I started my career as an academic anthropologist, then shifted my focus to banking and then healthcare. As a consultant or an executive, I quickly found that whether it was a staff meeting, a board meeting, or a client meeting, I was often the only woman in the room. When it was my turn to make a presentation, I watched with wonder as some of the men left to get coffee. When I shared my ideas, my insights or wisdom were often ignored.

I realized that my male colleagues weren’t going to change the prevailing culture and suddenly include a woman in "how we do things here." Things had to change if they were going to accept me, listen to me, follow me. But for the culture to change, I had to be the enabler of those changes. I had to help others feel comfortable letting me be part of their team as a highly competent, albeit female, teammate. As I stated in a recent Authority Magazine interview, which you can read here, here are the strategies that helped me do that. I wrote this article to help other women better choose the firms with which to work and create the right cultures for the future in which men and women work better together.

Want to help change the world for working women?

Please be our guest at our 4th Annual Women Business Collaborative (WBC) Action for Impact Summit taking place virtually on September 21 and 22. Join WBC members and hundreds of business people like yourself for a day and a half of high-level panels and speakers discussing how best to create equal position, pay and power for all women. 

I so enjoy my Authority magazine interviews. Not only do I get to really think about how to grow a business, change your culture, be an effective leader or become successful as a woman entrepreneur, I get to share my thoughts with all kinds of business people, either established or emerging. I love it! The most recent installment was part of the magazine's interview series, “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business.” You can read the entire interview here.

Regular exercise improves our physical health, decreases our risk for severe health conditions and helps us feel better emotionally. But for many of us, our lives are so full that we don't know how to add exercise to our already packed days. Neglecting our health at the expense of our busy schedules is dangerous for many reasons, but ultimately it can stop us from being the healthiest version of ourselves, both in mind and body. Understanding the impact that exercise has on our lives allows us to make intentional choices to improve our health.

                                                                        Photo courtesy of The New York Times. Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Multiple news outlets, including the NY Times, published an announcement on July 7^th, 2022 that the Las Vegas Raiders (sorry, I still think of them as the Oakland Raiders) hired Sandra Douglass Morgan as their President, the first African American woman to hold the role in N.F.L. history.

Why is this important for leadership?

The hiring of Ms. Morgan is important for three reasons:

First, in a male dominated sport, until recently it went against the established norms to hire a female senior executive. Three of my previous blogs talk to this point:

• Two Incredible Women Who Are Succeeding In A Man's World
• Women "Firsts" Shatter Stereotypes, Look Forward
• No Women Coaches In The NBA? Yeah, Becky Hammon Changed That.

Second, Ms. Morgan is a person of color, and while the Rooney Rule (expanded this year to include women) doesn’t appear to be working in hiring head coaches of color, something does appear to be working in the front office with the hiring of a minority CEO.

Third, women handle problem-solving differently than men. Perhaps this will work well for both the Raiders and the National Football League.

For the past two years or so, we all have been operating in a strange work environment. Many of us have experienced trying to work full-time virtual, part-time in the office, and even full-time in the office. For each of us, it has been good, bad, or none of the above, as post-pandemic work styles range from virtual to in-person to hybrid to pick your own style, causing business leaders to hide or run for cover...or in some cases, listen carefully for new solutions.

With all that's going on today and in your world, do you sometimes feel down? Overwhelmed? Wishing there was a way to feel happy, joyful, fulfilled?

Me too. That's why I was thrilled to be interviewed recently by Authority magazine for its interview series "Finding Happiness and Joy During Turbulent Times." They're talking with experts, business leaders, authors and mental health professionals who share lessons from their research and experience about how to find happiness and joy during troubled and turbulent times. And boy, aren't those the times we're living in. You can read the interview here.

As I waited to present to a group of male CEOs at a conference, I listened to several men complaining about how hard it was for them to attract a diverse workforce and integrate them into their current culture. One man said: "It took me three months to finally find a capable woman of color. She was great but lasted three months. She just didn't fit with the rest of the company. What am I going to do? My board is urging me to diversify and change my organization. Where do I begin?"

Probably a familiar story requiring new leadership skills

I love being interviewed by Authority Magazine, mainly because I am always asked thought-provoking questions which lead to really insightful discussions about women in business, leadership, culture change, workplace transformation and what's coming next. The most recent interview was part of Authority magazine's interview series, “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times.” You can read the entire interview here.

                                                                                                 Photo courtesy www.business-anthro.com

What the heck is corporate anthropology?

People often ask us: "What do you do?" and "How do you do anthropology?" They are familiar  (maybe) with anthropologists who work in small-scale societies in far away lands. My response: I tell them that companies or organizations in more complex societies are like those small-scale societies. We observe their interconnected networks, and the way people get their jobs done every day. They have many of the same dynamics as tribal or hunter-gatherer societies. They also have different ones which reflect how they have evolved into effective, or dysfunctional, organizations. Our job as corporate anthropologists is to help them "see, feel and think" in new ways to sustain their growth during these fast-changing times.