Undervaluing Yourself? Here’s How to Make Sure You Get What You Deserve

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Guest contributed by Karen Schoenbarthappy man with women

Do you routinely undervalue your professional worth? Are you afraid to step up and take on new challenges or ask for a promotion or raise because you aren’t sure you’ve earned them? If so, you are definitely not alone.

“Imposter Syndrome” is a term coined in 1978 by clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes. It refers to high-achieving individuals who can’t internalize their accomplishments and persistently fear being exposed as a fraud. According to a recent study in the International Journal of Behavioral Science, up to 70 percent of people feel this way.

The funny thing about Imposter Syndrome is that sufferers are almost always able to meet the requirements of their job, so their fears are actually unwarranted. Nevertheless, overcoming these fears isn’t easy. Follow these steps to gain confidence that you are exactly where you are supposed to be.

  • Don’t compare yourself to others. Set goals for what you want to do and focus on achieving those things.
  • Do an honest evaluation of your strengths and weaknesses. While everyone focuses on fixing the weaknesses, also focus on building up and honing your strengths.
  • Find people who believe in you both personally and professionally and reach out to them for support.
  • When you receive a compliment, don’t negate it or deny it. Simply say, “thank you.”
  • Focus on helping others instead of yourself. As C.S. Lewis said: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less.”
  • Talk with people you respect to see if they share similar concerns. Work together to overcome them. Remember, even brilliant and famous people occasionally admit to feeling like frauds. Try to laugh about it.

Nothing Cures Imposter Syndrome Like Hard Proof

An especially critical strategy for overcoming Imposter Syndrome is to track your accomplishments and communicate them to the people who matter. It is not attractive to brag, of course, but sharing your positive results with your boss and other senior executives will encourage them to support and reward you. When this happens, you will naturally feel like less of an imposter.

It helps to be as proactive as possible, so start a file today. If you get an email from a colleague or a client thanking you or complimenting something you’ve done, add it to the file. If you’ve been given specific goals or objectives, keep them handy and work the list—ensuring you are addressing everything on it. If you need help to accomplish a specific goal, ask. For example, if your boss said you need to hone your presentation skills but you haven’t had a chance to present anything, ask if there is an assignment that will afford you the opportunity. It’s fine to reference your objective and the desire to accomplish it.

A few notes of caution. Your file of accomplishments should be long and comprehensive, but beware of overkill when talking to your manager about them – even if you feel Imposter Syndrome getting the best of you. Choose examples from the file that demonstrate your mastery of a specific task or skill. These examples can also be used when meeting with other senior people in your company or a new manager who can benefit from learning what you have been working on.

Careful tracking and strategic communication will ensure that you have an excellent business case to ask for a promotion or raise, and will hopefully assuage your fears. But what if the worst happens? What if you swallow your apprehension, ask, and are denied anyway? How can you keep from undervaluing yourself then? First, make sure you understand the reasons for the decision. Are there softer skills you are missing, such as communicating tactfully or being assertive in meetings? Ask for specific examples of what you need that you are not currently demonstrating. If nothing is missing, inquire about what is holding you back. A lack of positions at the next level is sometimes a legitimate issue, so you may need to be patient.

Don’t Undervalue Your Offerings Either

A corollary to Imposter Syndrome is underestimating the value of your products or services. Here, you should remember that when you provide something that meets a need of your client or customer, you cannot be afraid to be compensated for it. Have pride in your offering, and know exactly how your client or customer’s life or business will improve as a result of having it. Be willing to walk away, but keep in mind that there are times you might want to be more flexible. For example, you might decrease your price in order to protect an important, long-term relationship. A negotiation that ends in a win/win will reduce your self-doubt and keep you from falling victim to Imposter Syndrome in the future.

Adapted with permission of the publisher, Motivational Press, Inc., from MOM.B.A. Essential Business Advice from One Generation to the Next 
by Karyn Schoenbart with Alexandra Levit.  Copyright (c) 2017 by Karyn Schoenbart. All rights reserved. https://www.amazon.com/Mom-B-Essential-Business-Advice-Generation/dp/1628654597

About the author

KARYN SCHOENBART, author of MOM.B.A. is CEO of The NPD Group, a global provider of information and advisory services to many of the world’s leading brands. She has over 30 years of experience in the market research field, with expertise in identifying and developing new business opportunities and client partnerships.

Schoenbart was named one of the Top 25 Most Influential Women of the Mid-Market by the CEO Connection. She is also the recipient of the Long Island Brava Award, which recognizes high-impact female business leaders, and the Legacy Award from Women in Consumer Technology. Schoenbart is passionate about coaching others to greater levels of achievement. She is a resident of Long Island, NY. To learn more, visit: KarynSchoenbart.com.

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

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Fallen off the January Proverbial Wagon Yet?

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Nicki GilmourBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

The way to make 2018 resolutions stick is to understand your own neuroscience about how you see your goals in action.

Your mind is driving the bus. Take back the wheel!

The rubber meets the road for goal setting when you have behaviors that actually are conducive to reaching those goals. If you find that when you write down a goal your feelings are that of relief for writing it down and espousing it but that’s where it ends, then you need to look at what you are doing or not doing and why this is the case.

For several years, I wrote “Run a 5k race” on my New Year’s resolution list. For several years, I did not run a 5k or any amount of running.

Sound familiar? If like me, you get as far as goal setting but you find you are not doing what it takes and then beating yourself up about it, then I have a solution for you.

First, look at your competing agendas, this is what you tell yourself is the reason why you cannot do x, y, z and in my case, I told myself I didn’t have time to run.
Now, you must ask yourself. What is really stopping me? What is my big assumption here? Do I really not have time? What am I doing that is a ‘boondoggle’ or time suck, that could be used for running time.
So, when you have found time, still you find that it’s not about that, what a surprise! Your big assumptions or implicit beliefs are lurking! Your mind is telling you that you dont have time but in all honestly you are scared of how much it will hurt! What if you cant do it? What if you cant achieve a simple 5k when you used to be a great athlete? True story. But, I ran that 5k last year and continue to run and do many other things by facing my fears, debunking them and giving myself permission to fail and be less than perfect. So whatever your goal is, look at what you are doing behaviorally to achieve it and then what you are not doing. Why are you not doing it? Look at what you tell yourself and the beliefs that you hold that get in your way. Be brave, it is not easy but you can do it.

If your beliefs feel paralyzing then talk to a coach! We can help you goal set and then change your mindset and behaviors to reach your goal.

If you are interested in hiring an executive coach, email nicki@theglasshammer.com directly or visit our sister company www.evolvedpeople.com to book your free, no obligation exploratory chat.

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Sexual Harassment: How Can Men Help Prevent it?

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sexual harassment

Guest contributed by Jim Morris, WMFDP, Chief Curriculum Officer

In our current political and cultural context women are emboldened – on an historically unprecedented level – to call out the toxic behavior of male colleagues.

What many men are now learning about second hand through the news is a reality women have lived with since entering the workforce over a century ago. Now that the floodgates have opened there is a reckoning taking place: As more and more women speak-up about their harassment experience, others feel supported in coming forth with their stories. This has led to a wave of solidarity, where women are also communicating more with each other on how to approach this problem. One example is the 13 million dollar legal fund for women in low-wage jobs, that was recently announced by a coalition of women in the entertainment industry.

Many of the women who are coming forward were offered financial settlements in exchange for their silence. This sends an unmistakable message that their employers were willing to tolerate harassment without real consequence. What would have been the response had these men committed an equally egregious ethical or procedural breach of another type, like misappropriation of funds, or ignoring a safety issue? Would it have been overlooked, swept under the rug, or treated as confidential? Instead of creating organizational cultures that have a true zero tolerance policy for sexual assault or harassment, we’re living in a world where, until now, it’s been acceptable to quietly collude in a cover up if the perpetrator has enough money, status and power to make the issue go away. This is privilege run amok. Proposed legislation in California that would benefit non-disclosure agreements in these settlements is one possible solution.

So how did we get here? One aspect is the cultural conditioning men receive from a very young age, which entails gaining prestige by cultivating a “cowboy” atmosphere that excludes and often diminishes women. This can range from simply favoring men for leadership roles or drowning out female voices in meetings, (labeled “loudership” in a Harvard Business Review article), to outright objectification, harassment or assault. It’s a systemic issue that is bigger than a few bad actors. Though it’s easy to point a finger at the egregious offenders who make headlines, what about the role that other men play in perpetuating the culture that allows this behavior to flourish? This is a time for men to ask ourselves individually how we have contributed to an environment that has allowed a large number of high profile men to engage in this behavior, over the course of careers that often span decades.

One of the more insidious dimensions of this is unconscious bias. Confronting this requires cultivating a mindfulness of the way one’s own culture and identity shapes behavior and perception. It calls for working with discomfort and sitting with those feelings. At White Men As Full Development Partners, we approach unconscious bias by suggesting the real work before us is to better understand our own privilege and the way other factors like gender and racial conditioning impact how we feel about and view each other. For example, white men don’t typically pay as much attention to their appearance at work, and they are rarely judged as being incompetent because of how they dress. Yet we know from research that the perception of a woman’s competence at work is much more connected to their appearance than their male counterparts. Women are under a lot more pressure to literally “look the part” in order to establish credibility at work. (4)

Another skill that’s crucial to develop is the courage to identify problematic behavior, and speak up to disrupt it. This gets back to the importance of fostering an awareness of how perceptions and realities differ depending on different aspects of your identity. Something that might seem innocuous to a man might actually be experienced as intimidating or inappropriate to a woman or member of a marginalized group. Recognizing that everyone has the right to feel safe and valued in the workplace (and beyond) sets the stage for this approach. The idea is not that men are fundamentally flawed, but rather, are in need of some perspective on how other groups experience life in a white male dominated culture.

Though it’s tempting to think this issue can be addressed with a two hour workshop or online learning module, the reality is that it’s an ongoing process and a long-term commitment. The research, however, says that behavior change isn’t fixed by “training” alone; it’s fixed by helping people learn to first courageously examine and then consciously shift their mindsets. Individual behavior change is a lengthy and deeply personal process. The assumption that training will eradicate a culture of collusion and protection isn’t realistic. Instead, our approach is to begin by examining how the power, privilege and status that each of us wields may impact the way we lead and partner with others. You can’t change behavior without shifting mindsets, and there is no ‘quick fix’ when it comes to that work.

We also need to ask ourselves what men can do to help prepare the next generation? What can be taught to children by men (and women) to preempt some of the sexual harassment endemic to our culture? This behavior starts at a young age because boys want to connect and want to gain status with each other, so we need to find ways for them to do that in positive ways, where there’s space to be vulnerable. Traditionally, discussions on sexual harassment have tended to frame this as a “women’s issue,” and changing that perception is crucial to this process. This entails examining the impact this behavior has on men as well as women, and on the success and health of systems we work within and depend on, from the private sector to government and beyond.

About White Men As Full Diversity Partners (WMFDP):

WMFDP is a diversity and leadership development firm founded in 1996 by Bill Proudman, Michael Welp, Ph.D., and Jo-Ann Morris in Portland, Oregon. WMFDP takes an unorthodox approach towards eradicating bias and discrimination in the workplace. Its client list includes Alaska Airlines, Dell, Lockheed Martin, Northwestern Mutual, Rockwell Automation, Chevron Drilling & Completions, The Nature Conservancy, MassMutual, and others.

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

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Getting What You Want in 2018

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Nicki-Gilmour-bioBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Happy New Year!

Most of us have new resolutions and all of them will rely on a behaviorial change in their essence, as they require action. If you have figured out what you want (and what you don’t want) and have named this as a future state, then congratulations, the first part is done. But, now the goals are on paper, will you behaviorally do what you need to do to really achieve them?

The good news is that you are in charge of your choices.

The bad news is that your unconscious mind can totally hijack best laid plans by creating competing agendas. How does this show up? What saboteurs are lurking? What fears do you harbor that stop you from achieving your goals? Well, subtle behavioral conflict often happens and what you don’t do to meet your goals is worth deeper examination.

Changing or leaving your job is a common example of where you may espouse that you want to change jobs but here you are two years later still in the same spot. Maybe you have been looking, maybe you have even sent out a few resumes, but my bet is that there is truly something within yourself stopping you from doing what you need to do to get what you want. This might look like logic on the surface, like you tell yourself you don’t have time to network or you need more experience to apply. But, the interesting part of all of this is that in reality you are probably holding assumptions and beliefs that are stopping you from actioning your goals. Continuing with the “logic”, the “no time” reason is usually about a fear, and this can be anything from fear of not getting the job, to fear of not performing in the job, to even just a baseline rejection issue as well as many things including fear of what the next workplace culture might be. Sticking with “the devil you know” comes up more than you can imagine for people. Many of my clients are amazing, talented, experienced executives – women and men from different industries and they are also very human. We are all a product of our past experiences and our cultural benchmarks that often scar us from the cradle to the grave with “the way it is.”

Now, that is not to say that systemic factors are not at play, from biased hiring processes to saturation in your marketplace and turbulent external conditions. But, people get hired in up and down markets and it is the internal dialogue that you have with yourself that matters. Mindset work is key, as by understanding your own paradigms and mental models you can truly formulate practical strategies. I say this because I spent significant time in the past several years studying and researching why people fail to execute on their espoused plans from organization diversity plans to individuals who want things to change. The psychology of saying one thing and doing another is fascinating but we all do it to some extent and it happens because of cognitive dissonance or competing agendas propped up by deep implicit beliefs.

So, if you want to get to a different, better, future place than where you are now, please call me for an exploratory chat as we now have a full service sister coaching firm – Evolved People Coaching and we would be happy to find the right coach for you.

Here is to a great 2018!

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

We are returning to your screens on Monday 9th January but we wanted to share with you the following opportunities:

This is our eleventh year of writing great content, career advice and exploring the research on advancing women at work and to that end we are looking for great writers, guests posts and people to profile.

For profiles: we profile senior women (Voice of experience profiles are for C level, SVP and Managing Directors ) and amazing “Mover and shakers” (VP’s ) in financial and professional services, technology firms and Fortune 1000 companies. We tend to not cover entrepreneurs because we believe the value of the glasshammer and our niche is to inform and empower women when they want to stay in big business and navigate that terrain.

We have themes as well as columns so we are looking for women to profile for Black History Month, Asian Heritage, LGBT leaders to name a few. International Women’s Day is everyday for us but open to posts for the month of March also.

If you want to write (paid as a journalist ) or contribute (non paid as you have a bio for your own expert service at end of column) then email and send unique posts to louise@theglasshammer.com

Finally, we want to tell you about what we have learned eleven years and 8000 articles later investigating how to empower women and their advancement. The conclusion in one word is “coaching”. There is no force more powerful than having a good coach as it pertains to figuring out how to get what you want and have a solidly good time doing it. Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder of theglasshammer.com has launched Evolved People Coaching for individuals and groups.

If you want to reserve an exploratory chat at no cost to see if coaching can help you, please email nicki@theglasshammer.com to find a time to talk.

Lets make 2018 the best yet.

Theglasshammer.com team

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Year End Review 2017: Professional Women and the Culture War

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Nicki Gilmour - Founder of The Glasshammer.comBy Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Publisher of theglasshammer.com

Every year in December I write about the runners and the riders, the losses and the gains for women in corporations. The usual statistical update of no movement in female leaders in aggregate can be seen by checking out the report compiled by McKinsey and Lean in called Women in the Workplace 2017.  More calls for increased hiring of female talent in the beginning of their careers to create parity at the top. Culture change, not just binders full of women is the key, as we know spreadsheets alone cannot fix this issue. Yes, there is much work to be done structurally with hiring bias, pay inequality for apples to apples jobs and flawed promotional processes, but we are missing the point; people leave jobs when their sense of purpose is brought into question. Sometimes it is related to money and recognition for the job done. Sometimes it is about competing agendas for men and women to fit life in and having babies is often cited as the issue that prevents women from succeeding. Yet, rarely are the power structures around who gets to keep their professional lives somewhat intact, supported and without question ever talked about.

Neuroscience and the psychology of advancing men

Our cognitive processes and confirmation biases make us assume that it is a given that men should advance at work and in life. Regardless of what men actually want or are actually capable of and the perception of white men knowing more persists through good times and bad times. Sallie Krawcheck wrote an excellent piece last week in the NY Times, in which she encapsulates the whole issue of how we devalue women. She was a leader at the world’s biggest finance shop but still had the guy in front of her, mansplain her business model to her. She commented in the article,

“I was astonished, because I have managed more financial advisers in my career than probably anyone in the country. I realized in that moment how deep our gender views run, how men are still seen as leaders and women as more junior.”

We are a long way off equality and the power of perception has a role to play, as many men and some women believe that things are close to equal, even in firms where the number of female senior executives is 1 in 10. Perception works both ways, it keeps us in and it makes us leave if we see no pathway forward.

Our brain creates inference and assigns values that we don’t even know about that then writes narratives making us think we know the outcome based on past experience and current norms. This surfaces as conscious and unconscious beliefs about the world and how it should work.

Why do women and specifically white straight women have a complicated history of complicity and collusion around men who are deeply flawed or incompetent? Internalized misogyny and white privilege and betting on what has always been is the underpinning element. Even if you think you are a progressive person, liberal and modern, I hear cultural programming mixed with personal experience that 99.9% of the time makes you accept biased structures as the benchmark. The “think manager, think male” research shows that most women consistently rank men as a group higher than women for preferential traits such as competency and productivity. We all have deep programming and cognitive dissonance. Even if we are not stereotyping in our language and individual actions, most people overlook the systemic influences that create our overall environment. That silent invisible operating system called the patriarchy dictates the entire scope of possibilities and weighted value of your actions. What gets preference? Much like your phone, you cannot see the mechanics of how things are ordered and valued for memory and battery unless you look very closely, but instead can only choose the app that can personally help you in the moment. Until we address the fact that the system has weighted preferences on outcomes, we will see surface choices only.

Sure, there has been a deep perturbation in the fabric of the status quo this year from the Women’s March in January to this month’s cover of Time magazine announcing the silence breakers as the person (now people) of the year. There are so many conversations going on now that just didn’t happen outside academia even a year ago. Themes are being explored editorially and widely that were only for the most studied this time last year. Topics like collusion, such as the unpacking of the Harvey Weinstein power play are written about daily now. But, the battle and the war is far from won and this moment in time is one we can spiral up or down from. The relief of surfacing of 2017’s #metoo is only the relief that we can speak about such things openly. Exposing that the system is weighed against certain people based on their social identity (gender, ethnicity etc) and the power given to a person depending on their biological sex and place therefore in society is not the same as addressing systemic inequities. Certainly, the Supreme court itself has distance to go since American women are not equal under law (Equal Rights Amendment is not ratified) and LGBT people are categorized first and foremost behaviorally and not legally recognized intrinsically as people.

What do we need to do?

Care enough to form full and informed thoughts and be heard on the topic. Good men are doing good things and walking the talk such as Unilever’s CEO Paul Polman who voiced his shock at the World Economic Forum’s report when it was revealed that it will take over 200 years to get parity. Men have to understand that this is not a women’s issue. While people are talking up and talking down feminism, maybe we should be speaking about redefining masculinity. This TED talk by Justin Baldoni called “Why I am done being Man enough” is inspiring for all to watch.

Cordelia Fine has written an award winning book called “Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of our Gendered Minds” that is my holiday recommended reading to you as it debunks the myths of Men are from Mars and other purported differences that stop us from solving the issues. We have to stop believing the faux science that divides us or falsely categorizes us as it actually contributes to a system of yore.  Unless we talk about what masculinity is, the good , the bad and the ugly of it shaped from the ancient Greeks to now, we cannot get to a better version. We cannot get to understand what it means to be a woman in society if we do not examine what it also means to be a man. What are boys and men messaged? What does peer pressure do and Tony Porter talks about the problem of the “man card” in his excellent TED talk. He states, ‘My liberation of a man is tied to your liberation as a woman’. Culture not just biology, is what we need to look at and understand that keeping to a binary instead of understanding spectrums of human nature is not helpful.  There are men and women ready to engage in this conversation and I am ready to have a more advanced conversation in 2018 with everyone and we are well placed to begin!

Seasons Greetings from us here at theglasshammer.com and check out our coaching website: evolvedpeople.com as the change starts with you!

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Persisting Through The Dark: Women in the Boardroom

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The 2017 Heidrick & Struggles Board Monitor: Is Diversity at an Impasse? highlighted that after seven years of slow progress since the survey began, “women directors lost ground” in Fortune 500 companies.
The share of women-held seats dropped by 2 percentage points to 27.8%. The 50% projection pushed to 2032, yet again moved further off in the future.
So it’s no surprise that in their inaugural survey, Nevertheless, She Persisted: The Challenges and Opportunities Experienced by Senior-level Executive Women as They Journey to the Boardroom, Women in the Boardroom (WIB) found that the two words senior-level, executive women are mostly likely to use when it comes to the process of seeking a boardroom seat are “excited” and “frustrated”.
WIB surveyed over 500 senior-level, executive women who were either already serving as corporate board directors (25% of sample), or were interested in service, about their experiences.
The report found a tension between “the excitement that women feel at the prospect of service – and the frustration of securing that opportunity.”
Boardroom Journey: Obscured, Unsupported & Opaque
In their previous 2016 Board Monitor, Heidrick & Struggles pointed out that a major reason women representation is not moving forward is that “most boards are seeking new members from among ‘the usual suspects”, applying the same old process to the candidate selection pool, criteria and picks.
Indeed the WIB survey found that 90% of respondents felt that male networks dominate corporate boardroom searches and over 60% felt they function more effectively than their own women’s networks. 39% of women felt they had no board influencers in their personal network. Yet networking (and broadcasting their intention) remains a core tactic among women who seek, and especially attain, a board seat.
The report authors say, “there are exclusionary practices at play” including that often corporate culture doesn’t seem to actively support women’s boardroom ambitions, as 28% of senior-level, executive respondents chose not to talk about their boardroom aspirations at work.
Only 16% of respondents indicated their employer makes gender diversity in the boardroom a priority that is backed with action, policies and standards, and only 4% feel personally supported in their boardroom intentions.
While the candidate selection process is a well-worn default that fails to serve diversity, or ultimately business itself, pushing oneself towards the boardroom as a woman remains confusing. It’s still far from clear to most senior-executive women just how to break into the boardroom, from what remains a position of outsider status: being a woman.
Among respondents, 66% felt that the selection process is “opaque and mysterious” compared to other aspects of career advancement. 36% have no or only occasional interaction with their company’s board, and 30% of women who have boardroom ambitions don’t have a strategy for securing a seat.
The Persistence of Imposter Syndrome and Unconscious Bias
Even though the WIB survey was among senior-level, executive women that by all indications have achieved professional success, nearly 70% believed that high -achieving women are still deterred by both the inability to internalize and own their success and their fear of being exposed as inadequate.
The third most popular term used to describe pursuing a boardroom seat is “intimidated”. Despite that, 62% of respondents felt confident they are qualified and will get a board seat, and more women felt “excited” and “empowered” by the process than overwhelmed.
Even more prominent is the contextual reality of unconscious bias, such as how boards tend to end up gender matching, meaning they replace men with men and women with women.
Research has shown that awareness alone can’t mitigate unconscious bias – there is a level at which influences on decision making remain unconscious.
Showing You Mean Business About Boardroom Aspirations 
The WIB survey found that women who get through the door were more likely to prioritize securing a seat as a top career priority (83% vs 70% of all respondents).
These women “create a plan, market to their network, work on crystallizing their value add as a candidate, and invest in expert help, whether through coaching or membership in specialist organizations.”
The results revealed these women are taking specific and visible initiative, showing it matters to put your hat in the ring while being vocal about it.
Among these women, 80% belong to a networking organization (vs 66% of women), 67% belong to a board-specific networking organization (vs 40%) and 83% have alerted their network of their ambitions (vs. 54%).
So it’s fair to say that speaking up about boardroom intentions and getting specific in your actions, whether you feel supported by corporate culture, matters to reaching the coveted seat.
This not only means reinforcing your own right to put yourself forward, but advocating for other women, which only 34% of respondents agreed that women do.
For A Different Story: A Different Candidate Pool
Ultimately, we need a story about women on the boardroom that’s not about how some women beat the odds to break into the boardroom. We need a report that doesn’t have to say, as the WIB report states, “executive women thrive often in the absence of supportive structures and culture at work.”
Sure they do. But how much longer will that be the requirement these women have to meet?
We need a story in which the odds are for women rather than against them, in which they are invited into the boardroom not breaking into it, in which there isn’t too often a glass cliff hiding underneath the welcome mat when it appears, in which a corporate culture of both support and access are present rather than lip service and evasiveness, and where senior-level, executive women don’t see the path to the boardroom as mysterious, even from their relatively advanced position.
The report authors urge companies to look at communication, connection and culture as three key areas in which they can better support women into the boardroom.
And the one thing that makes a difference to increasing female selection to the board, according to Stanford research, is simply putting more women candidates into the candidate pool.
Boardrooms that truly hold themselves accountable to diversity will broaden their candidate pool and use vision to change the way the candidate sphere is defined.
Until then, we’ll celebrate the women who swim upstream – and often through the dark – to claim their too rare place in the boardroom. a
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The Motherhood Penalty: Overcome this Career Advancement and Wage Blocker

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Guest contributed by Josie Sutcliffe

motherhood

Image via Shutterstock

Despite considerable attention, the gender wage gap has only improved by 8% in the last 20 years — a slow pace of improvement that indicates removing the gap entirely is more than a generation away.

What’s holding up progress?

A Visier Insights report analyzed an aggregated database of over 160,000 US-based employees of over 30 large US enterprises and found that there’s an underrepresentation of women in manager positions — in particular during the key childcare years — directly driving the overall gender wage gap. This finding is known as the Manager Divide and has a strong correlation to motherhood.

The Motherhood Penalty

Simply put, during the key childcare years women are increasingly less likely to hold manager positions, which directly impacts their average earnings compared to men.

At the time the gender wage gap begins to widen (starting with women at age 32 earning on average 90% the wages of men and decreasing to just 82% by age 40), women are increasingly underrepresented in manager positions. This directly drives the gender wage gap as managers earn on average two times the salary of non-managers.

diagram

The Manager Divide occurs during the key childcare years: most women in the US who have children give birth to them between the ages of 25 and 34. And with most children entering school (and, therefore, requiring less childcare) at age 5, women who have children are most likely to experience increased childcare demands up until the age of 39. Despite an increased trend towards equal parenting, in today’s society women still typically take on more of the family care responsibilities. These responsibilities impact their careers.

It’s worth noting that, when reviewing promotion events by age, there is no significant difference in the overall rate of promotions in any age range for women or men. In other words, women are promoted at the same rate as men during the Motherhood years, but men are more likely to be promoted into manager.

If the Manager Divide was removed and, therefore, the same proportion of women held manager positions as men, the gender wage gap across all workers would be reduced by just over one third for those over age 32. If this “augmented” population of female managers were then given the same average salary as male managers, the gap would be cut in half.

diagram

Taking Steps to Finally Close the Gender Wage Gap

If a company pays women and men the same for equal work, but then underrepresents women in the better-compensated manager roles, that company has not achieved gender equity.

Here are some actions leaders can take to promote and ensure gender equity:

  • Get a high-level understanding of the state of gender equity within your organization. Start with simple metrics like “female ratio” (looking at the percent of total headcount that are female) by department, role, and/or location, and in your hiring pipelines.
  • Dig deeper by finding out if pay and performance ratings are unbiased for men and women. Compa-ratio is a classic compensation calculation that indicates how close a person’s base pay is the pay level midpoint for the role they perform. If women have a lower than average compa-ratio, then it is likely that pay decisions are not being made equitably. Similarly, understanding the proportion of employees who receive each level of performance rating and then comparing this to the proportion of each rating for female employees will uncover if performance ratings are handed out in an unbiased manner.
  • Measure not only promotions by gender, but also the nature of the promotions: by role, department, or location, find out if the percent of women promoted to or holding manager positions is lower than the percent of men promoted to or holding manager positions.
  • Take steps to correct gender inequity, starting with your processes for hiring and promotion. Implement the Rooney Rule: for every manager position you have open to fill, consider “at least one woman and one underrepresented minority” in your slate of candidates. Consider blind screening of resumes (removing names or other gender identifiers from resumes) when selecting applicants for interviews. And introduce consistent and gender bias-free performance management processes.
  • Given that the Manager Divide is connected to the years when women are most likely to have increased childcare demands, look into ways your organization can better support paid parental leave. It should be equally available to mothers and fathers, and be socially acceptable not just for mothers, but also for fathers to take. Flexible working time arrangements could be a key part of your solution.

Make the business case for gender equity at your organization. It isn’t just about fairness, avoiding lawsuits, and protecting (or building) your employer brand (check out the InHerSight for an idea of what the future holds — a Glassdoor-type site that focuses on rating companies from the perspective of their support of women). Research by McKinsey shows that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians. According to a  2016 McKinsey Global Institute report, if full gender equality is attained, $4.3 trillion could also be added to the U.S. economy by 2025.

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

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Increasing Accountability in Yourself and Others

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Guest contributed by Linda O’Neill, VP of Strategic Services at Vigilant

accountability

Image via Shutterstock

Almost every executive I talk with desires a more accountable organization. Many of them are running highly effective and profitable companies and it is their goal to keep the bar moving up and to the right.  There is room for improvement. In an accountable organization each employee understands his/her role and each employee can be counted on to do his/her job with no surprises. When a company’s culture embraces accountability, employees are self-motivated to contribute to the success of the organization.  It’s important to remember that accountability is voluntary – you can’t make employees (or anyone else) more accountable. There are, however, steps you can take to increase the likelihood your employees will choose to be accountable.

  1. Define it. It is important that everyone in your organization define accountability in the same way. Spend some time on this as a leadership team. Webster’s dictionary uses words like “answerable” and “explainable” to define accountability. To me, the most important element of accountability is the obligation to answer for our actions. It’s not just completing the actions.  It’s being responsible for the consequences of our actions in addition to completing them. It involves taking ownership of your job. There is no room for blaming others. What’s more important than the way I define accountability, however, is the way you define it for your organization. There is no right or wrong answer.
  2. Communicate it. Communicate the company’s expectations around accountability – broadly, consistently and frequently. You will be the most successful when you communicate accountability in context with the company’s mission, values and goals. When each employee understands that the way his/her job is done affects the company’s performance, you will experience greater individual and collective accountability. Put more control in the hands of employees for how they meet the expectations of their job/role. Employees who feel responsibility will also more willingly embrace accountability.
  3. Reward it. Just as you spent time defining accountability, spend equal time understanding how you will measure and then reward it. As the company makes progress toward its goals, share the information broadly. “The Carrot Principle” by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton is a great book to gather ideas about rewards. The authors stress that rewards must be deliberate. Create a system for yourself. You won’t just “remember” to reward employees. Tie the rewards to company goals and the employees’ role in meeting those goals. Communicate how the employees’ accountability (obligation to answer for actions) affected the goals.

Wanting more clarity around measuring accountability

It is important for every employee at every level in the organization to have a document articulating his/her accountabilities (similar to a S.M.A.R.T. goal document). I like calling this document simply “<Name> <Year> Accountabilities” (i.e., mine would be “Linda O’Neill’s 2017 Accountabilities”). Identify the categories important to your business, such as financial performance, customer service, team leadership and executive maturity. Clearly articulate the accountabilities in each area. Once you have a complete list of an employee’s accountabilities, define how you will measure success. For example, an employee may be accountable for bringing in $15 million in service billings for the fiscal year. The employee would record the results achieved at the end of the period.

Wanting greater accountability to self

Accountability comes from the inside out; it is a choice. Let me say that again: Accountability comes from the inside out; it is a choice. As a result, it makes sense that learning greater accountability to self enhances accountability on the job. Positive change begins with individuals changing themselves. You can translate the same strategies listed in the “wanting more accountability from others” to yourself. First, define what accountability means to you. Do you take an “owners” mentality to the commitments you make to yourself as well as the commitments you make to others? Next, spend some time noticing how your actions compare to your definition of accountability. You might want to write down every commitment you make to yourself or someone else for a week and then notice what supported or what got in the way of your accountability. What conclusions can you draw about you learned? What small change will you make to increase your satisfaction with your accountability to self? How will this enhance the way you model accountability for others?

Conclusion

Accountability means being doing what you said you would do, and being answerable for all of your actions –those that influence others and those that affect only you. When there is little accountability in an organization, stress levels tend to rise, communication is reduced, and territorialism is pervasive. When accountability is strong, employees are engaged, performance is high and company goals are met. What choice will you make to improve accountability both within your organization and within yourself today?

Disclaimer: Opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of the glasshammer.com

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The Multitasking Way of Life

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office

Image via Pixabay

 

Guest contributed by Terri R. Kurtzberg and Jennifer L. Gibbs

There’s an old joke that says that if a man wants to know what a woman’s mind feels like, he should imagine having a browser with 2,857 tabs open ALL THE TIME. Indeed, we do, as a society, promote the image of women as multitaskers—balancing the needs not only of our families alongside our careers but also serving in caretaking roles as well as more content-filled ones, even in the workplace. In addition, many have noted of late that women are predominantly the ones who are expected to keep track of information—across domains—in their heads. While there may be some real truth to the fact that expectations for women’s roles and knowledge do cross boundaries more often (in the big picture sense as well as in the minutes-of-the-day sense), there’s also a great fallacy in this line of thought.

Unfortunately, the truth (as we know it from cognitive science research) is that human brains, of any gender, are poorer at multitasking than is generally thought to be the case*. Our brains just weren’t meant to do the amount of parallel-processing that we so often attempt in today’s world. So, for example, trying to answer a text message while still holding onto the thread of a conversation or meeting already in progress is generally not fully successful. It may be successful enough—that is, it may be possible to string together enough of the information in the conversation or presentation even though there are gaps in what you heard or could process while you attended to something else—but there are two problems with this. First, there are indeed gaps, since our brains in fact cannot process two language-based tasks at once, and so we don’t always know what it is that we missed and whether it would have been important to our overall understanding of the topic.** Second, there is the issue of burn-out.*** Simply put, it is exhausting to have multiple streams of unfinished business (or “open tabs”) ongoing in the mind. Most people, but perhaps women especially, underestimate the toll that this takes. We assume that through sheer force of will, we can be successful at keeping all the balls in the air.

Thus, while research on distraction and multitasking has not yielded strong differences in the way it plays out for men and women, there certainly are important lessons for women aiming to make strides into higher positions. These fall into three categories:

  1. Know thyself: Understand that we are doing ourselves a disservice by constantly trying to keep track of too many things simultaneously. Then, do an “audit” for yourself by watching your behaviors and your incoming messages for a week. How many of them actually needed your attention immediately? Find the worst offenders, and make changes. Turn off notifications for blocks of time, set expectations by letting people know (perhaps through an outgoing email note) that you will respond to messages at the end of each day and not continuously, but to do X in case of truly time-sensitive needs, and remove your phone from your line of vision whenever possible.
  2. Know that you are being watched: People see you on the phone when you are in front of them. They can even reliably tell when you’re not listening with your full attention even if you’re not visible (say, on a conference call or one-on-one phone call). And yes, they absolutely do think differently of you for this lack of focus.**** Give the gift of your full attention. If you do need to pull your attention away, own up to it by explaining why to those engaging with you.
  3. Know the power of setting the tone from the top: Leaders have an opportunity to step in and make decisions to help rein in the problems stemming from the over-use of mobile devices. For one thing, there is a strong “monkey see, monkey do” effect that happens with respect to use in the professional setting. This problem is exacerbated since communication technologies have only existed for a tiny sliver of time, relative to human development, and continue to change so rapidly. Therefore, the “rules” are still being established for when and where it is appropriate to be engaged with technology instead of with the surrounding people. Being the social animals that we are, we are thus very tuned in to watching how other people are using their mobile devices, and tend to follow suit. For example, it is common to see one person bring a laptop to a meeting one week, followed by a whole crowd of people with their laptops open the next week. Similarly, seeing your colleagues answer emails at all hours of the night and on weekends put tremendous pressure on you to follow suit—a pattern that results in both lower productivity and higher turnover. These slippery slopes can be avoided by a wise manager attuned to the dangers of too much connection, and who makes explicit policies to the contrary.

Women are indeed pulled in many directions at once, and do keep track of many, many different “open tabs” each and every day, especially as they rise to higher levels at work. However, it is important to understand the natural limitations on human cognition as new technologies stretch the amount we ask of ourselves and our minds. Only then can you best out of yourself and those who count on your leadership.

 

*Ophir, E., Nass, C., and Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 106, 15583-15587.

**Bowman, L. L., Levine, L. E., Waite, B. M., and Gendron, M. (2010). Can students really multitask? An experimental study of instant messaging while reading. Computers & Education, 54, 927-931.

***Wajcman, J., & Rose, E. (2011). Constant connectivity: Rethinking interruptions at work. Organization Studies, 32, 941-961.

****Kurtzberg, T.R, Naquin, C. E., and Krishnan, A. (2014). The curse of the blackberry: Multitasking and negotiation success. Negotiation Journal, 30.

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