Gender Bias: Who is in Your Decision Seat?
Imagine if it were You!
Margaret Heffernan, in her TEDWomen 2015 talk, sites a study where MIT conducted research to identify the core characteristics of successful, high-achieving groups or teams. Surprisingly, I will tell you this, MIT's findings did not support the idea that high I.Q.s, whether individually or collectively, mattered in the success of these groups.
What MIT did find according to Heffernan was successful and high-functioning people groups or teams sharing three common characteristics:
Each group exhibited a sincere, high-degree of social sensitivity to each other. In other words, members within the group empathized with each other.
Each group gave roughly equal time to each member. No one person (or star) dominated the conversation. Nor were there any bystanders who didn't participate. In other words, the groups worked together with honor and respect towards each other.
And lastly, each group had more women members. In other words, there were more women members in each group.
Before going further, I highly recommend reading my last post for context: https://www.timbelo.com/work-blog/gender-bias-two-solutions
Now . . . Imagine with me for just a minute . . . What would our world look like if women were women’s biggest fans? Imagine what it would look like if women realized how important and powerful we really are . . . whether in the Board Room or at home raising the next generation. Imagine if women understood our voices are needed at the table . . . Imagine how wars might have been decided differently. Imagine how energy and pollution might have been approached differently. Or rules for taxes, for capitalism, for domestic violence, for immigration, etc. Imagine . . . Just imagine if we knew how important we were to our world, how are world would be different . . . better. Women make up 51% of the world's population and yet most of the decisions of this world are made by the male gender. Why? Because we don't know how important it is that we are sitting in the decision seats at the table . . . Imagine.
Originally published on July 24th, 2018*