I’ve been a woman in the tech industry for decades, much of that time spent in Silicon Valley. I’ve worked with hundreds of tech entrepreneurs and CEOs, almost all males. Early on, based on those experiences, I came to the conclusion that the only glass ceilings that exist are the ones we create and place over our own heads.
Let’s face the realities. Here is how a woman can become a leader in a man’s world.
- Stop thinking of men as the enemy. Men make up about half of the population of the world; we may as well focus on working together instead of automatically assuming all men are rotten. In my experience in the business world, about 1 in 10 people are jerks—and that includes women. I define jerks as people who make everything harder for everyone else. Everyone else is basically kind and willing to help others. The real trick is to avoid working with jerks, regardless of their gender.
- Don’t focus on “power” or “control.” Focus on providing value. Except for jerks, I found men surprisingly supportive as I rose in the business world. But I was never in it for power. I was in it because I had determined at an early age that what I loved doing best was helping others realize their dreams. Ultimately I became a revenue coach, conducting sales and marketing department turnarounds for CEOs. (In other words, I made the company’s sales go up.) I did that for decades. Rather than try to stop me from succeeding, just the opposite took place. My CEO clients were pleased when I succeeded in growing their revenue. It is much more common for men to compete with each other than to compete with a value-adding woman, in my experience.
- Use your natural talents. For example, I think that women, as a rule, are more empathetic than men. That makes us more able to take good care of customers, employees, and partners, which is the key component of successful revenue growth.
- Observe, but don’t absorb. Being naturally empathetic has a dark side; we can take on too much to the point where we create stress for ourselves. It is much more productive to observe without absorbing. You will still be able to solve the problem you’ve uncovered, but you won’t be stressing out about it. In reality, doing this will actually make you more effective.
- Picture yourself as you would like to be. It’s easy to fall into the trap of self-doubt, especially when we set out on our own and start a business. It’s lonely at the top (and not just for women). Spend some quiet time imagining yourself as a wise and composed leader, and live in that skin during your working day. People see you the way you see yourself; in fact, they assume that since you know yourself better than anyone else does, your self-perception is something they can observe and trust. So how others see you is 100% driven by how you see yourself.
- Give yourself a break. Anyone who wants to succeed in the business world will have to work hard. And anyone in a position of responsibility will make mistakes along the way. Don’t overwork to the point where your soul starts to wither; spend time with nature and loved ones to ensure you stay grounded. And when you do make a mistake, just face it, forgive yourself, and work on fixing it in the future.
- Learn so you can teach. The more you learn, the more you earn. That’s true of everyone, men and women. Those who lead are those who keep learning, which enables them to teach others what they’ve learned. And these days, with AI getting smarter by the minute, hyperlearning is the only way we will survive.
All of us, men and women, are becoming programmers of AI. The more we are kind and helpful in our thinking and behaving, the more likely we are to bring that positivity into our AI prompts. And the more likely we are to create a new digital world that we want to live and lead in.