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Nothing IS Something

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Next to the work I do in my company, one of my focuses over the years has been supporting women in advancing their careers and achieving gender balanced leadership. To this end, I recently co-authored and helped publish a book entitled ‘Ready for Female Leadership: The Future is NOW’.

In the past few years, I’ve expanded my desire for an ‘all encompassing’ equitable and inclusive workplace and society. This embraces not only all the ‘isms’ we commonly hear about but also one which has taken a backseat to all the others: ageism (I call ageism the ‘forgotten child of DEI strategies’ – hopefully a useful oxymoron).

In 2020 and 2021, I was fortunate to be a guest speaker for Vivian Acquah’s ‘Amplify DEI’ summits. She asked me a question in our pre-summit interviews: “What would you tell your younger self about the topics you spoke about (Discrimination and the Stress Response / 50 plus As Change Agents)? And why?”

My response to her was as follows, though perhaps not verbatim: “Every action has a consequence which falls somewhere on what I consider the scale of good or bad. Doing nothing is also doing something and that is bad. We all need to play a role to ensure racist and biased behavior becomes intolerable behavior.”

In replaying this back to myself recently, it made me think of an essay I wrote in the late 70’s. I had joined the Canadian Armed Forces as a military nursing officer. During basic officer training, we had to write an essay and share this to our group. A high ranking officer would grade us on poise and confidence. Nothing exciting came to mind as a topic, so I decided to write my essay entitled ‘Nothing is Something’. Here follows a portion of that essay. How I was rated by the attending officer is a story for another day…

The dictionary describes ‘nothing’ as:

  • Not any thing : no thing
  • Indicating the absence of meaning, value, worth, etc.
  • Of no importance or significance

Now let’s think about all the euphemisms we use for the word ‘nothing’ in our everyday language.

That person means nothing to me – which should tell the listener that this person is of no significance to me. Actually, it speaks volumes about the impression this person has made on me.

Nothing doing which means definitely no. If I hear a definite no then this is the opposite of yes, which tells me I’m not going to get what I want – and that is something.

Then we combine it with the word less. The idea is nothing less than revolutionary. [= the idea is revolutionary]

If you come to the party empty handed you have nothing in your hands, which can be very significant to the person hosting the party.

Has anyone ever told you that you have nothing to fear? Just how relaxed did this make you feel?

And when you see a wrong being committed against someone or society in general, doing nothing is tantamount to doing something, which could have very dire consequences.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

It’s this last one for which I hope you’ll sit up and take notice. How often have you let a minor or major transgression pass without calling it out, personally or professionally?

The cost of doing ‘nothing’ is incalculable: mentally, emotionally and financially to our society as a whole. Why would we perpetuate something that has so many negative consequences? Is it to preserve a false sense of superiority or privilege, which only serves to harm us? If so, how ridiculous is this?

We can all do something, even some little thing, to ensure an equitable and inclusive society. What will you do?

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Do You Dare To Swim With The Sharks?

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Many of you who know me, also know I’ve spent eleven years as a (board) member for PWN Netherlands.  As well, I work with two companies supporting diversity in the workplace, and supporting women in developing their careers. All three of these organization are voices for gender balanced leadership. And although this article isn’t about my usual focus on stress hardiness and resiliency, at its heart, it actually really is.

Recently, someone shared with me on LinkedIn, a Tedx Talk given by Alexis Kanda-Olmstead, who actually inspired this article.

Why is our stereotypical model of a successful leader a good looking, well-bodied Caucasian male, typically wearing a dark suit? Why is it that most people generally don’t recognize women as models of leadership? Is it because women are perceived as perhaps less intelligent, too emotional, too soft? Or if a female leader is demonstrating masculine traits, is she seen as pushy or aggressive? It comes down to what psychologists call ‘mind models’.

For many women, walking into a situation in which the stereotypical expectations are high, can be a fear-based moment. (I told you there is a link to stress!) There is an unspoken threat she is facing, which can trigger the stress flight, fight or freeze response. In the words of  Alexis, it causes “hypervigilance, second guessing ourselves, getting stuck in our minds and at worse, choking”.

What would it take for you to brave the next step, as a woman, to realize you too are a highly competent and successful leader, even though you aren’t yet the ‘model’ of what society thinks of in this role?

In research done with male and female university students, which Alexis quotes in her TEDx Talk, the discrepancies in their belief in their abilities to be a leader were large. None of them had any ‘real’ experience to draw these beliefs from and in fact, they were contradictory to what the research results demonstrated.

One of my great-nieces played a lot of sports in her youth. At age 13, her mom was watching her on the volleyball court, instructing her teammates regarding the next play. The thought occurred to her mom that her daughter might be bossy. She didn’t think, in that moment (though she does now): my daughter is assertive or has great leadership skills. As it turns out, my great-niece, at age 21, is the epitome of assertiveness, knows what she wants and has demonstrated her leadership skills countless times.

Years ago, I met a psychologist in the Hague, who was presenting on self-efficacy. This is defined as: ” one’s belief in one’s ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task”. At the time, the term was new for me. She commented that even more than the glass ceiling, this was the greatest obstacle to women advancing in their careers. I was in my early 50’s and was just starting (yes, just starting) to develop a belief in myself, in my abilities and in my expertise. Her comment hit me hard! Much of this belief is achieved through nurture – it can be learned.

There is a term called ‘’: “It is a specific form of efficacy associated with the level of confidence in the knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with leading others.”

In the research I mentioned above from Alexis’s Tedx Talk, women bottomed out in leadership efficacy. They reported using the leadership skills they were questioned about much more than the men in the study but didn’t believe in themselves as leaders.

There is so much that all of us can do, to undo the stereotypical model of leaders. That’s a journey I’d like to invite you to make with us in the Female Leadership Journey starting in January 2021.

Dare to take the next step, to swim comfortably with the (metaphorical) sharks and learn that you won’t get eaten.