Invite men to women's events: Angela Fox, MD ANZ, Dell

We need to invite men into conversations about women in business, and speak to them in a language that they understand, according to Angela Fox, senior vice president and managing director ANZ at Dell Technologies.

Fox spoke at the recent Women in Tech event hosted by Equinix. She sat on a panel alongside three other female tech leaders and spoke to a room full of women, where the only men attending were working for the venue. 

The event broached topics including the underrepresentation of women in the workforce, the challenges facing women in business, and the characteristics that helped these women achieve success. However, according to Fox, the only way the tech industry and broader Australian business will gain real traction on these issues, is if men are involved in driving the change.

“We can’t have a conversation without involving the majority. And so [men] play a really critical role,” said Fox. “We as females will need to embrace that.”

Responding to an audience question from Digital Nation Australia about how men can be brought into the conversation, Fox said, “Invite them. Put them on the invite list.”

“The whole ‘Is there females on the panel?’ there are situations now where you need to ask yourself ‘are there males on the panel?’ because we don’t want to cut them off.

"They can sometimes tell our story and it will resonate with their male colleagues because they've told it in a male way and that's okay. Because that's advancing our cause, that's what we need,” said Fox.

Fox pointed to the variations in language, tone and delivery that are necessary in landing a key message as a minority.

“If you're sitting in a room of a majority, and it doesn't matter whether it's male or female, wherever you feel the minority, sometimes your language doesn't resonate. Sometimes they don't quite get how you're putting something. There is a degree of needing to understand how you can kind of get your message across. It may not always be the way that you think it is,” said Fox.

“Know your audience and pitch accordingly.”

Referencing a time when a male colleague turned to Fox in a business meeting and told her ‘You talk too much,’ she said she learnt a valuable lesson around message delivery.

“At the time, it felt like a slap across the left cheek, but also I took a learning out of that because the way I was delivering my message to a majority male audience was not resonating. As passionate as I was, it wasn't getting through.

"It doesn't mean that I had to dial back my passion. It didn't mean that I didn't still have a good point to make, but I had to tweak the way I was delivering it to get the resonance,” she said.