Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women

Why Women Need to Play Big

As mentioned previously, I am a business book junkie.  I love to read and I find I learn best in reading books from lots of viewpoints.  I recently discovered a FABULOUS book published in 2014 – Tara Mohr’s  Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak up, Create and Lead. 

For many years, every business and leadership book I found and read was written by a man. Lots of amazing wisdom, great ideas, and I have learned a ton.  However, there is a different perspective when reading books on business from women.

Women face unique challenges as entrepreneurs and as leaders. According to the National Women’s Business Council, women start businesses with half as much capital as men.  In addition, women are often criticized for being “bossy”, “not nice,” “aggressive,” while these are traits that often lead men to succeed in leadership roles.  Furthermore, as Sheryl Sandberg states in Lean In, “Career progression often depends upon taking risks and advocating for oneself – traits that girls are discouraged from exhibiting.”

In Playing Big, Mohr, walks through the many ways in which women can talk themselves out of taking big leaps in their careers and in their passions.  She also discusses how we can “underplay our hand” in the workplace. She then provides suggestions and ideas for how to make a successful launch into something authentic and bigger.

Your Inner Critic can stop you from Playing Big

Fear can prevent many of us from applying to a new job, starting a business, or undertaking a new project.  Our inner critics can be a voice inside our head telling us it is not safe, too risky, or too much work. But this voice that wants to keep us safe can often also keep us from being fulfilled.

When Mohr surveyed women about their career frustrations, she found that it wasn’t money or work-life balance that frustrated many.  The highest listed frustration was the feeling that they were not “playing big”.

Using your Inner Mentor

There is another “voice” that we can use to counteract the inner critic which Mohr calls your “inner mentor.”  Take some time and visualize meeting your ideal future self, twenty years from now.  Where do they live? What are their days like? What are they most proud of? Picture asking them how they got there and what has been important to them.  You can find an audio version of the visualization here.

This visualization of a future self can then be used to guide what really matters to you. It can help you make decisions that will get you closer to where you really want to be.  It may help you decide which opportunities to pursue and which not to. This exercise may stimulate you to think more creatively about what’s possible.

Sitting still and visualizing is not something I do well.  However, I have had times where I thought I didn’t know what to do and have looked for the perfect mentor to help me.  I have believed in the knight in shining armor.  However, over time, I learned that there are very few knights in shining armor. Often, I know a lot more than I give myself credit for.  All of us have much inner wisdom that gets drowned out by our inner critic or just ignored through being busy and not listening.

Specifically, the way forward is often not going to come from doing what we have done in the past.  It is going to come from new ideas and our imagination. As stated in the book, “If people haven’t been taught how to use their creativity, how to imagine, then they can’t create a dramatically different reality than what they know today, because they can’t imagine it.”

Speaking Up and Speaking Clearly

We don’t just need to come up with new ideas.  We also need to implement them and convince people of their merit.  One of the most interesting parts of the book is about the speech patterns many women adopt over time to try to “tamp down bossiness,” and appear “nice.  Have you ever heard yourself say, “I just think maybe. . .,” “I’m no expert but. . .,” or “I could be wrong but. . .”  Mohr has great advice for how to break these habits and replace them with better options that reflect confidence and warmth.

The Transition Team

The transition in veterinary medicine and in our society is real.  According to a 2017 Barlow Research Associates report, 57% of small businesses are owned by people over age 60.  37% of small business owners want to transition ownership within the next five years.   This “Silver Tsunami” means that who owns our profession sits in the balance.

One purpose of this blog is to encourage the women, who make up the majority of our profession, to lean in.  I have encouraged ownership, participation in our VMAs, and speaking up industry wide.  Many women have commented about the struggles and discomfort of doing this.  I have had some women tell me they did not feel welcome or listened to in their VMA.  One woman told me of her learning curve to be able to, “fit in with the boys” of her business group.

Mohr aptly describes this transition period and our role as women leaders.  She states:

“Today women have access to participate in a public life, a professional life, and a political life that is not yet reflective of women’s voices or women’s ways of thinking, doing, and working.  That means that as we participate in those realms, we’ll often feel like outsiders, like strangers in a strange land.  It’s our job to not run away from that but, instead, take up our small piece of the transition team’s work, sharing our ideas, our voices, our callings in a way that is authentic to us.  By so doing, we’ll create a more balanced, sane culture, one reflective of both men’s and women’s voices. “

If we want to create a sustainable, collaborative veterinary industry, we need women to play big for our profession.