E17: Talent Development For Diverse Women Over 50

You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me safe and sound. And when I fall, you've tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down with an illusion, like a sparrow with broken wings. But now I shine with your reflection on me. I'm getting back up on my feet.

Hey everyone, happy Friday and welcome to Inclusion Unscripted. Inclusion Unscripted is a live broadcast. We stream every Friday at 2 PM unless I've decided I want to take that Friday off, which I did last Friday. I just needed a break. But Inclusion Unscripted is here because we are not just talking about diversity and inclusion. We are living it. A lot of people can say, you know, I'm a diversity and inclusion expert, but we are living diversity. People who are diverse are living diversity every day. Inclusion Unscripted is built on the premise that we have to live more powerfully. We have to use our voices more courageously. We have to say what needs to be said, even when it's uncomfortable, when we're saying it. We have to show up bolder than we do. We have to say and create a safe space for us to have the tough conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion. For those of you who are joining me for the first time, my name is Margaret Spence, and I am the founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab. And this podcast, livecast, is my voice, adding my unfiltered voice to the arena of diversity, equity, and inclusion. But I bring a lens not only as a consultant, as a woman, but as an advocate for various parts of the inclusion process. I help organizations build dynamic DE&I programs. I help organizations build effective women's leadership development programs. So that's me, but you're not here to learn about me. You're here to be enriched, not only in the topic, but in the subject. So today is National Employee Appreciation Day, and I had the honor of participating with BambooHR yesterday in their employee engagement process. And a bunch of you reached out to me on LinkedIn to say thank you for sharing your voice in the arena. So today I'm taking on a little bit of a, of a different topic. I think organizations are building out diversity and inclusion programs. Everybody has gotten themselves to where they said, you know what, we need this. And simultaneously, we're building women's leadership development programs and we're putting both things out simultaneously. Some organizations have taken the all-women approach to empowering women leaders or next generation of leaders. Organizations have taken the we need talent acquisitions, we need to get new talent in the door. I remember 2 years ago, actually it was a little bit over 2 years ago, it was just before the pandemic. I was asked to speak for a large global organization, and they had brought together all of their employees for Women's History Month. And the premise of the program was helping women build more effective careers. And I went through an almost hour presentation, and we had 30 minutes of Q&A. And something stuck with me from that event that it sort of resonated continuously in my mind. A group of women went into the chat and they said, "What about us?" And at first I didn't understand what they were saying. They said, "What about us?" And so I asked the question in the Q&A. I said, "Someone put in 'what about us' into the Q&A. Tell me what that means." And the women started responding. And they said, we've been sitting here in this organization year after year after year. And when we started in the organization, there was no women's leadership development program. It wasn't a thing. Years later, we are still waiting for people to help us manage our careers. And one woman in particular said, I'm 60 years old, I've given up. I've got 5 more years to work. I'm just going to put my head down and I'm just going to show up here and do what I have to do for the next 5 years. And I thought to myself, boy, that's, that's really sad for a woman at age 60 to say, I've been overlooked so much in this organization that I don't even care anymore. I don't care what's going on. I'm just going to show up. I'm just going to do what I have to do. I'm just going to be here. So in thinking that through, I thought for Women's History Month, we need to do a better job of addressing this population of women. You know, there's a lot of focus on young women. There's a ton of focus on early career or new grads, but there isn't a targeted focus on women over age 50. When you've sort of hit the stride of your career, you've put, you know, pedal to the metal for a number of years, and now you're 50 years old and you're evaluating the last 15 years of your career, and you're saying to yourself, how do I make this next era work for me. And I'm reminded, you know, about Betty White. Betty White didn't become famous until she was much older. You know, she had been in the industry and had been around for a number of years doing, you know, lots and lots of cutting-edge shows, but she didn't come into her prime until she was later in life. I think what's happening right now in the the quest for talent, we are forgetting our internal talent and we are forgetting the diverse women who are sitting in organizations. So this episode is to speak not only to organizations, talent development folks, but also to speak to women, diverse women. And when I say diverse women, I mean diverse women. Who have been sitting in place, holding a spot, waiting for an opportunity, waiting for the organization to recognize us as diverse women. You know, a lot of organizations think that they are diverse because they check the woman box. Here's the challenge: checking the woman box doesn't make you diverse. Because if every woman on your team looks the same and every woman in leadership looks the same, you're not diverse. What you've done is allowed women in the door. You've opened the door and you've let some women in. That's what you've done. You've opened the door, you've let some women in, and in letting those women in, you've positioned them all over the place, but more or less they look the same. They look exactly the same. There is no difference between the categories of women that you've brought to the table. And so Black women are shut out, Hispanic women are shut out, Asian women are shut out, Native American women are shut out, Indigenous people are shut out, right? You've shut us out. And so we're excluded from the places that would allow us to grow. A few episodes ago, I talked about organizations wanting our skills, but not our ambition. This is exactly that right now, where organizations want our skills, but they don't necessarily want our ambition. And they darn sure don't want our voice in the room. They don't want our voice in the room. And when we push the edges against the system, The system that everybody's so comfortable in. When we push against the grain of the system, we're often seen as angry. No, we are not angry. I had a whole episode, I think 4 episodes ago, where I talked about the angry Black woman and dispelling that myth because we have a right to be upset. We have a right to our experience. We have a right to saying what is true for us. You know, as people of color, we have been denied over time the ability to speak our truth. We've been denied that. And when we speak our truth, it becomes offensive. It becomes something that has to be qualified. You know, No man says his truth and then has to qualify it. But if a Black woman says her truth, she has to qualify it. You've got to give the context around what that truth is. But here's what I know, and as someone who's knocking 60 at the door, and I have no qualms in saying it, I've spent a whole bunch of my career, nearly 40 years, pushing against the grain and not always speaking up the way that I need to speak up in a room. But I found my voice. I found my voice when I turned 50. I literally found my voice the second I turned 50. I found my voice because at that point I didn't really give a damn. I didn't care anymore. About what people thought. It was important that I said what was true to me. And I think for women in your organization at age 50, they're now questioning their purpose. They're questioning the process. They're trying to figure out what their contribution is and how valued the contribution is to the organization. And if now that they're in the latter half of their career, will they be validated by doing work that they truly love? I think, you know, organizations are missing the boat when it comes to people over age 50. You know, AARP has a long history of, of content that they put out about career management after age 50. They have tons of content that they put out and they say this is the time for you to seize the opportunity to ask for what you want. And so for women who have been sitting in the same position, in the same roles, overlooked year after year, this is your time. This is your time to fearlessly say, "How can I manage my career? What will this look like for me?" Now is the time to say that. And for organizations, the talent that you have sitting in your midst that is undeveloped is shocking. People who have 20 years of experience who have been sitting in the same role year after year, undeveloped, it's shocking and shameful that these women are still there. You know, so What the organizations have been saying to women is, you're not ready. You're not the right person. You're not the cultural fit. And I did a program a couple of weeks ago for the National Inclusion Council. And I said, the conversation that we have about women and the way that we promote a woman's abilities is completely different from how we promote a man's ability. So that's, that's the first track that we tend to go down as organizations. We go down a track of we communicate with women one way. We communicate with women one way. We communicate with men a totally different way. Completely different way we communicate with women. But then when it comes to diverse women, When it comes to diverse women, now we have a whole new set of communication tools that only get applied to diverse women. Only gets applied to diverse women. You don't apply it anywhere else. The languaging is, um, you don't have the skill set yet. You're not ready yet. We think that you are a fit for this role and we need to develop you over time. But in other cases, for non-diverse women, you'll say, "Yep, she's got executive presence." But we give women the label of executive presence, but we don't give men the label of executive presence. We never say to a man, "You have to be executively present." That is not a conversation, but somehow for women We create these ladders of conversations in order for us to feel that we are ready, or for you to feel comfortable with us that we are ready, in order for you to feel comfortable with us that we are ready. And, and this is— it's, it's shameful, you know. And there's lots of books written out there about executive presence. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is executive presence shouldn't be the precursor to my ability to be promoted. You should be working with me to develop my executive presence, not saying you don't have executive presence, so that's why you're not promoted. But here's what I know. For diverse women, the level of forgiveness for us does not exist. If we make a mistake in your organization, if we screw something up, it shuts down our ability to be promoted ever. The one thing gets held against us for life for diverse women and diverse men. The one thing. If I do something wrong, I will be punished. If I speak up too loudly and vocalize my disagreement, I will be punished. I will be blackballed in the organization. If I talk about the fact that my leader isn't leading me appropriately, I will be blackballed in the organization. If I bring my voice to the table fully, I will be, um, destroyed. And so what happens is Black women get into the people pleaser mode. Diverse women get into the people pleaser mode. We know that what you are doing is not correct, but we don't want to say it because we're afraid of committing career suicide. That's what happens. We're afraid of committing career suicide. We are struggling through committing career suicide. And so oftentimes what you'll find is, what you will absolutely find is women of color sitting silent, will smile, will say, "Yep, this sounds good to me." We won't say it because we're afraid of losing. But here's what I know, diverse women, you've already lost. If you don't use your voice, you've already lost. And if you're in an organization that doesn't want to hear your voice, you've already lost. That's the truth. You've already lost. So we have to really think through the development track that we allow women to enter. We have to really think through the development track for women, and we have to think about the development track for women over age 50. That's the key. Do we, do we honestly think that women over 50 don't want to have proactive careers? Do we honestly think that? Do we think that when a woman is 50 years old or 55 years old or 58 years old or 59 years old that she doesn't want to continue to build her career? Do we honestly think that a woman loses her ambition the older she gets? I'd say to you that women don't lose their ambition when they get older. They don't. Women over age 50 are probably way more ambitious than they were when they were 20 because maybe they were raising kids then and they couldn't give the energy to the organization that they can now. So I honestly think this is an untapped marketplace. This is an untapped talent pool. I guarantee you, if you go into your organization right now and you look around and you say, you ask a simple question, where are the women? Ask that question. Then say, where are the women over 50? What roles are they in? What roles are they occupying? What positions do they have in the organization? If we say that pretty forcefully, we'll probably look around and say, wait a minute, we forgot a whole swath of women. And yes, Jim, it is an element of intersectional psychological safety. It is for, for women over 50, absolutely. Because when we talk about women and then we talk about diverse women and then we talk about women who are older and we have this whole mindset that a woman doesn't want growth— I think at the back half of my career, I'm doing way more stuff now than I did when I was in my 40s. Because I had my kids in tow. Now I don't have my kids in tow. I don't. So I have the freedom to say I want something to look a little bit differently. I want my career to look different. So how do you, as a, as a talent-driven organization— every organization is talent-driven— how do you allow women to sit on the vine and die? How do you allow that? What is the psychological process that you went through to allow the women in your organization to die on the vine? And what is the conversation you have about diverse women and allowing them to die on the vine as well? How does that look? How does that look for diverse women? Is a key question. Because for diverse women, we are tired of showing up and giving you our all and getting nothing in return. We have the same dreams as every other woman. We have the same dream as men. The women in your organization have the same drive. Lean In has done study after study after study that says women want opportunity just as much as men, if not more. The challenge is that when we put our hat in the ring, it's swatted down the first time. Then we may find enough courage to put our hat in the ring again, and it gets swatted down the second time. Then we'll say, okay, maybe I need to go fix myself. And as women, we go off now to fix ourselves because that's what we've been told. Go fix yourself. Go become better. Maybe you're not ready yet. So we go do the work that you've asked us to do, and then we come back and put our hat in the— in the ring again, and it gets swatted down for the third time. And at that point, what happens for women is the dimmer switch gets turned on. And I call it the dimmer switch. The dimmer switch is pretty simple. This is how it works. A manager demoralizes the employee so much that the employee turns up every day with their light bulb completely turned off, and all that is available to the employee is the single filament— the single red line in the bulb is left on— and the employee shows up every day, and they show up because they have to. They need to pay their bills. They need to do stuff, but they're not contributing fully to the organization. And every company has thousands of people with the light bulb turned off showing up every day. And the lack of productivity and the lack of, of motivation and the lack of empowerment and engagement is killing us as organizations. And we don't see it. And for women over 50, we are sitting there putting up with it over and over, day after day. So today, on Employee Appreciation Day, let's start appreciating our women over age 50. Let's start appreciating them. Let's say, hey, tell me what you want from your career. It's a simple question. Margaret Spence, maybe we have overlooked you in the past, but we want to hear you now. And thank you, Jim, Monica, and Evelyn, for commenting. I appreciate you. And yes, Monica, it's a paradox for sure. And Jim, it's an element of intersectional psychological safety. Great points. Thank you for, for commenting there. And Evelyn "Real leaders recognize that talent and support is surfaced to help drive the organization's greatness." Absolutely. We cannot in this day and age of the great resignation, which I don't think it's a great resignation. In fact, I had a great conversation with Monica and she says, "It's not the great resignation. It's the great reshuffle." People are rethinking this whole process. They're rethinking it. You're, here's the thing. Let me pause the women. Discussion for a second. Your employees have watched their friends and family die from a dreaded disease that had no mercy on them. And in that moment, they got to rethink their own life. That's what's happening, but we've labeled it the Great Resignation. No, it's not. I tell you, the most pivotal moment in my life was the day my mother passed away. The most pivotal moment. In that moment, I resigned from my job and I said to myself, I can no longer work for this organization. I don't like the team I'm on. I don't like the company I'm working for. In fact, I hate all of them. And I went out and I started my own company because that was what was important to me. I went and I took another job for 2 years, and I worked through that, and it became the defining moment for me. So people are now saying, I've watched people die, and I am now thinking through what is the contribution I'm making in your organization? What is the contribution? What are you seeing of me. Again, as I said a couple episodes back, the issue is you cannot ask me to give you my skills and not accept my ambition to grow. That's it. That is not the Great Resignation. It's not the Great Resignation. It is the fact that you are not having stay conversations, as my mentor Bev Kay says so eloquently, You have to have stay conversations with employees. They have to know first, what, what is the goal that they have for themselves? They have to know this. They have to know. The second is they have to understand that your roadblocks and your derailers don't mean that they're not qualified. That's the second thing that's going through women's heads right now. And especially a woman over age 50, A lot of them are boning up their resumes, right? They have to say, if I have a development and a skills gap, is this organization developing me? Are they pouring into me the way that I am pouring into them? Is that happening? That's the question, right? And then they have to say, is the organization mentoring me? Is the organization finding me champions and sponsors? Is the organization giving me stretch goals and stretch assignments, or are they comfortable leaving me in the same seat for the next 20 years or the next 15 years? Are they comfortable leaving me there? Are they as comfortable? That is the question. And yes, Dale, they are prioritizing themselves over the corporate profits. Corporate profits mean nothing to your employees, especially if they've watched their friends and family die from COVID-19. It means nothing because they recognize one thing: when you're dead, the money doesn't matter. And so now your employees are asking for happiness. They're asking for engagement. They're asking to do work that makes them come alive. They don't want to push paper. They don't want to do that. They want to say to you, hey company, I'm a woman over 50. I want to contribute greater. I have all these skills that I've gained over the last number of years sitting in multiple roles. I want now to elevate myself. I want to build my personal brand. I want to contribute so that everybody sees my contribution. Because what happens to diverse women specifically is we will do the work and our bosses will take the credit. And so nobody really understands our value until the day we decide to resign and walk out the door. Then suddenly they're like, wait, oh, you were the one doing the work. You were the one doing the work all this time. That's when they come to the realization that, that you were the one doing the work. So the question is, how do we empower women? And here, let me talk to you women out there. Let's talk to you first before I talk to the organization, because the organization has had lots of time to get this right and they've gotten it wrong. So let me talk to you as women. The first question that I say to every woman If you are trying to figure out what to do next, ask yourself, what do I want my next chapter to look like? Because at age 50, we are now writing chapters in 5-year increments. We're writing the chapter from 50 to 55, the chapter from 55 to 60, the chapter from 60 to 65. And if we choose to stay in the workforce, we're writing maybe the chapter to 70. If we choose to stay in the workforce. But the chapter from 65 to 70 might be your own thing, might be the passion project that you put off your whole life that you want to pick that up in retirement and run with it. That may be the thing. I have a great friend who retired and she basically started her coaching and consulting business, and that is now her next chapter. So for us, As women, our chapters are often written in 5-year increments, but we have to get clear about what we want the chapter to look like. We have to recognize that we have the pen and the paper, and it's our book that we're writing. Oftentimes as women, I'm a caregiver. My dad turned 93 on Tuesday, and I'm a grandma. Which is even more amazing, right? So here's the thing. I know that I've written my 5-year chapters. And for me now, this 5 years, this next 5 years that will take me to age 65, I'm saying I want to leave an impact for the next generation. And I'm going to show up bolder to leave that impact for the next generation. And I'm going to lend my voice in the rooms that I'm in so that the next generation has better opportunity than my generation did. That's my goal, my 5-year goal. So how do I make that happen? Now is when you do the hard work. The hard work is being able to ask for what you want. Maybe all these years you've sat in that desk, you've sat there year after year, and you've never truly been bold enough to ask for what you want. This is the time to do it. This is the time to say, I wanna know what my development goals are. I want to know how you're going to develop me. Here are two positions that I want to achieve in the next 5 years. How am I going to get there? Now is the time for us to have that conversation. Today, not a week, a year, 5 more years. No, now. Feel emboldened to step into your greatness. You know, it's Employee Appreciation Day, but it is Women's History Month. We are standing on the backs of great women. Great women who went through lots of suffering and suffrage for us to be here. And women who are still fighting in the trenches for our rights. It's time for us now to say, "I am ready to write a new chapter in my book, and this is how it's going to look." This is how it's going to look. For organizations, talking to you, you talent development folks out there, you HR folks out there, it's time for you to create a psychologically safe work environment for women over age 50 because you haven't done that. You haven't done it. Now is the time for you to do that. Now is the time for you to evaluate how you talk about women who have been sitting in the organization for years? What is the languaging that is being used to describe these women? What is the language that is being used to empower these women? Is the talent development process empowering all women, or is it only empowering early career women? Because all women, that all women category doesn't work because you cannot have one message for all women. Because here's what I know about intersectionality. Everybody shows up at the intersection with their own needs and wants, and nobody starts from the same place or the same intersection. So if I am a 50-year-old woman who is a caregiver, I have a different intersection than a 50-year-old woman who still has children at home, who has a child maybe getting ready to go to college. So you have to evaluate the messaging that you are using around talent development and really start to have targeted conversations with each one of the subgroups within your woman, all woman category. There is no one message. There is no one languaging. There is customized programs that meet people where they are. We have to take the term intersectionality for real. And understand that inclusion includes women over age 50. It includes us. It includes us. And we often don't have a voice in the organization. So here's a pointer. Have a focus group. Invite women who have been sitting in the same role more than 15 years, who have been in their career at least 20 years to come to a focus group to talk about what they want. But here's the thing that must happen, talent development folks, is you have to be willing to listen and not invalidate their story because their story is real. We cannot go around invalidating people's story because it makes us uncomfortable. It is their story to tell. So if they tell you a story that they've been overlooked 5 times for a promotion, hear them. If they give you a story that their manager has taken credit for their work, hear them. If they give you a story that says, "I've applied for 8 positions and I've been told no," hear them. We have to be willing to hear what these women have to say. Don't try to take it personal. Don't try to devalue what they've said. Don't try to give it a different spin. We don't want to hear your spin. We're giving you our story, our truth, our voice that has often been marginalized and quieted. That's the real— the reality for women over 50, and that is the absolute reality for diverse women over age 50. We've been in the room and you haven't heard us. We've been in the room and you haven't seen us. We've been in the room and you haven't validated us. We've been in the room and you haven't acknowledged us. So now is the time. So here is the plan. Don't build another women's leadership development program until you carve out your data. Look at your data. Where are your women over age 50? Have they been in the same role? What's the tenure in the role for these women? How many times have they applied for a promotion and been told no? And if your data can't capture that, you probably need to start capturing it for the younger generation. Because here's what I know about the young folks. I have a 37-year-old and a 28-year-old. If they get turned down for the promotion twice, you don't need data. They're gone. Because our generation, the 50-somethings, we've been taught to perfectly show up in your imperfect world. And sit and wait our turn for things to happen. The next generation's not gonna do that. So if you get this wrong with the current generation that's in your workforce, the almost 50-year-olds and the 50 and over, if you get it wrong, the 20-year-olds will not give you grace. They will walk out the door and you will have a revolving door of talent. So here's the thing. Your current talent pool is your incubator. It's your incubator. It's where you get to go fix all the things that you've done wrong. It's where you get to go fix all the things that need to be fixed. So talent development folks, I'm talking to you, HR, my peeps, I'm talking to you. We have got to validate the current talent at the same time as we bring the new talent in. Because if I watch you throwing resources at the new talent and you aren't validating me, I'm boning up my resume and I'm moving on. Because here's what COVID taught us. There's lots of opportunity out there. There's lots of recruiters who are dialing people up right now. And if the recruiter and the new company can sell the company better, your person is gonna be gone. And here's the other part. When diverse people walk out the door, it's about the time that you figure out their value to the team because they're usually the one doing all the work and getting the least amount of credit. That's the truth. See, I told you guys, Inclusion Unscripted is here to have the hard discussions that nobody wants to talk about. We're not here to make it nice. I don't have the time or the energy to put a bow on it or a lipstick on some pigs. Don't have time for it. I'm saying what needs to be said. We've got to do better as talent development folks, and we've got to do better as leaders, and we have to do way better as HR people to identify the intersectional voices in our organizations. We've got to do better. And yes, true talent is hard to find. Yes, this is it. It's, it's hard to find. True talent is hard to find. And so women over 50, here is my charge for you: ask for what you want and don't take no for an answer, because there's no longer a time for you to that you don't want something, you need to say it. Because 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, when you turn 65 and you decide to fully retire, I don't want you to live with regret. I don't want you to live with, I should have shown up bolder, I should have done more to get the position, I should have worked harder at this. Or I should have really asked for what I want. Don't live with regret. Today is your day. Seize the moment, seize the opportunity. And so I want to thank all of you, um, for joining today. Uh, as I said, we are here every Friday at 2:00 PM, Inclusion Unscripted, where we are living diversity, not creating it. We are living diversity. Diversity is a living being. And if we don't understand that diversity and inclusion requires us to live in that space, then we continue to do projects and try to fix something. But we are all diverse. Every single one of us is diverse. The issue is we are not inclusive and we don't create equity and equality for all, and we don't empower employees to thrive, to thrive. They can belong, but if they are not thriving, we are doing an ineffective job of building diversity and inclusion in your organization. So thank you all for joining me, and I appreciate you. You can visit inclusionlearninglab.com and sign up for our newsletter. And next week I'm going to demo our DE&I community that we have officially launched. And I want to demo that and give you guys a taste of what we have in our diversity and inclusion community. So thank you again. Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy. And we will be back.

You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me safe and sound. And when I fall, you tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down with an illusion, like a sparrow with broken wings. But now I shine with your reflection on me. I'm getting back up on my feet. That you showed up.

Thank you everyone, take care, see you next Friday. Bye!