. Since our brains have the capacity for massive expansion, we can become incredibly wise if we reform our missteps as learning opportunities.
So, if you have found yourself acting in any of the aforementioned ways that may injure a woman’s potential for success, fear not! You can grow and become the man that any woman entrepreneur would be lucky to partner with in business. Below are some great guidelines to follow.
- Get Perspective
Be honest and open with yourself. Have you made these mistakes before? Where do you have to go to improve? How will you bridge that gap?
You may have to start on your own side of the street first.
Are you feeling the worthiness that you deserve? If not, it can affect you in negative ways, including arrogance and lack of respect for other people. Both of these consequences can ultimately lead to the mistreatment of women entrepreneurs.
You must increase your worthiness to a high level. Shift your self-worth to increase your net worth! Being true to yourself and working to increase your own self-image can help you support and uplift the women around you as well.
- Have Her Back
Once you start to change your own behavior, put others to the test. If you see another man approaching a woman entrepreneur for the wrong reasons, call him out on it. Invite her to finish her thought or encourage her to share her idea.
Creating a comfortable environment for women can greatly increase your startup’s chances of success.
Women possess strong communication skills and social intelligence. They can overcome obstacles and hardships, but a little male encouragement can be the motivation that she needs to catapult success.
- Engage By Listening
Allowing the women in your life to speak freely about their current projects can greatly benefit both parties. According to Stephanie Burns (Founder of Chic CEO), women are extremely collaborative, even with potential competition.
By listening and asking insightful questions, you can open up endless doors for collaboration and growth. Men and women have different views, ideas, and insights, which can lead to better problem solving and higher performance.
Women also tend to prioritize building relationships that could lead to future sales. Genuine connections are very important to success, and nurturing those relationships can go a long way for any business.
- Offer Encouragement
By being the good listener, you are not only a shining example to others, but you are actively increasing your ability for profit. Women love to collaborate and share stories of success.
If you have a woman spreading positive words about you to her community, it will only spread even farther. Women have 80-85% of buying power in the United States, so genuine connections with women in your circle can be extremely beneficial to you.
Encouragement is also extremely motivating for women in the workplace. 56% percent of women were motivated to become entrepreneurs by the encouraging effort of a company’s founder, compared to only 31% of men, according to this study. A few motivating words can go a long way for women.
- Offer Quality Mentorship
Women entrepreneurs often have difficulty finding mentors that can help them through the hardships of starting a business. Why?
Well, it’s due to the lack of women entrepreneurs currently in the world. It’s well known that entrepreneurs with mentors are substantially more successful than those without mentors.
No person truly becomes great on their own. Our success is linked to the people we choose to have around us.
As Jim Rohn said, “Success is something you attract by the person you become. And what you practice in private, you’ll be rewarded for in public.”
So, let’s take a fresh look at our networking event. You are at a big networking event in New York City, where you and other well-tailored men are engaging in great conversation. Confidence fills the air.
Suddenly, a stunning woman entrepreneur walks into the room. You can see she is a little intimidated by the number of men in the room and proceeds to go towards a group of women. You decide to approach her to start a conversation, gradually bringing her over and introducing her to the other men in your group.
You do not know it at the time, but it turned out to be one of the best decisions. Her ideas and network have instrumentally influenced the growth and success of your company. In return, she makes some valuable connections for her business.
Wouldn’t you prefer this scenario?
Source: 30dB.com – Women Entrepreneurs
About these results: Encouraging results both in % positives and in volume of opinions on the subject. It is also interesting to see the positives drop a few points when the results are for entrepreneurs alone. — Howard K. 30db
—
Photo credit: Getty Images
Men avoid counseling due in part to societal pressures. Some organizations have responded with on-line resources so their is less social stigma. Could on-line resources like linkedin or gofundme fill in the hap for female entrepreneurs? I know guys going through divorce who wouldn’t communicate with the exes except via text so they’d have a record of what was said. It might remove some of the fear and ambiguity on both sides.
I can appreciate the spirit of this article…workplace equality and calling men to lead in that effort. Cool. But the delivery is borderline condescending. Like women are really that fragile, helpless, and emotionally needy. Umm, no. That’s taking us backwards. I’m also afraid that the author really doesn’t understand the male/female dynamic from the man’s perspective. Trust me, there are many MEN that want to act in all the same ways as the author describes how a “woman does”. But his ass would get smashed on and minimized too, in a corporate environment that focuses on PROFIT over everything. The… Read more »
Jennifer makes some excellent points in the article and I commend her for writing it and brining a female perspective to light that often isn’t showcased. Yes, women need to cut out the catty, backstabbing bitchy ways that many of us treat one another, but the article doesn’t pertain to the fact that women have significant opportunity to support and build each other up. The article’s focus is ways that both men and women can benefit in general, if men supported women more in scenarios where women are a minority. From my own experience, in the banking world for many… Read more »
Gentlemen, the frustration and anger here is symptomatic of the problem I describe. You are completely accurate, in that the article does not address women owning their side of the street, which they must. Dressing provocatively, gossip and drama, are all part of what’s broken. There are many of us, however, that want to positively contribute, be successful, thrive and work in contribution to others as well as uplevel our own entrepreneurial endeavors. One of the main issues I’m tackling is the issue of woman keeping woman down and the transference of this repeatedly throughout generations. Why this occurs is… Read more »
Pull HR in? Often times they are part of the problem. Within the month the facility will completely run by women in that the one male co-director is retiring. The remaining female director was the director of our girls facility – closed, She then moved to the other male adolescent facility – closed last month. Granted in both cases there was some extenuating circumstances but those circumstances also effected our facility which was run by a male but we didn’t close. “There tend not to be organizations supporting those who are not being discriminated against in society” Such as white… Read more »
I appreciate the article and I don’t mean to sound harsh. I’m simply telling you why a lot of men aren’t aggressively assisting women. In the field I work in, information technology, most of the bosses I’ve had were women, but I’ve been blessed to have expert power. I one job, I was the only guy, but was also the lead tech, database administrator, network administrator, programmer, engineer, etc. I kept the place running so I had as much say, sometimes more so, than my bosses. I also handled things differently than some today. When the “girls” would talk about… Read more »
Excellent article! The key points raised by the author reveal what’s important to women and how men can comfortably contribute to the process of empowering women. Oftentimes, we hear and read male comments about potential “harassment” and “male equality”. First, harassment is a crime. If there is an allegation, it should be taken seriously and the legal process should be followed. Secondly, “male equality” is as mythical and ignorant as the manufactured term, “reverse racism”. There is no such thing. When men introduce these “questions or challenges”, they reveal their lack of genuineness and their only desire to pretend to… Read more »
Allow me to share my usual clinical staffing. Our clinical staff consisted of 4 men and 8 women but as of this writing, two male staff have left. There are two staffings during the week. One is to discuss specific clients and their progress, if there is any. The other is to discuss clinical issues which include things like Joint Commission audit (we had this past week) behavioral issues, etc. The meeting start out good where we attempt to follow an agenda. I would say that within 30 minutes, the meeting completely falls apart because he women, yes it is… Read more »
What really bugs me about some of these articles and their writers is that they don’t respond. We’ve had some guys here talking yet the author says we stifle the female conversation…. where is your conversation Jennifer? In reading the responses, there is plenty to discuss on your part. The silence is deafening.
As a millennial, I am no fan of the traditional gender roles. So, I welcome women who want to be entrepreneurs.
As a commenter stated, a women’s feminine and fashionable style can sometimes get in the way of her intention to network and do business.
So, I think it may be a good idea for women to go with similar business attire as men. It will keep the focus on business, which is Jennifer’s point in this article.
Nonetheless, I appreciate her for raising awareness about this issue from a woman’s perspective.
I’d love to support women entrepreneur, but see, we have this whole father’s rights thing going on. We have male mental health, suicide, physical health, homelessness, veteran suicide, male suicide, male choice, parental rights, the profiling of our boys as rapists, the male only draft, depression, sexual abuse, domestic violence against men, circumcision, 1/3 male college enrollment, the dating format, death rate, the destruction of male community, assault on our very essence as men that I’m dealing with right now. As soon as I’m done with all that, I’ll jump right in and help to enhance the 80% start up… Read more »
Well said DJ
Are there as many articles to women telling them to help men in an area, say support in being a teacher to fend off pedo hysteria, or allowed to be SAHD more…as there are articles by women asking for more help from men? Starts to feel like men are expected to fix the world mostly. “You are at a big networking event in New York City. The room is bright and filled with well-tailored men engaging in great conversation. Confidence fills the air. Suddenly, a beautiful woman walks into the room with her long hair, shining eyes, impeccable makeup, flowy… Read more »
Guy walks up to stunning women. What’s the first thing that pops into her mind. I’ve tried to mentor women, but they often seem to think that there is an ulterior motive and the last thing you want is to be accused of sexual harassment. Why aren’t you considering that the men might be intimidated (afraid) to talk to her?
There is no way I’d be caught dead in any situation where I did not have witnesses, no way I’d allow myself to be alone with a woman in a business environment…and there is no way that I’d involve myself with them until such time as I knew that I could trust them. There are some that you know you can right off, but the rest? Far too risky today for a man, especially when women have the power to destroy us by accusation alone. That’s what happens when our sexism (the part that we never talk about) directs us… Read more »
Preach
Do me a favor Jennifer, would you give me a list of organizations where the focus is on men and business? Perhaps you could give me a list events where male business owners can receive guidance, support, mentorships for their male owned businesses. How about business associations for male business owners?