May 27, 2010

Dear Attendees,

It was a pleasure to have you join Unbound Ideas for The Female Vision, a webinar presented by Sally Helgesen and Julie Johnson on May 25.

We are pleased to make this session summary available to you along with several resources provided by Sally and Julie. On the right side of this page, you will notice a light blue column that contains several elements. Just under the two speakers’ pictures, you’ll find a slide image that links to the on-demand recording from this session, along with access instructions. If you did not sign up for this optional program element, but did attend the live session, contact Tad Furtado at (800) 348-3470 or via email to learn more about gaining access.

We truly enjoyed the experience of contributing to the launch of Sally’s and Julie’s new book, The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work, to be released in book stores on June 14 and available from Amazon.com right now. Twenty years ago, Sally Helgesen wrote The Female Advantage, a book that changed the conversation about women in the workplace. We believe that The Female Vision will have a similar impact on organizations at the senior leadership and strategic levels.

Joined by executive coach and author, Howard Morgan, Sally and Julie began their discussion by explaining why they wrote the book and providing a definition of the female vision. They promised to explain what the female vision means for organizations and how it can be operationalized.

The origins of the book emerged from conversations in 2006 about the difficulties that organizations were experiencing attracting and retaining talented women. In both Sally’s and Julie’s extensive but different experiences, women at the top of organizations have been discouraged, and have often “opted out” because they don’t believe their talents are being properly employed, nor their insights being heard. Privately, many women express a disconnect between what women tend to value and what organizations tend to reward, while publicly they state they’re leaving for family reasons.

What is the Female Vision? Sally and Julie stated that it is comprised of three elements. First, women tend to see things differently – or, they employ broad-scale notice. Second, women tend to think differently, specifically they bring more subjective data to their analysis and decision-making. Third, women tend to value work differently, meaning they evaluate satisfaction through daily experience rather than abstract rewards like salary or achieving numerical goals.

Sally and Julie went on at length to illuminate these three components. In particular, the notion of broad-spectrum notice drew much attention. This was described as the capacity women have to notice many things at once, as compared to the tendency many men have to focus on specifics and details. As a result, women excel at picking up emotional cues, judging context, etc. Neuro-scientific literature was quoted to support these observations, in addition to anecdotal evidence. According to the authors, narrow-spectrum notice was probably quite adaptive in the industrial era, but is no longer sufficient in today’s complex global marketplace.

As this discussion wound down, Julie focused on strategies that can be employed to support and benefit from the female vision. Women must become more adept at articulating their vision, framing observations in the language of benefits, enlisting allies, and holding themselves accountable through internal partners or peer coaches. Men can foster the female vision by speaking up in support of it when it appears in meetings, etc., and by broadening their own spectrum of notice. Finally, organizations can help institutionalize the female vision by including such language in their efforts to attract, retain and develop leaders, as well as by valuing diverse ways of perceiving, working, and making decisions.

The benefits of such an approach will be seen through the organization’s ability to access more information through richer, more diverse sources of data; by its ability to reach different groups inside and outside the organization; and by the establishment of a more balanced and sustainable decision-making process.

In their final messages, Julie offered that women leaders must give themselves permission to trust their own instincts in order to realize their female vision fully; while Sally urged the audience to begin thinking about the extent to which the capacities of the female vision are going to become increasingly critical as demographics, technology, and the nature of the economy continue to evolve.

It was an insightful and even inspiring presentation, and we can imagine the ideas of The Female Vision entering the leadership lexicon. We encourage you to contribute your own observations and insights by emailing us, or emailing Sally and Julie directly.  And keep an eye out for your copy of the The Female Vision, which has been ordered and is on its way to you as part of your registration package.

On behalf of Sally Helgesen, Julie Johnson, and Howard Morgan, we thank you again for joining us, and look forward to the next occasion.

Warm Regards,
Unbound Ideas