Women are great for the bottom-line, deliver higher dividends to stakeholders, offer diversity of thought and opinion that creates a healthy environment and prepares leaders for upcoming challenges. “Women are standing up and changing our culture,” states Jay. They don’t just stand up for themselves but bring everyone up with them. Given a chance, women make a difference by having a broad influence at all levels of leadership. Together, women and men, are more effective in leadership and can build on a better future.

Jay offers a hopeful perspective of how things have changed by comparing her generation to her Mother’s generation. Her book is hopeful. She is hopeful, worth listening to, and so impressive with how she is changing the world. She asks important questions for our future and lays out what we need to be aware of going forward.

You will find out the next epidemic affecting our ability to maintain a critical mass in leadership positions. You will get suggestions on what you can do to address the epidemic before it reaches the 2030 projection date.

A gap Jay noticed in the marketplace as she was filling out paperwork in a Memory Care facility for her Dad, helped her launch a new venture. She co-founded MemoryWell, a digital platform for storytelling of loved ones by professional writers, at the end of 2016. Jay has insights into Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease that she shares. I found this very helpful. I have loved ones suffering with Alzheimer’s disease. You will get some pearls of wisdom too.

As a nascent entrepreneur, she describes some of what she is learning as a business owner working with 650 writers and employing a staff of 4-fulltime people and 3-part-timers. Her fundraising efforts led her to Silicon Valley, known as the bro-culture (less than 7% of women entrepreneurs receive venture capital funding). She explains what she found there. We discuss how the overall culture has shifted since the #MeToo movement.

Jay reads the last paragraph in her book as we close out our conversation. “Perhaps my mother’s sense of her own destiny was grander than the world she lived in would allow. What if she’d been born 30 years later? Would she have been the first female U.N. secretary-general? I think she very well could have. Or, at the very least, she would have found female kindred spirits, allies amongst the diplomatic ranks, women who could help her smooth out the rough spots of a still oppressively sexist international climate. There is a regular gathering of women in diplomacy in Washington called Diplobabes. I sometimes imagine my mother at such a gathering: how would it have helped her? Women are not there yet by any means, but reaching broad influence means that we’re no longer struggling isolated and alone like my mother had. And I like to think she too would find, as I have, that in numbers comes safety–and power.” (p. 201) 

Mentoring Tips

After listening to our conversation:

• If you haven’t yet, buy BROAD INFLUENCE and get a WeMentor Discount through Amazon.
• Get your loved ones story told by a professional writer at MemoryWell.
• 2030 Caregiver Epidemic Projection: 1.5M shortfall of caregivers. Two-thirds of women are in caregiving roles. This could set us back in reaching and maintaining critical mass in leadership if women are needing to quit leadership responsibilities to be caregivers. What could you do right now as a leader to prevent this shortfall of caregivers? One idea I have been thinking about since talking with Jay is to discuss this openly with clients, both men and women. Collect their ideas. Sort them out and see where we could go with the ideas.
  • What are you thinking? Post your ideas on social media. Email your ideas to me.
• Train our boys to listen carefully to women’s voices as equally as we do men’s voices. Listen carefully to each person that speaks to you. One voice is not more important than the other. They each offer different information, thoughts, ideas, and opinions worth considering. Each of us matters.
  • Women, value your own voice. Notice what you experience when you hear yourself speak as a leader.
  • Men, focus in when a woman is speaking. Try to understand what she is saying and say it back to her. Validation of being heard is powerful.

Mentoring Help

• Join a WeMentor Entrepreneurial Leadership and Mentoring LAB! Learn with others and learn from others. Become the leader you envision yourself to be.
• Subscribe to this podcast. You will be the first to get inside information of what is happening at WeMentor, inc.

The Best Way of Doing Business      Episode 159       MemoryWell