What You Seize is What You Get

Contributed by Lynne Morton, President, Performance Improvement Solutions

Today’s work environment is tougher than ever. The pressure to find or keep a managerial level position is immense. The pressure to deliver high performance and maintain a leadership role is intense. For many women, the challenges are coupled with the added pressures of striving to maintain personal or family balance. Yet that needn’t be seen as a sign of weakness. Women continue to want to achieve more professionally, and continue to show their abilities to do that well; there’s no weakness evident. Yet we need to be stronger than ever to survive. Today, survival is based on success. And that success can be achieved by those who go after it. In other words, success is achieved by those who see opportunities and who seize them.

In today’s tight job market, it is the person with the confidence and the qualifications who gets the job. Even though women are still, unfortunately, being paid less, companies are not rushing to hire women as a way to keep payrolls down. They are relying on what they think they need: strength during tough times. It’s time for us to get in touch with our inner strength and project that to the world.

According to the Pew Research Center, men outpace women in getting jobs. And women are getting laid off more so than men, at least in some industries. In financial services, long a male-dominated world, from 2007 to 2010, 12.5% of women in the financial industry lost their jobs, compared with 8.8% of men, per the Economic Policy Institute. It would seem that part of the problem comes from women being seen as weak, perhaps indecisive, and not standing up for themselves. Women are not making a strong enough case for the value they are bringing to their organizations… perhaps because they do not see it themselves. Clarity of vision is needed, internally and externally. Then action.

This is a time for bold action, for being decisive, and for standing up against fear or uncertainty. If what you see was what you got, we now know that what you see and seize is what you get. If times are tough, so are we and here’s how.

1. See the Opportunity. Don’t be blinded by lack of progress or fear of failure. Organizations need leaders who recognize what needs to be done and who are willing to take a chance on doing it. That may mean volunteering to serve on a special team that is wrestling with a new problem. It may mean being willing to work longer hours for a discrete period of time in order to learn new skills. It may mean recognizing that there is societal pressure to have more women leaders and if you can show the value you bring, you could make a good case for your career advancement. But you must recognize what is possible in order to take the steps to achieve that.

2. Be Bold but Not Rash. Being decisive is often viewed as male trait, both in terms of the ability to come to a decision quickly and the ability to articulate it in a compelling way. However, women are also known as strong communicators, so why not combine that strength with decision-making. This is a tough one for women, since we don’t want to be criticized as being “too masculine” (read: too aggressive) but also don’t want to be written off as being “too feminine” (read: too weak). McKinsey’s powerful Women Matter studies show that women apply a more participative decision-making style than do men. We aren’t likely to be rash in coming to the decision, so why not be equally strong when communicating it.

3. Think Long-Term PLUS Short-Term. Change is never easy and it is rarely quick. Striking a sensible balance between what may be felt as near-term sacrifice for long-term gain is difficult. Stretching yourself now because if will pay off later is risky. But it works. The summer issue of WorkingMother Magazine features the 2011 Best companies for Multicultural Woman and captures “aha” moments from five women at some of those firms. Each of them talks about the power and achievement they obtained by stretching themselves. Each talks about the strength and satisfaction they achieved by starting within themselves, generating confidence and awareness, and then taking action based on that. Each woman looked beyond the now, to the then; each came out a winner.

WalMart has a unique 20/20 Campaign with a beautiful, simple vision: to raise the percentage of women on corporate board to 20% by 2020. They are seeing an opportunity and taking advantage of it… an opportunity for them to connect with their female customers and stakeholders; and an opportunity to make a difference. Women need to have similarly clear vision. That will make a difference, too.

We can’t rely on organizations to change on our behalf; we have to lead them in that change. We can generate FUSION-like energy by noticing potential, within ourselves and in our environments, and then making it happen.

Lynne Morton is a globally recognized leadership coach and management consultant based in NY. A widely published author and frequent public speaker, she heads the firm Performance Improvement Solutions, which specializes in the FUSIONCoaching™ for High Potential Women Process.