Our Turn (7 page)

But it wasn't just about leaving the CBC. It was my exit from an entire industry whose time at the top was waning and whose leadership seemed to lack the courage to chart an effective way forward. I may have been doing one of the most important jobs in Canadian television, but what was television becoming? It was already clear that advertisers would soon be spending more on online digital ads than they would on print, radio and TV (a milestone surpassed in Canada in 2013, and a year later in the United States). So while other large traditional media organizations sent attractive offers my way, I was already sold on a new direction. The promise and potential of a new view of media hooked me. Technology was giving power to the very people I had made a career serving—those glorious masses. And I wanted to hear what they had to say.

[ IV ]

You Need to Get Over Yourself

AT TWITTER HEADQUARTERS IN
San Francisco, the staff gathers every week for Tea Time. It's a casual end-of-day event, beer and wine along with the tea, held in the wide-open space of the company lounge with added chairs and a stage up front. People make presentations about specific projects or new directions and employees chime in with comments and questions. But not all employees spoke up. Last year, the company's SWAT team noticed that relatively few of the Tea Time questions were coming from women. Short for Super Women at Twitter, SWAT is the cheekily named internal team that works to advance women's interests at the company. I became part of the team not long after I joined Twitter in the spring of 2013. I've always believed that advocating for women in the workplace requires a constant, concerted effort. Tea Time was a case in point. Here was a regular opportunity for employees to be heard, yet too many of the women who came out to the sessions stayed silent.

Like many of the big tech and social networking companies, Twitter has more men than women among its three thousand or so employees. So proportionally, one would expect to hear from more men at any company forum. But I know too well that numbers don't tell the whole story. Even when there are more women than men in a group, or at the table, there's no guarantee you'll hear from them. Stacks of evidence show women are far less likely than men to speak up in the workplace
.
And when women are outnumbered by men, they're even more inclined to keep their thoughts to themselves. In 2012, researchers at Brigham Young University and Princeton examined how groups that included men and women collaborated to solve problems. They found that when women were in the minority they not only spoke less than the men, they spoke significantly less than their proportional representation might suggest: in those cases, females talked for less than 75 percent of the time that males did.

The finding is no surprise to me. In my experience, when men and women gather for a work meeting a remarkable ritual often unfolds. Perhaps because the boardroom table was historically the domain of men, an ancient, almost tribal dynamic takes hold. The men jostle and posture. They speak freely and unprompted. They interrupt each other, often talking over one another, talking over the woman. I have been that woman. I've been the one who has offered up an idea, only to have it drowned out and then hear it repeated almost word for word a minute later by, say, John. This then cues Richard to say, “John makes an excellent point!” And while I seethe in silence, the men move into mid-ritual, reinforcing and reframing each other's views. Like a game,
they toss a ball of ideas around the table, and flex their personal capital.

Women are still newcomers to this game. And while we can be terrific at reading a room, we don't always read it well in such moments. We're too stumped by being talked over, or having our idea hijacked, to join in. Yet it's in those moments, like it or not, that you have to get over yourself and jump in. Bringing an idea to the table doesn't mean you “own” it. The team owns it, adds to it, debates it, fleshes it out. If you have a great idea, set it free; if you hear a good idea, back it up and bring additional value to it. The meeting table isn't a place to go it alone, but a place where you anchor yourself as part of a team.

Yet it isn't easy, and we women don't get over ourselves enough. We fall back on another traditional pattern, reminiscent of the classroom, when you put your hand up and waited to be called upon (reinforced by what you've seen happen to the woman who speaks first). And while you wait, you formulate precisely what you want to say, only to find that when it's your “turn,” you have missed the moment or someone else already has made the point. Fretting over saying just the right thing and fearing saying the wrong thing, women can end up saying nothing at all.

I know this particular insecurity intimately. Having so often been the newbie, the only woman and/or the youngest exec at the table, I have felt so out of place it robbed me of my voice. I was shy, too careful about what I'd say, or how I'd say it. More than once, my bosses told me during performance reviews that they felt that I knew more than I was contributing.

Women do not have a lock on being shy. Men suffer too. Strangely, given my chosen career, I have no desire to be at
a podium. I take a deep breath before presenting my ideas and making jokes in front of large crowds of people. But it's my job. And if I'm going to do my job well, I have to pull myself together and contribute.

In the workplace, I've been able to overcome shyness by defining it for what it is—a kind of self-indulgence. To be shy or too quiet in work situations means you hide who you are, and, more significantly, hide what you think and what you know. By not speaking up, you don't just deprive yourself of a voice at the table, you also abdicate contributing to the group. And that means you're actually not doing your job. After all, if you've been asked to the table in the first place, your colleagues and your bosses believe you have something valuable to contribute. The invitation is to participate and by taking that seat, you have accepted. When people don't share to their full potential, the group loses out—particularly in these times. As the digital age prompts widespread downsizing, every voice matters. It's not just the views of the leader that are critical, but those of every member of the team. The cards you keep close to the vest might well be the answer to a problem, or a map of the best way forward.

Or maybe you're afraid your input could be rejected or your suggestion isn't good enough. Sure, the chance is always there that you might say something that will make others question your judgement or abilities. And, unfortunately, women are still vulnerable to the knee-jerk judgements of others. Stereotypes are powerful, and stubborn old cultural views about how a woman ought to look/think/act are hard to shake. A 2012 Yale University study found women who speak their minds are still seen as both overbearing and
less competent than their quieter peers, while outspoken men are viewed as more competent than their quieter colleagues—and they tend to be rewarded for it. In the workplace, the talkative male tends to be seen as confident and powerful while an assertive woman runs the risk of being labelled bossy, domineering and, yes, bitchy. So it's worth noting that women's fears around speaking up are not unfounded. But staying quiet is not the solution. If those damaging, limiting perspectives are to change, men and women have to stop buying into them. We don't do ourselves any favours when we do.

So what if when you step up for your moment in the spotlight you say something wrong? In reality, your thoughts drop into the conversation and the team moves on, whether you've been brilliant or not. I had to ask myself, “Just how important do I think I am that my words have that kind of staying power?” You may ruminate in the shower or lose sleep over some stupid thing you think you said, but in those situations there are very few mistakes that can't be forgiven, and usually they are so small that they're quickly forgotten. Looking at it that way convinced me I was holding myself back—and, frankly, not doing my job when I sat quiet in a meeting. It was wrong
not
to speak up. In the end I decided I just had to get over myself.

At the CBC, I made a point of putting my views forward within the organization, but I also tried to make my voice heard outside of it. It was crucial to recasting the network as a modern broadcaster with clout. In 2011, when the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan sold its majority stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to Rogers Communications and Bell Media (BCE), who as a result became owners of the
Maple Leafs hockey team. I was concerned the public might interpret the deal to mean that the CBC no longer had the rights to broadcast the Leafs' games. To establish publicly that the CBC hadn't lost anything, I put out a statement congratulating Bell and Rogers on the deal, and said that we at the CBC—as the home of the Maple Leafs on
Hockey Night in Canada—
looked forward to working with them. Speaking up brought me an insult from a prominent Canadian sportswriter who published a column saying I was “blowing kisses to the boys.”

I was grateful Twitter had been invented. It allowed me to speak up again, and instantly. I tweeted the writer's misogynistic comment and asked whether this was still 1952. The tweet echoed far and wide, as men and women re-tweeted it with a heavy dose of disdain for the backward attitude.

The incident was one of many that taught me that you can't withdraw from criticism. You have to resist the temptation to give in to insecurities and allow others to define you. If you have a point to make, or you're doing something you believe is for the greater good, you have to just do it, ignoring the risk that a few might call you out and disagree. By not speaking up you run a greater risk of being misjudged. As I like to advise people who are hesitant to join Twitter, people are going to talk about you anyways—wouldn't you rather be part of the conversation? To cede the floor is to let others speak about you and, worse, speak on your behalf. I think our tendency to keep our heads down and just get on with our work can be one of the barriers that keep women from getting ahead—but it's one that is within our power to overcome. The keep-your-head-down attitude might win good
girls praise in school, but the business world will punish you for it. That's not to say that you should suddenly become a blowhard or magically transform from wallflower to show-off. But if you have an interesting observation, share it. If you have an idea, present it. You have to lift your head up every now and again. You have to get over yourself to be yourself.

Speaking up doesn't guarantee results. I learned that hard lesson dealing with a group of comedy writers who worked on shows commissioned by the CBC. Some of those guys, and they were all guys, had been working with the broadcaster for years, and as I made a push toward including more shows with female leads, I read some scripts that compelled me to speak up. In one episode, they had the female character, a newly single woman, diving under a table in a restaurant to hide when her ex walks in. In another, the lonely dumped woman was holed up eating ice cream in her closet. When I pointed out that these were clichés, they told me that their wives thought they were funny. They gave me the distinct impression that I, that women, weren't even allowed in this work area of funny men. We added women to writers' rooms but then got feedback from many of those women that they were being ignored. And they were too intimidated in a transient career to go on the record with their complaints. One pregnant network exec told me she'd felt ridiculed. As the network boss all I could do was keep returning to check that writers' room out and keep tabs on the creative process, though from an increased distance as the boys circled their wagons. We were hoping to broaden the primetime audience and appeal to more women and younger women, in particular, and they were still mining old boys' humour for laughs.

I not only had every right to give them my input, it was my job to do so. I never did break through that wall. I failed. But I never stopped trying to make myself heard—and that really is the crux of it.

The more I forced myself to speak up—to speak out, to question, to muse—the more comfortable it became. Practice was the best behavioural training. Not that it was always easy. But if you don't use your voice, it atrophies. With regular exercise it gets stronger. That strength is crucial not just for those who lead, but for any woman who hopes to make a meaningful contribution at work.

No, We Haven't Come a Long Way—Not Yet

EVER SINCE I STARTED AT PARAGON,
I have belonged to organizations that work to help women exercise their voice in the workplace and keep our interests showing up on corporate agendas. I've been a member of Toronto Women in Film, Women in Communications, and a number of internal groups that advocate for women's issues within a company. I think it's dangerous to assume we've come far enough, as many women and men actually seem to do. The reality is that business is not doing well enough by women yet. It may be tempting to say, “Okay, we've ticked that box” after one or two women are hired to senior roles and as a result become the poster faces of female progress. This tiny minority of female leaders, wearing heels among all those men in brogues, are presented as living examples of the success of the women's movement. But only a slim fraction of corporate leaders are female and, in the ranks below, the situation may not be much better. Even in the tech
industry, where women have made noted inroads at the highest levels, more than two-thirds of employees are male.

At the CBC, I instituted a diversity plan to make sure we kept asking the question “Where are the women? Where's the diversity?” Reporting directly to me, its director had a mandate to analyze who was doing the job on camera and behind the scenes. Just making that effort to count and question made people pay attention to the composition of a group and how they could affect it by their own recruitment and casting decisions. It wasn't about meeting quotas. It was about staying mindful and trying to correct imbalances where they existed.

Today, social media is ushering in a whole a new level of mindfulness to these kinds of issues. Through blogs, websites and social networks, ever more instances of imbalance, injustice, discrimination, both subtle and overt, are called out online in a digital recast of feminist activism. It's massive, hyper-organized and seems to move almost at the speed of sound.

It's true there's a dichotomy: in the online space, women and girls are easily stalked, threatened and bullied by anonymous creeps. But it's also an open space where people can share, support one another and discuss the kinds of issues—like sexism at work, domestic violence and date rape—that were once only talked about anonymously and in whispers. It's an intimate conversation among the masses, making women feel less alone, if not empowered. Granted, there's no pretense of a united female voice here: there may be nearly as many battlegrounds between women as there are around them (left vs. right, east vs. west, black vs. white; all
the iterations of the mommy wars). But there's no denying that social media have created a new power to force change.