How To Weigh The Risks Of Your Next Career Move

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Career Move“The Great Resignation” has been circling headlines for months as employers look to fill open positions post-pandemic, and employees look for greener pastures with a career move. The job hunt is increasingly competitive as 44% of employees are actively looking for new roles and 53% are open to leaving their current job.

The good news is that there’s no shortage of open positions. As of January 2022, the U.S. had 11.26 million jobs available — a 55% increase from January of 2021. The pressure to hire has encouraged employers to consider increased pay, benefits, and flexibility at work.

Diving into a new job presents plenty of opportunities to develop your career, skills, and financial wellness. It can also be intimidating to learn new processes, develop new relationships, and potentially find yourself in a less-than-ideal working environment.

After refining your resume, applying to positions daily, and attending a few interviews, you may finally find yourself presented with a job offer. A gleaming opportunity that may offer higher pay or a more prestigious job title, but you can’t be sure of its work-life balance or career challenges yet.

Some well-deserving workers may even receive multiple offers to consider. These situations create pressure to make a decision relatively quickly. It’s a good spot to be in, but having the skills to evaluate risk and rewards lets you fully enjoy the moment and guides you to make a confident decision.

If you’re in the middle of a job hunt or considering other career opportunities, here are some steps to help you weigh the options.

1. Identify Your Priorities

Your individual needs for your next career move are unique to you, and understanding those goals helps you create a framework for comparing offers. A majority of workers (56%) are looking for a pay raise, but there are several job benefits to consider, including:

  • Health benefits
  • Job security
  • Flexibility at work
  • Career goals
  • Employer culture

Take time to list the potential benefits of a new job and rank what’s most important to you. This is a great practice before you start applying so you can save your time and energy for positions that best fit your needs. It can also help you decide how well your current position matches your needs to consider if you’re ready for a change or not.

Next, make a spreadsheet or other list that includes all of these benefits and rank how well each job opportunity meets these criteria. This creates an easy and objective reference to compare jobs that you can update to reflect your needs as they evolve.

2. Research The Position

The internet age has given us a range of resources to evaluate employers and job expectations that too many employees don’t take advantage of. While you likely studied a company, its values, and the position itself throughout the interview process, another review before signing on is worth your time.

Start with the company itself and explore its communication channels. YouTube videos, press releases, and the About page can help you identify cultural values, how the company has and continues to grow, and insights into management. Some companies even go as far as to share their hiring secrets — a great reference in the interview phase.

Review sites like Glassdoor provide a peek into the employee experience through position and interview reviews. Check out the site to vet your priorities against what other employees report their experience with the company was. You’ll also have access to salary ranges that will help you negotiate your pay.

Finally, you’ll get the best information straight from current and former employees. Check out the company’s LinkedIn page to find current employees and search the company name to find anyone who previously worked there. You can connect with workers and send a quick chat that you’d like to know more about their experiences. You may be surprised to find how willing people are to help you find a job that fits.

3. List Your Risks

Most people stuck between two options are worried about making the wrong decision more than they are making the best decision. They’re hung up on the risks, wondering if it’s a step backward or if they’re really cut out for the position.

Imposter syndrome aside, it’s important to consider the risks of a new position. To compare the risks of staying and leaving, you need to start by identifying them. Sit with the moment and feel your excitement, fear, hesitation, and joy. What’s the root of each of these feelings? You may think:

  • “There’s no room to grow in my current position.”
  • “What if I don’t work well with my new manager?”
  • “If this career change doesn’t work out, I may have to restart where I am now.”
  • “If this startup goes under, I have to job hunt again.”

List these risks under the decision it ties to. Visually seeing the number of risks for each choice is helpful, but not all risks are equal. Place the biggest risks at the top of each list and continue the list from most to least risky.

moving careers

 

4. Evaluate And Control Risk

Now that you have clear lists of your potential risks and rewards, go back and consider how you can negate some of the risks. Here are some examples from the previous exercise:

  • If there’s no room to grow in your current position, is there a new skill you can develop to open higher career opportunities?
  • If you’re worried about your next manager, can you set up a meet and greet through the employer?

This practice can also uncover that the risks aren’t holding you back so much as a fear of change. That’s absolutely natural. Especially considering the economic turbulence of the last two years. Still, 80% of employees that quit their job in the last two years have no regrets.

5. Make The Decision That’s Right For You

Changing jobs is an excellent way to advance your career and financial health. Salaries increase an average 14.8% with a new role — especially if you’re early in your career. On the other hand, you’re placed in a new environment to develop new working relationships, which comes with its own networking benefits.

Ultimately, there’s probably not a right or wrong answer. No matter what you choose, you have the option to continue looking for new opportunities if you don’t love where you land. If you land in a position that helps you thrive, that’s a huge win for your well-being and career.

Following the steps above can give you peace of mind that you’re making the best choice with the information available to you. But remember that your next job is far from the end of the line, and there’s always another opportunity around the corner.

By: Bri Marvell is a content creator from Austin with interests in financial wellness and career development. When she’s not at her desk, you can find her exploring the city with her dog, Miko, or getting creative with a new craft.

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Inclusion: One Destination, Many Intersectional Paths?

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Over 2/3 of companies say that DEI work is critical, and the conversation these days centers on fostering cultures of inclusion to support the diversity of workplaces we need to have, do have and will have – if organizations are optimizing potential. Organizations are increasingly aware that “diversity without inclusion is exclusion.”

According to a new Bain report from a survey of 10,000 people (4,500 women) in seven countries entitled “The Fabric of Belonging: How to Weave an Inclusive Culture,” most people agree on what inclusion looks and feels like, but what actually creates the outcome of feeling fully included is more complicated – not only to organizations, but also to individuals, themselves.

Inclusion is Nearly Universally Defined, But Rare?

We all want to belong, but how we get there, together, can feel enigmatic and the solution is far from a one-size-fits-all approach. People, regardless of individual identities, levels and experiences – describe what inclusion feels like and what it looks like in very similar, nearly universal ways.

When it comes to what inclusion feels like, the researchers define inclusion as: “the feeling of belonging in your organization and team, feeling treated with dignity as an individual, and feeling encouraged to fully participate and bring your uniqueness to work every day.” When it comes to what it looks like, people to tend to come together on the notion that an inclusive organization is diverse and where people are heard, valued and supported. Other research has shown that we feel inclusion only when our needs for both uniqueness and belongingness are met.

While people hold a universal ideal of what inclusion means to them, one of the most “stark” takeaways Bain asserts is that the majority of employees – regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation – do not feel fully included (less than 30%), including those we tend to regard as most favored by the system and in positions of influence and power (straight white men). And no one demographic indicator can predict who feels excluded.

However, as Bain points out, “Even though the feeling of inclusion is fundamentally the same across groups, our research shows that the lived experience of inclusion is driven for various groups by a diverse variety of factors.”

To add some grounding, too, another perspective is that inclusion is really a net effect of day-to-day interactions, and individuals in particular groups experience acts and outcomes of exclusion far more frequently than individuals in other groups. In Forbes, Gaudino writes that “inclusion is invisible to those who enjoy it, because inclusion reflects the absence of negative incidents that make one feel excluded.”

Among the many examples we could draw on, McKinsey notes that black employees are 23% less likely to see there is support to advance and 41% less likely to view the promotion process as fair. Or consider that 59% of black women reported never having a casual interaction with a senior leader, versus 40% for all men and 49% for all women. Or that Asian American women have been the least likely group to experience being promoted to management.

If the experience of feeling “fully included” is pretty low in general, the evidence of exclusion is still highly punctuated for individuals in particular groups.

Feeling Included Matters For Individuals and Organizations

Amidst The Great Resignation, the feeling of inclusion is important to retention. Women who feel excluded at work are 3 times more likely to quit. Employees experiencing low inclusion are up to six times more likely to actively pursue new jobs compared with those in similar demographics experiencing high inclusion.

On the flip side, Bain found that approximately 65% of people across identity groups view an inclusive environment as “very important when considering new roles.” Employees who do feel fully included are much more likely to promote positive word of mouth about their organization. People in more inclusive environments, where psychologically safety is present, are more likely to innovate, challenge the status quo, and bring new ideas to the table. Bain argues the gains in creative thinking from inclusiveness are much greater than increasing diversity alone.

Just What Creates Inclusion?

Not surprisingly, the researchers found people hold different deep-seated notions on what creates inclusion, and those beliefs can clash in ways that create strong discomfort.

What is even more critical is that individual’s perceived notions of which “behavioral” and “systemic changes” would create more inclusion do not always match up to what actually drives impact or the experience of inclusion, so leaders are advised to “listen first for problem identification, not solution design.”

As an example, black women’s perception of how certain enablers are important to their sense of inclusion matched up 55% of the time – high perceived enablers corresponded to actual high impact on their sense of inclusion and same with low perceived enablers. But enablers such as “open and honest communication” and “coaching and professional development” were undervalued in perception, relative to how highly they were attributed to feeling a sense of inclusion for black women. And enablers such as “engagement check-ins” and “team feedback sessions” were overrated in perception relative to how attributed they were to feeling a sense of inclusion.

In inclusive cultures, people feel able to be authentic and supported to fulfill their potential, and Bain found that a common denominator of inclusion for everyone is opportunities for professional development and growth – in which there is much room for more equitable access to opportunities – and where employers can focus effectively.

When it comes to what individuals truly need, or different demographic groups, Bain emphasizes a data-informed intersectional approach that incorporates geography, demographics, and seniority to understand how to identify the systemic and behavioral enablers that can increase a sense of inclusion.

Other research has also indicated that inclusive leadership is fundamental, as Bourke and Titus point out: “what leaders say and do makes up to a 70% difference as to whether an individual reports feeling included.” They found the most important factors in cultivating a culture of inclusion are leadership commitment and demonstrating a visible awareness of the bias within oneself and the organization.

Ultimately, everyone wants to feel a sense of both authenticity and belonging and like they have access to the opportunity to thrive and fulfill their potential. People look to see if leadership is listening to this, and whether they are committed not only to the cause, but to understanding the real needs of their people.

By Aimee Hansen

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Will Companies Value the Leaders Who Invest In Inclusion?

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DEI leadersWhile women report being both increasingly burned out from the pandemic years and vulnerable to leave the workforce, they are also most likely to be rising up to embody the leadership our times ask for.

Will companies begin to put their money (financial and career trajectory rewards) where their mouths are? If not, allowing women to disproportionally shoulder the “unpaid work” of empathetic management and DEI is a strategy for losing the leaders who are tapped in and more valuable than ever.

Our Times Call for Compassionate Leadership

Amidst the pandemic, leadership has become more oriented towards supporting individuals as a whole person, not just as employees, with qualities such as emotional intelligence and active listening. As written in Forbes: “One of the key lessons young people can take from today’s successful executives and leaders is the value of taking care of your people.”

According to Catalyst, employees who report their leaders are empathetic are far more likely to feel engaged, respected and valued, are more likely to stay in their place of work, be innovative and feel a sense of inclusion. When people sense their leaders are empathetic, they also feel more able to navigate the demands of work and family life.

People who see their leadership as empathetic in decision making are also likely to be collaborative and empathetic themselves. And when leaders are more empathetic, it fosters better levels of mental health in their organization. Using empathy as the catalyst for leading with more compassion (not ‘I feel with you’ but ‘I am here to help,’ as we are inherently interconnected) creates even more effective leadership.

As Tracy Bower, Ph.D. sociologist and the author of The Secrets to Happiness at Work, writes in Forbes, “Leaders don’t have to be experts in mental health in order to demonstrate they care and are paying attention. It’s enough to check in, ask questions and take cues from the employee about how much they want to share” – and this drives positive relationships, engagement and organizational results.

Women Are Leading The Deep Cultural Work

According to the Women in the Workplace 2021 Report – a collaboration between McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org collected from over 423 organizations and 65,000 employee surveys – women are more likely to be carrying the torch of the “deep cultural work” necessary to transform workplaces “healthily and sustainably” in these times.

Women managers are consistently more likely to be supporting employees in their work lives (making the workload manageable, navigating work/life challenges, preventing and managing burnout). Women are also much more likely to be checking in on employee’s overall well-being and supporting them emotionally. In essence, employees are reporting that their female managers are showing up more with the active compassion of ‘how can I help?’

Also, women are more likely to be doing informal DEI work, beyond formal job responsibilities, and spending substantial time doing so. Compared to their male peers, senior female leaders are twice as likely to be making DEI work a part of their weekly work flow (1 in 5 vs 1 in 10). Women are also likely to recruit from and support underrepresented groups, be allies to women of color, to educate themselves, to speak out again discrimination, and to advocate for, mentor or sponsor women of color – although it’s important to note there are still big gaps to bridge in embodying the allies people would most value.

Ultimately, the work women are doing is driving better outcomes for everyone – because employees who feel their managers support their well-being, or who feel DEI is a priority and strong allies are present, are significantly happier, less burned out and more likely to stay around.

Women Are Stepping Up, And Burning Out

Yet while women managers and leaders are heeding the leadership call of our times, they are also undeniably overburdened themselves, with many not only carrying the double-shift of childcare and work, but also feeling the expectation to be “always on” in the absence of clear work/life boundaries in the remote and hybrid workplaces – another issue companies can help to address.

In 2021, 1 in 3 women were thinking about downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce, up from 1 in 4 women a few months into the pandemic in 2020. 4 in 10 women were looking to leave their company or switch jobs. 42% of women felt often or almost always burned out in 2021, a big jump up from 32% in 2020, and compared to 35% of men. That burnout feeling escalates with responsibility level. Among senior women who are managing entire teams, 50% were often or always burned out, and 40% were considering leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers.

Valued in Words, But Not In Actions

Companies are espousing that DEI and employee well-being are important to them. But while 87% of companies say that supporting employee well-being is critical and 70% say DEI work is critical, only about 25% are formally recognizing this work – and even fewer are rewarding it.

Despite stating gender and racial diversity as top priorities, only two-thirds of companies hold senior leaders accountable for progress on DEI goals, and less than one-third hold managers accountable, who are essential to creating cultures of inclusion. Among those who hold senior leaders accountable, fewer than half factor progress on diversity metrics into their performance reviews and less than a quarter build in financial incentives for progress on performance goals – meaning ultimately, the work is overlooked.

Right now, these highly sought leadership behaviors are adding up to be the new “unpaid work” highlighting where companies need to put more value. That women are disproportionally carrying this is a dangerous liability for employers during the Great Resignation. According to the report authors, “Companies risk losing the very leaders they need right now, and it’s hard to imagine organizations navigating the pandemic and building inclusive workplaces if this work isn’t truly prioritized.”

The authors urge organizations to treat DEI like any business priority, including following goals through to assessing effort and progress within performance reviews, and relating that to career advancement and compensation.

It’s Time to Recognize and Reward The Work

Right now, women are feeling burned out while taking personal leadership initiative on collective responsibilities. Companies are sabotaging progress on what they allege to be business priorities by not threading that priority through to enacting accountability, monitoring results and rewarding effectiveness.

“Companies need to incentivize and reward the things that women are doing to create these better working cultures,” says Jess Huang, co-author of the report. “This helps all employees because if it’s rewarded, more leaders will do it.”

Going further, she suggests: ”One solution companies should consider is incorporating criteria into performance reviews that recognizes the work managers are putting into supporting their teams and DEI efforts. Companies should use upward feedback provided by employees on their managers to help take this into account.”

It’s not enough to talk about valuing DEI and supporting the well-being of your employees. More companies need to demonstrate they value the work it takes to make it happen – to retain the leaders that are doing that work.

By Aimee Hansen

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OP-Ed: International Women’s Day 2022: Burnout, Sustainability and What Matters?

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International Women's Day 2022Many companies focus myopically on International Women’s Day. This year #BreaktheBias and
 gender and climate are the annual themes, depending on your source. But, as founder and fifteen 
years in here at theglasshammer, it is hard to believe that these slogans and themes that come and
 go every year create any change at all. People wants Acts, Not Ads from companies, and
 professional hard-working women are tired of the lip service and want to see the talk, walked.

As 
we enter year three of the global pandemic, with so many of us doing extreme amounts of work, 
and some of us also still balancing childcare with covid related closures of daycares and schools, 
isn’t it time to ask ourselves how can professional women and men (and especially anyone who 
has second and third shifts with kids and aging parents) do balance and self-care, better? What 
matters? And what role do firms have in creating the workplace of the future that we are ready to 
be in, now? This International Women’s Day, the manifesto should be to take a day off.
 Tomorrow the work will still be there!

Overwork and Burnout


There is work and then there is overwork. Chances are if you are reading this article, you have 
spent at least some of your career in the overwork zone. You probably work in financial, legal or
 professional services, in technology firms, big pharma, manufacturing, media or Fortune 500.
 You are probably a go-getter, highly ambitious and very successful. You probably have engaged
 some of the usual methods and possess some of the characteristics often needed to get to the top, including old fashioned hard and long work, a
 competitive nature, cognitive smarts, higher than average EQ to read the room, and a belief that
 improvement is always possible. Possibly three generations of professional women are reading 
this article with similar, yet evolving, culturally programmed definitions of success regarding wealth, status
 and career ladder climb concepts.

Is the extreme achievement mindset in sync with your life
goals, your health and mental wellness? Is overachievement about meeting other people’s 
standards or earning your worth?


Dr. Devon Price, like many of us, came to his senses regarding extreme productivity after a health
 emergency. He insists that we should stop valuing ourselves in terms of our productivity at
 work. In the book, Laziness Does Not Exist, he affirms that ‘we don’t have to earn our
 right to exist’ with overwork and endless achievement.

Advice includes to listen to your body and to forget grinding away all the time to meet arbitrary
 standards. By reframing what being ‘lazy’ means, versus the allure of validation through
 achievement, a healthier, happier you can emerge.

“Laziness is usually a warning sign from our bodies and our mind that we need a break.”

In an interview with NPR, he discusses why we rationalize working so hard, and how asking for 
help, and helping others to helps us, prevents tiredness from overwork but also facilitates us to be better
, due to feeling less exhausted as “our brains take micro-naps either way.”


It isn’t just you.

In several recent studies, isolated overwork came up as the most demotivating factor and biggest
 reason people are quitting jobs. This isn’t new news. Back in 2017, Inc magazine reported on employees 
quitting when leaders overwork people, show zero empathy and don’t respect time when people
 are out of the office living their lives, but it is further accentuated by the pandemic. 
Microsoft conducted an employee indexing survey of 30,000 that resulted in a study called
 “The Next Great Disruption is Hybrid Work – Are we Ready?”

By looking at trends including 
desire for flexible work and hybrid structures, the study reiterated what their CEO Satya Nadella 
called the hybrid work paradox. This study reveals that while people want more flexibility and remote 
options, they also seek deep human social connection. The same study reveals that high
 productivity is masking employee exhaustion and overwork. It states measurable uptick over the
 course of the year –  February 2020 to February 2021 –  on volume of emails sent, 66% increase on 
people working on documents, and meeting usage on teams increased in volume and time on
 meeting applications.

Uncovering your own Competing Agendas

Isn’t it time you figured out what you want for you? Start with your values. Take a look at what
 matters to you on this worksheet – literally, pick ten words that mean the most and then rank them
 1-10, with one being what you value most. Are your actions matching your values? Are you
 living a humdrum existence while your top value is adventure? Are you spending fourteen hours 
a day at work when your top value is family? Now is a great to re-evaluate what matters to 
you. Be yourself, everyone else is taken as the adage goes.

If you had trouble thinking about how all of this meets reality, or deciding what your values are
, or felt conflicted, that is part of the journey too. Hyper achievement and superhuman
 productivity are sometimes part of deep developmental gremlins that have made their way into 
our heads over time, so we can’t see any other way to be, making them our base operating 
system with everything else being an app on top. Kegan and Lahey, Developmental 
psychologists at Harvard, really have a superb method in their book, Immunity to Change, to 
help you figure out what your unconscious mind is doing to you while you happily goal set in
 your conscious mind all day long regarding work, fitness and home life. We are all a product of 
whatever beliefs and paradigms that we have accumulated throughout our life and if your
 granny/dad/mother/friend told you words to live by, chances are you are doing just that, 
implicitly following some guidelines without even knowing.

What are your saboteurs? There is another easy way to find out what is going on inside your own 
head by taking this short quiz on “How we self-sabotage” by Positive Intelligence. It is key to
 understand what is going on with yourself and what your self-talk is likely to be telling you.
 Let’s start with the gremlins. If you have something like hyperachievement as your top saboteur,
 then it is likely you will justify the overworking with sentences like ‘I must be effective and 
efficient, and ’emotions get in the way of performance.’ Or if you have a high control saboteur,
 you might be telling yourself things like, ‘well if I don’t do it, who will?’ Or, that people need
 people like you to get the job done. Show yourself some compassion and a great book to
 understand how to even begin to approach such a daunting task is Radical Compassion by Tara
 Brach. It is normal to feel your feelings and that includes joy.

In short, honor yourself on International Women’s Day by taking stock of what matters to you now, and how closely your own life feels aligned to that.

We are starting a Spring coaching cohort in May for sustainable success in 2022. Cost is $3,999 
per person and includes a yearlong program with 6 sessions of executive coaching, peer coaching
 and career development training. Limited spots, contact nicki@theglasshammer.com and write
 spring coaching cohort in the title of the email.

By Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com

Nicki founded theglasshammer in 2007 to inspire, inform and empower professional women in their careers. We have been the leading and longest running career advice online and in person media company in the USA for professional women in financial services.

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OP-ed: Menopause at Work – A Call To Action

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A senior HR official at a Fortune 500 company recently told me that women at her company routinely refuse to accept recognition awards for their years of service. Why? Because they don’t want people to know their age. Had that ever happened with a man, I asked? Never, she replied.

menopause at workOur society does not value age and aging, particularly in women. For women in the workplace and in other leadership positions, this double whammy of sexism and ageism is pernicious. As a result, many of us take steps to avoid drawing attention to our age. So when it comes to menopause, a unique marker of aging for women, it’s complicated. Even my most confident and successful friends and contemporaries become uncomfortable when talking about menopause. The stigma is real. We endure the stereotypes of angry women fanning themselves through hot flashes, while the silver fox goes happily about his business.

I am passionate about menopause because I believe that we are doing women and the people important to them a disservice by not talking more openly about the effects that menopause can have on some women, particularly at work. Many of us are in our prime professionally during these years, with senior positions of responsibility and management. It goes without saying (or it should) that having more women in C-suite positions is a good thing. Among other things, companies with greater C-suite diversity are shown to be more profitable, and more socially responsible.

The status quo of ignoring menopause is not ok. Menopause has a real effect on many women at work, as shown in this recent study, from Standard Chartered Bank and the Financial Services Skills commission in the UK. It delves into the effect that menopause is having on the financial services sector. A key finding centers around loss of talent due to menopausal symptoms – the study found that a quarter of employees experiencing menopausal symptoms said that they were more likely to leave the workforce early because of their experience. And the very real stigma around menopause means that only 22% are comfortable talking about it.

So what is menopause? The average age for menopause in the US is 51, and experienced by every cisgender woman (and some non-binary and transgender people.) Menopause marks the day when you have not had a period for 12 months. The time leading up to menopause is perimenopause, which generally begins in the mid 40s and lasts on average seven years. Perimenopause is caused by fluctuations in hormones, and this is when menopausal symptoms may start. During this time, periods may be uneven, heavier than normal, or irregular. You may have hot flashes, night sweats, brain fog, difficulty concentrating, heightened anxiety, reduced libido, weight gain (especially around the waist), heart palpitations, vaginal dryness, sleeping issues, or stiff and aching joints. In fact, there are 34 widely reported symptoms of menopause. 80% of women experience the most common symptoms, hot flashes and night sweats. For 15% of women, they are severe. For women who enter menopause surgically, perhaps due to a hysterectomy or cancer treatment, symptoms are often worse. The symptom that women find the most bothersome? Difficulty sleeping. Not surprising, as lack of sleep affects all other aspects of life. These menopausal symptoms don’t stop when your periods end; they often last for several years after you are officially in menopause, though they typically taper off. Once you have hit one year with no periods –a moment that can only be marked retroactively– you are post-menopausal. You will remain in this state the rest of your life.

Many women are familiar with the more common perimenopausal symptoms, but most don’t realize that their heightened anxiety, heart palpitations, sudden waking up in the middle of the night, lack of confidence, or difficulty remembering words might all be related to the fluctuating hormones of menopause. We tend to think of menopause as a gynecological issue, but it is so much more than that. It affects every organ in our body, and none more so than the brain. In fact, anti-depressants are often misprescribed during perimenopause: one study suggests that more than 60% of women have been inappropriately given antidepressants for low mood associated with menopause (and they won’t work if the cause is fluctuating hormones). It’s also important to note that menopause comes with many positives: no more periods! No more worrying about getting accidentally pregnant!

So what can we do to destigmatize menopause? Here are a few suggestions for actions to take, both personally and in your workplace.

  • Get Educated. Understanding what happens during the (potentially very long!) perimenopausal period can shed some light on what can feel like uncontrollable, out-of-nowhere struggles, like those sudden middle of the night wakings or lack of confidence. It’s often difficult to untangle perimenopausal symptoms from the normal stresses of life (particularly these days). But understanding what happens during menopause, knowing that it is transitory and that you have agency, is important. A good, fact based, very readable book on the subject is Dr. Jen Gunter’s ‘The Menopause Manifesto’. A new non-profit, letstalkmenopause.org, has some great resources, and balance-menopause.com, developed by the UK’s leading menopause physician, has a lot of fact based information (and a great app, too).
  • If you are suffering, seek help. Menopause is a natural transition, but that doesn’t mean it’s ok to suffer. You have options for treatment. Your OB-GYN should be your first call, but don’t be discouraged if they aren’t as helpful as you hoped: there is, sadly, a huge gap in care for menopausal women. Shockingly, just 20% of OB-GYN residency programs provide any kind of menopause training. The North American Menopause Society (NAMS) has a list of certified menopause practioners. There are also new services specifically focused on menopausal women; Gennev, Elektra Health and Alloy, for example.
  • Talk to your HR department. The more that this issue is raised, the better. Ask what benefits your company has for menopausal women. Have your women’s group do an information session. Give a training on menopause for managers. Asking for information and resources will bring the issue to the fore. The more menopause is raised, the more your company will start to recognize it as a life event that should be supported just as fertility and pregnancy are, and treated with as much sensitivity as mental health.
  • Talk to your colleagues, friends and family. Be part of breaking the stigma. While you may be uncomfortable talking about menopause at work, sharing your experience with trusted colleagues educates, empowers, and normalizes. And if you aren’t comfortable talking about it at work, talk to your friends! It’s helpful to understand what other women are going through, and to share your experiences. Don’t forgot your partners and family too: it’s important they understand what you are going through. There are also some great online communities: the apps Peanut and Perry have good menopause support groups.

Menopause is a natural, essential stage of life. It can also add to what’s already a stressful time – kids, parents, work, COVID. But by empowering ourselves and our communities with knowledge, support, and the right medical help, we can march into the next half of life with joy, strength and power.

About the writer:

Kate Brashares (she/her) is the co-Founder and CEO of a new startup, Hello Maisy, focused on developing clinically proven, effective products and services that are being designed to support women through all life stages, with an initial focus on perimenopause, menopause and healthy aging. She is passionate about building and growing organizations that drive societal change and improve health outcomes. Previously Kate was the Executive Director of Edible Schoolyard NYC, and has also worked in brand marketing and finance. Kate has a B.A from Cambridge University and an M.B.A. from Columbia University.

Help us find out more! We are conducting a survey to find out more about women’s experience with menopause. Please fill in the anonymous survey here.

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Unlearn, Learn and Relearn: The Key to Career Change and More Meaningful Work

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learn and relearnWith four in 10 women considering leaving their current roles, “Unlearn, Learn, Relearn” could well be the mantra for executive-level professional women looking to switch tracks to more meaningful work.

Despite the ‘passion at work paradigm’ being around for more than six decades, there are downsides to that approach. It could be a straight path to (self) exploitation, says journalist Sarah Jaffe in her book Work Won’t Love You Back. You may have heard the talk about it leading to even high-salaried staff burning out or tackling depression in the workplace.

Unlearn

Canadian academic Galen Watts, based at the Centre for Sociological Research in Belgium, writes in The Conversation that the passion pursuit could be underpinning the Great Resignation currently sweeping through the world.

He suggests first ensuring you have a robust social safety net before searching for more meaningful work. That means valuing work and your family, friends, and hobbies, not prioritizing one over the other.

Your next professional move should see you focus on work-life balance. Here’s why that’s important: McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2021 report shows half of female senior leaders are burned out, about 42% are exhausted, and about 32% are chronically stressed.

Before you agree to a job offer, do more than your usual due diligence in researching the work culture of the organization.

Learn: who are the key players for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in your target industry

“Set your standards high for would-be employers regarding their diversity, equity and inclusion strategies and activities. Too many organizations focus on just the optics rather than making a difference aligned with a stronger purpose,” says Nicholas Pearce, Clinical Professor of Management & Organizations at the Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management.

He advises looking for companies that:

  • Link their DEI efforts for individual and collective purpose
  • Prove their DEI achievements through transparency
  • Work with similar organizations to progress humanity

Those exemplars may well rise to the top anyway, as those just paying lip service will “abandon their DEI efforts”, says Pearce.

Relearn: The side hustle or internal path to entrepreneurship

You might have a hobby, interest or small business you’ve been nurturing while in full-time employment. Beware the stereotypes that may be deflecting you from entrepreneurialism.

A recent study published in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice found that one career path doesn’t fit or describe all women. It debunked the swathe of previous research that took a broad brushstroke to all professional female entrepreneurs marking them as less-economically motivated in their concepts of success, and less qualified as managers to run businesses.

The published study found that women entrepreneurs varied, more than converged, along a “single universal prototype”. It drew on career data from more than 800 female graduates from a U.S. business school over six decades. Those researchers advocate for a career path perspective or framework that sees entrepreneurship as a series of pathways or activities over time.


Carve your own entrepreneurial path, but be aware of what stereotypes you may come up against, such as when you pitch for start-up investment, as according to Crunchbase, just 2.3% of venture capital funding goes to female-led start-ups.

If you still have a side-hustle itch, consider if your current employer has a program to identify and support corporate social intrapreneurs. Nancy McGaw, a senior advisor at the Aspen Institute’s Business & Society Program, describes such intrapreneurs as on-staff and on standby to drive needed changes.

Take the initiative rather than wait to be tapped on the shoulder. McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2021 report points to a ‘broken rung’ still existing – the first step up to manager level. It means companies are inadequately laying foundations for women’s sustained progress to more senior levels. In short, women are under-represented across the higher ranks of the corporate ladder, as you no doubt know.

You’re not just after a ‘job’

You might reconsider confining your career move to ‘job titles’. If you have experienced your day-to-day role verging further and further away from your ‘job description’, think how to build skills for the next role.

You can keep up to date with our nation’s demand for skills, knowledge, and abilities via the OECD’s Skills for Jobs interactive website. Here you can zero into categories of skills that interest you. Here’s how I see them roughly split into skillsets:

  1. Analyst: analytical, reflective, critical thinking, digging deep into the data
  2. Linker: human-face including the human-computer interaction
  3. Sentry: security (cyber and physical), safekeeping
  4. Artist: creative, entrepreneurial, right-brain, communications
  5. Career: health, wellness
  6. Maker: fixing and maintaining
  7. Civic: keeping the status quo, public service, foundational
  8. Sustainers: care for the earth, resources

To ensure your next move is more meaningful to you, take heed of lifelong learning – the overarching theme for unlearning, learning and relearning.



Nicholas Wyman is CEO and Founder of IWSI America. He has sought novel ways to connect youth with the jobs of the future. Wyman believes the ‘learn by doing’ approach has much to offer in a new world straddling the fault lines of a ‘skills mismatch’ and has innovated market-driven solutions to address the long-term workforce issues faced by employers, education institutions, and governments. Wyman has also built a global conversation around the need to change the status quo in job skills training. His research work and thought-leadership articles are widely published and internationally recognized, and he’s the author of Job U: How to Find Wealth and Success by Developing the Skills Companies Actually Need. He is an international expert in workforce development issues and models. Wyman has an MBA and has studied at Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government and was awarded a Churchill Fellowship.

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Why Introverts Are Needed In the Workplace

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introverts at workWhen you enter the corporate world as an introvert, one of the first hurdles you may have to overcome is the societal expectation that you should behave more like an extrovert. The temptation to be someone you are not can be overwhelming and may lead to disappointment and missed opportunities. What if rather than hiding who you are, though, you were able to listen to your own wise inner voice and use your unique communication style and let your true personality shine through while also contributing tremendous value to your organizations and teams?

The reality is that if you are willing to stretch and grow and be a little bit vulnerable, if you are willing to stop being who people expect you to be and to start experimenting with being curious, listening more, and showing your real quirky self to the world, you may be surprised at the results. When you stop talking only about business, stop trying to be the loudest, smartest, most confident person in the room, you are then able to access your unique introverted abilities and wield them like a superpower.

The Advantages of Being an Introvert in Business

Let’s look at some well known introverts who demonstrate this every day. In his article, 23 of the Most Amazingly Successful Introverts in History, John Rampon tells us that many industry giants are not only introverts but their success shatters stereotypes about what it means to be an introvert in the business world. Among others he shares with us that Marissa Meyer, current Yahoo! CEO, has admitted that “I’m just geeky and shy and I like to code…” He and numerous other sources quote Bill Gates as saying, “ …if you’re clever you can learn to get the benefits of being an introvert, which might be, say, being willing to go off for a few days and think about a tough problem, read everything you can, push yourself very hard to think out on the edge of that arena.”

This comes as no surprise when you look at research done by organizational psychologist Adam Grant. His findings not only confirm that there is no real long-term difference in the effectiveness of introverted and extroverted leaders, but that in some situations, introverts actually outperform their extroverted colleagues. For example, his findings show that introverts really shine in situations where creativity and team cohesion matter. They are more likely to be better listeners and to encourage creativity and to form deep and meaningful relationships with team members.

If you think back over your own personal experiences, you may have found this to be true at times in your personal experience also. Can you remember a time when you listened deeply and collaborated with another individual only to find that you had effortlessly built a relationship without even really trying? That ability is the secret sauce that introverts often don’t even know they possess because they are trying to so hard to act like extroverts instead of tapping into their natural relationship and problem-solving abilities. When introverts tap into their unique ability to listen, collaborate, problem solve and build trust, they are a quiet but powerful force in an organization that helps share a diverse orchestra of talent that works together to create a beautiful symphony of diverse abilities.

A 2002 study by Nassbaum supports this idea and reveals that introverts are in fact more likely to work together to find solutions to problems and to listen to and ask for other people’s suggestions. They are more willing to consider new ideas and are less attached to their own personal ideas. This allows team members to feel valued and free to share their ideas and for clients to feel cared for and part of the problem-solving process when issues arise. When introverts let go of the expectation to come up with all solutions on their own and to be the most engaging person in the room and just let themselves be a safe place for others to express themselves, relationships blossom from that organically.

A study by Rehana Noman in the International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences reveals that more than 79% of introverts rely on their intuition, inner feelings and reactions to make decisions rather than making snap impulsive decisions. This is compared to 50% of extroverts who report making snap impulsive decisions on their own. The most successful introverts know their strength comes from their natural ability to listen not only to their own intuition but also to seek input from others and to cultivate deep long-term relationships one at a time. They may not woo a room of a hundred people in one fell swoop or shake 50 hands in a night, but just like the proverbial tortoise and hare, they move slowly but surely across the finish line. Over time they gather speed as one relationship leads to another and then another. Initially it may take longer for their careers to take off but the willingness to be open and vulnerable can create a feeling of reciprocity that naturally leads to long term relationships and a surprisingly large network of clients, colleagues and referral partners that form a solid foundation for growth.

Supporting Introverts Helps Your Organization Thrive

The problem comes when a workplace is set up in such a way that introverts don’t have a chance to have a voice or use their unique strengths. For instance, let’s look at another study by Adam Grant of Wharton with his colleague, Dave Hofmann of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They studied a U.S. pizza-delivery chain and found that introverts’ strengths are often locked up simply because of the way work is structured. If in meetings only the loudest voices are given a chance to share ideas or employees are pitted against each other to find solutions, then any solutions presented will naturally come only from the extraverts and solutions that might otherwise be found are squashed by the loudest voices. On the other hand, if meetings are structured in a way that everyone has a chance to speak, or introverts are given opportunities to lead small teams, that creates a culture and space in the organization that allows room for their natural creativity, intuition, and desire to collaborate, and results follow.

How does an organization get the most of our its Introverts? It creates a work culture that allows introverts to be themselves, have a voice, to lead small groups and to have opportunities to build deep meaningful relationships one at a time. By holding space for both personality types, leaders and organizations can access the unique skillsets and characteristics that both personality types bring to the table and reap the rewards of a neurologically diverse and productive workforce.

By: Monica Parkin is a self professed introvert, an award winning International speaker, author of Overcoming Awkward, the Introverts Guide to Networking Marketing and Sales and Podcast host at the Juggling Without Balls Podcast. Find out more at monicaparkin.ca, connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at info@monicaparkin.ca

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Personal Transformation in 2022: What are You Harmonizing With?

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transformationThe transformational story of caterpillar to winged butterfly has arguably become an overused and often abused analogy for rebirth. Yet, the crux of the journey is neither the caterpillar nor the butterfly, but the dissolution and uncertainty in the void of the chrysalis.

The messy process of transformation, the surrender of what has been for what will come, both terrifies and excites us. As humans, we face uncertainty in the transformation journey many times in our cycles of personal growth.

It is partially the willingness to go the liminal place of uncertainty that determines our capacity for personal evolution.

We also face a challenging matter the caterpillar does not: how resistant the human ego can be when it comes to letting go of who we have perceived ourselves to be, and the worth and value we have attached to it.

Separate Your Worth From Your Roles

Identity, according to Psychology Today, “encompasses the memories, experiences, relationships, and values that create one’s sense of self.”

In her book Warrior Goddess Training: Become the Woman You Are Meant to Be, Heather Ash Amara speaks to how we often attach value or self-worth to the roles we play within our lives. Any role that we identify with, no matter how valuable it may be to our sense of self, also becomes a too narrow script to ultimately live in.

A role can range anything from a “loving mother” to a “successful executive” to a “good friend” to a “resilient entrepreneur.”

We tend to have a script for every role we play, one that was often written before us. How you perceive yourself and how others perceive you can become a trap. Being stuck to being something you have been proud to identify with can be as much of a cage as being boxed into a role that you never asked for, if you have to keep acting out the script of that role to feel worthiness.

If you’ve attached to the image of being a world traveler, you might buy a ticket when you truly crave a home. You may not even be able to admit to yourself that you crave a home. If you’re attached to being a loving mother, perhaps your script does not include taking the personal break you really need. If you’ve attached your worth to being a good friend, you may have written yourself into a contract of being available more than what is now kind to you.

In order to be free to move authentically in our lives between roles, to both redefine who we are and to expand, we must be able to release ourselves from any script we’ve attached our worth and value to.

So take stock of the roles you are playing:

  • What roles have you currently attached some sense of worth or value to?
  • What is the script you have defined for each?
  • What worth do you derive from playing these roles?

When it comes to change, we have to be willing to question where we have displaced our sense of worth. We rather come to source it from our inherent selves and sometimes tear up or simply re-envision our scripts to fit who we are now.

As Brené Brown often speaks to, we have to stop hustling for our worthiness, which ultimately comes from shame and fear we are not enough. We must realize, as Meggan Watterson writes, “Worth is not given, it’s claimed.”

From a place of knowing our inherent worth, we give ourselves permission to shed who we have been without losing our sense of value in the world, and more importantly, our connection to ourselves.

Harmonize To Where You Want To Be

Inside of personal change, there is often a time of dissolution between a previous reality and the one that you are moving towards. And while you might not be able to see it, you can still harmonize towards where your inner awareness is taking you.

Imaginal cells are like the blank slate of the becoming inside the chrysalis. The caterpillar is gone. Possibility exists. At first, imaginal cells operate like disconnected islands and appear to be a threat to the organism. It is only once enough imaginal cells begin to vibrate at the intrinsic tune of butterfly and communicate with each other that they reach the tipping point of collectively becoming the butterfly.

Often, a time of transformation does involve re-imagining our lives. It’s not only new outcomes we might envision, but begins with our beliefs about ourselves, others and how the world works, as these are often shaping the reality we are operating within. If all the cells still vibrated at caterpillar, the change would never occur.

As Joe Dispenza writes in Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, “a state of being means we have become familiar with a mental-emotional state, a way of thinking and a way of feeling, which has become an integral part of our self-identity.”

Just as with roles, the truth is that we can derive worth and value and reward from our limiting beliefs about ourselves and the world, even if that value is the ability to stay comfortable inside of our limitations. We must not only be able to see the pattern, but desire to evolve, by actively challenging the more well-oiled perceptual pathways within so that we shift to and harmonize at a new level. As we begin to do this, we notice change begins to happen.

In her book How To Do The Work, Dr. Nicole LePera, also known as “The Holistic Psychologist”, shares her writing practice of leaning into growth through her Future Self Journaling prompts she used to ground new experiences in her body.

For the new experience she wishes to cultivate (eg restoring balance to her nervous system), LePera writes what she is practicing today, why she is grateful to be practicing it, what she is doing, how will she know when she is doing it and what the change will allow her to feel.

This journaling practice is a way to resonate more with the woman she is becoming and with the balanced nervous system she wishes to cultivate. Often we need to practice not only thinking in the direction we are moving, but feeling into it. This act of attention is infusing the conversations happening within the cells with a new way of being within the body.

Even when we don’t know our next big landing place, we can often feel the internal pull to evolve from within even as we must overcome ourselves, just as the being in the chrysalis must release the caterpillar to the open possibility of the imagination of cells.

Are you able to release yourself from the bounds of roles in which you have previously cast your worth? Are you able to harmonize more of your feelings and thoughts and actions with the being you can feel you are becoming?

In the uncertainty of the chrysalis and transition within a human life, this may look like nothing. But little by little, these small practices become the change.

By Aimee Hansen

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Year In Review 2021: The Great Reckoning

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Year in Review 2021The great resignation has taken the main stage for big news for professionals and career path navigation in 2021. With the pandemic still raging, there has been a widespread re-evaluation with “what really matters?” being the theme for professional women and men alike. The great reckoning of “does this work, and work for me?” has emerged from a combination of elements that have brought people to a point where they want to look more deeply at their values and how those values align with their workplace and firm culture, beyond the paycheck alone.

Realities such as exhaustion or burnout effect are much higher in 2021 than 2020 due to the ongoing slog of Covid and the effects it has on all aspects of life and work. McKinsey/Lean In’s most recent report on Women in the Workplace 2021 states 42% of women feel burned out regularly in 2021 as opposed to a reported 32% in 2020 and more than men in both years.

Conversely, in the same report, progress is shown at between 6-24% for the pipeline of future female senior managers and leaders, with the most progress being at SVP and C-suite levels but still not surpassing a third of all leaders in these positions. However, as someone who has covered this topic deeply for the best part of fifteen years, I want to underline that 6% may not seem big, but it can be considered as progress finally after many stalled years. This is at least a trend in the right direction of progress and you can see the numbers and insights and analysis on them from theglasshammer.com from 2011 here in all Year in Reviews.

Active Listening- Feeling Heard is Important

Is the world changing for the better? As it pertains to not tolerating overt sexism and racism, yes clearly it is, as everyone is quicker to pour light on things that just don’t fly anymore.

In fact, men are starting to behaviorally show up as allies when they should and interestingly a new Catalyst study suggests this can be dependent on whether they feel they will be heard as humans, on many topics as well as this specific one. Manager openness to hearing inputs and suggestions, from how the job should be done to elements regarding culture such as inclusion, increases the chance of men speaking up against sexism from 35% to 62%.

Feeling heard is a human trait, no one likes to think they are talking to a brick wall or invisible, yet 80% of my leadership development assignment as an executive coach to senior Wall Street women and men involves delivering the bad news that peers and direct reports feel that managers don’t listen to them. Kate Murphy’s book You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters is a compelling journalistic exploration of what happens when people listen to each other, which can apply to any relationship, spouse, friend or child as well as to being a better executive or manager. Surely, now is the time for managers to listen?

Opportunity in Disruption

‘The Great Resignation’ doesn’t have to threaten diversity efforts, but rather isn’t it time to do things better and in some cases, differently?

Some people might want to go back to the office some or even all of the time, while others might want to stay working from home some, most or all of the time- and with most landing on the same preference of being given the choice to make their own decisions. What leaders seem to be missing is that it is about empowering people with choices to control their time, not mandating face time in the building.

In fact, this topic is very much about leadership development and mindset shift. Susan Ashford, Professor in the Management and Organizations group at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, explores the concept of flexing as a growth mindset for leaders. She discusses empowering people to know their needs and to be radical in their own “self management” in her new book about leadership learning called The Power of Flexing. This concept of letting employees get on with it on their terms in this Covid era world is backed up by research by Peter Capelli, Director of the Center for Human Resources at Wharton University, who suggests that in fact, many people are finding that they are thriving in a remote or a hybrid version of work. This study reveals that people are motivated when they are achieving their goals along with two very important things: feeling valued, which is the biggest driver, and being within a supported and inclusive environment. Capelli’s research also shows that getting tasks done to create a sense of purpose alone comes in last as a motivation driver, so endless piles of work in the wrong isolating conditions can lead to disengagement and quitting.

Adam Grant, Professor of Psychology at Wharton, researched back in 2007 how employee performance is increased when there is a feeling of helping an actual human by meeting with them to know about their issue and having the ability to try and help. Putting a face to a name seems to matter, and as face to face human contact has been reduced in the past eighteen months, it will be interesting when we see future research into videoconferencing (as a close second or even as a replacement?). It does seem like some major Fortune 500 companies are taking the leap of faith that remote work is the future with PwC announcing that it will allow all 40,000 of its US client services employees to work virtually and remotely, with the UK office following suit with an additional 22,000 people allowed to work remotely.

Aligning People and Technology

Getting leaders to understand the importance of aligning the human side with the operational and technological side is key to engage and retain talent – it’s futurism and that requires a lot of mental complexity as systems thinking will need to be applied. Are leaders up for the challenge?

To create the workplace of the future, it is key to start with the workforce of the future. Meryl Rosenthal, CEO of Flexpaths, has been pioneering remote and flex work for all since 2005. She sees the trend as here to stay and knows the role of leaders is crucial to success.

She comments, 
“As hybrid work increasingly becomes a reality across organizations, ensuring that alignment at the top doesn’t wane is key. At FlexPaths we are seeing more and more companies ill-prepared for the downstream impacts of poorly implemented hybrid work. With plummeting engagement, uncertain executives and ineffective communication, now is the time to focus on leaders on why it is important to get a plan as the future is now”.

People Want Acts not Ads

Finally, evolved employers must realize that employees want to see real acts, not just lip service and advertising around issues that are value-driven. Whether it is working remotely or responding to social or environmental issues, it is crucial that corporations understand that walking the talk and closing the identity gap between espoused and lived values happens. Data of both quantitative and qualitative nature is required to understand what people expect from their employer. If your company was a person, would you want to hang out with them?

We believe diversity and gender issues can be solved when companies finally understand that organizational development is important and that diversity is not about a Noah’s Ark approach but rather about lived experience. Behaviors matter as they all add up to create culture.

We wish everyone a happy, safe, peaceful and joyful festive season. See you in 2022.

By Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com

Nicki founded theglasshammer in 2007 to inspire, inform and empower professional women in their careers. We have been the leading and longest running career advice online and in person media company in the USA for professional women in financial services.

We also provide executive coaching services and organizational coaching under our sister brand evolvedpeople.com

Thank you to all readers, sponsors, supporters and contributors over the past 15 years. We couldn’t do it without you!

For the women by the women.

If you want to coached by Nicki in 2022, write to her nicki@theglasshammer – to find out more about the process. She works with VP level and above.

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Women in Facilities Management: An Opportunity to Lead?

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women in facilities managementIn May 2020, CNBC celebrated how the number of women running Fortune 500 companies hit an all-time high, with 37 such female CEOs, compared to 33 the year before. The actual state of affairs remains that as a group most women continue to struggle to attain an equal footing in managerial and leadership positions across most industries at the same rate as men.

A 2020 report by the ILO painted a discouraging picture: the report found that only limited progress had been made for the full and effective participation and equal opportunities of women in leadership positions in the workplace.

The report, prepared for the Empowerment and Progression of Women’s Economic Representation (EMPOWER), found that was true of every country in the G20, which includes the United States, over the past 10 years.

It gets even worse for American working women regarding the gender-based quality of their working environment, with a 2018 survey placing the United States a lowly 20th out of 29 OECD countries in the so-called ‘Glass Ceiling Index.’

“Pink” vs “blue” jobs

In a 2019 report, The Economist concluded that, even with strides made by women in typically ‘male’ industries, the tendency in the U.S. was that men still tended to pick “blue jobs” while women still opted for “pink jobs”. This, unfortunately, seems to prevail in the facilities management industry.

Women in Facilities Management, the only professional organization in the U.S. focused solely on furthering the advancement of women in commercial facilities management, notes that “…even today, facilities management continues to be one of the most male-dominated career paths”. The same organization cites a recent study that found that men still outnumber women in facilities management leadership roles by an astounding nine to one.

For the record, male-dominated occupations are those that have 25% or fewer women in them, which could certainly describe the facilities management industry in the U.S.

Benefits of more women in facilities management

Generally, there are many benefits to having more women in management positions. A major survey of 745 female and male corporate leaders conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership found that workplaces with more women tended to be better to work for all employees, regardless of gender. Employees in those organizations also felt more dedication to their organization and found their work more meaningful work. Interestingly, they also suffered less from burnout.

Industry experts have asserted that women could actually be uniquely qualified for leadership roles in facilities management. How so? It mostly boils down to emotional intelligence (EQ). Women, who tend to have higher EQ rates than men, benefit from attributes such as self-awareness, self-management, strong social skills, and, very importantly, empathy.

Even for a mostly technical, ‘nuts and bolts’ industry such as facilities management, every one of those attributes can only be beneficial for employees, resulting in higher productivity rates and overall efficiency. This is backed by research specific to the industry that found that gender-diverse teams make better decisions and are better at complex problem-solving. It was also shown that having more female leadership resulted in improved work culture.

Case studies: successful women in FM

Fortunately, there is a growing number of American women who have risen to leadership positions within the FM industry. This only bodes well for the industry. Below are three such case studies:

Case study 1: Cheryl Carron

Cheryl Carron is the Global Operations Lead for Integrated Facilities Management (IFM) and Experience Services (ES) for JLL Work Dynamics. She leads a global team of experts that enable the delivery of IFM and ES products and services to the company’s clients worldwide. Charron has had a career spanning nearly 30 years in real estate and integrated facilities management. Prior to joining JLL Work Dynamics in May 2021, Cheryl served as President of IFM, North America, for Sodexo, the latter of which has won numerous quality workplace-related awards in recent years.

Case study 2: Elizabeth Vasek

Elizabeth Vasek is a facilities manager at the Ford Foundation in New York City. She has openly discussed how she encountered a lot of “mansplaining” early in her career, which included men explaining technical terms to her in a patronizing tone. She did find this intimidating but found that she could overcome these sexist obstacles by asserting herself and not being afraid to ask questions when needed. She found that having a mentor and being part of a network of fellow women professionals helped immensely in building her knowledge and growing her self-esteem.

Case study 3: Jill Frey

Jill Frey is the owner and president of Cummins Facility Services (CFS), a national multi-faceted facility management company based in Marion, Ohio, that services Fortune 500 companies across the US. CFS is a 100% female-owned enterprise that provides janitorial, landscaping, snow removal, HVAC, security, floor care, and light maintenance services to clients in various industries. Frey took over managing the family business in 1994 and turned it into the FM success story that it is today.

“Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor”

In the conclusion of this article, it’s worth noting what Michelle Bachelet, the former President of Chile, once said: “Educational equality doesn’t guarantee equality on the labor market. Even the most developed countries are not gender-equal. There are still glass ceilings and ‘leaky pipelines’ that prevent women from getting ahead in the workplace.”

Her analogy of glass ceilings and leaky pipelines seems tailor-made for the facilities management industry.

It’s an industry that will undoubtedly benefit from a growing and more equitable number of women in leadership roles. And every woman in the FM industry would do well to remember the words of the brilliant author, Aldous Huxley: “Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor.”

Bryan Christiansen is the founder and CEO of Limble CMMS. Limble is a modern, easy-to-use mobile CMMS software that takes the stress and chaos out of maintenance by helping managers organize, automate, and streamline their maintenance operations.

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