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How Empowered Women Empower Women with Jane Finette (Ep. #48)

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Building Better Managers Podcast Episode 48 - Jane Finette

Building Better Managers Podcast Episode #48: How Empowered Women Empower Women with Jane Finette

Sometimes we all need people who believe in us more than we do ourselves. Women who do not feel supported in the workplace are more likely not to ask for help or promotions, or to drop out of the workforce altogether. As leaders, it’s imperative to lift others up, and women, in particular, need strong leaders supporting them in the workplace now more than ever.

In this episode, Jane Finette, author of “Unlocked: How Empowered Women Empower Women” and the founder of The Coaching Fellowship, joins the Building Better Managers podcast to help us better understand both what it means and what it takes to empower your women leaders.

In this episode:

Meet Jane Finette

  • Jane Finette is the Founder and Executive Director of The Coaching Fellowship, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of young women leaders in social change. A leadership expert and Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC), Jane has dedicated her life to achieving equality for women — empowering them to create impact and build the world of tomorrow, today.
  • A 2020 Women Forward Gold Award winner from the Business Council for Peace, Jane’s passion, expertise, and two decades of experience is anchored at the intersection of technology and human potential. At her core, she empowers individuals and communities to solve the world's largest, most persistent, and perennial problems.

The Current Business Climate

  • The pandemic really got going in the spring of 2020. Several months later the data started coming out that the numbers of women leaving the workforce were very high. And the very slim gains that women had made in terms of positions in power and influence were being rapidly lost - the World Economic Forum said we'd lost 36 years of progress in 2020 alone.
  • There were also studies that showed increasing numbers of sexual violence, child abuse, and lower numbers of girls going to school. About 32 million girls did not go to school today, and not because they didn't want to. Another 12 million girls will not go back to school after the pandemic.
  • There's a very great need for leadership from organizations and individuals right now to help reverse these trends. Many industry leaders are stepping up, but the wider the support becomes, the better.

A Better Approach to Networking

  • 85% of people will find a new job through a referral through their network. There's more research that says that the your salary and your rate of promotion is also directly tied to the size of your network. So when we aren't actively growing our networks, we're missing out.
  • Number 1 - Reframe: If you have trouble with the word "networking", think of it as "building community" instead. We can all do that - we know how to do that.
  • Number 2 - It's a muscle: Setting yourself a goal of meeting one new person, every week, is not too heavy a lift. That's 50 new people a year! Who knows where that will lead?
  • Always end these meetings trying to get a new recommendation of someone else it might be good for to get to know. This way you're constantly building farther and farther away from your core network. Helping others build their network in the same way, making introductions, reinforcing the importance of the process, being a role model.
  • The number of young women first time managers has stalled at only 85 for every 100 young men. And it's even lower for minority women. So when people say there's a "pipeline problem" it's kind of true, because if those young women don't get the first break into management, how can they hope to catch up? In many ways they're set up to fail.
  • Businesses are very focused on bringing more women into the C-suite and into the boardroom, which we absolutely need. These young women will never be able to catch up if we don't give them the chance. And they are just as smart, we make them work twice as hard, then they are told they're not ready. So that's another thing we can do - Tell them that they are ready!
  • Networking can seem like a huge turnoff, especially to young women just starting out.
  • One concept to try is "tag team" networking. Take one of your colleagues and go in together, even people from different companies.
  • When you go to a networking event together and open a conversation with, "I'd love you to meet my colleague," it makes it so much more comfortable for both of you.
  • There are plenty of statistics showing that many women don't do as well speaking about themselves as men. It's just not as likely that they will be able to give blanket answers regarding their skill sets, while competing against men who might be more used to saying, "Oh, yeah, I have experience with all of that." So we need to be able to support each other's relative competencies in that way too.

How To Help Others - Even If You're NOT In a Position of Power

  • Most of us want to help, yet many of us feel disenfranchised, so how can we make a difference? You know, that there, it's what do I have? What will I do that will actually help? And what could I do that would help it's a drop in the bucket, you know, it's not enough. So t
  • Cat Berman, the founder of CNote, tells us to just say "Yes." "Yes, I can meet." Because we all know how hard it is to ask! If someone has come to you and actually asked for your help, keep in mind that there were probably seven shades of hell she went through just to get to the point where she asked you if you could make that intro, give some advice, or point her to some resources.
  • Take a moment to give some feedback. One of the things that we're trying to balance is that we're trying to do so much, and we have to take care of ourselves. If you can't say yes right now, acknowledge this person is important and say, "I'm so sorry, I can't do this right now, I'm so busy, let's schedule a time this week."
  • Very often when things just fall through the cracks and we never hear from them again, it's such a blow, and maybe they won't even try next time.

Downloads & Resources

Follow Jane on LinkedIn here, on Twitter, and on her website JaneFinette.com.

Get Jane's book How Empowered Women Empower Women on Amazon.

Subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast platform!

Check out our blog articles on Leadership here.

Jane Finette

Jane Finette is the Founder and Executive Director of The Coaching Fellowship, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of young women leaders in social change. A leadership expert and Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC), Jane has dedicated her life to achieving equality for women — empowering them to create impact and build the world of tomorrow, today.

A 2020 Women Forward Gold Award winner from the Business Council for Peace, Jane’s passion, expertise, and two decades of experience is anchored at the intersection of technology and human potential. At her core, she empowers individuals and communities to solve the world's largest, most persistent, and perennial problems.

Episode Transcript
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