Authentic Words from Authentic Women
By Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of The Glass Hammer
This year, our theme has been “exploring identity at work,” and we have hosted two panels exploring what it means to be a woman and LGBT in financial services in New York and in London. Recently whilst attending and speaking at Out & Equal’s Global Conference in London, I was fortunate enough to attend a breakout session called “Being a Senior Executive Woman” moderated by the skilled Jean Balfour. The panel consisted of Liz Bingham from Ernst & Young, Claudia Brind-Woody from IBM, and Alexandra van der Tuin from Accenture (Netherlands).
The panelists discussed being an authentic leader, breaking the glass ceiling, and how sponsorship has a big role to play in increasing the number of women in senior management.
How do women get ahead? The panelists agreed that it was important to:
- Take risks.
- Watch how you frame situations and don’t have self-limiting thoughts or dialogue with yourself.
- Know how to “make your ask” and know what you want.
- Make it easy for a sponsor to find you by doing great work.
- Be true to yourself and when something isn’t right, address it.
- Don’t be too proud to ask for help when you need it.
When asked how to be authentic as a leader, Bingham commented, “It’s the behaviors that bring authentic leadership to life. You have to look at how you are going to be a role model, and then the next step is about having the courage to call out bad behaviors around you.”
Brind-Woody added that leaders should also work to engender trust in those with whom they are working, like their team and clients. The other piece is having the courage to admit mistakes and learn from them, and then move forward.
She said, “It is easy to make assumptions about people, clients in particular, and often I have been surprised to find out that they are LGBT or have an LGBT family member. There have been a couple of instances where I have bumped into a client at an Out & Equal or other LGBT event and we spend a few minutes laughing about how we had not previously mentioned it.”
Van der Tuin suggested that perhaps LGBT people have an advantage when it comes to authenticity, since many LGBT executives and women have a tendency to be introspective around their behaviors, consciously thinking about how to stay true to themselves.
Sponsorship and Advocacy
On the topic of helping other women, and men helping women (the question was posed by an LGBT male audience member), the panel agreed that sponsorship and advocacy goes a long way.
Van der Tuin commented that due to the collaborative approach favored by Gen Y, it is getting easier for women and LGBT people to build stronger relationships around work projects. Bingham suggested tackling the glass ceiling by modeling diverse teams, so that more traditional clients can see how diverse teams can produce great results. Brind-Woody suggested that the way to further one’s own career is to further other talented people’s careers, referencing research that shows diverse teams often outperform teams that are made up of the same type of people.
Finally, on the topic of ambition, all of the panelists agreed that self-limitations impose the greatest glass ceiling of all. Bingham shared her mother’s words with us.
“Shoot for the moon and you might land on the top of a tree”
Or perhaps here in the US, we could translate that as, “You go, girl; the sky is the limit!”
