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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Women in Corporate America Continue to Feel Like a Square Peg in a Round Hole

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Guest contributed by Lisa Levey

Gender diversity is on the radar in corporate America after more than 10 years of research highlighting the economic benefits of women in leadership roles.

Companies have invested in gender initiatives that aim to support women’s advancement and diversify the leadership pipeline. Some companies have been at it for multiple decades. Yet, the results seem to be much ado about nothing.

McKinsey and LeanIn’s 2017 annual Women in the Workplace report on the state of women’s advancement recounts the sad tale – women fall behind early in their careers and the gender gaps widen at each step along the career ladder. And year after year the changes are marginally positive at best.

So what is going on? Why despite much effort on the part of organizations does the big picture of women’s place in corporate America look eerily similar to 10, 20, or more years ago?

The truth is that despite much effort, corporate work environments – developed by and for men – continue to be defined by masculine rules of engagement. In multiple ways, so many women at work continue to feel like a square peg in a round hole.

Masculine and Feminine Behavioral Norms Diverge

To understand the disconnect, let’s begin with the well-researched premise that masculine behavioral norms are deeply linked to hierarchy. Men think in terms of competition and increasing their relative positioning, aka power and status. Dominance behaviors often define their approach.

Translated into the workplace, this looks like men bragging about their accomplishments – accomplishments that often are inflated. This looks like talking over others and mansplaining – talking without interruption – to control the floor or from lack of self-awareness. This looks like posturing and talking a big game to get the upper hand in a negotiation. This looks like sexualizing women – perhaps unintentionally – or intentionally with the goal of marginalizing them by seeking to ‘keep them in their place.’

Women have been socialized to equalize, rather than to differentiate, resulting in a predisposition to share rather than to concentrate power. Stephen Lukes, a sociologist who has written extensively about power, contrasts the approach of getting an individual to do something they may, or may not, want to do with a far more sophisticated and cooperative alternative in which both those who do – and do not – benefit from the status quo have agency to influence the system. Women tend toward the latter.

Translated into the workplace, this looks like sharing credit, even in situations where others played a small role. It translates into women being more soft-spoken and less likely to put someone on the spot. It translates into women focusing on shared goals, rather than power differentials, in negotiations.

The Rockefeller Foundation commissioned Korn Ferry to study women CEOs to learn how more women can make it to the top. What they found was, in comparison to their male counterparts, women CEOs demonstrated far more humility, were more likely to credit others as playing a central role in their shared success, and were significantly less likely to self promote.

Leadership = Men, Masculine Norms Prevail

Not surprisingly, leadership in the business world has been defined through the gender lens of masculinity, rendering women lacking. How many times has it been said, “she lacks gravitas” or “she doesn’t have enough executive presence to be a leader.”

Studies show that women are deeply drawn to a sense of purpose and meaning, often connected to helping others and to women’s vision of making the world a better place. A longitudinal study of more than 700 engineering students at premier universities found that a central reason so many women leave the engineering field was a disconnect between their drive to solve problems that make a difference in people’s lives and their workplace experience of corporate proclamations rather than demonstrated commitment to improving society. Similarly the Korn Ferry study reported women leaders were driven by a strong sense of purpose, perceiving their companies as positively impacting the world.

Research by the OECD [an organization focused on promoting policies that improve the economic and social well-being of people worldwide] and UNWomen show that when women have greater access to economic resources, they spend those dollars on things like health care and education, bettering not only themselves and their families but also their communities in the process. Yet in the business world, where cold, hard analytical thinking is king, male leaders denigrate women’s emotions, marginalizing women by characterizing them as ‘not tough enough to make the hard decisions’ or ‘lacking business acumen.’ Why then are men, driven by emotion as they make risky trades on the stock market and pursue questionable acquisitions, [most of which provide NO economic benefit to shareholders,], praised for their gutsy decisions and held blameless for failures rationalized as the cost of doing business?

For most professional women, advancement is very important but, it is not their only goal. Thus, they are more likely to forgo an opportunity that does not fit into the big picture of their life at that time. Commitment and hard work are not an issue for women but the all-in, all-the-time definition of leadership that prevails is.[i] How many women start their long workdays having already fed their children, thrown in a load of laundry, answered some emails, made lunches and maybe even started dinner? Yet women receive messaging that they aren’t committed enough!
Bain & Company’s 2014 US gender partity research found that while women start out with as much, or more, career ambition than their male peers, after two short years on the job, their career aspirations decline precipitously while men’s remain constant.

Why the big drop? Women continually encounter the masculine leadership norm of the ideal worker who is singularly focused because they have a partner who deals with all the rest. What if we stopped telling women they aren’t committed enough at work? And what if we start telling men that they and their loved-ones are paying the emotional price for their no limits, masculine leadership model?

To make matters worse, it seems that no matter how women behave, they just can’t seem to get it right. Women who meet stereotypical gender expectations of being nurturing and accommodating – are deemed likable but “not leadership material” – while women who are assertive get kudos for possessing leadership potential but also judged as lacking interpersonal skills. Leadership or likeability – it seems women can only pick one.

The Problematic Value Proposition for Aspiring Women Leaders

When women in the pipeline look up, they see struggle because of their gender, little support to figure it out, and the need to combat even greater – not less – gender bias with each step up the corporate ladder. Feminine behavioral norms are devalued and even when women behave like men, they’re still judged lacking. Why then are we surprised when women don’t say, “Please sign me up for more of that?”

McKinsey and LeanIn’s 2017 Women in the Workplace report captures the struggle. Women progress at a slower rate than their male colleagues, despite asking for promotions at comparable rates and being no more likely to leave their companies. In fact, men report they are more likely to receive raises and promotions without even having to ask. Women in the study were nearly 5 times as likely as men to report gender played a role in their chance for a promotion or raise. Is it any wonder why women lose optimism in their career potential?

While men are doing more at home than their father’s generation, women continue to disproportionately shoulder the load at home, in many cases enabling their partner’s singular work focus. And the cycle continues!

Meanwhile many men can’t even see that the playing field is tipped, essentially invalidating the lived experience of their women co-workers. It makes me think of the many women’s voices that have been twisted and silenced for so long when calling out sexual harassment. Finally in this Harvey Weinstein epoch, women are being heard.

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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Behaviors of the Incumbent Leaders and Their Effects on the Rest of Us.

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By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

The CEO Genome Project states that there are four behaviors that show up for senior leaders to set them apart.

A Genome project on anything is fascinating to me as it of course only can replicate on what went before and I am interested in futurism in conjunction with historical trends. Why? because otherwise from day dot until the end of time, we are going to have to live in denial that the legacy masculine trait data is skewing the potential of women and ironically modern evolved man. Why no one has really dwelled on this is a bit of mystery to me, or is it a conscious or unconscious omission? If we only talk about how old testosterone straight white American men have led, how do we expect women or other men who naturally are or aspire to not fit the mould of the stereotype?

The effect of us bowing to the patriarchy is serious. Lewinian Theory ( the foundation of organizational psychology and systems thinking) suggests that behavior is a function of our personality and the environment we are operating in. In real life, just about all of us can point to a female leader who has assimilated to what I like to call “Jack Welsh in a skirt” mode and with disastrous results for her and most who have to be part of that team. Yet, to punish that individual is to misunderstand the systemic forces and rewards that are real and active as long as the masculine trait pattern of leadership is considered the only one, or the superior one.

I have zero interest in stereotyping men into one group. I think there are amazing men out there but they too are subject to systemic forces that make them behaviorally choose (albeit consciously) to be people that given other conditions, they might not be.

This work is the key to Diversity. Diversity is culture work, it is not Noah’s Ark and until companies truly view it this way, there are only strategies to provide not real change to achieve.

So, in the meantime, if you want to navigate your career optimally and authentically, consider working with a coach who can help you.

Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com or nicki@evolvedpeople.com for a free 15 mins exploratory session.

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Workplaces that Work for Women: Experiences Matter – The 2018 Catalyst Awards

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By Nicki Gilmour, CEO of theglasshammer

My takeaway from the 2018 Catalyst Awards and Dinner is that owning your experiences is the first step and the second step is to not let them negate other people’s experiences if you are truly going to be a man or a woman who is going to see progress in our lifetime for gender equity.

Catalyst, the oldest and leading research and advisory nonprofit organization for advancing women at work, has a conference that is second to none for translating theory and research into practice with CEOs of major companies and theglasshammer.com was honored to attend the annual conference.

‘Workplaces that work for women, are workplaces that work for everyone’ was the theme and mantra of the day, with great companies getting to share some of the best practices that they have implemented to understand results beyond the rhetoric. And, the sub theme of the day was how to be a male ally or gender champion as men in the room spoke of how they wanted to see change. A stunningly sincere and impactful dinner speech by Carnival Corporation (Cruise Lines) CEO Arnold W. Donald, the dinner chair of the gala, created a genuine sense that some men really get it. Quoting Maya Angelou saying “When you know better, you do better” regarding gender equality and diversity. Mr. Donald spoke of his own experiences as a man of color while acknowledging humbly and implicitly that he knows experience does not in itself equal enlightenment; although for me, he was the most enlightened man of the day. It is so important to hear people and more importantly men to acknowledge that other people may individually or systemically due to their social identity (gender, ethnicity, orientation, nationality) have experiences that are not yours and that does not invalidate yours or theirs. I heard this man recognize his male privilege in a way which showed me real commitment to being an ally because his foundation was one of acceptance, not denial around his own gender’s historic position at work.

Deborah Gillis, President and CEO of Catalyst spoke at lunch regarding this topic of “how to” be a male ally or champion of women, advising the confrontation of the fact the level playing field has not always been there, and how men can “call it out” when everyone’s voices are not being heard.

She stated that Catalyst wanted to send out a beacon of hope in this watershed moment of #Metoo. She asked rhetorically, “How can we focus (on work), if we don’t feel safe?” and later in breakout sessions, Hilton panelist Laura Fuentes, SVP, Talent & Rewards, and People Analytics reiterated the need for psychological safety. Fuentes commented that behaviorial data was part of the ongoing evaluation and development process for managers which created an accountability to those who they lead and to the values and culture of the firm.

This method of actually measuring opinion and perception was also discussed by panelists from West Monroe Partners who took steps to formalize policy and communicate it in their firm. They did this so that perceived cultural norms such as time off and flexibility could be used positively and inclusively for all and equally implicit negative norms could be addressed also. Betsy Bagley, Senior Director and Consultant, Advisory Services, Catalyst and Katherine Giscombe, PhD, Vice President and Women of Color Practitioner, Advisory Services, Catalyst skillfully moderated this discussion around what actually can be done to create better workplaces for women with an organizational model worth checking out in Catalyst resource section.

Carla Harris, Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley led a superb closing session with her usual candid and engaging style, opening with, “we cannot manage, the way we were managed”.

Harris explained first how to get to management and the important difference between performance and relationship currency. In her “pearls” (of wisdom) session, she explained how sponsors do not need to know the good, the bad and ugly, but rather, “the good, the good and the good”. She advised women and men in the audience to understand that performance currency has diminishing returns, as the baseline is always to do a great job but to understand that over time people come to expect excellence from you. She stressed the importance of relationship currency in the advancement formula. She also stressed the importance of improvement via feedback saying, “data is your friend, you cannot fix it, if you don’t know its broken.”

Regarding leadership and change regarding diversity, Harris stated, “I cannot believe that three decades later, we are still talking about the business case for diversity. If you still aren’t clear,” she quipped, “I will tell you right now” and went on to explain that it’s about innovation and to innovate you need a lot of perspectives and that comes from multiple experiences and that experiences are born from having different people in your team.

Harris explained that people need to be courageous in soliciting other people’s opinion and that the trait of courageousness is needed for intentionality to happen for change with accountability and consistency present.

The initiatives that were recognized this year were The Boston Consulting Group with their Women@BCG, IBM with Leading the Cognitive Era Powered by the Global Advancement of Women, Nationwide with Our Associates’ Success Drives Business Success and Northrop Grumman Corporation with Building the Best Culture, Leveraging the Power of Women.

Great work, Catalyst! And good luck to Deborah Gillis in her new role.

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Becoming a Great Leader: Managing Conflict in Teams

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Elegant leader

Guest contributed by CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke

Let’s face it: Most of us hate conflict. Even the toughest among us are at least a little uncomfortable with it. When faced with it, many leaders and executives tend to opt out.

But, here’s the truth: The best and most creative solutions often happen when people opt in to conflict. Not an all-out brawl or a name calling wrestling match, but a quality sharing of how we really feel about a decision or an issue. To do this a leader must create optimal conditions and their job isn’t to have the right answer, but to create the space for the project, team, or organization to wrestle together to collaboratively come up with an answer and move forward.

Our decade and a half of experience working with teams shows that when even one person listens to and reflects on the opposing opinion of a peer with genuine curiosity, the change in the room is palpable. That combination of vision, opinion, and passion, when combined with curiosity, leads the entire team to new possibilities. That’s the role of a healthy dose of curiosity.

Too often a leader unwittingly defuses the tension by determining the right answer, Maybe you have as a leader or have seen leaders cutting off discussion and taking things off-line when people get too emotional or listening to the loudest or the favorite voice, the one whose thoughts are usually the same as the leader’s.

The Value of Vulnerability and Curiosity

When teams are vulnerable and curious, they use the natural energy of conflict and discover that it isn’t my way or your way, but a whole new way. New ideas emerge. Instead of a fight, there is magic.

It starts with people opting in, becoming vulnerable, and revealing what they really think, feel, and want. This allows for a free flow of opinions which can be more or less judgmental but if combined with curiosity, not righteousness or defensiveness) can use the energy of conflict to become a smarter and highly innovative team.

We’ve seen it time and time again in our work. Teams that master the use of vulnerability and curiosity produce creative and innovative solutions not just once, but over and over again. They are more resilient and they bounce back from setbacks and failure. People on these teams feel engaged and fulfilled, and they have more fun. Just an aside: It’s probably no surprise that vulnerability and curiosity work wonders in personal relationships too.

Either of these qualities can instantly transform a team in conflict. Put them together and teams make quantum leaps forward. It only takes one individual to make a difference.

And, remember that you don’t have to let go of your judgments or opinions. Curiosity means having your judgments and being open and interested in a different perspective. Being curious means considering that there may be more than one right way, reality, or answer.

Stopping the fight for your right way and being open to the ideas of others and taking an interest in how the other person came to his or her conclusion. Listening with the willingness to be influenced via an open mind.

Some helpful phrases that help demonstrate curiosity and elicit another’s response are:
  • “Help me understand how you got there.”
  • “Why is this so important to you?”
  • “What is driving your strong conviction?”
  • “Tell me where I’m wrong?”
  • “Wow! That is very different from my view. How’d you get there?”
So, want to transform your team? Here’s how:
  • Be human and acknowledge conflict. You are the model. If you acknowledge when you’re uncomfortable in the tension and ambiguity, others learn they’re not alone.
  • Don’t go for the quick fix. The drive for efficiency in conflict is born from the discomfort of the tension, the ambiguity of not having the answer, or a fear of looking bad.
  • Get out of the right-wrong trap. Yes, we all want to be right, but do you want to be right more than you want to succeed?
  • Check for conflict. If you see people disengage, check it out. Encourage people to speak up, to have different opinions, and to hang in for the long haul.
  • Listen to the naysayer with interested curiosity. Even when you think a team member is a pain in the butt, step into his shoes and see the world from his point of view, sharing that out loud. You might be surprised what you find when you get out of your own way.

The benefits of being curious include getting outside of your own story, which opens a greater pool of information to generate creative ideas. This can strengthen the team’s learning and growth.
Making the other person feel heard and considered can shift the energy from defense to cooperation, opening the door to new, creative possibilities and therefore transitioning the focus of the team from power struggles to idea expansion.

About the author

CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke are business consultants, speakers, and co-authors of The Beauty of Conflict: Harnessing Your Team’s Competitive Advantage (November 1, 2017).

They and their organization, specialize in helping professional women, leaders, teams and entire companies learn how to transform conflict into creativity and innovation.
Many thanks

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

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