“To get to where you are, I know what you had to go through.” (Unknown)
I am often invited to speak or write about my experiences as a professional women. I have collected extracts from various texts as a reminder for myself for 2025. It has become almost the norm for people to complain about work-related stress, toxic work environments and work conflicts; it is most alarming! While many times I wish I could fix the external environment, I can’t. Having said that, I still have a dream of us, very simply put, being gentler on each other! So I reflect…
(Thank you to my dear friend Dina for the photo)
In leadership positions, I learnt leading means listening to many voices while sometimes having to moderate my own voice. I also learnt the discretion of knowing when compromise was NOT an option! Let me give an example: I chaired an event committee many years ago where I had to stand firmly (making many enemies in the process) to avoid a negative portrayal of “Africa” – with the risk of the continent being perceived as not having anything to offer serious professional debate on a global stage. It was a battle to maintain the integrity of the event. At the time, as I witnessed debates in the media about blacks being portrayed as monkeys, our event was under constant threat of being portrayed as an “African event’, not in a positive manner, but with the negative connotations of Africans being ONLY fun-loving, dancing and singing, with nothing deeper to offer humanity. These are the situations where compromise is not an option. But it was still not a “dry” event, and we had much joy in conceptualising and implementing it. Balance is key.
Often, these intellectual differences are portrayed, inaccurately, as personality clashes – in some case, these intellectual difference may even lead to very aggressive attempts at “character assassinations”. It takes great courage to stand one’s ground, to avoid pettiness and to keep redirecting the conversation to what really matters.
Another challenge is that our knowledge contributions are sometimes considered irrelevant through selective memory or deliberate obliteration. We are often “written out” of history, subjected to erasure and eradication; there are many forms of exclusion that we have to contend with such as attempts to “silence” difference, dismiss as “non-professional” any alternative forms of doing, thinking or practice, and declaring “other” voices and forms of expression as invalid.
What does a “rise to the top” mean for a woman? This is a sensitive topic considering that powerful women have historically been vilified. Systemic misogyny is real, and women tend to be subjected to many forms of slander. The symbolic aspect of having more women in any profession has benefits. Yet, women imitating men and following their lead, rather than innovating new ways of “doing”, means no real change will be achieved. Perhaps I may humbly offer some principles for the building of ecosystems of partners and allies in professional teams:
• Collaborative (versus competitive)
• Flexible (versus rigid)
• Enjoyable/Creative (versus harsh/tedious)
• Relevant/People-focused (versus male-dominated ambitions)
• Gentle (versus aggressive)
• Innovative (versus repetitive)
• Deeply engaging/Transformational (versus surface engagement)
In addition, I share more lessons, especially crafted for young women professionals; these are shared with no claim of moral superiority, in the hope that they resonate with some. It is important to note that I do not always get it right!
1. Build up your work and your professional reputation – it takes years. Mostly importantly, whatever your discipline, be clear about the principles that guide you. Our work is a reflection of our values. It is not neutral.
2. Negotiate – you need time to grow – young people in any system get burdened with tasks that do not always help in the building up of their career profile.
3. Balance authority with humility; engage and share knowledge with an open mind, with generosity and integrity.
4. Use simple language – I do not care who you are or what your discipline/project is, you can communicate it simply.
5. Learning needs courage – and sometimes learning demands that we step out into the unknown to be challenged by new ideas and to grow. Sometimes learning means to we need to be willing to leave our spaces of safety and to put ourselves forward to learn how to teach and do.
6. Become a reflective practitioner: block out time for learning, writing and research – treat it a sacred – this is important for any role that you take on. This is an ongoing process – devise strategies that work for you. Learn to pause.
7. What is your professional message? Identify it, refine it, perfect it – it takes years; what we do in our professional lives is a reflection of our value systems.
8. What is your purpose? We bring our values and ourselves to our work environment in different ways.
9. Our words count! Chose them carefully.
10. Our personal and professional lives are not so clearly separated. The interface between the personal and the professional is ambiguous however hard we try to separate them. How we present ourselves in the professional space is a reflection of who we are in our private lives. Always work at fixing yourself, forget about fixing others.
11. Don’t take on a management position before you are ready – it is a trap! Ask yourself always: is it ego/status-driven, financially driven? Do you have the right qualifications? Yet at the same time,
12. Everyone has learnt on the job – do not be deceived or discouraged by people saying you do not have knowledge, skill or experience – say yes to every opportunity that is presented to you and learn on the job;
13. Develop the skill to know the difference between 11 and 12!
14. Some people won’t like you – learn to live with that, don’t spend your energy on it – just do the work and always remember Berne Brown – if someone is not in the arena their opinion doesn’t count; at the same time,
15. Remember Maya Angelou: “I come as one, but I stand as ten thousand.”
16. Know when to move on – some people need to be left behind/dropped – others need to be with you on your journey – know how to distinguish between the two – it is not always so evident! Our judgment is often blurred with emotions
17. You will be subjected to various forms of bias and discrimination; it comes with the territory. I have often found that some people would saunter in, unprepared and speak the obvious – yet be treated with the utmost respect and reverence. I constantly have to prove myself as I am first met with suspicion. And when I do speak, I get praised in a rather exaggerated manner because not much was expected from me in the first place. Be alert to this.
18. Difficulties do not make our character – difficulties expose our character. Be reminded to work on yourself daily – fix yourself from the inside out.
19. Make every move and decision based on your values and integrity; “integrity is what we do when no one is looking.”
20. Let collaboration drive you – forget about competition
21. Acknowledge your power. I have sat in meetings where respected professionals have managed to sway opinion and influence decision making merely by the authority they held and their perceived reputation – on some occasions purely subjective opinions have been taken as gospel. We can decide to act with professional arrogance, grandstanding and enforce questionable notions of excellence – or we can decide to ethically add our voice in dialogue and facilitate for other voices to emerge. We have great power in the boardroom and in society.
22. You will fail – devise strategies to deal with that. I love the podcast title: “The art of having a bad day.”
23. Self-protect, do everything with kindness towards yourself and others
24. Remember Stephan Covey’s 3 balls: family, health, career – the latter is a rubber ball, it bounces back after a fall; family and health are glass balls and, if neglected, they shatter to pieces.
25. Remember borrowed wisdoms: our small actions change the world, the way we do anything is the way we do everything, the way we live our day is the way we live our life.
Happy women’s day 2025!