December 15, 2022 • 15 mins
A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that women are now just as likely as men to hold managerial jobs. While this is a great step forward, it also brings new challenges for both companies and women in leadership. One of the most important issues facing managers today is keeping these leaders engaged and motivated. Join Dr. Mira Brancu and host Shari Simpson as they discuss tips for helping women in leadership stay on track and achieve their goals.
Guest: Dr. Mira Brancu, Consulting Psychologist & CEO/Founder, Brancu & Associates
Dr. Mira Brancu helps executives, and their teams, lead well today and better navigate tomorrow. Her organization development consulting firm, Brancu & Associates, was awarded the 2021 Corporate Philanthropy Award for supporting under-served women professionally and economically. Dr. Brancu brings two decades of experience in healthcare and academia, including an award-winning leadership career at the US Department of Veterans Affairs and a faculty appointment at Duke University. Dr. Brancu is also a contributor to Psychology Today and Thrive Global and the author of Millennials Guide to Workplace Politics.
Mentioned in the episode:
- McKinsey Article: https://leanin.org/women-in-the-workplace
- Mira Brancu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirabrancu/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
(upbeat music)
(00:05):
- Hey, and welcome to "PCTY Talks,"
I'm your host, Shari Simpson.
During our time together,
we'll stay close to the news
and info you need to succeedas an HR pro, and together,
we'll explore topics around:
HR thought leadership, compliance,
and real-life HR situationswe face every day.
(upbeat music)
(00:29):
Mira, thank you so much
for spending a few minuteswith me on the podcast today.
- Thanks for having me.
- So, you have such an amazing background
and it's one of the reasonsI wanted to talk to you.
You know, I have a passion for women
in all facets of theirlives and how they grow.
You know, one of the thingsI have the privilege of doing
in my role is I get toco-lead our women's ERG,
(00:50):
we call it Sheero.
So, seeing the work thatyou're doing, I was like,
I really wanna talk toyou about, you know,
just helping women grow inthose leadership positions,
and so I thought I couldstart our conversation
around a recent study on women
in the workplace that was conducted
by leanin.org and McKinsey & Company.
You know, one of the items they talk
about is the pipelineproblems we have with women,
(01:10):
specifically the broken rungto first level management
and women leaving the workforce.
So, with that in mind,I wanted to ask you,
why is it so important tohelp women stay engaged?
And what I mean by that is, you know,
I don't read articles about, like,
let's help men stay engaged.
It's very focused on women.What's the difference?
(01:31):
- Yeah, so, you mentionedthe McKinsey article
and when they started doing this,
one of the biggestissues that they said was
the broken rung issue, right?
And that phenomenon iswhen there's more men
than women who are being promoted
into that first leadershiprole, that management role.
(01:53):
The most recent study,
so that was two years ago whenthey reported that, and now,
we're two years later,
having known the problems
and implemented all the things, and now,
we have a second pipeline problem,
not one pipeline problem, but two,
and that second pipeline problem is now,
that for every one woman who is promoted
(02:15):
into a director role,
they found that two women leave.
- Wow!
- And so, they didn't find that with men.
That's why we focus onengagement for women.
- What do you think distracts women then
from staying engaged inthose management roles?
- This is a complicatedquestion because I often wonder,
(02:42):
is it that other people
or things distract themor is it something else?
And I think it's a couple of things.
One is life circumstances.
The women who have younger,you know, kids at home,
there's a lot moreresearch that has come out
(03:05):
that this is not gettingbetter in terms of the burden
of the household and childcare
or other dependent care.
Burdens still fall onwomen way more than men
and I think McKinseyalso found that women,
once they get into leadership roles,
(03:27):
there's at least double, theymight have said quadruple,
there's at least double,
the sort of childcare issuesor household, you know,
management that they have compared
to men in leadership roles,and so, is that a distraction?
(03:49):
I'm not sure I wouldcall it a distraction.
I would call it an inequity.
The other is there's a lack
of mentorship or sponsorshipthat is appropriate
and sufficient that provides'em with the support and so,
they're not given thesame level of guidance
and support on how to movethrough the organization
(04:09):
in terms of getting promoted,
career advice that is appropriate
and sufficient to getinto new leadership roles,
not knowing how to navigatecomplex organizations.
It's not because theydon't have the skillset
or couldn't gain the skillset,
it's that they're excluded
from conversations that men are provided
(04:32):
with about navigatingthose workplace politics.
And then there's, you know,
things like microaggressionsthat's highly distracting.
(Dr. Mira chuckling)
That can be highly distracting,
as well as frustrating andupsetting, and it really,
(04:54):
it is another layer that mendon't often have to deal with
and when those things happen,
when you get negative messages,when you get undermined,
when somebody takes credit for your work,
which happens more for women than men,
all of these are distractions
because we're just trying to do our work
(05:15):
and then we've gotta deal withall of these other things.
The final one, again,
I'm not sure I wouldsee it as a distraction,
but it can actually beseen as a distraction,
which is that women
are socialized to supportother people really well,
and so they work really hard
(05:36):
in order to get promoted tothat first leadership role
by supporting other people,especially their leaders,
and understanding what theirleaders need really well.
And so, at some point,
they're so good at anticipatingand supporting other people
above them, their teams,
(05:57):
that I often see them lose themselves
and not sort of sure where to go.
At some point they hit, like,
a real milestone ormonumental sort of shift in,
who am I really
and is this what is right for me
(06:18):
or have I been doing thisall along for other people?
And that can be incredibly distracting,
(Dr. Mira scoffing)
as you can imagine, just, like,all of a sudden realizing,
is this my identity or not?
And if not, then where amI going with my career?
And what, you know,
there's the core lifecrisis, the midlife crisis,
there's this woman life crisis too
(06:39):
(Dr. Mira scoffing)
- And it's interesting to think
about that from the perspectiveof how you framed it
on women are brought upin these support roles.
So, I suspect, youknow, I know for myself,
but I suspect this istrue for a lot of women,
we're kind of multi-passionatebecause we've responded
to what's being asked of us
in very different waysand very different roles,
(07:00):
but we've always shown up.
We've always stepped up to the position.
So, we're not really deepin a niche in particular,
but we might have this reallybroad set of skills and so,
when we're asked that question,
"Hey, what do you wannado when you grow up?"
You have probably 10 pathsyou could take, you know?
And so, it's interestingto kind of go back
to that thought process of how we
are trained to support
(07:22):
and how that can complicate things.
You know, I've been talking a lot
with my peers around this idea
of the mental load that women carry,
and you validated it bytalking about, you know,
women in childcare, andI had a funny situation
with my husband the otherday where, you know,
I'm really conscientiousof when my senior,
(07:42):
he's in high school, leavesfor school in the morning.
I can hear him get up and go out the door
and I was laying in bed and I was like,
"Hey, I don't think I heard, you know,
our son leave for school yet."
And my husband was like,"What are you talking about?"
And I was like, "I bet that'snot something that you have
on your mind every morning.
It's like, hey, did heget up and go to school?"
And he's like, "It never crosses my mind."
And I'm like, "Yep.
That's somewhere in my brainevery morning that, yeah,
(08:05):
did he get up and go to school?"
And that's such a very simple example,
but there's so manythings that women carry
from a mental load perspective.
You know, how do youbalance all the life stuff
that women have in ourheads and then, like,
let's layer on the career stuff, right?
Yeah, it's a lot to navigate for women.
- Yeah, and I just wanna sortof highlight first, well,
(08:29):
number one, I loved how youthought about the strength
of being able to support peoplein lots of different ways,
is that you get to have anincredibly wide skillset
and women don't necessarily realize
that that is a strength or a value,
so I appreciate that you'vejust brought that up.
It's gonna get me thinkingfor the rest of the day.
(08:51):
(Dr. Mira laughing)
In terms of the different experiences,
I want us to be reallycareful not to equate what's
on our minds relatedto childcare with women
because I know a lot
of men think about these kindsof things too and really,
(09:12):
it's a parent issue,
and at the same time it istrue that often, on average,
not for every woman, not forevery man, but on average,
it is the case that, you know,
they're thinking about all
of these additionalthings and juggling it.
(09:34):
I often think, when you thinkabout leadership roles today,
in this day and age,
and how hard it is to be a leader, period,
but also how hard it isto be a leader right now
in this complex world,
how much more women canbring to the table given
(09:56):
how much they've practicedmanaging all the things,
all the time, and thinkingabout multiple people's needs
at the same time, for example,
and having so many distractions
and still cutting through allof that in amazing ways, and,
you know, they saywomen work twice as hard
(10:17):
to get the same things
and all of these put togethermake women incredibly set
up for leadership in today'shighly complex, uncertain,
volatile kind of, youknow, world and workplace.
- We need to talk aboutthat more, you know?
(10:39):
Everybody should betalking about that more,
that very unique skillset that women bring
to the table that isprobably often overlooked.
I'm always amazed when I meeta woman who's at, you know,
higher levels of leadership and I start
to hear their stories and, you know,
they are balancing a bunch
(11:00):
of different things andthey have all these passions
and it has set them up forsuccess in so many ways.
You know, as you thinkabout the unique role
that women in leadership have,
how do you think they are gonna be shaping
the future of work?
- Yeah.
I think we need to reallymove past this old model
(11:25):
of leadership that worked when things
were quote on quote simplerand move past the sort
of single hero model of leadershipwhere there's one leader
and they have a specific idea
or vision and it is doleddown to the masses and,
(Dr. Mira scoffing)
(11:46):
you know, all of that.
The skillset that we just talked
about in being able to float
through lots of different circles,
different individual employee needs,
different team needswithin an organization,
(12:08):
their experiences of evenhaving a non-traditional,
usually non-traditional,leadership pathway
where they move laterally.
They move backwards to move forward.
They take pauses and breaks.
They move in and out of leadership,
and in and out of organizations.
That brings incredibleperspective as compared
(12:28):
to the traditional oldmodels of one person moving
up the same, you know, singlerungs of the same ladder.
And between that and their focus,
or it could be socialized.
Mostly, I think it is socialized thoughts
(12:50):
about sort of how they buildcommunity, how they network,
how they interact with people,is a shared leadership model,
and we need team leadership more than ever
for different people tobring different skill sets,
different knowledge,different experiences,
(13:10):
and I've seen women be able to do
that really well and in fact,
most of the women that I work
with are women who say things like,
"I'm not sure that I could be a leader
in the way that I see becauseI like collaborating."
(Dr. Mira and Shari chuckling)
I'm like, "That's a problem?" Right?
(13:31):
(Dr. Mira and Shari chuckling)
I like to take the timeto gather perspectives
and information to make decisions
and what I see is
that leaders have to makereally quick decisions
and I'm like, and that's a good thing?
(Dr. Mira scoffing)
- Right.
- Making really fast decisions
without all the informationis a good thing?
(Dr. Mira and Shari giggling)
I don't hear a problem here.
(13:52):
- Right.
- I hear a real strength
and you can create that leadership pathway
and the perspective and mapit the way that makes sense
because that's exactlywhat we need right now
and we don't see a lot of that
and they find that so refreshing.
They're like, oh, becauseit feels authentic to them.
(14:12):
It feels like, well,that's how I think anyway.
And so that, I really thinkthat's what they can bring,
you know?
If they've had those experiences and
if that resonates for them,
that's an incredibly powerful skillset.
- Well, I thank you for yourinsight and if you're a woman
in leadership right now
and you're listening to this podcast,
(14:33):
I hope you're walking away
with all the confidence in the world
because you bring a veryunique skillset to the table
and you have so much togive your organizations
and if you're a man listening,
here's a great opportunity
for you to realize how to be better allies
and provide mentorship'cause I think, you know,
you mentioned that and it's so important
for women to have, you know, mentorship,
and that doesn't necessarily have to come
from another woman leader, you know?
(14:54):
Anybody in leadership can provide that.
So, Mira, thank you
for taking a few minutesof your day with me.
- Absolutely. It was a great time.
Thank you.
(upbeat music)
- This podcast is broughtto you by Paylocity,
a leading HCM provider thatfrees you from the tasks
of today so you can focus moreon the promise of tomorrow.
If you'd like to submit atopic or appear as a guest
(15:14):
on a future episode,
email us at pctytalks@paylocity.com.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(00:05):
- Hey, and welcome to "PCTY Talks,"
I'm your host, Shari Simpson.
During our time together,
we'll stay close to the news
and info you need to succeedas an HR pro, and together,
we'll explore topics around:
HR thought leadership, compliance,
and real-life HR situationswe face every day.
(upbeat music)
(00:29):
Mira, thank you so much
for spending a few minuteswith me on the podcast today.
- Thanks for having me.
- So, you have such an amazing background
and it's one of the reasonsI wanted to talk to you.
You know, I have a passion for women
in all facets of theirlives and how they grow.
You know, one of the thingsI have the privilege of doing
in my role is I get toco-lead our women's ERG,
(00:50):
we call it Sheero.
So, seeing the work thatyou're doing, I was like,
I really wanna talk toyou about, you know,
just helping women grow inthose leadership positions,
and so I thought I couldstart our conversation
around a recent study on women
in the workplace that was conducted
by leanin.org and McKinsey & Company.
You know, one of the items they talk
about is the pipelineproblems we have with women,
(01:10):
specifically the broken rungto first level management
and women leaving the workforce.
So, with that in mind,I wanted to ask you,
why is it so important tohelp women stay engaged?
And what I mean by that is, you know,
I don't read articles about, like,
let's help men stay engaged.
It's very focused on women.What's the difference?
(01:31):
- Yeah, so, you mentionedthe McKinsey article
and when they started doing this,
one of the biggestissues that they said was
the broken rung issue, right?
And that phenomenon iswhen there's more men
than women who are being promoted
into that first leadershiprole, that management role.
(01:53):
The most recent study,
so that was two years ago whenthey reported that, and now,
we're two years later,
having known the problems
and implemented all the things, and now,
we have a second pipeline problem,
not one pipeline problem, but two,
and that second pipeline problem is now,
that for every one woman who is promoted
(02:15):
into a director role,
they found that two women leave.
- Wow!
- And so, they didn't find that with men.
That's why we focus onengagement for women.
- What do you think distracts women then
from staying engaged inthose management roles?
- This is a complicatedquestion because I often wonder,
(02:42):
is it that other people
or things distract themor is it something else?
And I think it's a couple of things.
One is life circumstances.
The women who have younger,you know, kids at home,
there's a lot moreresearch that has come out
(03:05):
that this is not gettingbetter in terms of the burden
of the household and childcare
or other dependent care.
Burdens still fall onwomen way more than men
and I think McKinseyalso found that women,
once they get into leadership roles,
(03:27):
there's at least double, theymight have said quadruple,
there's at least double,
the sort of childcare issuesor household, you know,
management that they have compared
to men in leadership roles,and so, is that a distraction?
(03:49):
I'm not sure I wouldcall it a distraction.
I would call it an inequity.
The other is there's a lack
of mentorship or sponsorshipthat is appropriate
and sufficient that provides'em with the support and so,
they're not given thesame level of guidance
and support on how to movethrough the organization
(04:09):
in terms of getting promoted,
career advice that is appropriate
and sufficient to getinto new leadership roles,
not knowing how to navigatecomplex organizations.
It's not because theydon't have the skillset
or couldn't gain the skillset,
it's that they're excluded
from conversations that men are provided
(04:32):
with about navigatingthose workplace politics.
And then there's, you know,
things like microaggressionsthat's highly distracting.
(Dr. Mira chuckling)
That can be highly distracting,
as well as frustrating andupsetting, and it really,
(04:54):
it is another layer that mendon't often have to deal with
and when those things happen,
when you get negative messages,when you get undermined,
when somebody takes credit for your work,
which happens more for women than men,
all of these are distractions
because we're just trying to do our work
(05:15):
and then we've gotta deal withall of these other things.
The final one, again,
I'm not sure I wouldsee it as a distraction,
but it can actually beseen as a distraction,
which is that women
are socialized to supportother people really well,
and so they work really hard
(05:36):
in order to get promoted tothat first leadership role
by supporting other people,especially their leaders,
and understanding what theirleaders need really well.
And so, at some point,
they're so good at anticipatingand supporting other people
above them, their teams,
(05:57):
that I often see them lose themselves
and not sort of sure where to go.
At some point they hit, like,
a real milestone ormonumental sort of shift in,
who am I really
and is this what is right for me
(06:18):
or have I been doing thisall along for other people?
And that can be incredibly distracting,
(Dr. Mira scoffing)
as you can imagine, just, like,all of a sudden realizing,
is this my identity or not?
And if not, then where amI going with my career?
And what, you know,
there's the core lifecrisis, the midlife crisis,
there's this woman life crisis too
(06:39):
(Dr. Mira scoffing)
- And it's interesting to think
about that from the perspectiveof how you framed it
on women are brought upin these support roles.
So, I suspect, youknow, I know for myself,
but I suspect this istrue for a lot of women,
we're kind of multi-passionatebecause we've responded
to what's being asked of us
in very different waysand very different roles,
(07:00):
but we've always shown up.
We've always stepped up to the position.
So, we're not really deepin a niche in particular,
but we might have this reallybroad set of skills and so,
when we're asked that question,
"Hey, what do you wannado when you grow up?"
You have probably 10 pathsyou could take, you know?
And so, it's interestingto kind of go back
to that thought process of how we
are trained to support
(07:22):
and how that can complicate things.
You know, I've been talking a lot
with my peers around this idea
of the mental load that women carry,
and you validated it bytalking about, you know,
women in childcare, andI had a funny situation
with my husband the otherday where, you know,
I'm really conscientiousof when my senior,
(07:42):
he's in high school, leavesfor school in the morning.
I can hear him get up and go out the door
and I was laying in bed and I was like,
"Hey, I don't think I heard, you know,
our son leave for school yet."
And my husband was like,"What are you talking about?"
And I was like, "I bet that'snot something that you have
on your mind every morning.
It's like, hey, did heget up and go to school?"
And he's like, "It never crosses my mind."
And I'm like, "Yep.
That's somewhere in my brainevery morning that, yeah,
(08:05):
did he get up and go to school?"
And that's such a very simple example,
but there's so manythings that women carry
from a mental load perspective.
You know, how do youbalance all the life stuff
that women have in ourheads and then, like,
let's layer on the career stuff, right?
Yeah, it's a lot to navigate for women.
- Yeah, and I just wanna sortof highlight first, well,
(08:29):
number one, I loved how youthought about the strength
of being able to support peoplein lots of different ways,
is that you get to have anincredibly wide skillset
and women don't necessarily realize
that that is a strength or a value,
so I appreciate that you'vejust brought that up.
It's gonna get me thinkingfor the rest of the day.
(08:51):
(Dr. Mira laughing)
In terms of the different experiences,
I want us to be reallycareful not to equate what's
on our minds relatedto childcare with women
because I know a lot
of men think about these kindsof things too and really,
(09:12):
it's a parent issue,
and at the same time it istrue that often, on average,
not for every woman, not forevery man, but on average,
it is the case that, you know,
they're thinking about all
of these additionalthings and juggling it.
(09:34):
I often think, when you thinkabout leadership roles today,
in this day and age,
and how hard it is to be a leader, period,
but also how hard it isto be a leader right now
in this complex world,
how much more women canbring to the table given
(09:56):
how much they've practicedmanaging all the things,
all the time, and thinkingabout multiple people's needs
at the same time, for example,
and having so many distractions
and still cutting through allof that in amazing ways, and,
you know, they saywomen work twice as hard
(10:17):
to get the same things
and all of these put togethermake women incredibly set
up for leadership in today'shighly complex, uncertain,
volatile kind of, youknow, world and workplace.
- We need to talk aboutthat more, you know?
(10:39):
Everybody should betalking about that more,
that very unique skillset that women bring
to the table that isprobably often overlooked.
I'm always amazed when I meeta woman who's at, you know,
higher levels of leadership and I start
to hear their stories and, you know,
they are balancing a bunch
(11:00):
of different things andthey have all these passions
and it has set them up forsuccess in so many ways.
You know, as you thinkabout the unique role
that women in leadership have,
how do you think they are gonna be shaping
the future of work?
- Yeah.
I think we need to reallymove past this old model
(11:25):
of leadership that worked when things
were quote on quote simplerand move past the sort
of single hero model of leadershipwhere there's one leader
and they have a specific idea
or vision and it is doleddown to the masses and,
(Dr. Mira scoffing)
(11:46):
you know, all of that.
The skillset that we just talked
about in being able to float
through lots of different circles,
different individual employee needs,
different team needswithin an organization,
(12:08):
their experiences of evenhaving a non-traditional,
usually non-traditional,leadership pathway
where they move laterally.
They move backwards to move forward.
They take pauses and breaks.
They move in and out of leadership,
and in and out of organizations.
That brings incredibleperspective as compared
(12:28):
to the traditional oldmodels of one person moving
up the same, you know, singlerungs of the same ladder.
And between that and their focus,
or it could be socialized.
Mostly, I think it is socialized thoughts
(12:50):
about sort of how they buildcommunity, how they network,
how they interact with people,is a shared leadership model,
and we need team leadership more than ever
for different people tobring different skill sets,
different knowledge,different experiences,
(13:10):
and I've seen women be able to do
that really well and in fact,
most of the women that I work
with are women who say things like,
"I'm not sure that I could be a leader
in the way that I see becauseI like collaborating."
(Dr. Mira and Shari chuckling)
I'm like, "That's a problem?" Right?
(13:31):
(Dr. Mira and Shari chuckling)
I like to take the timeto gather perspectives
and information to make decisions
and what I see is
that leaders have to makereally quick decisions
and I'm like, and that's a good thing?
(Dr. Mira scoffing)
- Right.
- Making really fast decisions
without all the informationis a good thing?
(Dr. Mira and Shari giggling)
I don't hear a problem here.
(13:52):
- Right.
- I hear a real strength
and you can create that leadership pathway
and the perspective and mapit the way that makes sense
because that's exactlywhat we need right now
and we don't see a lot of that
and they find that so refreshing.
They're like, oh, becauseit feels authentic to them.
(14:12):
It feels like, well,that's how I think anyway.
And so that, I really thinkthat's what they can bring,
you know?
If they've had those experiences and
if that resonates for them,
that's an incredibly powerful skillset.
- Well, I thank you for yourinsight and if you're a woman
in leadership right now
and you're listening to this podcast,
(14:33):
I hope you're walking away
with all the confidence in the world
because you bring a veryunique skillset to the table
and you have so much togive your organizations
and if you're a man listening,
here's a great opportunity
for you to realize how to be better allies
and provide mentorship'cause I think, you know,
you mentioned that and it's so important
for women to have, you know, mentorship,
and that doesn't necessarily have to come
from another woman leader, you know?
(14:54):
Anybody in leadership can provide that.
So, Mira, thank you
for taking a few minutesof your day with me.
- Absolutely. It was a great time.
Thank you.
(upbeat music)
- This podcast is broughtto you by Paylocity,
a leading HCM provider thatfrees you from the tasks
of today so you can focus moreon the promise of tomorrow.
If you'd like to submit atopic or appear as a guest
(15:14):
on a future episode,
email us at pctytalks@paylocity.com.
(upbeat music)
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!