Closing the Leadership Gap for Women at PwC

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By Jarod Cerf

According to Jennifer Allyn, the Managing Director of PwC’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, “The problem is not just about women or about companies. It’s an interaction between the choices that women are making and the opportunities that companies are providing. And the question is ‘how can we work together to close that leadership gap?’”

Sometimes, as Allyn explained, the right solution involves a combination of feedback, responsiveness, and adaptability. The Full Circle program that PwC launched in 2008, for instance, was developed to address the on- and off-ramping needs of high potential professionals at the firm who wanted to take a few years off to focus on parenting or elder care.

“Concrete programs matter,” Allyn stated. “They signal to people that it’s okay to take a non-linear path. Because if we want to retain talented people who want to step out for a period of time, we should be able to stay connected to them, keep their technical skills current, and when they’re ready, bring them back to the firm.”

She added, “In fact, we just had our first Full Circle participant admitted to the partnership: she took two years off, returned, stayed on the partner track, and was admitted in June.”

Advancing Careers Through Sponsorship
There is often a divide, Allyn remarked, between what is ‘easy to accomplish’ and ‘what should be done’ about the leadership gap. At PwC, the core issue was one of how to develop and enable talent, women included. “Talent is the firm’s primary asset,” said Allyn. To that end, PwC reinforced the importance of sponsorship by creating a mandatory program through which partners can preserve their individual legacy as well as the organization’s culture.

“Our partners are owners of the firm, and their legacy is the next generation of leaders,” Allyn affirmed. She added, “In their partner plans, which they fill out annually, each of them has to select three diverse professionals—women, minorities, LGBT—that they are sponsoring and investing in, and they have to list those people by name.”

By the end of the year, partners report back on the specific actions they took on behalf of their candidates, as well as the results of those actions. From there, partners adjust their plans accordingly, with particular emphasis on career trajectories for the upcoming year.

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Women in Engineering: Providing Pathways for Future Generations

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iStock_000008675366XSmallBy Michelle Hendelman

By now, we have all heard the facts and figures about women in STEM fields. There have been gains, as evidenced by the high profile appointments of Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg to the C-Suite. However, there have also been setbacks, such as Twitter’s bold move to announce their IPO last fall without a single female on their corporate board.

There is plenty of media attention surrounding women and the boys club of Silicon Valley, but what does the bigger picture look like for women in other STEM fields, such as engineering?

A recent survey conducted by TE Connectivity found that the vast majority (87 percent) of respondents identified engineering as the leading profession sparking innovation and invention in the United States. Yet, women make up only 14 percent of the engineers in the United States. As society is recognizing the positive impact of engineering, what role will women play in sustaining the growth of this industry? Furthermore, what steps can be taken to make sure the pipeline of female engineers remains strong and consistent?

Untapped Potential
According to Jane Leipold, Senior Vice President of Global Human Resources at TE Connectivity, “Women can play a huge role in the future growth of the engineering field. Right now, there is nothing but upside potential in terms of attracting new talent.” Leipold added that as more female role models in engineering emerge, there will be a trickledown effect resulting in finding talented women interested in pursuing a career in engineering.

Attracting female engineers is only one half of the equation. The other –equally important –half of the equation is retaining women who enter the field by providing them with tools and resources that support career advancement and professional growth. Research on why women leave engineering revealed that one of the most important factors cited for driving women out of the field was workplace climate.

What’s more, one-third of women who graduated with an engineering degree never entered the field professionally due to the perception that the industry as a whole was unsupportive of women. In order to reverse the trend of women opting out of engineering, Leipold emphasized the value of investing in programs that support the advancement of women. She noted, “It is important to develop women as they move up the ladder into executive and leadership roles.”

The perception that engineering, and STEM fields in general, are not welcoming to women creates the well-documented psychological phenomenon known as “stereotype threat” that can prevent young women from entering and advancing in their careers. For example, when idea that women are not as good in STEM subjects as men is perpetuated, women will subconsciously internalize this notion and begin to lack confidence, even if they have proven their competence.

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How Developing Effective Communication Skills in Yourself and Others Leads to Success

Three serious business people talking in boardroomGuest contribution by Curtis Sprouse

When it comes to communicating, there are effective and ineffective ways to go about it. There are factors that exist that affect how someone communicates, whether they communicate poorly or effectively. The primary factors impacting how effective one is at communicating are listening, open-mindedness, and actively engaging in the conversation. Secondary factors include conflict resolution, and proactively and effectively providing and receiving feedback.

Effective communicators engage in an appropriate exchange of information. They feel a need to receive information, but also have the ability to provide information at the appropriate level. Because they have good listening skills, they know how to actively engage in listening, which means instead of just hearing what others say, they are actually taking in what someone is saying—comprehending, retaining and relating to what is being said. People that manage these behaviors are good at rephrasing what they have heard. They have well-developed or well-managed dominance and energy. These are genetic behavioral traits that, when not managed, cause people to be controlling, impatient, and present with a drive to win a position while rationalizing why it is acceptable to operate in what is clearly an ineffective way.

Now this is only the tip of the iceberg, as listening requires that one seek the appropriate amount of information regardless of the presenter’s skills. This includes the ability to be open-minded, and not overly critical of the sources grasp of information. Effective communicators are also able to engage in conflict resolution, because they are typically emotionally prepared and have actively listened to what the other person has said. Rather than shutting down during conflict, or tuning out what the other person is saying, effective communicators listen and engage in the situation properly. Lastly, the key influencer in being an effective communicator is being relevant in both providing and receiving feedback—not providing or seeking too little, or too much.

Those who are below the effective range of communicating do not share information or feedback well, if at all. They are also not looking for information. Typically, there are very few advantages for people who are ineffective communicators. The only benefit may be if someone was involved in a job that required a lot of confidentiality, otherwise the disadvantages far exceed the advantages in being an ineffective communicator.

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Are You Dutiful or a Disruptor? Career Advice for the Innovator in All of Us

iStock_000009286763XSmallBy Nikole Grimes

A recent six-year study observed the habits of innovative entrepreneurs revealing a set of discovery skills that distinguish the most creative executives. The most entrepreneurial and innovative CEOs spend 50% more time on these discovery activities than leaders without a track record of innovation. The discovery skills highlight that innovative entrepreneurs connect disparate ideas and concepts, interact with diverse people from all walks of life, ask questions of the world at large, keenly observe behaviors, and test their ideas.

So what are these discovery skills? They are associating, questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking with one sub-trait underpinning all five of the discovery skills. What is this subtrait? Disrupting.

The most innovative leaders – those leading inventors whose ideas and businesses literally transform the way our world works – continually assess, evaluate, and analyze existing perspectives. Subtly and not-so-subtly, these leaders challenge the status quo.

Innovators disrupt traditional ideas through the skill of associating. They connect seemingly unrelated issues and concepts, resulting in fundamental shifts in perspective.

They disrupt the assumptions that underpin existing systems through the skill of questioning – asking “why”, “why not”, and “what if.” In order to get the most complete view on a topic, they will frequently take a position that is opposite their own initial perspective. They ask challenging questions that push themselves and others to break through to new ideas.

Visionary leaders disrupt even small things by observing common everyday behaviors and then considering alternatives to the standard ways things are done.

This sub-trait, disrupting, is also expressed through the skill of experimenting – by literally trying new things, testing new concepts, and doing old things in new ways, they explore and encourage the exploration of alternatives.

When they are networking with a wider array of people from all walks of life they disrupt the hierarchical culture of most businesses. Instead of limiting their network to their peer group, transformative visionaries actively seek the cross-pollination of perspectives across fields, cultures, and countries.

The greatest innovations are inherently disruptive and the sub-trait of disrupting underlies all of the discovery skills. In a Forbes piece, “Disruption vs. Innovation: What’s the difference?” author Caroline Howard wrote, “Innovation and disruption are similar in that they are both makers and builders. Disruption takes a left turn by literally uprooting and changing how we think, behave, do business, learn and go about our day-to-day.”

Women & Disruption
Disrupting is increasingly valued by corporations and is now frequently covered in business-related media. For example, the theme of Deloitte’s just-released 2014 Technology Trends report is Inspiring Disruption. The report provides a deep analysis of ten emerging technological innovations. By identifying disruptive technologies as they are developing, you can best plan for and even capitalize on them.

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