You're Measuring the Wrong Things

0:00Speaker 1:The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W four WN Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsement for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates. Any questions or common should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W four WN Radio.

0:26Speaker 2:This is Beyond Confidence with your host d W Park. Do you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional, and financial goals? Well? Coming up on Dvparks Beyond Confidence, you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers who have stepped into discomfort, shattered their satus quo, and are living the life they want. You will learn how relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals.

0:53Speaker 2:Moving your career business forward does not have to happen at the expense of your personal or family life, or vice versa. Learn more at www dot gwpark dot com and you can connect with vants contact at gvpark dot com. This is beyond confidence and now here's your host. W Park.

1:12Speaker 3:Good morning everyone, It's Tuesday, and of course I'm thrilled to be with you. It is one of the favorite times of my week because we get to have a wonderful conversations. And sometimes these conversations are hard. Sometimes these conversations are fun, but these are conversations that are important to have that nobody may be having. So I want to thank each in every one of you who have got a boox, especially in this day and age with AI becoming a thread and scaring so many people. So if you're looking to future proof your career and learn how to think about AI, because it's not what you think, it's how you think, be sure to get our book, The AIA and see and as you'll know, part of the proceeds going to Kiva dot org because it's important that we share the cheer with others as well. So let's welcome our guest. Welcome Brad, Welcome, David.

2:17Speaker 4:Hey, great to be with you.

2:18Speaker 3:Thanks Stevie, absolutely so. Do you recall either of you a moment or a person that left a positive mark on you.

2:32Speaker 4:Boy, Where to start? There are so many if you you know, I'm gonna I'm just going to refer very quickly when it comes to this thing, this project that Dave Smith and I have been engaged in for all of these years, promoting a gender fair workplace, promoting gender fair relationships. I think I need to start with my only sibling, my sister. We had parallel has in the military. My sister stayed for thirty years, and I got a front row seat over the arc of her career, hearing about and observing the gendered headwinds that my sister experienced daily that I never did as a male who happens to have a similar career and similar personality style. And that was kind of my eye opener to gender inequity both in relationships at work, to opportunities both in society and the workplace. So I think it was that influence, you know, engaging with my sister, listening to her, observing her, that was kind of what got me started on this path.

3:45Speaker 5:Yeah, very similar for me, not my sibling, but in this case my spouse and my partner, my wife, We had parallel careers and it was really a lot of those conversations over the dining table about the experiences we were having in the workplace and seeing how we had very different experiences, both in some of the interpersonal aspects of how we were perceived in the workplace, but also in opportunities, mentoring, just being seen as being ready for what's next, And a lot of that came very naturally to me. I didn't have to look very hard for her.

4:24Speaker 5:It was often very challenging to find people who were willing to talk to her about her career and her career development. And it really opened my eyes to the fact that these were not necessarily just one person's experiences, because I went back and I talked to my own colleagues, my female colleagues at work, and to look at their experiences and also made the connection that Wow, this is a really systemic issue that lots of women are having, and it does tend to be more rampant in more majority male professions and occupations out there, but it's not peculiar to them, right, see that and lots of them out there. And that was the one that got me curious and thinking more about this and about how we could all be engaged in doing the work to really help to solve for some of the gender inequities we see today in the workplace.

5:15Speaker 3:Absolutely, Brett, thank you for your services. And it's it's important that we recognized what's going on and a lot of things have changed as we look at the numbers. What was not true a few decades back, it is true now we are seeing a lot more women CEOs, more women in the workforce, and yet there is that gap and it's important to bridge that gap. So, David, what was your career like and how did you decide to shift from your career into this project.

5:56Speaker 5:And again, I have my start in the military, and that was where I began to see some of the differences as women were being integrated more fully into the military, recognizing that again it wasn't necessarily equal or equitable in many different ways in terms of their opportunities they were receiving when we had that, and so one of the places that we thought was I think really interesting in terms of the research. And this is where Brad and I started our work together when we were collaborating and teaching at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and Brad's an expert and mentoring and career developmental relationships. And one of the connections we saw to my work in sociology around gender work and family issues was really this kind of the disconnect in terms of the quality and the access and the type of mentoring and just broader advocacy and sponsorship well as well for women compared to men.

6:54Speaker 5:And also the fact that many cases, you know, there was this difference in that men don't make or sponsor women in the same way that they do for women, and when they do, they often don't do it in the same quality and doing it in a very loud, full throated way that have really speaking up for her, especially when she's not in the room, in the same way that they do for other men. And it really piqued their curiosity to understand more about how maybe it's some of these career developmental opportunities that were the roots and the source of some of this. So we began that's where we started and doing our research and moving towards this idea around how do we engage men and becoming part of the solution around creating gender equity in the workplace, because you know, often when we you know, we looked at organizations and leaders, and we see these inequities, like you know again, women not getting the same kind or the same access to mentoring as men. They often looked at that and said, well, we'll create a women's mentoring program, which is great, right because it gives a focus on women, but it often still sent a message

7:57Speaker 5:to men that they didn't need to engage in doing the work. And so we needed to think about how do we reframe this, right, how do we begin to shift this this is a more systemic issue and structure this in a way so that men see that they have something in this too to be gained. And they have and they're part of the solution as well when it comes to doing this for everybody.

8:16Speaker 3:David, thank you for sharing that, and thank you for your services. So as you and Brad that the research. I really like what you're sharing that making men also part of the solution. What are some of the findings that you came across.

8:32Speaker 4:Well, I hope you have three hours, because we have a lot to share. We're going to keep it. We're going to keep it very brief for you, Diva. But some of the big things that really stood out, I think the way we as maybe organizational leaders for the last several decades have tried to approach gender fairness is simply not working. And here a couple ingredients. Here, we have made gender fairness of women's problem, meaning all of the obligation to change the workplace, to change inequities has been on the backs of women. So women's rgs, which are rarely funded or maybe human resources, get these siloed obligations to fix what's wrong in the workplace, and that's simply not working. Women didn't create this series of inequities around gender, and it's truly unfair to now expect them to fix it. So that messaging has suggested to men over and over again that this is a women's problem.

9:35Speaker 4:So maybe you haven't advent or initiative in your company around gender, and you men see it and immediately say, well, that has gender or women in the title, So that doesn't involve me, So I don't show up, I don't engage, I don't think I'm invited. And then one other issue that came out loud and clear in our first book Athenaising, A lot of men are afraid. They're afraid of stepping in it. They're afraid of saying the wrong thing. They're afraid of gossip or rumors. They don't want to get it wrong, and they think that it's safer just to sit on the sideline and you know, maybe not engage with these talented women who are coming into their departments or their organizations. They say to themselves, well, women can mentor and sponsor those talented junior women. I don't need to do that. And by the way, I'm anxious about doing that. So I think we have not given men the opportunity to see what's in it for them when they really lean in to collaborative relationships with women, when they contribute to gender fairness, when they loudly sponsor women at work. There's a lot in this for us, and

10:50Speaker 4:we can tell you more about that. But men benefit when they really engage in gender fair workplace.

10:58Speaker 3:And those are some of the keywards. What's in it for them? What's in it for me? Especially in this day and age. Yeah, so we'd love to hear your thoughts as to how can men benefit, because when they are also benefiting, then it becomes a women situation rather than creating that gap that oh, this is not my problem.

11:19Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, maybe we could start with the area around caregiving, because this is one of those around traditional gender roles. That is one of the challenges that that men and women both face in the workplace. And so as we think about benefiting and the opportunity to make the workplace more fair and to facilitate, you know, getting what I want and what and what she wants at the same time, I think this is a place where we can all win when it comes to that, including the organization, including the workplace, the employer. And so again, these these notions that that women are somehow the innate caregivers and the and the default caregivers and any relationship really hinders women's ability to move forward in their careers, move forward as leaders seek opportunities when there's perceptions by men and other people in the in their organization that somehow they're a risk, or they're they're not as committed to the work, or they're going to leave at some point, or they're they're just not able to commit to the same quality and level of the work as men are, and so they don't right, so they don't get the opportunities. They are

12:25Speaker 5:not put in the positions where they can do these things, and so this, this hinders women's ability to do that. The flip side of that coin is that there's an assumption, right from a gender roles perspective, around traditional gender roles, that men are somehow not innate caregivers, are not good at caregiving or the again, the stereotypes that go with that around these bumbling men who who can't seem to find their way around to how to take take care of others, whether they're small children or somebody older in their family. Maybe, but men can and men do want to do that. And that's the challenge is that when men try to step into caregiving roles or to do more of that, to take maybe take some time off or paid leave or use flexible work arrangements to be able to facilitate doing some of that caregiving, they're penalized.

13:17Speaker 5:And sometimes it's very explicitly and other times it's implied in terms of maybe their manager asking him it's like, oh, well, you know, why do you need paid leave? Don't you have a wife? And it's like, WHOA really is that where we're going to go with this, But this, you know, these expectations that men are going to be penalized and they are in many ways. They're stigmatized and penalized for trying to use programs or policies practices that enable them to be the caregivers that they need to be. That also help us to facilitate women stepping in and leaning into those roles where they're not doing the lion's share of the caregiving. And we haven't even gotten to the domestic labor and the mental load that goes with all of that as well.

14:02Speaker 4:Yeah, and two other benefits, Diva that you know you mentioned the with them, what's in it for men? Two other things. Lots of research now showing that when men lean into caregiving at home and share it equitably, they have healthier brains. You know, they have younger looking brains. Caregiving tends to stimulate areas in the brain that are linked to better empathy and you know, emotional intelligence and awareness. They feel better, they enjoy deeper relationships with their children.

14:31Speaker 4:And then second, we're looking at research on men who are getting promoted to C suite jobs across corporate America in the last decade or so. It turns out men who show up with this spirit of collaboration and inclusion and humility and curiosity all the things that lead to really gender fair leadership, those are the men who are getting promoted today. I think companies and organizations are finally recognizing that's who we want in LEE readership. And so if you want to know what's in it for men, there's a lot of career opportunity in addition to all the interpersonal benefits.

15:08Speaker 3:Absolutely, and companies are stepping up because as I coach so many different gentlemen from across different span of cross section of different industries, a lot of companies are providing equal portunity leads for men as well as for women. So that's another way that they can kind of step in to bridge the gap. You talk about five essential tactics for world class gender inclusive leadership, So what might those be?

15:42Speaker 4:Well, I can lead off Dave, and maybe you have some others in mind. But number one, stop outsourcing gender fairness initiatives. Too many leaders, you know, are happy to silo all of their gender inclusion initiatives in for example, the Women's Energy Right or maybe HR tend to be underfunded or not funded at all, and it puts all the obligation on the disadvantaged group in this case women, to affect change. In the company that's not working. I need to make this a core business initiative and make it really clear that this is not a nice to have, it's a value that we want to live in everything we do and the way we do business. So stop outsourcing.

16:33Speaker 4:You need to own gender fairness. It needs to be centered in the work that you do as an executive in your organization. People need to be clear about that. And I'll give you a tangible example when, for example, International Women's Day comes around and your company has a very performative tea and cookies and a panel to celebrate women, but there's nothing else meaningful going on. You know, the rest of the year, everyone in your organization knows that that's performative. And a lot of people we talked to said, you know, I can walk into a company and tell right away, maybe I'm a speaker on a gender event.

17:15Speaker 4:I can tell right away how seriously the company takes it, because when it's serious, usually the CEO it not only introduces me, but stays for the entire session, takes notes, ask questions. That makes it clear to everybody that this is a top priority, right versus the CEO who doesn't even show up which is more common or quickly introduces the speaker and then takes off to, you know, a more important meeting, so you see that quite often. Second, or I guess third, talk about your why. You need to get comfortable with your why. Why does gender fairness matter to you? Why is this a key business priority for your organization? And talk about your personal why who?

18:01Speaker 4:Who are the women in your lives that matter to you and that you care about and that you don't want to face inequities. Tell your story it needs to be compelling on a personal level, and then pivot and go from your personal why to why does this matter for our organization? Dave any others I missed?

18:22Speaker 5:Yeah, you know one I like the highlight is really around how we how we from a cultural perspective, and there's certainly a shift here in how we value for example, care work. But transparency is a key piece of this, and being transparent across the organization. One in the policies and practices that we're using and then who's using them and how they're being used. Right, so people want to know, right, this is how we get past stigma and it's like, oh, you know we have this policy, but you can't really use it, or my manager said that, you know, hey, that's not really for you. And that's often something that men here when it comes to for example, paid leave out there. So having transparency is really good. One of the ways that we see leaders really embody that and lead, you know, in a very forward leaning way with it, is how they role model and use some of these programs.

19:15Speaker 3:Right.

19:15Speaker 5:So, yeah, maybe you're at that point in your career where I don't necessarily need remote work or flex work arrangements, but it really means a lot when I'm not one hundred percent in the office and I'm using those on an occasional basis, when it makes sense right to demonstrate that, hey, this isn't just for certain people, this is for all of us, right, and here's what it looks like when I use it, so I can role model what it looks like to use flex work arrangements or remote work or hybrid work in some case. The other part of that, I think, in the valuing caregiving is also the implementation of how we use it. And so the same thing, right, role model, how do you use paid leave? What does it look like? How do we value that in terms of training managers who are implementing these policies, you know, down there on the front lines. How do we train them and educate them on the implementation of these policies.

20:07Speaker 5:What's it look like when I have a I find out that I have an employee who's going to go on paid leave? What does that process look like? How do I prepare them to go on paid leave? How do I prepare my team to again, how do we re distribute that work or how do do I have the opportunity to bring somebody else in temporary work? You know, what are my options when it comes to the tools of my toolkit? And then how do I support that worker when they're on paid leave and again without end up being an intrusive on their time off, but at the same time recognizing that, hey, we want to stay connected while you're gone, and that means because I'm looking forward to you coming back. And talk about the transition back, which can often be the hardest part for women and men.

20:52Speaker 5:When you've been away from work for whether it's six weeks, twelve weeks, six months at a time, it's hard to come back when especially and you've been in some sort of a full caregiving mode. In that way, and so talk about the transition, what does it look like, what are we going to do, what would work best for you? And then what would work best for the team, and how do we make those meat in the middle. And then I guess I think the other part is understanding that we all need different aspects around, for example, childcare or elder care benefits, and then beginning to understand and talk about that in a way that we can we can understand and make sure that those benefits are available and accessible to the people that need them in a way that again they can afford, because often caregiving is very expensive and we have a lot of you know, childcare today in many places. As most parents out there can tell you, it was just one of those where it's like they're making very hard decisions about the economics and their family around who's doing what kind of work and how much of that work because of just the

21:55Speaker 5:cost around caregiving, and childcare is just one piece of it. Elder care is another component of that, and in many cases we have that sandwich generation of us who are you know, we still have kids at home that are less than eighteen, and we have parents who are over sixty five. And we're doing caregiving for both on both ends, and so how do we work with them to keep that talent in the workforce and help them to stay at that high level at the same time meet those caregiving needs that they need to do.

22:22Speaker 3:Absolutely, these are some great points. What really resonated with me, David, was that transition helping, whether it's men or a woman transition during that time that listen, as you're heading out for caregiving, whether it is for parentally or whether it is for elderly care, that you're secure you're not going to get penalized that you are out for six months. We will evaluate you based on your performance in six months. Because a lot of my clients have come back and said that because out my ranking from a performance yearly performance review went down, So come and you'll pr which is performance review. I don't know if I want to take full leave, and so many times they end up taking only half a leave, or sometimes what they'll do is they'll take two months here, then two months there, and when they're doing that, it disrupts the team a lot, and then you also start seeing resentment on the team's part.

23:28Speaker 3:So that part is very crucial because now men in the leadership roles are role modeling, training people their reports how to implement it when they get in that position. Yeah, so what are the techniques you have seen that have worked for organizations to normalize and remove the stigmatization around caregiving.

23:58Speaker 5:Yeah, there's several ways that we've seen that have been very effective. And some companies choose to do this, you know, kind of in house, meaning they've they've they've spent the time to train their managers in a way and give them the tools, like they have checklists. For example, when they find out that they have a employee who's going to be going out on leave, right, the things that they need to do with the employee to prepare them for moving going on leave. At the same time, the thing the checklist for the manager to work with the team in terms of all right, so how are we redistributing that work? And that varies a lot depending on the type of work it is and if it's client facing work or you know, certain project based work. You know, uh, do they have a unique role or set of talents that they're bringing to that project, And so there's different ways to do that. And again, companies will will have different tools that they uh will will give the manager and how to what are their options in terms of how do I replace that? Do I Are there opportunities to bring other people in? In some cases there are

25:02Speaker 5:on a temporary basis. In some cases we're redistributing within the team, and that's just kind of a you know, you think about first responders for example, this is a very common one where they recognize that for somebody to be out on leave, that means that they're picking up the load, right, and they do that for each other. That's part of the expectation and the understanding of how they do that from a first responder perspective, because it's really hard to bring in kind of temporary so to speak, to fill those gaps for them. But in other cases that's not the case that because of the type of work that they do, the highly specialized expertise, there's often a lot of people out there on the market that do this fractional work and they're doing it on a piecemeal type basis or in the gig economy that's become so popular right that they can hire those people in and they have a list of people who they work with where they can do some of this and that's just the beginning of it. The second part really is the next phase of while the employees out and keeping that engagement going and thinking about the what is the

26:04Speaker 5:type of communication we're going to be having, what are we going to be emphasizing, recognizing that the employee is actually learning and a chance to practice new skills while they're on leave that they can transition back into the workplace with as well. And so that's one that I think a lot of people don't even recognize that, Hey, people are still gaining experience in a variety of different ways and maybe whether that's again working on managing a myriad of caregiving needs, especially as you think about if you're caregiving for a maybe from an elder care perspective, somebody with a dementia related disease, there's a lot of there's a lot of coordination that has to happen there, and a lot of management of time and resources. And so again those are things that can be used to develop those and bring those back into the workplace and understanding that, I think there's also an opportunity to leverage caregivers when they come back in two. Again, there is a support network within the workplace within your team to be able to, hey, how did you do this when you were on leave? I have I have a very

27:07Speaker 5:similar circumstance. Many of us are kind of going through this, sometimes for the first time, but others have had the experience of doing it. How do we how do we create a network of support network within our team or within the organization broadly, and that's often where employee resource groups come in. And then finally, I think one of the most important pieces is that transition back. Got to the got to have the training for the manager and how they can how they're going to bring that employee back again. What are the options. Maybe in some cases we need to bring somebody back in a part time and then kind of gradually work their hours up to full time again. Other cases they can bring them back into full time status, but because it's client facing, they've got to work them back into teams or working with clients in these different programs. Sometimes employers will work with consultants and third party right so outside the organization to do some of this to facility some of that for them, and they're doing the coaching at the same time, they're helping to manage this within their teams across the organization,

28:07Speaker 5:so they can build some of that those skill sets internally in the organization as well.

28:12Speaker 3:Mm hmmm. So these are some very crucial points to keep in mind. So as we are talking about let's say some of the organizations have implemented some of that, but what are some questions they can ask before they start measuring progress towards the gender fair workplace?

28:31Speaker 4:Mmm? Boy, so many questions and you know, part of it, part of it, you know, could be around caregiving, you know. So if we're talking about that, how about starting with a caregiving census. A lot of organizations have no idea who among their employees have caregiving obligations, and it can be it can be a sticky situation because the employers of afraid to ask who has caregiving They don't want to violate privacy and their concern maybe about legal ramifications.

29:09Speaker 4:Employees also are reluctant to respond, right because they don't trust the organization. Yet, what are you going to do with this information? Will I be stigmatized if I self identify as a caregiver? So I've got to start with some cultural change and building trust make this normative. So how about just starting with a census to find out related to that. If we're talking about gender fairness more broadly, div yet, how about conducting listening sessions with women. We got to interview one person who said a herculean major leadership mistake here is to assume that women are doing fine in your organization just because you're not hearing complaints or you're not receiving data, probably because you're not asking for it about how women are experiencing the workplace. Don't assume they're doing okay. You know, conduct anonymous surveys, have listening sessions, have listening sessions with women across the organization at different levels, and ask them how they're doing. You can have a third party person do this, you can have somebody else do it. Start going to the women's ERG meetings and listen to women about how they're experiencing

30:28Speaker 4:your workplace. It's going to be an epiphany for you when you start. You know, once they trust you, they're going to share with you where you have work to do, what's not going well. And then how about just looking at bottom line factors. If you want to start some gender fairness process, how about just starting at the beginning with taking a hard look at your current onboarding of women. How are you doing with targets to getting to gender balance at each level? How are you doing with retention?

31:02Speaker 4:How are you doing with advancement? If you don't have a baseline for those numbers, it's going to be very hard to assess how you're making progress.

31:12Speaker 3:It thanks for a deeper reflection. Yeah, I'm seeing where you're at, David. You're sharing something.

31:18Speaker 5:Yeah, I think there's and there's some intersections within that that are really important and making sure that we're kind of, you know, as Brad's giving these questions that we don't stop there right there, there's another level of question of disaggregating the data a little bit and so understanding where as we think about retention, So retention figures can get masked in a lot of different ways, right as we as we aggregate the data, and so can we look at that for different groups of people? So for example, if we're looking at from a gender perspective, that's great, but within women, for example, can we look at how maybe the differences are there for women of color?

31:52Speaker 3:Right?

31:52Speaker 5:Can we look at regions? So if you have a again, lots of global companies today, can we look at different regions and is it is it working differently in one region versus another? And if one's if there's one reason that stands out as being really great, why is that can we what can we learn from that region?

32:09Speaker 4:Uh?

32:10Speaker 5:Same thing from a functionality perspective looking at different elements of the business that you run. Are women doing great in one place and men are doing great in another? And you know why are there differences? As we look at kind of the functionality uh component of that, and we see we have great uh, you know, equity when it comes to maybe around marketing and communications or HR or legal. But when I go over to sales or operations, engineering, R and D, suddenly I'm seeing these these huge deficits where it's like, where are all the women? Why aren't there as many women over here as there are there?

32:46Speaker 5:And so then beginning to ask those more those deeper questions about that and and understanding what you're trying to achieve. And I think that at the end of the day, when leaders really ask the hard questions and dig deep in there, then they'll begin to start to parse out some of the either places where they need more information or too they'll start to learn some of the practices that maybe are causing that or that are holding them back from achieving what they're really trying to do.

33:13Speaker 3:And that's such an elevant point because so many times what happens is that you do surveys and you get that data. It can mask a lot of underlying problems. But as you are recommending where you segment the data, where you parse it out, you can pinpoint where things are working and where they're not working. And as you do it, even a deeper reflection, you can definitely put your finger on the pulse that oh, it's working in this region or in this department, but it's not over here.

33:47Speaker 3:So as we talk about you know, we have talked about culture, we have talked about how can we implement techniques, you'll also talk about result only work environment. Can you shed some light on that.

34:01Speaker 5:Yeah, this is an interesting one, I think, especially in you know, this has been around for a while now, talking about performance measures and looking at the focus on the product or the result, right, the outcome as opposed to a lot of the other things that get measured when we think about you know, evaluations, right, as we think about all the different evaluation systems that we use out there. How often are they focused in on this results piece of it? And this is important especially, I think in this kind of post COVID world, as we again we learned what remote work was all about. For those who didn't know what it was before COVID, they certainly do now we've all experienced it, and also understanding what the flexibility around remote work provides, and so thinking about what flex work arrangements look like and where they add value for different employees and to the business overall.

34:59Speaker 5:So I think that that's a you know, that's an important part of this and the and the results only work environment. So moving forward, you know, when you have people who are working remotely, how do you measure their work performance differently or the same as you do if they're in person? Right where I'm seeing them all the time in a in an in person environment, I'm not seeing them all the time necessarily in a remote work environment. So what does where? What are the limitations in being able to assess performance on an individual basis or even a team basis as we go through that, and so this is where we've had to spend more time I think really leveraging some of the best practices out there in terms of how do we measure not just the number of hours worked in a day, which tells me maybe level of effort. Maybe I don't know, it could tell us that, but really it's it's not really telling me.

35:56Speaker 5:What I really want to know is is how productive were you as an employee? How what did you contribute to the team? What do you contribute to the organization? How did you further our mission or our business operations in that twelve hours or whatever many hours you worked in that period of time? I don't know, right, And so we if we start, we're measuring things like number of hours work, numbers of days work. Those things don't tell us the same thing as that. And there were lots of great examples, and maybe I'll let Brad share he has a couple of favorite examples there around what it means to you know, expect people to be in person one and then and not just in person, but be there for long hours. But there's really not a whole lot of productivity going on there if we're not measuring it properly.

36:45Speaker 4:So here's here's a terrific example for you, Tivia. We got to interview Bridget Shulty and she said, Hey, when I was at the Washington Post as a journalist, I had an editor who would come around the newsroom floor at like, you know, for midnight, and he would later say, I know who all my good reporters are because they're here at eleven o'clock at night, right working on stories. And her thought was, you should know who your good reporters are by the quality of their journalism and the quality of their stories. And she said, most of those people sitting there at midnight on their computers were dudes with no caregiving obligations who were playing solitaire right. They weren't being productive. So it's a terrible measure. And this is why the results only work environment can be so helpful.

37:36Speaker 4:We had another interviewee say, you know, when I tried to propose much more generous flex work policies, I had a couple of male managers push back and say, oh, I'm not letting her take flex work because I know she's just going to be doing the laundry. Right. And later that day she finds these same two dudes, you know, standing around the water cooler spending a half hour talking about Monday night football, and she walked up to them and just said, you guys are doing laundry right now you realize that, right, you're doing laundry. And it was such I hope an epiphany for those guys, you know, to think about their biases related to flex work. So we have work to do in changing presenteeism narratives. Right.

38:26Speaker 4:We tend to assume that the most productive effective employees are the ones we see all the time or are sitting in their office, and it's not correlated often with their actual contribution.

38:39Speaker 3:Absolutely, And here's the thing. A lot of companies are recognizing that, and for that reason, they're providing their employees unlimited PTO. They can take as much time off as they want. And the focus is productivity, the focus is results. The focus is that timeliness and that has gone long ways for a lot of different companies because employees can be present but mentally absent. So we have talked a lot about things, where can people reach you, how can they find you? Share, share with us about your books?

39:15Speaker 4:Yeah, certainly so. I think two big things. Go to our website and that's workplace Allies dot com, and you can find out about the work Dave and I have been doing and find out about the books we've written, and then also take a look at our forthcoming book, Fair Share, comes out January. I'm sorry, June thirtieth coming. I think I'm stressed out because it's coming fast the end of this month, June thirtieth, fair Share. This is kind of a deep dive into much of what we've been talking about today, Diva. How do we change the workplace, change the way we think about work, how work gets done, you know, think about policies connected to giving so that we can invite men into their full power at home and then invite women into their full power in the workplace.

40:08Speaker 4:We want to get to that kind of equal caregiving, equal work opportunity for both genders. So that's our new book.

40:18Speaker 5:Yeah, and please reach out to us on social media on LinkedIn. We'll keep the conversation going and we look forward to engaging with everybody and talking more about how to get your fair share?

40:30Speaker 3:Is there any last quick nugget sayall would like to share?

40:38Speaker 4:Dave, any last nugget?

40:41Speaker 3:Yeah?

40:41Speaker 5:I think one of the most important things that I took away from the work that we did in writing Fair Share was that we all do caregiving. We all associate ourselves as you know, and think of ourselves as caregivers at some point in our careers and our lives, especially in our work careers, and that remember that that's true for everybody else that you work with or who works for you. And it's time, especially you know, in the United States, for us to start recognizing this is an important part of who we are. We have these obligations and needs and we need to be able to lean into those, one because there's not a lot of great caregiving support in this country. And two, when we are allowed to do that, it makes us better employees too, It makes us more committed to the work that we do.

41:33Speaker 5:And so let's help each other in doing that.

41:37Speaker 3:Absolutely. Thank you David, Thank you Brett for joining us, because, as you mentioned, caregiving is important, whether it's as a parent, as a child, taking care of your elderly parents, or for someone else in your life, whether it's a friend or whoever it is, it's an important part and it's the kindess that we need to extend not only towards ourselves but to our colleagues and people who are in that space. So thank you for joining us, and thank you one of the audience for being part of her show because without you, the show would not be possible.

42:14Speaker 3:Please reach out and let us know how we can serve and support you so that you can live the life that you deserve. And thank you on a tech genius for making the ship possible. Be well and take care.

42:27Speaker 2:Thank you for being part of Beyond Confidence with your host, Divva Park, we hope you have learned more about how to start living the life you want. Each week on Beyond Confidence, you hear stories of real people who've experienced growth by overcoming their fears and building meaningful relationships. During Beyond Confidence, Va Park shares what happened to her when she stepped out of her comfort zone to work directly with people across the globe. She not only coaches people how to form HERD connections, but also transform relationships to mutually beneficial partnerships as they strive to live the life they want. You are ready to live the life you want and leverage your strengths. Learn more at www Dotwpark dot com and you can connect with w at contact at dwpark dot com. We look forward to you joining us next week.