The slide share contains the three blog posts to date from the Network of Executive Women (NEW) Leadership Summit "The NEW Male Champion" and "Engaging Men Who Get It" workshops.
The articles are entitled:
> The NEW inclusion of men which summaries workshop 1
>NEW male engagement in women's advancement which summaries workshop 2 and
> Intercultural Competence and Women's Advancement which highlights the use of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) to accelerate women's advancement
3. must recognize that championing women means a win for themselves and their organizations.
I urged men to consider these three benefits:
● Greater customer affinity: Understanding women better means understanding markets
better,
● More coworker engagement: Understanding women better means accelerating their
and your performance, and
● A stronger personal brand: Understanding women better means better finetuning and
improving your personal brand.
Again, this major obstacle of apathy was addressed headon by aligning the group’s
aspirations to the top challenges faced by CEOs.
Learn a new approach
The NEW Male Champion has the mindset, skillset and toolset to identify, support and
advocate cultural change within organizations that benefit women. The mindset is one of high
selfawareness and knowledge of others, particularly women. The skillset can generally be
described as being a good listener, observer and communicator. And the toolset is having the
ability to align strategies that advance women with achieving business objectives.
During the session, men challenged each other with questions such as the following:
1. How well could others articulate why gender advancement matters to me?
2. Who are my female role models?
3. How do I foster gender knowledge?
4. What is my aspiration regarding the advancement of women?
5. How much time do I spend mentoring and being mentored by women?
After these discussions, the male participants developed a clear and poignant list of behaviors
they will model, obstacles they will overcome and personal actions they will take to become
male champions.
We also discussed how to incorporate the LIFO, Life Orientation Effective Communication
model to ensure they were matching their communication style to the communication needs of
their audience.
12. ● The knowledge set is selfknowledge, knowledge of others and groups
● The skill set is good listening, observing and communicating skills and
● The tool set is instruments such as The IDI® and The Winters Group cultural identity
exercises and DNA model
The IDI® assesses the capability to shift cultural perspective and appropriately adapt behavior
to cultural differences and commonalities. It is a 50item questionnaire available online that can
be completed in 15–20 minutes. A wide range of organizations and educational institutions use
the IDI (click here to view a number of organizations using the IDI).
The Intercultural Development Continuum is grounded in theory, research and evidence to
explain predictable stages people go through, based on their intercultural experiences. The
model can predict one’s ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in a variety of
cultural contexts.
The journey of intercultural competence is from a Monocultural to Multicultural Mindset. The
Monocultural mindset uses one one’s own cultural values and practices to make sense of
other culture’s differences and similarities. A global, intercultural, or, multicultural mindset can
view interactions from multiple cultural perspectives.
The first stage along the Continuum is Denial. In this Mindset, one is comfortable with the
familiar, not interested in complicating life with “diversity” and “cultural difference,” and may
avoid interacting with other cultures. The business impact of this mindset is that we just plan
and manage our business the same way we always have. There is no difference; everyone
accepts this. And we believe we will continue to succeed as we always succeeded. The Denial
mindset to women's advancement can be depicted as: “The corporate environment and
system works for me, it should work for you”
The next mindset is Polarization, where one has a strong commitment to a way of thinking
and about their culture. Typically, either their culture is superior or inferior. One probably has
some distrust of, and discomfort with, other (cultural) behaviors or ideas. Polarization signifies
a we vs. them attitude.
The business impact of this mindset is that people appear so different; so confusing that they
make one uncomfortable. Our wish is that others conform to our ways, like our products and
services, be happy as “we” are, and stop complaining; or go elsewhere. The Polarization
mindset to women's advancement can be depicted as: “If women adapt to the system, they will
succeed in the system”