Happy Thanksgiving: Career Plans for 2019 can start now!

Happy Thanksgiving to our readers in the USA.

Enjoy the time to rest and be with family and friends.

To everyone else in other parts of the world, have a great week. We are taking a publishing break.

It is a great time to start thinking about 2019.  What you might want to change, do more of or do less of? What are you thankful for? What will you do differently next year? If I wave a magic wand and we are transported in time one year from now, looking back what would you have liked to have achieved?

Career decisions – they are personal, professional and full of patterns.

Time and time again, when coaching I see that people feel that they are obliged to do jobs that no longer work for them. We grow and then stuff ourselves into boxes, we all do it at some point, so why put up with situations that no longer fit? Making decisions depends on your personality, preferences and wherever you are at in your life for sure, but your operating environment matters as behaviors come from how you intersect with the culture around you.

The glasshammer is 11 years old, and very early on in this journey, I was lucky to have a life changing experience for which I am thankful. I was fortunate to be part of a fascinating “big brother house” type learning experience, a residential executive masters in organizational psychological (I/O) with a concentration in change leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. This amazing course taught me the systemic levers of change- whether it concerns change at an individual or an organizational level, one thing is true, it is hard to ensure that you walk the talk and that the talk (self-talk) is not controlled by legacy beliefs- conscious and unconscious about the way things are! Basically we are all a product of what our granny/father/mother told us when we were nine years old.

I learned that change leadership starts with really knowing yourself. You can control more than you think you can but equally important is knowing what you cannot control (the systemic stuff). You can play the game once you know the game, or you can choose a new game.

So the good news is that you can lean in, lean out or lean sideways, but do what is right for you personally and then ensure your strategy works in the context, aka the environment you are operating in. The rest is just general advice!

If you want to explore coaching with me, please book into an exploratory call by emailing me nicki@evolvedpeople.com or booking into this calendar for a 15 chat as I am now enrolling 2019 clients and cohorts. Limited places (and there is a cost, please note depending on session type, length etc).

Make 2019 your year!

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2018 Latina Leaders- Hispanic Heritage Month

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach, Organizational Psychologist and Founder of theglasshammer.com

This week’s column is a nod to our celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month series this week and throughout the month.

Latinas at the highest echelons are still underrepresented but we wanted to spotlight the top Latina leaders in business show you the Latina professionals that are making it happen. The future is now, progress is being made and more Latina women are running companies and raising capital for entrepreneurial ventures than before.

Career advice for Latina women may seem on the surface to be the same as for advice for any other woman from any other background. Why? Because it is only by varying degrees of believing and adhering to the patriarchy as an operating system, that makes each woman who is reading this abide or dissent from the cultural norms and gender roles they are messaged from birth.

If you are messaged values of a collectivist society versus those of an individualist society, you may show common traits. This is a more accurate way of actually having a career conversation about the context in which a person is operating in also, because the term “Hispanic” is perhaps something that is so inaccurate and unfair since it assumes that all Spanish-speaking people from over a dozen countries are the same, yet it equally assumes that all English-speaking people are not the same. That is an uneven start and can lead to greater stereotyping.

Beneath the surface, career advice could differ greatly for aspiring Latina leaders, because going against the grain is easier said than done in families and firms alike. This is where collectivism as a theory meets the reality of living in an individualistic culture.

Also, everyone has different personalities and value sets so many women do want to care-take more and play a larger family role, but to reduce it to a binary is a problem. And, many (not all) Latina women are faced with this binary in choosing to comply or dissent against the gender roles set, and dissent against the historical family structure expectations.

My advice is let’s start asking what each individual woman wants, instead of assuming we know that their social identity is all that they are (ditto anyone else for that matter.)

If you are a Latina, a constant strategy is to individuate yourself as a person to remind people who you are and what you want and what you are capable of, not who they think you are!

Nicki Gilmour, CEO of theglasshammer.com offers Executive and Career coaching in Spanish and English. For an exploratory call contact  nicki@theglasshammer.com o reserva aqui.

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High Stakes: Changing Careers at the End of Your Long Career in Financial Services

By Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder of theglasshammer.com and resident Executive Coach

What do you do if you really feel that you need a change?

First of all, talk to a coach to make sure that you don’t just need a vacation.

Coaching to stay in the game is often a lifesaver as it can give you some strategies to delegate work or navigate the inevitable politics in a way that doesn’t drain you. But, at face value let’s say you are ready or at least ready to think about making a change.

The first thing to do is look at where you are at in your life? Here are things to consider if you are in the “last 2-5 years” of your current fast pace, Fortune 500/financial firms work stage and now want to do something more meaningful with your time and energy for the next chapter. It is not retirement we are talking about here, it is about transition. This column is about the very specific transition of high flyers who have slogged under the boomer and generation X structures of facetime and fitting in, into their next chapter of purposeful, less rigid work.

What do you want to do with your time and energy for the next five to fifteen years?

If you are like many of the senior level, talented, smart and well-paid women who work in financial services and who hire me to work on how to do something other than the massive role they are currently doing, then think about these factors:

1. Is it really about the money?

The money is keeping you in to a degree and creating some inertia around change. It’s hard to take a pay cut and it’s hard to think about walking away from a pile of vested equity (and there are ways to not do the latter) but nobody is saying leave tomorrow and getting a plan is key. If mortgages are nearly or already paid and the kids are in college or are set up for that experience financially, it is possibly not entirely about the money.

2. Is it about your identity?

When you have worked so hard and built an identity around the job, people are often worried about the loss of that identity in various ways (from actual self- concept change and the psychological effects of that, to status and to relating to others).

3. Is it about a fantasy?

So, you may have come to the conclusion, that you do not want to be CEO or on the Exec Committee. You might be C- level, SVP level, or Managing Director level and you might be ready to declare this the pinnacle of corporate life and guess what? Giving yourself permission to do what you actually want to do is actually pretty important. The trick is to explore what you really want to do next (and that could be making it to CEO also). Look beyond the fantasy and allure of running away and opening a Bed and Breakfast, north, south, east or west of where you live now! If it’s a business, great then let’s see how serious you are about doing the business plan and figuring out that landscape for real. Really testing your assumptions about what you want to do next, whether be your own business or a non-profit gig or even running for office, it is good to consider in detail (viability check) what that will look like with a coach while safely cashing in on the (big) day job from a comfortable office with a view.

Work with Nicki Gilmour as your Executive Coach- book a complementary exploratory call here or email her on nicki@evolvedpeople.com – the sister coaching business to theglasshammer.com

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6 Important Things New Project Managers Need to Know

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By Andrej Kovacevik

Corporate demand for project managers is growing at a rapid rate of pace.

Talented people will be needed to fill the numerous project management positions that are becoming available; and industry insiders expect to see women stepping up to fill a significant percentage of these roles.

The Association for Project Management reports that female project managers tend to be younger and less experienced than their male counterparts. For the new female executives who are entering the field, we offer this list of 6 important things female project managers need to be aware of:

1. The Scope of Your Projects Might Change

Often, an executive or group of executives from your hiring organization will set parameters for the scope of the project you’ve been selected to manage. In a perfect world, you’d work within the scope of those parameters to complete your project. But according to Elizabeth Harrin at A Girl’s Guide to Project Management, you can’t always count on things to work out so neatly. She points out that most projects evolve through 4 formal versions of scope before their conclusion. Be flexible in your anticipation of this reality.

2. Managing Expectations Is an Essential Part of the Job

Whatever project you’re managing could potentially bring huge changes for a whole bunch of stakeholders in your hiring organization. Does everyone fully understand the implications of what’s coming? Probably not. As the project unfolds, do your best to help your colleagues get a handle on what the new normal is going to look like going forward. Be proactive about making any dramatic transitions as painless as possible for all stakeholders involved. How you handle this can make a massive difference in whether your leadership is perceived as a success or a failure by the end of the project.

3. It’s Crucial to Share Big-Picture Goals With Other Stakeholders

It’s easy for colleagues to succumb to tunnel vision and entirely miss what the main objectives for a project might be. Creating a mindmap can help to explain what’s going on and to get everyone else on board. It’s a big win if you can get all the relevant stakeholders involved in your project to understand the big-picture goals and buy in from the beginning.

If there are people who aren’t buying in, it is helpful to identify them early on and figure out the reasons for their opposition. Perhaps they even have valid reasons that should be addressed. Don’t ignore the naysayers. It’s better to work with them towards a resolution.

Obviously, you’ll first have to understand your project’s big-picture goals in order to communicate them effectively to your team. This shouldn’t be a problem — but for many project managers, it is. You might be surprised to learn that 80 percent of all project managers don’t fully understand the subtleties of how their projects support their hiring organizations’ business strategies, according to capterra.com. So if you don’t have a clear understanding of the primary motivators, you’ll have to do your homework so you can effectively educate both yourself and your team.

4. There’s a Whole Bunch of Jargon You’ll Need to Decipher

If you haven’t already earned a Master of Project Management degree, you might not be thoroughly educated about all the PM terminology that you’ll encounter as you work your way through your projects. Smartsheet.com offers a helpful glossary of project management terms you’ll want to be sure to familiarize yourself with.

5. The Role of Project Manager Is Changing in Ways That Favor Women’s Skills

According to experts at the international association of project managers, the vocation has evolved significantly over the course of the last several decades. They explain that, 20 years ago, the job of project manager was perceived as macho. Currently, in contrast, emotional intelligence is one of the foremost qualifications that top executives seek in a project manager. Today’s project managers need to excel in diplomacy, resourcefulness and creativity — a skillset that comes as naturally to women as it does to men. The pressure to be macho is now out of the picture. And, accordingly, the numbers of female project managers has been growing and is expected to grow more in the future.

6. You’ll Need to Cultivate a Professional Network

Elise Stevens, writing on behalf of the Project Manager website, explains that women will find better opportunities in the long term if they establish and nurture their own professional networks. In her opinion, one main advantage of networking is having the opportunity to better understand what leaders desire in managers and project leaders. Her network has also opened up new opportunities that would not have become available to her otherwise.

As a management professional, you cannot expect to succeed if you’re isolated on your own island. You’ll constantly need to turn to others to solve problems, find needed resources, delegate tasks and seek input. When you’ve cultivated a network, it’s much easier to accomplish all these things.

Of course, these are not the only things female project managers urgently need to know; but these are some of top things that tend to take women by surprise when they are new to project management. The sooner you wrap your head around these 6 things, the better the outcome will be for the projects you’ll manage in the course of your career.

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

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Dare to Dream! What Job Would You Do if You Won the Lottery?

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By Nicki Gilmour, Executve Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Upon winning the lottery, some people might stop working.

Others would take the opportunity to work in their dream job. What is your dream job? If you do not know the answer, let us have some fun while summer is still here to dare to dream because you might just find some answers for real life by letting your mind run wild.

Let’s start with 3 questions to stimulate the process:

1. What makes you tick? ( there are many tests to take- for example, the Hogan personality instrument helps you understand you behaviors based on your personality and work environment, Myers Briggs, Firo-B etc). Do you need recognition? Is it about power for you? How high is your altruism markers? Are you hedonistic and want to have ping pong and happy hours? How social are you? Do you need to achieve at all costs?

2. How do you prefer to learn? if you are going to do a new thing, how would you like to approach it? Will you jump in and learn by doing? Or would you prefer to have time to studying?

3. What are your absolute bottom lines and how did you get to them? If you had teams of support people, would you choose to outsource child care or would you outsource work? How do you want to spend your time?

Have some fun here. Write it down, draw pictures, do a vision board, whatever works for you!

What comes out of this simple exercise for you?

If you want to work with an executive coach on this and and then the advanced exercises that will take you to the next level at work or even your next job, contact nicki@theglasshammer.com

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3 Easy Ways to Know What Job You Want to Do Next

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By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Staying in the job, after the love has gone?

We have all done it, we have all stayed in a position at work that just did not excite us anymore on any level. The reasons that keep us there can vary but more often than not, it is a combination of wanting the security/ money and not believing that there is a better situation out there for us. Confidence, or lack of it for people who have never had a confidence issue before, can be very daunting.

It is normal to ask yourself, ‘But what would i do?’

The answer to that question is very personal and individual but in broad strokes my bet is that you could do a range of things inside or outside of your current firm and even industry.

Isn’t it time to do what you want to do? I mean, you probably have more skills than you give yourself credit for and probably most of them are entirely transferable.

Here are 3 steps to get closer to your ideal job.

1. Make a list of what you like doing
2. Then make a list of what you do not like doing
3. Make a list of the tasks you would be doing in a more ideal situation 12 months from now.

I am mentioning tasks, because often we talk about roles or responsibilities instead of tasks. Roles like, I want to manage people doesn’t actually define what is your task or the tasks they are doing that you will be responsible for, so go granular in this exercise.

What comes out of this simple exercise for you?

If you want to work with an executive coach on this and and then the advanced exercises that will take you to your next job, contact nicki@theglasshammer.com

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5 Things You Can Do as a Leader to Help Increase Engagement In Company Initiatives

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Latina
This week we invited a guest to contribute to the career tip column.

Fierce Conversations wrote a recent blog post on how leaders engage with it comes to organizational initiatives.

  1. Get on board, even if you’re not the driver. Just because you aren’t driving an idea or initiative, or didn’t come up with it to begin with, doesn’t mean the team and the entire organization doesn’t need you to get behind it. The sooner you can play the role of supporter-in-chief, the faster things will start to change and the larger impact you will see.
  2. Set expectations, and meet them. If you say you will be an advocate for a program, or that you expect an initiative to succeed, you need to show up for it. Trust is key here, as too many promises broken can lead your employees to simply stop making an effort.
  3. Model the behavior. Leaders need to be modeling the behavior they want to see. As there is a clear correlation between C-suite behavior and the model behavior they wanted exhibited. If you want all meetings to start on time, make sure you are never late. If you want people to work across teams, make sure they see you doing the same.
  4. Engage on a personal level. Through one-on-one conversations, either planned or organic, interact and engage regularly with employees and other company leaders. Create opportunities, such as social events or a weekly office walkthroughs, to support this endeavor, and ask about activities taking place. Use this feedback to improve upon the process.
  5. Follow-through. An initial email isn’t enough to support something. Ensure you continue to have conversations that advocate for a program, and that the leaders around you do the same. These conversations need to be ongoing, and fluid. Consider having a specific check-in point where you communicate widely the feedback and results to-date. Make changes as necessary.
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5 Tips to Increasing your Empathy as a Leadership Strategy

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By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

I used to have zero empathy, lots of honest concern for the person in their situation, but zero empathy (and I have the psychometric tests to prove it).

I could not understand why people could not do better, get over it and get on with it. I was judging them against my paradigms built as a child growing up in a terrorist state with an emotionally unavailable parent and a right wing culture telling me I had to be tough to survive( Northern Ireland in the 1980s under Thatcher). My frameworks and values were in play exclusively, not the other person’s frameworks. It was frustrating for me and I am pretty sure it was not a pleasant experience for people I managed and had in my life. Empathy is a leadership skill, because without it you cannot understand what people are feeling which dictates everything from how they perform to how they show up at work attitudinally and to how authentic they are with you.

This is key if you want to get past the golden rule of ‘treat others of treat people how you want to be treated’ and evolve to the platinum rule of “treat others how they want to be treated.”

So, I built, brick by brick and I internalized it and like any muscle flexed it until it became integral to my nature. You can do this also!

Here are 4 quick tips to get started:

1. Ask open questions that allow people to tell you about themselves and their situations in a way that gives them space to do it their way. Don’t interrogate people as building trust comes before, during and after these types of interactions.

2. Understand the difference between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is when you feel an emotion for their situation ( such as sorrow and there is distance between you and them emotionally). Empathy is when their emotion is something that you feel with them as it pertains to your own ability to map it internally to your own experiences.

3. Do not limit other people’s emotions to your own range or to your own experiences. Frankly, you might not have the biggest range in the world. And if are very subjective in your ability to interpret events and can only do it through your lens ( see Kegan and Lahey again on the socialized mind in Immunity to Change) then I have found in people who have low EQ but lots of empathy that the person who is seeking to be understood by you on a topic can feel frustrated by the way that you are very keen to share what happened to you as part of the meaning- making and it can drown out the original person. Or that the subjectivity factor completely limits the process, putting the process in or near the concern quadrant if this was a map.

4. Recap and name the emotions you hear as a question not as a statement. In my opinion this is very tied to points 1 and 2 and 3.

5. Use the “magic if” to walk in the other person’s shoes. For example: “If my dad had a stroke this week, would i be able to finish project x today?’.

Practice makes perfect! And imperfection is ok too, your efforts will be appreciated, I am sure.

If you would like to develop your leadership skillst, I would be happy to work with you as your executive coach. Contact me on 646 6882318 or nicki@theglasshammer.com for an exploratory chat

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Maintaining Credibility: How to Deal with People Who Try to Devalue You

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By Nicki Gilmour Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

What happens when someone tries to discredit your work or disqualify you as a contender for a job?

Not just in politics, but in the workplace too. It is hard to believe that we still have to talk about this matter, but its still lurking. Whether it is overt sexism, a micro-aggression or even worse, the impact on the person on the receiving end is real. In the societal context, women ( and other minorities) are not believed and the benefit of the doubt usually goes to the perpetrator due to their status and biological sex/race/orientation (i.e. legacy dominant position that people do not like to challenge their implicit authority). In a work context, it means less pay, lost promotions and general unnecessary emotional stress. This is the stuff that causes a drag on individual/ team and firm performance and no amount of words about diversity from the CEO or drinks in the women’s network will fix the heart of what diversity work is; power and who gets it to have it , keep it and be believed.

Often people with issues (this is the kindest version I can print) will try to discredit you as a person and they start with your social identity, which means your grouping characteristics such as which gender you are, which ethnicity you are, and which orientation you are. Even if you personally don’t feel massive affiliation to these categories because it can be a shock to people with no intersectionality that you too could be just trying to live your life as a human and do your work without considering yourself (insert what you are here: a woman/black/gay etc).

Remember, it is often about you according to them and their stereotypical notions of who you are and absolutely nothing to do with who you actually are and what you are actually capable of. Equally, the people who i am referring to who feel like they are a threatened species, often benefit from their sex, skin color via positive stereotyping ( someone once said, its not a glass ceiling, but a thick layer of men). It is worth noting that anyone can do it even if they are a woman themselves because internalized misogyny and desire to protect traditional power structures have never been so obvious than this moment in history. But, whatever other people’s paradigms are, remedial attitudes or baggage, it should not have to be at your expense.

Why is this career advice? It is something that you need to be aware of because unfortunately one day you might stumble up against a less than evolved individual who will directly or indirectly try to lessen your credibility or devalue your work based on nothing more than your social identity.

How this plays out is that they take a shot at you based on their perception of their superiority and appropriateness regarding legacy positions for women, people of color and LGBT people. For example, at a recent social gathering, a fellow who had previously said offhand comments about women at work and LGBT people, decided to directly spit out a challenge starting the question with “who?” when the who was very obvious so it was not actually a question, it was a micro-aggression against a gay family structure.

Furthermore, bias is regularly disguised as ‘values’ because if you look at how values are formed, it is easy to see that constructs come from past norms, socio-conditioning and current cultural messaging. What did their granny tell them when they were nine? Chances are, they are operating heavily on familiar programming completely unaware that they have inherited things that they might not even truly believe if examined.

So, what do you do if you find yourself facing a person who is intentionally trying to devalue you.

There are strategies to pursue and which road to take depends on three things:

1. The overall systemic environment.

Where is the whole group at regarding their own ability to honestly digest how individual behaviors impact ongoing norms and actual humans in the group? The denial levels for untoward behavior in the workplace or socially are reducing as we have seen this year with sexual harassment. But, overall the ability to deny wrongdoing on micro-aggressions are still high. Look at how tolerant of bad behavior is the manager of your team? What flies? What are the group norms?

This is workplace culture and crucial to your next move when bringing up what happened. Will you be believed? The worst thing is not being believed or being told your experience couldn’t be true or is somehow invalid. Will you be shushed as excuses from you are wrong /you misunderstood them fly from people who are supposed to listen to such things? (HR , leaders, mentors, friends). Take the temperature as your truth is your truth, but group theory (Bion) suggests the group will protect the legacy structures, unless there are reasons not to.

2. The standing of the individual and their power based on them as an individual but also the power and authority assigned to them due to their social identity which adds benefit of the doubt privilege. Extreme cases are Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby- they thought they were untouchable due to the social currency. But, everyday bias and derogatory stuff is what we are talking about here, so relay the transgression to people who have mental complexity and can hold two conflicting realities in their head at the same time. That is to say, they can experience that this guy is great with them but bad to you as simultaneously true versions of reality and use their one subjective personal data point as an objective truth.

If no mental complexity is there ( as defined by Kegan, the Harvard development psychologist by the way, not just being rude here in saying they are not advanced), you will risk the high denial element again as these folks might have high IQ and make lots of money but are completely remedial on EQ, SQ and connecting the dots and you might as well be arguing with a small child.

This can be a depressing piece of work as there are many people who are capable but just have never had to do any real joining of cognitive, emotional and psychological processes because they can just stay in their ignorance as they have had no direct experience of what it means to be in the non dominant group and intersectionality doesn’t touch them. Also congruence is comfortable for everyone so its not their fault how they got there but it is their responsibility to figure out how to develop knowing that the world is full of many different types of people who historically didn’t have any power – see Kegan and Lahey again on the socialized mind in Immunity to Change. There are still so many men and women who cant help but protect the status quo for so many reasons. If you want to see this in action, participate in a contained social experiment- go to an AK Rice Group Relations conference on Power and Authority!

3. The third factor is your personality? Are you a confronter or a keep the peace person? You need to know your own comfort zones and abilities and what you are going to be able to take emotionally as revealing bad people can take strength, energy and there are stakes at play sometimes ( the bully/bigot knows that the stakes are low or them and high for you).

So, once you know the above, you can work out what the best course of action is. Sometimes it is about doing something and sometimes is it is not.

For extra reading, I recommend Leaders Guide to Leveraging Diversity Capabilities or leave this book on your boss’s desk to prime the pump for people who want to make things better so you build a cultural coalition of people who know how to deal with everyday problem children at work. I quote Maya Angelou in high regard, because “when you know better, you do better.”

If you are dealing with difficult people or a culture that has systemic diversity issues in it, I would be happy to work with you as your executive coach. Contact me on 646 6882318 or nicki@theglasshammer.com for an exploratory chat.

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What to Do When the Goal Posts Move at Work

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By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Recently, Fast Company published an article on unclear goals and what to do with the boss’s instructions are lacking or confusing.

As a coach, organizational psychologist, there is a piece of advice I offer everyday to my clients and it is something my own mentor told me many years ago. What is this sage wisdom? Never take a job where your responsibilities and your authority to execute (resources, power, ability) don’t align. Literally, do not accept the role of protecting the free world, if you can have the big red button to press if you need it. This analogy feels much more edgy these days than when I used to say it, which in itself is a reflective moment on whether we need a new analogy. Words matter!

So, say you take a job that you thought you were given the ability to execute on but it turns out that other people hold the resource, or the tools or the actual sign off? What do you do? You are already in the seat and the goal posts feel like they are a moving target!

It is key to explore your options and understand their potential future payoffs and consequences.

This is where good coaches can really help you.

I look forward to hearing from you since matrix organizations, company dysfunction etc means this is often much more common than we would like to believe.

Book an exploratory coaching call with Nicki here: https://calendly.com/nickigilmour/evolved-people-exploratory

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