Executive Career Coaching Archives - The Career Success Doctor

How Mad Is The High Heels At Work Debate?

Thanks to an actress called Nicola Thorp, the ridiculousness of the rather mad ‘you must wear high heels at work’ debate has been thrust into the public consciousness of the UK . If you’re UK based and don’t know the story you’ve probably been living under a rock, but the basics are that Nicola, a resting actress doing some temp work, was told that, to be a receptionist at global accountancy and consultancy firm PWC, she would have to wear high heels. She refused, and told her story to the media, thus inspiring a huge discussion about the sexism of it all.

One of the best commentaries on this I have read appeared in The Guardian, where the writer, Caroline Cadwalladr (she must be Welsh with a name like that), rails against the curse of the high heel as an instrument of deformity, and comments on why we should speak out about it.

I adore beautiful shoes, and heels, but for the last 10 or 15 years I have had to leave them behind. I have hyper-mobile (i.e. weak) knee and ankle joints, so I am unstable at the best of times. Your high heel makes me more unstable. The hyper mobility has brought with it various knee and foot problems which I can only keep in check by wearing orthopaedic insoles, and you try wearing those with a pair of high heels! It’s really, really tricky, because I now have to wear extra wide shoes, and finding elegant versions of such things is a nightmare. I have heel-envy as only someone who can only wear old lady shoes can have heel-envy.

What Are The High Heels At Work Issues?

It seems to me that there are several issues to disentangle from this whole story. The most obvious is the illogical attitudes of certain organisations to the professional dress code. Back in the day, it was regarded as bad form if women had bare legs, or wore sleeveless or low plunging blouses or tops. In certain organisation this is still the case.The reason? Immodesty. Now can someone please explain what is modest about a 3-4 inch heel? And in those same organisations, women were (and often still are) expected to wear skirts, not trousers. Trousers – which are generally so much more practical – were regarded as women trying to be too much like men; not feminine enough.

I’m not an image consultant, but I do believe this stems from a kind of sexism where women are expected to look the little woman. OK, Louis XIV wore heels for dancing and other courtly activities, and men wore heels to stop their feet sliding through their stirrups, but in general the men avoided the 4 inch plus heel. High heels make you unstable, and thus vulnerable and, er… womanly. Similarly pencil skirts (yes, some organisations still expect their women to wear pencil skirts). Have you ever tried to move at any speed in a pencil skirt? Like the high heel, it emphasises our femininity, and our bums.

We women also have to bear some responsibility in all this. For many women, heels signify empowerment, they raise us up, they make us feel taller, grander, more feminine, sexy and, yes, professional too. We choose to wear the bloody things on nights out, to weddings and garden parties (as your stiletto sinks into the damp grass). Why then do we complain when male-dominated institutions say we should wear heels to work, given we love them so much out of work?

While many men are supportive of the women who are protesting about the high heels at work issue, some still think we should just suck it up. The argument often runs along the lines of ‘women have more dress choice and men have to conform to dress codes too’ lines. This little gem from news.com in Australia is a great example. But of course, men have not had to put up with many years of sexism and inequality, and I think many of them feel challenged when women stop saying nothing, which is our more usual habit, and speak out for what we think is our right. In this case the right to choose to have healthy, comfortable feet.

Today if a client has something to say about my shoes (and it has happened), I talk about my infirmity. I no longer feel the need to hide it, and it generally embarrasses them into an uncomfortable silence. I have turned down job offers from organisations who told me I had to conform to a no-trousers dress code, or they didn’t like my jewellery. Because the way I saw it, and still see it, if you work full time, you spend more of your waking hours at work than you do with your partner or family. If your values and those of your employer don’t coincide, or at least match on the points that really matter, that’s an awful long time to be spending in that environment.

Photo via Pixabay under Creative Commons Licence

Self-Deceit : How To Sabotage your Career Success and Happiness

Written by The Career Success Doctor

If you read the biographies of successful women from Sheryl Sandberg to Karren Brady, there are various common themes that emerge. The one I’m interested in here is the sense of feeling a fraud. These ares seriously successful women who questioned whether they deserved to be in the positions they have achieved, because they have learned to tell themselves a story that women don’t deserve to be taken seriously or to reach the highest level.

For years I used to deceive myself about who I was and what I wanted out of my life. I had some great stories I told myself about all the things I couldn’t do, particularly because I was a woman. And it was less than empowering! I totally believed them, and they shaped my identity. The classic one was to tell myself I didn’t have enough qualifications. It’s only now, with 5 degrees including a PhD that I realise it was never about the qualifications!

Men do it too; it’s not the preserve of women. However, women are notoriously bad at asking for a pay rise or a promotion, and their confidence levels in the workplace tend to be lower than those of men.

What these stories do for us is to protect us. We keep ourselves safe by keeping ourselves small. We tell ourselves our stories over and over again, so making them true. The problem then is that we don’t step out our comfort zone, and we don’t achieve the real greatness we are capable of. We don’t achieve the happiness we want, let alone the career success.

I just watched an excellent TEDx talk from Cortney Warren on this very subject. She’s a psychologist who has researched extensively into the subject of self-deceit, and the video makes for a very enlightening 15 minutes’ viewing.

What are the stories you have used to protect yourself and hold yourself back? Leave a comment in the box below.

And if your stories are still keeping your life smaller than you wantl, and you’d like to change them, please get in touch.

Do We Women Sabotage Our Own Career Success?

Written by The Career Success Doctor

Mindset is so critical for career success, and it’s one of the ways that we successfully sabotage ourselves! I came across this article, Career Talk For Women, on a site called Post-Journal, which discusses this in some depth. As the author, ELIZABETH P. CIPOLLA, says:

‘It’s no secret that the world needs more women who are shamelessly confident in their ability to serve as role models and change agents. Our region (New York) is no exception. This month will focus upon the self-imposed handcuffs that can hold us back from making our mark as a competent leader if we aren’t quick to intervene.’

I love that phrase, ‘self-imposed handcuffs’. It describes the way we sabotage ourselves so well! You can read the rest of the article here.

Should Control Freaks Be Allowed To Be Managers?

Written by The Career Success Doctor

Once upon a time I was a control freak. I openly admit it now, although back then I was shocked when a good friend announced the fact to a group of strangers – and not in a jokey way. I had no idea that I was being controlling.

It’s easy to look around for people to blame, but I do thin part of my problem was that all the managers I had ever had,with one exception, had been of the command and control variety. When I started at Esso, just as Margaret Thatcher was coming to power, we talked about management of organisations, not leadership, and management meant getting people to do stuff.

Back then managers weren’t well educated in things managerial: there was a fair bit of research done at the time on how little management education British managers had.The idea that the best way to get people to perform well was to take a coaching approach hand’t even been thought of. Back then, control freakery was tolerated in managers, as was industrial bullying.

Fortunately things have changed, both for me personally and for industry as a whole. I’ve learned to give away control (it’s called delegation), and industry is much more aware of the fact that people are at their best when you inspire them, rather than push them relentlessly.

Yet there are still control freaks around in positions of power. From my perspective, this approach stems from a combination of poor role models and concealed fear. Most of the control freaks I have coached are secretly afraid that people will find out that they don’t really know what they are doing, or they are frightened of losing their job or getting demoted for failure. That’s the ones who can even see that they are control freaks.

Of course the ability to take control of a situation is important. Disorder tends to confuse people, and it’s well known in psychological circles that people instinctively look for a leader. If you are managing a group of people, and you’re not the leader, someone else is going to do the job for you. At the same time, you can lead successfully without controlling the living daylights out of those you are managing.

The tendency to over-control isn’t limited to men, either. I’ve only ever had one female boss, and she was OK, at least as far as the whole control question is concerned. However, I’ve coached female bosses who were inclined that way, and I have heard horror stories both from my coaching clients, and from friends about women who were clearly out of their comfort zone and their area of competence.

The remedy does lie in good education -and it’s one of the issues where personal coaching can really help. Control freaks rarely want to share their deepest insecurities in group situations.

So should control freaks be managers? In an ideal world, no. They won’t get the best out of people, and while they might get results in the short term, in the longer term, people will either vote with their feet and leave, or start to under perform or find ways to undermine the boss. At the same time, over-controlling managers need help – both to improve their own performance as a leader, and to create a better working environment for their staff.

As for me, my attitude nowadays is that I’m glad there are control freaks around clamouring for responsibility, so I don’t have to. I’m happy to step up when asked, and I’m a far better leader now I’ve got over this need to feel in control. This in turn comes from knowing who I am, and losing my insecurities about not being good enough. But control freaks have their place, and I am always happy to hand over to someone who enjoys putting order into the more mundane aspects of organisational life that are essential for their smooth operation.

Increase Your Energy And Career Success – Care For Your Body!

Written by The Career Success Doctor

When we lack energy, we come across as dull and unattractive, which doesn’t help our career prospects. In this video blog I discuss why and how this is a problem, and some simple steps you can do to help take care of yourself and your body, and boost your energy.