Both Gender and Personality Play Into Perceptions of Transformative Leadership, and It Seems Women Have a Slight Edge

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female leaderIs how you’re seen as a team leader impacted by your personality or the fact that you’re a woman? New research helps to understand how both interact when it comes to being perceived as a transformational leader by team members.

According to Finnish researchers Brandt and Edinger, who recently published their findings from an academic setting across 14 years in Gender in Management: An International Journal, sex does indeed matter in leading project teams: “Women tend to be more transformational team leaders than men.”

Five Practices of Transformational Leaders

Transformational leaders have been defined as people who are recognized as “change agents who are good role models, who can create and articulate a clear vision for an organization, who empower followers to meet higher standards, who act in ways that make others want to trust them, and who give meaning to organizational life.”

According to Kouzes and Posner and their book The Leadership Challenge, transformational leadership is based upon “The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership” model, measured by the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI).

  • Challenging the Process (Challenging) – such as changing status quo, innovating, risk-taking
  • Inspiring a Shared Vision (Visioning) – such as passionately envisioning a future & enlisting others in common values & vision
  • Enabling others to Act (Enabling) – such as fostering collaboration & trust & strengthening others
  • Modelling the Way (Modelling) – such as leading by example & within organizational values in pursuing goals
  • Encouraging the Heart (Rewarding) – such as sharing in rewards and recognition, celebrating accomplishments

Brandt and Edinger indicate that transformational leadership has been connected in previous research with leadership effectiveness, job satisfaction, and higher motivation; and can enhance team learning, team member empowerment, group cohesiveness, and team performance.

Being Perceived as a Transformational Leader

Researchers Brandt and Edinger studied how personality type (as indicated by Myers Briggs) interacts with sex in impacting how members rate a leader’s transformational leadership capabilities within a team context. Measured within six-week project teams in an academic setting, Visioning was deemed less relevant and removed.

The widely-used MBTI measures personality preferences as: extroversion/ introversion; sensing/ intuition; thinking/ feeling; and judging/ perceiving. With the slight exception of thinking/feeling, personality types have been found to be distributed fairly evenly between the sexes.

Gender: Women Are More Transformational

In general, consistent with other meta-analysis studies, but not every single study, the researchers found women leaders received higher ratings in overall transformational leadership – especially in the behaviors of Modelling, Enabling, and Rewarding.

Women were more likely to practice leading by example, fostering collaboration and strengthening others, and celebrating and recognizing the accomplishments of team members as goals are achieved.

Indeed a 2014 Ketchum global survey ranked “leading by example” as the number one attribute important to great leadership, with 57% of people rating women as outperforming men at this trait, as well as 4 other top attributes including “bringing out the best in others.”

Broadly on gender, previous research by Brandt & Laiho, collecting data from 459 leaders and their subordinates across a 14 year period in different industries, investigated whether men and women with similar personalities act differently. Consistent with social role theory, they found that regardless of personality, women were more Enabling whereas men were more Challenging, rated both by themselves and those reporting to them.

Personality: Extraverted Personalities Are More Transformational

Personality influenced leadership perception for both sexes. Brandt & Edinger found that regardless of sex, “extraverted and judging personality types are more transformational leaders than introverted and perceiving ones.”

Extraverted team leaders were rated more Modelling of behavior, Rewarding of accomplishments, and Challenging of status quo than introverted team leaders. The researchers speculate extraverts may have more ease in stepping into short-term project leading roles, and also have a tendency to focus more on other people and give more positive feedback whereas introverts tend to focus and less on feedback, as they often require less themselves.

Previous research by Brandt & Laiho also confirmed extraverted female leaders were seen as more transformational and rewarding than intraverted ones.

Gender & Personality: Gender Impacts How Personality is Perceived

According to Brandt, “some personality types behave in the same way as a leader despite the gender, whereas some personalities act differently.” This also goes for how they’re perceived. In some cases, men and women with similar personality preferences are viewed differently by their team members as well as subordinates.

Among extravert team leaders, women were rated as more Modelling & Rewarding-oriented than their male counterparts, and so overall more transformational.

Being inclined away from extraversion seemed to penalize men more than women. The research found “introverted, sensing, thinking and perceiving female leaders are regarded as more transformational than men with similar preferences.”

The previous research by Brandt & Laiho also showed many areas in which women were rated as more transformational than men with similar personality preferences. They found, “Intuitive women were more Rewarding and scored higher on overall transformational profile than intuitive men. Thinking women were regarded as being more Enabling than thinking men, and finally, judging women were seen as more Enabling and transformational overall than judging men.”

The research also found that how leaders perceive their behavior (self-appraisal) does not always match up with how those they are leading rate it (appraisal). For example, feeling female female leaders evaluated themselves as more Enabling, but subordinates rated thinking female leaders to be more so.

Addressing Your Transformational Leadership Gaps

While the research in many ways indicates a gender advantage for women when it comes to transformational leadership which is worth taking note of, that’s also a dangerous game to rely on, as it keeps us in the realm of gender expectations and it hasn’t yet played out in outcome when looking at company profiles.

Social awareness in leadership “calls for a heightened sensitivity to how one’s behavior, in words and deeds, impacts others.” For this reason, insight into how your gender and personality combine to play into leadership perception matters.

Perception is ultimately perhaps most interesting as an input into helping chart your own leadership development. One take-away for female leaders is an opportunity to experiment with your behavior, no matter your personality, to grow in action and hence identity as a transformational leader.

For example, based on these findings women leaders who are more introverted might be advised to try out more extroverted behaviors – even if less comfortable – such as visibly giving positive feedback, outwardly rewarding accomplishments, and being visible in how you model the values you espouse.

The researchers suggest that all leaders can benefit by enhancing their self-knowledge: “When leaders know how they are perceived by others, they can address their weaknesses and maximize their strengths.”

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That Harvard MBA Won’t Be Enough to Close the Gender Gap

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women shaking handsThe danger of conventional wisdom is it doesn’t have to be true to influence reality. New research reveals that the gender gaps in career growth between Harvard MBA graduates are not a result of women prioritizing family over career more so than their male peers. Rather, the unspoken assumption they do seems at play in affecting outcomes in their lives.

The “Life and Leadership After HBS” study surveyed 25,000 graduates of the Harvard Business School, majority MBAs, aged 26-67. Marking fifty years since HBS started admitting women to the MBA program, the researchers Ely, Stone, and Ammerman wanted to find out what graduates trained for leadership had to say about their experiences to date with life, work and family.

The study found that, “(All) Harvard MBAs value fulfilling professional and personal lives — yet their ability to realize them has played out very differently according to gender.”

Both male and female graduates marked success early on by career achievement and then both evolved their definition with age and experience to reflect that both profession and personal life mattered to them. Nearly 100% considered quality family and personal relationships highly important.

The researchers found both sexes also equally valued career fulfilment, stating “Their ratings of key dimensions of professional life, such as ‘work that is meaningful and satisfying’ and ‘professional accomplishments,’ were the same, and the majority said that ‘opportunities for career growth and development’ were important to them.” Women actually rated growth and development slightly more than men.

It’s no surprise that high-aptitude Harvard MBA graduates sought both personal and professional fulfilment, but seeking similar things with similar capabilities did not mean that men and women netted similar outcomes.

The Fulfilment Gap

Harvard MBA women did not step back from their career values, but their career opportunities seemed to stepped back from them.

Across three generations of graduates, 50%-60% of men were “extremely satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their experiences of meaningful work, professional accomplishments, opportunities for career growth, and compatibility of work and personal life. Across the dimensions, only 40% to 50% of women were as satisfied.

As their lives progressed, women reported feeling underchallenged by the work and responsibilities they found waiting for them, and subtly “mommy-tracked” right off the career ladder. The study revealed that only 11% of HBS women were out of the workforce for full-time child care – and then often because they were stuck in unfulfilling roles with weak prospects, so most Harvard MBA women were not “opting out”. Rather those seeking challenging part-time roles or flexibility found themselves being placed to the periphery as though they were only part-in.

Beyond that, HBS women working full-time were significantly less likely than their male peers to have direct reports, profit-and-loss responsibility, and positions in senior management, showing the gender bias reflected no matter what.

The researchers shared, “The message (to women) that they are no longer considered ‘players’ is communicated in various, sometimes subtle ways: They may have been stigmatized for taking advantage of flex options or reduced schedules, passed over for high-profile assignments, or removed from projects they once led.”

Importantly, 77% of all HBS graduates, and more women than men, believed that prioritizing family over career was the number one obstacle for women’s career advancement. But the researchers voiced with exasperation that different “choices” that would objectively reflect that priority could not explain the gap in leadership.

“We considered not only whether graduates had gone part-time or taken a career break to care for children, but also the number of times they had done so. We asked about common career decisions made to accommodate family responsibilities, such as limiting travel, choosing a more flexible job, slowing down the pace of one’s career, making a lateral move, leaving a job, or declining to work toward a promotion. Women were more likely than men to have made such decisions — but again, none of these factors explained the gender gap in senior management.”

In fact, previous research has demonstrated that even when working mothers overcome doubts about their workplace commitment through “heroic” efforts to visibly demonstrate it to their employers, they face a secondary form of “normative discrimination”. Hyper-committed mothers are perceived to violate the gender norm that they should be prioritizing family over work, and this projects negative attributes on their personality (not the same for hyper-committed fathers), which in turn harms career development. Hence, “efforts on the part of mothers to overcome doubts about their workplace competence do not eliminate discrimination; these efforts just change the mechanism of discrimination.”

It may be the persistence of the belief that women prioritize family over career (or should) that’s truly at play in tapering the career trajectory of Harvard women.

The Expectation Gap

The Harvard research reported, “we found not just achievement and satisfaction gaps between men and women, but a real gap between what women expect as they look ahead to their careers and where they ultimately land.”

Men started out with more traditional expectations, and life mostly satisfied them. 60% of male graduates expected their career to take priority, and that’s what happened 70% of the time. A strong majority of men expected their partner to take primary childcare responsibility, and 86% of the time, they did.

Women, however, launched their careers with stronger expectations that their partnerships would be equal, but reality fell short. Fewer than a quarter of female graduates expected their partner’s career would take priority, but 40% of the time it did. And while only half of women expected to take primary responsibility for raising children, two-thirds ended up doing so.

The researchers reported, “The fact that HBS alumnae are finding themselves in relationships in which their careers are subordinate to their partners’ more often than they anticipated strikes us as meaningful. Our findings indicate that ending up in less-egalitarian partnerships is disappointing—perhaps especially so when a career has stalled.”

Women whose careers and child care responsibilities were seen as equal to their partners felt more satisfied with their career growth than those in traditional arrangements. Tellingly, men in more equal relationships reported lower career satisfaction, likely thrown against their own expectations and gender norms too.

The Guardian lamented, “Somewhat depressingly it seems that we are still in something of a time warp, with the reality of working life for mothers falling far below expectations and ambitions.”

Who needs to Lean in?

The researchers concluded that, “Women are leaning in”. At least when it comes to Harvard MBA graduates, “Women want more meaningful work, more challenging assignments, and more opportunities for career growth. It is now time, as Anne-Marie Slaughter has pointed out, for companies to lean in, in part by considering how they can institutionalize a level playing field for all employees, regardless of gender or caregiver status.”

The study suggests we need to get beyond the conventional wisdom that a “woman’s primary career obstacle is herself” – and the premises hiding underneath it that silently justify brushing women’s career ambitions discreetly under the corporate rug.

Theglasshammer has an organizational consulting arm called Evolved Employer that specializes in helping companies do the necessary work to ensure the future progress of all employees.

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7 Ways To Be A Great Mentor for Women

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women working mentoringCareers today are complex and fast-paced. All of us are continually faced with steep learning curves as we navigate new jobs, new technology, and new global challenges. Beyond this, women must overcome gender stereotypes and negotiate having children during peak career development stages. Great mentors have never been more critical.

In the past, true mentors provided holistic support to their protégés—including instrumental career support, emotional support, and role modeling. Mentors served as sponsors and coaches, protected their protégés politically, and helped them get challenging assignments. All of this is important, but it’s too much for one person to do in today’s demanding workplace.

Reframe the way you think about mentoring and help your protégé do the same. You can and should play an essential part of your protégé’s development, but to succeed she will need a network of mentors, sponsors, coaches, and peers. Instead of helping, you will hurt your protégé if you lead her to believe that you are the only mentor she will need. Explain to her that building relationships is essential for good performance and for getting ahead in the workplace. And the more developmental support she gets the better.

Here are 7 ways to be a great mentor for women:

1. Empower her to lead the conversation.

The best skill you can teach is how to be a good protégé, and a good protégé will take the lead in the relationship. Taking the initiative empowers your protégé to develop leadership skills and take ownership of her career, essential for her long-term success. Thus, as a mentor your role is not to direct the relationship instead your role is to guide your protégé by asking good questions and helping her think through career issues. Discuss goals for the relationship at the outset and be explicit about why you are pushing her to take the lead.

2. Become a sponsor and help her connect with other sponsors.

If you are in a position of influence, think about how to raise your protégé’s visibility. Expose her to the complexities of your role and introduce her to other leaders in positions of power. Raise her name as a high potential candidate for promotion in both formal and informal conversations. It’s notable that women are more willing to ask their managers for stretch assignments with a sponsor behind them.

3. Encourage her to take on challenging assignments.

Succeeding on challenging tasks is how we build self-confidence and self-efficacy, critical for performing in executive roles. Get to know your protégé well enough to help her identify experiences that will grow her skill set. Such high profile projects also serve to build her network, improve her reputation, and prepare her for more responsibility. Help her reflect on these experiences to fully capture the learning and incorporate new skills into her role.

4. Acknowledge gender issues exist.

Your protégé knows that gender may be a factor in her career; it has been a big part of the mainstream media conversation since the publication of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. The issue is to recognize the role of gender and consider how it may or may not impact opportunities at your workplace. A key benefit of women mentoring women is the potential comfort in shared experiences. Be open to this conversation. Ask your protégé if/how gender has influenced her career. As appropriate, share your own experiences and how you coped as examples of resiliency. Help her navigate challenges using your knowledge of the people, processes, and culture of your particular organization.

5. Coach on executive presence.

Appearing and sounding professional are important components of impression management. You can help your protégé understand the unwritten rules, those implicit assumptions that underlie behavioral expectations and what is considered suitable for executives in your workplace. Observations on the wardrobes of high profile women are rampant, and good public speaking skills are crucial for aspiring leaders. Give thoughtful feedback on appropriate attire and presentation style to help women put their best foot forward.

6. Help her identify role models.

With women comprising less than 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs, clearly it is a challenge to identify female role models. Try having your protégé think about what she admires about different executives she’s observed. Consider what her goals are and who you know has strengths in areas she needs to develop. Instead of searching for one perfect role model, people can serve as role models for specific skillsets or managerial styles. Building relationships with both male and female mentors will be essential for her success.

7. Urge her to develop mentoring relationships outside your organization.

Everyone needs an objective sounding board outside of their workplace. Encourage your protégé to discuss her career with people from different companies and from different parts of her life (e.g., industry groups, community). External mentors give perspective and can offer fresh approaches to obstacles because they are not embedded in the organization. Women benefit particularly when they connect with mentors who support their goals both inside and outside of work.

To be a great mentor today requires creativity and the flexibility to adapt your approach to your protégé’s needs. In the process, great mentors learn a lot too.

About the author:

Wendy Marcinkus Murphy is an Associate Professor of Management at Babson College and author of Strategic Relationships at Work: Creating Your Circle of Mentors, Sponsors, and Peers for Success in Business and Life.

by Wendy Marcinkus Murphy

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Office Housework: Lean In, But Don’t Be Leaned On

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working from homeIf you make well-meaning, generous, happy to help contributions day in and out at the office and it goes without recognition or reward, do you make a sound? When it comes to your career, probably not. The truth is when it comes to both moving up and looking after yourself, too much helping might be hurting.

In a recent New York Times article, Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant write, “This is the sad reality in workplaces around the world: Women help more but benefit less from it.” After all, there’s a difference between leaning in and being leaned on.

Why We Help

Sandberg and Grant are quick to note that gender stereotypes are at play in creating expectations for women to “pitch in” thanklessly for the team: “When a man offers to help, we shower him with praise and rewards. But when a woman helps, we feel less indebted. She’s communal, right? She wants to be a team player. The reverse is also true. When a woman declines to help a colleague, people like her less and her career suffers. But when a man says no, he faces no backlash. A man who doesn’t help is ‘busy’; a woman is ‘selfish.’”

So it’s no surprise that Law Professor Joan C. Williams, author of What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know, says that for women, “Saying no without seeming touchy, humorless or supremely selfish is a particularly tricky balancing act.” Women continue to be left “holding the mop”, in the words of Senator Elizabeth Warren, for men in the office. Blogging on leadership, Williams defines office housework as:

“the administrative tasks, menial jobs, and undervalued assignments women are disproportionately given at their jobs.”

“Someone has to take notes, serve on committees and plan meetings — and just as happens with housework at home, that someone is usually a woman,” says Sandberg and Grant.

What happens when a woman says no? A study on altruistic behavior led by NYU’s Heilman tested how male and female employees would be evaluated based on choosing whether to stay late for an important meeting. A man was rated 14% more favourably than a woman for staying and helping. A woman was 12% more negatively than a man for declining.

It’s the equivalent of the “awww” factor daddy gets but not mom when he carries around the baby, and it’s unequally rewarded. Sandberg and Grant state, “Over and over, after giving identical help, a man was significantly more likely to be recommended for promotions, important projects, raises and bonuses. A woman had to help just to get the same rating as a man who didn’t help.”

If you’re finding yourself disproportionately engaged in leading mentor programs, coordinating the interns, taking notes, heading up thankless committees and special side initiatives, ordering the sandwiches, volunteering to stay late, and spending time behind the scenes coaching, you are helping organizational success according to many studies noted in the NYT article.

But the question is at what price to your career and to yourself?

Hindering Your Career

The NYT article stated, “Studies demonstrate that men are more likely to contribute with visible behaviors — like showing up at optional meetings — while women engage more privately in time-consuming activities like assisting others and mentoring colleagues.”

Behind the scenes help is valuable, but when it’s mostly women who are carrying the time and effort commitment on low-valued, low-visibility work, who is free to step up to the high-value, high-visibility opportunities?

“The person taking diligent notes in the meeting almost never makes the killer point,” Sandberg and Grant write in the NYT. And Williams asserts in the Washington Post, “We have to get women out of office housework and onto more projects that really matter, both to them and to their companies, if we want more women to be successful in reaching positions of influence.”

Sacrificing Yourself

Williams writes, “Women are often asked to play the selfless good citizen…by taking on assignments that men don’t want or that the organization doesn’t highly reward.” But what happens when women act selfless, or out of our need to be dutiful or helpful, is we too often neglect ourselves.

Women are more likely to feel burned out at work when it comes to emotional exhaustion, according to an analysis of 183 different studies across 15 countries. According to another study, women’s focus on and involvement with others to the exclusion of taking care of their own self can cause stress and depression underneath.

Being helpful can create personally rewarding interactions, but women need to be careful that they’re not exhausting their own energy and resources while colluding with multiplying expectations upon themselves.

If your identity becomes locked up in being the helpful one, which your gender already infers, then it becomes an expectation you serve and reaffirm. When out of balance, being of service to others at the workplace can mean being of dis-service to yourself.

A Mindset Change

Sandberg and Grant suggest that organizations should chose to value, track, and recognize acts of helping, as well as address the imbalance in assigning this work. They also suggest men could step up to contribute their share and help vocalize the unsung contributions.

In the meantime, they suggest breaking free of the cycle of mop-holding comes down to women, to you: “For women, the most important change starts with a shift in mind-set: If we want to care for others, we also need to take care of ourselves. One of us, Adam, has conducted and reviewed numerous studies showing that women (and men) achieve the highest performance and experience the lowest burnout when they prioritize their own needs along with the needs of others. By putting self-concern on par with concern for others, women may feel less altruistic, but they’re able to gain more influence and sustain more energy. Ultimately, they can actually give more.”

The NYT article pointed out an exec who found more efficient ways – such as a FAQ manual – to address requests for help, as well as caring ways to decline over-stretching. Only then did she make partner. You can be as giving, caring, and considerate in how you say no to others while recognizing your needs and limits as you can be in saying yes.

Women are quick at helping, and it’s part of the path to success, but that doesn’t mean we have to shoulder all the under-valued work at a cost to ourselves.

Perhaps we need to qualify Sandberg’s call-to-action: Lean in, but don’t be leaned on.

By Aimee Hansen

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The Formula for Selling Anybody, Anything, Anytime

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women salesHere’s the thing: sometimes we’re selling our ideas, sometimes we’re selling our products and, these days, many of us are selling ourselves as the best candidate for the job/as the person who deserves a promotion. With this in mind, here’s the proven formula for selling your best self to anybody, anywhere, anytime.

First: Yale University did a study of the 12 most persuasive words in the English language. What they discovered is that the most persuasive word in the English language is “you.” Consequently, I recommend throwing it around a lot: “As I’m sure you know,” “As I’m sure you’ve heard,” “I wanted to talk to you today,” etc.

Second: California-based Social Psychologist Ellen Langer revealed that there is one word in the English language that increases the possibility of cooperation from 60 to 94%. No, that is not a typo. I will repeat: 60 to 94%. This word is “Because.”

Lastly: “The Duncan Hines Cake Mix Marketing Theory.” When Duncan Hines first began making cake mix, the decision to have you at home add the egg was made in the marketing department. Why is this effective? Because they realized that when we add the egg we feel proud because we contributed; we can say, “I baked!” How does this work in a business scenario? You need to articulate how you can contribute to the other person’s success and/or how they can contribute to yours so that what is created becomes your shared success.

So that’s your formula: you + because + the egg = success.

Following are three different ways you can apply this formula for success

Talking to an Interviewer:

Too often we spend our interviewing time talking about why we are right for the job. This sounds a lot like, “And I just think this company would be perfect for me/would help me meet my goals.” No. What you need to be talking about is how you are going to contribute to your future boss’s/the company’s success once you are hired.

What might this sound like?

“I wanted to talk to you today because your job description/your company’s mission statement/your bestselling product is X, and my skill set/my personal passion/my sales experience is in Y. Applying the full force of my expertise to this job will enable us both to reach our goals.”

Talking to Your Boss about a Brewing “Situation”:

The use of the word “situation” here is quite deliberate. The White House doesn’t have a “Crisis Room,” they have a “Situation Room.” Likewise, you don’t have a crisis– you have a situation that needs to be resolved.

So, what would the formula for success sound like here?

“I wanted to bring a potential situation to your attention immediately because it requires expert attention. X has occurred and I have come up with the following two, possible solutions. Is there one that you prefer?”

In this instance, their egg is not as much the mention of their expert attention, but the opportunity you are giving them to apply that expertise to two possible resolution strategies. Having them to choose which they prefer (and tell you why it’s far better) not only allows them to add their egg, but to choose the temperature at which the solution is “baked.”

Talking to a Potential Target at a Networking event

Too many networking events are about what others can do for us, rather than what we can do for them. In my experience, however, the most successful networkers aren’t asking, “What can you do for me?” but “What can I do for you?” In this scenario, then, the formula would likely sound like this:

“Hello, I’m X,” (if your target is standing with another person, or in a group, introduce yourself to everyone present.) “I wanted to introduce myself because I know you are the visionary behind X idea/product/company, and I wanted to introduce you to Y/write about you in my newsletter/ask if I could help you organize your next charity event.”

As you can see, the offer doesn’t need to be huge — the fact that you made it at all is what helps you stand out. Leaving room for them to add the egg of their choice is what will ensure your successful connection.

Happy baking!

Guest Contribution by Frances Cole Jones

Guest advice and opinions are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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Career Tip of the Week

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woman typing on a laptopThis Week’s Tip Is…

Successful narrative

Think about how all business leaders tend to have an “arc” to their story. What is your arc? How does the tasks you do, and the projects completed, add up to a narrative for your career?

Welcome to Career Tip of the Week. In this column we aim to provide you with a useful snippet of advice to carry with you all week as you navigate the day to day path in your career.

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

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Happy Memorial Day!

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memorial-day-2015

We will be taking a short publishing break, but we will return tomorrow with the latest career advice, news, and inspiring women to help you advance your career.

Please join our LinkedIn community here in the meantime!

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Derailed but not Deterred: How Women Leaders Can Get Back On The Success Track

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Career-newsHow can women leaders increase their odds of being more successful after they’ve received negative feedback or suffered a work setback?

Answers to this question abound: Be more aggressive, capitalize on natural people skills, speak up more, avoid organizations with glass ceilings – the list can go on.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these answers except that they can sometimes have limited value, as we often struggle to succeed due to internal rather than external reasons.

For over twenty years, I have used a leadership assessment tool developed by well-known psychologist Robert Hogan that identifies and helps manage what he refers to as “derailers”. Hogan’s definition of derailers is personality traits that emerge under stress when we lose our ability to regulate behaviors because our brain goes into a self-protection mode. Unaddressed, these actions can sabotage relationships as well as careers.

In my book, Beauty Queen: Inside the Reign of Avon’s Andrea Jung, I wrote extensively on the impact of Andrea’s pleaser “derailer” – avoiding conflict or the tough calls and trying to appease others in order to maintain harmony. Andrea was a brilliant and highly successful leader, but the combination of intense stress and difficult circumstances (the loss of her second-in-command) allowed her derailer to diminish her effectiveness. I have coached many women who possess this derailer and I’ve witnessed how it causes them to stay quiet and fail to speak up. This derailer is related to risk taking, and it affects not only business decisions but also taking personal risks such as voicing a minority opinion in a meeting or making a controversial comment. In these women’s minds, the self-protection mode can kick in and often unconsciously, they believe it is better to “play it safe” and not say anything versus having their opinions disparaged.

Be aware, too, that understanding the context is crucial when it comes to assessing the impact of derailers on women leaders. For example, I coached Joan, a senior vice president with a large organization. Her derailer was mischievous – under stress she circumvented the rules or created her own rules to get results. In Joan’s previous organization, this behavioral mischief resulted in her being labeled a true innovator who broke through outdated processes to turn around a tired brand. In Joan’s current role, she is being labeled as non-collaborative and a lone ranger. Her previous organization’s culture was more aligned with her values and personality while her current organization’s culture is known as more conservative and operating by the book. Recall that all derailers possess a flip side. In Joan’s case, the daring and provocative moves that helped her succeed in one organization are causing her to fail in another company. Context means a lot, especially for women leaders who tend to be given labels that are difficult to shake.

I worked with another woman, Tanya, who was overly cautious and worked in an organization with an overly cautious culture and business strategy – they were never the first to market but followed the market leader with decreasing success. As part of a corporate shake-up, more aggressive managers were brought in. Tanya’s new manager gave her some pretty tough feedback about not only the need to speak up but to push the envelope with her plans and programs. Again, a changing context affected how Tanya’s overly cautious behavior was perceived. What helped Tanya succeed in one context caused her to struggle in another.

Derailers are part of who we are, so you can’t get rid of your derailers. But you can learn to manage them. The management process can be more difficult for women leaders than men, in part because bosses are sometimes more willing to give tough feedback to men because it’s assumed they can “take it”. In some companies, too, male leaders are more likely to receive coaching than female leaders. Therefore, you may need to learn how to manage your derailer yourself.

Here are some tips for doing so:
  • Know what the “buzz” is about you–what people say about you behind your back usually leads right back to your derailers. Ask your friends, partner and spouse what you do under stress. They always know and can often be your best coach. If you hear that you have too much pride, never ask for help and have trouble admitting you’ve made a mistake, then arrogance is your likely derailer.
  • Discover what pushes your buttons. I worked with one colleague who always got under my skin with her cynicism and bitterness, and I became a different and very untrusting individual when we tangled. Every time we argued, I became confrontational and angry—this was not my usual mode of operation. By identifying how you react when your buttons are pushed, you can receive additional clues about your derailing trait.
  • Understand your context. Be aware of how your derailer fits within your organization’s culture. Figure out the norms of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Ask yourself whether this has changed with new leadership and how it’s affected you.
  • Take action and get tactical. Tanya, the overly cautious woman I coached, needed to speak up more, so she set a target of stating her opinion at least 5 times in every meeting she attended. After a while, speaking up became a habit.

Finally, be aware that in many organizational settings, women are reluctant to admit to themselves or others that they have a flaw. We’ve been conditioned to believe that we have to be better, stronger, and smarter than our male counterparts if we want to succeed. Thus, we can be reluctant to consider that we might have a derailing tendency.

But all of us have them, be we men or women, young or old, CEOs or neophytes. By being aware of your most impactful derailer and making an effort to counteract its effect especially when you’re under stress and it’s causing you problems, you can counteract its negative effect. Managing your derailer doesn’t guarantee women leaders success, but it certainly levels the playing field in more ways than one.

Guest Contribution by Deborrah Himsel

Deborrah Himsel is the author of Beauty Queen: Inside the Reign of Avon’s Andrea Jung. She is also an educator and executive coach – www.himselandassociates.com

Guest advice and opinions not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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Accountability, Leadership Responsibility, and Common Sense: Leaders Share What Makes Diversity Initiatives Work

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Professional WomenGender diversity and inclusion doesn’t just happen, as Catalyst shows every year at its awards conference. A sustained improvement in the percentage of women in corporate workforces and leadership comes from hard work by companies to achieve and maintain set goals. It also requires a visibly demonstrated commitment to diversity by those in charge.

Honorees at this year’s Catalyst Awards Conference shared their companies’ secrets to success in increasing the percentage of women in leadership levels and throughout their companies’ workforces. The winning programs at Chevron Corporation and Proctor & Gamble combined three tried and true ingredients for advancing women at work: accountability, common sense, and leaders who took personal responsibility for improving diversity and inclusion at their companies.

“How we are behaving in any interaction speaks louder than any company effort,” said Melody Boone Meyer, president of Chevron Asia Pacific Exploration and Production Company. “Your behavior is how people read what’s real or not. The communication is there, but much more important is whether you’re living that.”

“Your behavior is how people read what’s real or not. The communication is there, but much more important is whether you’re living that.”

At the conference in March, Meyer, along with Mike Wirth, executive vice president of downstream and chemicals at Chevron; William P. Gipson, chief diversity officer and senior vice president of research and development at Proctor & Gamble; and Colleen Jay, president of global hair care and color at Proctor & Gamble, took to the stage to describe not only how their companies changed their approach to improving gender diversity, but also their personal journeys with taking responsibility for diversity as well.

As Meyer said, “Leaders need to live it.”

Accountability

Leaders from both companies detailed how they were held accountable for meeting corporate gender diversity goals.

Wirth explained that, at Chevron, leaders have to answer for their diversity action plans as part of their performance reviews. He also described an exercise the company’s CEO had leaders undertake: “The CEO said I want you to go out and spend time with three people who are very different from you and I expect you to respond,” he recalled.

“Accountability is nothing unless you have goals,” Gipson agreed. “Targets change everything.”

Proctor & Gamble ties diversity goals to executives’ stock options, he said. But the goals aren’t easy to meet and they aren’t merely window dressing to placate investors who care about diversity – they’re stretch goals.

“To really move the needle, you need to have some stretching,” Gipson said.

Indeed, Wirth commented, Chevron even employed reverse inventives at one point. “If you didn’t make progress, the bonus would be affected for everyone in that group,” he said, explaining that Chevron’s leaders wanted to make sure executives understood that diversity was a shared responsibility.

Common Sense

Diversity initiatives wouldn’t work without a heavy dose of common sense, as well. For example, Gipson explained that a few years ago, leaders at Proctor & Gamble realized women were leaving the company at a disproportionate rate. The company undertook a workforce survey to figure out why.

One of the reasons, P&G discovered, was that the company’s flex work program just wasn’t working. Offering employees the ability to work flexibly is one way companies can help their entire workforce meet their personal responsibilities. Since women as a group bear the brunt of child- and elder-care disproportionately compared to men, flex programs have been identified as a way for companies to retain female employees.

It turned out, Gipson said, that P&G’s flexible work program wasn’t flexible enough.

“We were trying to mandate when and where to work flexibly, but life is not really that way,” he explained. The company amended its program based on the survey results.

Leadership Responsibility

Finally, the panelists described what is possibly the most important part of an effective gender diversity initiative. Leaders have to internalize the value of diversity and demonstrate that value in their personal actions.

For example, Johnson said she and other P&G executives help each other keep track of blind spots.

“We help keep everyone sharp so we can role model that going forward,” she explained.

Similarly, Wirth described how he had to face his own personal blind spots a few years ago when Chevron undertook a dramatic restructuring. He picked all white men to lead his new team.

“I got a lot of feedback from the CEO, my kids, and women in my organization,” he said. “I had to do a lot of reflection on myself. I genuinely believed I had the right beliefs and behavior, but that’s not good enough. People need to see action.”

“I got a lot of feedback from the CEO, my kids, and women in my organization,”

He continued, “As a white male, I’ve got an extra responsibility to catalyze the discussion [on diversity], and create an environment where everyone is supported and everyone understands the expectations.”

Gipson described how, as an R&D executive, he had to learn to “embrace the soft stuff.”

“It’s the hardest stuff,” he said. “But no matter how much progress we’ve made, we can always get better.”

That attitude – that we can always get better – is an important one in diversity and inclusion. Simply meeting the numbers isn’t good enough. True inclusion will require everyone in the workforce – especially leaders – to keep pushing themselves harder to identify and change their own personal weaknesses when it comes to diversity and working to change their companies for the better.

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

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Listening Is Getting Harder, but It’s Necessary for Leaders

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women in technologyEvolving digital technology demands more communication and accessibility from all employees, which leads to a culture of multi-tasking. But as leaders face increased communication demands, it’s important that they retain the value of listening.

Listening is Getting More Difficult

Active listening has been identified as one of the ten attributes of embodied leadership. Effective listening by leaders has been noted as the first step in creating trust within organizations. Also research shows that supervisor listening contributes to employee job satisfaction, satisfaction with the supervisor, and fosters a strong and beneficial exchange between leaders and team members.

Yet according to Accenture’s #ListenLearnLead study of 3,600 business professionals across 30 countries, the vast majority of professionals (64%) feel that listening has become more difficult in today’s workplace.

While nearly all (96%) of global professionals judged themselves to be “good listeners”, nearly all (98%) also report multi-tasking at least part of the day.

The study found that eight in ten respondents said they multi-task on conference calls with work emails (66%), instant messaging (35%), personal emails (34%), social media (22%) and reading news and entertainment (21%). In fact, professionals report distracted listening and divided attention unless they are held directly and visibly responsible within the context of the meeting.

“Digital is changing everything, including the ways in which we communicate. In turn, the way we communicate is changing how we listen, learn and lead in the workplace,” says Nellie Berroro, Managing Director, Global Inclusion & Diversity at Accenture. “Today, truly listening means not just watching our nonverbal cues in face-to-face meetings, but also maintaining our focus on conference calls, staying present, and resisting the urge to multi-task with instant messages and texts.”

Multi-Tasking Means More Quantity, But Less Quality

The attraction to multi-tasking seems to be a double-edged sword in the workplace that pins quantity against quality.

In Accenture’s study, 64% of Millennials, 54% of Gen Xers, and 49% of Baby Boomers reported multi-tasking during at least half of their work day. While 66% of professionals agreed multi-tasking enables them to get more done at work, 36% report that distractions prevent them from doing their best work. Millennials were at the extreme on each – feeling multi-tasking meant getting more done (73%) and yet distractions prevented them from doing their best work (41%).

However it’s traditional interruptions imposed by others (telephone calls & unscheduled meetings & visitors) rather than technology that were reported as most disruptive, perhaps due to the lack of control over these distractions.

What suffers? The trade-offs reported include decreased focus, lower-quality work, and diminished team relationships. But can leaders afford these trade-offs, too?

Despite the Benefits, Are Leaders Too Accessible?

“Our survey found technology both helps and hinders effective leadership,” says Borrero. On the positive side, 58% of survey respondents saw technology as a benefit for leaders enabling them to communicate quickly with their teams, allowing both time and geographic flexibility (47%) as well as accessibility (46%).

However, 62% of women and 54% of men felt technology made leaders over-stretched by being too accessible. 50% of respondents felt it forced multi-tasking and 40% felt it distracted from culture and relationship building. 55% felt a top challenge for leaders is information overload.

Borrero recommends practicing discipline when needed in disengaging from other technologies to give full focus to the material in front of you, such as putting your mobile device on silent during phone conferences and actively noting key points. “When you face information overload,” she says, “become comfortable with turning off technology. For example, you might disconnect at night, so you can recharge, and decide not to look at your phone until the morning.”

Importantly, when it comes to effective leadership and overcoming barriers to it, focusing on quality of communication and connection matters most – and that may very well start with listening.

The most important leadership attributes identified by the study were the “soft skills” of effective communication (55%), ability to manage change (47%), and ability to inspire others and ideas (45%), closely followed by understanding team members.

Yet this is also where skills suffer: the two most commonly perceived obstacles to effective team leadership were a lack of interpersonal skills (50%) and a lack of communication skills (44%).

Getting Better At Listening

While digital technology brings many advantages, leaders who compromise at listening may compromise their ability to lead effectively.

A Westminster Business School report highlights, “Listening is an essential skill in all situations and it is particularly important for leaders and managers to actually hear what others say, not simply what we think we hear them say…All great leadership starts with listening. That means listening with an open mind, heart and will. It means listening to what is being said as well as what isn’t being said.”

Despite its importance to leadership, leaders are too often ineffective at truly listening according to an HBR article by Christine M. Riordan. She notes, “The ability and willingness to listen with empathy is often what sets a leader apart.”

Riordan outlines three key behaviors leaders can practice that are linked with empathetic listening:

1) Hearing with all of your senses and acknowledging what you’ve heard.

This means “recognizing all verbal and nonverbal cues, including tone, facial expressions, and other body language.” It’s as much about listening to what is not said as what is said, and probing a bit deeper, as well as acknowledging others feelings or viewpoints and the act of sharing them.

2) Processing what is being shared and heard.

This means “understanding the meaning of the messages and keeping track of the (key) points of the conversation.” Effective leaders are able to capture and remember global themes, key messages, and points of agreement and disagreement.

3) Responding to and encouraging communication.

This means “assuring others that listening has occurred and encouraging communication to continue.” Acknowledging others verbally or non-verbally, asking clarifying questions, or paraphrasing reflects consideration of their input. This can also mean following-up to ensure others know listening has occurred.

According to Accenture’s Borrero, “Leaders are role models employees emulate, so it’s important for them to set a good example. In our increasingly hyper-connected digital workplace, we all need to practice ‘active listening,’ including paraphrasing, taking notes and asking questions. At Accenture, we offer a number of courses in effective listening, which is critical to our company as we focus on serving clients.”

In today’s leadership context, where effective leadership means showing social awareness not just self-awareness, leaders may employ technology to help them do it, but one way or another, it’s important they find a way to truly listen.

By Aimee Hansen

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