I’ve been tuned in to the enormous power of acknowledgment ever since I left university and started work. Like most people, my general experience of acknowledgement has been from lack of it rather than abundance.

During my career as a Project Manager, I worked within a high pressure company culture where people were generally NOT routinely acknowledged for their work: it seemed that the only time someone noticed the work people did was when something went WRONG on a project. I recall submitting reports and the focus was always on the red and amber flags – very little time was spent acknowledging people’s hard work or positive results.

When I trained as a Coach, I learned about the importance of getting our needs met. In a personal development context, this means the needs above the basic Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Here’s a very quick and dirty introduction to why getting your personal needs met is so important: When human beings don’t identify their own personal needs and put processes in place to get them met, these needs tend to drive our behaviour. In turn, this propagates an unhealthy vicious cycle where we sub-consciously try to get our needs met. This ultimately holds us back from achieving our biggest dreams and goals.

A good analogy might be this: Imagine you want to get from A to B in a car. You’re determined to get to your destination and you keep putting your foot down on the accelerator. But you’re not getting anywhere because you’re also pressing the brake pedal at the same time. Getting your needs met is like taking your foot off the brake pedal so that the accelerator pedal can do it’s job and you can drive to your desired destination.

One of the core needs that almost EVERY person I’ve ever coached is the need for acknowledgement.

Back in 2006, I felt so strongly about the power of acknowledgement, that I submitted a proposal to a major high street bank for a workshop on acknowledging skills for managers. I wrote this proposal in response to so many of my clients expressing their unmet need for being acknowledged at work.

Acknowledgement in this context is about recognising something that someone has done; it’s the action of showing that we have noticed someone or something. And the power of acknowledgement in the workplace is the power to help people to flourish, to enhance their performance, to grow their confidence and create a virtuous circle of high performing, happy and fulfilled employees.

Let’s go back to my car journey analogy: If a company or organisation is like the car, then the unmet need for acknowledgement is the brake on the car stopping it from reaching its desired destination. When you build genuine acknowledgement into your company culture, not only are you taking your foot off the brake, you’re filling the car with turbo fuel to enhance the acceleration!

Professional athletes know that ongoing acknowledgement and celebration as well as cheers from their fans and encouragement from their team mates improves their performance. The power of acknowledgement is as useful to high performance in the office and raising confident kids as much as it is on the playing field.

It is an unfortunate fact that most company cultures constantly put the focus on what’s not working, on what needs to be fixed and what still needs to be completed. Whilst it’s important to fix and finish, I believe that taking the time to recognise and acknowledge people for the work they have done would act as a preventive measure and reduce the number of problems that get all of the focus.

Acknowledging is a powerful catalyst for action, but when it is absent, it leads to inaction, resentment and demotivation. Talented women and men who don’t feel valued vote with their feet. I know this because, during my years as a professional Coach, I’ve helped a fair few of them to walk elsewhere.

The power of acknowledgement is one of the most underrated and most important elements of leadership and of unleashing human potential. Whether I am coaching personal clients or corporate clients or whether I’m just going about my day-to-day life, acknowledgment is something that’s always been at the forefront of my mind. My radar is almost always switched on to spot opportunities to acknowledge people, whether it’s one of my boys at home, one of my clients or a waiter in a restaurant. It can be anywhere – close family member, colleague or stranger.

Last weekend I was in my beloved Lake District and I felt moved to talk about the power of acknowledgement at the top of Orrest Head in Windermere! I shot a Facebook Live which I’ve uploaded to my blog.

Click here to watch the video – You’ll hear hear me tell the story of the train conductor who seemed to grow a few inches taller after I acknowledged him, or my own recent story about being on the receiving end of acknowledgement for my own performance at work. And even better, you’ll also get to take in some of the finest views in England whilst you’re watching! 🙂

Click here to watch my Vlog on “The Power of Acknowledgement”

 I’d love to hear from you below in the comments.

• Do you feel acknowledged at work?
• Do you look out for opportunities to acknowledge your team or colleagues?
• Are you better at acknowledging your family than your colleagues? Or vice versa?
• And how about strangers? Do you go out of your way to acknowledge people you notice doing a great job, even if you feel a bit awkward doing so?

Sage is a global company and the UK’s biggest tech company.  They have 13,500 employees – 53% male and 47% female. 27.5% of those women are in technical roles – and anyone who knows about the gender bias in tech, will recognize that this figure is right on top of the bell curve.  This is a company that says they are passionate about diversity and inclusion. But the thing is – they MEAN IT!

I’ve collaborated with Sage for about four years, ever since I met Leisa Docherty, their Global Director for Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement, at a Women in Leadership Round Table in London.

Leisa invited me to facilitate a workshop for Women at Sage on “How to Enhance Your Self-Belief” in 2014 and soon after this, I was invited to join the panel of Sage Business Experts.  Last year, I interviewed Leisa for my Inspiring Women Interviews podcast show.  Along the way, I’ve got to know other Sage employees and gained an insight into their company culture.  So when I say that this company is passionate about diversity and inclusion, I speak from first hand observations of their behaviour – they always seem to walk their core values and at every level of the organisation.

I’ve just returned from the #SageSummit at ExCel in London, where I was one of their business ambassadors.  The highlight of the summit wasn’t the roadmap for the latest features of Sage products. Nor was it the fascinating advances in artificial intelligence or even their new accountancy robot baby called Pegg!

The acceleration of the digital economy

For me, the most fascinating part of the #SageSummit was the diversity session:

Technology is out-performing the rest of the UK economy at double the rate of growth, adding about £97 billion a year to our economy – an increase of 30% in the past 5 years.

(from the third annual Tech Nation Report)

But we need more talented people to catapult this fast-growing digital economy further.  We all know there is a shortage of talent in the tech sector in the UK and one of the ways we need to address that is by embracing diversity. One of the key areas of work to be done to attract diverse talent is encouraging more women into technology – and close the gender pay gap whilst we’re at it!

How to get to equal with the gender pay gap

Barbara Harvey, Managing Director of Accenture Research presented a fascinating and insightful talk during the Diversity session on closing the gender pay gap, focused on the technology sector, called “Getting to Equal”. If you’re interested in the thorny issues of closing the gender pay gap or how to attract more women into tech, then Harvey is your woman! She has the data that sheds light on where the problems lie – and some ideas on how to solve them.

Harvey showed us that getting girls interested in tech at an early age is key:  When young girls in junior school are inspired by technology, it sparks their interest and they are 25% more likely to go into technology.

This percentage increases significantly when you add three other factors into the mix:

1. Making tech something that girls “just do”
2. Giving tech an aura of “cool”
3. High quality teaching

Teen Problems?

But the problem begins when girls get to high school – this is where we are failing them.  Teachers struggle with limited resources and are forced to follow a curriculum that doesn’t lend itself to cutting-edge cool technology.  According to the Accenture data, 65% of teachers say they’d rather be teaching something else other than coding.

Now, rumour has it that there are one or two rather boring Computer Studies teaches around (disclaimer – if you’re a Computer Studies Teacher reading this, then it’s NOT you, obviously!)  If girls have a boring teacher, they are 30% less likely to go on to study computing – no surprises there really.  But Barbara’s point is this:   Unless we transform the way computing is taught in our schools, we will never solve the talent gap issue, whether it’s gender-related or not.

However, the opportunity is enormous:  If we DO solve this issue and we can inspire more girls into technology, by 2025 we could triple the number of women in tech.  The knock-on benefits of this are enormous, as technology is one of the key equalisers – 55% of women board members have professional tech experience.

Becoming digitally fluent

We can get more girls into technology simply by encouraging them to use the Internet and mobile technology.  Harvey calls this “digital fluency” and her research shows that the more digitally fluent you are, the higher your chances are of finding work.  Digital fluency is fundamental to creating diverse workforces as it helps women and people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds to find work.

The figures are staggering:  By 2030, digital fluency could bring 97 million more women around the globe into paid work, close the pay gap by 21% and increase women’s income by $1.9 trillion.

Another factor that will help close the gender pay gap, according to Accenture’s research is “tech immersion”.  Women can gain an advantage by taking a course in coding, working in an IT department or continuously learning new skills. Accenture’s findings show that by 2030 tech immersion could reduce the gender pay gap by 5% and increase women’s income by $0.5 trillion.

Are women failing themselves?

The bad news is that young men are taking advantage of this enormous opportunity in technology far more than young women. Over and again, young women are making decisions that are putting them at a disadvantage from the word go. Here are a few examples from Harvey’s findings:

• 43% of young men take a coding module compared to 30% of young women
• 62% of young men are continuously learning new digital skills compared to 41% of young women
• 41% of young men are up-skilled in digital tech compared to less than half that figure – 20% for young women.

Harvey’s session was an overview of Accenture’s Getting to Equal 2017 report.  The hard work really starts with identifying and implementing key solutions. Here are the key messages we should all take from Accenture’s research:

• Improve the quality of teaching and the curriculum for computer studies courses at school
• Make tech into one of the “cool kids” at school and promote the message that it IS something that girls as well as boys do
• Develop innovative Initiatives to help everyone become digitally fluent – the rising tide raises all ships, after all!
• And one that reflects my own core philosophy – Help all women to aim high, to make informed choices and to proactively manage their careers.

What do you think?…

Source for the facts and figures in this post: Getting to Equal 2017, Accenture, taken from Barbara Harvey’s talk at the #SageSummit, 6th April 2017, as observed by the author of this post, Amanda Alexander. I have attempted to represent an accurate reflection of Accenture’s “Getting to Equal” report, but please check all facts from the report itself which can be viewed here

On Thursday, 15th September I attended the Women in Business and Leadership Round Table at the House of Lords, chaired by the Rt. Hon Baroness Warsi PC. The event was one of a series of Round Table discussions.

Women have a significant contribution to make in leading cultural change and driving a model of collaborative leadership. The Round Table event focused on the key qualities of leadership, strategies to increase diversity in businesses and harnessing technology to support a blended work life balance for all.

The panel members  were Clare Barclay General Manager SMS&P, Microsoft UK, Griselda Tobogo Managing Director Forward Ladies, James Cliffe Head of Business Banking UK HSBC Commercial Banking, Margaret Totten, Managing Director, IA Cubed (IA3) and James Maunder, Director of Information and Digital Services, Institute of Directors.

Here are my own “top 20” gems of wisdom, wit and wonderment that I drew from the discussion on women in leadership: 

1. We very quickly limit ourselves because of what other people tell us what we should be doing, particularly when we are children (you have to ignore this!)

2. Bring your emotional intelligence to work, not your emotions to work

3. Don’t underestimate the power of a sponsor in your career. A sponsor who has identified you as emerging talent can be highly influential in you securing your new role.

4. Don’t just focus on getting female representation on interview shortlists. Invite women on the interview shortlist panels, as well. We all have unconscious bias and this gets injected into the recruitment process. This is why you need women in the interviewing loop.

5. You can’t bridge the achievement gap if you don’t bridge the ambition gap. As a leader, you need to nurture – create – the ambition in emerging female leaders

6. Females have no fewer aspirations than males, but they do tend to have less confidence.

7. However… young men share similar anxieties to young women. But they usually cover it up with bravado.

8. But generally, men ask for pay rises. Women don’t. BIG CLUE to the gender pay gap!

9. How do leaders juggle work with family? There’s no panacea.. There are no more hours in the day when you’re more senior! You simply get better at figuring it out!

10. Have the courage to be yourself, but also build on other people’s experiences.

11. We will have progressed a long way with gender equality when we STOP treating women having babies as an exceptional event.

12. The only way we’re really going to crack the work-life balance nut is by leaders REALLY walking the talk.

Lead by example: Work from home one day a week, for instance. By doing this, you give the best kind of permission to your team to do the same.

13. Here’s a novel idea to actively lead from the top with work-life blend and employee well-being. Tried, tested and achieved 100% success when implemented by one of our panelists for his staff: Tell your staff that they will score poorly on their performance evaluation if they haven’t booked annual leave by the next review meeting!

14. Bring your whole self to work, not just your half self – i.e. you with your work hat on. Let your colleagues get to know who YOU are (see point 10 … it’s all about true authenticity, not pseudo authenticity!)

15. Work is an activity, not a place. Think about this one in the context of agile working and work life balance/blend!

16. There is an urgent need for the UK government to review the support (or lack of) for self-employed women when they have a baby.

17. Ultimately, women have to take control of their own career – nobody is going to do it for them.

18. We need to start asking ourselves WHY we’re not asking men the same kind of questions as we ask women, such as: “How do you balance work with family?”

19. On asking a group of school children the question: “What do you want to be when you’re grown up?” the no. 1 answer for boys was: “Footballer”.

Depressing.

The no. 1 answer for girls was:

“Footballer’s wife”

Infinitely more depressing.

Moral of this story: We have a lot of work to do!

20. And finally, albeit somewhat in contradiction to point 19.. “The next generation will be much better at this than we are!”

Here’s hoping! 🙂

Leadership ain’t what it used to be! And the challenges of a business leader in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) World aren’t those that you read in your job specification!

Never more so in industry have people needed to feel safe and to have a sense of belonging. Our brains are on full alert throughout most of our working week (if not our weekends as we struggle to find a good work/life balance). We vacillate from fight, flight, freeze, and survive to inertia mode. Of course it’s not all bad – we sometimes thrive along the way too. And, if we’re smart leaders, we check into recovery on a regular basis and have a self-actualization strategy to prevent anxiety and burnout.

With the Internet technology revolution and cyclical economic recessions human capital struggles to keep up. Child and business psychologists observe that empathy, the glue that binds us, is on the decline. Teams are working less well together. Leaders aren’t leading with emotional competence. And people are walking out of the workplace in swathes to become self-employed, because they won’t subscribe to the old ways of being managed.

Enter the emotionally intelligent business leader.Continue reading

In episode 004 of the Inspiring Women Interviews podcast, Emma McGuigan, Senior Managing Director Technology, Accenture UK and Ireland shared some of her “secrets of success” for to help you to build a successful career whilst balancing it with life and family.

I’ve summarised my 15 favourites from my interview with Emma in this post. Enjoy – and let me know which one is the most useful to YOU right now in the comments section below the post.

1. Don’t beat yourself up when things don’t go right. Draw a line in the sand and move on.
2. Decide what’s important to YOU and focus on those things. Let go of what’s NOT important to you.
3. What is YOUR “set in stone” for managing your work-life balance? For Emma, it’s having one meal a day with her family. Choose yours and do it!
4. Your life will continuously evolve. Treat your life an old fashioned radio that continually needs fine-tuning. Be gentle with yourself – guilt is useless.
5. How do you reflect on how you are spending your time each day? What works for you? For Emma it is running. Find the thing that helps you to reflect on each day so that you are spending your time on the things that are important.
6. Never feel guilty and never live with regrets. Instead, decide what you will do differently next time.
7. Positive energy comes from always looking for the learning, not dwelling on the things that didn’t work out and keeping yourself moving forward.
8. Don’t place limitations on yourself: STOP saying ‘I can’t do this because…’ and look for a reason you can!
9. Measure your success by the outcomes you want, rather than the number of hours you sit behind a desk or spend replying to emails.
10. At the start of your day, ask yourself what you’re going to focus on that day and whether that’s the best use of your time in relation to your current priorities.
11. Keep asking for feedback. If for example, if you have just chaired a meeting but you’re not sure how you performed, ask others what they thought and what they would’ve done differently. Just ask!
12. You can’t go through life beating yourself up about things you didn’t do, just celebrate the things you did.
13. Avoid being a victim. When something happens that feels “unfair”, turn that feeling of injustice into something that empowers you. What do you want to happen? Use the “bad” situation to create your own “good” situation.
14. Remember that NOBODY cares more about your career than you. If you expect someone else to tell you what you should do next, you could be waiting a very long time! OWN your career management.
15. You only get one chance at your life, so make sure you grab every opportunity that comes along – and grab them fast! Get into the habit of going for it rather than deliberating. Give it a go and if it doesn’t work out, try something else!

You’ll get more of Emma’s tips and you’ll benefit from the full impact of the summary above by listening to the interview on the .  If you enjoy the show, I would be so grateful if you could leave feedback over on or Stitcher and share it with your own connections.  By doing this, you will help to get the podcast to more women and inspire them to be the best they can!