Gender Intelligence: I Was Once Blind But Now I See with Barbara Annis at Joe Polish's Genius Network - Genius Network Episode #131

I call it gender intelligence. So I coined that trademark that because I thought the concept of gender equality was broken. Because the problem with gender equality is it forces us to focus on inequality. Glass Half Empty and Blame Game.

Barbara Annis, a world renowned expert on gender intelligence and inclusive leadership, founded a gender intelligence group 27 years ago with offices in Toronto, New York and and 50 team members worldwide. They have conducted over 8,000 workshops on the subject and are the go to experts for companies like NASA, Express, HSBC and Ericsson. In this episode, Barbara explains the hardwired differences between men and women and how to capitalize on them in the workplace. She'll break down hard facts and years of research that reveal that revenue and performances increase when men and women work together. You'll learn why it's critical to capitalize on gender intelligence in the workplace if you want to move the needle in your business. Go to genusnetwork.com131 to access the show notes for this episode along with an exercise to help you take action on what Barbara teaches.

In the United States, 72% of women between the ages of 25 to 54 are employed. How many of you have women working for you in sales or leadership positions? Now? Think about this. 85% of consumer spending is influenced by women. Do you know that having a gender blended team produces better results? An MIT study of 192 teams tasked with solving difficult problems found that the IQ of the group was not as important to innovative thinking as how gender diverse. The group is. Just as important as having women on your team is knowing how to communicate, lead and inspire them. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman or what really matters is how developed is your gender intelligence. Barbara Annis is a world renowned expert on gender diversity and inclusive leadership. 27 years ago she founded Gender Intelligence Group with offices now in Toronto and New York and over 50 team members worldwide. She and the team have conducted over 8,000 workshops on the subject of gender intelligence and they are the go to experts for major corporations like NASA, American Express, HSBC and Ericsson. The global telecommunications giant with over $200 billion in sales and over 100,000 employees. When Barbara spoke to their North American sales team leaders, they not only paid attention, they took action. At the time they had no women on their 20 person sales team. After she spoke, they hired 10 women. In the first year sales they went from 500 million to almost 1.5 billion in sales. Not only did sales triple, morale went through the roof. They now embrace gender intelligence. Company Wide. If you've heard Barbara speak in this room, you know it's hard to hear her. It's because she has to talk softly because she has a cranial nerve disorder. When she talks loudly, it creates severe brain pain. So please turn up your hearing aids if you have them, and let's all pay attention. Barbara does know the difference between men and women in the workplace and also at home. She's married to a man. He's a judge. Barbara has seven children, five of them men. She has seven grandchildren, six of them boys. A wife, a mother, a grandmother, a gender intelligence guru. Her title is Gender I was once blind, but now I see. Please help me welcome Barbara Annis.

So there are some real hard wiring differences that maybe we don't know, that we don't know. So when I first started my career, I was the first woman in sales at Sony. 600 salesmen and they called me salesman, right? And I won 14 outstanding sales achievement, MVP award, et cetera. But what I did was I ended up behaving like one of the guys. Harvard University calls it the first woman syndrome, right, where you take on that male behavior. But when I left, I started deciding, you know, what did I really want to do. And I read this amazing book. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It was 1989. It was called Brain Sex. It blew my, my mind. And what blew my mind was that we didn't recognize and appreciate and capitalize on differences. So then I embarked on researching neuroscientists, scientists, researchers for 27 years. We're actually doing a documentary. I'm meeting in Hollywood next week to launch the documentary six part documentary series on gender differences in all aspects. So I'm now speaking to you for nine minutes, condensing 40,000 hours of research. So you can imagine it's going to be a little tough, Right? Next time I want 20 minutes. Okay, Joe, wherever you are. I call it gender intelligence. So I coined that, trademarked that because I thought the concept of gender equality was broken. Because the problem with gender equality is it pushes forces, numbers. It forces us to focus on inequality. Glass half empty and blame game. So what I wanted to create was something that has a whole new way of thinking about appreciating differences and capitalizing on those. So we're different. We conduct, as you heard, 8,000 workshops. But let me show you a little bit about the differences. How many of you know that men and women communicate differently? How many men have ever said, that's not what I said? And she Says, oh, yeah, but I knew what you meant. Yes, right. So here's some interesting. I love this quote by George Bernard. The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred. So in eight minutes or less, I'm going to remove some of that illusion. Right. But I'm going to give you some action in terms of what you can do. We're going to look at brain differences. Very high level. One million people has been tested. You can see here in 30 countries, all continents. So this lives in our lives all over the world. Now there's a bell curve. Larry Kahil, if you don't know him, you should know him. Go on YouTube, listen to him. He has a lot to say about this, but he says that 95% of us are either XX or XY and 5% is a whole mixed difference. Now, there are some scientists say it's more like 10. So there's an argument between whether it's 5 or 10, but that's the range now, hardwired versus softwired. So our brains. There is a hardwiring or brain that I'm going to talk about right now. But then of course, we have neurofinds and all kinds of things in our prefrontal cortex that we can adapt to. So if you look at this building, you can see the hardware is there, but you can move the furniture around. Right. To be conducive to what you need to do. Right. But it's really important for us to understand that because how many of you have children? Have you noticed boys and girls tend to be different, Right? And actually, do you know that in the world, we're blaming boys for breathing literally in the classroom because boys learn differently. Important to know about that. Let's explore this. So how many women have ever asked a man, what are you thinking when he's relaxing? And what does he say? Now, why is it that all over the world. I get that answer right? Watch this. So this is the male brain at rest, not Joe's, by the way, but this is the typical male brain at rest. And this is the female brain at rest. So when we say to men when they're relaxing, what are you thinking? And he says, nothing. It's actually possible. And we don't need to blame men for doing that. Men and boys need to do that. Does that make sense? Let's dig a little deeper. So prefrontal cortex is the consequential thinking of the brain. So if you have boys or girls, you heard, I have. My son is Christian. His prefrontal cortex Was developed way later than my daughters. Right? 14 years in girls, 18 to 22 in boys. So when you say, what were you thinking when you did that? What do you think he said? Exactly. Women worry more. We weigh options more. And that can often get misinterpreted. Amygdala, fight and flight is more active in men. So that's the stress factor. We shouldn't misinterpret that, by the way. So men tend to kind of get what they stress. They tend to explode. Women tend to implode. And let's really appreciate and understand that difference. Web like thinking. So when you're in a meeting, you've been in a difficult meeting with men and women. Men ask women what they notice because they may pick up other things in there because they make connections to things. Hippocampus. Women remember everything. Everything. So if you're in an argument, this is for the women learning, right? Don't start with saying you always or you never. You're always late. Right? It can be a huge impact. We also remember the intricate details. This is what's happening in the MeToo movement, guys. This is what's happening. Men tend to remember the gist of things. I think we can heal all this through the prison of gender intelligence. Really getting to a concept of understanding means there's nothing to forgive, which is my commitment. In this world of ours, how many women have had an intuition? And then you've talked yourself out of it and you knew, right? Trust that gut. And women, men, when you hear women say, I don't have a good feeling about this. Listen, what are you seeing? What are you seeing that I'm not seeing? That's gender intelligence. Sarah Bellum. This is the action. Men really look for action. Boys look for action. In the school, we're really misinterpreting boys because boys tend to move physical around a lot more. A lot of work needs to be done in that area. My son Stefan was in the classroom and he wasn't eating his lunch. And I asked him when he came home for weeks, why aren't you eating his lunch? And he said, well, I'm not allowed to. And I said, why? He said, I have to be in the principal office standing, watching the wall for the hour, simply because he had learning differences, not add, which is they labeled him. So a lot deeper learning here. Now let's look at conversations. Do you know that women share more? You notice that? So on an average men, when they have a positive negative experience, they tell three people only if it's relevant. Women tell 32 people, even if it's not relevant to the topic, right? So women share, women talk. So women can be your best promoters or not. What's the percentage of consumer spending for women? What do you think? Shout it up. 85%. And there's certain countries where it's 92%, like Japan. Right? So that would be interesting to know more about, right? How you can have that impact women, when you have a bad experience or you have a great colleague, don't you tell everybody, right? And if you have a not so great one, don't you tell everybody, right? So that's really a huge competitive advantage. So here's the breakthrough example. And you heard about Ericsson. This is Johann Bjorkman and he really didn't think so. How old do you think he is right there? In his late 30s, would you say? Right. Two daughters, Swedish man, wife, didn't think there was any need for gender in his sales team. And you heard that he went from 20 men, added 10 women and went from 500 million to 1.5 billion. Now we have so many experience and of course we only ingest the seeds inside organization. They plant it, you know, seed it and water it and apply it. But what we've seen is that the areas when you have men and women working and winning together, you actually create superior performance. So on an average, there's been a 20 year study where it looks at companies who had greater gender balance. They actually have a 34% increase in revenue. This is a tracking. It's really amazing to see that we have call centers. How many of you are involved in call centers? We have a credit card company who decided to put gender intelligence in their script. And call centers, right? And collection, they increased in 2009. So remember when that was bad times, right? They increased 85% more in collections. 85% just by embedding subtle differences between men and women. So really the old. Do you remember the old saying, great minds think alike? It's really about the paradigm shift about great minds think unalike. And how can you create that unalikeness? So I invite you to really look at reading this book. And if I know you have tons of books to read, so read chapter three of that book. Read chapter three and join me in creating the possibility of creating a gender intelligent world where we understand each other, where we appreciate and value each other. And I have to tell you, I live that with my children, colleagues, I live that as a wife. I'm married 22 years and I adore the guy. And why do. I adore him because he's different than me. You know, it's just so much fun. Trust me, I can tell more about it, but I won't get into details. So let's together create a genuine, intelligent world. And I thank you so much, and I hope you could hear me. Thank you.

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