“There are two pieces of debilitating thinking that hold women back: The first is waiting to be noticed or appreciated. The other is not taking a risk to apply for a new job or opportunity, believing that they do not have enough experience or skills sets,” according to Christie Hunter Arscott, author of the book, Begin Boldly.
In Begin Boldly, Hunter Arscott turns this thinking on its head. She encourages women to treat their career like an investment portfolio with early deposits of bold moves, courageous actions, and informed risk.
“One thing I know for certain that I wish to impart to you: Brilliant careers are seldom built without bold moves,” says Hunter Arscott. “Despite recognizing the benefits of making bold moves, most women—especially those early in their careers—struggle to harness the power of risk-taking.”
Speaking about the book, Hunter Arscott states that it will equip you with the tools to navigate the workplace strategically and successfully, despite challenges and setbacks. Additionally, she shares that the book can be used as a comprehensive guide to prepare yourself to make the most of your early career years. It can also be used for those who coach, mentor, counsel and advise early career women, with insights and exercises for those you are supporting.
As one of the first Rhodes Scholars to complete graduate work in Women’s Studies, Hunter Arscott has been named by Thinkers50 as “one of the top management thinkers likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led.” She serves on the Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard Kennedy School, and her speaking and DEI advisory client list includes Fortune 500 companies, international forums, government entities, and top academic institutions.
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Christie Hunter Arscott
Hunter Arscott shares these additional insights with us:
Question: How can women address and improve feelings of frustration and burnout in their careers?
Hunter Arscott: The first thing women can stop doing is focusing on achieving “balance.” While balance is an elusive ideal at best, it also misses an essential point. Instead of imagining a scale with two sides that we are trying to balance, we would be better off imagining a wallet with a limited number of dollars. We have a choice of where to invest those dollars – our time – and we want to invest them in the activities and tasks that produce the most returns.
Try this simple trick to build a brilliant career: Forget about achieving “balance!” Instead of asking: “How do I balance?” try flipping the script and asking: “How do I optimize?” Seeking balance sets us up for failure and defeat. Focus instead on how to optimize your time investment.
Many women invest their precious and limited time and energy based on assumption rather than insight. My best bit of advice: Ask, don’t assume. Ask the people who matter to you what matters most to them and adjust your investments accordingly. You may find out you are unnecessarily putting time into tasks and activities that are not important to the key people in your life, while missing out on what is important. Invest in data, not assumption and in turn, minimize overwhelm.
The key to alleviating or reducing feelings of conflict isn’t in working harder but in getting smarter around the needs, expectations, and desires of those who matter to you and have a stake in your career and time and energy investments to produce the best returns.
Question: How can women best support and advocate for other women?
Hunter Arscott: If we truly want to empower women to live bold and brave careers, courageous advocacy can’t stop with advocating for ourselves. It must include advocating for others. As the saying goes: Empowered women empower women. We can support the risk-taking of others by elevating them through using the power of our voice and the power of our choices.
The following tactics can be used regardless of your race or background or demographic makeup or level in an organization. The key is to use our voices and choices to elevate others. In addition, if you’re personally facing these challenges, you can use the book to better understand how you can ask others for help and support. But don’t abdicate your power to advocate for others.
The onus and responsibility to be the greatest advocates lie with the women who are in the majority in an organizational context or in a position of privilege or both. For example, from a race perspective, in most settings, this is white women. In all settings, the greatest responsibility lies with those of us who are privileged to hold a position with power, influence, and the ears of decision-makers.
Amplify the voices of others.
- Have you ever heard someone make a statement in a meeting and not be heard, and then ten minutes later someone else makes a similar statement or suggestion and the response is “Great idea!”?
- Have you heard someone offer insights, but no one responds or seems to have heard it?
- Have you ever heard someone be talked over or interrupted before they could fully express their viewpoint? This happens more in situations where there’s perceived difference. The simple solution: Amplify the voices of others.
- For the first scenario above, you could say: “I believe that is what Kristen was saying earlier. Kristen, could we go back to you? I’d love to hear more of what you were thinking.”
- For the second, you could say something like: “Building on Kristen’s idea, I wanted to explore whether we could talk about the potential to implement this in our current context.” You simply use a bridge or the beginning of a sentence that builds on the idea of the person whose voice may not be heard in the room.
- For the last scenario, it can be as simple as “I think Kristen got cut off there and I’d like to hear the rest of her comment.” Or “I think Kristen was trying to share something. Kristen, can you repeat what you were saying?” This is tried and tested in real-world settings.
Introduce colleagues, leading off with their credentials. Due to the double bind, women who are perceived to be tooting their own horn may be viewed as competent but not likable. The work-around? You toot the horn for other women!
One simple action is to introduce women leading off with their credentials (rather than asking them to introduce themselves). This could be applied at networking events, speaking events, meetings, new team introductions, and more. Will Rogers, the American stage and film actor, once said, “Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far.” This is even more true for women!
Check your “Outlook equity.” We’re more likely to spend time with people like us, who make us comfortable, where there’s an element of sameness. This can result in many employees feeling left out of important connections and networks, an outsider who doesn’t belong in certain settings and contexts. Knowing that it’s natural to gravitate toward others who feel familiar, we need to make a conscious effort to bridge divides of difference and spend more time with people who may not be like us. This is one of the essential ways we can prevent “in-groups” and “out-groups” in organizations, enhance feelings of belonging, and ensure that important networks and connections are open to all employees.
In a session I was recently running for a Fortune 500 company, the leaders encouraged their employees to “check their Outlook equity.” I inquired what they meant by this, and they explained that they use the Microsoft Outlook platform and that asking employees to check their Outlook equity is asking them to see whom they are spending time with. Do they have an open-door policy only for some people? Are they responding to proactive employees rather than strategically setting up meetings and touch points with all team members? Are you investing time with some people more than others?
Look at your “Outlook equity” or “calendar equity” and see how you can adjust how you spend your time. You can give yourself a challenge of inviting someone new to meetings or events where appropriate or setting up standing time slots where you connect with someone outside your normal circle. You can encourage leaders to set up standing meetings or checkpoints with all team members, rather than simply responding to requests (that most often will come from the employees who feel most comfortable, while those who need the connection might not proactively reach out) or holding “office hours” (set times when people can drop in to see you), to create a true open-door policy.
Question: How can readers best put the advice of Begin Boldly into practice and implement the strategies outlined in the book?
Hunter Arscott: At the beginning of the book, I share that Begin Boldly is "lighter on anecdotes and richer in action" and presents an abundance of solutions that readers can start implementing in their lives right now.
Aside from the first two chapters, each chapter includes a "Put-It-Into-Practice" section with clearly laid-out techniques to try, an “Aspiration-to-Action” exercise to help bridge the gap between readers' aspirations and their actions, while encouraging them to adopt a structured approach to experimenting, and a “Risk-Reward-Refine-Repeat” closing that frames how to use these insights to fuel a risk-taking ritual. The book can be used as a comprehensive guide and toolkit as readers build their bold and brilliant careers.
Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.
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