Recently, I had the privilege of presenting my program “Wonder Women” to a group of 30 students at Harvard Business School. All were women, from diverse and varied cultures and backgrounds.
“Wonder Women” began to percolate in my mind when I was invited as a guest to the national meeting of Northwestern Mutual. I was surprised at how few women there were at the meeting, but it turns out that only 10% of the field is female. As I walked around, I talked to several young women from different parts of the country, who all started working for Northwestern within the past couple of years. Each was engaging, dynamic, and excited to be a part of the organization. Later I was surprised to learn that over 90% of them would not be working for Northwestern Mutual in five years. That’s a huge attrition rate! Why do they leave? I immediately began to think “What can I teach these women about selling and communication skills that could help them close more business and achieve financial success sooner, and therefore want to stay with the company longer?”
I’ve researched and read extensively about gender differences, as well as communications, teams, and public speaking. I wanted to know not only how women communicate differently than men, but why they do, from a biological perspective. That directly led me to think about how these disparities (pitch/tone, body language, eye contact, etc.) may impact a woman’s success in a gender-biased (male, white) business world, and what women can do to counteract them.