Mastering the Art of Active Coping

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iStock_000012181015XSmallBy Jacey Fortin (New York City)

How do you respond to stress? Do you avoid big problems, or confront them head-on? Do you distract yourself with smaller issues, or ignore them to focus on what matters most? Do you seek help from others, or go it alone?

All of these behaviors fall under the banner of ‘coping,’ and each individual does it differently. But if you’re in a position of leadership, your coping style may have a greater impact on your job performance than you think.

Just ask Leslie Pratch. She’s the CEO and founder of Pratch and Company, which specializes in assessing and grooming executives for leadership roles. She also has an MBA and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, so her insights go beyond the surface level. Early in her career, she published a study on gender, motivation, and coping [PDF] as indicators of leadership effectiveness. And she found that the only trait that consistently predicted leadership ability in both men and women was an aptitude for ‘active coping.’

“I want to differentiate my use of the word ‘coping’ from the common connotations, which barely scrape the surface,” Pratch explained. “I use it to refer to a sense of mastery. Individuals can learn to master the situations around them and take an active coping stance, assuming they have the willingness to become more self-aware.”

In other words, anyone who wants to improve her coping methods must take an unflinching look at her entire personality—hidden motivations, unresolved issues, confidence levels and more. And if you think this level of introspection sounds better suited to the psychologist’s couch than to the corner office, Pratch says think again. Drawing on years of extensive research and real-world applications, she asserts that “looking at the subconscious levels of coping is actually the best prognosticator in terms of determining leadership.”

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Expanding Your Horizons: Seven Tips to Get on an International Board

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Attractive African American business woman with executives in meBy Jenny Chen (Washington, D.C.)

Recent studies on women in the boardroom reveal that women are getting seats at the table at an unfortunately slow rate. In fact, calls for more women on boards have been more vocal in Europe and the UK.

For example, Britain just announced that companies would have to announce to shareholders by September 2012 their own targets for placing women on their boards, and state clearly how they plan to do so. Countries such as France, Spain, and Norway have already introduced compulsory quotas.

Irene Natividad, chair of Corporate Women Directors International, said, “Something is happening, and it’s driven by Europe.”

But supply seems to be unable to keep up with demand. The CWDI reports that US companies hold about 20.8% of board seats. According to the European Professional Women’s Network, 9.7% of the board members at the top 300 companies. And in China and India, women hold only about 5% of board seats.

This opens up an opportunity for women in the United States to join boards abroad, particularly in Europe where many companies are looking to fill their quotas or mandates.

As Candice Morgan, director of advisory services at Catalyst recently told HR Magazine, “We’ve certainly seen, for a while, an interest in women with international formal experience, since the legislation in Norway.”

Serving on a board is a great opportunity to broaden your horizons, said Lauren Leader-Chivee, Senior Vice President at the Center for Work-Life Policy and Partner at Sylvia Ann Hewlett Associates. “If you aspire to top leadership, being on a board…gives you exposure to a diverse set of management. To be fully competent in your own company you need to have a diverse range of experiences,” she said.

Here are seven tips to keep in mind when you are seeking a board seat abroad.

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Women in Law Firms: Why is Progress So Slow?

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iStock_000018130893XSmallBy Hua Wang (Chicago)

How do law firms distribute billing origination credit and how does the distribution affect compensation and the advancement of women lawyers to positions of real power and influence in their firms? What steps can law firms take to develop fair and equitable compensation, origination credit, and client succession policies that will help women lawyers to advance and succeed?

As women lawyers become more senior, they experience an increasing shortfall in income compared to male attorneys, and higher attrition rates. Despite the commitment by firms to advance women lawyers, women represent only 16% of equity partners nationwide. These lawyers hold an ownership interest in their firms and occupy the most prestigious, powerful and lucrative positions.

The under-representation of women among law firm equity partners means fewer women on the compensation committees. According to the 2010 American Bar Association survey study “New Millennium, Same Glass Ceiling” [PDF] of nearly 700 women law firm partners, about half of the respondents had one woman on the committee. One-fifth had none. Another fifth had two women. When women are not part of the dialogue and the decision-making body that charts the future direction of firms, the chances are greater that the policies and practices implemented will be less responsive to the career needs of women lawyers.

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Gender Intelligence: Why Different Wiring Means Better Business

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iStock_000014690519XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Why, after decades of work to advance and empower women, have we yet to close the gender leadership gap? According to Marie Wilson, founder of The White House Project, one reason could be the brain. “I was convinced so much that if we just didn’t the right things, trained women right – and I’m so tired of ‘fixing women’ – we could just make it work. When I met with Barbara Annis, we started to talk about what I had avoided my whole life – brain differences.”

She added, “Wiring doesn’t mean everything, but it means a lot.”

Wilson was speaking at the first ever Gender Intelligence Summit, a conference organized to discuss the neurobiology of gender. Held in Washington, DC, on Friday, the conference featured preeminent scientists on the subject of gender intelligence, as well as corporate diversity practitioners who have incorporated gender intelligence into diversity and inclusion work – and found success.

When companies take into account gender differences within the brain, and teach individuals and companies to appreciate and value those differences, diversity becomes more than a numbers game. Barbara Annis, Founder and CEO of Barbara Annis & Associates and Chair of the Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, is an expert on inclusive leadership. She said, “We thought that if we got enough women into the pipeline, some of them would float up.”

But, she continued, true inclusiveness isn’t merely about the numbers. It’s time to consider the neurological reasons women work and lead differently than men, and why companies can benefit from appreciating those differences.

For example, men generally perform better than women when it comes to spatial reasoning, while women usually perform better at reading facial expressions. Both are valuable skills for a business team to have in its toolbox. Learning to appreciate these kinds of distinctions can help instill corporate culture with a reverence for difference – which will drive gender inclusiveness on a more meaningful level than simply injecting more women into the pipeline with fingers crossed for success.

Focusing on the benefits of “unlikeness,” Annis said, is one way to encourage companies to change their game, refine processes to retain women, and, ultimately, make more money. “The business case is compelling. You can’t deny it anymore,” she explained.

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Senior Management Holds the Key to Gender Parity: It’s the Culture, Stupid!

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Nicki GilmourBy Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of The Glass Hammer

As founder and publisher of theglasshammer.com, I am proud to pen our 2000th article today and to share with you some of our latest thinking and around gender parity. We are proud to have spent the last four years creating a “must read” online publication designed to help professional women actively manage their careers. We have had the pleasure of covering the most progressive research on gender from well-known think tanks and attending events with fantastically inspirational speakers, as well as hosting our own panel discussions and networking events.

It seems appropriate to celebrate our 2000th article with a look at what components could play a major role in helping a critical mass of women to break the glass ceiling over the next few years. After all, if the last twenty years is closely examined, we would find only an incremental change in the number of women in leadership roles in major companies. (For example, as The Economist recently reported, while the proportion of working women has risen from risen from 48% to 64% since the ’70s, women still only make up three percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.) Similarly, the advice given to women since the 1980s hasn’t changed much either and has been predominantly to act more like men.

Is this strategy working for women? Whilst it definitely makes sense to provide women with a guidebook to how the game is played currently, I cannot help but feel this method ignores the elephant in the room. What might that be? Culture.

It means addressing the culture question and exploring tough topics around why macho works styles are still revered. Asking how culture is formed and maintained and who gets to most heavily influence it should be on every leader’s list of things to look at in 2012. This examination and honest diagnostic approach would enable senior management to look at the systemic issues that are preventing women and other minorities from advancing from middle management to senior management roles and onwards to the boardroom.

Behind the scenes here at theglasshammer.com, beyond creating empowering content for our readers and community members, we have begun to conduct research and write white papers on under-represented groups in the workplace. Our work explores topics  such as women in technology teams, LGBT women at work, and multicultural women in financial services. This work is conducted via our sister site Evolved Employer and is focused on helping companies understand how to architect their company culture to be inclusive and supportive of talented people who don’t necessary fit or want to be categorized into one box or other based on their outward appearance. (Hello Generation Y.)

Many companies and the people in them are still not clear on the business case for spending time developing talent as a business driver. “Smart people come in different packages” is the best way I can explain the need for dispelling myths around what a leader looks like. Diversity work is deeply personal and quite hard because it challenges every deeply held belief we’ve ever had. No one wants to admit to ourselves that we have biases. Often, unconscious bias, even those held by women, protects those who have historically held power, in order to uphold the status quo and maintain workplace traditions. Micro-inequities are often upheld by the very people who are most hindered by them.

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Plugging the Leaky Pipeline at the Mid-Management Level

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Business woman using tablet PCBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

For years, we’ve been led to believe that once women had the “right” education, the “right” training, and the “right” work experience, not only would they succeed at the highest levels of business, but they’d also reach parity in the c-suite. According to the Catalyst report The Pipeline’s Broken Promise [PDF], the premise of this assumption was that the pipeline for women into senior leadership was robust, but it appears that the hopes surrounding parity were too optimistic.

Catalyst reports that when it comes to top talent, women lag in advancement, compensation, and career satisfaction and in order to combat this systematic gender inequity, companies must better develop and fully leverage highly talented women in the workforce.

The good news is that there are major companies, like Time Warner, American Express, and McKinsey, that are working to plug the leaky pipeline at the mid-management level.

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5 Steps to Get Through a Difficult Work Situation

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iStock_000017887517XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

In today’s fast-paced workplace and tough economic environment, difficult situations are bound to arise. But whether you’ve been tasked with delivering unpleasant news or downsizing a team, as a leader, how you handle the situation influences its outcome significantly.

“I think the most important thing to remember is that it’s not just about you,” explained Hyune Hand, Executive Vice President and General Manager at Wolters Kluwer (WK) Corporate Legal Services. She continued, “There is a whole team behind you looking at you, relying on you, to make sure you get to the right outcome.”

As a leader, it’s your job to make sure you evaluate every situation thoughtfully for the good of your company. Here are five ways to ensure you handle any tough situation with poise and maintain the respect of your colleagues.

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Why Communicating Emotion Can Make You a Better Leader

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Group of businesspeople having a meeting.By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“I’m an easy crier,” began Cheri Beranek, CEO of Clearfield, a NASDAQ-traded broadband company. “I’ve learned that there can be a right time for crying, but it can’t be about business.”

Beranek recalled recently losing a CFO to a heart attack – and when she informed her staff, she shed some tears. But, she said, she also worked hard to maintain poise. As a leader, she explained, it was her responsibility to respect her team’s emotions as well. “It’s about knowing how to support your staff, while also communicating the fragility of life,” she said. “Regardless of the situation, you always have to have empathy with the environment.”

“Remembering that it’s not just about my emotions, but also someone else’s helps me to be more objective,” she continued. “You have to approach people with dignity and approach people with empathy.”

In her 25 years in the telcom industry, Beranek said, she’s learned a lot about leading with empathy. “Gravitas, dignity, and depth of personality is something you are constantly developing.”

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New York Companies Slowly Putting More Women in Leadership

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Is it time for lunch?By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

This year, women hold almost sixteen percent of the director seats and executive positions in New York’s 100 largest public companies. Whether that’s good news or bad news depends on whom you ask.

The information comes as part of the Women’s Executive Circle of New York’s latest census of New York’s top companies, produced in conjunction with Columbia Business School. According to the study, the percentage of women in leadership roles at these companies is growing. Wonderful! But… that growth is occurring at what seems like a snail’s pace. How long will it be before a woman nabbing a top seat at a big company isn’t news?

Yesenia Scheker-Izquierdo, Co-President and Co-Founder of WECNY, and a partner with KPMG LLP’s New York Financial Services Practice, said, “We are seeing some progress but the pace is slow. The more information we can provide the more robust the conversation. We are fortunate that the information is well-received and that in general, diversity is a business focus that makes sense for all involved.”

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Benchmarking Progress: The Gender Equality Project’s Next Phase

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BusinesswomanBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“We’ve been working on our own journey of promoting and measuring progress in gender equality,” explained Pamela Craig, CFO of Accenture. “We’ve always been interested in a global approach – and there are differences among countries. For example, in the Philippines we have a long history of women in leadership. But in other locations – like Japan – it’s more challenging.”

Craig continued, “That’s why it was interesting at this year’s World Economic Forum to hear from Nicole [Schwab], who very much has a global approach – to get to a global standard. It was inspiring to hear her vision and how it’s evolved.”

The Gender Equality Project (TGEP) was launched earlier this year at Davos, with the goal of helping global companies measure gender equality quantitatively and qualitatively across national borders and cultures.

“The approach to TGEP is extremely thoughtful, in terms of how it is intended to measure progress and understand what equivalency is. It is thought-provoking. For me, the light bulb just went on,” she explained.

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