Movements like ‘Me Too’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’ have highlighted that equality still has a long way to go in our society. Indeed, the biggest challenge is still to come because the discrimination that remains is often at a subconscious level and baked into our institutions and culture. It’s much harder to tackle a problem when people are often unaware of their part in it.

Kate Eberle Walker is the author of The Good Boss: 9 Ways Every Manager Can Support Women at Work and Chief Executive Officer at PresenceLearning. After a career in the male dominated finance sector, Walker found that when she became a senior leader she received lots of requests from ambitious women hoping she would become their mentor. When she reflected on her own progression, she realized that much of it was down to the good fortune of having a woman as a boss.

“For me, having female mentors had been really critical. I went to work for a female CEO, who mentored me and was a really important part of my career,” Walker said. Noting that only 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs and one-third of managers are women, she started her book to help fill some of the gaps for those who could not find a female mentor.

When she started interviewing other women for her book, she realized how vital the manager was to success. “Almost all the answers were not about a strategy or tactic, but that they had a really good boss,” Walker explains. The result was a book aimed at helping people be better managers, and she shared some of her rules with us.

Call her by her name (Rule 1)

Terms of endearment are commonplace, but they are also loaded. Calling someone ‘dear’ or ‘sweetie’ instead of their name carries with it a host of assumptions about that person’s qualities and position, regardless of how innocently it might be used.

It also reflects a wider set of judgments that people will subconsciously make about women. There has been copious research showing that people will assign different characteristics based on gender for the same action: a man might be seen as assertive while the same behavior in a woman can be seen as shrill.

Don’t make her ask twice (Rule 7)

Walker tells a story from early in her career when a CFO told her that he always waited for people to ask him twice for something to make sure it was important. However, when she remembered this later in her career and followed up on a request to consider her salary, she ended up being made to feel insignificant for asking again.

Research shows that women often self-censor. In salary negotiations half of men will ask for a rise, but only three-in-ten women. Walker highlights that the problem applies to any situation which might require assertiveness, “women are less inclined to ask. So, there's a penalty if you set up situations where you force a woman to not only ask once, but twice. How likely is it that she's going to feel like she can keep on pushing?”

Managers must recognize that even equality of opportunity is not equity if the women have been conditioned not to ask, and need to make it as easy as possible with allowances for negative experiences in the past — especially if these might have been within the same company.

Don’t ask, “What Does Your Husband Do?” (Rule 3)

Walker found many women whose situation at work changed because their situation at home changed. Something that would not happen for men. “Women would tell me that from the minute that they walked into an office with an engagement ring on their finger, people would change their attitudes and assumptions about them,” Walker says. The consequences were often negative, whether that was poorer pay because it was assumed their partner was supporting them, or fewer opportunities because there was the assumption they would leave to have children.

In fact, the decisions that a woman makes about her personal life are as relevant, or irrelevant, as those made by a man. As Walker says, “don't assume that because she's having milestones in her life that any of that speaks to her ambition for herself in her work.”

Whether you manage one person or one thousand, there is a lot to learn from Walker’s book. The key, perhaps, like we have seen when considering difficult conversations or influence, is developing that understanding relationship and acting on it. Whenever you are interacting with someone, understanding their position, and thinking about how your behaviors and actions affect that, can make all the difference.

Click here to listen to Kate’s episode.