Please Give to Take The Lead. Here are 5 Great Reasons.
There’s an experience as universal to women as death, taxes, and overeating on Thanksgiving.
Andrea shares an idea at a meeting. No one responds. Ten minutes later, Andrew offers the same idea. Everyone jumps on the bandwagon. Andrew gets credit. Andrea is frustrated. She feels undervalued. And she probably is. Her pay for the same job with the same experience is 22% lower than Andrew’s. She gets exemplary performance reviews but is told she is abrasive. He gets the promotion based on his potential. Or, if she’s an entrepreneur, she gets less than 10% of the venture funding. He gets the rest.
If you’re a woman, you’re probably nodding your head. Not being heard, or not being perceived as credible, remains one of the most persistent implicit biases keeping women from their fair share of leadership positions.
If you’re a man, you might be curious but skeptical. You know you don’t deliberately disregard women’s voices. You might even have asked how you can help bridge the leadership gap. After all, you have a daughter. Or maybe you’ve seen studies that say your business will be more profitable with more women at the leadership table.
That’s why we’ve developed “Gender Bilingual Communication,” a popular Take The Lead Teaches workshop topic. Because these are learnable, teachable skills and Take The Lead’s unique comprehensive program rooted in a sophisticated understanding of power dynamics cracks the code, breaks barriers, and propels women to their higher intentions. Among other tips, I tell women to:
Use simple declarative sentences.
Ask specifically for what you want.
So I’m declaring and asking! Thanks to you, Take The Lead had a spectacular first full year of operation. We’re asking you to contribute now to help Take The Lead scale up. Together, we can reach gender parity in leadership by 2025. Seriously. Sixty-four years faster than the most optimistic projection.
Drum roll: The 5 great reasons to contribute to Take The Lead today are:
Everyone deserves to be heard. As noted above, Take The Lead teaches women how to communicate effectively (and men how to hear them). Take The Lead mission’s four pillars (prepare, develop, inspire, propel) make a comprehensive whole with breakthrough impact that uniquely changes women’s relationship with power and teaches movement building principles for systems change—the combination that cracks the code.
You, your friends, and daughters deserve a fair shot at achieving your dreams. In its first full year, Take The Lead has:
Initiated programs quickly due to the leadership experience, research, writings, and courses I’ve contributed from work on the frontlines.
Taught our signature online certificate course three times, hosted webinars, created a digital community for mentoring and networking, published Leadership Fictions on the impact of media on women’s leadership, and released the Close the Gap App negotiating tool to demonstrate our commitment to change the narrative from problem to solution focus.
Held a public launch event February 19, 2014. We packed a 3000-seat auditorium, reached 500,000 people via livestream in 48 countries, and created collaborations with over 200 organizations.
Achieved this on the tiniest of shoestrings, with passion, sweat equity, and in-kind goods and services. Now we’ve proven the concept. We seek funding for the $1,300,000 needed to scale-up in 2015. Over the next three years, we’ll make learning programs self-sustaining and create philanthropic partnerships to ensure that economically challenged women have the same access to leadership development as the more privileged.
Every other cause will fail unless we balance gender power. Women have been stalled at 18% of the top leadership positions across all sectors of work and politics for almost two decades. Yet the world is crying out for the leadership qualities women bring. The great problems of violence against women, environmental degradation, attacks on women’s reproductive rights, failure to advance economic justice—even child nutrition—will not be solved until women hold equal social power with men.
Greater gender parity will make your business more profitable.
Every gift helps. Please click that donate button now. Together we can make the playing field fairer. For yourself. For your friends. Your daughter. For good—the good of men, women, and the world.
Thank you so much! P.S. I gave you 5 reasons to support Take The Lead’s mission. But why do you personally support women’s leadership parity? Please tell us in the comments section. Personal examples and stories are welcome as well as your one line reasons. Feel free to include photos or videos.
About the Author
Gloria Feldt, Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead, is the author of No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power. She teaches "Women, Power, and Leadership" at Arizona State University and was named to Vanity Fair's Top 200 women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers.