Mentors and Sponsors Archives | Page 2 of 7

Want More Women at the Top? It’s Time to Fix the Leaky Talent Pipeline

Breaking the Glass Ceiling, Mentors and Sponsors, Pipeline

By Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

Previous research has identified that women do not get as many career-changing jobs as their male colleagues. This imbalance is one of the main reasons why the talent pipeline in many organizations is not as diverse as it should be. The question persists in the gender equality arena: why aren’t there more women in leadership positions? Yet, there is evidence that managers and key decision makers are not giving equal access to women when it comes to opportunities that can positively impact a career trajectory.

This begs the question: is the talent pipeline being managed properly with respect to gender diversity initiatives and leadership development strategies in a firm? Catalyst reports that between 2009 and 2012, the percentage of Fortune 500 female executive officers has remained at a near standstill, increasing slightly from 13.5 percent in 2009 to 14.3% in 2012. What factors are contributing to the stagnancy of women’s career advancement in traditionally male-dominated industries such as finance, technology, and professional services?

In order to get to the bottom of why talented women are not being ushered through the talent pipeline at the same rate as their male colleagues, let’s take a look at some key factors creating roadblocks in corporate gender diversity at the most senior levels of management.

The Cycle of Sponsorship in the Workplace: You Get What You Give

Mentors and Sponsors

By Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

If you feel like you are stuck in a plateau in your personal career development, it is probably time to take a step back and assess what you should be doing to remain relevant in your company and in the eyes of upper management. The key to your success may not be found in the typical areas of corporate training and development. Instead, you may benefit by becoming a sponsor to someone within your organization who you feel can turn into a rising star with the right guidance and representation.

How does sponsoring someone else help you advance? While the idea of sponsoring someone may feel one-sided to you, this is actually not the case. Anna Beninger, Senior Research Associate for Catalyst, states, “One of our major research findings around the idea of sponsorship is that paying it forward pays back. Developing others really increases your own visibility.” She adds, “Essentially what you are doing is showing the company that you are not only about your own advancement, but that you are invested in the future of the organization.”

By taking on a sponsor role, you automatically align yourself with other influential players in your company. People will notice. You will inevitably get the attention of the decision makers as they start to recognize the impact of your institutional knowledge and experience. What this means is that by helping a young executive navigate their own career path, you reinforce and display your real value to the company, not just your perceived value.

Mentoring the Millennial Generation: Advice for Senior Female Executives

Mentors and Sponsors

By Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

What is the best way to find out what makes NextGen employees tick? Ask them. This is exactly what PwC, along with the University of Southern California and The London Business School did in their groundbreaking study, PwC’s NextGen: a global generational study [PDF]. With over 40,000 responses collected and 18 global territories represented, this study identifies the attitudes, perceptions, mentality and overall work preferences of the next generation of the world’s workforce – Millennials.

Although Millennials and non-Millennials hold many similar viewpoints about flexible schedules, the ability to work occasionally from home, and the importance of healthy work/life balance, it seems as though PwC’s NextGen study reveals one important difference between Millennials and the generations before them. Millennials are not as inclined to make big sacrifices in their personal lives in order to climb the corporate rungs at work.

In fact, according to the study, 15% of all male employees and 21% of all female employees would accept less pay and extend the pace of their personal career advancement to work fewer hours. The study also suggests, however, that Millennials value different contributing factors to their personal advancement. What is the impact of these findings?

“Millennials are not afraid of working hard,” says Terri McClements, US Human Capital Leader for PwC, “it’s that the experience is equally important to them as putting in the hours it takes to achieve a certain title or role.”

While the results of the NextGen study have the potential to significantly affect workplace culture as corporate leaders adapt to accommodate the needs of this emerging workforce majority in an effort to improve employee retention and create effective talent development programs, the real impact just might be felt in the mentor/mentee relationships between non-Millennial senior level executives and Millennials.

This is especially true in the case of senior level female executives who choose to act as mentors to Gen Y rising stars within their company. With Millennial attitudes differing from non-Millennials in some key areas, how can these two generations of female workers connect in a way that is meaningful and beneficial for everyone involved, including the company?

Why Do We Need Male Mentors and Sponsors?

Mentors and Sponsors

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

By now, we know that mentors and sponsors are critical for our career advancement. We need mentors who can be our sounding boards and give us advice, and we also need sponsors who push us toward stretch opportunities and have our backs behind the scenes.

Mentor and sponsor relationships with women may come more naturally than those with men, but there simply aren’t enough senior women to go around. We ask a lot of senior women. It’s time we ask senior men to do more to help level the playing field for women in the pipeline to the top.

Caroline Ghosn, Co-Founder and CEO of the online mentoring platform Levo League, explained, “Given the ratio of women and men in leadership today, having one-to-one mentoring interactions with only senior women won’t work on its own or be available to everyone who needs them; this is a necessary but not sufficient part of the mentorship puzzle. We need to do two things. First, we need to cultivate relationships with male mentors. Second, women can try turning to resources – like Levo – that access the relatively scarce group of female mentors through technology and provide a one-to-many system of mentoring.”

Levo recently invited Warren Buffett to serve as a mentor within its Office Hours mentoring series, and the company plans to open the doors to more male mentors in the future. Ghosn suggested that women can advance more rapidly by keeping an open mind about the gender of their mentor or sponsor, and making an effort to reach out to senior men for advice and advocacy. Here’s how.

5 Accountability-Factors You Should Look for When Deciding to Join a Company

Mentors and Sponsors

Contributed by Linda Galindo

High performing, accountable job candidates want to join high performing, accountable organizations. When the level of personal accountability one holds is a mismatch with the organization, conflict and a plan to leave shortly after joining is not far behind.

Am I going to join a company that utilizes my work style orientation that places a high value on personal accountability or is it going to be a struggle from the day I say yes and take the job? Here are 5 things to look for when joining a company to decide if the company is accountable.

1. Definition of Success for the role you are accepting.
Is the organization clear on their definition of success for the role? Are you? In order to ensure success, success has to be defined. A pledge of support for your success going into a position is rhetoric unless it is backed by a meeting of the minds on what that means. For example, “Success is bringing standardization to common practices in the department in order to realize economic efficiencies that the organization needs.” If your boss-to-be agrees to that definition of success but does not reveal the “as long as” they have in mind, you are likely doomed. Their point of view may be “Yes, success is standardizing practices as long as you accommodate our high performer’s exception to skip the documentation requirement, or work around the underperformer who is 2 years from retirement.”

2. The organization has a role clarity process.
What you are told in the interview and subsequently sign up for may change dramatically as soon as day one on the job! It is that single line at the bottom of the job description that Human Resources hands you to sign that includes “…and other duties as assigned.” Is there a monthly meeting for the first six months to affirm role clarity? How often do you hear that “what was described in the interview is not what is happening on the job?” Although well intentioned, efforts to paint a clear picture going in does not mean things won’t change as new needs pop up. High performers know it is vital to respond to stay competitive, but leaving on-going role clarity untended is a huge mistake. Without a commitment to on-going role clarity updates, it is unlikely the organization retains accountable, high-performers as their role becomes doing the work of underperformers who are not held accountable to their role clarity.

Read more

May 1, 2013/by The Glass Hammer

Gillibrand Women’s Mentoring Initiative Gains Steam

Mentors and Sponsors

By Robin Madell (San Francisco)

At the end of 2011, we reported on the launch of a new statewide mentorship program in New York: the Gillibrand Women’s Mentoring Initiative. At that time, New York’s U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand announced a partnership with the Council of Urban Professionals (CUP) and the Partnership for New York City. The goal: to find 100 senior executives who were willing to share their time and expertise with 100 up-and-coming women professionals.

The mission was accomplished, and in 2012, the first wave of Gillibrand’s mentor/mentee pairs met quarterly, checking in with the Partnership along the way to report on progress. Among the 200 participants were mentor Lori Lesser, a partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, and mentee S. Jeanine Conley, the Hiring Partner for BakerHostetler’s summer and fall recruitment and a member of the firm’s litigation group.

Lesser and Conley participated in The Glass Hammer’s 2011 article, New Women’s Mentoring Initiative Kicks Off Across New York, and when we last connected with them, they had just met for their first mentorship breakfast powwow. “It was more than I even expected after only our initial meeting,” Conley told us at the time.

A year later, as CUP reviews nominations for the second class of leaders to participate in the initiative, we checked in with Lesser and Conley to find out how their mentoring experience unfolded and what they gained through the initiative.

Best Practices: How One Corporate Sponsorship Program Creates More Confident Women Leaders

Mentors and Sponsors

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Within Citi, enthusiasm and support continues to grow for a new program designed to develop and advance women leaders in Risk. Brian Leach, Head of Franchise Risk and Strategy at Citi and architect of the program, said he designed the “Women in Risk” program (WIR) to focus on developing key leadership attributes.

“We believe the essential attributes of a leader include decision making, building and maintaining a strong professional network and team, and a willingness to take intelligent risks,” he said. The multi-faceted one-year program provides visibility, training, career planning, and access to senior leadership within Risk and across Citi, pairing a carefully selected group of senior, high performing women with a sponsor from the Risk function’s executive committee.

Leach continued, “To be blunt, I expected success. But what I was pleasantly surprised to see was how many of the participants, in the first year, took on new jobs with increased responsibilities as a direct result of the access and the opportunities the program provided them.”

In fact, more than half of the participants moved onto bigger roles in their first year. He explained, “When you go through a program like this, if it is successful, you wind up with an incredibly confident group of people. And if you’re confident, you’re willing to take on new challenges. Once you have that mindset, when opportunities present themselves, I think a lot of things line up.”

Diana Lozano Zay, now a Director in Commercial Risk at Citi, was one of the participants in the program’s inaugural class. She summed it up, “While the WIR program helped me transition to New York, and provided a great sponsor, most importantly, it allowed me to join a virtuous cycle that leads to better opportunities.”

Zay continued, “Since participating, I have received new and increased responsibilities. I feel more confident and am more aware of the importance of ‘taking control of my career. Thus, I have become more vocal about what I want. Further, my managers became more aware of my potential. I feel this new opportunity is a direct result of the program.”

In just three years, the Women in Risk program has produced better prepared, more self-assured female leaders. Here’s how it works, what Citi has learned since the program launched, and advice on how to develop your own high potential sponsorship program.

Rethinking Role Models: Why Millennial Women Want More

Mentors and Sponsors

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

We know that role models are critically important for inspiring women to lead. “You can’t be what you can’t see” is a refrain often repeated by feminist trailblazer Marie Wilson. Young women need strong, visible role models, not only to illustrate the heights to which they can aspire, but also to visualize the pathways they can take to get there.

Yet, new research by Dr. Elisabeth Kelan, Associate Professor in the Department of Management at King’s College London, shows that many young women entering the workforce don’t necessarily identify with the women at the top.

In her new book, Rising Stars: Developing Millennial Women as Leaders, she explains how millennial women are challenging the way we have long understood role models to work. She explained, “What women are doing is questioning. They are looking at the sunny side as well as the shadowy side.”

“It’s about being admired rather than idealized,” she said. And according to Dr. Kelan, that’s a good thing – for women and for companies. Here’s why.

Tips on Coaching the Next Generation

Mentors and Sponsors

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Earlier this week Pershing announced the results of a new study into the financial advisory workforce. The results revealed that while younger generations really desire coaching and mentorship, and older generations want to provide that, there may be a bit of a communication barrier.

But, according to Pershing, it’s critical for financial advisory companies to work out this challenge. After all, in the next decade, 12,000 to 16,000 advisors will retire. Considering the rate of retirement and an anticipated increase in demand, the industry will have to add up to 237,000 people in the coming ten years.

Kim Dellarocca, director and global head of segment marketing and practice management at Pershing, explained, “Each day, the industry sees young advisors exit the industry and never return. Firms need to think about how to recruit and retain younger advisors by understanding their drivers and motivations – and convey to them that being an advisor is a rewarding and fulfilling career.”

Companies have to make sure that financial professionals who are retiring are able to convey all of the institutional knowledge and client servicing know-how to the next generation of advisors. This challenge is not unique to the financial advisory industry – as we are all aware, the difficulties in maintaining a productive relationship between different generations run throughout the ages.

Pershing’s report “The Inaugural Study of Advisory Success” provides some advice on how people approaching retirement can best communicate with their younger employees, so that they feel they are leaving their legacy in good hands.

Start with the Personal: Managing and Coaching with Empathy

Mentors and Sponsors

By Natalie Soltys (Kansas City, Missouri)

In a competitive, fast-paced and ever-changing industry such as information technology, caring and nurturing instincts are usually seen as detrimental to success. Oftentimes, women are encouraged to suppress this natural predisposition in order to grow their careers. (For example, check out Karen Firestone’s recent Harvard Business Review piece.)

However, one executive with Cerner Corporation has found her stride by emphasizing these particular characteristics. She uses cooperation, empathy and thoughtfulness to thrive in this Kansas City-based health care information technology company.

“Building strong professional relationships is very important,” explained Tricia Geris, senior director of Corporate Meetings and Events. “I always start with the personal.”

Having built her career from an event coordinator to an executive with a continuously growing team, her approach has certainly been successful over the last 20 years.

Geris admitted that she didn’t start in 1993 with a clear, laid-out path or direction for her career. With hard work, a good attitude and the ability to model her behavior after other successful women, the “growth and recognition just happened.”

The individuals she worked for, most notably Cerner’s current Chief People Officer, had personality traits that she admired and emulated. They were honest, fair and respectful of everyone from the newest associate to the CEO. They impressed on her the importance of being a good listener and not being quick to judge. What truly helped her along were their great mentoring and coaching skills.

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