Voice of Experience: Laure Châtillon, Partner and Diversity Leader, PwC France

oice of Experience: Laure Châtillon, Partner and Diversity Leader, PwC FranceThere is a famous book by the French Minister for European Affairs Nathalie Loiseau called Choisissez Tout (Choose Everything), where she underscores that women don’t have to make sacrifices. There is no standard in life: You don’t have to be ambitious or start a family, but you have to try before giving up. That has been an important theme in Laure Châtillon’s career, as she believes that anything is possible if you do it your own way.
“Early in my career, I had talked with women who said I was a dreamer to imagine that I could have a fulfilling career as well as several kids even if I already knew it was possible,” she says, citing her current reality as a partner at PwC France and a mother to four children. “I would love to talk with them and tell them how my husband and I made it work,” she says.
Building a Fulfilling Career
That quest to have it all began when Châtillon was attending a French management school and joined PwC France as an intern. After her last year of school she decided to start her career there, joining the valuation team where she valued intangible assets and companies. Except a short time in the leveraged finance division of Royal Bank of Scotland, she spent almost her entire career at PwC France. “I had my four kids within PwC, and it has never been an issue for my bosses,” she says.
She was promoted to partner in 2017. “We are transforming business, and we know that business is different every day so I enjoy the constant challenge,” she says. Additionally, she was asked to take on the diversity and inclusion subset within PwC France, a new role that has offered an exciting complement to her position as partner in valuation.
A Focus on Diversity
Diversity is a focus Châtillon has always had. “It’s not just a matter of philanthropy; our societies are more and more diverse and we really have to be more inclusive if we want to stay up-to-date.”
Although companies are increasingly finding that a robust focus on diversity is vital to retain talent, better meet client needs and foster innovation, there is still much to do. Châtillon feels that one way to encourage diversity is to become an active sponsor, as building a group of supportive women will help to retain more in top management levels. Sometimes it can feel like an uphill battle, she says, as she herself has seen many women who attended school with her choose to downshift their careers. “Stereotypes don’t come from men only,” she notes.
Of course, the ability to juggle work and family is never easy. “The most significant challenge is time, but you learn to find space in your agenda for what matters and then couple that with the trust you can build on your teams,” she says.
Furthermore, there is not just one path to success. “Define it for yourself and find your own path to get there,” she says. “Never be afraid to think outside the box and do things differently, more innovatively.”
One of her most recent accomplishments as diversity leader was starting a women’s incubator with soft skills workshops and a mentoring program, along with inspiring events such as hosting speakers like the French Minister of Equality. Châtillon also launched an initiative for gay, lesbians and everyone else, with the hope that it will ease inclusion for everyone working in the company. Lastly, she started different initiatives to attract more people from different backgrounds within the company, with the purpose of being more representative of the society as a whole.
Châtillon’s ability to prioritize and juggle has led to her fulfilling career. “My proudest accomplishment is that I’ve been able to share my enthusiasm for our industry with my clients and team, and still balance a busy family,” she says.

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Why Gender Equality is Good for Men – Part Two of Three

gender pay gap

Guest contributed by Lisa Levey

Part One of Why Gender Equality is Good for Men looked at the positive effects for men in their relationships with their spouses and children.

Part Two focuses on the positive health implications – both physical and mental – for men with a more egalitarian world view.

Gender equality benefits men’s physical health

Gender is highly linked with health risks and outcomes and men continually draw the short stick. But men’s health challenges are substantially driven by their own attitudes and behaviors [which they can change.]

Men who espouse more traditional beliefs about gender make less healthy choices. They drink more alcohol, smoke more, and are more likely to take drugs as well as paying less attention to eating healthily or getting enough sleep. They’re less likely to seek medical care for preventive reasons or to follow their physician’s instructions when they do seek care. Real men don’t seem to think they need to cut their portion sizes as they age, limit how much beer they drink, or spend precious time going to the doctor but they make these decisions at their own peril.

Gender equality benefits men’s mental health

In addition to benefiting men’s physical health, gender equality plays a vital role in men’s mental health. Men more involved in the daily activities of raising children, as they rock their child to sleep, braid their daughter’s hair or give their teenager a shoulder to cry on, have the chance to experience a physical closeness and intimacy that is life affirming. Biology reveals that men are programmed for emotional connection. As men care for their children, the hormone’s associated with bonding rise, just as they do for women.

Gender equality powerfully benefits men’s mental health by countering the tendency toward isolation. In comparison to women, research indicates men struggle to a substantially greater degree with developing and sustaining friendships that feel fulfilling and meaningful.

Gender equality gives men permission to be soft – and bold, to be scared – and brave, to be silly – and serious, to be in control – and let go. It allows men the full range of their emotions, not just the socially acceptable ones like anger and desire.

Men who ascribe to less traditional gender norms have lower rates of depression and suicide, the most extreme response to the masculinity straight jacket that leaves men unable to reach out and to work through difficult emotions. Men commit suicide at four times the rate of women and middle age white men are more than twice as likely to kill themselves as the population at large. Clearly something is amiss for men.

Gender equality lowers men’s work-life stress

Men have been saddled with the primary breadwinning role for too long. And while the bias toward men as primary providers persists, a Pew study suggests there may be change afoot. While more than 70% of women and men reported it was very important for a man to be a good provider, women identified their breadwinning responsibility – and that of other women – as far more important than men.

It’s understandable why many men struggle with not being the primary provider, a role for which they have long felt acute responsibility and received social and financial reward. Yet many men fail to see how their partner’s earning capacity provides not only far greater security for the family but also far more flexibility for them. With a financial teammate, men can more easily contemplate starting a business, leaving a bad employer, or push for a promotion. Gender equality helps men to not feel stuck and without options.

Multiple research studies document that men in more egalitarian relationships report lower levels of work-life stress. What may seem counterintuitive for men is that devoting more time to their lives outside of work actually minimizes their work-life stress. The same has not been found to be true for women.

The conclusion seems to be that women and men who intentionally share home and child care responsibilities can simultaneously enable women to focus more freely on their careers and men to feel less pressured to always be working. It enables men and women to engage in multiple deeply meaningful roles in their lives.

Contributor Bio

Lisa Levey is a veteran diversity consultant, having worked with leading organizations for more than two decades to assist them in realizing the underutilized leadership potential of women. Her current work focuses on engaging men as allies and partners. She led the design and development of the Forte Foundation’s Male Ally signature resource platform for engaging men in diversity work and architected a pilot program to launch corporate male ally groups. She blogs for the Huffington Post and the Good Men Project on gender norms at work and at home. In the spring of 2018 partnering with her husband Bryan, Lisa is launching Genderworks, a coaching practice for dual-career professional parents to support them in navigating the obstacles to gender equality at work and at home. Lisa earned an MBA with highest honors from the Simmons School of Management and a BS with distinction from Cornell University in applied economics.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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How to Lean “In-Between” and Keep Your Career Moving

Woman-on-a-ladder-searching
Get to the top! Lean in! Break the glass ceiling!

These clarion calls from the power sisterhood sound exhausting, unrealistic—even undesirable—to women in the everyday sisterhood feeling pressured to turbo-charge their careers alongside caregiving for children, aging parents and the monumental effort to make it home in time for family dinner.

What if you’re a talented, ambitious woman who actually prefers to, or needs to, lean “in between”?

Today ambitious women are not only found in the corner office or charging the corporate ladder in leaps and bounds. Ambition has a new face at a time when women have respectable professional options beyond the tied-to-your-desk, 60+-hour-a-week corporate job.

If your goal is to pursue work with substance in a reasonable work structure, you have three ways to be on an employer’s payroll—without sacrificing professional stature:

1. Make peace with a current full-time job that has reasonable demands, don’t worry about advancing to levels that could swallow your personal life and find ways to “grow in place”.
2. Turn your current full-time+ job and long commute into a more flexible situation—reducing hours and/or working at least partially at home.
3. Find an enlightened employer who offers a more flexible culture and healthy paths to professional growth.

Keep Growing Without the Big Promotion

If a big promotion is in the offing and you’d rather pull the covers over your head than pop champagne, it’s OK to decline or postpone. It’s not the end of your career if you take a slower route to the next level or never make that jump at all. Evidence this is true is found in some of the most unlikely places.

Working Mother magazine publishes an annual list of the “50 Best Law Firms for Women,” including big, top-ranked firms women chose to exit in decades past. Now these firms tout reduced hours and remote work. Most ensure that lawyers who take advantage of family-friendly programs are not cut off from partnership or leadership positions. I’ve seen this sea change firsthand: an attorney I know works remotely in Vermont, travels to her New York office occasionally, and snagged the partner title at a prestigious firm on her own time.

When you don’t have the family bandwidth for a big promotion, these eight strategies can help you “grow in place”:

1. Define leadership beyond big titles. Recognize that leaders at any level head project teams and set work quality standards.
2. Broaden confining job descriptions. Suggest to your manager expertise you’re interested in attaining and particular projects that could expand your role.
3. Streamline current responsibilities. Make room for more skill development—zero in on better processes, ways to delegate, etc.
4. Collaborate more with team members and departments. Explore job shares—or multi-disciplinary project shares that could cultivate new skills.
5. Take the lead on training and mentoring. Help younger colleagues navigate work and life issues so that women, especially, take fewer career breaks.
6. Get greater industry exposure. Participate in industry associations, speak at conferences, write articles and more.
7. Sign on for legacy projects. Don’t get lost in routine tasks—raise your hand for initiatives that could go down in company history.
8. Help your company be a good global or community citizen. Research organizations that align with your company’s mission and be a volunteer or spokesperson.

To grow in place focus on breadth of responsibility and visibility so managers can evaluate you in broader leadership terms and acknowledge your own brand of ambition and success.

Kathryn Sollmann is a flexwork expert, speaker and career coach—and the author of Ambition Redefined: Why the Corner Office Doesn’t Work for Every Woman & What to Do Instead.

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The 3 Best Ways Busy Professionals Can Reduce Stress and Start Thriving

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women stressed

Guest Contribution

Ask busy professional women about what she most desires, and a lot will wish to reduce stress.

If you feel like you’re living on the proverbial hamster wheel, it’s time to make small changes to your day to reduce stress and save your sanity. Our tips will help you thrive instead of just get by.

1. Multitask in your personal life

Busy professionals are the rock stars of multitasking. But, multitasking for work is very different from multitasking for yourself. In fact, multitasking may be the wrong word to use. According to Entrepreneur, your brain time-shares rather than multitasks since it is only able to focus on a single task at a time. You must learn how to divvy up your time equally and effectively among tasks. How is this accomplished? Create a to-do list categorized into similar tasks so that your brain doesn’t have to totally change gears. Be sure to always keep your list visible so that you don’t feel that rush of accomplishment, only to realize you have more to do. If you start feeling overwhelmed, remember it’s okay to take a step back and get re-focused. In the future, saying “no” is an option too to avoid getting burnt out.

2. Use Your Lunch Hour to Reduce Stress and Refocus

Unfortunately, Americans take only a portion of their lunch break to eat, or they skip lunch altogether. According to the New York Post, one survey found that 50 percent of workers take 30 minutes or fewer on their lunch hour and that 29 percent work through lunch. Some of the best ways to reclaim your lunchtime include leaving the office to have lunch with a friend or exercising outside with a co-worker or friend. To maximize the benefits of getting out of the office, meet a friend outside to eat for 30 minutes and spend the other 30 minutes walking, meditating, or doing yoga. Physical activity gives you the true breaks you need from work to get refreshed and boost your brain function and mood to help you be more productive and have less stress.

3. Prioritize Tasks

Implementing time management practices is another excellent way to reduce stress on a daily basis. For example, create a checklist for work and home. Arming yourself with a checklist helps you focus and reduces the amount of time you waste on email and social media or chatting with co-workers. Be sure to organize your checklist from most to least pressing tasks and consider allotting yourself enough time for each one. By prioritizing, you will not only feel less stressed, but may find that you are better able to concentrate because you’ll know you’re giving your attention to the most important task on your to do list.

If you’re a visual person, put the checklist on your laptop or tablet or on your desk so you can mark off completed tasks, feel a sense of accomplishment, and know where you stand with your day. If you prefer to use technology, create a note or list on your smartphone; or download one of the many checklist apps.

Stress levels also climb when you feel like you have to do everything right now. One tip is to follow the two-minute and 10-minute rule, as described by Kyle Brost. If you have a task that will take fewer than two minutes, do it immediately so that you don’t face the stress of having too many incomplete tasks. However, if you have a task that requires more time, use the 10-minute rule. Commit to working on the task for 10 minutes. When the time is up, permit yourself to stop and move on to something else to keep chipping away at your to-do list.

High levels of stress prevent you from being productive and thriving. Do yourself a favor and multitask for yourself. Then, use your lunch hour to refocus and reduce stress. It’s also helpful to prioritize tasks and manage your time wisely.

Author

Julie Morris is a life and career coach. She thrives on helping others live their best lives. It’s easy for her to relate to clients who feel run over by life because she’s been there. After years in a successful (but unfulfilling) career in finance, Julie busted out of the corner office that had become her prison. Today, she is fulfilled by helping busy professionals like her past self get the clarity they need in order to live inspired lives that fill more than just their bank accounts. When Julie isn’t working with clients, she enjoys writing and is currently working on her first book. She also loves spending time outdoors and getting lost in a good book. Visit her site at juliemorris.org

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Voice of Experience: Karen Shane, Wells Fargo Advisors

By Cathie Ericson

Karen Shane, a Charlotte, NC-based financial advisor with Wells Fargo Advisors, believes that if you are driven and passionate about your career, the sky’s the limit—no matter the industry.

She concedes that having support is an important component to one’s success. “I always tell my daughter to find what she is passionate about and then work like crazy to rise to the top. You’ll find that you won’t mind working hard if you feel you are doing what you are meant to do,” she adds.

Rising Through the Ranks

Shane started her career in 2004 as a trading assistant on an institutional fixed income desk servicing bonds for large banks. The job entailed sitting at a huge desk with 10 other people, each of them assigned a computer and a phone getting bids on bonds. She earned both experience and her Series 7 license, but after a few years decided to pivot to a client-facing role. She joined AG Edwards as a client associate and through subsequent mergers is now with Wells Fargo Advisors. In 2010 she moved to Charlotte, N.C., with her family where she became the registered associate of her current partner, Susan Brown.

The two women went through a coaching program offered through their firm called DELTA, part of which was envisioning a 10-year goal which led them to the decision to partner –their client ethos and focus on holistic advice complementing each other.

In 2014, the pilot program of Wells Fargo Advisor’s Associate Financial Advisor (AFA) program launched, so Brown encouraged Shane to enroll in the program to transition to a financial advisor role and ultimately create a partnership.

Shane is also proud of the commitment she gave to pursuing her Certified Financial Planner™ designation – having studied at 4 a.m. before her family got up and spending hours at the library on the weekend –encouraged throughout by Brown on their Sunday morning runs.

Finding Opportunities in Wells Fargo Advisors’ Next Generation Talent Program

Right now, Shane is enjoying the challenge of developing more meaningful relationships with clients and finding new ways to build their practice, with a specialization that focuses on female executives. This pivot has helped build her confidence as she has enjoyed making recommendations and seeing her ideas come to fruition.

Shane credits both the AFA program and the support she receives from Brown as helping her develop that confidence. “Most client associates are women, and without the proper support they can feel stuck in that role. The Next Generation Talent Program is very empowering, not just for me, but the many others like me who were looking for a path to transition and enhance their careers.”

She sees the value that comes from women supporting each other, and the game-changing benefits that can arise from mentoring relationships with more seasoned female leaders. Shane looks forward to paying it forward, and is currently helping encourage one of her peers from the AFA class who’s taking the CFP exam.

Outside of work, Shane stays busy with her family – a 13-year-old daughter who’s immersed in the world of theater, both performing and volunteering at the local theater, and a nine-year-old son who plays soccer and golf.

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Unlocking the Power of Latino Employees in the Workplace

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Latina

Guest Contributed By Julia Taylor Kennedy and Pooja Jain-Link , CTI

Latinx Heritage Month is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary – and ever-growing – economic influence of the Latinx community in the United States.

The buying power of the Latinx market is currently $1 trillion and projected to reach $1.7 trillion by 2020; if this community with its collective capital were a country, it would rank as the twelfth largest economy in the world. What’s more, Latinx labor will account for 80 percent of U.S. workforce growth between 2012 and 2022. Understandably, multinational companies based in the United States are desperate to unlock this growth market.

Take Toyota’s campaign for its 2017 Camry: the company created an ad specifically targeted to its Spanish-speaking consumers. The ad shows a man whizzing down a highway in a Camry, when he gets a call from his mother. He hesitates for a few seconds before he decides to decline the call and focus on the joy of driving his new car. Toyota collaborated with Conill, a Hispanic-focused agency, to create an ad that spoke to many Latinx consumers who cherish family values, but struggle with the desire to break away and live on the “edge.” Toyota’s ad was hugely successful because the company engaged an agency that understood the market in an authentic way.

We’ve seen other employers and entrepreneurs use their unique insights to create a differentiated voice in the mainstream. Take Christy Haubegger, founder and publisher of Latina magazine—the first publication of its kind to cater to the Latina population in the U.S. She created the publication to change the complexion of newsstands: “I was a huge magazine reader growing up, and you’d never see Latina faces on a newsstand. It was a striking thing. So, I was a consumer, I was the target audience, I was that person who wanted to see that reality reflected back.”

To unlock this powerhouse market, both Toyota and Latina magazine capitalized on insights from those who represent it. As previous Center for Talent Innovation (CTI) research shows, teams with at least one member who represents the culture of the team’s target end user are up to 158 percent more likely to understand that end user, increasing the likelihood of successful innovation for that audience.

Unfortunately, Toyota and Haubegger still remain outliers. The Center for Talent Innovation’s report, “Latinos at Work,” reveals that Latinx employees are caught in an unfortunate bind: they feel that in order to advance in the workplace, they need to tamp down their innovation-unleashing cultural savvy. A full 43 percent of Latinas and 33 percent of Latino men feel the need to compromise their authenticity to conform to executive or leadership presence standards at their companies. Overall, more than three in four (76 percent) expend energy repressing parts of their personas. To be seen as leadership material, that is, Latinx employees feel the need to cover or downplay who they are by modifying their appearance, body language, communication style, and leadership behaviors. Promotion patterns positively reinforce this belief, as those who spend a great deal of energy repressing their personas at work are almost three times as likely as those who expend less energy to strongly agree that they are being promoted quickly.

And the frustrations of Latinx employees in the white-collar workforce don’t end there. More than half of Latinx professionals (59 percent) experience slights and snubs in the workplace. Of that 59 percent, 24 percent say that others are given (or have taken) credit for their contributions, 22 percent say that colleagues tell them jokes that make fun of certain ethnic or religious backgrounds, and 18 percent say they are excluded from after-work “get-togethers.” They also lack sponsors – senior leaders who advocate for their promotion, arrange for stretch assignments, and provide “air cover” to take risks. A mere five percent of full-time, high-earning Latinx professionals in large companies have sponsors in their corners.

Here’s the good news: there are clear cut steps any organization can take to better leverage Latinx talent. To include, empower, and advance this crucial talent cohort, and as a result, tap into a not-to-be-missed market, employers can do the following:

Encourage sponsorship across difference.

The boost sponsorship confers on Latinx talent is massive. Latinx employees with sponsors are 42 percent more likely than Latinx employees without sponsors to report being satisfied with their rate of career progression. We have found in past research that sponsored professionals in general are also less likely to have one foot out of the door, and more likely to ask for stretch assignments and raises. This robust relationship can help Latinx talent achieve their full potential, and it can drive engagement and retention while fostering workplaces of inclusion, authenticity, and innovation.

Expand the idea of executive presence.

According to 53 percent of Latinas and 44 percent of Latino men, executive or leadership presence at their companies is defined as conforming to traditionally white male standards. Organizations can make this population feel valued and included by prizing authenticity over conformity and operating from an understanding that a range of presentation and communication styles can succeed in the boardroom.

Embrace and celebrate difference.

Every year, Coca-Cola celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month by recognizing the achievements and contributions of Latinos in the United States. In 2015, Coca-Cola launched the campaign #OrgullosoDeSer with a short film to celebrate the power of family and culture. Using the hashtag #OrgullosoDeSer #[InsertLastName], people shared the film along with special family moments and their own reasons for being proud to be Latino. “At Coca-Cola we have been a part of so many of the important moments in Hispanic families’ lives, and we want to continue making new memories with them,” said Lauventria Robinson, vice president, Multicultural Center of Excellence, Coca-Cola North America. “During Hispanic Heritage Month, we are celebrating the immense pride Latinos have for their culture and heritage, a pride that translates most significantly into their family names, which they carry with honor and joy.”

Latinx voices need to be heard and understood. Representation matters. Companies have an opportunity to tap into the unique insights of their Latinx talent and, as a result, tap into the huge and extraordinary Latinx market that awaits. There’s no better way to celebrate Latinx Heritage Month.

About the author

Julia Taylor Kennedy, Executive Vice President and Director of Publications

Julia Taylor Kennedy is executive vice president and director of publications at the Center for Talent Innovation where she leads digital learning and drives qualitative research and writing. She coauthored Mission Critical: Unlocking the Value of Veterans in the Workforce, Power of the Purse: Engaging Women Decision Makers for Healthy Outcomes, and Disabilities and Inclusion. A seasoned writer, producer, and interviewer, Taylor Kennedy has moderated sessions and hosted podcasts at the UN, Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs, The Conference Board, and many others. She has also collaborated with business and gender experts on articles published in Forbes, Time, and academic journals, and has advised speakers for major platforms like the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. Previously, Taylor Kennedy hosted 51%, a public radio show on gender issues, and reported for NPR and NPR member stations. She earned a journalism degree from Northwestern University and a master of international relations from Yale University.

Pooja Jain-Link, Senior Vice President and Associate Director of Research

Pooja Jain-Link is a senior vice president and associate director of research at the Center for Talent Innovation. She drives research design and analysis, focusing on survey development and quantitative data. She has expertise in the use of business as a force for social change. Prior to joining CTI, she verified the social and environmental standards of Certified B Corporations™, worked on corporate sustainability at Bigelow Tea, and was an assistant editor of academic journals at Cambridge University Press. Jain-Link received her BA from Duke University and earned an MBA and Master of Environmental Management from Yale University.

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How to Write Inspiring Speeches to Motivate People

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presentation

Image via Shutterstock

Guest contributed by Stacey Wonder

All of us can remember listening to a great speaker.

Whether it was a school teacher that took your history class on an exciting adventure through time or it was an employer who really knew just how to sell the company’s message, good speakers are often few and far between. When a person speaks well, the experience for the audience can be truly magical.

Strong motivational speakers are first and foremost powerful storytellers. They do not spend their time reciting long lists of facts and figures. While that information may be included in the story they tell, the speech itself is not about these things.

So, how can you write the kind of speech that inspires people and moves them to take action? It all starts with careful planning. While most motivational speakers make it seem like they are just having a casual conversation with their audience, it takes a lot of preparation for it to feel effortless to the audience.

Spin in the New Light

One of the first things you need to do is decide on your message. Ask yourself, what information you want the audience to leave with. It should reveal a surprising truth about your topic. One thing motivational speakers do not do is tell the same old story. They may discuss the same topic over and over again, but they are known for spinning it in a new light. You want to find a way to question a commonly held belief; this statement should be so profound that it causes the audience to stop and think about your topic and analyze it from a whole new perspective.

When people attend a motivational discussion, their minds are already open and they are looking to be inspired. To be successful, you must deliver on that promise. When writing your speech, try to think of something new and innovative that will make your audience think that they have learned something totally new and exciting.

Give it a Rhythm

Once you have your message, you need to find a way to deliver it without sounding like you’re giving a lecture. Speakers that drone on and on without a rhythm usually lose their audience very quickly. Your speech needs to introduce new information on a regular basis. Generally, to keep them engaged plan on providing a new point at least once every ten minutes.

Still, you don’t want to introduce the point in a straightforward and factual way but deliver it in a way that is engaging.

The Beginning

One of the most important parts of a good story is the beginning. It is the time when your audience will be deciding if you’re worth their time. You need to deliver a strong and attention grabbing message within the first thirty seconds or you may see the audience mentally check out before you ever get started. A great example of a grabbing beginning you can read in Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address.”

The best way to do that is to make your first sentence one that they are not expecting. Start by telling a personal story that can relate to your message. How long the story will be depends largely on the length of your speech. Obviously, if you have only 10 minutes to speak, your story should get to the point within the first minute but if you have an hour or more to speak then you have the time to weave in intricate details that will tie the audience to you.

Use Repetition

Just like with a song, repetition aids memory. When you hear a song, which is the first part of the song you remember? Isn’t it the chorus? Why is that part of the song so memorable? Because it is repeated over and over again throughout the song.

This does not mean that you just keep recanting the same words over and over again, like a chant. While that may work in some cases, the point here is to repeat the general idea behind your message. Try to work this idea into your speech at different intervals. This will drive home the point so that your audience will remember it long after they have left the presentation. Good example of a repetetive motive you can see in “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther.

Choose words that the majority of people will be able to relate to. If your story is about a childhood experience, choose expressions that will evoke powerful memories from others but at the same time is unique. Consider some of these guidelines for how to start your story:

1. Make it different from anyone else’s beginning
2. Take your audience on a mind journey
3. Give your audience something they can relate to

If you have a well-thought-out message that you would like to deliver, but you feel that the words you choose are not that powerful, you can consider hiring an editor at such platforms as Upwork or EssayTigers.

Give Them a Buzz

Your speech should not be full of canned expressions. The more you try to copy other people the less likely you will engage your audience. No two people speak alike so no two people should deliver the same type of speech. Showcase your uniqueness in your speech.

Ask yourself, what makes you tune into a speaker’s message. This will help you to understand the kind of speech you should want to deliver. Usually, it is some type of conflict. A battle of the wits or a challenge between two different personalities. Read Susan B. Anthony’s “On Women’s Right to Vote” to see the example of how a speaker can present and develop the conflict.

If your story contains conflict you will draw your audience in and will be able to hold them there until you are ready to bring home your main point. Leave out a few details so that they will be on the edge of their seats, waiting with bated breath for you to deliver on your promise.

People who attend motivational speeches are looking to be wowed. They are looking for someone to point them in a whole new direction to a place they would have never thought of.

So, don’t be afraid to create a little drama, build up some suspense, and add a touch of mystery. Without conflict, the audience will be able to predict what is going to happen next and when that happens you will have lost them.

Bottom line, when you are writing a speech you are starting a relationship with your audience. Your first words should be chosen to draw them in with a promise of something great, something new and refreshing. Once you have captured their attention, deliver your message with a surprise; something that goes against conventional wisdom.

Repeat that message periodically throughout the speech making sure that you introduce a new idea or concept every ten minutes or so.

When you are ready to close, remind them of what they have learned, give them steps to follow through and finish by closing the loop and going back to the story you started with.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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Got promoted? 7 Tips When Choosing a Successor

Smartly dressed young women shaking hands in a business meeting at office desk

Guest Contribution

As you get promoted, you may be asked to help to select the right person to take over when you leave.

If legacy is important to you, you’ll probably want to have time to train your successor to handle their new role just as expertly as you do now.

Here are seven ways to make the process better for everyone.

1. Make Development the Focus

All too often, leaders make the mistake of scouting out employees with the same traits and skill sets and spend less time on what potentially a successor could do. A smooth transition includes not only figuring out who can do the job as well as you but it’s also about giving them the tools they need far in advance of the time they’ll have to use them.

So, as you begin to think about finding your successor, keep in mind that their confidence and hard work aren’t enough to ready them for your role. Development training should be part of the plan, too. Many companies have made this mistake, promoting someone into a position that they certainly have earned from successes as an individual contributor or even as a manager in another team, but for which they don’t particularly have the right skill set for this next role.

So, make sure development is at the heart of your succession plan. It’s not just workplace mentoring or shadowing, although those are important methods, too. Development is all about learning leadership skills that will make the promotion into a starring role more natural. Conferences or workshops can provide training, also, and reinvigorate leaders-in-training in their current positions.

2. Choose the Right Person

The first step in the process is to find the right candidate to take over for you. You might know exactly who that person is already, and it might be someone who works closely with you or someone who is excelling in a role that’s tied closely to yours. Consider the person’s skill set and make sure they’re already knowledgeable in some of the areas you deal with on a day-to-day basis. For extra padding, you could select more than one potential successor and, through training, see who is the best fit.

3. Consider the Logistics – And Revisit Regularly

When is it a good time to start succession planning? There is not one answer here, and it is depends on how senior you are and what is talent process is. Thomas Collura, partner at Hodgson Russ, says that the biggest mistake is failure to properly plan for succession early and neglecting to revisit those plans. As the business changes, so should your plans. Be open with your successor as well so that any changes can be considered well in advance.

4. Look to the Future

You shouldn’t make your succession plan with just the present taken into consideration. Instead, it’s vital that you have a broader outlook as you sit down to determine who’s right for the role. In the short term, someone just like you could be the solution, but, in the long run, you might make a mistake. Every company’s plans and forecasts are different, but you should know the trajectory of your role before you choose the replacement person.

5. Avoid Any Bias

Whether we like it or not, there are unconscious biases that come with the hiring process. They’re deemed to be unconscious because they’re not something we do purposefully, but these tendencies can stifle workplace diversity.

Taking certain precautions can prevent yourself from falling into this trap. Some hiring managers look at resumes without considering the candidate’s names so that gender bias can’t come into play. This practice could rule out any race-related biases, too.Of course, choosing a successor might mean you’re selecting candidates you already know. In this case, practice staying open to picking a new leader who’s not exactly like you.

6. Be a Mentor

Once you’ve narrowed in on the person or people who have the potential to take over in your absence, you should provide on-the-job training as well as the leadership development mentioned above. A great way to teach someone how to do your job is to show them first-hand, and a mentoring program would allow you to do that with ease. There are more benefits to mentoring than just training a successor. It makes all employees more skilled in their roles, and it makes them feel more satisfied with the workplace because it provides them opportunities to learn and grow. So, offer the program on a broader scale, but ensure your mentees are those who you’ve earmarked as potential leaders. That way, they can learn directly from you.

7. Write It All Down

Finally, as you wind down your role and prepare to hand over the reins to your successor, do one last thing to make it all simpler — provide them with a written set of instructions. Yes, it’s old school, but it’s also extremely helpful. All of your in-person training was great, but there are always going to be critical pieces of information that are worth repeating — write those down.
Not only will this make the succession plan easier for your replacement and your company, but it will make you feel at ease about everything, too. If you’re devising the right strategy for easing the transition, you care — and you can walk away knowing that you handled it well, chose the right person and prepared them as best you could. And there’s no better feeling to have when moving forward than that.

Disclaimer: The opinion and views of Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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Mover and Shaker: Cassandra Cuellar, Associate at Shearman & Sterling

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Cassandra Cuellar

By Cathie Ericson

Being inquisitive and asking a lot of questions is one of the best ways to move ahead, whether you’re working with a partner or client, believes Shearman’s Cassandra Cuellar.

In addition, she recommends that professionals always maintain a positive attitude, showing up and treating every day like a new day. “It’s a stressful job, and you have to recognize that your role is to find a way around issues, to find a solution that will meet the client’s ultimate goal whether it’s an internal or external client.”

Honing a Specialty That Always Has Emerging Challenges

After growing up in a small town in Texas, Cuellar came to Austin in 2003 to attend University of Texas – the first lawyer in her family — and has been there ever since. While attending law school, she clerked with the firm Andrews Kurth, where she received an offer to work with the Emerging Companies group. She worked there for seven-and-a-half years until this March when the group of 14 attorneys and associated support staff moved over to Shearman and Sterling LLP.

Currently she is working with companies that are exploring very cutting-edge fields. For example, she is enjoying the challenge of developing two areas in the practice — cryptocurrency and digital assets – and helping move them more into the mainstream. “We have to take them out of the hands of the fringe groups and make them more accessible so people will become comfortable with crypto and blockchain,” she notes.

Another exciting area of growth is in AI. She has a client who focuses on looking at manuscripts and movie scripts for patterns that resonate, which she says is the type of task that AI will revolutionize by applying a more systematic approach.

Learning By Doing

Cuellar describes her first two years as an “unending learning moment.” At the time, she was working with several junior attorneys who left for various reasons so she seized the opportunity to fill the gaps. While it entailed many late nights, in hindsight she sees that taking on these various extra projects was the best possible thing she could have done to propel her career. “I was able to learn from mistakes and now have a vast background which helps me recognize things that I wouldn’t have noticed before.”

While embracing those kinds of opportunities can grow your career, she also finds incredible benefits in taking advantage of mentoring, whether formal or informal.

In fact, at an earlier position that didn’t offer a formal program, she sought out other attorneys to help give her advice. “People are more than willing to have conversations with you when you show you appreciate their time,” she says.

At Shearman, she recognized the culture of mentorship and support the minute she came over. “Female partners whom I don’t even work with have reached out, which was so impressive that these busy women would welcome me and offer their support,” she says. One in particular who stands out is partner Sarah McClean, whom she notes has been very conscious about developing a team of great women and inviting her to immediately get involved.

Another option Cuellar took advantage of was getting involved with industry organizations, which she finds particularly important for minority lawyers. She has enjoyed the four years she’s been involved with the Hispanic National Bar Association, which offers avenues for professional development and advancement; for example, she has had the chance to make pitches to corporations and gleaned immeasurable professional development opportunities from sitting in and learning from other attorneys

Because she places great importance on developing the pipeline of younger lawyers, she’s also been involved with a UT group called Minority Women Pursuing Law, which works with first-generation law students to offer counsel on job hunting. Each year Cuellar presents on what they should know as college students about what law schools and law firms are looking for to help give them a leg up.

Married with two dogs, Cuellar loves to cook and barbeque at home, and she and her husband enjoy frequent visits to their families in south Texas.

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