Reflections on Women in Tech and the Power of Supportive Spaces
I read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In in 2016 and found it very insightful, having worked at one of the world’s largest IT companies from the late 1990’s to mid 2000’s I can relate to a lot of what she talks about in that book, many of her personal stories and those of other female contributors in the book I’ve encountered personally. Thankfully, the IT industry has evolved over the past 20 years, and it now acknowledges the importance of women in the industry, and some of the experiences I went through in my early years would not occur today and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t be tolerated. I should also say I’ve had some great male bosses during my career who have supported and encouraged me to grow and I’ve had a huge amount of fun, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the IT industry in my 20’s and 30’s, we worked very hard, and we seemed to party just as hard. When I think about my early career days I’m conflicted, would I want a young female graduate to go through some of the situations I encountered, no, however, those years have made me who I am today and if I could go back in time, I don’t think I would change encountering the situation but maybe I would change the way I responded to it.
Jump forward to today, when I joined the Endeavour Solutions group last year, I was very pleased to see it had a Lean In group. Kate O’Leary our Director of HR had started the group when she joined Endeavour. Lean In Circles are small groups that meet regularly to share and learn together, I feel very blessed that Endeavour sees the value of these meetings and encourages our female team members to attend them during our working day, this gives everyone the opportunity to join the meeting and the chance to focus on the content without having to juggle it during family and personal time.
Over the past 12 months, we’ve had meetings focusing on; Centered Leadership, How to take charge, Mental Health and Transformation Counselling, Why Women need to try twice as hard at work, Financial Planning for your retirement, and The fight to be respected and liked at work. With all these issues we get the chance to review content and then discuss it within the team, it’s a safe and respectful space for people to be open and to learn from each other.
Our Lean In Circle gives everyone in the group the chance to be a leader and a mentor, and that is priceless in the world we work in today. My hope is for us to continue to grow as a team and for us to support and elevate each other and that every female in our company knows that there’s someone, many people, there to help and support when needed.
