How To Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings

This podcast's presenter speaks to comedian and former Google employee Sarah Cooper, who has just published a tongue-in-cheek “handy manual” for women in male-dominated environments called ‘How to be successful without hurting men’s feelings’.

"You’re a woman at a meeting and you just spotted that your male colleague has made a mistake," the presenter asks, "What do you do?"

You kind of want to put yourself down a little bit and say you’re not sure and you don’t even really like numbers, you don’t even understand math really, but maybe these numbers might be wrong?

When emailing a request, don’t say: show this to me. People will think you are mean. So use a lot of emojis, smiley faces, exclamation marks, XOXO if you want... Just make it seem really really friendly.

"Are you trying to make grown women seem like little girls in the way that they communicate?" the presenter asks.

People expect women to do this, Cooper says. "If we just respond in a direct way with 'no', people will think: wow, she is in a bad mood." She advises:

Read my book and then stop doing all of these things.

Before this part, you can also listen to an interview with Renee Adams of Said Business School at Oxford University.

In the business world it’s often argued that having more women on the company’s board improves a company’s productivity, financial performance and value. The professor says:

In the current policy debate everyone appeals to the commercial reasons for increasing gender diversity. But that evidence is simply not robust. It’s very hard to measure the actual benefits of diversity, but I think there is a case to be made for quotas to be argued on the basis of fairness. 

The presenter also speaks to Gay Collins of the 30% Club, a global movement that campaigns for more women on corporate boards, who says:

There is no doubt that a diverse board makes better decisions.