Women make up half of the educated workforce and earn the majority of advanced degrees. In school, college and university, women outperform their male counterparts. However, the workplace paints a very different picture. Women don’t do nearly as well as their male colleagues. They find themselves stalling. Starting a family makes it even harder for a woman to return to work and progress up the career ladder. Even today there is inequality in the workplace. Women everywhere are having to bang twice as hard on the door to force it open. They are still dealing with gender inequality, and are often earning less than the men in their office simply because they are female. This is despite them working the same hours and having the same level of degree. It’s no wonder that more and more women are choosing to start their own business. However, this is not a move for the fainthearted. Starting your own business takes real determination, hard work and probably a little help from a business loan too, but it’s worth it and it means that they can smash through that glass ceiling. Do you want to succeed? Do want you want to smash through that glass ceiling too?
3 tips that will help you succeed
Work smarter
In your old workplace you probably found that you were in meeting after meeting. Even worse was that those meetings would often go on for hours. Some people like to speak for the sake of speaking. They like to arrange meetings for the sake of arranging meetings. It makes them feel important, this is not smart working. Stay focussed, make decisions quickly and don’t hold meetings when you don’t need to. Don’t be tempted to work longer and harder on something and don’t take too much work on. You will need to learn to say no, you will need to prioritize and you will need to delegate. Make sure that you are always finishing your work by a certain time each day. You need to forget everything you learn in your previous workplace and retrain yourself. This is YOUR workplace:you make the rules.
Be confident in your abilities
Women can often feel like they have to apologize even when there is no need to apologize. This is down to a lack of confidence in themselves. Never apologize for something that was out of your control. However, if you did make a mistake then be confident enough to admit it. People will respect you for that.
Listen always
A good leader is also a good listener. We need to have empathy with others and we need to listen actively. We might get frustrated that Suzanne in Accounts is late every Wednesday and Thursday, but there might be a reason for this. It’s our job to find out why Suzanne is late. Perhaps it’s because she has to drop her children with the babysitter. We should find out and then offer Suzanne help. We should put ourselves in Suzanne’s shoes and ask ourselves how she must be feeling. If we can do this then we will probably find that Suzanne is a better worker as a result. We could easily be Suzanne and we need to remember that.
Running our own business won’t always feel comfortable but that’s good. Being uncomfortable pushes us forward and gives us the drive to succeed. It means that we will continue to climb upwards.
In the words of Sheryl Sandberg “we are lucky, we don’t live in the world that our mothers lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited.” We can carve out our own career and we can run our own business. It just takes determination and we need to be prepared to shout louder than the men. Get out there and get shouting!
