The show’s guest in this episode is Sinead Sharkey Steenson. She is the career elevator coach at generation women. And she helps women get promotions and the pay rate rises that they deserve. She’s past passionate about equality and seeing more women in leadership. And she blends practical strategies with simple mindset tools to achieve amazing results. And several of them have gotten over 100% pay raises, and multiple promotions. And to date, she’s helped over 10,000 women take a step up.

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The Challenges Women Face in Leadership with Sinead Sharkey Steenson

Hey, everybody, I’m Melanie Parish, it’s so great to be here live with you today. I just want to invite you to take a deep breath. It is just such a busy time of year. I know we’re all hoping for a little more sleep soon as time zones change. And it’s just so nice to take a minute and to be present. So, I want to invite you to be fully present with me. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to tour with my son, the University of Waterloo. And it was a fascinating day for me. Mostly it was all about him because he’s thinking about going to university. They’re in software engineering, or computer science or a systems design that got opened up as we were there. And I was really taken by a few things. And one of them was just how new this school is. They first opened in 1959. And so, they were just issuing degrees, just a few years before I was born. And the fact that it’s such a new university on the tour, we found out a lot of the professors got their PhDs there and came there in around 1980. And they got they got their degrees, and then they just stayed on. And so, it feels fresh and new. And the buildings are all contemporary, which is really interesting. Some of the buildings are really new, like 2017, and shiny and exciting.

We had the opportunity to meet with a friend of ours, who is the Terence storj, who’s a faculty there. And he’s with the National Research Council of Canada. And he’s a research officer there. And he does amazing work with robotics and brains and using brains for efficiency. And we got to just walk around and look at different robotics labs and talk to him about how they were using robotics to try to work like humans. And it was just an amazing opportunity. And what I realized is that college tours, university tours are gimble walks, you go on a
on a tour, because you want to see what it feels like on the ground. And you want to see what’s happening there that you can’t read about in a brochure, you can’t hear about it from someone else. And so, we were able to do that. And the feel of the University of Waterloo it is so tech driven, because so many people are doing tech degrees. There’s a train that runs through campus that takes people mostly to shopping malls and takes them places, but everything is really designed to connect underground or across the sky. And there’s a feel people where the culture is so palpable when you’re there. So, it was a fascinating sort of study of culture and energy. And it was really interesting to see as well as sort of the joy that I get when I rub up against, you know, actual scientists Two are doing real live laboratory experimentation, which brings me great joy.

And I’m super excited about our guest today. Her name is Sinead Sharkey Steenson, and she is the career elevator coach at generation women. And she helps women get promotions and the pay rate rises that they deserve. She’s past passionate about equality and seeing more women in leadership. And she blends practical strategies with simple mindset tools to achieve amazing results. And several of them have gotten over 100% pay raises, and multiple promotions. And to date, she’s helped over 10,000 women take a step up. She draws on 20 years’ experience in HR, and I am super excited to have her on my program.

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Welcome to the show, Sinead.

I’ll thank you very much smile, and it’s a delight to be here.

Oh, it’s so fun to have you here. Well, we are doing book club today. And, and I wanted to start by reading a passage. And I know that you also have a lean manufacturing background. So, I picked passage for you. And so, I’ll just read it, and then we’ll chat about it a little bit. Perfect. And this is from we’re doing; we’re doing book clubs. So if you want to join along, we’re on chapter one for the month of October and we’ll be moving to chapter two in November. And the we are looking at the climate of innovation. And I’m reading on page 15. The phrase lean manufacturing entered our language in 1988. With John calf six article triumph of the lean production system. Lean Manufacturing originally referred to internal practices at Toyota, as it steadily eliminated waste from its factories for profitability and success through continuous improvement. In North America, we began by trying to integrate Toyota as best practices into factory work. But over time, we learned that Japanese methods were more useful for continuous improvements. In Japan, there’s something called shushing ko yo, which translates to lifetime employment, or lifetime commitment. Japanese employees expect that they will work hard and stay with a firm for life. Because of this commitment to lifetime employment, Japanese companies always believe they need to improve their systems, instead of replacing their people. North American companies have adopted many Japanese ideas of continuous improvement that set the stage for innovation, including three that we will explore later in this book, kata, a practice of questioning and thinking for improvement gimble walks walking the factory floor to see the actual processes and Kanban boards that trackwork. To frame experimentation, it may be useful for you temporarily to think of your pupil as permanent, it will help you focus on your processes, and on universal improvements. Yeah, any thoughts on all of that?

So yeah, as you said, I do have a background in lean manufacturing. So, one of the many hats I’ve worn in my career was a very fancy title of Lean Six Sigma master change agent. And so, I would have worked in the factory that across a large engineering organization, coaching leaders to implement improvements. And we used all of the tools you’ve mentioned. But I really love the concept of the Gemba walk, because as a leader, it’s so easy to become detached from what’s really happening. Think you know what the answer is to jump into making improvements. And the Gemba walks all about, go and see, we actually used to call it the goal. See, go see what’s really happening. Look at the processes, look at the data, look at how the people are interacting with that. And then you can really make a difference. And I think when leaders often start out and take a big step up, you can feel a pressure to make change and to live up to the new salary you’ve got to perform and actually taking that time to do a Gemba up to spend time looking at what’s happening. And they also have, I can’t remember what the term is, I think where you just stand and watch things for 30 days, you’re not allowed to make any change. And I just think that’s really smart. Because changes you make, before you understand things is going to be useless, the end up and you’re only going to ruffle a lot of feathers.

Well, it’s, it’s such an interesting concept. And I think, you know, the gimble walk with at Toyota was on the factory floor. And it was the idea that you, you know, the, the boss sits up on high and the factory and they’re going to come down out of that box. And they’re going to, you know, watch what happens in, you know, really get into it and see what’s happening on the floor. But in knowledge work, you know, often when I’m working with clients, and I’m sure it happens with you, too. It’s like, well, how do you how do you do a gimbal walk? If you’re talking about software development? Or how do you do a gimbal walk if you’re talking about a knowledge worker or a therapist, accountant to like, how do you actually, and I’ll say, go sit next to them. They’re literally doing work somewhere, go sit with them, and ask them questions while they work. Like it’s okay. Don’t be so distant, don’t be so far away. It doesn’t have to be a remote looking like actually go sit with them and talk to them about what they’re doing, how they’re thinking about their work. And, and because knowledge work, you know, we often think about that being over there somewhere. And not like getting our hands in it together. And I think it’s really powerful. And I love your idea to have of waiting 30 days, when I first moved into my house, you know, I was so excited, I moved into a two-acre property with lots of gardens. And boy did I feel like I better get a handle on the gardening and the beading and the whatever. And then three years after I moved in, I had baby twins. And so, my weeding really went downhill for a couple of years. And I was amazed to find that some of the plants that I had diligently weeded for three years, were actually beautiful perennials that started to flower. After I stopped weeding them so diligently.

I’m like that may be the best metaphor for leadership. Rose of Sharon

Actually. Lip Cha.

We could just add that. So, stop, stop overweighted leave your people alone and see what they can do with.

We did yeah, don’t over weed your people. flourish. Yes. So, I think I love the idea of letting like seeing what people can do on their own. And, you know, make sure you water the water, give them a little water or food or whatever.

Because when you start a role people are already tense about what it is you might do a comment and change, they’re expecting you to be critical. And, you know, to make change. And so, taking that time to observe and to ask brilliant questions and be interested and understand. And if you can, one of the great things we I learned as well from that background was the whole principle of the eight wastes. So, understanding, you know, over processing things, but one of the greatest wastes is people’s intellect. And actually, the people that are there and have been there for a while may not have been listened to in a long time. And there’s a whole lot of knowledge and expertise that you can tap into. And if you can help them fix some of the things that they’ve been struggling with, then you’re going to build a brilliant relationship for the future.

If you can help them fix some of the things that they've been struggling with, then you're going to build a brilliant relationship for the future. Share on X

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for just having a little chat about the book. It’s near and dear to my heart, obviously, and I love the concepts that are there. I always find it so interesting when I start to talk about all the Japanese concepts you know from China. Yoda, it’s always the Gemba walk that any consultant or coach loves, I think it’s the most powerful concept. It’s always the one that people who work with people find to be powerful. So, for those of you who have someone in your organization struggling, I really want to give you a challenge to go to where the work is being done and watch the work. That’s the concept of the gimble walk, you can read about it in my book, you can read about it in lots of books, you can read about it in the Toyota kata book as well. But the Gemba walking, read about it on Wikipedia, Google GEMBA, walk G, E, M, B, A, and read about Gemba walks, and then start to do gimble walks with your people watch the work, as they do it, whatever it is that you’re doing, don’t just talk about it start to watch the work, I meet with my assistant, almost daily, my tech person, and I watch her work I she shows me stuff. We meet sometimes for five minutes, and she shows me stuff. It has improved the level of the work we do in my organization, a million-fold, like it changed everything when we started doing that. So, my challenge to you is to look for where you can do a start to do some gimble walks in your organization this week. So, Sinead, what are you experimenting with in your life and work right now?

Oh, that’s a good question. So, I constantly experiment with my programs, and how can I have the most impact for the women that I work with. So, I like to innovate and try different ways of working so that I work with very busy women, and then that probably any of us cultures that work with leaders work with busy people. And so, it’s fine in ways that I can work with them that are impactful, that go with them on their journey, and help them make transition and transformation along the way. And so, I experiment in how I build the programs in the tools that I use, and how I interact with people. So, one of my most well, I’ve I launched a program last year, an impactful leadership mastermind. And it being brings together a great mindset program with mastermind sessions where we get to problem solve, and master classes where they get to learn new skills. And it’s all very interactive in the moment. And, you know, we build an amazing network of women at support. And that way, we get to see a massive amount of transformation, then the six months that we work together.

And, and I know that you’re working with women who are trying to sort of make the leap into the C suite. If you had a couple of tips for someone who is, you know, at what maybe this is, the first question is at what point in someone’s career, should they start thinking about the C suite?

Well, as early as possible, really. So, like, I’ve worked with women at different levels. And so, I like to help women accelerate their careers and progress. And I think what can happen, certainly, I’ve been doing lots of sessions in big organizations lately. And they have a tendency to only see the next step. And so, I encourage women to step back and think about what’s the impact you really want to have? And how do you want to change things? Because so I did a session last week in the global bank, and there was a level of frustration, like in a lot of big organizations that they weren’t being heard. And, you know, the there’s a culture of high level of levels of hours worked and that kind of thing. And so, my challenge was, you know, what are you doing about it? How are you getting involved? How are you going to influence that? And they were like, oh, I don’t think I can work to that level. And they’ll say, Well, why wouldn’t you? If not, who? And who’s going to change things for the better if it’s not you? And so, I would encourage you to be thinking big from the early days. is thinking about how I am building good relationships, building my network, plug in my gaps, getting the experience, so that you’re, you’re ready when the time comes. And then obviously, as you get into more senior levels of management, it’s, it’s having great conversations with leaders above you and in other organizations to understand what is it that I need to be focused on and working on and building my strengths and so that I can get out there and have that impact and influence. And as women, I find, we have to play the game a lot so that we can change it. Because if we try and reel against, I disagree with this completely, but it’s very hard to reel against things before you have the power of the to make the change, unless you all band together, which we are seeing happening a lot more and I’m 100% behind that. But do try and step up so that you can change the game for the people that come behind you.

What do you think are the things that people do that get in the way of being promotable?

The number one thing is, and this may be controversial, but it isn’t really I think, a lot. And I see this a lot with women is spending way too much time doing a great job. And not enough time talking about it and thinking about their career and spending time on career. So of course, it’s important to perform to do well. But if nobody sees it, then you’re never going to get anywhere. And so there can be this culture of focus on busy work, and taking everything on and not setting boundaries, and not taking the time to highlight what it is you do and think more strategically about, what am I doing to help myself be seen to get myself to the next level. And so, I see a lot of busyness, a lot of hard work, and not enough shining your light and saying, excuse me, I deserve recognition for this over here.

How do you think people can say I need red? Like, how do you say I need recognition.

So, the key is to talk a lot about the results and the impact that you haven’t. And so, it’s not about being because women are judged differently as well. It’s easier for a man to say, hey, look at me, I did this not that they do well, someday. But it’s easier. A woman has to tread the boards a little more carefully. Again, I don’t agree with this. But we do have to be conscious of bias and how we are judged and how we are measured differently, things are changing. And so, it’s about always being prepared for a meeting, to have something to see, to do an update, and to talk about the results and the impact that you have and talk about the strengths that you’ve used. And so, whether it’s talking about, you know, how we were having that problem, or what I’ve done is and that highlight what you’ve done, show your strengths, shine a light on it. And so, the impact of for the for us as a team or as a business is that now we can and I’ve saved this much money and you know, whatever it is, but you are making it very clear what it is you’ve done, the impact you’ve had the results that you’ve got. And it’s not about you know, denying the efforts of the team, but it’s knowing when to see we and knowing when to say I and I think women have a much greater tendency because we’ve been trained to see.

I constantly experiment with my programs, and how can I have the most impact for the women that I work with. Share on X

That’s great. Where can people find you Sinead?

Everywhere. The best place my favorite place to hang out is definitely LinkedIn. So, Sinead Sharkey Steenson on LinkedIn and I also have a company page generation women. I’m on YouTube, and Facebook. But definitely LinkedIn is my favorite spot. And it’s easy to reach out to send me a direct message and I love people that connect message, introduce themselves, you know, ask for my help, start a conversation, whatever it may be, and the good Think about if you’re a leader, you should be on LinkedIn, you should be using that to highlight what you do, as well as, as what the company is doing. So, when you reflect well on the company, also reflect well on yourself.

Thank you so much for being here today. It’s been such a joy to get to talk with you. And I love these ideas about how women can show up and, you know, make themselves more visible. It’s powerful stuff. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks for Thanks for chatting.

Thank you for having me, Melanie, and congratulations on the book. I really enjoyed it. So, I would encourage people to go out and yeah.

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Well, it was great to be here with you today. I have loved talking about gimble walks and women in leadership, I really challenge you to think about where you want to learn more about the people that you’re supervising about the world that you want to see more of and go there and look at what’s happening on the ground, do your own gimble walk, figure out what it is you want to learn about and go look, dive in, find out what you can see. It’s all there waiting for you. And I encourage you to go learn as much as you can. And go experiment.

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Sinead Sharkey Steenson

Sinead Sharkey-Steenson is The Career Elevator Coach at Generation Women where she helps women get the promotions and pay-rises they deserve. Passionate about equality and seeing more women in leadership, Sinead blends practical strategies with simple mindset tools to achieve amazing results…with several getting over 100% pay rises and multiple promotions! To date she’s helped close to 10,000 women take a step up.

Sinead draws on over 20 years corporate experience in HR, Leadership Development, Business Improvement, and Cultural Transformation to help her support women to achieve their ambitions. She has been recognized as one of 22 Leaders to Learn from in 2022 by Bunch Leadership App.

She has developed and delivered career and leadership programmes for multiple global organizations including Sensata, Citi, Deloitte, the IFA, and Lean In.

Sinead has a lifelong love of learning and strives to bring the best academically and professionally to her work. She has a BA Hons in Psychology, MSc Computing, MSc Human Resource Management, is an NLP Master practitioner, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, and an accredited ICF Coach and Positive Intelligence (PQ) Coach.

She’s a mum of two girls who have made her even more passionate about equality. She also loves live comedy and music, sleep, and cold water swimming…in that order!

 

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