Editorials

Editorials

by Felicity Menzies

How Managers Can Make Casual Networking Events More Inclusive

October 22, 2018

Extract:

I have repeatedly found that companies that don’t make an intentional effort to be inclusive often end up excluding women of color and immigrants. It’s crucial for people at all levels of an organization to understand how casual gatherings exclude employees from marginalized backgrounds, and more so, can have a detrimental impact on their careers. Organizations have a responsibility to disrupt these destructive patterns.

Meet Two Women Fighting For Culturally Diverse Leadership To Make Australia More Competitive

February 15, 2018

Extract:

Meet Dai Le and Felicity Menzies: two women determined to shake up the fact our leadership circles in business don’t look anything like the general community.

Flexible Working Hours For Dads Could Be The Future of Australia’s Corporate Culture

October 24, 2017

Extract:

Company culture dictates whether both men and women feel comfortable asking for and accepting flexible working arrangements, regardless of whether there are formal policies enabling them to do so, according to leadership development specialist Felicity Menzies.

An Anecdote About 3 International Professionals Negotiating An Acquisition Illustrates How People Make Decisions Differently Around The World

October 31, 2016

Extract:

Olivia is senior legal counsel in the London office of an accountancy firm. Her group has been working on the acquisition of a competitor business with offices in Mumbai and Dubai. One of her responsibilities is to appoint an external legal firm for the purposes of drafting partnership agreements.

Cultural Intelligence And Business Decision-Making

Dec 1, 2016

Extract:

The way people make business decisions varies from culture to culture. Understanding how different people arrive at their decisions can make or break a business deal.

Cultural Intelligence Is Key to Building Asia Capability

Aug/Sept, 2016

Extract:

Asia is the single biggest growth opportunity for Australian business. By 2025, Asia will account for almost half of the world’s GDP and will be home to four of the largest global economies – China, India, Japan, and Indonesia. By 2030, two-thirds of the world’s middle class will be in Asia, up from one-third today, and by 2050, Asia will have twenty of the world’s top 50 cities ranked by GDP, up from eight in 2007. In A World of Difference: Leading in Global Markets with Cultural Intelligence, Singapore-based consultant Felicity Menzies offers Australian business a proven approach for closing the Asia capability gap and capturing this potential.

Cultural Intelligence Improves Performance In Diverse Settings

July 8, 2016

Extract:

Cultural intelligence is becoming a bigger issue for boards as more Australian organisations expand overseas and look to capitalise on strong growth in emerging Asian markets.

Three Ways Millennial Women Can Successfully Negotiate A Global Assignment

May 31, 2016

Extract:

Felicity Menzies, founder of Culture Plus Consulting, who advises companies on building cultural intelligence, agrees. “Making sure that the right people hear her message is important. Because many international posting are secured informally, it’s helpful for a female millennial with global ambitions to communicate her desire for an international posting widely to colleagues across different levels of the organization and also across departments and locations,” she says. Because so many organizations continue to underestimate their female employees’ willingness to work abroad, women must explicitly communicate their global ambitions to counteract this implicit bias.

Influencing Effectively Across Cultures

June, 2016

Extract:

As workplaces become more diverse, cultural differences in values and communication styles present new challenges for in-house counsel. To be an effective influencer in today’s business environment, in-house lawyers must demonstrate cultural intelligence — the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to communicate appropriately and effectively with people of other cultures. Communicating appropriately involves interacting with others in a manner that conveys genuine interest and does not violate their cultural values, beliefs or norms. Communicating effectively involves successfully achieving the goals of the interaction.

This Leaders Global Assignment In Her 20s Catapulted Her Into Roles Usually Reserved for Men

May 26, 2016

Extract:

Felicity Menzies, founder of Singapore-based diversity and inclusion consultancy Culture Plus Consulting, successfully negotiated an international assignment early in her career, which led her on the path to becoming the former head of Westpac Private Bank in Singapore. While the Australian bank currently boasts close to 50% of women in executive positions, back in 2008, when Menzies was in her role, less than 20% of women held that honor. Menzies tells me that negotiating a global assignment early became the crucial stepping stone to securing senior leadership positions within the financial industry, where only 19% of women hold executive roles.

Diversity In APAC Marketing And Comms: Enough Lip Service

May 9, 2016

Extract:

In Asia, creating a diverse workforce faces specific cultural challenges that change country to country.

Unconscious Bias is Holding Women Back

Oct 28, 2015

Extract:

Many organisations blame a lack of viable female candidates for board positions, even in markets such as Singapore, which has relatively high overall female workforce participation rates. Rather than facing a lack of qualified female talent, it’s more likely that recruiters and HR professionals tasked with board appointments hold biased perceptions of the characteristics and traits that define effective leadership.

Cultural Intelligence is Key to the Future of Business

2015

Extract:

The workplace has changed dramatically over the last two decades, and skillsets must align with this new environment. That is where cultural intelligence (CQ) comes in to play. CQ is defined as an individual’s capability to manage culturally diverse settings – the knowledge, skills and abilities that enable us to detect, assimilate, reason and act on cultural cues appropriately. CQ is not the capability for effectiveness in a particular culture. It is instead a unifying approach to intercultural competency that helps anyone adapt to and function in any novel cultural setting.