Does Being Goal-Driven Actually Drive Us Crazy?

BenningtonContributed by Emily Bennington

If you’re on this site, I’m going to assume you’re driven. Me too. But as driven women, we tend to get wrapped up in things we want but don’t yet have.

The dream job… the higher salary… the better body… you name it.

So when we want something, but don’t have it – what are we supposed to do? Ah, yes. Set goals. Write it down. Check the box. Congratulate yourself if you get it done… and beat yourself up if you don’t.

This is the path of us girls who have business books on our desks and self-help books by our beds, i.e. remarkably accomplished on the outside but plagued by a nagging discontent that’s like an itch we can’t scratch.

So what happens next?

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Work Guilt: Letting Go of Doing It All

By Robin Madell (San Francisco)

“A person can only try hard and do their best. The goal is not perfection.”
–Leigh Steere, Co-founder, Managing People Better, LLC

Many executive women spend time at work feeling guilty about not being able to accomplish more. Yet with so much expected at the executive level, particularly in a down economy when companies are short-staffed, it’s virtually impossible for an executive to ever clear her to-do list, either in the office or at home.

For women raising families, the potential for guilt mounts exponentially. A study of 2,000 women commissioned by baby care company NUK found that 90 percent of working mothers feel guilty for a range of reasons, which include being too busy to give their children enough attention, working late or long hours, and going back to work after maternity leave.

Manhattan psychologist Dr. Joseph Cilona suggests that among the factors behind work-related guilt for women are a series of long-standing societal double-standards: women are still often expected to be the primary caretakers of children, attend to more than their share of household maintenance, and to look youthful and attractive in the bargain.

“Women are frequently judged when they fall short of unrealistic, impractical, and often unreachable standards,” says Cilona. “It’s no wonder that many women are experiencing burnout at an earlier age.”

So what’s the problem with guilt? If we feel a little guilty while we work or parent, is there any harm? According to Cilona, the answer is yes. “As a psychologist, when I think of guilt, I immediately think of an emotional cancer that can do serious damage to both the self and relationships,” he says. “Though debated by some, for me there is no sufficient evidence that guilt is a universal human emotion like joy, sadness, or even anger, which have recognizable facial and postural expressions across cultures. Guilt appears to have emerged out of cultural rather than biological determinants, all of which to me are utterly toxic.”

If there’s a secret to learning to recognize the toxicity of work guilt and release it, we all want to know what it is. Here are some strategies for women to consider.

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Thought Leaders: Lisa Agona, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, LexisNexis Risk Solutions

thought-leadershipLisa Agona describes herself as very thoughtful and very driven. After studying economics in college, she pursued a career in marketing for financial services and professional services companies. After climbing the ranks at Accenture to become the global marketing director for capital markets, she got a call from LexisNexis. “I actually wasn’t going to come – I loved New York City and I was satisfied at Accenture.” The role would mean moving away from the excitement of the Big Apple, and she also had the impression that the company might be a bit conservative for her tastes.

“But when I came and interviewed at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, I found it was anything but uninteresting,” she said. “The people were innovative – even ingenious. From a marketing standpoint, it was a place I could get my arms around and build transformation and new ideas into the business.” So she took the opportunity and made the move to Atlanta, unsure of what the outcome would be. That’s her first piece of advice on getting to the C-Suite – take risks.

“I was right. It was a risk that paid off. When I wake up in the morning, I can’t wait to get to work.”

Agona, now Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, shared her advice for women on breaking into the C-Suite.

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What to Do If Your Flex Work Arrangement Gets Axed

iStock_000004026171XSmallBy Robin Madell (San Francisco)

“We live in an age of advanced technology, which provides opportunities for more efficient and flexible modes of communicating and working. Eliminating policies such as a flexible work schedule diminishes our progressive advances, and most often negatively impacts women more than men, as women are predominately the primary caretakers and are in greater need of flex time.”
–Tammy Marzigliano, Partner, Outten Golden LLP

First it was Yahoo’s decision to cut work-from-home arrangements. Now Best Buy is following suit. In the current corporate climate, flex work opportunities — previously embraced by many HR departments as good for retention and smart for business—are under increased scrutiny as struggling companies look for ways to cut corners.

What this means for employees is that those with previous telecommuting arrangements may suddenly find themselves scrambling to rebalance their work-life arrangements if corporate flex policies change. To be prepared, it’s important to be proactive by exploring steps you can take if you find yourself with a new manager who’s anti-flex work, or if someone in the chain of command says you can’t work from home anymore.

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“What’s She Doing Here?” How to Deal with the Legitimacy Double Bind

Attractive business womanBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

As women advance through their careers, they often face challenges to their legitimacy, or the notion that they didn’t really earn their position. Apparently, some people are incapable of fathoming a world where a woman is competent and capable of earning a job by way of her qualifications. They would rather attribute her success to a quota, or to mere optics, or to one of the other methods women are presumed to employ to make their ways to the top.

It’s not fair, and it’s an issue that doesn’t seem to be going away, either.

It’s also not just an anecdotal issue or one that can be explained away by so-called oversensitivity (yet another term hurled at women to demoralize and delegitimize us). In fact, hard data backs this up. Both Catalyst and McKinsey have uncovered research showing that, while men are hired and promoted based on their perceived potential, women don’t get that benefit. Women have to earn new positions by already having done the work – by proving their performance.

And once a woman has earned her position, the questions don’t stop there. Women have to keep earning that job over and over again. It’s exhausting. It’s one more way way women are inhibited by tiny invisible biases throughout their day.

It can also lead women to question whether they should engage in women’s networks and initiatives – after all, they may reason, if they need that extra help, maybe they really don’t deserve their job. Or, perhaps, they worry, others will feel that way, that if women are perceived to need extra help, then they don’t really deserve those jobs they have fought so hard for.

It’s a double bind many women experience – they want support, but don’t want to be seen as needing support, for fear they may seem they need it. Exhausting.

But that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and go home. It also shouldn’t prevent us from engaging in women’s events and supporting initiatives to help one another. Here are a few ways we can approach challenges on job legitimacy.

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Ursula Burns Discusses Impatience and Leadership at Catalyst Awards Luncheon

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ursulaburnsBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

At last week’s Catalyst Awards Conference, lunch keynote Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox, shared her experience and advice on leadership and more. “I lucked out,” she began. “Xerox is a company that fit me well. It allowed to relax into my own self.”

Having begun her career as an engineer, Burns climbed the corporate ranks all the way to the top, becoming the first Black woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company in 2009. “There was an unbelievable roar and uproar about that,” she recalled. “But the board expected that, and I expected it, and our PR people expected it and prepared me for it.”

But what surprised Burns and the rest of Xerox was the conversation about her transition – how she was appointed CEO by another woman, Anne Mulcahy. “The two together really took on an entire conversation. Anne and I refused to do an interview together at first. The only time we did it was at the Fortune Most Powerful Woman conference. We stayed away from that conversation.”

In fact, she continued, all the media hubbub was discomfiting for her initially. “I found out people liked me, respected me, thought I was smart – without ever knowing me. I became the most smart, most famous, most beautiful person… but at that point I hadn’t even done anything!”

Now, almost four years into her job, she’s easing into the public eye as she’s shown her skill as a CEO. “Now it’s more normal to [position] me as a leader,” she explained, “not having the spotlight on me as an oddity.”

Throughout her talk with Catalyst CEO Ilene Lang, Burns discussed her career path, joking about her reputation as a notoriously impatient person and sharing her advice on speaking up and leadership.

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Voice of Experience: Janet George, Managing Director, Accenture Technology Labs

janetgeorgeBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

According to Janet George, Managing Director at Accenture Technology Labs, it’s time to start viewing the differences women bring to the table as assets. “I think women are different from men. Our brain structure is different. Our leadership style is different. Our management style is different. Our career styles are different.”

“These differences are strengths when partnering and collaborating in a team environment,” continued George, a technical leader in the emerging technologies space. “They lead to richer discussions. I can tell you – there’s nothing compared to working with smart women.”

“Companies need to take advantage of the value-add that women provide. The challenge lies in under-utilization. We need advocates – both men and women – to change things,” George said. “It’s also important to have advocates in your own career. Being a deeply technical woman, in many cases, is daunting or even isolating. We deal with a lot of complexity. For years I was the only woman with a technical background in the room – and it’s very encouraging to see a changing landscape.”

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Lean In: A Primer on Owning Your Power

978-0-385-34994-9.JPGBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

By now, you’ve probably had time to pick up Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean In – or you’ve at least read a few of the reviews. My first take: I liked it, and more than I was expecting to. If you’re in a position to advocate for women at your company, it would be a great buy if only for its lengthy bibliography, which is basically a comprehensive list of every single study on the business-case for women at the top and the ways women are prevented from getting there – from stereotype threat to work/life issues to the tiara syndrome to false meritocracies and more. Her message about taking risks and expanding your ambition is also valuable.

Beyond that though, it’s an interesting read on how one woman’s personal understanding of feminism has taken flight alongside her growing acknowledgment of her own influence. It’s an experience that will probably resonate with many of our readers.

Over the past few years, I’ve done hundreds of interviews with senior women in the financial and professional services industries as part of our profile series. And over that time I’ve heard from more and more women who are coming to terms with their own power. They are realizing that they have the potential to make a difference for other women in their companies.

Sandberg writes that publishing the book and continuing to speak up about women is her own “lean in moment.” She realized that she has the power and the platform to make a difference, and she’s taking the initiative to do so. Many women have more influence than we realize on this matter, yet we shy away from using the f-word (feminism) or speaking up about implicit bias at work (no one wants to be seen as a complainer). But now we are seeing a groundswell of interest and enthusiasm for this issue (for example, Lean In debuted as a number one seller on Amazon‘s Best Sellers list). This could be a “lean in moment” for all of us.

“We can no longer pretend that biases don’t exist, nor can we talk around them,” she writes. How will you own your influence when it comes to gender equality?

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Build a Better Tech Community – With Women

iStock_000019152998XSmallBy Robin Madell (San Francisco)

CodeProject is the world’s largest independent community of coders and developers. But in early 2012, Sean Ewington, Jeff Hadfield, Chris Maunder, and Terrence Dorsey recognized three related areas in which they believed CodeProject was not living up to its full potential: helping women embrace programming in greater numbers, enter the industry, and find support within it.

To that end, Maunder and David Cunningham decided to create an Advisory Board for Women in Technology. Maunder told The Glass Hammer that the initial idea for the board started back in 2003 when he attended a Women in Code session at a developer conference. “It was clear that at the time, the issues women dealt with in breaking into—and being accepted into—the developer community were different than those that guys faced,” says Maunder. “I always wanted to dig a little deeper and see if these issues were truly stopping women or if there were actual things, simple things, that could be done.”

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Voice of Experience: Jennifer Wu, CFA, Senior Vice President, Institutional Sales and Relationship Management, ING US Investment Management

JenniferWuBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“My advice for women starting out in the asset management industry is to seek out mentors within their respective firms and broadly in the industry,” began Jennifer Wu, CFA, Senior Vice President of Institutional Sales and Relationship Management at ING US Investment Management. “When I entered the industry, I asked people for their insights on career advancement and everyone had the same advice: find mentors who can champion for you.”

She continued, “As long as they are in a position to influence your career development, you need to be open-minded and thoughtful about finding someone who identifies with your ambition, understands your constraints, and someone who is willing to invest in your career.”

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