Description

You’ve probably heard the following statistic: “Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet at least 90% of them.” 

Several media outlets have circulated this claim, including reputable sources such as the Harvard Business Review and Forbes.

It's the starting point of the discussion led by our host Vik with our guests:

• Laura Lesueur, motivational speaker and author, highly involved in feminism and gender equality questions. A true ambassador for women's ambition and leadership.

• Jacqui McMillan, our General Manager at Novotel London Canary Wharf, and a true expert on leading positions in hospitality since she has been a GM in hotels for over 20 years now.

• And Martijn Van Der Graaf, Chief Operating Officer Western Europe at AccorInvest and also an expert on the hospitality industry with almost 25 years of experience.

  
  

In this episode, our guests, drawing from personal experiences, explore stereotypes and biases ingrained from childhood that affect career trajectories for men and women alike. They tackle impostor syndrome—commonly associated with women in leadership—questioning its exclusivity to women. The conversation shifts to societal resistance to gender parity, evaluating individual and collective actions for change within teams and organizations. Are quotas a necessary catalyst? Beyond gender, the emphasis on diversity as a key to performance, innovation, and creativity is discussed. Finally, they offer practical tips for embracing ambition and supporting those on the brink of taking a leap.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Hello and welcome to Beyond AccorInvest, the podcast where we tackle business, societal and environmental challenges in the hospitality and real estate industries. I'm Vic and I'll have the great pleasure to be your host for this brand new format brought to you by AccorInvest, Europe's leading hotel owner and operator.

• Speaker #1

  How do you envision your future? Our world is evolving fast, and all industries face common challenges. Hospitality is no exception. What about you? Do you simply dream of a better world? Or do you dare to be the change? Welcome to Beyond a Core Invest, the podcast where we talk about our business of today, tomorrow, and beyond.

• Speaker #0

  And here is the topic for today's episode. Hospitality, ready for women's power? Very good question. And we have three amazing guests to start off this first episode of Beyond AccorInvest. Around the table, we have Laura Le Sueur, who's a motivational speaker and author, an ambassador for women's ambition and leadership. She's written about a whole manifesto for enlightened feminism. Laura, very nice to have you with us.

• Speaker #2

  Thank you.

• Speaker #0

  Welcome. And we have two people from AccorInvest, starting with Jackie McMillan. General Manager of the flagship Novotel London Canary Wharf and an expert on leadership because you've been in general management positions for over 20 years now in hospitality.

• Speaker #3

  Thank you.

• Speaker #0

  Jackie, welcome. And we have also with us the Chief Operating Officer for the Western Europe Hub at AccorInvest, Martin van der Graaf.

• Speaker #4

  Thank you.

• Speaker #0

  Welcome to the show. An expert in the hospitality industry with almost 25 years of experience. So all together, this is 100 years of experience around the table. Well, we have a very, very interesting and relevant topic, I believe, for any industry, and hospitality is not an exception. And let's start with a statistic that I'm sure that you've heard many times before. It comes from an internal Hewlett-Packard study cited by McKinsey and then in many articles afterwards that speaks to the confidence gap where men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of qualifications, but women only apply if they meet the... absolute majority or most of qualifications required for the job. First question to all of you, and maybe let's start with Laura. I see already a reaction on your face. Is it true? Is it accurate? Do you have other research to complete? Let's start with you.

• Speaker #2

  Well, I have heard about this statistic before, and it's interesting because when I was a former VP sales in the tech industry, which is not a very feminine industry, when you ask to a woman, do you want to take a new leadership role? It's true that one of the first question is like, oh, are you sure I'm the right fit for the role? Am I will be able to make it? And if you ask to a man, one of the first question is interesting. He's not wondering that much if he's able to make it, but. how much more I'm going to earn or like what is the exact rules, what are going to be the responsibilities. So yes, I think that the reaction initially is not the same, maybe because of this imposter syndrome, but also because women, we are waiting to be more than ready. We are waiting to have maybe one and 10% of the abilities, of the capacities. a man, if we want to compare, is saying, okay, maybe I'm like 60 or 70% ready, but I'm going to work for it and I'm going to do with my determination, with my skills, I'm going to acquire the skills on the way. So yeah, I think it's...

• Speaker #0

  So your experience speaks to this kind of situation. Do you see the statistic being true in the industry of hospitality?

• Speaker #3

  I think imposter syndrome is definitely something that comes into it. I was super fortunate that... Really, for the first 15 years of my career, I'd never experienced it. I'd never felt like I was an imposter until 2018, which is only, what, six years ago. And it was when Flagship came up, the Novotel Canary Wharf general manager's position. And it came into my inbox and I immediately said, that's not for me. I'm not ready for that. They won't want my profile. and, you know, very close to not actually applying. And I was super fortunate at the time that I had a great boss who was still in Aqua Invest, Mario, who actually arrived at my hotel that I was in probably about two days before the deadline and said, I've not got your application. And I said, you don't want me? And it was the first time I'd felt that I was an imposter and if I got it, I would be lucky if I got it. And without this man coming and telling me, apply, apply, apply. Maybe I wouldn't be sitting here today being in the manager. And whilst that's frustrating, I learned a lot. But yes, that was the first time in my whole career I'd experienced imposter syndrome.

• Speaker #0

  We're going to go back to imposter and the learnings. I'm very curious. Martin, anything to add to this stat and just in general, the confidence gap?

• Speaker #4

  No, I think in general, the gap is there. I see it. I mean, I've done many, many job interviews for general managers of hotels and you see a different. approach and I think exactly as you were saying before there's the way in general and I think we're going to stereotype a lot today with this type of topics that indeed in general if you take the average of the men versus the average of the women that on the women's side yeah they're more looking at okay but I'm not sure if I know this part and a man will in general you try to avoid getting into the topics that they don't know and they try to talk around it. And where in general, women are more open to share, okay, this is something that I don't know yet. And yeah, so I definitely saw it a lot.

• Speaker #0

  So then a question, given that it is reality, there is at least a perceived gap for sure and even a concrete gap from what you're saying. Does it make a difference in how you manage? men and women? Because both of you, Jackie and Martin, you're managers of teams.

• Speaker #3

  I think when you're managed by a woman, I think you learn a lot. And I think you feel sometimes much more empowered because your line manager is a female. So I have, I think I have quite a good mix of male and female managers. Do I manage them differently? I'm a little bit sceptical with regards to this and I don't want to be too controversial. Tell us more. But I have a lot of men that I would manage differently, not because they're a man, but because the way their personality is, I would approach them differently. And I think we can fall into a trap of saying we manage men in a very direct way and we can be very direct with them. And if we talk about colours, for example, which I'm quite into, they're going to be red. And I think we make mistakes. managing people differently due to their gender, I think we really have to look at their personality. Whereas I have a female manager, and if I spoke to her or managed her in a different way, she would not react well. So I think for me, yes, there is definitely a gender difference, and we understand that, but I think it's much more about their personality, and you've got to go a layer deeper than whether they're male or female. And I have a particular chef who is meant to be... very strong and he's very, you know, he's a chef, so he's going to be red. And actually he wasn't. And for six months I struggled to manage him because I was managing him like a man. And actually when I changed it, went a layer deeper and managed him differently, I got the best results. So I think we have to be very careful. So do I manage men and women differently? No, I think I manage different personalities differently.

• Speaker #0

  Personalities. Martin, what's your experience?

• Speaker #4

  For me, it's more the diversity, which is the most important, I think. The mix between men and women. Because sometimes there are certain job roles that are really into where I think 80 or 90% of the people are men. Or 80 or 90% of the roles is women. And for me, more on the business perspective, I think it's important to have that mix. And have that mix, what you also have outside of work and where you haven't. There's different, not only men and women, as you said, it's also depending on the personalities and if they're more like the personal people or the ones that are more business driven. But for me, the mixture of a team is the most important. And for me also in the past, the most important is to have a mix of... men and women, but also in age, in age gap, younger people, older people. So for me, it's more about that and not so much focusing if at the end it's men or women, because every person is different at the end.

• Speaker #0

  Laura, what do you see?

• Speaker #2

  I agree with Jackie saying like we should manage people personality wise. And at the same time, I noticed that it begins at very early stage with education, obviously of girls and boys. And if you say to girls, oh. you are doing good because you are a good girl, because you are a good pupil. And that if you are saying to boys, you are doing good because you are the best, because you are strong, then in the work life, women will go looking for recognition much more than men, if we generalize, would be looking for being the best, so most driven by competition. And this is really symptomatic. So for women, they are more looking, as I have noticed, for being recognized. Like at school, they are willing to have good grades. But rules have changed between school and between the work life. It's not the same rules. So this good pupil syndrome tends to apply to the work life. And then we tend to learn this the hard way. But there is a difference because of the gender, because not naturally, but because of the education and the roots that we have. But we should be managing people personality wise. So I agree with that.

• Speaker #0

  So you're saying that education is kind of pre-programming us in a certain way to expect different things and also have different criteria. Absolutely. I've once heard a quote that says, good girls go to heaven and all the others go where they want.

• Speaker #2

  I heard it as well.

• Speaker #0

  So let's go back to this imposter syndrome. Is it really? a female thing, Laura?

• Speaker #2

  Well, actually, I think that men can have it, but I think it's related also to the way you are able to embrace failure. And I was reading a study saying that little boys are more driven to make a lot of competitive sports, for instance, where you learn to work in team, where you learn to fail. Whereas like girls are less driven when they are like in the young age to do so. So I think if you are able to embrace that things are not perfectly done, that you leave the need to be perfect, that you are able to embrace failure. you will less have this imposter syndrome. So I think it's a training, but men can have some imposter syndrome. Maybe they will shut it down. And women tend to question themselves maybe too much, saying like, I need to be legitimate. So I will not dare right now. I will wait to be legitimate to dare. But in fact, you need to dare to be legitimate because your legitimacy is made from experience. So if you never dare, you will never gain legitimacy.

• Speaker #0

  I see Jackie and Martin nodding heads.

• Speaker #4

  I'm also a little bit of a statistic guy. Indeed, statistics show this. For example, a completely different example. There was an article published not long ago in the Netherlands about marathons. I like to run myself and if you run the marathon, you need to enter. When you're going to subscribe yourself on a marathon, you need to enter your predicted time.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, yes.

• Speaker #4

  And so there was a whole study done and all the men. To generalize again, they say, okay, I will run the marathon in four hours. And then actually at the end, they did a study of all the participants of a marathon. And they looked at, okay, how long do they think they're going to run? So on average, all the men, 60% of the men overestimated their time. So they said, okay, they will do it in four hours, but they took four hours and 10 minutes or longer. So it's 60%, which is a huge number. And of women, it was less than 20. So actually women, they say, okay, I'm going to run it in four hours. And then 80% of them will do it in four hours or less. And there's only a small 20% who overestimate themselves. And there, that's general statistics. But I think that says something about the general approach between men and women, which is kind of similar what you can have at work.

• Speaker #0

  You had something else?

• Speaker #3

  I think men do have imposter syndrome, but I also think they can mask it much better. Not much better than women, but I think women are not afraid to say, I am good at this, but I need to be better at that. And I think we're more transparent about it. Whereas a man will say, I'm great at everything. I can do it. But inside... I think they probably have the same insecurities that we do. But I think in general, it's, you know, we talk a lot about men should speak more about their emotions or how they're feeling. Whereas a woman, you know, you get us with a group of girls and we will talk for hours about how sad we are or how happy we are. and so I think men mask it more but I think being honest about your weaknesses or the areas that you're not as strong in and being truthful about who you are as a person or how I'm going to fit into this GM role if I was interviewing someone who was open about that actually for me I would probably go for that person more because they're telling me I'm good at this I need to work on that And another example, again, with this flagship Canary Wharf, which is the scariest job application I think I've ever done. I remember, and I shared it with Martijn this morning, my final interview was with two of the top people from Aqua Invest. And I told them why they shouldn't give me it. So literally, I said, if you want someone who is going to sit behind a desk and produce spreadsheets, don't give me this job because I'm going to disappoint you. And I walked out thinking, I've just told them why not to give me the job. but actually it must have worked because then I got the job. But I was very open and transparent with them about the type of manager I was going to be for them.

• Speaker #0

  Very nice example. So we've discussed that there is this confidence gap, a gap in ambition. We've discussed a little bit the sources. There's partly imposter syndrome, partly education, partly maybe a different way to establish or estimate your abilities and skills. Let's now turn to what can we do? what can we do to fix this or to address this? Laura, do you have some recipes?

• Speaker #2

  Well, the good news is that there are many things to do because it's a multi-factor issue. I think we can act at the individual level, at the team level, at the organizational level, obviously at the political level. But I think that we need to take into account something is that women don't have less ambition. than men. Actually, there is a very interesting study stating that if you ask a man at the beginning of their career, do you want to reach a C-level position to have a leadership role? There are 43% of them that are saying yes, almost the same ratio than for men, almost the same, which is interesting. If you ask them the very same question three years after, this 43%, it's fold on to 16%. 16%. Three years after. And I think it's interesting because, of course, there is the visibility, the lack of representation. So the first thing to do is that we need to showcase women achievement in organization. Because as a woman, if you cannot see it, you cannot dream it. And if you cannot dream it, you cannot do it. So to have more women that not only do well in companies, that are visible, that... learn to talk about their achievements, and Jackie is a great and humble at the same time example, for instance, then I think we need to take into account what is the reality of women's lives. Because of course, there is, I mean, there is no more frontier between personal, professional life. When we know that, at least in France, in average, there is 10 hours of difference between the domestic task that women are doing versus the men. So this is 10 hours that you don't put into your work. in your personal realization as well. So I think that, for instance, there is something called the motherhood penalty. So we should implement concrete things for women, like, for instance, not putting strategic meetings after 6 p.m. because you know that you will lose women in the room so that will not be taken into account for the strategic decision and so on. Many things can be done at every level. And I think that everyone has a part to play in that.

• Speaker #0

  Anything else that you have from perhaps your experience on how to encourage women to be more empowered?

• Speaker #3

  I think I definitely agree with Laura on that. And a recent conversation, we have a programme which is around six to eight months. And I have a lady, mother of two. Her husband works away. So it's a lot of the domestic and the child kind of care is down to her. And she said, I can't do this programme because I'm worried about I'm not going to be able to get childcare. And a man would never in many ways think about that side of it. So we really worked with her on how we could support her and how we could make sure that some of the courses started a little bit later so she could drop her children at school. So again, I believe that that is a big difference between a man and a woman. A man would not think about it, he'd say, put me on the course. The woman is thinking all about the background and her life. But I think if we can show flexibility, we can show them that we can dare to do it and we will support them. then I think that's a way of getting around it. But this comes up a lot, especially with women of a certain age who do have children.

• Speaker #0

  And what you're saying, Jackie, is that it is a conversation to be had at work.

• Speaker #3

  Absolutely.

• Speaker #0

  And not to ignore. Martin,

• Speaker #4

  what's... Yeah, I think it's a conversation to be had at work. However, I think there's also something in society as a general, and I think you were also referring to it a bit, I think. Well, we still see if two people have kids and one gets sick and the school is calling, well, who are they calling? Are they calling the father or the mother? As you say, in general, it's still the perception, okay, the kid is sick, so we call the mother. That is still what is happening. So I think that's still happening in society in general. So, of course, we can step by step. Everybody needs to put in their little effort. But I think the best thing that we can do as a company is, okay, what can we do? What can we support? What do we have in our own hands? Because I think the general perception. Well, it's difficult to change by yourself, but we can do it step by step. And while we were discussing about flexible work, and I think over the COVID time, we saw, okay, there's a lot more possible. Where everybody said, oh, that's never possible. Over COVID, everybody proved that it is possible to do a lot online and you don't need to work from nine to five. There could be other hours. so I think those type of things will help as well for uh for yeah for for this type of things and I think as well sorry we work in hospitality we're a 24 hour a day seven days a week business if we cannot offer flexible working and

• Speaker #3

  different hours and and all of that in hospitality then what industry can you do it in so we should be really leading this for women to ensure that they can still get the best career and not have to work nine to five. So I think we should be leading this.

• Speaker #0

  Here you go. That's ambition. Good ambition. We talked flexible working. We talked time management and just in general scheduling, you know, strategic meetings and calls. We talked visibility, how to make career women visible and also somebody that you want to look up to. Anything else that is within our control, perhaps?

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, I think. It begins by the way we talk. I have heard so many brilliant women starting their sentences, and I did it myself by... I was lucky enough to, I had the luck to, I was fortunate to. And this sentence is nurturing the imposter syndrome for herself and for other people. Because of course, the way we talk is shaping the way we see each other. And this, when we say I had the luck to, I was lucky enough, it's saying that, okay, what I did, all my successes and achievements is because of external circumstances. Not because of my hard work, not because of my choices, determination, and so on. So I think women can learn to... try to erase what I call this trap sentence and to say, this is what I did and not necessarily putting that on the back of luck. It's the same in the boardrooms or in meeting rooms. When a woman is trying to add something, sometimes she's saying, and actually very often she's saying, oh, I just have a small remark. I just have a small question. Whereas if you just say, I have a remark on what has just been said. it's not the same at all. And this counts in terms of posture. So yeah, we can act by the way we talk and by the words we are choosing.

• Speaker #3

  Laura, I have to agree. The lucky thing, it comes up so much. And when one of my team sees this, and hopefully she will, every time in her performance review, I'll say, you know, you've built an amazing, empowered team, but I'm really lucky with the people. I said, no, no, no, you make your own luck. You created this. But I hear this probably once in every female's performance review. I have never heard it once in a male's performance review. He says, I know. I have. I have created a great team. And so I say, no, we make our own luck, but 100% agree with that.

• Speaker #0

  Wear the pride of your accomplishments. Martin, you spoke about, you know, diversity of teams. I don't know if it's true, but I heard, I think, preparing for this show, that the team that you manage is only women. Is that true?

• Speaker #4

  The management committee in Western Europe is mainly women, indeed. So it is... Which is good. Again, I said at the beginning, it needs to be a diverse profile. So, I mean, I think it's not the aim to have only women at a certain position, but it needs to be a healthy mix. However, there's a lot of teams where it's only men. So I think it's good to also have some teams where the majority is women. So yes, that's true. And also for me, it's very important for the hotels. I mean, at the end, we're a hospitality company and the real company is managed at hotel level, so which is the general managers. And I think also on the general manager side, it's very important to have a lot of women there. Where I think we're getting there. I'm very happy to say that for the Benelux area, so Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, we're already at about 50% of the general managers being women. In the UK, we're not there yet. So it's about one third of the general managers that are women and about two third that are men. So there we're not yet at the equal level. However, if we look, and I think Jackie can confirm, she was referring to some training programs that we see now at the second layer, that there's actually a lot of women. So on the number twos in a hotel. So I think... In a few years from now, I think also in the UK, we will be there and we will be having completely mixed teams where about 50% of the people are men and 50% are women, which I think for me is the best. Also on business decisions, decision taking, I think it's good to have that healthy mix.

• Speaker #0

  When you talk of healthy mix, and that's maybe one more question on what can we do. How do you define a healthy mix? Do you, Laura, I don't know, do you recommend quotas? What is the good recommendation on that?

• Speaker #2

  Well, I used to say that quotas is something necessary that we would like to not have it as necessary, but it has proven to work, like in France. Thanks to the Copésie-Merman law with quotas, France is the European champion about the ratio of women at boards with 46.5% of women in the boardroom. And if we look at the executive committee, it didn't have the trickle-down effects that we could have hoped for. It doesn't meet, like, because we don't have already quotas for the executive committee, but it's coming with the Rixin law of 2021, which is stating quotas for the executive committees as well. So I think it's necessary to make things going faster about what could be the perfect mix. I think anyway, that diversity is a key for growth, for creativity, for innovation. And because we have this tendency, which is natural, that we want to be surrounded by people who look like us, think like us, act like us. Of course, it's interesting to have. diversity, not only in terms of gender, but of seniority, of ages, of cultural, because it's like widening the scope we have and the reflection we have. And yeah, I think it's really a win-win situation.

• Speaker #3

  So just on quotas, I think we need to be a little bit careful with this because I remember we started talking about this and, you know, we want 50% men, 50% women. I never want to be given an opportunity or a job to make up your numbers. So again, I think we need to be careful with that because that can also, if we talk about imposter syndrome, say, well, they only gave me that job because they needed another woman on the board. So I think we need to be a little bit careful with that. You should be the right person at the right time for that right job. But I think what we do now is we talk about it a lot more. But to set quotas maybe wouldn't be my first choice. Again, I think it's all about diversity. And I agree, not just with men and women, with age. with background, with, yeah, where you come from. But quarters kind of scare me a little bit.

• Speaker #0

  We come to a close. This is a shared dream, I understand, to have mixed diverse themes and to work for parity in gender. To close this, what can you share, perhaps as an inspiration for our listeners? Pick one thing that you have seen being very efficient, something very easy, practical that we can do at individual level today, tomorrow. Something that works really well, whether it's a measure of... an initiative, a project, what could it be that you can share in this conclusion that anybody could just put in place tomorrow?

• Speaker #2

  Well, I want to focus on the individual level. So I have spoken about the language tip. I would say, especially to women, train yourself to raise your hand before you are sure you are ready. And because there is nothing great that is being done without falling, but you fall and then you step. forward again. And I want to focus on that because usually like a man that fails is judging what he did. And a woman that fails tends to judge what she is. And this is not okay. So we should try to raise the hand before we know we are ready. And even if we are making mistakes, this will be our experience for the rest of our career. So yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Beautiful. So jump in and separate your accomplishments from your identity. Exactly.

• Speaker #4

  Yeah, for me, I think at the end, it also comes to recruitment and who's going to get which position. And I think for me, it's important to look at, OK, what do I really need? What's already in my team? What type of personalities do I have? And again, not only men or women, but what type of personalities do I already have in the team? And what type of things are we missing? And to write that down before you even go to candidates or to shortlist on who could potentially fulfill that job. I think if you write that down in advance, that will definitely help because then it will show that you need a person with these type of skills or with another type of skills. And I think that's something that can really help to diversify teams.

• Speaker #0

  I love the tip of writing it down. You know, it's like a shopping list that you do before you go to the shopping.

• Speaker #4

  To do it before. So not when you have the end list and then because then you talk towards the candidate that you already have in your mind. But do it really before you have any candidates. and then it will definitely help.

• Speaker #0

  Very good.

• Speaker #3

  Jackie? I think a few things. I think when you are recruiting for a new position or an internal promotion, when you have the three or four men that are banging down your door, because they will be the ones to knock first, I think as a general manager, you really have to look deep into your team for the women that are possibly sitting there with that application thinking, will I, will I not? Because sometimes, as with me, I just needed a little nudge just to say, you know, go for it. Go for it. What have you got to lose? Don't be afraid to fail because you will learn from the interview process or you will, you know, you will learn the stages along the way. And my dad always said to me, you know, you can be whoever you want to be, but never underestimate your self-worth. And that's what I would say. But look for those people that are literally writing the application and then they're stopping. Those are the people that you need to look out for to make sure that you encourage them to do it.

• Speaker #2

  I completely rely on what Jackie just said, because sometimes we tend to mix confidence and competence. And it's not necessarily the more confident people that are the more competent. So to illustrate what she's just saying.

• Speaker #0

  So keep an eye on those competent people that perhaps lack just a tiny bit of confidence and do nudge them to go ahead. All these wonderful tips. Thank you so much again, Laura. Thank you, Martin. Thank you, Jackie, for joining this first episode on women empowerment in the hospitality industry. And thanks to all of you for joining us on this first episode of Beyond a Core Invest, where we tackle business, societal and environmental challenges in the hospitality and real estate industries. You can listen to Beyond a Core Invest on almost every podcast platform or watch a video version of this on YouTube. And if you enjoyed it, please make sure to leave a review. To learn more about AccorInvest, go to LinkedIn. In the meantime, dream, dare and take care.

• Speaker #1

  Beyond AccorInvest, the podcast where we talk about our business of today, tomorrow and beyond.