Tips for Women on Negotiating Salary Now That Equal Pay Is Mandated

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Guest contributed by Susan Brennan

On April 9, a US appeals court ruled that a woman cannot be paid less than a man for the same job simply because they had a prior lower salary.

While this is certainly progress in the right direction, it will be interesting to see how companies enforce and track this in action.

Do you cringe a little when you think about salary negotiations? While negotiating your salary might feel like something you would rather avoid, deciding, whether or not, to accept a salary offering and having the confidence to negotiate for higher, is a skill that take you well beyond your life right now.

However, pay secrecy or being discouraged to discuss salary is a real thing that many people, especially women, deal with. According to a survey from the Institute of Women’s Policy Research, 51 percent of women reported, “The discussion of wage and salary information is either discouraged or prohibited.” And with women in the United States earning on average 80 cents to every dollar a man makes, the time for women to feel confident to earn what they deserve and have these conversations is now.

Here is a guide on salary negotiating from the moment you receive the offer to the moment you and your future employer agree upon a number.
  • Before the offer—and even the interview—do your homework so you have data to back up your case

Before you start talking numbers, figure out how much you need to live by doing an inventory of your fixed expenses. This is called determining your bottom line. What do you have to pay every month rain or shine; rent, child care, food, car payment? This isn’t necessarily the number you should settle for, but it will give you your bottom line—then build up. Caveat: Employers do not care what your expenses are, so don’t use this as an argument for more money.

  • Know your worth

There are a lot of resources to help you determine what the market is paying for similar positions and experience levels. Websites like Glassdoor and Payscale allow you to plug in a job title and years of experience and get a range for what the market will bear for that kind of role. The numbers will take into account geography and a number of other factors that have an impact. Across industries, pay gaps vary. For example, female doctors earn significantly less than male doctors, an average of 28 percent.

There are also some awkward situations you need to be ready for, such as:
  • On the first interview, you’re asked about your salary expectations. A good (and honest) response is to tell the interviewer that at this point, you’re focused on learning more about the role and what you will be doing before moving forward with salary. If you absolutely need to answer, never provide a single number; have a range ready based on your research so you have data to back you up. If you’re asked about salary on an online application, try to skip that question or enter a range if possible; otherwise enter the high end of your range.
  • You get the offer at a lower salary than you expected. First, express that you are excited about being offered the position and the value you can add to the company. Then add something like this (given that you’ve done your homework on fair market salary): “I did want to talk to you more about the base salary because I’ve done research around comparable roles with my background in [insert experience], and my expectation was that I would be in the range of [insert range here] and I’m wondering if there’s room to negotiate.” And make sure you also ask questions about benefits such as health coverage, retirement matching, and vacation; they can add a lot of value and should be taken into consideration.
  • You want to negotiate the salary. Should you email, meet in person, or make a phone call? The natural tendency for a difficult conversation is to email, but when it comes to salary it’s very important to have a conversation if you can. You can certainly send email to say you would like to talk more about the offer, but set up a time to talk. It will help both of you get a good read on each other, and you can get answers quickly. If the answer is “No” to negotiation, ask when you could expect to get closer to your range. “How do people in this position historically move up the range? How often will I be reviewed and see salary increases?”
  • You get the call with the job offer and salary you want. Should you accept? First and foremost, do not say “Yes” right away, as it binds you without knowing the full terms of the offer, including benefits and reviews. Pause, take a deep breath, be gracious; and buy some time. A good response: “I’m thrilled to get the offer and I will definitely take some time to think about it. Could you send an email with all of the details and we can schedule a follow up call to discuss?” This is important: Do not make verbal acceptance to an offer without reviewing all the details! It may seem counterintuitive to pause after all your work negotiating, but there are a lot of other details that are part of the offer. The contracts are typically written by a lawyer or human resources personnel and can be binding— even if you’ve only made a verbal agreement. Carefully review the agreement once you receive it.

The bottom line of successful salary negotiation especially for women: Know your budget and have data on the market range (versus a single number) to back up your worth. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you deserve; but make sure you are vision-driven—the value you will add to the company—and data-informed.

Susan Brennan is Associate Vice President of University Career Services at Bentley University and co-host of the career advice podcast Counter Offer, the podcast that helps you love Mondays. Over the past decade, she has put Bentley on the map for delivering impactful career education and outcomes, with 99% of first-year students participating in her team’s ground breaking career development course and 97% of 2017 graduates employed or attending graduate school within six months of graduation.

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

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Are You a Sexist Woman at Work? Part Two

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Following on from last week’s column on how our brains assign positive and negative traits to men and women without asking us, we look at how we all hold bias ubiquitously.

Or in plain English, women can be as sexist and upholding of the patriarchy as men. How does this play out in the workplace? It appears in small and large ways in offices, hospitals, orchestras, schools and governments.

When some women work for female bosses, the experience can sometimes be perceived by them as less than optimal? Is the female boss truly awful as an individual ? Maybe or maybe not, as we can look to deep behavioral theory to explain why people act the way that they do. Social psychology theory by Lewin suggests that behavior is a function of a person’s personality activated by the environment that they are operating in. So, when you are working for a female boss who happens to be taking on traits that you do not expect her to (as a woman), you might consider that this boss might be beholden to the systemic forces that encourage behaviors that are activated in their personality. She might have consciously or unconsciously chosen that path as assimilation is what most career blogs and experts have spat at women for the last thirty years. Doesn’t make it right, but certainly explains things.

Or it could be you who has deep rooted issues about who the boss should be? You could be jarred as she isn’t meeting your stereotypical traits imagined for her as a female manager. This is only worsened by the gender segregation that is peddled falsely as brain science. Men are not from Mars, Women are not from Venus. Newsflash, we are all from Earth and we all need to do a better job on Earth at reducing bias that comes with instant thoughts of who the other person is. We all are socially conditioned to believe the differences between the sexes are the same for everyone and this discredits the real work of letting people speak and act as individuals at work while understanding that by virtue of having a social identity, has legacy trait and role assumptions in society and therefore at work too. Outwardly we see gender, ethnicity etc as a feature of the human in front of us but we have to stop that from being a definition of capability and capacity and actual experience.

Are you wrestling with challenges at work? Consider coaching with nicki@theglasshammer.com

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Recovering from a Mistake at Work

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Sad businesswoman

By Cindy Krischer Goodman

Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada studied gender differences in apology behavior of men and women ages 18 to 44 and found women apologized more and felt they had caused offense more.

To recover from a mistake, career experts advise walking the line between apologizing and expressing confidence you can handle tough situations going forward.  Even if handled well, there could be lasting repercussions or lingering distrust. The more glaring and costly the mistake, the more it could affect your job security. It is important to acknowledge you recognize the mistake’s seriousness and are prepared to accept the punishment management doles out without complaining, including being taken off a client’s account or moved to another department. The next step is working hard to rebuild trust.

“It’s going to sting for a while,” said Leadership Coach Monique Catoggio. “But we have to be really aware of how we’re behaving and make sure others are seeing we understand the mistake, are making positive changes, and are dedicated to not making the same mistake again.”

Catoggio, founder of Illumined Life Leadership in Miami, said part of being a leader is role modeling for team members how to bounce back gracefully from a slip-up and learn from what went wrong.

In real life

A marketing director at a Miami accounting firm read a news article about her firm’s acquisition, she realized she had made a mistake. She had misspelled the name of the acquired firm in the press release that went out to hundreds of news outlets. She knew she quickly needed to fix the situation and prepared a new press release to distribute, labeling it “correct version.” Next, she went to her boss with an explanation, and the details of how she corrected her mistake.

At some point, everyone inevitably makes a mistake at work. Sometimes the slip up is small, such as sending an email out addressed to the wrong person. Sometimes it is big, with the potential to be costly for the organization.

Reacting timely and honestly to a costly error can make a difference. You don’t want your boss to learn about the mistake from a co-worker in another department, or worse, a customer. Admitting to a mistake, rather than allowing others to come to their own conclusions, helps assure your boss or client can trust you to be upfront and honest. Career experts advise against fessing up by email, insisting it’s better to have a verbal dialogue in which emotions can be conveyed. As a manager, you may need to take responsibility for an error someone below you made. In doing so, you will need to commit to finding out how the blunder happened, putting in new protocol, and monitoring your team closely so it doesn’t happen again.

In seeking out the root cause of the mistake, you will need to dig deep to understand if you need to be more patient, less distracted, ask more questions or double check facts. You want to discover any fundamental flaws in processes and uncover the actions over which you had control. Your goal should be to make sure you and your team learn from the mistake to ensure it never happens again.  Most important, approach your boss or your customer with proposed solutions for how to make things right.

Learning from mistakes

As many people have discovered, mistakes that initially seem costly, have potential to be opportunities. Paul Schoemaker, entrepreneur, consultant and educator who has taught at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, believes success is the sum-total of many mistakes. As the author of  “Brilliant Mistakes: Finding Success on the Far Side of Failure,” he has said, “If you want your team to get better, first, teach them to frame any mistake as a learning opportunity.”

Schoemaker believes sometimes making mistakes can be the quickest way to discover a problem’s solution. For example, a mistake that initially seems costly based on previous operation methods could end up saving a company money in a changing business environment. In developing a mechanism to prevent re-occurrences, you could discover a more efficient way of getting work done. And, by working hard to remedy the situation with the customer, you could build a stronger relationship.

Success in learning from a mistake may require involvement from another person, someone objective who can give advice, identify training or help with solutions. They may know of someone that has bounced back from a similar mistake and a way to deal with the situation that you don’t.

Going forward, you will need to re-prove yourself on each new assignment and possibly even in your daily activity. Meanwhile, expect to be treated as if on probation; you will need to get past self-doubts, take every measure to ensure the mistake isn’t repeated, and show you are doing your best work. It may take time, but the goal is to prove to management, your colleagues and yourself that you are still trustworthy in your role.

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Changing Jobs: What Financial Benefits Do You Need to Think About Besides Your Salary?

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People waiting for an interview

Guest contributed by Marisa Joseph

The excitement of a new career path, or even taking on a different role within your current company, can be accompanied by new (and sometimes overwhelming) personal and professional considerations.

And, for women who’ve spent more time establishing their careers, these considerations can vary significantly from those just starting out.

When approaching this transition, be sure to evaluate (and understand) the potential impact on your lifestyle that a new job might bring, along with how your short- and long-term financial goals could be impacted each step of the way. One in four Americans feel some level of financial anxiety, according to a 2017 Northwestern Mutual survey, making addressing these considerations – no matter the stage of your career – a key step to moving forward with confidence.

Before you accept the offer, ask yourself a few questions:

1. What’s going to happen to my non-cash bonuses? If you received stock options at the company you’ll be leaving, make sure you’re aware of the implications when switching jobs. Review your offer letter and/or employment agreements to ensure you’re cashing out your stock options within a stipulated time of departure, and checking on potential tax implications.

2. Is my tax bracket going to change? Depending on your new salary, you could be bumped into a different tax bracket. By meeting with an accountant, you can better prepare yourself for offsetting a potential tax increase.

3. Is your potential employer offering other benefits that are important to you? Maybe you’re looking for a more flexible schedule in your new job, or perhaps the opportunity to go back to school. Remember to highlight these possibilities in conversations with your potential employer. Ask also about a sign-on bonus or annual incentives, as well as termination provisions, to ensure you’re maximizing your financial options.

Once you’ve begun your new role, take the time to review your benefits package to update or supplement as necessary.

Below is a list of what you should review:

1. How am I handling my retirement plan? Your new job may provide you with the opportunity to contribute to a company-sponsored retirement plan, such as a 401(k) or Roth IRA. If this is something you took advantage of at your previous job, a financial planner can help determine if rolling over your old plan – or keeping your money where it is – is the best option for staying on track with your retirement goals. And, if this is a new opportunity for you, make sure you review what your employer is willing to match so you can maximize your contributions.

2. What are my insurance options? Your new employer may also offer insurance plans for employees, which could include health, dental, disability and life insurance. By thoroughly reviewing your benefits, you can identify any gaps in what your employer is willing to offer for baseline coverage, and where you may want to purchase additional protection. Ask yourself also; will I need to pay more in premiums, copayments or deductibles for my family? Consider again talking with your financial planner for help navigating your options and understanding any of those gaps in insurance.

3. Is there a waiting period before my disability (and/or life) insurance coverage begins? Sometimes, new employees are required to wait 90 days before they become eligible to receive coverage. Find out if you fall into this category, and from there, identify if supplementary insurance could be an option to protect you and your family during the gap.

Finally, once you’ve made it though the first several months at your new job, it’s time to evaluate one more crucial metric.

1. Am I happy? While your job may have come with perks like the ability to have more discretionary income or additional vacation days, these can sometimes seem less attractive when coupled with demanding hours or difficult relationships with coworkers. Does the new job fit with your lifestyle? Is it putting you closer to achieving your long-term financial and professional goals? Consider discussing your thoughts and options with a trusted friend, mentor or coach to map out the next steps of your plan.

By keeping in mind this checklist of questions, you’ll be on your way to embracing your new position feeling confident and prepared.

Guest contributed by Marisa Joseph http://marisajoseph.nm.com

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

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Are you a sexist woman at work? Part One

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Recent revelations about banks paying women less for the same job seemed to surprise everyone, yet nobody, given the recent wake up call that we aren’t as avant garde on equality as we once thought.

Let’s assume good intentions for now and review the brain science behind managers and leaders’ decisions to promote and pay men more than women for the same job.

How is this still all happening in 2018? Simply put, it is our brains fault and how we give the benefit of the doubt to certain people based on their social identity (sex, race, nationality, class etc) and the associative brain process kicks in. Basically, what we have seen before generates positive and negative stereotyping that we silently attribute without knowing the individual (if we let that happen).

The brain and the way it processes information actually puts association to things in the ‘collection’ stage of data which was not previously believed to be the case. Literally if you see (or moreover don’t realize you have just seen) four red cars go past and then a blue one, your brain is busy assigning category and value to observed data without your conscious knowledge or permission. Likewise, pattern breaking is hard for the brain regarding that a leader/techie/mechanic/astronaut looks like based on images it has seen before.

Many social psychologists, naming two here; Chris Argyris (and his ladder of inference which can be used today by you in meetings for better bias breaking) and Virginia Schein have been telling us for years that we think our way into biased decisions unconsciously is based on our own beliefs. Now, neuroscience concurs that our brains trick us into thinking some people belong in a job because of their category type and the implicit value assigned to it. Notice use the of word “belong” because deserving on actual present moment merit has nothing to do with past patterns of other people’s performance. The average brain in its categorization of things and does not even attempt to predict future shapes and sizes of anything, hence it was Steve Jobs and not just anyone who could think up the iPod by looking at the walkman. It does however work pretty hard to tell you what is unfamiliar to you as Dr Banaji and colleagues’ impressive body of work on cognition and unconscious bias work has shown around ethnicity and gender.

So, here is the bad news, even as a woman your brain exercises bias against other women. Your whole life you have lived in the operating system of the patriarchy with more boys and men in leading roles from the first book you read, first job worked at, to the movies you watch. Then there is the messaging you heard from your grandparents and everyone else around you and how you were supposed to be as a girl and then a “young lady” then a nice woman. If you broke from heteronormative cisgender or even ethnicity molds, you got to have a pejorative label. Sound familiar? You can be a nice or nasty women and that doesn’t even begin to address the intersectionality issues that create much worse dichotomies or lose-lose stereotypes for non majority grouped people.

There is good news and that is you can override your cognitive processes. Recently, 3 out of 10 school children when asked to draw a scientist drew a woman. That is the best ratio we have ever seen, but we have ways to go.

You can start to be conscious of your thoughts and feelings in crucial moments like hiring and challenge your own assumptions around the constructs and paradigms you are holding. Put them on the table, shed light on them and see if they serve you and your mission? If you espouse a goal or a way of being, what are you actually doing behaviorally and not doing to achieve that goal?

How do your thought patterns match up to the person who you say you are? How do your unconscious beliefs help or hinder you at work?

Book an exploratory session with Executive Coach and theglasshammer.com‘s founder Nicki Gilmour (nicki@theglasshammer.com) to figure out how to get what you want today!

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The Growth Mindset as a Career Strategy

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Image via Shutterstock

By Lisa Larkowski

Life-long learning is more than a slogan.

Apparently even the brightest amongst us are limited if we do not continue to grow and evolve. This is commonly talked about as mindsets. A fixed mindset is a belief that intelligence and ability are set and unchangeable, while a growth mindset believes that intelligence and ability can be improved through your efforts, strategies, and help from others. Mindset researcher and expert Carol Dweck herself has tried to set the record straight and debunk the popular misconception that there are “pure” mindsets. Dweck in a 2016 Harvard Business Review article states “Everyone is actually a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets, and that mixture continually evolves with experience.”

What is the “Bright Woman effect”

The “Bright woman effect” sprang out of a phenomenon called “bright girl effect” in research which showed that girls had more fixed mindsets than boys, and in particular, the more intelligent the girl, the more likely she was to have a fixed mindset as opposed to a growth mindset. This helped explain why highly intelligent girls tended to give up faster than others when faced with new or difficult challenges. The line of reasoning followed, then, that if you were a bright girl with a fixed mindset, then your fixed mindset would follow you throughout your life. tle :

New research from Case Western Reserve University shows that the so-called “bright girl effect” does not persist into a “bright woman effect.” The research smashes two misconceptions, the first being that highly intelligent women have fixed mindsets. And secondly, that each of us has either a fixed or growth mindset that endures through our lives. It turns out that we have both fixed and growth mindsets. That they are changeable. And as Carol Dweck has indicated, that with effort, we can tip the scales in favor of growth mindset. The “bright woman effect” is a long-held assumption that the more intelligent a woman is, the more likely she is to have a fixed mindset as opposed to a growth mindset. But until now, no studies focused on the connection between intelligence and mindsets in adults.

Case Western’s examination of three separate studies shows that the “bright girl effect” does not endure into adulthood. The studies revealed fixed and growth mindsets in both men and women, but they were not consistent with gender or intelligence. As the researchers concluded, “There is limited evidence for a “bright woman effect” which is good news contrary to what it sounds like because the study’s results suggest that fixed and growth mindsets can shift over time and with circumstances.

Gimme Growth

It goes without saying that growth mindsets are more productive than fixed mindsets.

Growth mindsets are associated with greater success confronting challenges, taking risks, persisting in the face of adversity, and succeeding by learning from mistakes and setbacks. Fixed mindsets lead to lack of persistence, inaction, and harsh self-judging and “create an urgency to prove yourself over and over again.” Who wouldn’t want to get rid of fixed mindsets and bring more growth mindsets into their lives? Ironically, the key to getting more growth mindset lies with our fixed mindsets.

In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck suggests practices for working with fixed mindset triggers as the first step in journey towards what she calls a “true growth mindset.” Here are two things to consider.

Embrace your fixed mindsets. Notice when they are present, observe them, and most important, try not to judge them. Fixed mindsets can show up in situations where we feel challenged, stressed, overwhelmed, criticized, when setbacks occur, or when we see colleagues succeed. Become curious about your reactions. Ask yourself: How do I feel and react in challenging situations? Am I reacting with anxiety, anger, incompetence, or defeat, or instead with curiosity to learn more? Accept your thoughts and feelings and work with and through them, as much as you need to. You can even give your fixed mindset a name or a persona to help you call them out when you notice them.

Intentionally shift to growth mindset. When you notice your fixed mindsets showing up, actively shift yourself into growth mindset by asking yourself questions like: What can I learn from this? How can I improve? What steps can I take to help myself? This begins to loosen the grip of your fixed mindset and open you up to learning, possibility, and forward movement.

Make Friends with Your Fixed Mindsets

Shifting from a fixed to growth mindset is possible, but it takes work. It requires recognizing the situations or events that trigger us into a fixed mindset in the first place. It means looking at our feelings and reactions and then working with those with self-kindness and non-judgment.

Our mindsets are not written in stone. The more we can recognize and work with our fixed mindset triggers in the areas that challenge us, the more we can take charge of our reactions and bring more growth mindset and its benefits into our lives.

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The Business Case for Gender Diversity: Necessary But Not Sufficient

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Image via Shutterstock

Guest contributed by Lisa Levey

The business case or economic justification for gender diversity is front and center in any discussion of the subject.

Yet as a veteran diversity consultant, I don’t see the business case is getting the job done. It’s not that the business case is unimportant. Clearly, it’s critical but while the business case is necessary, it’s not sufficient.

There has long been evidence of the links between gender diversity and positive business outcomes – enhanced financial performance, greater creativity and innovation, and less risk among others. In 2008 the U.S. and the world fell into an economic downturn of epic proportions. Yet as late as the spring of 2007, the International Monetary Fund or IMF was messaging continued optimism for the global financial markets.

How could the IMF – explicitly tasked with monitoring the health of global financial markets – have missed the signs? An independent study found that ‘groupthink’ fueled by lack of diversity in perspective was to blame and gender diversity is a powerful means to bring that diversity of perspective to the table.

In June 2011 Christine LaGarde became the first female leader of the IMF replacing her predecessor Dominique Strauss-Kahn who was at the helm in the run-up to the global financial crisis. In 2016 LaGarde was unanimously voted for another 5 year term.  

The IMF example powerfully illustrates the limitations of the business-case only bias characterizing our current approach to justifying a focus on gender diversity. If bringing the world’s economies to their knees does not provide sufficient evidence of the business case for diversity – and the economic hazards of homogeneity – it’s clear the business case must only be a piece of a bigger puzzle.

Most white men approach gender diversity, all diversity truth be told, with trepidation. They experience the topic as harmful, fraught with conflict and risky. For some men, the very idea of enhanced gender diversity elicits anger. They perceive women’s initiatives as reverse discrimination and see support for greater gender diversity as undermining their professional security and status. Gender diversity makes many men feel awkward, confused and guilty; they keep their distance thinking, ‘I’m not one of those guys. I’m a good guy. I’m not doing anything wrong.’ But of all men’s problems with gender diversity, the biggest barrier to their involvement is indifference and apathy. In their mind’s, gender diversity is a women’s issue.

But that is where they would be completely mistaken!

Diversity is about evolving work cultures so that men can be the far more engaged fathers they long to be. Diversity is about men being able to take paternity leave – without career penalty – so they can experience the profound bonding with their child in his or her earliest days. Diversity is about men’s wives and partners being paid equitably, so she can contribute more financially, and he can feel less financial pressure. Diversity is about men’s mothers being able to reenter the workforce after divorce so that she can support herself and rebuild her self-esteem, in many cases. Diversity is about men’s sisters who want to leave unfaithful or violent husbands but don’t feel financially able to do so.

Diversity is about men’s daughters having the same professional opportunities as their sons and their sons having the same opportunities to be involved parents as their daughters. Diversity is about men’s daughters not having to deal with the sexually inappropriate norms that are pervasive in the workplace. Diversity is about men’s female bosses, many incredible mentors, not getting the opportunities they deserve because they’re deemed too nice – or not nice enough – to be a senior leader.

Diversity is about men recognizing that many of their seemingly harmless behaviors – assuming a new mother is not up for the challenge of a new job or stretch assignment without even asking her, making sexual jokes that demean, talking over women in meetings, paying the women you manage less than the men because you can – don’t just affect those other women. They affect his women [and girls] too by normalizing and perpetuating the status quo.   

While gender diversity is the smart thing to do in a business sense, it is also the right thing to do in so many ways. We shouldn’t be so reluctant in the business world to say that aloud! Helping men realize the connections between gender diversity at work – and in their lives outside of work – has been an enormous missing link. Gender diversity is not just about men helping women to thrive at work. It is about men being full partners in driving change because they know just how much gender diversity at work is connected to so many parts of their lives and has repercussions far beyond their workplaces.   

My vision is for white men to be an important voice at the diversity table, listening, sharing, and working to co-create new norms. Gender diversity is not a zero-sum game. It’s about evolving the work world for the 21st century in ways that improve the lives of women and men.

When we talk about gender diversity, in addition to articulating the economic case, let’s also talk about how it deeply affects men – the people they care about, the values they hold, the lives they want to lead, and the world they want to create for themselves and their children.   

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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Getting visibility for career advancement

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Visibility matters in your career.

It is important for bosses, sponsors and even peers to know what you are capable of and see what projects you are working on. Externally it is good to be seen by people in other firms too as although you might choose to be a “lifer” in one firm, you may also one day look for a change. Building a network is crucial to a career that is broad and long as people drive processes and innovate new products.

For eleven years here at theglasshammer.com we have profiled a senior woman on a Monday in our Voice of Experience column and on some Thursdays we profile Mover and Shakers and Rising Stars. We also have addressed intersectionality since the beginning, making sure in our profiles, interviews and panel events that all types of women are visible.

We have written over 800 profiles in total and we have not finished yet so as we look ahead for the rest of 2018, we are looking for great women to profile in financial and professional services and Fortune 1000 companies for the rest of the year. Thematically. we are looking for LGBTQIA Leaders for our June Pride series and then Men who Get it for July and then Latina leaders for September.

Please apply to louise@theglasshammer.com if you wish to be considered as a “profilee”.

We do not cover entrepreneurs for one reason that we have had in place from the beginning and that is because women are often encouraged to leave big business. Our site has always been about navigating your career inside industries (money, oil, big law) that have formal and also implicit male structures and hierarchies

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Let’s Move from a Gender War to a Gender Partnership

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Guest contributed by Lisa Levey

Gender equality is not about winning a war!

The war metaphor distracts us with finger pointing, blaming, and endlessly seeking to justify who’s the perpetrator and who’s the victim. The war metaphor keeps us stuck. The reality is we all – both women and men – fall victim to highly gendered thinking. We are stuck in gender binaries and it has been, and in many ways continues to be, our conditioning.

In an experiment that has been repeated many times and redesigned in multiple ways, both women and men demonstrate a male-bias for leadership positions in the workplace. The experiment might go something like this: participants are asked to rate the resumes of candidates for a leadership position. They are told that each group will be evaluating the strength of one among multiple candidates. What the participants don’t know is that everyone is looking at the same exact resume. The only thing that has been changed is the name and gender [and in other experiments the race or ethnicity] of the candidate. Both women and men evaluate the supposed male candidate more favorably, even indicating he should be paid more.

The Revolution of Declining Expectations

Several years ago at the pinnacle of the financial implosion, I listened to Harvard Law Professor Nancy Gertner’s keynote address at a women’s leadership conference where she passionately described the women’s movement in the 1970’s as a revolution focused on changing the workplace and changing families, not about women having the choice to work outside the home. She went on to say that far too little had changed in either sphere and that change requires viable alternatives, which remained elusive, with companies overwhelmingly still family unfriendly and as a result, continued skewed gender norms at home. Retired Federal Judge Gertner [appointed during the Clinton administration] described the current state as the Revolution of Declining Expectations which needed to be remedied by igniting the consciousness of women and men[LL1] [LL2].

Yes, women can be a top leader -but if she has children, she had better be a good mom first. And men get major kudos for being an involved dad, BUT he better be a breadwinner too or we’re not quite sure what to make of him.
Both men and women suffer from a dissonance between their egalitarian ideology and their behavior. Take for instance the common scenario where a man strongly espouses gender equality, yet somehow that doesn’t translate to his negotiating a parental leave for more than a paltry week or two or realizing that his relationship to work must evolve if he plans on being a co-parent rather than a parent-assistant. No more flying out to a client on a day or two’s notice or heading out for 18 holes of golf, feeling fully justified because he spent an hour on Saturday morning playing with the kids.

I saw this dissonance in stark relief as a member of a research team examining millennial dads. In The New Millennial Dad: Understanding the Paradox of Today’s Fathers, two-thirds of men reported they should share care of their children equally with their spouse but only one-third actually did so. At the same time, over 90% of millennial fathers indicated wanting greater responsibility and men were twice as willing as women to seek advancement, even if it meant more time spent at work.

Similarly, a woman passionate about gender equality, especially about her husband sharing the load at home, fails to realize that her dictating the terms of engagement when it comes to parenting and household management renders him a servant, not a partner. Instead of grabbing the baby in frustration if dad doesn’t know what comforting techniques work best, she – and he – are better served in the long-run by her encouraging his efforts and giving him alone time with the baby when he can develop his comforting repertoire. And, if she blows a gasket when her husband returns from school shopping with their daughter sporting – to mom’s mind – an awful haircut, she must realize her parenting micromanagement not only saps his confidence but chills his desire to be involved.

The Mirror Image of Gender Inequality

The metaphor I’ve coined to illustrate the complexity of gender, and the fight for equality, is that of a mirror image.
Men, because of their gender, enjoy a privileged status in the workplace, which I’ve seen is highly challenging for many men to see or accept. His path upward is facilitated by countless subtle and not-so-subtle norms, ranging from male senior leaders who see in him themselves earlier in their careers, his knowing – having been schooled in the masculinity code – the importance of self-promotion for advancement, and his intense commitment and singular focus on work fueled by having a spouse or partner who is accountable for home and family management.

Similarly women, because of their gender, enjoy a privileged status as a parent and the leader at home. Everyone assumes a mother knows how to nurture a child instinctively, rather than the reality of her building skill through trial and error. School and camp default to mom as the go-to parent, even if dad explicitly asks to be called first, as my husband and I witnessed year after year after year. If a woman decides to step out of the workforce for a time, because the pressure at work feels too great and/or she wants to spend more time with her child, she is comforted by the familiar trope that she is being a good – no better – mother. But it’s hard to imagine a man feeling supported to stop working – or even cutting back at work – so he can be a better father. Ask dads who are the primary caretakers, as I have, about feeling welcomed into the mom clique at school or on the playground. While some have a positive story to tell, it’s far more common to hear about their feeling excluded, literally like the odd-man out

While women continue to struggle for their rightful place at the workplace leadership table, similarly men continue to struggle for their rightful place at home and as a parent/ caretaker for their loved ones.

The Power of Gender Partnerships

For the last 2 ½ years, I have seen the type of consciousness raising that Judge Gertner described as a remedy for the Revolution of Declining Expectations in a very unlikely place, the campuses of elite business schools. It began with my attending the first event hosted by the Harvard Business School Manbassadors, a group of men who sought to support gender equality at business school and in the workplace. Over more than two years, I have been researching male ally groups across the country and it has given me great hope for the future of gender equality.
These young men work closely with their female peers who are involved with women’s leadership groups on campus. They have candid conversations about gender, educate themselves about gender inequalities at work and at home, and work together to affect change.

I have been deeply inspired listening to young men share their desire to be a good partner in fully supporting their girlfriend’s/ wife’s career aspirations and being an inclusive leader that facilitates the professional development and advancement of women and men. They see supporting gender diversity and gender equality as both the smart thing as well as the right thing to do. They have seen the struggles of their sisters, mothers, friends and work colleagues and they have heard the challenges of their female business school peers. They want to make it better, not only for women but for themselves too. They don’t want to be absent dads and they’re tired of the locker room talk and behaviors. It doesn’t square with the women they see all around them, including the women they care about in their lives.

Male ally groups have provided a powerful forum for men to get involved and to transition from ‘the problem’ to ‘part of the solution.’ Working side-by-side with their female peers, these men and women are grappling with gender in all its complexity and seeking to rewrite the gender rules.

Rather than sapping our energy fighting with one another, or becoming resigned to ‘that’s the way it is,’ women and men can be far more effective working together to make gender equality real and not just aspirational in our lives.
That my friends, is key to getting us unstuck!

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.  
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Self-Awareness – What Can You Not Access Yourself and What to Do About That?

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By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Reading is the supreme life hack – medium.com recently declared gifting a list of psychology and philosophy books, a couple of which got added to my (long) reading list.

Reading is an executive habit, with top executives reading at a much higher rate than others, with some stats quoting one book per week. But, it is what you do with what you read that counts.

Behavior change is notoriously hard for anyone. Addiction theory and neuroscience tells us that it takes sixteen weeks to bring a habit.

There is no doubt that our habits are socially acceptable like over working, over extending and never believing enough is enough. Then there is the whole topic of feeling worthy! Our fires are fueled by our self- talk, our mental models and our beliefs – implicit and explicit. Are you consciously goal setting or is the driver of your bus your unconscious mind? Just what role does the belief set that has been formed since childhood play right now? Our fear can fuel us without us ever realizing the agenda it creates while we go about our business.

Are you ready to talk about it and go on a journey of discovery?

Work with nicki@evolvedpeople.com as your executive coach to kill those gremlins!

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