Shaifali Sandhya, PhD. 

‘Nobody knows my heart is crying’ By Todd Stump Everyone in Arbaz’s family is dead. One brother disappeared more than two decades ago and another died after losing a leg in a bombing and an arm to the Taliban, who sawed it off at the shoulder. Arbaz’s hosts have generously provided for his material needs and attended to his physical injuries, but after 11 months as a refugee in Germany, this is the first time the 23-year-old Afghani opened up about the trauma he experienced in his home and during his journey. “Nobody knows my heart is crying,” he told Dr. Shaifali Sandhya at a Red Cross refugee center in Berlin. “When I would tell people at home, they’d treat it as an ordinary thing.” To people in his homeland his experience is unexceptional, common enough not to be examined or thought about too much. The same is true for people in his new home. His fellow refugees lived through their own traumas and the staff at the resettlement centers have heard many similar stories. Sandhya -- a Delhi-born, Cambridge-educated psychologist -- has counseled hundreds of immigrants in her career. She says the psychological effects of trauma from war -- loss, privation and social isolation -- may be a better indicator of an immigrant’s ability to successfully adapt han characteristics governments tend to focus on, like country of origin and religion. Sandhya left her home in Chicago in November 2016 to conduct a 10-day fact-finding trip in Germany, the first part of a study of how trauma among refugees manifests itself in individual and group behavior. Sandhya, 44, speaks five languages and is learning German as well. She financed the project herself. She visited four cities, spoke to government ministers, visited refugee centers and met more than 100 refugees, videotaping interviews with some of them, including Arbaz. Names of the refugees have been changed to protect their identities because they fear the recent backlash against Muslim immigration in Europe and are concerned that President Donald Trump’s travel ban will force them to return to their home countries, where they likely will face retribution and even death. [Sandhya with relief workers in Dusseldorf] At the outset of the trip, Sandhya considered herself well-suited for the research. An immigrant herself, she has lived in five different countries, including Muslim ones, and studied the interpersonal dynamics of non-Westerners in Western countries. She counsels immigrant families confronted by colliding cultures, but while examining the physical and psychological journey of refugees, she began a journey of her own. She arrived at the first refugee center in a bustling Berlin neighborhood dotted with ethnic restaurants, where 40 percent of the residents are immigrants. [ A young refugee father in Greece. Photo Courtsey: Bernhard Von Gruenberg] The refugee center is in a recently converted department store, the exterior of which was decorated with children’s drawings -- it could have been a school or a recreation center. The elevator was covered in graffiti, but not the kind an American city-dweller might expect. Instead, these were images of dinosaurs with kitten’s heads and other fanciful children’s scribblings. Germany’s refugee population is primarily from Afghanistan and Syria and is mostly male. All the residents at the refugee center have experienced some form of trauma. The scar that runs down the face of Ferhad, a 20-year-old unmarried Syrian immigrant from Aleppo, is a lifetime reminder of the torture he suffered under interrogation. Arbaz contracted an infection during a long boat journey, causing severe abdominal pain and blood in his urine. “These are clear signals to health professionals that they are in need of help. But what of the wounds that can’t be seen?” Sandhya asked. With Sandhya next to him, Arbaz sat patiently while questions and answers were translated from English to German to Urdu and then back again. Frustrated, he finally turned to Sandhya and surprised her, asking in her native Hindi, “How do I explain what goes on in my heart?” In her years of counseling immigrants and helping them to cope with new environments and personal relationships, Sandhya learned that what might seem to be a matter of the mind to a mental health professional is frequently a matter of the heart to a patient. “I’ve learned that you can’t help a person if you ignore culture and family considerations, but until now, I’ve seen it mostly from the female perspective,” she says. “This new experience has taught me that the traumas women suffer are often related to the traumas experienced by the men in their lives. But men in these cultures are reluctant to talk about them, so the problem goes untreated.” Hassan – whose name, like Arbaz’s, has been changed to protect his identity -- told Sandhya that he had been a darji, a tailor. He was born to a Kurdish family of seven siblings in Afrin, a land wild with olive groves known as “liquid gold” in northern Syria. “I had a normal life,” the 32-year-old refugee said. “After my marriage, I stayed with my wife and children.” That changed in 2006 when Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad’s forces pulled Hassan from his shop and out of his normal life. He was detained in a secret prison for his “political activities” and his quest for a new life began. Upheaval in the lives of refugees like Hassan can cause trauma that manifests in ways having profound effects on both refugees and the countries where they settle. Sandhya said psychologists know that when no constructive outlets are available for mental anguish, symptoms can emerge as what they call “somatic” pain, or pain related to the body and distinct from the mind. “Somatic pain can manifest itself in many guises including malaise or chronic bodily aches, but has no diagnosable medical cause," she explains. Further disguising the problem is that these trauma manifestations may be shaped by culture, so they deviate from the typical ways Americans, for instance, may experience PTSD, Sandhya said. “Salvadoran female civil war refugees can suffer from “calorias“-- a perception of intense heat in their body. For Cambodians, it is sometimes manifested as hallucinations of vengeful spirits,” she said. Headaches, Sandhya learned, was how Syrian men here are experiencing the phenomenon. “I have huge headaches. I feel sad but I don’t cry . . . I am living with men and I cannot have them see me cry,” Hassan said. “Have you spoken to Aliya and Imran since you left?” Sandhya asked, inquiring about Hassan’s children. Rubbing his temple, Hassan replied, “I have a headache. I am sorry. I want to tell you more… but I cannot.” Another coping mechanism is unwavering faith. Many refugees credit Allah with their survival. Yet another is dissociation, a term psychologists use to describe the separation of normally related mental processes, which results in one process functioning independently from the rest. “It is a coping mechanism to help the person continue to function in the aftermath of emotionally traumatizing life events,” Sandhya said. She sees it regularly when refugees tell their stories, describing horrific events in anodyne, emotionless ways. Arbaz told his story as if he was reading a telegram; short declarative sentences delivering horrifying news and ending abruptly. “I saw little children take pictures of the war, of dead corpses.” “People were being flagellated, strung up as chickens with their flesh torn up.” Even before he turned 13, four of Arbaz’s siblings died, lost to bombing and Taliban attacks. When he was 16, another sibling died. His parents, unable to cope with their misfortune and without treatment for their own trauma, died in quick succession, grief-stricken. Left out of his retelling was any description of his own horror at having witnessed such events, the terror he must have felt under constant fear of death, or the heartbreak of watching his parents die. By the time a refugee arrives in a host country, he has spent an average of $9,000, traveled through six countries and many cities, endured two years of intense hardship, and attempted unsuccessfully to settle in a safe haven at least twice. But, most significantly, he has likely witnessed repeated brutalities to family members, loved ones and traveling companions. “What an outsider might see as a casual acceptance of death is the brain coping with overwhelming trauma,” Sandhya said. “Dissociation limits and alters the access to intense sensory and emotional memories that would otherwise inhibit basic functions.” While this protective mechanism alters the impact of terror on our bodies, it does so at the price of silencing victims whose experiences are vital to understanding the effects of trauma. Sandhya recommended that refugees be encouraged to share these traumatic episodes both for their own health and for their successful integration into their new communities. Through her study, Sandhya said she hopes to gather knowledge of civic innovations that lead to more successful integration with less conflict. She said the lessons can be applied to refugee settlement in the U.S. While there are misgivings among the general public about the level of resettlement in Germany and a growing political backlash, Sandhya said that everyone from the most senior elected officials to the caregivers in the refugee centers were united in their unwavering belief that the experiment will succeed. Frequently, the commitment is quite personal; many Germans involved in the resettlement efforts are married to immigrants or are immigrants themselves. But their efforts on behalf of the refugees can be suspect. In their home villages, many were told that Germany is a dangerous place where Muslims were unwelcome. Rania, an 8-year-old from Syria, at first refused to believe one of the center’s workers was, in fact, German. Rania said to her, “I can’t believe it because you smile all the time.” Todd Stump – Bio Todd Stump is a consultant and freelance writer from Chicago, Illinois. He built broadcast television, publishing, and digital media companies in Central European countries including Poland and Romania and consulted for a Fortune 500 start-up in Russia. He currently builds brands and creates messages for non-profit organizations and companies. Published in US News and World Report, February 15, 2017 http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-02-15/in-germany-refugees-face-challenges-beyond-relocation

This is part 1 of a 3-part series on the Mental Health On A College Campus: the soaring levels of stress and suicide on college campuses, particularly among Asian-American women; the difference between anxiety and depression; and what colleges can do to instill a sense of happiness independent of achievements, and the importance of developing the art of talking about feelings. A recurring dream troubles Connie each night. She’s walking when the darkness knots her feet, creeps up all around her, and she falls. When she first came to the US from Fujian, China at eleven years old, she told herself, “No one is here to support you. You must support yourself.” Through the crossfires of insomnia, exhaustion, crying, overeating, and panic attacks, she grappled strenuously through to high school. A few times, she tried to share her feelings with her mother, who reprimanded her, “You’re a lazy bum. Just get faster reactions.” In a Major Depressive Episode, people may tend to show psychomotor retardation, where they move sluggishly, avert their eyes, sit slumped or speak slowly. When her mom interpreted the lethargy inherent in depression mistakenly to be laziness, Connie thought, "maybe the problems will go away in high school." When they didn’t and she talked to her father, his response was, “You don’t have problems. You think too much.” This Fall, Connie will be one of the twenty million freshmen starting college and navigating other challenges of young adulthood. Today’s college students have many worries and campus life is rife with anxieties: What will I do when I graduate? Do I have enough to pay for the semester, the year? Will I gain the freshmen fifteen, or thirty? How do I balance classes, academic work, clubs, friends, finding internships, keeping in contact with family, and a job without being overwhelmed? For students everywhere, along with vast possibilities, campuses are cauldrons of uncertainty amidst pressures and perfectionism. Graph: What is your client's top-most concern? For 25,475 college students, clinicians chose one primary concern per client Source: Center for Collegiate Mental Health, PennState, Annual Report 2014 For the American freshman today, stress is at its all time high.While male college students experience similar pressures as women (Read Julie Scelfo, New York Times, 2015), the statistics are particularly alarming for Asian American female students. Recent research indicates growing alcoholism, drug abuse, and HIV risk. Information compiled by the American Psychological Association sheds light on the epidemic of silent despair: Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Asian-Americans aged 15-34 US-born Asian-American women have a higher lifetime rate of suicidal thoughts (15.9 percent) than that of the general U.S. population (13.5 percent) Among Asian-American adults, those aged 18-34 have the highest rates of suicidal thoughts (11.9 percent), intent (4.4 percent) and attempts (3.8 percent) compared to other age groups Asian-Americans college students are more likely than White American students to have had suicidal thoughts and to attempt suicide Earlier this year, Luchang Wang, a Yale University undergraduate, wrote in an FB message that she was in “deep emotional pain” before she jumped to her death from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Of the nineteen suicides on the MIT campus in the last 15 years, 42% involved Asian American students. Asian American college students like Luchang and Connie experience greater rates of stress and are more likely to think about suicide than their non-Asian peers. Connie was raised in Fujian, China by her maternal grandparents. Her father left for the US when she was ten months old and worked odd jobs six days a week, mostly repairing window casements and doors. Her mother followed him shortly thereafter. When her grandparents could no longer support Connie, she was sent to the US. When Connie arrived in their tiny Chinatown one bedroom apartment, she “didn’t even know ABC.” Her parents and younger three siblings, whom she had never met, felt like “familiar strangers.” Three deadly knots underpin poor mental health in Asian American students: We tend to think of students as being depressed and unable to cope with high pressure – but they may carry a predisposition to depression. High suicide or depression rates are associated with existing and/or untreated family psychiatric illness, due to shame and ignorance of mental illness. We tend to think of Asian-American families as “collectivist” who put their “families first.” The primacy of family assumes open communication, but in fact communication is generally quite poor in Asian American families. Career trumps communication about feelings. Amy Chua writes in The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom: “The Chinese mother believes that (1) schoolwork always comes first; (2) an A-minus is a bad grade; (3) your children must be two years ahead of their classmates in math; (4) you must never compliment your children in public; (5) if your child ever disagrees with a teacher or coach, you must always take the side of the teacher or coach; (6) the only activities your children should be permitted to do are those in which they can eventually win a medal; and (7) that medal must be gold.” Many families, not just Asian American ones, tend to think of authoritative parenting with rationed praise as critical for their child’s success. They believe that a child’s success is measured not by the authenticity of their true feelings but through possessing any number of such assets: beauty, career, hard work, intelligence, accolades, etc. This flies in the face of child development experts who believe that every child has a need to be noticed, understood, taken seriously, and loved by her parents. When families develop the art of not talking about feelings, children learn to deny their own feelings, particularly negative ones. As adults they may not know how to regulate their negative emotions and resort to dealing with them through addictions (work, sex, alcohol, video games, and so forth). If they are in intimate relationships, when conflicts occur, they may find themselves caught in cycles of punitive or cutting off relationships. A high-stress and high achievement campus culture activates such preexisting vulnerabilities. Thoughts of suicide and suicide attempts peak during high school and college – a time when social groups are being formed and the pressure to fit into them is the highest. This suggests the important role peer relationships can play in managing depression and enhancing a sense of belonging. At some level, students like Connie know something is amiss with them. “When I’m in college,” says Connie of the depression, “I want this to be over and done with...I just need someone to be there mentally.” Students like Connie are only too relieved and empowered when they find someone they can talk to. How do you find a sense of accomplishment independent of material achievements? Colleges must foster learning and critical inquiry about the self in imaginative ways too as students embark onto life’s defining moments. It is up to the colleges to provide students with the resources to connect to themselves, with one another, especially for those who are not used to doing so. It is not an easy task to teach anyone to attend, value, respond, and regulate their feelings, but colleges must rise to the task or else, allow some of their best and brightest to fall into the darkness. In part 2 of Mental Health On A College Campus, I’ll describe the difference between anxiety and depression and how colleges can help students develop a sense of happiness. Executive Coaching|Chicago: Dr. Shaifali Sandhya offers professional career coaching for high school and college students, and executives to assist them in driving positive change in their life. She has a practical and insightful approach conducted in a confidential environment uniquely tailored to meet their needs such as: increasing creativity; engagement; team motivation, and bottom-line; or reducing stress, to plan for an impactful future. Dr. Sandhya has coached teams in organizations like Mckinsey and provided consultation to industry leaders in the areas of law, architecture, and technology.

The New York Times publishes Dr. Shaifali Sandhya's letter in response to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz piece (“Searching for Sex,” Sunday Review, Jan. 25)

The New York Times editorial section published a letter to the editor by Shaifali Sandhya, Ph.D., which responded to the op-ed India's Mental Health Crisis. India lacks mental health care Re “India’s mental health crisis” (Editorial, Dec. 31): India’s mental health conundrum is compounded not by just a scarcity of trained professionals but also by resource deficits, such as a lack of mental institutions and beds for the mentally ill. Few government hospitals have a psychiatric outpatient facility and only a handful have inpatient facilities for psychiatry patients. Such resource deficits result in treatment gaps where 50 to 90 percent of people with urgent needs are unable to access health services. Strategic efforts in mental health can only commence with a steadfast governmental commitment. Over the past two decades, as I have treated and researched mental health concerns in Indian families, both in India and America, I have witnessed firsthand how the absence of early preventive action results in long-term suffering for families. Shaifali Sandhya, Chicago The writer is a clinical psychologist and an associate professor at Adler University. Published in the New York Times on January 25, 2015 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/opinion/islam-and-the-national-front.html

Hang in there, Nadella, CEO Microsoft, advises women in the technology industry not to ask for a pay-raise. Trust in him, he believes, and faith in the system will eventually, reward women for their hard work. I wrote in: Part 1, Nadella and Women: Four Alarming Facts, about the gender pay-gap and the daily disenfranchising behaviors professional women experience; and Part 2, The Satya Nadella Thinking Code, damaging effects advice such as this has for an organization and industry. In Part 3, How Nadella Can Be the Leader We Need, I write about how Nadella can unleash creativity within Microsoft and the tech industry by harnessing female talent. "What is it that we can do that is unique, that is impactful?," Rapper Common asks, quoting Nadella from his 2014 speech in the Super Bowl 2015 Microsoft sponsored ads; the answer is one that continues to evade Nadella: empower women. The Cloud may be the next big thing, but there are many big myths clouding the technology industry. One false belief is that men – not women – are key consumers of technology. Not true, says Genevieve Bell, the Director of User Experience at Intel. In Western countries, she says women are remapping technology: more than men, women spend greater time on the internet surfing, skyping, texting, and networking on social media sites. And, specific technology-driven interventions in areas such as in-vitro fertilization are transforming the lives of women all over the world. Women’s choices, Deloitte reports, translate to 85% of purchasing decisions or $4.3 trillion (of $5.9 trillion) of US consumer spending. This is no pocket-change and nor is the technology industry’s reach restricted only to information technology. How to tap into his female consumer’s extraordinary economic potential then, by tapping into the multiple markets that information technology touches, ought to be paramount for Nadella, and any other CEO. Women’s interests are lucrative, and they’re creating a buzz in the global economy: on one hand women are economic drivers but on the other, they feel underserved by the products they purchase. Consider the recent launch of Apple Health, a self-tracking health app to let users measure “all of your metrics,” and yet, excludes menstruation. This crucial omission of the most significant biological, psychological and emotional condition afflicting females as girls, wives, mothers, and sometimes, grandmothers and one which consumes an enormous chunk of their month isn’t just an honest blip; it is a symptom in the cultural value plaguing organizational innovation. Namely, women have peripheral, not primary benefits as consumers, collaborators, and contributors. Thus, women in Nadella’s Microsoft, like the rest of the world, might see themselves as game changers, but when it comes to Microsoft’s boardrooms and executive committees, they are kept at the margins. Gender is an important construct in shaping women’s thoughts, experiences, and world-views but when it comes to technology products, innovations seldom incorporate gender in designs. Two important tasks of a CEO are how to gain competitive advantage by shaping an industry, and to mobilize all of employees equally. In this light, Super Bowl ads, estimated at sixteen million dollars may have limited utility in empowering Microsoft and it's culture.To gain these advantages, Nadella must create an ecosystem that enables gender-diversity. Understanding the ecosystem and working for the common good, are the most critical qualities for a leader to have, says Maccoby, an advisor for top-tier leadership in 35 countries or Strategic Intelligence. Strategic Intelligence in the case of Nadella would require foresight, crafting a vision, collaboration, and empowering people within Microsoft. In his book, The Leaders We Need, Maccoby says: leaders people follow are ones who understand deeply the diverse mix of people they lead. He also offers four suggestions to leaders: Develop a heart, clear the mind, listen deeply, and be responsive. Developing a heart to listen deeply, a capability if nurtured, will serve Nadella well. To start with, for Nadella, this would involve tuning in to the female psyche. To attend to the complexities and challenges of being a woman he would need to identify the many “faces” of his female consumers (such as: single, married without children, married with children, divorced; and the vast swathe globally: poor women in countries like India, Africa and Bangladesh who spearhead entrepreneurial businesses via their mobiles). To mobilize women Nadella would need to engage women at all organizational levels and in all processes – from tapping into other women’s user experiences to factoring in gender in the design process. This will assist Microsoft in gaining both commercial and innovative advantages. Work place diversity pays, Herring, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago would tell Nadella. Herring concluded that a diverse work force enhances business earnings: bringing in 15 times more sales revenue. There are other advantages in attracting and retaining talented women, especially for OECD countries where labor force is predicted to shrink by 15% by 2030. And Nadella would find, as Zenger and Folkman did, through a study of 7280 leaders that women do make for better leaders than men. Nadella has the potential to shape technology and women’s private experiences at work by executing the Microsoft mantra – Be What’s Next. It’s a rare CEO, globally, that believes that gender diversity ought to be a strategic priority. It's true that Nadella has his plate full with Windows 10 and the future success of Azure, Xbox, and Office 365 but in order to give Microsoft the "best opportunity to serve our customers everywhere," Nadella will have to listen deeply and more than Ballmer did. Through deep listening and collaboration, Nadella could re-imagine organizational processes at Microsoft and reshape in positive ways the role of gender in technology. When executives find that their perspectives matter in their work places, it greatly improves their creativity and the quality of their lives. By honing in to the pulse and passions of his female executives, Nadella can be the leader we need. So next time, when a young woman asks him, How should women ask for a raise, Nadella need only say: Just like everybody else! I'd love to hear from you: What do you think makes for a good leader or a CEO? And, if you like this article, feel free to share

This is the second in a series of three posts on the Nadella Thinking Code, and what do to do about it. Read Part 1 here. Synopsis, Part 1: Against the backdrop of twin data – token paycheck of talented women relative to their male colleagues and daily disenfranchising behaviors they face at work - Mr. Nadella’s advice – Hang in There –reveals and perpetuates the pervasive bias at work: Women are discount workers, lesser than men in their intellectual abilities, talents and interests Bias means showing favoritism to one over another or being closed off to the talents of another. Here are the three damaging effects of Nadella’s Thinking Code: 1. Resurrecting Stereotypes & The Weak Value of Being Nice Professional women are supposed to be nurturing, nice and easygoing, a widely held fixed idea that affects how we evaluate women, roles they occupy, their communication, and when they digress from such softer skills, their harsh perceptions. Don’t ask for a raise, and if you do, you’re not going to be trusted is a double whammy: it reminds women that their workplace expects them to be nice, and also their dreams are secondary. No wonder then, while most women in Science, Tech, Engineering and Math (STEM) professions) love their jobs, startlingly just after one year 45% won’t stick around! Incidentally, you must know Mr. Nadella: CEO compensations have ballooned to five times the salary of our wealthiest 0.1 percent, and in recent decades skyrocketed by 937%? What’s good for the goose must be good for the gander. But women learn fast that they dare not dream of owning deep pockets as yours.In schools and homes, young girls learn that they are agents in a meritocratic system, their ideas are currency and their potential is limitless. The workplace reverses childhood lessons; in rewarding how women function in relation to others, it also deprives them of opportunities to learn relevant skills. In limiting their capacities, leaders like Nadella and organizations like Microsoft limit their potential. 2. Double Standards and the Bromance Sabotaging Innovation: Nadella’s bumble afforded the perfect storm for the male leadership in technology; they could have supported their female colleagues grappling sexism and misogyny in overt ways such as - bullying of female critics like Sarkeesian by male video gamers, sexist apps like ‘Titstare,’ and male alpha culture – but they didn’t. Women consumers control $20 trillion spending, globally, but products representing them are either stereotypical (softer, pinker, more purple, more flowery) or more masculine. In an innovation hungry milieu, “good karma” worker – diligent yet unmindful of her labor, is precisely what successful organizations need to avoid. Diverse teams imply representation of differences in gender, ethnicity, personality, and culture, and safety to voice their thoughts. Diversity and empowerment will bring about unbridled creativity. 3. Leave or Learn helplessness In their first year at work, courageous and creative women who have previously navigated stereotypes to bag jobs in the industry, face a conundrum: quit and turn away from tech or be self-employed. Exodus makes sense, for deep down we all seek control; the successful control of any space, emotional or work leads to personal satisfaction and creativity.Those who decide to stay, need to hunker down and pretend the wide-spread bias doesn’t exist (including shaping their own expectations or bringing their behaviors in line with others’ expectations) in order to survive. Accordingly, they will suppress their selves - voice fewer opinions, learn to speak as pacifiers, or suppress those suggesting differences – and their abilities. When people feel helpless that they cannot control their circumstances no matter what they do, they will show increases in stress, depression, creativity and productivity with consequences for the organization. To beat his own thinking code and to create an empowered and aware organization for all, Nadella can do these three things to correct his bias: 1. Get Out of His Cloud Crunch analyses to determine reasons why women are falling behind in his organization. It’s not the employees who need fixing, it’s his system and his bias. 2. Get to Know His Gals and Build Female Empowerment Wine and dine the gals to find out what’s bothering them. Figure out what the shyest one has to say in a safe place and without fear of being out of line with his expectations. Organize peer groups to help them develop how they can be self advocates so they can bring about change for other women in the community and society. Implement financial reimbursements and bridging the gap for salaries, bonuses, merit pay, and resources invested in women at Microsoft, resulting in products that are useful and engaging for a wider audience. 3. Know Himself Launch his own personal journey to explore his deep-seeded biases. He may discover that his transference with his larger-than-life company – might be clouding his ability to see his organization’s sexist behaviors. As he deepens his awareness, he may discover his compassion for the challenges faced by his female employees so that he may be the leader we need. In Part 3, How Nadella can be The Leader We Need, I'll explore how persons in positions of power can unleash creativity through diversity and empowerment. I look forward to your comments on this topic.

This is part 1 of a 3-part series on the Thinking Code of Satya Nadella; its effect on an organization; and what to do about it. Click Follow to read more from Dr. Shaifali Sandhya. How should women ask for a raise? Hang in there, advises Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, to women in technology, for “the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along.” Take my word for it, continues Nadella, “Good karma will come back.” And “that’s the kind of person that I want to trust, that I want to give responsibility to.” The ever widening difference between what women earn in comparison to male colleagues, is as important to a gathering of the 7500 most formidable and talented women in technology, as it is to the rest of us. So, how to make more money would have been especially important counsel coming from Microsoft’s leader - being paid $18 million for 2015 – except it didn’t come, and what did, was woeful. Instead, as outrage poured on social media, Nadella swiftly back-pedaled, saying he was “inarticulate” and conceding that the “industry must close the gap.” The apology, like the comment, was flawed, but interestingly – it hacked Nadella’s thinking code and with it, an insider tip to unwritten success rules in the work-place. While his advice – a leap of faith and blind trust - could work for an arranged marriage, there are reasons why it is toxic for our psyche, and devastating for the technology industry. However, this could very well be a teachable moment for Mr. Nadella if he follows three repair strategies (which I will cover in part 2 of this series) First, let’s examine four facts about the conditions under which women work in the technology sector – 83% male versus 25% female workers in technology; 29% female work force at Microsoft; only 15% percent make it to any kind of managerial role (Graph 1) 17% of females hold leadership position at Microsoft but most likely, this figure further drops at senior leadership levels, since only 5.2% women in general, make it as Fortune 500 CEOs Female computer science and engineering majors earn 77- 88 percent of their male colleagues salary one year after graduating, furthering widening during employment For the rare racial and ethnically diverse women in technology, the pay gap is more stark: African-American women earn 69 percent and Latinas earn 58 percent of their male colleagues Ladies, this is what this means: no matter who you are, a judge, a cardiologist or a professor, you will always make far less than your male colleagues of similar age, race, education, and who puts in the same hours on the job as you. And one would think that as you accumulate more expertise, competence and experience, you could earn more. But no, this pay-gap is counterintuitive, it widens as you age. No matter what skills you learn or what degrees you earn, at work the biggest unsurpassable barrier isn’t your competence but your gender. What the wide and unyielding pay-gap doesn’t reveal is this: the standard differential practices at work women experience daily: longer durations to get a promotion or an equity partner; size of their bonus or merit pay; their performance is evaluated and competence judged by supervisors; and, how their professional identity can be deemed optional and secondary. This wide pay-gap also doesn’t reveal the absence of softer interpersonal skills - encouragement, inclusion, and access to resources – are as important as financial ones in nurturing competence, accomplishment, and satisfaction. The thinking code manifest in the pay-gap is that women are lesser than men, in their intellectual abilities, talents, and interests; the thinking code drives pervasive bias behaviors and shapes who will succeed in the work-place. So, Hang in There in a system creating inequity for you isn’t the best advice. This is why Nadella’s thinking is problematic. But that’s not the only reason why…In The Satya Nadella Thinking Code: Three Damaging Effects, and Three Ways to Cure Them (part 2 of the three-part series), I’ll describe how the Nadella Code can damage an organization, and what he might do to overcome that damage. I look forward to reading your replies on this topic.