Harnessing the Power of LGBT Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)

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jenniferbContributed by Jennifer Brown and Judy DiClemente, Jennifer Brown Consulting

The imperative for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender awareness in the workplace has grown dramatically in recent years. This has been fueled by a larger conversation around workforce engagement and diversity, which asks the question, “Do our employees feel they can bring their whole selves to work?” When large swaths of employees feel the need to manage or hide their identities on a daily basis, the losses in productivity, innovation, and corporate reputation are staggering. The introduction of ever-greater numbers of Gen Y employees, who display an unprecedented comfort with diversity and include many “allies,” stands in stark contrast to the closeted reality experienced by many LGBT Gen X and Baby Boomer employees.

Although many employer-of-choice companies have made great strides and commitments on the policy level, this reality continues to lag behind corporate aspirations and declarations of support. This is especially true in the financial services industry, where the war for talent (especially of the younger variety) rages, and yet where there continue to be serious cultural challenges around diversity and inclusion efforts, and LGBT inclusion specifically.

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Voice of Experience: Jennifer Barbetta, Managing Director, Chief Operating Officer, Alternative Investments & Manager Selection, Goldman Sachs

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Jennifer Barbetta“You should look at your career as a marathon, not a sprint,” advised Jennifer Barbetta, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer for the Alternative Investments & Manager Selection business at Goldman Sachs. That’s one piece advice she said she likes to share with her junior team members and those she mentors.

In fact, Barbetta said, “Watching those I have mentored find success is one of my proudest achievements.” She believes in having candid and honest conversations with her team and mentees. “These conversations provide them with the tools to help lead them down the path to success.”

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Why We Need More Gay Role Models in Financial Services

women smilingI learned a shocking statistic recently. According to a poll by the HRC [PDF], up to 51% of LGBT professionals on Wall Street are still in the closet. That means over half – half – of LGBT professionals are uncomfortable being themselves in their workplace.

We must ask why so many professionals are still afraid, in 2011, to be open about who they are and who they share their lives with. If anything, this statistic reveals some very shocking truths about the nature of inclusiveness in our top firms and companies. It’s time for those cultures to change.

This week and next, to celebrate PRIDE on Theglasshammer.com, we are featuring profiles of several amazing women who live their lives as openly gay/lesbian professionals – despite the challenges (perceived and real) that exist for LGBT individuals in the workplace. It is our hope that by shining a spotlight on these successful women, more LGBT professionals will feel inspired and empowered to bring their whole selves to work.

Theglasshammer.com was founded on the principle of creating professional networks where you can relate to people who are in the same situation as you – for example, being the only women on your team can be tough. Yet, many of us have other identities, such being a different color or nationality or being mothers. These are very visible differences, and are protected from discrimination by law. On the other hand, gay and lesbian professionals are often the invisible minority in the room, and in many respects LGBT is the last taboo in the workplace. Legal protections are still not up to par in the U.S. (In 29 states you are not protected from getting fired on the spot for being gay or “accused” of being gay.)

There are some very simple reasons why companies should work harder to create an inclusive culture for their LGBT employees.

1) You have gay clients – the business case.
2) You have gay employees – the retention case.
3) Generation Y (and many others) won’t want to work for you if you are doing nothing or doing evil around gay issues – the recruitment case.

Theglasshammer.com creates networking groups of women in financial and professional women, but perhaps one of our greatest challenges is to find senior lesbian business leaders who are “out” and visible in their firms. Why is it so hard to find a critical mass of role models to inspire other women who may be struggling to be themselves at work?

The cost or perceived cost of being “out” seems to be still very high for gay people, and the fear of negative consequences from employers or co-workers can be clearly seen in the HRC study “Degrees of Equality” detailing why gay employees don’t come out.

  • “Thirty-nine percent believe they will lose connections.
  • Twenty-eight percent believe they will lose promotion opportunities.
  • Seventeen percent believe they will be fired; this number increases to 42 percent for transgender workers.”

Everyone reading theglasshammer.com can do something to contribute to creating a better culture in your firm. Here’s are three ways to reach out.

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Building Careers and Doing Good

iStock_000006684238XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

On Wednesday, Morgan Stanley held its third annual Strategy Challenge event, the culmination of an eight-week program in which 60 of the firm’s up-and-coming talent put their skills to use for fifteen charities in need of strategic advice on organizational growth.

Audrey Choi, Managing Director of Global Sustainable Finance at Morgan Stanley, remarked, “At Morgan Stanley, we have a long standing, deep commitment to giving back to the community.”

The non-profits are not the only beneficiaries of the program, though. Choi added that the participants in the Strategy Challenge are nominated by their business leaders as future leaders of the firm. They are able to make connections with other rising stars, and gain access to senior level individuals they wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to meet, in addition to gaining valuable skills and experience.

As a result, Choi said, Morgan Stanley has donated 6,500 hours of community service this year, worth approximately $1 million – and that figure does not include the value of the advice provided by the firm.

Joan Steinberg, Managing Director and Global Head of Philanthropy at the firm, added, “When we say we want to deliver the best to our communities, this is what we mean.”

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To Fix the System, Coach Men on Gender Issues Too

iStock_000016827030XSmallBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

This past April, the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. released a report stating that inadequate career development has kept women from reaching the top ranks of the corporate ladder. The findings were based on a 2011 survey of 2,525 college-educated men and women, including 1,525 individuals employed by large companies. According to McKinsey, companies must groom female middle managers for advancement. Joanna Barsh, a McKinsey senior partner who co-wrote the report, said companies need to “spend more time coaching women and offering more leadership training and rotation through various management roles before their ambitions sour.” Other recommendations to remedy the problem included having more women seek out mentors, as well as “putting women in programs that would help them develop and get over the next promotion hurdle.”

According to Marcia Reynolds, a master certified coach, the problem is that these recommendations primarily focus on fixing the women, instead of on fixing the system that created the problem. In her column addressing the McKinsey report, Reynolds even cites a recent Harvard Business Review article that found that companies that are committed to putting women through mentoring and training don’t necessarily promote them; they just make them busier. This is something echoed by career coach Roy Cohen, who says that many women – and men – go through coaching programs and don’t get promoted for a variety of reasons and it’s unfair to expect high-ranking women to personally reach out to women currently climbing the corporate ladder.

“There aren’t enough women in the top ranks of corporations and those who are there are already stretched too thin,” Cohen said. “Just because a woman has become successful doesn’t mean we should set a different standard for her. Women should be able to be as political and self-serving as their male counterparts. There’s this double standard where we expect women to take the higher road, but it’s unfair to burden them with these responsibilities. Women should be able to behave as badly as men. We set women on pedestals – and then look at their flaws.”

Relying on women to fix the system isn’t going to work – and it’s not fair. Shouldn’t men be engaged in this effort as well?

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Women and Complexity: Strategic Multitaskers

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Businesswoman negotiating with menBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Are women better than men at understanding and managing complexity?

We’ve all heard that one reason women make great leaders is because we are better at multitasking. Juggling work, family, household, and personal responsibilities, we’ve become particularly skilled at working in complex environments with many variables and competing objectives at stake, and coming up with solutions for issues that have many different angles.

Sure – it makes sense. But until recently, women’s legendary multitasking abilities seemed they could also just be a myth – that women cope well in complex situations simply because we have to. Are women good at multitasking because of neural wiring? Or are we good at multitasking because of societal pressures? Maybe there’s no difference between men and women when it comes to our ability to handle complex situations.

But, in fact, recent university research is suggesting otherwise. Studies show that women’s brains have, in fact, developed to make complex, strategic decisions – exactly the kind of solutions today’s business leaders need to be equipped for. Here’s how.

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5 Essentials To Build Employee Trust: Behaviors That Are Sometimes Forgotten Along The Way

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StephanieLemaContributed by Stephanie Lema, Founder of Bepositivemom.com

Depending on your organizational structure, the leadership hierarchy may be very flat or may have several tiers. Either way, how managers, directors and vice presidents interact with their employees has a direct impact on morale and productivity.

Trust plays a major role in the corporate culture. It’s built over time and is very fragile in the workplace. Over the last decade, studies have shown workplace trust diminishing.

If you are standing on the corporate ladder in a management position, you can lead your team to success by building and maintaining their trust by engaging in 5 essential behaviors. Here’s how.

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US and China Announce Partnership to Develop Female Leaders

iStock_000016774143XSmallBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

In early April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, along with Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong, announced the launch of the China-U.S. Women’s Leadership Exchange and Dialogue (Women-LEAD) with the hope of increasing dialogue between high-level Chinese and American women leaders and expanding exchanges on gender equality between organizations, think tanks, and universities.

Women-LEAD will be led by the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues and the All China Women’s Federation (ACWF). The initiative was launched just as the U.S. and China completed their second high-level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange (CPE). These exchanges have been taking place since the late 1950s, with the goal of enhancing international understanding through educational, cultural, and humanitarian activities involving the exchange of ideas and experiences among those of different countries and diverse cultures. During the most recent CPE, teams from the U.S. and China identified more than 40 joint outcomes in the fields of education, science and technology, culture, and women’s issues.

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Ending Bias Against Flex Workers: Measuring Quality Over Quantity

GeraldineGallacherContributed by Geraldine Gallacher, Founder and Managing Director, The Executive Coaching Consultancy (London)

My teenage son set me a riddle recently: “A man and his son were injured in a car crash. They were taken to hospital as the little boy was wheeled into emergency surgery the operating surgeon said, “Oh no, that’s my son!” How could that be? Actually I had heard it before and so I knew the answer. The surgeon was his mother. It is funny to think that this old riddle is still doing the rounds. Is it still a surprise that the surgeon could be female? The point of my telling this is that in that moment of working out the answer, people still toy with the boy having two dads as the solution rather than the surgeon being female. This is a neat example of unconscious bias.

These days people know better than to openly discriminate on the basis of gender, race or disability. However, what is much harder to control are our unconscious biases. These biases make some of the headline statistics harder to change. In the UK, the University of Sheffield’s Institute of Work Psychology points out that the unemployment gap between ethnic minorities and the general population has been around 15% to 16% for the past three decades. Women are still a minority when it comes to senior positions. Women represent 13% of FTSE 100 directors and more widely, in Europe, just 10% of the highest level executives in the top 50 publicly quoted companies are female.

So what’s the answer? Offering flexible working to women during the phase of their career where they are seeking balance is critical. However, you need to be sure you are not unconsciously biasing your views of their performance as a result of them being part-time.

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Voice of Experience: Alison Rose, Head of Corporate Coverage and Client Management, EMEA, Global Banking & Markets, Royal Bank of Scotland

AlisonRoseBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Alison Rose’s advice for women in banking is to seek out and learn from the women who have gone before. She said, “Seek out role models and invest time your network. Role models are very helpful, particularly in an industry that is male dominated.”

Particularly sage advice, and after all, she should know. Having risen to the role of Head of Corporate Coverage and Client Management for the EMEA region in the Global Banking & Markets division of RBS, Rose is quite a role model herself. Now also leading the firm’s diversity initiative, she is a passionate supporter of attracting and retaining women in the industry.

“Helping women be successful is incredibly exciting and rewarding personally, but it’s also a critical business issue,” she said.

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