Forecasting Report—Leadership Trends for Q4 2021 and 2022, Part II

Hey everybody, Dr. Robyn McKay here. And welcome to a special episode of the Mindset Rx. It is your place to be if you're an emotionally intelligent leader, and you're ready to set the tone with purpose and productivity and positivity for your week, your month, your year. And today, this is kind of back by popular demand, and it actually... I recognized on the last session that I did of Mindset Rx, that I didn't spend enough time talking about this topic today.

So we're gonna dive into forecasting for the future of women in leadership in the end of 2021, 2022 and beyond. So I hope you really enjoy this episode. I enjoyed putting it together. And one of the things I wanted to share with you as we begin having this conversation about what is the future of women in leadership, I wanted to share that I've been able to see around corners, most of my life. I'm a visionary leader.

An example of that was about 10 or 11 years ago, while I was still working as a psychologist at Arizona State University, I had taken a team of young women leaders from the university over to Intel for their Women at Intel annual conference. And I remember I was sitting in the audience watching a keynote speaker and participating, and I thought, "I see myself... " I could see myself doing a keynote address for Intel. Well, it took 10 years because just this last March, I actually did the keynote address for a diversity and inclusion conference at Intel for one of their major global divisions.

So it took a little while sometimes for what I see in my mind to materialize into reality, but it's always there. And I'm hoping that in sharing that information with you and what I've been seeing coming down the pipeline for us as women leaders in corporate, that you can understand that time is a funny thing. And maybe it's this quarter, maybe it's next year, but these are the things I'm definitely seeing as trends that are building, that are growing among women in leadership, particularly in tech and healthcare, in FinTech and in other high performance fields.

So without further ado, let's dive in. And I'm gonna just switch over here so I can see my notes. If you're watching live, I'd love to say hello to you. And if you're watching the recording or listening on the podcast, please again say hello and let me know... Let me know, which of these trends you're really excited about or looking forward to participating in, experiencing and contributing to. Alright. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get started.

I put this together as 10 trends. And so I'm going to do a count down kind of like the top 10 list that... Oh my gosh, I just totally I'm dating myself, but I'm just remembering David Letterman when he would do the top 10 list. So that is kind of the context that I wanna start with today.

So the first one that I'm seeing as a trend continuing now and in the future is the great resignation. The great resignation, is going to be continuing in response to women leaders really standing at an existential crossroads with their work. And they're asking deeper questions than they've ever asked before. Primarily, I think because there's time to do that now that they didn't have before.

The one gift of the pandemic has been an opportunity to kinda get quiet with yourself and to check in with your heart, with your vision, with those dreams and hopes that you've had since you were a little kid. And to really ask, what's the point of all of this? What am I meant to be doing now? And maybe it's the thing that you're doing. But what I'm finding among the women leaders that I'm working with is that they're really wanting to align their values, their vision, their most deeply held goals and dreams with whatever organization that they're choosing to work with.

So what I'm really seeing in response to this great resignation is that women leaders are choosing purpose and principles over power plays and politics. They're really growing tired of having to give their blood, sweat and tears in order to accomplish things for organizations that maybe they're not in alignment with anymore. So plan on seeing more from the great resignation.

The next trend I'm seeing is that there's also gonna be a shift away from the value... Or from the belief actually that you have to sacrifice your values or you have to defer your heart's desires in order to make money.

So a lot of times in the past, up until about 2019, even in the beginning of 2020, there was still a mindset among women leaders that I have to wait until... I have to wait until retirement. I have to wait until I have a bigger nest egg. I have to wait until sometime delayed in the future to pursue my heart's desires. To pursue that thing that I know that I'm really meant to be doing or contributing here.

And now what we're seeing as a result of all of the existential questions that people are asking right now... So they're saying, "You know what... Wait a minute. I don't wanna defer any longer." And they're also realizing that there's not enough time to wait. There's no more time to waste, because life is short, and you really don't know when it's going to be your time to depart this earth.

I'm not saying that out of fear or anything like that, but we really don't know. And I think the idea that we have to delay our hopes and dreams is an old model, an old paradigm that's slowly being deteriorated. And the more that women like you and I can do to really honor our most deeply held values to pursue our hearts desires is going to help that old structure dissolve completely.

Alright. Let's see... What else do we have here? Number three... This is a cool one. What I'm seeing now and in the future is that women are taking ownership of our careers. They're no longer feeling entirely reliant on their organizations for raises, for promotions, for training dollars. What I'm seeing is that leaders are hiring executive coaches privately rather than relying or expecting their companies to provide coaching for them.

And they're expressing their desire for bespoke coaching programs that address their specific needs, their goals, their desires rather than that buttoned up cookie-cutter program that's designed by male leadership with men in mind. Women are really asking for something different in terms of the coaching that they wish to receive.

Number four, for thought leaders and thought workers, particularly in tech, and the FinTech space, there's really been a away from trading time for money. And instead, the prominent focus is going to be more on results and productivity. So think about it. We need efficiency and focus instead of taking a long time to complete projects or getting buried under administrative minutia like emails and meetings and nonsense that really distract from the thought worker's job which is to think. Which is to strategize. Which is to generate new ideas, new approaches.

And the efficiency with which thought workers can actually work is going to start being honored and rewarded rather than how much time it takes to do a project. And this harkens back all the way back to elementary school, middle school, high school. When people who had really fast processing speeds, very bright minds, learned very quickly that if they finished their work too quickly, they would have to do more and they wouldn't fit in. And maybe their peers didn't like them because they were so smart.

So they learned how to temper their quickness, how to hide how fast they worked in order to fit in. And certainly that is a need that a child would have to be able to fit in, to have a social life, to be able to be part of something bigger than themselves.

But where we are headed now and in the future, is that if you're a fast thinker and if you can do things very quickly, that's what's going to be rewarded over trading that time for money. And having to somehow justify the large salary that you're getting by how many hours you put in, it's how productive can you be? How many new ideas can you generate? How many more problems can you solve?

Can you imagine that? How exciting is that gonna be for us to be able to just create and be rewarded? Be compensated for our ideas and for our approaches and strategy. It's very exciting. At least it is to me. I hope it is to you too.

Number five, you've heard me talk about this before, but I want to bring it into this context of the top 10 trends I'm seeing. There really is going to be a shift in the understanding and relationship to time, work and money. So I wanna just break these down real quick.

In your relationship to time, what you need to understand is that time is the only non-renewable resource that we have. So shifting your relationship means that you're gonna make friends with time, so you don't have to be a slave to it anymore, or... And you don't have to be a slave to your calendar for that matter either. You're gonna learn how to make time work for you. And there's actually gonna be an un-tangling of the relationship between time and money.

In fact, time is not money. And I want you to let that sink in for just a second. Time is not money. But we've been programmed for generations to believe, so time is money. You can see that... Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick... Time is ticking. Time is money. It's not. Time is different from money.

And as we untangle the relationship between time and money, we can really begin to see how that's true. With work, I want you to think about it this way, changing your relationship with work means that maybe you don't have to grit it out. What if you didn't have to work so hard in order to get ahead? What if going to work meant you could actually be in your flow? What if working meant that you were being creative and making a contribution based on your greatest gifts, and the thing that you are meant to be doing? What if?

What if you got to shake your head and say, "I can't believe I get paid to do this?" Rather than, "I don't get paid enough to do this." You can feel the difference. I can't believe... I don't get paid enough.

And then the third shift we're going to see is the relationship with money. Because really for women leaders and all leaders in particular, there comes a time when you've got enough money. The money isn't necessarily the motivating factor that got you working in the first place. When you look money in the eye and realize that you can retire in a couple of years. When you look money in the eye and understand the support that you actually have in place to live your life and to contribute in the way that you're meant to. When your needs are met, more money becomes nice to have rather than necessary to survive. So at that point, you have to find a different motivator to keep on contributing. The motivation may not be to work until you retire or to work until your stock options mature or whatever it is.

Instead, the motivation can be, how can I contribute? How can I make a difference in this world? It doesn't mean that you have to go volunteer somewhere. You could if you wanted to. But it could mean that actually what you're designed to be doing right now can be compensated financially as well. So that the reward... There's a sacred reciprocity between the work that you're doing, and the compensation that you're receiving.

Okey-doke. The next one is this one. Here's what I'm seeing a lot of recently, is that women leaders are disrupting the old school, competitive, dog-eat-dog leadership model. They're no longer willing to play the hyper-masculinized bro culture, that competitive leadership game. Or to tie themselves up into knots in order to fit into that toxic, outdated organizational culture.

Here's the thing that's interesting, is that they've become... These women leaders have become savvy enough and wise enough to know that they're no longer willing to carry the torch for leaders who aren't willing to make room for diverse perspectives. So this is the dismantling of the patriarchy is what we're talking about here. If we wanna get real precise. But there's a very limited tolerance at this point for people who aren't willing to address emotions. For people who aren't willing to allow the diverse perspectives of people who look different from how they look, in order to come forward and contribute in novel and useful ways.

Number seven, emotionally intelligent people are going to be valued and elevated to leadership positions for... Specifically for their ability to read, process and manage emotions of themselves and other people.

See, in the past, typically who's been promoted to leadership positions are exceptional, high performers who are experts. So leadership positions have in the past been treated as a reward for the hard work, for the competitiveness, for the contributions of an individual contributor who may be technically exceptional. But the unfortunate downside to that approach, to rewarding performance with leadership is that those people don't often make exceptional leaders.

So as that's going away... And this is gonna take a while. Let's be honest about that. It's been taking a while. I think it's going to accelerate. I see this coming faster now and in the future than ever before. But what's actually gonna start happening is that people are going to be profiled based on their capacity to lead people. They may not be the top expert in their area. They may be more like a jack of all trades.

Think about it this way. The best leaders may be A-minus students or B-plus students in their technical field. They'll know enough about their field. They'll be able to speak the language of the field that they're leading in, but they will have this exceptional ability to bring out the best in other people. And that's what's gonna be valued.

So if you are a technical expert and you are also emotionally intelligent, now is your time. Now is your time to start expecting that you're going to be promoted, that you are going to be elevated into leadership position specifically for your ability to speak both languages. Both human language of emotion, psychology and technical language, machine language.

So isn't that good news for you? I'm excited. I'm really excited about this one. Along with that, number eight is this... There's gonna be... Obviously, mental health has become a huge issue within the corporate space. And the focus on mental health and well-being is going to continue now and in the future.

The stigma about seeking help and support is dissolving. Mental health support is going to be viewed as necessary and important, rather than weak or needy. This is an important turn of events as somebody who has been in the field of mental health, in psychology for as long as I have been, this is something that I have known has been taking place very slowly and subtly in the corporate space. But now, especially with what's been happening with the pandemic, with the increases in depression and suicide, this is gonna be continuing to be a very, very important topic, and actually embraced in corporate.

It's going to seem kind of strange if somebody doesn't have a coach, a therapist, some kind of healer that can help them perform at their highest levels and keep their... Keep their minds straight and keep their psychology well, so that they can do their best work.

Alright, two more. Are you ready? This next one I really like too... There's going to be a shift away from servant leadership to coach leadership. Where the leader develops coaching strategies and skills in order to effectively motivate, inspire and transform their teams for optimal performance.

Now, if you've been around me for a while, you may have heard me say this, I'm gonna say it here too, I really don't like the label of servant leader. And here's why... Especially for women leaders. And actually, I would say for anybody who's not a cis-gendered white male who's in a leadership position. I think servant leadership for that group of people is important because that particular group... Not everybody in it, but generally speaking, they do have more of a competitive self-centered approach to leadership.

So servant leadership, I think there is still a place for people who require a little bit more awareness or a lot more awareness around how their leadership is actually being of service to other people rather than serving their own self-interests.

However, for the rest of us, I want us to really move away from the servant leadership model and even using the language around servant leadership. Because from the time we were little, we've been programmed and socialized to be helpful, to be nice, to be kind, to go the extra mile, to do whatever it takes, instead of refining our own abilities and skills and gifts to make the contribution that only we can make. We've generalized our helpfulness because we can, and because that's how women leaders have been socialized for generations, actually.

So what I've decided... This is my forecasting based on my own decision-making actually as a leader, is that the work that I do with women leaders, both in my coach leader certification program and in private coaching is around giving leaders the skill set of coaching, in order to be able to bring about the best in their teams.

So there is an innate quality as an emotionally intelligent leader, you have this ability already to manage emotions, to read emotions, to motivate people. And now that skill set is being added to these leaders, so that they can actually be a leader coach. And that's a very exciting development that's coming down the pipe.

Last. Last, last, last. One of the great challenges, I think, for a lot of leaders is having a sense of over-responsibility for a team, for a program, for a project, for a division, for an organization. And in that sense of over-responsibility, there is this misapplied and misidentified belief that you have to have all the answers. Even though intellectually, you know that that's not possible. There's kind of a program that runs beneath the surface that says you should, and if you don't, there's something wrong with you.

Not only that, but the other part of the responsibility is that kind of micro-management piece, where my job as a leader is not to bring out the best in you. My job is to micro-manage you so that you are perfect. So that the process, so that the project goes as well as possible. Ultimately, so that nobody gets into trouble and nobody gets fired.

So that's an old way of thinking. It's an old paradigm. And where I'm seeing this headed, particularly, for emotionally intelligent leaders, is that there's a shift from feeling wholly responsible for a program, a team, an organization, and so on, to making the best contribution possible. To taking into consideration your unique position, your unique abilities and your expertise, to contribute to the program, the project, the organization, in only the way that you can.

This lightbulb moment is gonna come when you realize that you don't have to have all the answers, but instead that your contribution makes all the difference. Your contribution makes all the difference.

So in some ways, it's the difference between being a life raft for the people who report in to you, to being a lighthouse for those same people. To maximizing... To identifying and maximizing talent. To seeing the best in your people. To believing them, and to carrying the vision for them because if you're not carrying the vision, it's very difficult for your teams to be able to see where they're headed. And as a leader, that's I think one of your most important, unspoken responsibilities. Carry the vision. Carry the vision for the future.

Alright, so that is my take on the top 10 trends in women and leadership for the rest of 2021, 2022 and beyond. I would love to hear from you. What's your number one take away? What do you see coming down the pipe now and in the future? And what's the prediction of all of those 10 that I gave? What's the prediction that you're most intrigued by? I'd love to hear from you. Leave a message in the comments and I will be sure to respond to you there.

If you're listening to the podcast, shoot us an email and let us know what's the most intriguing prediction that you heard today?

Alright, until next time, I am Dr. Robyn McKay. This is the Mindset Rx podcast and LinkedIn live broadcast. I'm your host and I will see you the next time.