engage the answer walking right next to you?
“That will never work.”
…that was my answer. Word for word. I had just finished Georgetown Coaching and needed something to build a business around. My coaching paper had asked for my management philosophy, and it spilled out just that fast: “I like to empower people – engage, manage, partner, observe, wonder, execute, and renew.” I saved it. It became the organizing principle. And empower.com internet address vital to any business was already taken.
Walking with Beth, sharing the idea and the problem, and she said “How about empowering… leaders?” And the coach, the guy who had just written a whole paper about it, said… that will never work. It was luckily not lost on me that it was not very…
empowering…
We still laugh about it. Turns out THAT was available. empoweringleaders.com… and off I went…
Nobody waits to be ready. They Get Up and Go… Go…
A band that could not play a note…
…got up anyway. The Go-Go’s came out of the Los Angeles punk scene in 1978, broke friends with no musical training. Belinda Carlisle and Jane Wiedlin started a band because nearly everyone they knew was starting one. They named it at a Denny’s on Sunset Boulevard. None of them knew how to play. Charlotte Caffey joined 2 months later, Gina Schock was on drums by 1979, and Kathy Valentine took up the bass around 1980. On March 6, 1982, Beauty and the Beat was the number 1 album in the country, and it stayed there 6 weeks.
The first all-female band to write their own songs and play their own instruments made it…
Belinda brought the charisma and the voice out front, and she did not wait to be good first. Nobody in that band did. In September 1982 the band put the method out as a single, written by Jane and Charlotte: Get Up and Go. It peaked at 50. It was never the big hit. It is still the whole story.
…engage starts with a question, not the answer
The Signpost for engage is the leader people want to follow into the work. An open presence. A shared picture of where this is going that people want to be inside of, and a real sense of why. And the tell… they lead with questions. The Roadblock is the leader who already has the right answer. The only answer. The smartest person in the room, which is exactly who I was on that walk, with the best idea of the day standing next to me.
…and this week, empower is about her
This week is National Women’s Leadership Week, and I am officially relaunching empower as what it was always for… empowering women’s leadership. Each day this week carries 1 vector, what it looks like at its best and at its worst, a story, and a woman you can do something about before the day is out.
Because the numbers on this are not subtle. Women get mentored. Men get sponsored. Among high-potential MBAs who had a mentor, 88% of the men had been promoted 2 years later, against only 65% of the women. Same advice. Different outcome. The difference is whether somebody senior engages for you in a room you are not in. And the gap starts at the very first rung. At entry level, 31% of women have a sponsor, against 45% of men. It narrows as they climb, and it never quite closes.
Women are ready and waiting at the door. Are YOU the men AND women to open it…
Who did you answer before she finished?
I have told that story on myself for years, and it keeps getting truer. The best answer that day did not come from my paper. It came from the person next to me, and it came as a question. I had put engage at the front of my own philosophy, and then I did the opposite, out loud, to the person who knows me best. From the inside it did not feel like the Roadblock. It felt like being quick and clever… If you want to see how not to do it, watch CNBC Halftime Report… the men there REGULARLY cut off the women guests who frankly are much better investors.
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: go back to 1 woman whose idea you shut down, this Monday. Reopen it with a question, and let her answer stand… even if your first reply is already on its way to your mouth.
Getting leaders to ask the question before they reach for the answer is where most of my coaching starts. Schedule time with me here.
So come along for the week. A band that could not play a note, 7 songs, and 7 women you can empower before Sunday. Time to… Get Up and Go
