Clients find me in all kinds of ways. Usually it’s through other clients, who are kind enough to refer their networks to me. The majority of these people are, as I’m sure you can already guess, women. But every once in a while I get an approach from a man who has seen me give a talk about my work strengthening women’s voices, and wants me to help a woman that they know. Would it surprise you to learn that the majority of these men are seeking help for their own daughters?
Last month I was contacted by a father I’ll call Eddie. His daughter, a 24-year-old woman I’ll call Martelle, was finishing her first year of work at a big financial company. Her annual performance review was coming up, which came with an opportunity for her to present a report about everything she’d accomplished that year, and ask for a raise.
Eddie wanted me to “fix” his daughter’s voice. He thought she sounded “like a little girl” and needed to “start making a bigger impact when she spoke up at work”. I told Eddie to ASK his daughter if she wanted some Power Voice coaching, and if she did I would help her prepare for her upcoming performance review.
Martelle was excited to level-up her professional communication skills, and we got started on her presentation. Her progress in the company was impressive. When Martelle had arrived at the company a year ago, they were still reeling from a giant mess they’d made the previous year. They had accidentally sent out the first draft of an email to clients that promised all kinds of things the company wasn’t yet prepared to deliver, causing mass confusion and chaos both internally and externally (I’d actually heard about The Big Mess from another of my clients who worked at the same firm, and it was just as terrible as you can imagine!). The company was still dealing with the fallout, and as a result many of its everyday tasks and processes were being neglected.
Martelle took one look at the Big Mess and got right to work. She sorted out which tasks were still undone, and created a dedicated project to complete them, enlisting a few of her colleagues for help. She gave regular updates to her boss and the company’s Senior management, and answered all their questions about what to expect with the project. She led her 5-person team through the whole thing, and by the end they had completed almost 80% of the outstanding tasks. During the course of the year Martelle had also come up with a new system for managing internal projects that had been widely adopted by her co-workers, and even her own manager.
Martelle and I crafted a great slide deck that showed each step of her progress, and made a great case for a salary increase. She sent the deck to her father so he could give her encouragement and wish her luck. Once the performance review was all over and Martelle had gotten the raise she hoped for, Eddie called to thank me for helping out. During our conversation he revealed that he’d had a personal breakthrough about his daughter, and about women everywhere, and here’s what he told me:
That his personal bias against his daughter’s way of speaking had kept him from recognizing her extraordinary accomplishments. (BTW: Each of us has our own developmental process that changes both our communication pattern and the sound of our voice, sometimes quite dramatically. Every generation has its own unique style of communicating, and we also have our own individual quirks. The things we say and the way we say them evolve over time. The way you speak now could be unrecognizable to your future self, and that’s perfectly natural!)
That he might have carried this same bias into all of his conversations with the women in his own workplace for decades.
That from now on he would check himself and resolve to listen better to the women around him.
Breakthroughs can happen to us at any time. Eddie’s is a good reminder that we continue to learn, grow, change and evolve. When men support and amplify women’s voices it increases the chances that we will thrive (and that support is needed now more than ever!).
For help with work presentations, email me directly for rates and availability. I love hearing from you!