Trey Anthony speaks at a show promoting her book, Black Girl in Love (With Herself), on March 11 at Synchronicity Theater in Atlanta.HANDOUT
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Every year, Trey Anthony receives numerous invitations from companies to speak for Black History Month and International Women’s Day events, which take place in February and March. As an award-winning playwright, producer and professional speaker who identifies as a queer Black woman, she knows she has a lot to offer. So when several organizations – including a Crown corporation that reported more than $7-billion in revenue last year – recently asked her to speak for free because they said they didn’t have a budget to pay her, she decided to call them on it.
“[Speakers] need to be compensated for our time, efforts and talent,” Ms. Anthony wrote in an e-mail to the company, which she shared in a LinkedIn post that has since gone viral. “I have to take time out of my day to speak, also several hours/sometimes days to prepare the talk, find child care for my child … I also have a household that I’m responsible for, bills, food, mortgage and just living,” she wrote. It’s particularly insulting, she added, to place a financial burden on a Black woman – historically paid less than white men – on a day that focuses on women’s equality.
Read the full article for more reasons why companies should consider factoring a speaker budget into their event planning.
What leaders can learn from Oscar winner Sarah Polley
Last year was a huge one for the 44-year-old Toronto-based writer and director. She published a bestselling book of essays called Run Towards the Danger and directed the critically acclaimed film Women Talking, which went on to win her the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Polley’s transformation from unwilling childhood sweetheart to Hollywood A-lister offers plenty of inspiration for leaders.
The first lesson: Reinvent yourself. As a kid, Polley was best known for playing the precocious Sara Stanley on Road to Avonlea. Her early acting career was so loaded with trauma (including a literally death-defying role in Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) that she quit altogether, eventually finding her place behind the camera. Just because you’ve built your rep as one thing doesn’t mean you can’t successfully pivot – and possibly even find your true purpose.
For more leadership lessons, read the full article.
The biggest shift at work is how leader, employee relationships are changing
“I’m perplexed because while so many people are looking for a new job and so many companies are hiring, I still hear about how hard it is to find a job or to find employees,” says Eileen Dooley, a Calgary-based talent and leadership development specialist and leadership coach.
“Sounds like what everyone wants is entirely different. Gone are the days of employees wanting only a paycheque. Today, workers are looking for a lot more, including a meaningful relationship with their leader to help shape the impact they will make.
“According to the Deloitte 2023 Global Human Capital Trends report, the work force is shifting from boundary (black and white) to boundaryless (fluidity). And if leaders don’t accept this, they will have a hard time attracting good talent.
Read the full article.
In case you missed it
Women do more ‘worry work’ than men. It’s affecting their mental health and their careers
The other day, Ksenia Barton was sorting through paperwork for her taxes and thought, there’s a lot of work here. Orthodontics, dental and medical appointments. Permission slips for her kids. Volunteering and social events. Birthdays. Appointments for her aging parents. Managing household bills.
“So many of these pieces of paper represented tasks that people don’t even know that I did,” she says.
Each receipt represented emotional labour – a combination of planning, caregiving, managing the household and the “worry work” of life that often comes at personal expense to women. This work is unseen, uncompensated, unrecognized and endless.
“The pandemic wasn’t even a thing to me compared to the tremendous stress and drama of helping my parents,” Ms. Barton says. “It’s work that again is unseen, unrecognized. No one prepares you for it. There is no support. There are no road maps.”
Read the full article.
Women with natural Black hairstyles are ready for more inclusive workplaces
For Black women with kinky, curly and Afro textured hair, wearing their natural hair is often a heavy source of discussion.
“Growing up I felt that straight, long hair was beautiful,” says Anok Tiordit, 23, a track and field athlete and recent nursing school graduate from Calgary. Akin to many lived experiences of Black women and girls, Ms. Tiordit faced social pressures to change her natural 4C textured hair in order to be considered beautiful and accepted in society.
She remembers feeling a sense of acceptance when her mother would give her hair a blowout, manipulating the texture into a straighter style.
“I didn’t like that when I had beads in my hair or cornrows my classmates would make comments about my appearance,” Ms. Tiordit says.
As a result of racism and social pressures, often looser and straighter textures have become heralded as “good hair,” contrasted against the negative perceptions of kinkier and Afro textured hair as less desirable and difficult to style.
Read the full article for more on how organizations can become more inclusive of all hair types.
Ask Women and Work
Question: I took a work-from-home job during the pandemic. It’s great – this company’s headquarters are in a different city than mine so it’s an opportunity I’d never have gotten otherwise and they are happy to let me continue working from home. However, I find myself getting distracted through the day by household tasks, my pets, my partner (who also works from home) and social media. Any tips for keeping my head in the game during working hours?
We asked Ann Gomez, founder of Clear Concept Inc. and author of Workday Warrior: A Proven Path to Reclaiming Your Time, to field this one:
Remote work offers many benefits. But when work is in the same place as where you live, the lines between your work and personal life can become blurred. Your brain may be primed to think it is downtime, or conversely, you may find it hard to shut down at the end of the workday.
Here are three strategies you can use to fortify your boundaries and perform at your best in a remote work model.
1. Identify your top three priorities
We are most effective when we concentrate on three core priorities. This is key no matter where you work, but perhaps even more so when you’re working at home and facing other types of distractions. This doesn’t mean three tasks, but rather three project-level initiatives, such as serving clients, leading your team or championing a large change initiative. Once you have identified your top three priorities, you can build routines around these core priorities. Routines are your productivity superpower. Block time for what you value most before other activities get in the way. And of course, be flexible when urgent needs arise.
2. Protect your focus
We know distractions can derail us, wherever we work. And those household tasks, pets and even partners can be a challenge to navigate. But we also know protecting time for focus work helps us super-charge our productivity and reduce our lower stress.
Adopt a focus routine such as a 45/15 rotation. Turn off alerts, minimize e-mail and other apps, set a timer and commit to single tasking for 45 minutes. Then, indulge in whatever you want for the remaining 15 minutes: respond to messages; refresh your coffee; snuggle with your hamster. These focus sprints can be as long or as short as you want and will help you make progress on what you value most.
3. Bookend your workday
We always make more efficient use of a limited resource. Declaring specific opening and closing times for your workday will prompt you to make the most of your precious working hours. Then introduce cues and rituals to shift into work or home mode. It’s ideal if you have a dedicated room or desk that you use exclusively for work. Or you can use other cues to shift your brain into work mode, such as a specific work placemat or a storage bin where you keep your work-related supplies and materials. These get put away at the end of the day, at which point you can shift to your personal routines.
Clear priorities, focus, and workday routines: these three strategies will give your productivity a boost and clarify the boundaries between work and home.
Submit your own questions to Ask Women and Work by e-mailing us at GWC@globeandmail.com.
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