Ladies, Stop #LEANINGIN and Get Men to Stand-Up

So the facts are simple and well documented. Women make on average 79 cents to, to men for the same exact work. 79 cents. This has a compounding effect on families, which is often not talked about, by the way, and the economy of $430,000 over the lifetime of a woman's career. One of the current solutions being offered is for women to just work harder and take ownership for their careers. The lean-in movement has created a thriving industry of workshops, seminars, conferences, and books dedicated to create that pipeline of talented women. Yet the wage gap still exists. And I can't agree with this more. Great book, great platform, but yet it's not moving the needle. So they— what lacks is a robust pipeline of women into management positions, those key roles. Why? Because senior leadership in most companies— this is where I got that information— still 85% of them, men, are not engaged. Every CEO has the information on pay equity and pipeline demographics, and as long as women are the only ones talking about it, there's no reason to change. Men need to stand up regarding pay equality—

men—

and advancing women. They owe it to their working spouses and their daughters— keep that in mind because that's going to be a key part of our conversation today— to demand equitable opportunity. So you're going to listen and learn today about what the tipping point for women issues and workplace inequalities are. What are best-in-class companies doing to attract, retain, and advance women? And what critical role do men play in advancing you women in the workplace? Now, I'm proud to say men do listen to this program, but ladies, I'm going to tell you right now, be sure to download this episode, share the video we're creating with our guests today, and take it into work, take it into your bosses, into your teams, and into any individual that has an influence within the organization, okay? Welcome back everyone. It is my pleasure to welcome Jeffrey Tobias Halter back to the show. Hi Jeffrey.

Nice to be back.

I am thrilled to have you. He's a thought leader on the strategies companies need to implement to accelerate their commitment to the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women. Jeffrey is a gender strategist and the president of Y Women, the letter Y Women. A strategic consulting company focused on engaging men in women leadership issues.

Woo-hoo!

Little shout out.

Woo-hoo!

Why Women focuses on driving actionable business plans and strategies to help organizations create integrated women leadership strategies. He is a former director of diversity strategy for the Coca-Cola Company. Jeffrey is author of two books, Why Women: The Leadership Imperative to Advancing Women and Engaging Men, and Selling to Men, Selling to Women. Ooh, I like that. He writes for numerous business publications and is a two-time TEDx speaker. Go look for him. TEDx speaker, Jeffrey Tobias Halter. His clients include Fortune 500 companies in fields from packaged goods to automotive, which we're going to talk about all of that. I am so happy you're here.

Thanks for having me, Beth.

I love this subject.

I can tell.

I do. I get so passionate when it— especially when someone like you have the courage. And I've been posting pics and photos to complement this conversation out there. And one of them is about this man holding a sign that says, "Thank you for the courage." You know, have the courage to speak up for women. Where did you and why did you get into this?

I would love to tell you that 20 years ago this is the work I'd be doing, and I would be lying. I'm a career sales guy, 20 years with Procter Gamble and Coca-Cola, sales manager, P&L responsibility. I was taking a staff rotation assignment, as you do, you know, before you go back out in the field and get promoted. And I was at headquarters, and for your guests in Atlanta who remember this, in 2000 the Coca-Cola Company had a $200 million discrimination lawsuit. It was racial in nature. It could have been brought by women. But literally overnight, I went from working in sales training, which was my expertise area, to running diversity education. And I'm a straight white guy, and I wondered what meeting did I have to go to to get put in charge of this project. And it was interesting at the time because there was a host of discrimination lawsuits going on. Texaco and pretty high-profile one. Coca-Cola was the first one that didn't have real overt discrimination. What it had was very subtle forms of very weak HR programs and processes. So it's a great company, but what you find, and still is present in most companies, is the core of your HR programs and processes, from wage equity to performance management to succession planning, are wrought with subjectivity. They are not legally defensible. And so I took over this diversity education program as a hostage. My own class, my own program. But I sat in class every day and I heard stories. I heard stories of racism and sexism and homophobia. And I had what they call a white male epiphany. Where you realize what white male privilege is and the world revolves around you.

Mm.

And I got very, very curious in this space. This was around the time also, if you recall, back in the early 2000s, Tom Peters was doing a lot of work around the business case for women.

Yeah.

And I listened to a webinar on Tom Peters and this just became so eye-opening. Why aren't we talking about this? Why are we not using this as a competitive advantage? And so taking my background in business leadership and combining it with this diversity strategy role that I evolved into, I decided to pursue this as my life work. And so 6 years ago, I started YWOMEN. The Y represents the Y chromosome, which is engaging men, which is often the missing piece. And what's so fascinating about the show today is I am literally not going to mention one thing women can do to improve themselves. That is not my place. What I'm going to do is arm you with the tools to go back to your organization and have a meaningful conversation around gender.

Sweet.

And what's so interesting, Bernadette, is nobody wants to have this conversation. Men are scared to death we'll say or do the wrong thing. People assume women want to have this conversation. They don't. Women want to be recognized as great managers, great scientists, great salespeople. And so what happens is nothing. We never talk about it. So you open with this, and this is something I'm going to close on, which is about how do you take this and bring it to life every day. I would ask every listener to listen to this podcast with their 10 to 12 people that work in their department and just talk about it. All I want to do is create conversation. That's it. Full stop. What I want to do though is arm your listeners with facts and data because that's what men need to hear. They need to know that this isn't some touchy-feely HR initiative, that there's a business rationale here. That's the 80% head piece that men need. And then we're gonna wrap up with the 20% heart need that moves men from just understanding the concept to advocacy.

I absolutely love that because— so ladies, if you didn't catch wind of that, he's telling us how to get into men's heads and how to influence them to do something that is in support of us. So I mean, that 80/20% is It's critical. It's critical, and it's so interesting that a man is defining that and letting us know that all we have to do is put some facts and figures and build a business case, which men thrive on numbers and ROI, and we all get that as business women, ladies. So now we have to translate it and use it productively with men.

Correct.

That's your point. Ah, okay. So you call yourself a gender strategist. I googled that like a long time ago when I first met you because I loved it and there's like no one else.

No, I invented it.

He's it.

I invented it.

Which is so cool. Okay, so what is it?

Yeah, basically what I do, I help companies create truly integrated women's leadership strategies with scorecards, measures, and metrics, which sounds easy.

Mm-hmm.

It's not. There are probably 50 to 75 companies in the Fortune 500 that get this and are doing it well. The bulk of the companies don't know how to do it. They have a series of initiatives which are all well-intended. They may have HR programs, they may have women's resource groups, they may have supplier diversity initiatives, but the company doesn't understand an integrated approach. And when I say that, what I mean is women's leadership has to be owned by sales and marketing. It has to be owned by operations and supply chain. That's where the bulk of the people sit. And then it has to be supported by HR and by senior leadership. Well, that's a very different approach.

Big time.

And so what does best-in-class look like? Best-in-class looks like approaching it as a change initiative. Think about this, for your listeners who are employee resource groups, this is my favorite story to tell. So Bernadette, you're a business person, we're going to do an M&A, big M&A, multi-billion dollar project. I'm going to pull together a group of well-meaning volunteers for them to take on in their spare time. I'm going to give you $20,000 to lead this initiative How successful will you be? Well, you won't be. And so what I tell companies is, if your company is not spending money on women's leadership strategies, if they're writing a check to the women's resource groups and patting you on the head and saying, "Go solve this," they don't mean it. It's just, "Oh, well, we have women working on that. That's good enough." What I will tell you is, for best-in-class companies, That's not good enough. That's what a gender strategist does.

Yeah, okay, so it's not about just appeasing what's politically correct out there by saying that you're putting together a committee of volunteers that are never going to do anything. It's ingraining it in everything that you do.

Absolutely. And when you look at what best-in-class companies are doing, it's really 3 things. It's one, it's taking this integrated approach— scorecards, measures, metrics— which demands accountability. I am going to hold you accountable to meeting numbers. Women's market opportunity, women's product opportunities, talent initiatives, talent advancement, moving women into field roles, moving women into sales roles. I am going to tie your compensation to that, just like I would any other business initiative. So it's number one, it's an integrated approach. Number 2, it is full transparency of numbers. That says we're going to publish pay equity, that says we're going to publish promotion, advancement, and retention. We're going to publish regrettable losses because you can't track and measure something, you can't hold people accountable unless you track and measure.

Unless you're tracking and measuring it, right.

And then the third element that best-in-class companies are doing are driving this down to middle management and men. Mercer did some amazing research, over 500 companies in 40 countries, and what it said is men in middle management are engaged at about a 40% level in total D&I initiatives, diversity and inclusion. Well, as a business person, if I'm looking for an opportunity gap where I can best spend my money, it's not spending it on women. It's spending it educating middle managers and it's educating men. And best-in-class companies have actually moved that metric from 40% to 50%, which doesn't sound like much. That's a 20% increase.

I was going to say, that's a—

That's a big increase.

Especially for, you know, big-ass companies that probably have never— And then it drops right to your bottom line.

Absolutely. Because engagement equals productivity. Absolutely. And so stop talking to and educating women, start talking to and educating middle managers and men.

And the reason why you're saying stop putting money toward educating women is because they already know.

They already get it.

They know what they're doing.

Yes.

They know what they're doing. Stop, like, man— not manhandling— stop placating them. Yes. Recognize that they're talented already. And therefore, what the problem really is, is the education or lack thereof of the middle management, specifically the male population, right?

Correct.

Yep. Love it.

What does best-in-class look like on that third point around engaging men? So Rockwell Automation, now think about this, they're a warehouse automation company. Not sexual business. Rockwell Automation. They spend over a million dollars training men on how to get really serious about this. They won the Catalyst Award. I didn't get that contract, by the way. We might be doing NBC at this point. That's what commitment looks like.

Yes.

It's big money.

Right.

It's big money, but it works. Right.

And it's focused on— those best in class are focused on the right problem, not the disguised problem. Not the problem that it's women, the real problem which is the education of the women.

Well, think about that, Bernadette. If you're a big company and you make a billion dollars in operating profit a quarter, this is surrounding you. Yeah, right. Yeah.

This is lunch.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's lunch for the leadership team.

So that's what best in class looks like.

All right, well, and you said best in class are about 40%, 45% of the companies have?

No, 40% to 50%.

40 to 50% of the companies out there?

No, 40 to 50, not percent.

Oh, 40 to 50 companies? Yes. Oh, my mistake. No. Big error.

No, if you look at the Russell 1000, there's 900 companies that don't know what they're doing.

Wow. Oh, mercy. All right, now is there a certain area that they're at? Are they big corporate? Are they middle market? Are they— did they— well, they looked at the top 1,000.

So that would be corporate. Here's what's interesting. Interesting is all you can do is go to various websites— Diversity Inc., Working Mother Magazine, Catalyst— and you'll see the same 50 to 75 companies listed who are doing really breakthrough work. And then you just kind of do the math to say mid-tier, you know, the Fortune 100— I'm sorry, the Fortune 101 to 500— there are pockets of excellence, but by and large most don't get it. You'd love to think that companies like, companies that get it that may not show up, Whole Foods, Tom's Shoes, you know, these companies with great cultures anyways, they're not even having this conversation. Right.

Because they don't need to.

Yeah, but think brick and mortar, think old line, hardcore. I think I mentioned to you earlier, I'm doing Caterpillar next week.

Right.

2 weeks ago I did United Technology, which is Otis Elevator and Pratt Whitney Engines. And so that's the kind of brick-and-mortar companies that are really starting to be challenged for a whole host of reasons. And they want to get better at this.

Sweet. Well, you know, I applaud your work.

Well, thank you.

Because it's so important. It's so important. It's so important. All right, so in your book, Why Women, The Leadership Initiative to Advancing Women and Engaging Men. You make a strong case for why women— advancing women is critical. Talk a little bit more about your theory in the area, and then how does your theory kind of match up with what you're seeing happening out there?

Well, my theory actually kind of came out of what I'm seeing out there. So, and it gets back to, as you talk to business leaders, and this is something that everyone can do in their own companies. Ask your CEO what keeps them up at night.

Mm, that's a great question.

And what you're going to hear is— there are the 3 themes I pick on to. Number 1 is growing revenue. Revenue is tough nowadays. It's, you know, it's not the go-go 2000s.

Right, right.

So I'm expected to grow revenue 3 to 5%. I'm expected to increase operating profit in the 10 to 12% range. And then the third one that CEOs aren't talking about but it's absolutely keeping them up at night is your corporate reputation is under attack. And so you are one blog post, you are one bad manager from being front page news. And Uber was in the news for just a whole horrible set of incidents.

Absolutely.

I don't think the CEO of Uber went to bed that night thinking he's going to be front page news. USA Today. So think about this, you're only as good as your worst manager. How many bad managers do you have out there? Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. And in this 24/7 social media world, right, you're playing defensive if you haven't built a moat, if you haven't talked about this and really advocated for it. And you're one data breach away, right, you're one social media thing away, you're one activist shareholder away. And so it's an expectation of great companies now to do this. It's not just a nice to do. There is a compelling business reason that you need to get really good at this.

Right. Yeah. I mean, there is, to your point earlier in the introduction, there's a lot of data now that supports— Absolutely. —you know, the ROI of women. And so— and women All I'm going to say, and we're going to get to this sooner or later, but— well, we're not because he didn't want to focus there, but just start believing in that. There's a lot of ROI in what it is that you do, ladies. I'll say that. He won't. He wants to talk about what we can do to build a business case for you that you can take to get men to stand up for you. So you— well, let me go back to— so that's your theory. It's tied to what it is that you're learning out there. And then how do you see it impacting even and linking even to the future of the US economy? Here's what's fascinating.

The business case, the timing of what's going on. I'm a big fan of The Tipping Point by Gladwell. Ah. I have a belief that women are reaching a tipping point in the US economy in general. In business. It's driven by a whole host of factors. Number 1, the business case. Today, 85% of new entries into the workforce are women, minorities, or millennials. So picture in your mind that picture. What does that look like? That picture looks significantly different than your senior leadership team today. Oh, yes. So we can't talk about women without talking about multiculturalism, without talking about millennials. Right. Everybody thinks millennials are kids. Millennials are turning 35. They're going to be the largest percentage of your workforce in 3 years. Here's where the tipping point starts to come. Number 1, 10,000 boomers a day are retiring. Are retiring. Wow. They started in 2008. They're all largely older white men like myself, and we're going to continue to retire for the next 10 years until we're all gone. So the change is coming. The tsunami is coming. So if you don't get women, if you don't understand multicultural dynamics, if you don't understand millennials, you are going to lose.

So even like, okay, so the male population between like 35 and 55, which is that what, Generation X? Is that what they consider? Is that male-heavy to the attitude of the boomer, or are they more leaning into—

no pun intended. Yeah, no, no. What it gets to is you have to look company by company because the challenge is so many companies are losing women as they ascend that pipeline that you talked about earlier. So by default, you're going to have a lot of Gen X men men, but they're going to be managing an organization significantly different than the boomer men. Additionally, you have a ton of really talented females at that level who've been a VP who are now going to go to SVP, EVP. So, so the change is coming. So that's one element of the tipping post. The numbers are behind women. Okay. Here's the second thing, whether we link it or not, Politics are being discussed in your company. I know that's an amazing revelation. Yeah. I joined corporate America and was told you don't talk about sex, religion, or politics. Right. Well, you know what, whether you like it or not, it's being talked about. And I say that to say I'm bipartisan. I'm a business consultant. Women's voices are rising. And you don't have to look any farther than 2 million women marching in Washington. And this isn't an attack against the current administration. Women's voices are rising. Every day in the Wall Street Journal and the USA Today, there's an article about women's voices. Those voices would have risen whether Hillary had gotten in or Donald had gotten in. And so women's voices collectively collectively are rising, well, that becomes the flashpoint. And then you continually are having initiatives where states are implementing transparency in gender equity, in pay equity, that are really driving the law of the land. I'll give you a perfect example of that. So New York— Boston about 6 months ago signed a bill. It hasn't gone into effect yet. Effect yet. New York signed a similar bill, and what it says is, as an employer, you cannot ask previous salary history of anyone. And this is designed to help women catch up, right? Because most companies hire you and give you a raise based on what you make, right? So now we can't ask that. Well, what's fascinating, and the unintended consequence of that, is if you're a big company based in New York, you're not going to have dozens of separate HR programs and policies across your company. You are going to go to that as a standard for your company. So then it's going to be in Chicago, then it's going to be in Los Angeles, then it's going to be in Atlanta. Because from an IT infrastructure standpoint, I can't manage that. Right. Right. California just passed a very progressive parental leave policy, men and women. Well, if California passed it, that's slowly going to be the law of the land. So this is this convergence of— oh, by the way, your talent pool is changing, women's voices are rising, and you've got government implementing policies that are forcing corporate discussion. Not necessarily mandating you need to do this. Right.. But if I'm already thinking about doing it, if I'm competing for talent, think about this: GE wants to hire 20,000 women in technology roles. You see the ads, the GE ads, they're amazing. They're talking to millennials, but they're very much talking to women. Right, right, right. Why?

There's no engineers. Yes, that, that—

You know, GE is not on— it's a great place to work. It's not on millennials' mindset. It's not a women's mindset. There is a war for talent. So one industry, the one I love to quote today, so I was talking to an executive from IBM. There are 400,000 job openings today in cybersecurity, and you need to be born in this country. Oh, wow. So there are companies that are absolutely feeling the pain of talent And the solution is you better have a women's strategy and you better have a multicultural strategy. And by the way, you better have a retention strategy for your old white guys who want to leave. You ought to beg them to stay and make this transition.

And knowledge transfer and all that kind of good stuff.

Yeah, but most companies right now, and this is slowly an evolving topic that's my next kind of project, if you're a 55-year-old white male in corporate America, there's a bullseye on your back. Companies want to get rid of you, and I don't have data on that, I don't have research, but what I'm saying is—

but isn't that the norm though? It's always the norm. Yeah, other than the fact that I hate it because now I'm 55, but I mean, that had always been the norm that, you know, you get into your 50s and all of a sudden they want the new generation.

And yeah, I joined Coca-Cola when I was 30, and I remember walking the halls literally my first day with a colleague and looking around And there weren't any gray-haired people. No, it was all— it was very apparent. This isn't a new phenomenon. This has been corporate America forever. Wow. So, but that's what no one's talking about, and we need to get them to stay. But again, it goes against every program policy. So if you have a pension, if you have health benefits, well, I don't have a hybrid solution for you to come back. Maybe you can contract, but that's going to screw with your Social Security. So these are really tough questions to real business people.

Well, I actually didn't go that far in my thinking as the employer.

So that's a gender strategist. That's what I do. I help companies connect the dots because it's not one thing. It's 20 interconnected programs, policies, initiatives. That you got to figure out.

All right, everyone. Jeffrey Tobias Halter. You know, you need to go to why— I'm sorry, whywomen.biz. I'm about to cough. whywomen.biz and check out all the resources he has. Check out the multiple books that he has. Check out how your company can engage with him. He's on stage. He's in your boardrooms. He's in your team. Plants. He's everywhere. So this is an imperative for major companies. So please be sure to check him out. And we're going to take a short break. When we come back, we have a lot more to talk about. So we're just going to take one more break, and we will be right back with Jeffrey Tobias Halter. Welcome back, everyone. We are having an amazing conversation about how women, you don't need to lean in. What you need to do is fight to get the men to stand up. So, Jeffrey, men are obviously in the center of all this, they're the core of all this. So why are they the critical link and how do we get them engaged?

So we talked about the 80% head piece and that's everything we've talked about so far, the business case, the numbers, the facts, the data. Love it. Here's what I'll tell you. How do we get them hooked? Believe it or not, there are— I believe, and I have no research on this, but just my causal research over the last 6 years— there are up to 30% of men who want to help, but we don't know what to do. We don't know what it looks like. And so for your listeners, what I would tell you is, you know who the male champions are in organizations. They're the great leaders. They wear integrity on their sleeve. They just get it. They know how to talk about the business case. They're, they're just fluent in it. They have a natural connectivity to being a great leader. They have a non-biased view of talent. This is really important. If you look at the sitting 24 women CEOs in this country. Literally every one of them had a man early in their career reach down and grab them and pull them up. It had nothing to do with them being a woman, had everything to do with, "You're amazing talent." Correct. "I want to pull you along." Yep. And so we know there are men out there who have this great non-biased view of talent, but what I have found advocacy comes from is a personal connection. And the story I tell that is very surprising to women, but believe it or not, men never make the connection, or rarely make the connection, that if I'm not advocating for women, I'm actually betraying my daughter. Ah, now here's what I'll tell you is there may be millennial men, there may be X-Men. As a boomer, and speaking on behalf of a number of mothers. What I will tell you is, Bernadette, we wanted to raise strong daughters. We supported them whether it was sports, whether it was music or art. We made sure our daughters went to a great college. And when our daughter graduates and makes less net money than my son, when my daughter is faced with the same sexism and bias and crap that we know exists in our company, when our daughter is going to go to work for Ron down the hall, who you know is just a sexist, we choose to do nothing. Right. Because we have never made the connection. There is a choice there. Yeah. And believe it or not, once I tell this story, the light bulbs go off for men. And it's that easy and it's that hard because we never thought about it. We went to work, we put our head down, we don't want to talk about this gender thing. And as I talk to men and they say, "Why do you do this work?" I say, "It's for my daughter. It's for your daughter." And they deserve better. So that's the heart piece. That's how you get them. And it works. What I will tell you is if you go out and research these 50 companies that are doing this well, many of them still have primarily male CEOs. Most of them are fathers of daughters. Yes. Their daughters are coming home saying, "Dad, don't you have like 200,000 people working for you? What are you doing to advance women?" Mm-hmm. It only takes one of those. Mm-hmm. And all of a sudden it becomes personal. Right. It becomes serious. And then men want to know, "I get it.

What do you want me to do?" Yeah, sweet, sweet. Well, and I find it interesting, I'm going to diverge just a little bit, but Billy Bush, the entertainer, the host, TV host, and he got caught up in that whole thing with Trump before he was president. And his daughter, so his daughter comes to him and says, "Dad, you have 3 daughters and a wife." How in the world could you stand there and laugh and contribute to the taunting and not support women? And he said beyond all the other media and his downfall, that is what hurt. Oh, sure. That is what hurt. So I love— now I want to segue into your—

Just one point on that that's really critical. There are male cultural norms that prohibit a lot of men from choosing to do this work. You know, the things we're raised with, the current definition of masculinity in our society. That's why I say focus on the 30% who get it. Right. It's a brand adoption model. You're in marketing. If you get 30, then you can get another 50% who go, that might not be a bad idea. I get that. Right. What you're never going to get is that last 20% who are just idiots. Yeah. So don't waste your time.

It's a great point.

If your company gets it, they will work their way out. Right. But I learned 10 years ago doing diversity training, I'm not an idiot whisperer. And you can't win that argument. So, take the high road and focus on the guys who want to get better.

That's hysterical. Idiot whisperer. Well, and at the same time, ladies, we know who those men are. You know, they are those men, peers or leaders, who have kind of, you know, took us under their wing or even just subtly kind of said you should go for that advancement or they came to you and said, "Hey, are you going up for that promotion or have you checked out that new program?" project. So we do know who they are. We don't throw all men into a bucket of non-supporters. So I just love that. Well, it's a great segue into— and I do want to talk about advocating and champions and whatnot, but I don't want to miss talking about your Fathers of a Daughter initiative because it segues beautifully, but it's such a wonderful initiative.

So share with our audience. Absolutely. You can download this at my website. Www.theletterywomen.biz. It's free. It's a great accompaniment to this podcast as you go and share it in your organization. So feel free to do that. And what it says is it's 10 things men can do every day to advocate for women. One is just listen. Tell me about your experience. Mentor and sponsor. Encourage a woman to apply. Encourage a woman to take on a project. So it's check the box, one of 10 things you commit to do. Put your daughter or daughter's name on it, sign it, and put it in your office. It's that easy. It's that easy, but it marks you as an advocate in the workplace for women. And it's going to force you daily to confront I'm going to confront this. Right. And what you'll find is women will find a way to talk to you. And what happens when you engage in this conversation is you will find out things about your company that you did not know existed. And it gets back to one of the very early things I said that said women don't want to have this conversation. They don't want to be the bearer of all things women in the company. Right. I was working with a large pharma company. Company. 60 women with their PhDs in oncology and biochemistry, just the smartest women you could imagine. And I said, I was doing an executive coaching program with them, and I said, hey, I'm going to be having lunch with your senior leaders at lunch. Is there anything you might need to share with them? They talked for 45 minutes. They talked about unconscious and conscious bias that they were faced with, up to and including, my research is double-checked, I'm held to different standards than my male peers, I'm expected to clean the lab, I'm expected to do administrative jobs, even though I am over these people. Right. And Bernadette, I had known these women for an hour, and I'm like, why haven't you told your senior leaders this? But these are the examples of not overt sexism, It's micro inequities, these little paper cuts that conspire to really hold women back, to not be treated as equals. Right. And so just this simple notion of taking a woman to lunch and saying, Bernadette, tell me what I don't know. And in the first 10 minutes, you're not going to say anything. Yeah. And then I'm going to say, what else? In the next 10 minutes, you might go a little deeper. Men, just shut up and listen. Don't say, "Well, this is the program, this is the policy." And then ask a third time. And in that last 10 minutes, you're going to hear root cause issues in your company that you did not know existed. And then as a leader, you have a responsibility to do something about it.

But you also have a responsibility to do that digging, to not just accept, because a lot of them would like to like any of these fake programs that are out there. They want to appear as if they're trying to address the issue, so they only go so far, so deep, because then they start getting uncomfortable, which that causes them to back off. They have the responsibility to get uncomfortable, dig deep, and women also need to kind of force them to do so if we want to be heard.

Yeah, and here's something that doesn't cost any money, but we talked about the value of employee resource groups and business resource groups. The next evolution, whether you have an employee resource group, a gathering of like-minded people, or a business resource group, that people, that group of people charged with a business initiative, is becoming the collective voice of that constituent group. So, we, again, we'll focus on women, but what are the collective issues of women in the organization? This isn't modest griping. This is coming to senior leadership with a list of 5 to 7 things, right, that are reasons you are losing women. And I'll tell you, I've got a non-disclosure with this company. It works because one company I worked with, it was actually their millennial group that demanded parental leave. Women had been asking for this for 15 years. It took the millennials going to senior leadership to get a 24-week male and female program. Wow. For all employees. So bringing your collective voices separates idle rumor and hallway conversation to say, here's the facts, here's the data on behalf of this significant constituent group.

And what I love about all of this is is too, I don't know ladies if you get a little bit agitated by this, but we have all of these conversations. I'll go online and see on LinkedIn or see on TEDx all these great panel advertisements or panel post evaluations and everyone, every person on that panel is women. And I'm like sitting there thinking, ladies, where, you know, you have to insert the men who are driving the issue. You have to insert them into these conversations. And yet sometimes they feel like, no, we're supposed to be beating our chest and marching to the beat of our own drum. And it's like, no, that's not going to get us anywhere.

Well, here's the thing. So I said I wouldn't tell women what they need to do. I'm going to offer one thing. Realize the collectiveness of your voice. Realize you're in this together. What's shocking to me, I'll use the March on Washington as an example. If you're in this group or you're in this group, well, you can't march. We can't support you. Get over it. Realize the collective power that you have. And it's game, set, match. It really is. And those are the companies that have figured it out. And that's how you get those amazing ROI results. This releasing of women's optimism and confidence and ideas and creativity. And that's where the business results are.

Sweet. All right, we have more to talk about, so we're not going anywhere just yet. I just want to remind you all though, get his book. It's also— you can take this podcast, you could take his download of his Father Daughter Initiative, you can take a copy of his book, you have like this toolkit from Jeffrey Bynum's Halter that you could take into your company, start sharing amongst yourselves if need be, but then start elevating it into, you know, other parts of your organization to start this conversation. So I want to move to that. He mentioned earlier about taking all this material, going into work, sharing it, even watching it, and, you know, spending 30 minutes of your time over lunch having a conversation conversation about it. So one of his other initiatives that he's kind of rolling out, so to speak, is his gender conversation quick starters that he also has. So I would love for you to share because I have a feeling they can go down, get resources.

Absolutely. Again, totally free. Uh-huh. Sweet. It's a newsletter that links back to what I talked about, and that is your employees are talking about this, whether whether you know it or not. So having a point of view is good. Women are in the news every day. All I want to do is create conversations. So the newsletter sends out 3 topics. One's very low-level, one's medium, one's for a graduate level. Read an article and there's 3 questions as thought starters for you to read and have a conversation. No one's right, no one's wrong. Let's talk about this topic. All I want to do is get companies talking about gender. Here's the one that you need to do though. June is Father's Day. You need to convene your group. True. You need to bring your women's resource group together for the next 2 weeks and talk about the responsibility of fathers. Now, this is, I will tell you, a shameless plug. Buy the book as a Father's Day gift for daughters to give to their dads. Yep. Because men need to read this book.

Absolutely. And it's not a shameless plug because we need all the tools in our own toolkit, and they do too. But the only way they're going to get it— they're not running to the store going, oh, what can I do today to solve the problem of women advancement? We have to kind of like poke them on the side. Fortunately, I was, you know, born to a father who had 12 children, 6 girls, 6 boys, and fortunately he had no— he had some biases and some prejudices, it wasn't gender. So he kind of treated us, you know, right down the middle and pushed us to be whatever we wanted to be, and even through my career, you know, kind of shoved me and said, you need to go for that advantage. Advancement and ask for it because a man's not sitting around waiting until he had everything to ask for it. So I've been blessed, and Father's Day will be, gosh, 15 years since my dad's passed. But anyway, so yes, great toolkits. His book, Why Women— you can go to whywomen.biz. You can also go to Amazon for it.

You can buy the book.

You can buy the book. Buy a bunch. Buy 6 of them. No, seriously. And give them out not only to your father, your own father, but even to people at work, male and female, get this conversation started. And then yes, sign up for his gender conversation quick starters. I receive it and I didn't know it was one and the same and it's awesome. I'll often share some of his articles then out, back out to LinkedIn and even on Shedding the Bitch. So you want to check out all of his resources. He's mentioned his father-daughter initiative you can download, he's mentioned the quick starters conversation, he's mentioned I mentioned his book. You have a lot of free resources here, people. Well, the book, you can afford it. So go out and definitely get the conversation going. And then I love— so Deborah, I know, is listening. I love the idea of promoting and kind of just socializing out there the fact that it's Father's Day coming up. Start conversations, use his resources to do that. Wonderful idea. We'll be putting that everywhere. Thank you. Alright, we have a couple of more minutes, so I want to find what is— you tell us, what is, in the last couple minutes that we have, what would be the top messages you would want to share?

There's an initiative embedded in my work, and it's the 4 things men need to do, really as a wrap-up and closing point. Since that's what we're talking about. Yep. Leaders typically want to lead. The challenge is that's the third thing they need to do. We talked about the first one. The first one is listen. Genuinely seek to understand because even though you may be a great business leader, you do not have context on gender. You've just never studied it. Mm-hmm. So first of all, I want you to listen. Second, I want you to learn. I want you to learn about gender competency. I want you to learn about gender bias. I want you to learn about the fact that men and women are having different experiences in your workplace. I want you to be able to learn and articulate the business case. Because we've talked about the business case, but one of the foundational elements of that is, if we're going to drive this down to men, if we're going to drive this down to middle management, I have to have scope of responsibility. So our first podcast, this is a while ago, but I talked about the fact that women are a $7 trillion opportunity. It's great to throw that number around, but as a middle manager, if I don't have my piece of that, you can't hold me accountable.

Yeah, right, right.

If I don't understand my role in talent, you can't hold me accountable. So that's the learn part. The third part then is leadership. Demonstrate leadership, visible vocal leadership. Hold your company accountable. That's the key piece, mm-hmm, is asking 3 questions, very simple yet very hard to ask. Every leader out there should ask every year these 3 questions. Number 1, how many men and women did you lose in your organization last year and why? Oh, by the way, you will always lost more women. They will always say, I want to spend more time with my family. And if you follow up, 75% of them either go to another company or start their own company. There is no validity to the fact that they left because they wanted to. They hate your company. Yeah. Yeah. So number one, how many men and women did you lose? Number two, what is your plan for next year to promote How many are you going to promote? Women. Full stop. What does it look like in writing? How many are you going to promote? What does it look like? Nice. This leads to, and it goes back to learning, men carry a bias, Bernadette, that says, if I'm promoting women, men must be being left behind. I've heard that. This goes back to full transparency. 19 seconds. Even in best-in-class companies that are trying to promote promote women, 66% of promotions still go to men. Your numbers, your facts do not bear out that men are being disparagingly impacted by promoting women. And then the last thing is lead.

Have the courage. Have the courage.

Have the courage. Take the— I'm sorry, have the will. The will to lead. Because listen, learn, and lead— 60 seconds. Everything is conceptual. Have the will to act. Advancing women today is like diet and exercise. Everyone knows it's a really good idea. Are you prepared to make a commitment? And do it. That's where it comes. Yeah, and that's where it comes. And hold your organization accountable.

Jeffrey Tobias Halter, woo-hoo! Whywomen.biz. Yes, there we go. Whywomen— I'm so sorry. I'm so excited. Exciting. Anyway, next program is Ask Bernadette. Post your questions, stories, and challenges out on Shedding the Bitch Twitter or Facebook, and we will take those questions and drill them down right here on Shedding the Bitch Radio. Thank you. My pleasure, always. Loved it. Have a great week, everybody. Bye.