Money matters, it’s cool to be good with it

After season one of Netflix’s Drive to Survive, ESPN saw a fifty percent uptick in the number of people watching Formula One. We were two in that camp, addicted to the drama, humanity, David and Goliath battles, and an anomaly of the sport that makes your teammate your biggest competitor.

How is F1 relevant to an article about money? Because they both suffer from unfair stigma. Ask us five years ago what we thought of the sport, and we’d have said, ‘it’s a bunch of cars racing around in a circle’. How wrong we were. And how wrong you are if you, like 45% of women, think money isn’t for you.

Women are socialised to avoid money

Over the last 100 years, women have gradually been granted access to the financial systems that rule our world. The right for women to work, earn equal pay, apply for credit, and be a financial decision maker, are all relatively new. These rights were hard won – the patriarchy didn’t roll out the red beige carpet, throw a welcome party, or hand over the jargon-riddled user manual.

We may now have legislated equality, but laws alone don’t change deeply ingrained money biases. Girls receive less pocket money than boys, and parents are less likely to teach girls about investing; we pay a 50% ‘pink tax’, and so on. This probably explains why the finance world still feels so foreign for many of us. That’s even before considering the myths about women and money, myths that have prevailed despite being well and truly disproven:

Women are big spenders: despite earning less, we save more.
Women aren’t good investors: we outperform men.
Girls are bad at maths: there’s no cognitive difference between sexes.

Women are actually excellent at money 

In a Drive to Survive style revelation, it turns out that women are very good with money. We are so good at it that we’ve managed to earn, save and grow it despite the lack of access to financial systems. Throughout history, we have found creative ways to build financial security. Here’s to the spinsters taking on low-paid labour, the hidden brains behind some high-profile male investors, and the well-accessorised who use jewellery as a source of accessible wealth.

Turns out, most of the things you believe about women and money are probably incorrect – unless you already think that we are better than men when it comes to saving and investing. Because we are, it’s there in the research. Don’t get too much of an ego though, because our differences are actually beneficial. It means we avoid silly risks and take a curious and pragmatic approach to achieve money goals over time 📈. 

Let’s get greedy 

The word ‘greed’ has come up a lot since our PowrUp episode on negotiation. When we’re socialised to ‘take one for the team’, it’s easy to feel selfish when we demand what we deserve. 

The gender pay gap is still a defining feature of modern economies, so damn right, we should want more. We still don’t have enough. Congrats to the handful of women who tuned into the podcast, then immediately put their mouths where their money should be and negotiated your pay. You’ve already increased the earnings of this community by tens of thousands of dollars, and we applaud you #WomenOfAction. 

If you’re concerned about being perceived as greedy when negotiating, pause to remind yourself that you’re the gender at the wrong end of the pay gap. Then take a deep breath and do it for yourself and the sisterhood. 👊

It’s time to take control

Taking control of your money means taking control of your life. Too many women still waive their participation in long-term financial decisions, and in a surprising twist, millennials are even more likely to hand the reins over to their husbands

We fought hard for those rights, and half of us abdicated them. 

We’re not trying to make you feel guilty, but opting out has long-term consequences for your financial security, especially when life takes a surprising turn. Learning the basics takes so little time. It’s worth handing over some household load, so you have time for finances. Sound familiar? Yes, how we operate in our houses mimics the workplace; we get stuck with invisible work when we should be contributing to strategy. 

Progress, not perfection

It really, really doesn’t matter what money mistakes you’ve made in the past, what opportunities you’ve missed, or how little you know; money is one of the few things in life that rewards you threefold for whatever effort you put in. And it’s never too late to start learning.

30 second action:

Organise a money date – it takes 30 seconds to send out a calendar invite to some friends. Then all you need is yummy food and drinks and these free conversation cards we helped create, to get the conversation flowing. Already good with money? Great, you’re perfectly positioned to shortcut the journey for other women.

5 simple ways to learn by doing 🎙️

We’re all familiar with the research: as women, we are less likely to put ourselves forward for promotions. We expect to know the whole job before starting (and undersell what we already know!). Our comfort zones are, well, comfy. The unknown? Not so much. 

The power of ‘yes’ 📣

You know the thing you’ve been holding yourself back from? It’s time to say ‘yes’ to it. The latest PowrUp episode challenges you to challenge your fears and GO FOR IT – take the risk opportunity and back yourself.  

It’s like riding a bike 🚴

Remember when you first rode a bike (or learned to swim, climb, and tie your laces…). You probably watched others, got some advice, mastered trial and error – and did all of this as a five-year-old! Yes, you’re already an expert at learning while doing; you already know how to problem-solve your way to success. You’ve mastered the ability to digest information, put it into practice, reflect and analyse, and then give it another go (*rinse and repeat*). 

You’ve heard the term, ‘fake it ’till you make it’? We prefer ‘you got this; it’s ok to learn while doing’. Here are five ways to back yourself to do it:

1. Act with confidence

From superhero poses to documenting your successful track record, there are lots of hacks to boost your confidence. However, researchers have found that the fastest way to build confidence is to make the choice to have it

2. Focus on the fundamentals

You don’t have to get a PhD on every subject, a broad understanding of lots of things is a superpower in itself. When tackling something new, identify the most critical elements of the role/task/skill – and just focus on those. Managing people for the first time? Master the 1:1 meeting before perfecting the art of delegation. 

3. Talk to people who’ve done it

Look through your network (and the networks of your network), and identify a few people that have ‘been there, done that’. You don’t always need to get a formal mentor, sometimes, coffees with a handful of experienced people will give you everything you need to know about how to master the new role/skill/task. 

4. University of Google

Between Medium, Reddit, Linkedin, businesses and experts who openly share their expertise – the internet has you covered. Want to learn how to ‘successfully manage a project’? The 1.3 billion results on Google are there to support your efforts. ‘How to budget and forecast’? 152 million results. You’ll be amazed at how much you can digest in 2-3 hours of focused research. 

5. Hone your observation skills

Be the most curious person in the room. During meetings, focus on who’s leading well and why. While at events, analyse the speakers to understand who is nailing body language and delivery. Witness someone diffuse a challenging situation? Spot a person with effortless networking skills? Observe and apply. Eventually the skills you mimic will become your own.

Take action

You know when you’re faced with an interesting opportunity, you can feel it in your gut. Next time one is presented to you (no matter how small it is), practise taking action. If things work out, you’ve learned you can do more than you thought. If they don’t? You now know you can handle more than you think. 

Want more examples, insights and tips?

On episode 5 of PowrUp, we share our stories of saying yes to the unknown, and how we built self-believe through three simple tools. Listen now

What if it all works out? The power of positivity

Michael Jordan is perhaps the best basketballer of all time – and half of one of the world’s most profitable partnerships. He’s athletic, talented and driven, but these are traits shared by every professional sportsperson. So, compared to the best, what gave him an almost superhuman ability to stand out?  

His mindset.

Jordan isn’t superhuman – he battled nerves like the rest of us. What set him apart was a supreme mastery of self-doubt. He wasted very little time imagining things going wrong and focused all that energy on planning for it to go well. He had such control of this ability, and he could turn almost anything into fuel. Critical feedback? It was catnip. At the mere suggestion, he wasn’t good enough; he could find a new gear and achieve seemingly impossible physical feats. 

We’ve heard enough success stories to know what you’re thinking. Good for him. With his incredible stature and talent, a bit of self-belief is easy. 

Incredible talent, you say? Are you talking about the guy who got cut from his varsity basketball team for ‘not being good enough’? Jordan’s place in history may now seem inevitable, but he succeeded despite experiencing the kind of setbacks that would make most people quit. Think about all the times you’ve doubted yourself after strong external invalidation of your abilities. Maybe Nat could have been an Olympic swimmer after all. 😉

Positivity is a practice

Last week, Kristen joined fellow Powrsuiter Jodi Willocks at the Wellington launch of consultancy Bastion Shine (yes, please send all the invites our way!). Also on the list were members of the world-champion Black Ferns rugby team. When we say world champion, we mean six-time world champion; these women are good. However, when co-captain Kennedy Simon stood up to speak, she recounted a tough period leading up to the world cup. They’d underperformed on a European tour, and despite overwhelming evidence of their abilities, self-doubt had well and truly embedded itself. 

Then they received this challenge: “what if it all goes right?”.

That (plus a lot of internal work!) was enough to change their mindset. And it led to a record-breaking performance that redefined the place of women’s sports in popular culture. Those of us who watched the final still tear up when talking about it, but perhaps instead, we should just tear a leaf out of their book and embrace the mindset that led to their success. Because if they can do it, why not you?

Get your hopes up!

Common knowledge (and more than a few studies) recognises that success in sports is 90% mental. It’s absurd how little we apply that philosophy to our own careers, and even more absurd how often we default to doing the exact opposite.

Thankfully, failure no longer correlates with death, but our brains don’t seem to have caught up. What may have served us well when looking into a prehistoric predator’s face is limiting when facing a career challenge opportunity. Even with very little on the line, women tend to shy away from situations that put us at risk of failing. We can default to negativity when applying for a new role, trying a new sport, or learning about topics like finance. We overanalyse all the ways things might go wrong but ignore how it could go well.

Here’s a wee truth bomb for you; when you want something, your hopes are already up. Planning for failure doesn’t protect you from the pain of it; it will still hurt. Why put the time, effort and energy behind the outcome you want the least? When we put it like that, it does feel counterintuitive, doesn’t it?

We talk a lot about having a growth mindset these days. Most of us now believe that our abilities aren’t fixed, and that we can learn and improve. Let’s go one step further and imagine the results. Imagine what that life will look like if it all goes right. 

Then go ahead and do it.

30 second action:

Think back to when you took a risk. Remember how you felt at the time? How did it turn out in the end? What did you learn from it?

Is Imposter Syndrome holding you back? 🎙

After publishing her 11th book, writer, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou admitted that after each one, she still thinks, “Uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody”. Liz Bingham, a diversity and inclusion champion and award-winning business woman has thought, “What are you doing here? What do you think you’re doing? You’re going to be found out.” Even Tom Hanks has admitted, “No matter what I’ve done, there comes a point where you think, when are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud and take everything away from me?”.

Imposter syndrome is a term coined by clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes and describes a feeling most of us have experienced. While there’s no official diagnosis, the phenomenon is a form of self-doubt – and has a real impact on the 82% of people who experience it. An affliction of high-achievers, imposter syndrome is the fear that personal accomplishments are the outcome of luck or oversight, not merit and achievement. While imposter syndrome can affect anyone, these waves of doubt disproportionately impact women and women of colour

The double whammy: the role of overconfidence in leadership

A recently published study revealed that, when asked about past performance, men tend to inflate their results at double the rate of women. The study first asked students to complete a set of maths problems; the men and women performed about the same. When asked to recall their performance a year later, most students overestimated theirs. However, while women consistently exaggerated their performance by 15%, men did it by twice as much.

Next, researchers divided participants into teams and asked them to choose a representative to compete against other teams in a maths challenge. Both women and men were willing to exaggerate their capabilities to bag the role; however, because women didn’t do it to the same degree, they were selected a third less often than their abilities would indicate. 

If natural overconfidence is a factor in men being overrepresented in leadership roles, then the underconfidence associated with imposter syndrome is arguably a weight holding women down a few rungs. 🪜 Feel unfair? Both genders in the study mistook confidence for competence. We’re all guilty of attribution bias, so one thing we can do today is changing how we see and present ourselves.

Expose imposter syndrome for the imposter that it is

Change your critical inner voice

Most of us have an ongoing internal commentary, and this inner dialogue can skew to be harsh and judgemental. Anne Elder-Knight, a leading New Zealand-based leadership coach, often gets her clients to complete a simple exercise. They are asked to spend 2 minutes listing their flaws on a piece of paper, and then to do the same with their strengths. Set a timer and try it yourself to get an (often shocking) understanding of your internal dialogue.

Once you’re aware of your critical inner voice, you can start to change it. While positive affirmations may feel like the domain of influencers, scientific evidence supports their role in changing how you view yourself. Start small, and pick an affirmation to say when your feet hit the floor each morning (this article gives a nice overview of how it works). 

Seek out examples

Adding to our blindspots is the adage that you can’t be what you can’t see – minorities often lack visible examples of people like them succeeding in their chosen paths. While we can’t immediately change a top-heavy structure of white males, we can actively seek out examples of leaders who look like us or an environment that normalises our dreams. For the successful duo at Girls That Invest, this meant subscribing to endless podcasts before launching their own. Surrounding themselves with podcasts tricked their brains into believing everyone was already doing it, which made it much easier for them to think they could too.

Celebrate successes and share failures

People who struggle with impostor feelings tend to brush off their accomplishments, which only exacerbates self-doubt. While we think we know ourselves better than anyone else, research shows we really don’t. Numerous studies have shown that our coworkers are often better than us at picking our personality traits. Yet another reason is to ask for feedback – and pay extra attention to the good bits! 

Have you ever told someone something embarrassing about yourself? How often do you find out they have experienced something similar? Sharing failures can be a real confidence boost because most of us are guilty of comparing our insides with others’ outsides. Take Canva, for example. Just a decade after its launch, the company was valued at over $50 billion, and Melanie Perkins, the attractive, young founder, is now the second richest woman in Australia. All very glossy, but that story doesn’t include the 100 rejections Perkins endured on her path to the top. Starting conversations about failure makes us realise that we are all experiencing bumps along the way – and can put our abilities in perspective. 

30 second action

The next time you need to do something out of your comfort zone, spend 30 seconds beforehand talking to yourself in the third person as a coach might. Studies have shown that this simple action can change your critical inner language into what you’d offer as a supportive and helpful friend. 🫶

Want more on Imposter syndrome?

Learn the history and some surprising facts that might make you question whether this ‘syndrome’ is a syndrome at all. Listen to episode 3 of the PowrUp podcast:

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