Drinking From a Different Well: How Women’s Stories Change What Power Means in Action
About the class
What does power mean to you? Taking charge or taking care? If you are female (or support “feminine” values) research suggests you want the power to do both. The problem is that some jobs only reward competitive thinkers who define power as the ability to dominate (“own the market,” “kill the competition”). These kinds of jobs leave collaborative thinkers thirsty for the joy and benefits of care-taking. In highly competitive systems, providing care, nurturing the weak, or passing up short term wins for long term gains is unrewarded or even punished as a lost opportunity to dominate. These restrictions generate enough “moral distress” that we leave or fail to apply. When accepting a hyper-competitive job feels like you have sold your soul, no salary can compensate us enough to stay.
Harvard researchers show that among men and women who are equally qualified for a promotion, a significant number of women do not apply. It’s not that women aren’t qualified for those jobs – they don’t want them. Corporate employers who want to attract more women into top jobs must enable the pursuit of moral goals, expand what counts toward performance rankings, and adopt more inclusive decision-making procedures to ensure top jobs offer the kind of power women want most – the power to choose to compete or when domination tactics harm collective wellbeing, to collaborate.
In this webinar you'll learn:
- How competitive and collaborative narratives shift what we perceive to be a problem and what kind of solutions we seek
- How collaborative voices are silenced by making it seem as if they undermine competitive goals
- How to protect collaborative thinking in competitive systems
- Designing systems that reward both sides of predictable paradoxes instead choosing one side or the other
About the Presenter
Annette Simmons is the author of five books including The Story Factor named by CEO-READ as one of the “100 Best Business Books of All Time.” Her most recent book is Drinking From a Different Well: How Women’s Stories Change What Power Means in Action. Look her up on www.annettesimmons.com.