For years, we've been telling women that in order to succeed at work, they have to change themselves first, lean in negotiate like a man don't act too nice or you will never get it. Get the office, color women already have everything they need to succeed at work.We just need to build the workplaces that champion women's strength, fixing places, not women. Meet Michelle King, Director of Inclusion at Netflix.

Hi, everybody. I'm

Michelle and welcome.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Super excited to have you with us. I will leave the stage for you and inject.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, you know, it's such a pleasure to speak to a wonderful audience of women and particularly women in tech. Um You know, my role at Netflix, it's obviously in the tech industry supporting our diversity inclusion. And um before that, I was at UN women heading up our Global Innovation Coalition for Change, which really partnered with the private sector. So, got a long history in, in the tech space um and very passionate about, you know, advancing women and girls into um stem based roles and in innovation and tech. So thank you again for having me today. You know, when I was thinking about the message that I was going to be sharing with all of you, I really, um I wanted to share kind of how this journey started or my journey into discovering that, you know, we need to fix workplaces and not women. And for me, my journey really began about seven years ago when I first arrived in America and I got asked to speak at a conference. Um Many of you might know it, it's the Pennsylvania conference for women. And at the time, I just finished a really important part of my phd research, which really looked at all the ways that workplaces um were designed by and for men and all the ways that they didn't work for women.

And when I set out, you know, to actually begin my research journey. Seven years ago, I didn't think that I, I would discover that, you know, I really anticipated that I was going to find all the things that women needed to do differently because I'd read books like lean in. And I really believe that there was something women weren't doing or, you know, women needed to do more or be more somehow to succeed, right? Um And very much from this idea that we were in deficit that we were missing some key skills that we needed um in order to advance. But it wasn't until I researched it that I realized that wasn't the case that actually when it comes to things like networking or leadership, you know, all the skills that women have are the skills that are needed. And that both men and women rape women is highly effective on sort of the core capabilities that are required to succeed, not only today, but also in the future world of work. And we'll, we'll come back to that.

And so when I was asked to speak at this conference and share my message, I thought great, you know, I'm new to America. If I'm honest, I don't even really know where Pennsylvania is, but it'll be great. I'll get to share, you know, my findings and with an audience of women who really engaged in this topic, and I'll get to see if this message lands, you know, if women agree with it. And anyway, I rock up at the conference thinking maybe it'll be 100 people. Uh turns out it's the biggest conference for women in America. And that year Michelle Obama was speaking, we also had Sheryl Sandberg at the event talking about lean in. So I got really, really nervous, really, really fast. And I wasn't sure how this message was going to go down because it's quite a sort of counterintuitive message. It's saying that a lot of the solutions around mentoring around development around women's own networking, all of those solutions don't actually work and that if we want to fix workplaces. We have to really focus on the culture, we have to focus on the lived experience, the behaviors, the norms, the practices that organizations engage in that marginalize and discriminate against women. Anyway.

So I'm at the conference, I get up on stage, I deliver my speech and I'm looking at all these women who are staring back at me sort of taking notes. And I notice very quickly that women slowly start to put their pen and paper down and the heads start nodding and I realize the message is landing. You know, women are, are really buying into this idea that we don't need to fix ourselves, that we need to fix workplaces. And anyway, at the end of the conference, I noticed there's a queue of women sort of lining up to introduce me and there's one woman in particular who looked really red in the face and quite upset. And as she approaches me, I see that she has sort of tears streaming down her face and, you know, my heart kind of sank and I thought God have I said something that's upset her. Um And as she's approaching me, you know, she's getting more and more upset. And anyway, when she finally reaches me, I sort of said, you know, what's your message? You know, what's going on here? Is there something I've done that's upset you. And she said, no, your message really resonated and I'm emotional because it's the first time somebody's told me that.

And I was like, well, what exactly did I say? And she said that I don't need to be fixed that I'm good enough just as I am, I'm going to put that up on my wall at work that it's not me, it's my workplace. And that was really the starting point for me writing my book, The Effects, um, you know, overcoming the invisible barriers that hold women back at work. It's a book about women's journey and, and their careers, you know, from the moment you enter workplaces right up until the moment that you leave, there are systemic barriers that you're gonna come up against, that you need to be able to recognize and navigate and see them for what they are.

Because if we don't, we internalize those barriers and we start to believe that it's us and then we engage in all this women fixing, um that doesn't work and actually leads to kind of knocking our confidence because we do all this activity to try and lean in and realize very quickly that, you know, no amount of leaning in is gonna solve the fact that our workplaces value men and masculinity more than women in femininity.

And so that is the issue that we're trying to solve for. And that was what sparked my journey into researching this writing, being an advocate for women and really trying to voice this message, which is based on more than seven years of research. Um So you know what's really interesting when we think about the barriers is when you read the book, some of them will shock you and some of them will also be things you're familiar with. So if we take for example, something as simple as the conformity bind, right? That is a barrier that most of us encounter in workplaces and particularly women who work in tech. So for example, when you think about what the ideal leader or manager is in most workplaces today, research finds that irrespective of where you live, the chances are you're going to think of what is sort of a prototypical white middle-class, heterosexual, able bodied male. But importantly, you're going to think of somebody who's willing to engage in sort of dominant, assertive, aggressive, competitive and even exclusionary behaviors to get ahead. So that for me is really the global standard of what success looks like. And research shows this is true even today.

Um And that is really if you were to imagine it, if you've seen Mad Men, it's Don Draper, right? So Don Draper is the standard of what good looks like in most workplaces. The problem is when we have the standard, um you know, leaders have to engage in those exclusionary, dominant assertive competitive behaviors in order to succeed and in doing that, they encourage employees to engage in the same behaviors and then that creates an entire workplace culture set up for one type of individual to succeed.

So what happens is the more ways you differ from Don Draper, whether it's your age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, gender, any of the attributes, the more you differ, the more barriers you're going to face trying to advance. And the same is true when it comes to behavior.

So the more ways you're engaged in sort of more feminine styles of leadership, the more democratic caring, empathetic, you know, typically feminine attributes of leadership, the more you are going to be seen as less leader like, right, and penalized for that men and women. And so that's an important point. You know, I found that men face barriers too and we can come to that in a minute. So the conformity bind is really the challenge women have and are presented the moment they enter workplaces where they have to live up to the Don Draper standard of what good looks like to be seen as a leader and engage in some of those more masculine, stereotypically masculine behaviors, like being assertive and dominant.

But when they do society penalizes them, so you perceive negatively for engaging in those behaviors because you're betraying the standard for what good looks like when it comes to how women are expected to behave in society. So that creates this bind or this conformity bind where you can't really conform to Don to be seen as a leader by engaging in those behaviors. Um because you're betraying sort of your womanhood. And if you live up to your womanhood by being meek, mild, unassuming, caring, empathetic, you're seen as less leader, like and less career ambitious. And so that creates a lot of challenges then to advancement. So that's just one barrier and it's a barrier. Women are likely to experience throughout their careers. Another is something as simple as the performance tax where we see that women have to work really, really hard. Um you know, just to be seen as sort of competent and an average male and that really limits and affects women's access to promotion, opportunities to recognition and reward opportunities. You know, it's much harder for women to sort of advance in organizations and be, be seen as um you know, succeeding because they have to sort of overperform in roles just to be seen as good enough as an average male.

And the reason for that is we just don't value women and femininity in organizations. So my message around this is not that we necessarily need to move to an organization that's feminine, but I just want to make that clear. My message is about equality and I define equality as the freedom to be yourself at work and to be valued for that. So it is about creating a work environment that values difference, a work environment where women have the freedom to be assertive, to be more inclusive, to be more democratic if they want to and where men also have the freedom to engage in some of those more stereotypically feminine leadership attributes which are actually quite transformational, right.

We're seeing leaders like Jacinda Arden, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, really transforming her country's response to COVID and as well as the Muslim terrorist attack because she displayed a lot of empathy, a lot of understanding, a lot of collaboration and kindness. So those are the leadership attributes of the future. We know that with advancements in tech, like A I robotics, nanotechnology, the internet of things, there is a huge demand for much more collaborative, inclusive transformational leadership style. You know, with over 60% of jobs changing the need to develop your soft skills around those areas for leaders and employees is absolutely be critical. And that's why I say that, you know, men need this freedom more than women do because women are perfectly positioned uh with the skill sets that they have, you know, if they don't engage in any of that woman fixing to really um you know, succeed in the future world of work. Whereas men, you know, to a large extent, really need this freedom to engage in some of those behaviors and not be seen as you know, um being less serious about their careers or more feminine, you know, as soon as men display any feminine characteristics penalized. So that is really how cultures of inequality work when we have these prototypes that are embedded in organizations you know, the goal is to try and shift away from prototypes and to a work environment that values difference.

And you can create those type of organizations by being very intentional about what your company values. So again, in the case of Jacinda Arden, her organization when she started her government and set it up in New Zealand, I actually asked her, you know, what, what do you want to be known for? Like how are you approaching the setup of your leadership? What is your legacy? What do you want to be known for in terms of how you lead? And she said kindness. So she had a very intentional strategy around setting up a leadership team that valued and displayed kindness. And as a result, she kind of did away in that moment with what the prototypical idea of what good leadership looks like. And she set up a work environment that allowed men and women to display kindness in a variety of different ways. And as a result, her entire government, but now New Zealand with, with all its different policies is known for being kind and compassionate, right? That is how they lead, that is how employees are expected to behave and that is what they're known for. And so men are actually rewarded for engaging in more kind, empathetic democratic uh behaviors. So that's an example of how you shift prototypes in organizations and women rarely need this.

So while men face on average about six barriers because of inequality because of Don Draper on average women face about 17. Now, the important thing to note in terms of, you know, what keeps cultures of inequality um in place in organizations today is the denial um that inequality even exists. So something my research found is white male leaders in particular are in denial and they're in denial around um difference in organizations. So they believe that workplaces are meritocracy that everybody has the same experience because everybody is the same, you're the worker, you're the employee, you know, your difference is not something that is a hindrance for you in workplaces. They kind of ignore the fact that workplaces have this embedded ideal. So I think the starting point really for a lot of this work is disrupting denial and we need leaders to become aware of how the playing field isn't le level. And actually, you know, there are different lived experiences of the work environment. It's not a meritocracy because success discriminates and it discriminates based on who most closely fits the Don Draper prototype.

So we really need a work environment that understands that the more you differ from Don, the more barriers you're going to face trying to advance work. And the job of a leader is to get to know those barriers so that they can remove them. I mean, a really quick test in organizations today to see if leaders get this is to ask leaders, hey how many of you understand how an equality works, how many of, you know, the barriers that women face, how many leaders understand how those barriers differ for racial and ethnic minority women.

So that's a really important starting point is holding leaders accountable for the cultures they create, you know, something we don't say enough is that the experiences of inequality in workplaces today is a direct result of leadership. So we need to hold leaders accountable by calling out, you know, some of these moments and experiences women have in terms of what I think everybody on this um uh event at, at this event, who's listening can do. There's really three things. The first is, you know, you need to become aware of how inequality works and how it shows up, you need to get in touch with your privilege, which is really your similarity to Don. So I'm a white woman. I have my whiteness in common with Don. That makes it that much easier for me to advance at work than it does any racial and ethnic minority woman because they have to deal with both sexism and racism and the interplay of both those forms of inequality. So the barriers you know that black women experience in corporate America are fundamentally more challenging and difficult to overcome than the barriers that black women face. So with that awareness, right, I can apply that understanding to my organization and have a look at how the barriers are showing up for black women and think about the different ways I can be an ally and more than an ally, a success partner.

What can I do to speak up to call out the barriers when they happen to make sure that my colleagues understand what those barriers are to recognize that it's not them, it is their workplace and that actually this is about us fixing it together. So a quick example for anybody just listening is that it's really important for us to think through, you know, when you have those day to day experience of inequality, whether it's a woman speaking up in a meeting and get getting told that she's being to assert it, right? Which we know is her really displaying Don draper attributes and being penalized for it. That is a challenge that most women encounter, you know, speaking up in just the right way, asserting themselves in just the right way. But that challenge is compounded with issues such as racism.

So for black women, you know, when they speak up, they risk triggering gendered racist stereotypes like the angry black woman stereotype. And as a white woman, it's my job to make sure that, you know, black women in meetings are heard and that they're not penalized for that.

So I can amplify, I can advocate and I can make sure there's room for them to be heard. And so that is how you partner as a as, as a success partnership, you step in, you're an ally and you think about different ways that people are experiencing the organization, different ways these barriers play out and thinking through how you can um be an advocate and how you can be an ally.

Another quick example for people is the performance tax that we talked about. So if you know that the performance tax is an issue that women are asked to do more, be more to advance compared to men. It's that much harder again, for black women in corporate America who have to continually prove themselves. The one quick way to be an ally is when you're in promotional performance discussions, make sure you amplify the achievements of your black women and your team. Make sure you speak up and talk about the, you know, all their successes, all their contributions, make sure when promotion decisions are made, you really question people's assessments of, of black women's performance based on whether that's reasonable and what we would ask for sort of an average white male.

So it's really important to think through some of these issues and speak up and be an ally. And the final thing I'll say just before I close is that it's really important to understand that when you're being an ally, this serves to benefit you. It is not about doing something to help anybody. This is about women coming together and being each other's success partners. Because when we witness or experience inequality in workplaces. It has the same negative impact on us as if you know, we had experienced that ourselves.

So simply witnessing discrimination has the same negative impact as if you had been on the receiving end of it. And that's why speaking up and taking action builds a more equal workplace for all of us. And being an ally is the starting point for that. So for me, there's a great opportunity here for women to come together and advocate for one another. But that starts with us doing the work, understanding what the barriers are, having that awareness and then taking action to be an ally. So that's what, you know, I really wanted to share with all of you today because I think there are practical things we can do and I encourage all of you to get a copy of my book. And you can also connect with me on linkedin uh Michelle Peking. And you know, I look forward to hearing from all of you and just remember it's not you, it's your workplace.

I have even nothing to add here. That was so up to the point, so powerful that uh brilliant. Thank you very much Michelle. Thanks for your time. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for doing what you are doing, fixing the workplaces, not women. I love that. Have a great day. Stay with us and enjoy the talks.