Can Supporting Other Women Be Dangerous for Your Career?

Guest Contributed by Andrea S. Kramer and Alton B. Harris

Approximately 85 percent of senior corporate executives and corporate board members are white men, a percentage that has remained basically unchanged for many years.

An important key to effectively combatting the gender bias that typically accompanies such a high concentration of male power is the active support, mentoring, and advocacy by women for the advancement of other women.

Negative Consequences of Advocating for Other Women

Unfortunately, when women actively work to advance the careers of other women, they often suffer personal career penalties. This is made clear in two-related studies published together in 2017 in The Academy of Management Journal. In the first study, the researchers surveyed 350 executives about their diversity-valuing behaviors—behaviors that sought to actively promote a demographic balance within their organizations’ leadership ranks. The researchers found that no executive, female or male, received higher ratings for competence or performance when they engaged in such behaviors. But when women executives engaged in diversity-valuing behaviors, they received much worse competence and performance ratings than did women who did not actively promote gender diversity.

In the second study, the researchers asked 307 working adults to evaluate a fictitious female or male manager after the manager had hired either a woman or a man. The researchers found that both female and male participants rated the fictitious female manager as less effective when she hired a female applicant than when she hired a man. As in the first study, it made no difference to the evaluations of the fictitious male manager whether he hired a woman or a man.
In summarizing their conclusions in the Harvard Business Review, the researchers wrote:

We know that in the U.S., there is still a power and status gap between men and women. High status groups, mainly white men, are given freedom to deviate from the status quo because their competence is assumed based on their membership in the high status group. In contrast, when women advocate for other women, it highlights their low-status demographics, activating the stereotype of incompetence, and leads to worse performance ratings.

What Can Be Done to Ameliorate the Risks of Advocating for Other Women?

Anne Welsh McNulty, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, thinks women should simply ignore the career risks of advocating for other women. She writes:

The antidote to being penalized for sponsoring women may just be to do it more—and to do it vocally, loudly, and proudly—until we’re able to change perceptions. There are massive benefits for the individual and the organization when women support each other.

McNulty’s recommendation carries substantial risk in light of the studies we cited earlier. Doubling down on advocating for the advancement of other women may be a viable strategy for senior women leaders who are secure in their positions. For women in middle and junior roles, however, it can have a real downside. That being so, how can women advocate for other women and not risk a career penalty?

There are at least two effective, relatively low risk strategies available. First, women can channel their mutual support and advocacy through their workplace networks, whether these are formal or informal. When women come together to talk and share their experiences, they see that many of their career difficulties are not unique to them but are common obstacles to the advancement of all women’s careers. Realizing they are not alone can provide women with positive benefits by increasing their self-confidence. By working together, women can concentrate their energies on concrete steps to move forward as individuals and to overcome the systemic obstacles negatively affecting women’s careers generally.

The second strategy is to enlist senior male leaders as allies in the effort to advocate for the advancement of women. Obtaining committed male allies is an important step toward changing the discriminatory nature of gendered workplaces. When men stick up for women at meetings, ask women to elaborate on the points they make, praise women for their contributions, and make sure that women are seen as valued team participants, this sends a strong message to other men that women are serious players. And, when men call out incivility, snubs, and microaggressions against women, they can often be effective in ending these biased practices.

Women may be at their best when, as Sophia A. Nelson has written they know other women “are at their sides and have their backs,” but active male support is also a very effective way to break through gender bias.

The Way Forward

Women working together collectively with strong male allies have the potential to make significant progress toward moving more women up and into senior leadership positions. It is important, however, for everyone to recognize advocacy is not enough. The focus needs to be on changing workplace practices and policies to interrupt the discriminatory operation of gender bias by stripping as much subjectivity as possible out of the assignment, evaluation, compensation, and promotion processes. Gender bias can only do its discriminatory mischief when gut instinct, personal preference, and feelings of comfort and familiarity are allowed to play major roles in career-affecting decisions.

It must also be remembered that the negative consequences for women’s career opportunities of there being concentrated, entrenched male power at the top of our major organizations is not going to be changed overnight through fundamental, culture-altering changes. Significant gender diversity in senior leadership is only going to come about through what Shelley Correll at Stanford University calls “small wins,” that is, “concrete, implementable actions … of moderate importance [that] produce visible results.” When a small win is achieved, “it often creates new allies and makes visible the next target of change.”

When women work collectively with male allies to rid their organizations of subjective evaluations and concentrate on small wins, women supporting other women would no longer be dangerous to their careers.

About the Authors

Andrea S. Kramer and Alton B. Harris are authors of It’s Not You, It’s the Workplace: Women’s Conflict At Work and the Bias That Built It (Nicholas Brealey/Hachette 2019). Andie and Al have both served in senior management positions and have in-depth experience with all aspects of personnel management including recruiting, hiring and firing, individual and team supervision, compensation, and promotion. For more than 30 years they have worked to promote gender equality in the workplace.

The opinions and views expressed by guest contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of theglasshammer.com

/by

Six Differentiating Tools Every Personal Brand Needs

Women-on-Computer 1

Guest Contributed by Elizabeth Harr

In a recent article, I talked about the steps required for creating your personal brand strategy.

In this article, I’ll cover how to design the supporting tools and infrastructure you’ll need to really bring your brand to life in a differentiated fashion.

Tool #1: Media Kit. I see this quite often – executives trying to get placements as a keynote speaker or panelist, but to no avail. Often times, firms overlook the importance of a media kit – a go-to place where speaking committees can easily access downloadable headshots, bios of different lengths, and access to published work or speaking samples. More than that though, a media kit is a vetting committee’s window into what their audience might experience in their exposure to you as an expert. For that reason, as the development of your personal brand strategy progresses, consider assembling public speaking clips into a video reel – it need only be a few minutes long, but this really gives speaking committees a sense of how you command the stage. It also gives prospective clients an excellent idea of what it might be like to work with you.

Tool #2: Polish up your bio and website. Boost the credibility of your bio and website by adding such features as recent articles and presentations you’ve made, as well as any recognitions you’ve received or awards you’ve won — basically, whatever could help convince your audience that you’re the genuine article, and worthy of their limited time.

Tool #3. Get ready to blog. Here again, your path depends on your level of independence. If you’re with a firm that has a blog, learn how you can become a regular contributor. If you need approval from others in the organization, explain your goal, and then work with the people who can help you get exposure. If you’re setting up your own blog, find and invest in the resources you need to make it happen. Why a blog? A well-written blog allows open access (i.e. no one has to give you an email in exchange for reading your blog) to your personal brand – it’s the path of least resistance audiences will use to experience your expertise.

Tool #4. Add conversion tools. To turn web visitors and blog readers into leads (one of your key goals), offer them something that’s so compelling, they’ll provide their name and email address in exchange for it. Typically, this is a more substantial type of content, such as an educational guide, whitepaper or e-book. After you create this content, place it behind a registration form on your site or blog. Make sure to include an enticing downloading offer to readers (see example at right). To be on the safe side, consider including language with your form explaining that the reader will be receiving additional emails containing valuable educational materials and advice — and that they can cancel at any time.

Tool #5. Customize your profiles on social media. Start by completing your LinkedIn profile, which is by far the most important platform for professional services experts. Next, look for active groups to join that people in your target audience tend to frequent. Twitter is another platform to consider joining, as it can help you promote your content. In some cases, Facebook, YouTube and other platforms may be helpful as well, although our research shows that most experts focus their limited time and effort elsewhere.

Tool #6. Practice and grow your skills. Make a habit of working on your new skills by carving out a little time every day to work on one or two pieces at a time. Remember, this is a business commitment, not a hobby. That means it’s not only okay, but actually important, to devote part of each workday to upgrading your personal brand. It’s an ongoing project — and one that will never end.

Now, It’s Launch Time!

Now it’s time to give your plan one more read — and then, dive in! Implementing it will be slow going at first, but it’s important to get your tools and resources in place before you set out. If you are an expert who seeks to become a leader in your industry, the roadmap I’ve laid out here can help you get on the right path, and keep on it.

The secret to launching a successful personal branding strategy is to break down the work into manageable pieces. Little by little, you will start to see results — a few email inquiries starting to arrive, a speaking opportunity or two popping up, and hopefully, a growing tide of new followers. At some point, people will begin asking to meet with you to discuss their particular challenge. And eventually, a few will decide to hire you and your firm — based on nothing more than your reputation and visibility. Take it from me: seeing that steady progress will make all the hard work more than worth it.

You’ve got your strategy, now put it to work!

About the Author

Elizabeth Harr, Partner at Hinge, is an accomplished entrepreneur and experienced executive with a background in strategic planning, branding and growth for professional services. Elizabeth co-founded a Microsoft solutions provider company and grew it into a thriving organization that became known for its expertise in Microsoft customer relationship management.

The opinions and views expressed by guest contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of theglasshammer.com

/by

How Remote Work Helps Boost Your Company Culture

Guest Contributed by Michael Volkmann

Only 10 years ago did the idea of remote work seem like an outlandish proposition.

Recently, however, the tide is beginning to shift. With remote work becoming more feasible, and employees becoming more receptive, remote work is due for a boon.

For some, remote work is still a strange idea but the benefits are becoming obvious. With companies as large as Yahoo! taking part in the remote work revolution, its appeal is growing rapidly. While many employers are still doubtful about the logistics of remote work, the cultural trend towards it is apparent. What are the benefits of remote work? Some are more apparent than others, but all in all remote work is cost-effective and productive for companies of all sizes.

One of the more obvious benefits of remote work is the reduction in cost for most businesses. When the bulk of a business’s employees telecommute the need for an office is greatly reduced. Decreasing the need for a large office with multiple cubicles has a positive effect on a business’s finances. While the monetary side of it is nice, the important part might be how it affects the culture.

In telecommute environments, there are less office politics and more working. Those companies that have large telecommute employee bases are oftentimes immune to the machinations of office personalities. There is less self-aggrandizing and less cutthroat behavior. The culture of remote work typically leans toward a more progressive and open view.

Those environments are generally less about ladder climbing and more about the work speaking for itself. The benefit of less office gossip and interpersonal drama is immense as it tends to lead to friendlier interactions and work-focused employees. When the weight of office drama and expectation is lifted from an employee they tend to perform better and are happier. In the new age of work, happiness is very important to employees.

Those who work in remote companies post the highest job satisfaction ratings. What employers sometimes fail to realize is that office culture can weigh heavily on employees and reduce the comfort they feel doing their job. By taking the office away, companies can create very positive and uplifting work environments.

On the subject of money, businesses that use remote work forces typically post higher profit margins. This is due to a number of reasons, but one of the largest is the lack of expenditure. This, coupled with higher productivity, leads to an inevitable increase in revenue. Another strong factor in this is that remote work also leads to less employee turnover.

Companies that use telecommuting have more satisfied employees that are less likely to quit and, because of their increased productivity, are less likely to be fired as a result.

Companies that adopt early are in for an evergreen opportunity for profit. The reduced cost and better productivity of remote work is creating a business environment that is ideal for revenue generation. This is helping the popularity of the model tremendously. In a few years telecommuting will go from being a fringe idea to the secret for a growing revenue-generating business including companies such as WordPress, Toptal, and many other tech companies.

On the employee-focused side of things, there are a number of great benefits as well. One thing that helps employees tremendously is the reduced cost of not having to go to an office. No more shopping for work-specific clothes or burning all that gas driving to and from work. For those that work telecommute jobs, traffic becomes a thing of the past.

Being able to work in the comfort of your own home without office politics or over-eager managers gives employees a comfortable work environment. This can also improve the health of employees as they can focus on the most crucial tasks and get more done than if they had the luxury to chatter with coworkers in a traditional working environment. This also works well for aging employees as the physical requirements to go to work lessen tremendously.

For new families as well, telecommute work can provide a way to generate income while not being away from their families. This employee-oriented style of work creates a positive environment while also being a more generous employer strategy.

With a positive impact on both profits and employees, remote work is clearly a beneficial pursuit. The remote revolution is coming in fast and companies keeping up will be rewarded greatly. The strategy of telecommute employment pays off incredibly well. It is a more positive environment for both owners and employees than a traditional office environment.

The numbers for remote work and the feedback from employees strengthens the argument. The new age of work is heavily focused on employee happiness and satisfaction. No other strategy accomplishes this like telecommute work. As remote work continues to grow, and technology follows, remote work will become the rule. The world is ready to work from home and you should be too.

About the Author

Michael Volkmann is a tech entrepreneur with a focus on business operations and finance. He has worked with many small businesses helping them with their M&A for over 6 years. When not in front of the monitor thinking about the future of AI and robotics, he spends his time snorkeling and traveling.

The opinions and views expressed by guest contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of glasshammer2.wpengine.com

/by

Creating Your Personal Brand — One Step at a Time

personal brand

Guest contributed by Elizabeth Harr

Personal brands are a hot topic in executive circles for good reason.

Just like a firm’s brand, a well-developed personal brand allows professionals a meaningful way to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Built correctly, a personal brand is neither self-indulgent nor self-promotional – but instead is a platform for promoting specialized expertise. And expertise – particularly specialized expertise – is consistently a top criteria buyers of professional services use when selecting a firm with which to do business.

While it’s hard to argue with the merits of having a strong personal brand, the more challenging conversation is around the specific steps and strategies needed to make it happen. If I had to offer one guiding principle for all executives to embrace as they embark in their own brand journey, it would be to employ purpose as your bouncer. This has come be a favorite mantra of my own ever since I heard it on a podcast from Whitney Johnson, the creator of the Disrupt Yourself podcast series. I love this expression because it’s a reminder that each of us is in charge of the multiple decisions we’ll have to make about our personal brand. What tools should you invest in? Where should you speak? What topics should you write about? What really should you be known for?

Adhering to a strict standard for how you evaluate personal branding decisions can make all the difference in time, in money you invest, and in how well you are received by the outside world. With purpose as the bouncer of your decisions, your personal brand will fill a void in the marketplace with a fresh and much-needed perspective on the problems your audience is trying to solve. Put another way, applying purpose – in the context of what matters most to whatever audience you seek visibility with – prevents you from adding to the noise, or worse, showing up as a generic jack-of-all-trades services provider.

Now everything I’ve said so far probably falls more under the category of philosophy rather than practical advice. However, with purpose as your gatekeeper and bouncer, implementing the following steps will be much easier and more effective. So let’s get to it.

Creating Your Personal Brand Strategy

Step 1: Understand where you’re starting from. Before you begin building your brand, you need to make an honest assessment of your brand’s existing qualities and level of visibility. Visibility can be defined in five distinct levels to help executives assess their baseline position, which in turn helps them stay realistic about how far they can climb. Are you at the level of a Resident Expert, where you’re known to a very small and defined circle? Or are you a Rising Star, where you’re just starting to expand your network and are becoming visible to a wider audience? It’s also important to define where you want to go. If your goal is to become a sought-out (and paid!) keynote speaker on the global stage for example and you’re barely past the first stage of your journey, you’ll be looking at an aggressive path forward that has a different investment of time and money relative to a goal of becoming highly regarded regional player for example.

The 5 visible firm levels

Figure 1: The Five Levels of Visibility

Step 2: Zero in on specialized expertise. Perhaps you are an expert in something already. That’s fine, but is your messaging for that expertise fairly broad (“M&A advisory,” for instance), or is it specialized (such as, “post-merger acquisition integration”)? If you haven’t done so yet, think about narrowing your focus. If you’ve tried unsuccessfully to pare down your services, at least try to be more tightly focused on which topics you write and speak about. Once you’ve done this, your ‘purpose bouncer’ should get busy, turning away any other blogging or speaking opportunities that don’t fit with the central thesis of your personal brand.

Step 3: Target a specific audience. What types of industries or organizations will be procuring your services? Who influences your buyers’ purchasing decisions? What positions within client firms will buy your services? The answers will dictate which people you should be communicating with in every blog post, speech, book, and webinar. Keep your audience in mind whenever you’re writing. It will help you stay on point, and attract the right kinds of prospects to your business.

Step 4: Find your own viewpoint. This essential step can help to differentiate your personal brand in a big way. If you can associate your personal brand with a specific issue, or lead with a point of view that’s controversial or counterintuitive, it’s often easier to attract attention. Doing so can also give you a unique perspective that will put your unmistakable stamp on each piece of content you develop.

Step 5: Select your tools. There are many choices — too many, in fact — for how you will push out messages to support your personal brand. The tools that tend to have the greatest effect on a personal brand fall within the three pillars of high-growth marketing: speaking, publishing, and networking (both in person and digitally through social media networks). The figure below depicts the top 10 most effective tools as well as their efficacy score on a scale of 0 – 10. As you can see, these run the gamut from having a personal website to publishing your own books. Of course, if you have experience with other tools, such as webinars or video, you can make them part of your plan as well.

10 effective tools

Figure 2. Personal banding tools ranked by impact (0 = least, 10 = greatest)

Step 6: Evaluate your skills — and be brutal. This may be the most difficult step — especially if you’re doing it yourself. It’s so hard to be objective about one’s own strengths and weaknesses. Try to honestly evaluate your proficiency in each of the skill areas shown in Figure 2. Is your writing as good as you think it is? How strong are you as a public speaker? Which skills need the most work? Prioritize these skills, and decide which ones you can work on by yourself, and which may require finding or hiring a teacher or mentor. And that brings me to…

Step 7: Build a support team. The great majority of us need at least some help on the personal branding journey, and many may actually need a great deal. So one of the first things you need to decide on is how you want to make the climb: as a truly solo ascent with just an oxygen tank, or accompanied by a team of Sherpas? When you’re part of a larger organization, you sometimes have the built-in support by way of ghostwriters, SEO experts, graphic designers and website developers. If you don’t have access to these skill sets, you can look to freelancers to fill any gaps. In either case, line up your resources early in your process so that you don’t have to spend time tracking them down when you really need them.

Crafting your personal brand around what really matters in the marketplace – expertise – is the first step. In a sister article, I’ll cover how to design the supporting infrastructure you’ll need to really bring your brand to life in the form of content, profiles, and bios. Afterall, a plan is only as good as its execution, which in turn can’t happen without a solidly built infrastructure.

About the Author

Elizabeth Harr, Partner at Hinge, is an accomplished entrepreneur and experienced executive with a background in strategic planning, branding and growth for professional services. Elizabeth co-founded a Microsoft solutions provider company and grew it into a thriving organization that became known for its expertise in Microsoft customer relationship management.

The opinions and views expressed by guest contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of theglasshammer.com

/by

Working Parents: Get Rid of Guilt, Blame, Shame and Regret, Once and for All

Supporting new parents

Guest contributed by Lauren Marie

With the rise of social media, the prevalence of judgment on parents has reached epidemic proportions.

This US study found that 90% of moms and 85% of dads feel judged by others, and nearly half of all parents feel judged almost all the time. This constant demand to conform to others’ rules not only undermines a parent’s wellbeing, it also stifles their ability to follow their dreams and create new financial opportunities for themselves and their families.

It doesn’t seem to matter whether you stay home to raise your children, put them in day care, have a nanny or family member caring for them, or something else. People feel they have the right to judge you for any choice you make involving children,

Is there a ‘right’ path for working parents? What if, rather than looking for what the right decisions are, you began to look for what your choices create, and choose what works for your family, regardless of other people’s judgments?

The modern family has grown undefined and can look completely different in every household. The idea that one size can fit all is a little crazy. What will work for you and your kids might not work for another family and that is okay!

Your choice creates awareness

Each choice you make will give you more clarity and direction to inform the choices you will make in the future. Instead of judging each choice as right or wrong, what if you look at the information you gained, and change course based on what occurs as you go? For example, let’s say you try out one day care based on a friend’s recommendation. Your child comes home unhappy, doesn’t want to go back, or cries every time you drop them off. This doesn’t mean that you made a bad choice. It is just more information you can use to make the next choice better and to give you more awareness of what works or doesn’t work for your child.

We think that we must make a decision and hold onto it, for fear that if we change our minds it will mean we were wrong or did something bad.

The capacity to change, to not have a fixed point of view, but rather a malleable reality that can look totally different in any moment, is one of your greatest gifts to the world and to your children.

Without having to hold onto a decision or a point of view, with no need of being right, and a total willingness to change on a dime, would you have to feel guilt or shame? What if you looked at the mistakes you’ve made as a chance to learn and grow and become greater?

Your children learn from watching and modeling you

If you judge yourself, you’re teaching your children to judge themselves too. Instead, have allowance for your choices, even the so-called mistakes, and you will teach your children to have allowance for themselves too.

That doesn’t mean you act without care or consequence. On the contrary, it means you ask questions all the time and choose based on what will create greater change for everyone involved.

Asking questions

When your children are at an age where they can reason and understand, begin asking them what works for them. Ask them where they want to go to school, who they want to play with, which nanny they like best? It doesn’t mean you have to do whatever your child wants, but it will allow them to feel empowered to make choices and gives you more information and feedback. You can also ask yourself questions… “I wonder what would happen if we chose to do: X, Y, or Z?”

What if you became curious again, about everything, the way children are?

Judging never creates greater

Guilt, blame, shame and regret are all based on judgment. Judging someone or something doesn’t make it better. It only locks what you are judging further into place. If you want something to change, you have to make a different choice.

We need to take pressure off ourselves by not looking at ourselves through other people’s eyes and by discovering what is actually true for us. Every time you begin to judge yourself, stop. It is a choice; it is not an automatic. Your point of view can actually become reality. If you believe you are not good enough, you never get it right, you’re a terrible mother … that’s what will reflect back at you.

You must put your kids to bed at a certain time, have limited amounts of “screen time,” read to them, give them appropriate social cues, teach them to play nicely with others. I’m sure you’ve heard all of this and more as the right way to parent and the right way to be a working mom. What you want to start looking at is which of these ‘rules’ are true and work for you and your kids, not just buy them all as real because someone else tells you it is so.

Judgments are not real. Let other people judge you however they judge you, don’t make it significant. You know you better than anyone. Trust in that; trust in you.

If you want to empower your children to love themselves, to trust themselves, and to make good decisions for themselves, you must show them by practicing allowance and trust for you first.

Practice gratitude for you

To truly get rid of guilt, blame, shame and regret, be grateful for who you are in the world, who you are in the workplace, who you are at home. This will start to shift the feelings of guilt and regret. When they come up, focus instead on something you can be grateful for about you. Watch the negative feelings shrink as the gratitude grows. Gratitude and judgment cannot coexist. It’s a muscle you can choose to build, and the more you use it the stronger it gets.

About the Author

Lauren Marie is a Joy of Business facilitator, acupuncturist, entrepreneur and mother of twins. She travels worldwide, facilitating classes and changing her clients’ point of view about life, health and business. Born on the outskirts of Washington D.C., Lauren now lives on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. A passionate creator and conscious rule-breaker, Lauren seeks to inspire other mothers to see the possibilities they overlook and to embrace every challenge and choice that parenthood brings.

The opinions and views expressed by guest contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of theglasshammer.com

/by

How Are Women Unique as Leaders?

Guest Contributed by Sam Bowman

Self-care in leadershipWomen are rising up in the ranks, leading companies, global organizations, and even countries.

According to a Pew Research Center study, the number of world leaders who are women has doubled since 2005.

Women simply make great leaders. As WGU points out, women are more effective than men in leadership roles. They’re also more innovative and cooperative problems solvers who tend to see the bigger picture as they work toward goals.

It’s not a stretch to say that as leaders, women are unique. Here are just a few of the exceptional traits they bring to the leadership table and how women can highlight these strengths to move up in their chosen field.

Women Are Empathetic

When leading people, it’s important to be able to put yourself in their shoes. Leaders must understand the different perspectives people bring to the table and empathize with them in order to be effective.

This is not to say that men aren’t empathetic, but it’s a trait that research supports as being a strength possessed and utilized more effectively by more women in leadership roles than men. The ability to empathize also assists leaders in being more flexible and able to build stronger interpersonal relationships with subordinates than their male counterparts.

Women Communicate Effectively

If you want to lead, then you must be an effective communicator, especially when it comes to communicating across cultural lines. Many studies done over the years indicate that women are better at communication than men. A study published in The Journal of Neuroscience found that women’s brains possess a “language protein” that may explain the communication differences between men and women.

In the workplace, women put these communication gifts to good use. Their naturally interactive leadership style encourages participation and the sharing of information at all levels. This makes them better at getting results from their teams since they’re able to communicate what they want and set expectations clearly.

Women Collaborate

It’s important for leaders to understand that team members simply approach problems differently than they might and value those different perspectives. Women seem to possess an innate quality for working well with others and enjoy learning about new solutions to solve problems together. This all relates back to the fact that women value teamwork and can make everyone on the team feel as if their contributions are valued.

Women can also use this collaboration skill to keep information flowing throughout teams and departments, ensuring that everyone has the data needed to do the job right.

Women Are Convincing

The willingness to build interpersonal relationships in the workplace also helps them to be more persuasive leaders. This is due to the fact that many women are empathetic listeners that take the time to learn about people in order to appeal to their sensibilities and needs. The result? Women tend to understand concerns or objections others may have to ideas and can effectively formulate a response that bears these facts in mind.

Women Are Generous

Many women are givers in their personal lives and that translates to the workplace, too. It’s easy for women to encourage the people around them and allow them to thrive as team members. They inspire and uplift the people they’re surrounded by, which is part of what makes women such great long-term strategic thinkers in the workplace. They want others to do well because they recognize that if their team does well, they do well too.

Don’t mistake generosity in the workplace for weakness, however. Women may be willing to be inclusive, but that doesn’t mean they are playing the role of mother to the people on the team. They’re not there to make sure you have your lunch, they’re there to make sure you’re participating in an environment that welcomes your ideas.

How to Highlight Your Unique Skills

Remember, being a positive and effective leader isn’t a position you apply for or a title you’re given, it’s something you show through example and action. When writing a compelling resume or cover letter, it serves you well to include your leadership skills and expertise, highlighting how you use these skills to set you apart from the crowd.

To showcase your workplace leadership styles and skills, you should:

● Discuss them: In your cover letter, address the leadership experience you have that makes you a successful manager or executive. Talk about the qualities you possess concisely to help convince a prospective employer that you have what it takes to be an effective leader.
● Prove it: You can say that you’re great at solving problems or delegating work, but you have to be able to demonstrate it with your resume too. Back up claims you make with bullet points that show your achievements and describe how you’ve leveraged this skill set in the past. Also, think about how you have used your leadership skills in the past to benefit employers and make sure to point these out in detail.
● Prepare: Whatever skills you choose to highlight in your resume must be backed up in conversation. You should expect to be pressed for details on these subjects, so think about how these skills make you perfect for this job and come to the table with examples.

Women Make the Workplace Successful!

Research has shown that companies that have women as a representative portion of their management teams perform better financially than those that don’t. While women still face many challenges in the workplace and must work hard to show they’re up to the task, progress is being made. As women continue to chip away at the barriers they face, organizations only become stronger. Lead by example and soon enough, people begin to follow.

About the Author

Sam Bowman writes about marketing, tech, and how the two merge. He enjoys getting to utilize the internet for community without actually having to leave his house. In his spare time he likes running, reading, and combining the two in a run to his local bookstore.

The opinions and views expressed by guest contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of theglasshammer.com

/by

How to Lead in a Fast-Isn’t-Fast-Enough World

female leaders

By Sara Canaday

Leaders are being challenged with increasingly complex demands every day, and they are expected to respond in record time.

Unfortunately, the conventional approaches they’ve always relied on simply don’t have the same impact in the context of this new business environment.

I work with thousands of leaders every year, and many of them feel like walking to-do lists and perpetual firefighters who never have enough hours in the day. These leaders recognize the need to change the way they respond to chaotic and inconceivable demands, but they aren’t entirely sure how to do that.

The common question is this: How am I supposed to lead successfully in a fast-isn’t-fast-enough world?

The good news is, we can uncover some clues to the answer by looking at the innovative approaches used by today’s modern thinkers and trailblazing leaders. Their strategic choices are oddly counterintuitive, undeniably successful, and downright fascinating.

I’d like to share with you six of the new practices and describe how they are helping talented professionals elevate themselves into modern leaders producing enviable results.

1. Shaking off the age-old bias for action and perfecting the use of the strategic pause.

Successful leaders in the modern era seem to have adopted a new habit. Instead of making action the default for every challenge, these leaders are pairing that alternative with an opposite response. It’s not about replacing action, which we know is a necessary leadership ingredient. We still need to reach our goals, meet deadlines, and produce results. This is different.

They think of it as developing a companion habit that celebrates BEING rather than DOING. It involves a strategic pause. A mental time-out. Space for their brains to percolate. Whatever we call it, this new habit requires consistently taking some time away from the chaos of business to let ourselves think.

2. Escaping from the prison of their own perspectives and passionately seeking out cognitive diversity.

Modern leaders know that their own decision-making doesn’t come from a mentally neutral position, so they push themselves to uncover other angles. Not a polite, obligatory surveying of the crowd to reach consensus, but a mold-breaking, eyebrow-raising exploration to prove themselves WRONG.

These leaders aren’t just finding success through an openness to new ideas; they passionately seek them out. They value cognitive diversity and invite team members to challenge them with radical alternatives. They let go of the need to validate their own perspectives, and they focus all of their energy on finding the best solution to meet shared goals. No matter where those solutions might originate.

3. Ditching the need to let hard data drive every decision and welcoming the insights of soft intelligence.

Trailblazing leaders today have recognized the tendency to be held hostage by information overload. Even though it feels unnatural, they give themselves permission to break free from their dependence on data. Do they still value the facts? Definitely. They just work to gain a broader context about its meaning. They’re willing to be informed by data but not ruled by it.

Leaders who are open to the idea of Whole Data—a more comprehensive view of the facts— stretch beyond the usual quantitative boundaries to incorporate intangible elements. They better serve their teams and their customers by paying attention to stories and narratives, emotions and attitudes, worries and complaints, risks and vulnerabilities. They search for the qualitative information that paints a more vivid picture.

4. Dropping their dependence on the usual routine and letting go of outdated tasks and deliverables.

Today’s forward-thinking leaders have realized that everything consuming their time must earn the right to be on their to-do lists. To establish that competition, they have adopted a new approach that defies their normal logic.

Most leaders have a competitive streak that pushes them to take on more rather than do less, but they are seeing the wisdom in that concept. Narrowing their focus to expand their perspectives. Minimizing their actions to maximize performance. Doing less to achieve more. Through the ingenuity of letting go, they are finding abundant success.

5. Defeating the drag on their communication and creating positive experiences that expand their influence.

Modern leaders embrace the idea of disrupting their typical approach to communication. They start in reverse. Instead of trying to determine what information needs to go out, they concentrate on the end result. What impact do they want to make? What are the challenges and perspectives of their audience members? What experience would they like to create?

With that in mind, they peel away all the layers of complexity that have been clogging up their communication and get down to messages that are authentic and engaging. They present them in novel ways. They aren’t afraid to open a window into their motives and rationale. And they create a meaningful, compelling experience that communicates in a more powerful way.

6. Committing to metaphorically resigning their roles as experts and approaching tasks with the spirit of a beginner.

Modern leaders are accelerating their careers by breaking free from the expert trap. They no longer allow themselves to remain captives of their expertise. They are finding the courage to change the tired, old narrative with a new attitude, some genuine vulnerability, and the never-ending desire to learn.

Success for these leaders means deliberately putting themselves in positions to humbly learn and grow. Every single day. They have learned to value questions just as much as the answers. And, perhaps more importantly, they work hard to ask the right questions—many of which start with, “What if…?”

While these exciting new principles are remarkably effective, the most compelling thing about them is the way they are applied. It’s a selective process. Not a simple swap of out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new. There’s a firm acknowledgement that the old rules aren’t completely obsolete. The most successful leaders have a knack for knowing when to stick with the traditional approaches and when to break away. They’ve adopted a new brand of wisdom, and they know when to use it.

If you’d like to learn more about the strategies behind this fresh approach to leadership—one that is ripe for our challenging times—I invite you to read my new book.

Author Bio

Sara Canaday is a leadership expert, keynote speaker, LinkedIn Learning instructor and author. She works with leaders and high-potential professionals from organizations around the world to expand their capacity to innovate, influence, engage, and perform. Her new book, Leadership Unchained: Defy Conventional Wisdom for Breakthrough Performance, is now available on Amazon. For more information, please visit SaraCanaday.com.

The opinions and views expressed by guest contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of theglasshammer.com

/by

4 Ways to Avoid Slipping Off the Glass Cliff

glass cliff

Guest Contributed by Meredith Wood

The glasshammer has written extensively about the phenomenon of the glass cliff over the years whereby women have been put in turnaround high profile positions that are for lack of a better word, an impossible task or poison chalice.

The best research on the topic is still by Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam, of the University of Exeter which shows that there is a quantifiable tendency for women to be hired to elevated positions in times of crisis and uncertainty only to be unfairly penalized when they fail.

The effect of this is to create an unrealistic expectation for women executives, setting them up for failure. When, because they were handed a rather stacked deck, expectations are not fully met, often a company feels justified in going back to a status quo leadership by putting a man back in charge. They can then feel satisfied that though they tried to promote equity, it just didn’t work out this time. A 2013 study demonstrated just how prevalent this is. In over 600 transitions from female executives in Fortune 500 companies, only four women were succeeded by another woman.

The system, to put it bluntly, is rigged. And research demonstrates this happens over and over again in many industries.

Ways to avoid slipping off the cliff

It’s not shocking that women must do more than men to protect their agency in the workplace. Throughout the business world, women have routinely faced difficulty that men do not register. From securing business loans to facing a growing gender pay gap, women in executive level positions have been systematically discriminated against.

However, in many cases there are lessons from those who have come before that will help navigate the cliff. These include pieces of advice that men have routinely taken advantage of where women have traditionally had a hard time embracing them:

– Learning to say “NO”: Before taking any position, find out if the company is facing a difficult situation or transitional period. Just because something is offered doesn’t mean it is a step up. Recently, Uber had difficulty finding a female CEO because it was facing allegations of sexual misconduct and security concerns. The women who turned down the position may have done so because they saw it as a glass cliff waiting to happen.

– Set up expectations beforehand: One of the ways companies get away with Glass Cliff behavior is because expectations for women executives are set at an unrealistic level. By coming up with feasible metrics that symbolize success it will be more difficult for anyone to point to the idea that replacement is necessary.

– Outline a long term solution: Part of the issue with a Glass Cliff is that it usually has to do with relatively immediate results. With a long term plan in place, there is less recourse for those who seek to oust a women executive just because the situation seems dire in the short term.

– Negotiate to handle risk: If the company is in a precarious situation, make sure the position is made to be worth your while. Women are 4 times less likely to negotiate their salary than men. Also be certain to research comparable salary and benefits for a position that fits the situation.

Most importantly, to successfully scale the glass cliff you have to first know of its existence. By learning the lessons of the cliff, it is then possible to understand how to be in the best position to deal with it.

For more tips on how to navigate the glass cliff, check out this infographic from Fundera.

Meredith Wood

Meredith is Editor-in-Chief at Fundera. Specializing in financial advice for small business owners, Meredith is a current and past contributor to Yahoo!, Amex OPEN Forum, Fox Business, SCORE, AllBusiness and more.

The opinions and views expressed by guest contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of theglasshammer.com

/by

Fixing The Broken Mentorship Model To Help Close The Leadership Gap

by Anna Robinson, CEO and co-founder of Ceresa

Walking into a Fortune 500 boardroom today, you’re more likely to find a CEO named John than a female CEO.mentors

In fact, only 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs and 20% of board members are women, which has been the case for multiple generations, as reported by BCG.

Breaking the cycle – the continuing need for female mentors

As most people know, the number of women in the workforce has grown over the last century. However, the number of women in senior management roles has plateaued. According to the Women Ahead report, Women make up nearly half of the global workforce (49%), yet one-third of organizations don’t have any women in senior management roles. Why the disparity? A study by Bain & Co found that when women enter the workforce nearly 50% of them aspire to move to senior leadership, but within just five years this number drops to just 16%. This typically corresponds with the time when many women receive their first major promotion but before they are typically starting a family. The promotion to manager is where men have a higher promotion rate than women. McKinsey & Co’s Women in the Workplace report shows that , only 79 women are promoted to manager for every 100 men. Largely because of these gender gaps, men end up holding 62 percent of manager positions, while women hold only 38 percent. This is also the time when support for women in the workplace drops off – as found by both Bain and McKinsey’s studies. These are all critical junctures where mentorship can be most effective in helping women to set their aspirations, navigate these changes and excel in both their personal and professional lives.

Ceresa’s research of the first cohort of 50 mentees shows that the top five reasons women seek mentoring encompass questions of work-life balance and finding meaning, alongside professional development and tactical career planning. This is why the need for effective mentorship for women is greater than ever. Programs that offer support in only one of these crucial areas leave women drastically under-resourced. Companies offer programs geared toward traditional skill development. Yet, as pointed out in HBR, traditional mentoring for women typically ends up focused on operating style and psycho-social issues.

So, how do we fix the broken model?

The good news here is that there is an answer that can help both women and their companies. Mentoring, when done well, has a significant impact on companies and the women participating. One of the most comprehensive studies of mentoring impact found that formal mentoring programs can drive an increase in retention by 40-50% for mentees and mentors. Yet, we very rarely come across internal mentoring programs that have been set up to achieve meaningful, long-term impact.

63% of women have never had access to any formal mentoring, according to a 2012 DDI survey, and especially lack access to senior mentors. While some people argue that mentoring should be organic, in reality, these stats prove this is not working for women. With fewer women in leadership roles, women are missing mentorship that can help with gender-specific issues, and research even shows male mentors can be intimidating rather than helpful in empowering their female colleagues and mentees, as reported by the Huffington Post. This broken model also holds the belief that any senior leader can be a mentor – which is definitely not the case.

The new mentoring model needs to provide mentors training on the skills and attributes needed for successful, high-impact mentoring. And the skills required for quality mentoring are not necessarily synonymous with the qualities needed to be an effective leader. Deep listening, asking powerful questions and focusing on sharing experiences rather than giving advice are all critical to high impact mentorship but are not always required of senior leaders in the workplace. Formal mentoring programs need to coach mentors on these mindsets and skills.

Traditional models also lack structure and accountability. If both parties fail to have mutual and clear expectations, the relationship often fizzles out because one or both parties become discouraged or uninterested. The new model solves for this by encouraging each party to dedicate time and effort in fostering the mentorship relationship – with a clear cadence and schedule upfront. Critically, mentees need to be prepared and intentional about their goals – including submitting a specific agenda ahead of time to their mentor.

We’ve also seen that in status-quo mentoring models, the feedback women receive focuses on psycho-social issues or is based around their work style rather than true career development and professional success, as referred to in the HBR article. The new model must incorporate hard career development and goals while incorporating broader health, wellness and personal issues. This also requires mentees to be prepared before they begin working with a mentor so they can identify the areas in their lives where they need the most help, and define their vision and specific goals.

Finally, to ensure a deep impact from mentorship, the engagement, participation, and impact of the program should be tracked. Collecting feedback and outlining the impact for the company and the individual is critical. This might include tracking satisfaction and sense of empowerment from the program, as well as measuring promotion and pay grade changes. Companies can also track improvements in brand loyalty and retention, using measures such as Net Promoter Score.

The future is female (mentorship)

While working to solve the gender leadership gap through mentorship, we are doing more than just addressing inequality for inequality’s sake. We are also opening the doors to leverage all women to improve business and societal outcomes. As seen, mentoring can improve retention by 40-50% for mentors and mentees. Furthermore, Women Ahead found that 75% of executives claim mentoring was critical to their success. Now is the time to accelerate the rate at which women achieve and thrive in leadership positions, and better mentorship is one tactical step to reaching this goal. But companies need to do more than offer lip-service to mentoring. They need to take the effort to structure the program, help mentees be prepared and intentional, offer specific coaching and support to mentors, provide more sophisticated methodologies in matching mentees and mentors – and then measure impact. If you can’t measure it, it cannot be improved upon – and will rarely be sustained as a business imperative.

About the Author

Anna Robinson is CEO and Founder of Ceresa, a tech-enabled and research based mentorship platform for aspiring women leaders. Anna launched Ceresa in 2018, with the mission of closing the global leadership gap for women. Anna dedicates her time to shaping the company’s vision and strategy, driving consistent high-quality programming, building a world-class team and culture, and shaping a sustainable social impact business model. Prior to launching Ceresa, Anna was a Partner at McKinsey & Company, where she led strategy and transformation work for US and global health systems, as well as leading several women’s initiatives. Anna was also COO at an early-stage tech company. She holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, MPhil, and BA from the University of Oxford in England. She currently lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and three daughters.

The opinions and views expressed by guest contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of theglasshammer.com

/by

Women, Men, and the Two Sides of Confidence

,
Professional Women

Guest Contributed by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Even when our assessment of other people’s competence is wrong, their self-confidence can still have self-fulfilling effects, opening doors and opportunities to those who simply seem more confident.

This is one of the reasons that so many well-intentioned people have advised women to be more confident to get ahead at work and in their careers. There are several problems with this kind of advice.

First, it fails to recognize that confidence has two sides. Although confidence is an internal belief, it also has an external side, which concerns how assertive you seem in the eyes of others. This external side of confidence is the most consequential because it is often mistaken for real competence.

The bottom line: regardless of how confident we feel internally, when we come across as confident to others, they will often assume that we are competent, at least until we prove them wrong.

This link between perceived confidence and competence is important. Although women are assumed to be less confident than men and some studies have shown that women appear to be less confident, a closer look at the research shows that women are internally confident. In fact, men and women are both overconfident—even if men are still more overconfident than women.
As Harvard Business School’s Robin Ely and Georgetown’s Catherine Tinsley write in the Harvard Business Review, the idea that women lack confidence is a “fallacy”:

That assertion is commonly invoked to explain why women speak up less in meetings and do not put themselves forward for promotions unless they are 100% certain they meet all the job requirements. But research does not corroborate the idea that women are less confident than men. Analyzing more than 200 studies, Kristen Kling and colleagues concluded that the only noticeable differences occurred during adolescence; starting at age 23, differences become negligible.

A team of European academics studied hundreds of engineers and replicated Kling’s finding, reporting that women do feel confident in general.21 But the researchers also noted that women’s confidence wasn’t always recognized by others. Although both women and men reported feeling confident, men were much more likely to be rated by other people as appearing confident. Women’s self-reports of confidence had no correlation with how others saw their confidence.

To make matters worse, for the female engineers, appearing confident had no leadership benefits at all. For the men, seeming confident translated into having influence, but for women, appearing confident did not have the same effect. To have any impact in the organization, the women had to be seen as confident, competent, and caring; all three traits were inseparable. For men, confidence alone translated into greater organizational clout, whereas a caring attitude had no effect on people’s perception of leadership potential.

We are, it seems, less likely to tolerate high confidence in women than we are in men. This bias creates a lose-lose situation for women. Since women are seen as less confident than men and since we see confidence as pivotal to leadership, we demand extra displays of confidence in women to consider them worthy of leadership positions. However, when a woman does seem as confident as, or more confident than, men, we are put off by her because high confidence does not fit our gender stereotypes.

If women don’t lack confidence, then why do we see differences in how men and women behave? Why are women less likely to apply to jobs or to request a promotion unless they’re 100 percent qualified? Why else would women speak less in meetings and be more likely to hedge their bets when making recommendations?

If the answer is not how women feel internally, it must be how they are perceived externally. In other words, differences in behavior arise not because of differences in how men and women are, but in how men and women are treated. This is what the evidence shows: women are less likely to get useful feedback, their mistakes are judged more harshly and remembered longer, their behavior is scrutinized more carefully, and their colleagues are less likely to share vital information with them. When women speak, they’re more likely to be interrupted or ignored.

In this context, it makes sense that even an extremely confident women would behave differently from a man. As Ely and Tinsley observed at a biotech company, the female research scientists were far less likely to speak up in meetings, even though in one-on-one interactions, they shared a lot of useful information. Leaders attributed this difference to a lack of confidence: “What these leaders had failed to see was that when women did speak in meetings, their ideas tended to be either ignored until a man restated them or shot down quickly if they contained even the slightest flaw. In contrast, when men’s ideas were flawed, the meritorious elements were salvaged. Women therefore felt they needed to be 110 percent sure of their ideas before they would venture to share them. In a context in which being smart was the coin of the realm, it seemed better to remain silent than to have one’s ideas repeatedly dismissed.” Thus, because we choose leaders by how confident they appear rather than by how confident or competent they are, we not only end up choosing more men to lead us but ultimately choose more-incompetent men.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is the Chief Talent Scientist at ManpowerGroup, a professor of business psychology at University College London and at Columbia University, and an associate at Harvard’s Entrepreneurial Finance Lab. He has published nine books and over 130 scientific papers. His most recent book is Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (And How to Fix It)?

This article is adapted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted from Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (And How to Fix It)? by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic Copyright 2019 Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. All rights reserved.

The opinions and views expressed by guest contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of theglasshammer.com

/by