November 2011 | The Glasshammer

Three Boardroom Challenges—And How to Overcome Them

iStock_000018386003XSmall By Robin Madell (San Francisco)

When we hear about women in the boardroom, it is often about their absence rather than their presence. The research firm Catalyst finds that only 15.7 percent of board directors are female in the United States—a number that has remained largely stagnant for the last five years. Creditsafe reports that women hold only a quarter of director seats in the United Kingdom.

Why is this? Because women have difficulty getting on a board despite their qualifications, says Beth Stewart, Managing Director of Trewstar Corporate Board Services, a source firm whose mission is to source and place qualified women on boards. Through her experience, Stewart has seen that it is easy for even the most well-intentioned board directors to proceed with business as usual.

“There are lots of qualified men who are easy for search firms or fellow board members to find,” Stewart says. “So why make the effort, rock the boat, take the risk, or ask for a favor to get a woman on a board?” She notes that most board search firms are paid to find board members, but not specifically female board members. “The search firms have many interlocking relationships—for example, if they take a CEO from Company X for Board Y, they will expect to get other recruiting business from Company X .”

With challenges like these to even getting a board seat, we hear little about the specific obstacles that women face who have defied the odds and made it to the boardroom. But once there, there are still more hurdles to contend with. According to a range of workplace and governance experts, as well as experienced board members, here are a few insights on how to clear them.

Negotiation November: Leading a Negotiating Team — Three Essential Steps to Success

Expert Answers

Contributed by Carol Frohlinger, Co-Author of Her Place at the Table: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success

Negotiating on your own can be tricky. Things get exponentially more complicated though when negotiation must be played as a team sport.

Let’s say you’re leading a shared services group that’s been given a mandate to centralize certain functions currently residing in individual business units. Chances are your team will face challenges from the business units affected about how your group will meet their needs. Your team will need to sit down with them to work things out.

Or, if you are trying to close a complex sale, it probably won’t be enough to merely assure your prospective client that your team will be able to seamlessly deliver on the proposal. A meeting between your team and the client will be required to make your case.

These situations (and many others) demand that you and those you lead negotiate effectively as a unified team. Not easy!

Remote Work is on the Wishlist This Year

Office Politics

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

What are women wishing for this year? According to a new survey from Microsoft Office 365 and 85 Broads, the answer is a more flexible work arrangement. According to a survey of members of the women’s networking group 85 Broads, a full 90% of respondents would prefer a regular remote working schedule, and 81% of women said they’d be more satisfied with their jobs as a result of remote working. Given the opportunity, they would work from home 3.1 days per week.

That’s more than half the week away from the office! The main reasons women desired a more flexible work arrangement included work/life issues, better productivity, and a shorter commute. In fact, it is notable that so many individuals felt being at work prevented them from getting work done. What is it about the workplace that is so draining?

Voice of Experience: Suni Harford, Managing Director and Regional Head of Markets for North America, Citigroup

Voices of Experience

sunniharford By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“I’m constantly learning in this job,” said Suni Harford, Managing Director and Regional Head of Markets for North America at Citi. “And that’s great after twenty-five years in the business, to say I learn something new every day.”

Harford, who co-heads the firm’s women’s initiative in addition to her day job, shows inspiring enthusiasm for her career – and, she said, it comes from doing work she enjoys.

“It sounds silly to say that the most exciting thing I’m working on right now is just doing my job, but these markets make for interesting days, and it’s very rewarding.”

Managing Through the Holidays: Five Tips to Remember

Office Politics

By Jenny Chen (Washington, DC)

We’ve now passed Thanksgiving – which means the holidays are right around the corner. And when sugarplums are dancing in your employees’ heads come the holiday season, it can be hard for work to compete. An Accountemps survey published last year revealed that one-third of senior managers surveyed said their employees are less productive the week before a major holiday – and this season is full of them!

At the same time, this is the busiest time of year for most firms whose clients are clamoring to meet year-end goals. Here are five ways managers can get their people to produce top results through the holidays.

Read more

November 25, 2011/by The Glass Hammer

Happy Thanksgiving!

News

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Today The Glass Hammer is taking time to celebrate the things we’re thankful for. Our new office, a packed slate of fab events in the next few months (more info coming soon…), and even the slightly unseasonably warm weather here in New York (cheers for sweater weather!) are some of our reasons for giving thanks.

Another thing we’re grateful for is you, our audience – a bold group of women (and a few men) working diligently to help break the glass ceiling. If you’ve got some extra time this week, take a look at a few of our recent profiles on women we’d like to emulate.

We also decided to designate November as a month to discuss why and how women can be better negotiators. Are you ready to ask for a raise or promotion, time off, or a new budget for your team? Read through our guide and prepare yourself today.

Finally, we’re always looking for inspiring, effective, dynamic women to profile on The Glass Hammer – if you know someone you’d like to nominate as a Voice of Experience, a Mover and Shaker, or a Rising Star, email melissa@theglasshammer.com. And if you’ve got a great story to share about how you managed to test your own physical or emotional limits, you might be perfect for our Intrepid Woman series.

Last Thanksgiving, we encouraged you to give thanks to those mentors who have helped you get ahead in your career. This year, in addition to those individuals who have been your shoulder to lean on, your sounding board, or your sponsor, don’t forget to thank those direct reports and assistants who’ve helped support you as well.

November 24, 2011/by The Glass Hammer

What Type of Leader are You?

Expert Answers

Contributed by Karol Wasylyshyn, author of Behind the Executive Door: Unexpected lessons for Managing Your Boss and Career

When historians write about business in late 20th and early 21st century America, they will say it was a time of intense leadership scrutiny – not only of executives’ results but of how they achieved them. This focus on leadership behavior has been my life’s work.

Or, in other words, I’ve been in the right place at the right time to deliver on a distinctive value proposition. Specifically, my integration of a business background and training in clinical psychology has enabled me to provide the behavioral guidance necessary for senior business leaders to thrive and win in a global business climate.

In my consulting experience, thriving and winning in a business climate that has become exponentially more complex and volatile is as much about effective leadership behavior as it is about smarts, industry knowledge, and classic leadership competencies such as strategic thinking and innovation management. Even a cursory examination of the flame-outs of well-known business leaders to include Carly Fiorina, Robert Nardelli, Al (“Chainsaw”) Dunlap, Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Tony Hayward and Mark Hurd bear this out.

A few years ago I became intrigued by a couple of questions. First, Do the executives with whom I’ve worked fall into any particular behavior patterns? And second, If they did represent specific behavioral patterns (they did), how could this information be helpful to both them and the people who report to them?

Based on my analysis of 300 executive coaching cases, I identified three distinct behavioral patterns or leadership types that I named Remarkable, Perilous, and Toxic. Subsequent empirical research found these three types to be empirically distinct based on two commonly used psychological tests – one based on the Big Five Factor theory of personality and the other a measure of emotional intelligence.

Negotiation November: Why You Need to Tell Before You Ask

Office Politics

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Last month Catalyst’s President and CEO Ilene Lang addressed roughly 2,000 women at Deutsche Bank’s Women on Wall Street event, regarding the organization’s latest report “The Myth of the Ideal Worker: Does Doing All the Right Things Really Get Women Ahead?”

The report analyzes the effectiveness of a number of career strategies – and while men seem to come out ahead no matter what career strategies they employ, women did benefit significantly from talking up their accomplishments.

Surprisingly, the report showed that although there is plenty of discussion around women “not asking” or women “waiting to be rewarded” for their work, in fact, women are negotiating.

She said, “Women and men negotiate the same. Women are less likely to negotiate compensation in their first job, but after that they learn from that.”

Why, then, aren’t women getting as far as men when it comes to asking for more? One part of the solution may be a simple as engaging in a little show and tell.

Women, Age, and Ambition – A Fresh Perspective

Featured, Next Level

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Recently More Magazine released the results of a survey on ambition, work/life issues, and other topics. According to the survey of 500 college educated women over 35, 43% of respondents said they were less ambitious now than they were ten years ago.

The headline that many news outlets and websites ran with was along the lines of “Women are Losing Ambition.”

Well, not exactly.

In fact, the survey revealed quite the opposite. Because, while 43% of the survey respondents said they were less ambitious now than they were ten years ago, the majority (57%) said they were just as or more ambitious today.

I repeat: the majority of women in the survey said they were just as or more ambitious now than they were 10 years ago. Amazing what insight you can gain by shifting your perspective.

It is curious that so many ambitious women’s voices (the majority!) have been ignored. Why is it easier to pretend that ambitious women don’t exist?

Voice of Experience: Kathleen Hughes, Managing Director, Head of Global Liquidity Sales, Goldman Sachs Asset Management

People, Voices of Experience

She advised, “Think strategically about how you build your brand. This is something I personally had to learn – the bar gets higher and higher in this industry, and it’s not enough to keep your head down and work. Of course, you have to produce. But you also have to promote your success and build your brand in a different way.”

And, she said, how you build that brand depends significantly on your firm’s culture. “Our culture here tends to be team-oriented. Relationships matter.”

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