About a year ago when I was looking for a new opportunity within my company, my manager brought me a position that required weekly travel. Talking over with him the pros and cons, I made a comment about how I’ve managed to avoid travel in my career up until this point, but I’ve always known I would eventually need to do it, as if it were a bullet everyone needs to bite in order to get to the next level.
Fast forward to today where I once again found myself pondering the question of inclusion and how we get straight to the heart of the matter. What lit the fire this time was a snippet I saw about a woman who won an award for the work she does around diversity and inclusion. Reading beyond the teaser headline, I was intrigued to find out what specifically she is doing that is so ground breaking it led to recognition. She's worked globally in a variety of different cultures, she gets to know her teams really well and matches their strengths and beliefs to like clients; she reads articles and watches TEDTalks on the topic and passes them on. All good stuff, but nothing terribly earth shattering.
Sometimes I think my ideas are so radical the world is not ready for them. But I really think I'm on to something with my position that in order to be truly inclusive, we need to change the way business is done. And maybe it's not so far-reaching after all.
For years I've described my career in terms of being able to "dodge" travel. But I’ve also been very successful in national, regional and global leadership roles with next to no travel. I led a team in Latin and South America for over a year without ever leaving Chicago. Something is not right here. I’m beginning to think I need to rewrite my story.
We women spend entire careers apologizing for what we can’t do. We speak about opportunities presented to us in terms of what is unworkable. We see our options for career growth as onerous. And we’re always surprised by how much we accomplish in spite of our limitations.
What if we viewed it differently?
It’s time to start dissecting our success. This is important. This is where the clues lie to help us begin to solve the puzzle of changing how we do business. The tactics we use to connect and empower teams are what we need to make visible and exploit in order to drive this concept forward. What do those of us who are grounded do differently to achieve great results in spite of the travel gap?
I’ve referred to the 2010 Deutsche Bank white paper on gender balanced leadership in a prior post. I love this excerpt because it shows what is possible: “Vivienne Cox who was with BP for over 25 years, and the head of gas, power and renewables until 2009 was offered in 1998 a promotion to head a division in the company’s downstream division. She was 39, had just had her first child, and turned the promotion down on the grounds that she did not want to travel all the time, work weekends and put in the constant late nights she assumed that the job required. The deputy chief executive, Rodney Chase, rejected her refusal and promoted her, because he wanted to show that the job could be done on her terms.”
Few of us have a manager like Rodney, but if more of us can start to correlate the positive results of our work to how we do business, we really could drive change. The change is already happening; the problem is we’ve made it invisible, hidden behind our shame and embarrassment that we can’t get results in the same manner men do. We need to stop apologizing for doing the job differently and talk about what makes us successful doing the job on our own terms.
If I think about my own career, I’ve been able to manage my national and regional teams remotely because of my leadership skills. I’m organized, proactive, communicative, inclusive, and cleaved to a regular meeting cadence that includes action items and holding the appropriate party accountable to demonstrate progress and deliver results. I’m also adept at leveraging my local teams to connect with their clients. I believe that delegation empowers, engenders loyalty, and grows careers. I’ve developed tightly connected teams and built virtual bridges to my clients. I’ve probably saved my clients hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel expenses over the years, and given my company far more productive hours spent on tangible work product instead of sitting idle in transit.
My challenge to you today is to think differently about your success. Assume that your approach is the accepted and expected method. What if you were proud to broadcast how you go about doing your job? What would that feel like?
“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.” — Robert Bresson
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