Interview Valérie Rocoplan “Dare to be the Chef”

As part of the reissue of her bestseller “Daring to be the Chef”, Valérie Rocoplan, Founder, Director and Executive Coach Talentis, tells us about her book and all the important topics it addresses.

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Remi Zunino: We are meeting today to talk about the new reissue of your book “Daring to be the Chef”, and this will be an opportunity to come back a bit about what prompted you to write it in 2008. Where are we today in terms of gender diversity in business? What can you imagine for the future? First question: what prompted you to write this book “Dare to be the Chef” in 2008?

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Valerie Rocoplan: I was giving a talk at HEC for women, and I was explaining a bit about the boosters and blockers of a successful career for women, and at that moment, Christie Vanbremeersch, who was co-author of the book, came to me and said: “Listen, what you are saying is fascinating. Wouldn't you like to write? ”. I told her: “I am a business manager, I am an executive coach, I really don't have time.” Finally she came to interview me, she recorded me, and thanks to her, we did the first edition in 2008, and it was very successful very quickly. The idea at the beginning was really to make this book a mentoring book for all women who are ambitious and who want to decode the keys to success before falling into certain pitfalls. And it's true that a career path in general is not easy, but being a woman, often in very masculine environments, it can be even more complicated. And so this book is really like a guide for all ambitious women who want to know how to go about each stage of their career, from the first stage of the recruitment interview, to joining a management committee.

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RICE: And speaking of the feedback you can get from readers, it was a subject that was a bit new in 2008, especially in France, when you released this book, what was the feedback? Both on the part of the readers, but also perhaps on the part of the companies that you have supported on the subject?

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VR: The subject was not new, for years and companies have always been working for more diversity within teams for years. But in 2008, business constraints began to increase in order to accelerate the feminization of jobs, since the Copé-Zimmermann law was passed in 2011, so it was already in the works. This law only affects boards of directors, but it still had a very strong psychological effect since it forced companies to have at least 50% women on boards of directors, which was successful. Ten years later, we can say that this law was extremely effective. Ten years later, we can say that this law was extremely effective. What women wanted was to have a number of tips and tricks to be able to access the functions that interest them. And sometimes, there are also men who read the book, to try to understand how they can help the female talents of their teams, and they were also interested to see what the boosters and blockers of a female career could be, so I have a few men among the readers.

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RICE: Today it will almost be fifteen years since the first edition was released, where do we stand in terms of the progress of gender diversity within companies?

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VR: There is an awareness, I think that young women today who are 25 or 30 years old more aware of the subject, more able to announce their ambitions, more able to really want to have a professional project that suits them. Ambition does not necessarily mean rising, it can also mean growing in the job you are in, but it always means progressing, because as soon as you stop progressing, you stay. So I think that from the point of view of awareness, it is more generalized to the functions of business leaders. Generally, there is an awareness, they have put in place certain actions. What is still a bit wrong is that the transformation plan is not conducted like a project, and therefore there are actions scattered all over the place, in addition it is sometimes not sufficiently coordinated. And so now, the next step, which we with Talentis support in companies, is for all these actions to be coordinated as a transformation program to work for gender diversity at all levels of the company and for this to be coordinated by business with HR, and not only by HR.

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RICE: Today, the activity of supporting companies for more diversity has existed at Talentis for fifteen years, would you tell us that you have supported how many companies and how many talents on this theme?

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VR: So now, I would say that we had to support around fifty companies on this subject, we must be close to 15,000 to 20,000 female talents. We also supported Comexes, management committees, managers, HR managers, to raise their awareness of the subject and understand which actions are useful and which actions are much less effective in succeeding in retaining female talent, promoting them, recruiting them and ensuring fair treatment. Because that's what it's about, it's that with equal skills, men and women have the same chances of accessing positions of responsibility or certain jobs. Talentis works to build programs for female talent and to ensure that they are promoted to positions of responsibility to raise awareness among managers and leaders about the subject and to give them the cards in hand as managers on what they can do at their level. And then sometimes to build, with HR as well, priority action plans for promotion, recruitment, talent pools, in any case, that there are coordinated actions around this subject.

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RICE: And coming back to the book and this new reissue, what is new in it compared to the previous editions?

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VR: We had a lot of chapters that dealt with the ability to succeed in recruitment interviews, to manage one's energy, to develop one's influence, to develop one's assertiveness... And this year, we added chapters that were highly requested of us, such as the management of dual careers, such as the development of one's power of influence, such as the development of one's power of influence, such as the subject of teleworking... In short, we updated ourselves in relation to topics that were really requested by our readers, and particularly also the subject of motherhood or parenting. How can we access the best practices put in place by women who manage to thrive in their professional project without exhausting themselves, with a life that is often rich and full. The luck we have is that fifteen years later, I think we have a generation of young spouses, who are quite feminists and who are, I think, convinced of the importance of dual careers. This was much less the case fifteen years ago, and so today, we see favorable ground in terms of personal life. Now it's up to businesses to become much more inclusive and to really get rid of their old macho and sexist shackles, and their very cartoonish leadership profile, and embrace leadership diversity. Moreover, beyond gender diversity, there is gender diversity, cultural diversity, age diversity, skin color diversity... And I think that diversity will also help global diversity.

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RICE: And also compared to the book, did I see that there were QR codes to the videos in the “La Minute Coaching Professional” series?

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VR: It's true that Talentis has been putting this in place for five years. These are short videos to show and share tips and tricks in management, leadership, etc. We thought it was a good idea to make this book even more of a learning experience. There were tests, there were questionnaires, there were stories, testimonies... And now, we said hey, we can associate videos with quite a few chapters that explain important things that complement what is explained in the book. Besides, people like to watch videos more and more, so we combined the magic of the QR code so that our readers could have access to some of the best “Coaching Minutes” from Talentis.

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RICE: Very well thank you very much Valérie. We hope that this new book and all of Talentis' activity and actions will also help to accelerate awareness and the effective reality of gender diversity in business.

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VR: We want it. Thanks Rémi, and happy reading everyone! You will find this book at Fnac, on Amazon and in all good bookstores. See you very soon and do not hesitate to send me your comments on the book.

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