5 Reasons NOT to Take a Promotion

lateralmoveBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

You are offered a sideways move, either in your organisation or to transfer to another company. Should you take it? While it might be tempting to hold out for a promotion, don’t disregard the possibilities presented by taking a lateral move. We asked five experts for their advice on taking a step sideways.

  1. Plan for the long term

    “A lateral move that is made capriciously may be a career limiting move; however, a lateral move that is part of an intentional plan can propel a career forward over the long term,” says Diane Youden, a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers specialising in HR effectiveness.

    Youden advises taking stock of your career path. Where are you now and where do you want to be? A sideways step might be the best thing to do to put you on course for your end goal and further career opportunities down the line.

    As well as considering the job prospects and how these fit with your overall career trajectory, think about who you work with now and who you could be working with if you said yes to taking that lateral move. “If your current supervisor is not a strong sponsor or champion for you, moving laterally can remove this obstacle and reset your career path,” says Youden. “A lateral move can be a strategic move when it broadens your network with key company decision makers, gives you more visibility, gains global exposure, or enhances management responsibilities. All of these attributes contribute to making an individual a more well-round and broader business focused resource – a desirable attribute in your career planning.”

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Is Your Appearance the Key to Fast-Tracking your Career?

lookismContributed by Helen Crossland (London)

Judging people on the basis of their physical looks is a fact of reality these days. Evidence also suggests that the culture of “lookism” within society now has such a foothold in the workplace that a person’s physical appearance can have as much influence on his or her career prospects as his or her performance in the office or boardroom. Whilst very few organisations will openly admit it, many businesses recruit, retain or promote employees on the basis of their attractiveness or how their appearance best complies with the image the organisation wishes to present. In certain circumstances, this can lead to job applicants and employees being discriminated against or harassed in the workplace purely on the basis of how they look.

It is a depressing thought that besides any other challenges women might face in the workplace, their progression up the career ladder might be more dependent on their looks than their brains or achievements. However, there is strong statistical evidence to show that women who wear make-up in business get better jobs and are promoted more quickly. In a survey reported in The Times last year, 64% of directors interviewed believed that women who wore make-up in the workplace look more professional, lending support to the theory that women are more likely to benefit career wise if they conform to this ideology.

The Guardian published a similar report which concluded that “attractive applicants have a better chance of getting better paid jobs.” The article also quoted a survey which found that women spend one fifth of their earnings on trying to look good in the workplace in the belief that their image will play a significant role in their career path.

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Executive Women in East Asia: Still Few and Far Between, But Growing in Number

istock_000003577385xsmall1By Lily H. Li (New York City)

Women make up only 10% of all the executives in South Korea and most corporations have only one or two female executives. And it is worse in the financial industry: Hye-Ryun Kang and Chris Rowley note in their case study, “Women in Management in South Korea: Advancement or Retrenchment?,” in Women in Asian Management that out of 710 executives in 140 companies only 1.1% in that East Asian country’s finance firms are female.

“Contrasting with worldwide trends, this time of feminization in financial areas,” observe Kang and Rowley, pointing to data that show South Korea’s ranking behind Canada (35%), the United Kingdom (33%), Mexico (22%), Hong Kong (21%), China (19%) and Egypt (11%) in terms of the percentage of female managers.

So why the disparity? To begin, culture. “Confucianism is often characterized as a system of social and ethical philosophy rather than a religion,” explains Judith A. Berling, a professor of Chinese and comparative religions at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. “[It] built on an ancient religious foundation to establish the social values, institutions, and transcendent ideals of traditional Chinese society.”  And Confucian values support male superiority and female subordination, according to Vimolwan Yukongdi and Rowley in  their book  The Changing Face of Women Managers in Asia.

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Diversity Hiring: An Asset for Asset Management?

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istock_000000314707xsmall1by Liz O’Donnell (Boston)

The number one hiring request at fund management firms right now is for diverse candidates, says Karen Fenaroli, a recruiter who specializes in senior level jobs at asset management firms. It sounds encouraging, but is it really? Are the requests for diverse candidates a response to the growing body of literature and research that shows a strong correlation between women at the top and healthy bottom lines? Has Wall Street decided more women and people of color makes for better business? Or are human resource professionals merely mandating that their hiring managers simply follow the Equal Employment Opportunity Guidelines. As Fenaroli puts it, “Are they looking for an appropriate perspective of women in management or just checking off a scorecard?” The answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Clara Sierra is the Executive Vice President of mutual fund company Sentinel Investments, and one of the highest ranking people at the firm. She has an impressive resume having worked at AIG and Alliance Capital before joining Sentinel.  She is also female, Hispanic and a mother.

“On paper I look like everyone else,” she says, “but in real life, I don’t look like anything in the room.” So when she got a call from a recruiter who told her she was the hottest ticket in town and not to worry what the job entailed, just know the position was “top echelon, corner office and they want a woman,” Sierra thought it was “bombastic.”

James Walsh, author of “Mastering Diversity: Managing for Success Under Anti-Discrimination Laws“, says hiring managers are looking first, for great people and second, not to get sued. “The key question is do you want a diverse payroll or do you want diverse people working for you? Is diversity something you look for in the individuals you hire?”
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Playing the Corporate Chess Game: Mastering Strategies for Career Success

jcarterphoto1Contributed by Jessica Faye Carter

Success strategies in the corporate world bear a surprising resemblance to those employed in the game of chess. There’s a reason for this: corporate contexts and chess share certain commonalities.  Both are games of strategy and patience, of mental dexterity over physical strength, and combine offensive and defensive measures to achieve the desired outcome.  In other words, they’re both “mind” games, which require the employment of strategic efforts for advancement and winning.  These strategic efforts are often described as “corporate chess.”

Such strategies are of particular importance to the career development of professional women of color, because they have made markedly less progress in the workplace than their ethnic male and white female counterparts. According to Catalyst, women are 15.7% of corporate officers, but only 2% of them are women of color. 

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Five Tips For Preparing for Your Mid-Year Review

istock_000002769502xsmall1by Elizabeth Harrin (London)

This is the time of year when we dredge up those objectives documents we produced with our managers back in January and assess whether we’re on track.  The half-year review process differs from company to company, but chances are your boss will be asking you if you’re going to hit your targets for 2009 – and if you haven’t made much progress so far then the next six months are going to be tough.

Here are five tips for preparing for your review:

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LGBT in the Workplace: One Executive Woman’s Story

As women in the workplace trying to break the glass ceiling in Corporate America and professional services, we certainly have our challenges. But, imagine if, on top of those, you felt like your brain was out of sync with your body and you had to hide that fact from co-workers and friends. Today, as our last piece covering LGBT issues in the workplace, we share with you the challenges faced by a now-female executive who transitioned from being a male executive while trying to maintain a high-powered IT career.   

 

austin_chronicle_headshot1“Transitioning in the workplace is much like a chess game,” explained Meghan Stabler, an IT executive with BMC Software who transitioned from male to female while working for the company. “You are already laying out multiple game plans based on the planned results and things that are happening today.  In other words, you have to think to yourself:  I want this down the road and, to make that happen, I need to have these conversations with these people and this policy in place.  On top of that, it is like the dominos configuration. The objective of the transitioning individual is to lay that domino pattern out so that when they need to, they just tip the first domino and everything falls into place.”

 

The decision to transition from male to female was not a simple one for Meghan, although, as a young boy living a very happy childhood in England, she had always felt trapped in the wrong body.  “It was one of those things as a child – I didn’t quite know what it was but I felt there was something different about me. It wasn’t until about 10 or 11 when I saw a newspaper article about a tennis player called Renee Richards [who had transitioned from male to female] when the proverbial light bulb went off over my head.”  Puberty was even more difficult for Meghan because she felt that her body was changing in ways her brain was telling her was wrong. “I was going to bed at night praying for three things – I would wake up a girl, that my parents would still love me and that my wardrobe would change.  And then I would wake up in the morning in tears because nothing has changed.”

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Pride Month: Making it Easier for Professional Women to “Come Out” in Corporate America

istock_000006997296xsmall1Nancy, a manager of a creative group in a large financial company in the Fortune 500, was facing a dilemma that an estimated 21% of employees in the workplace also face. Soon after joining the company, she had to figure out how to “out” herself as a lesbian to her boss who had “no clue” about her sexual orientation.

“It was very uncomfortable for me to figure out how to say something to him,” she said,  “The idea of actually having to tell him was so weird.  I hadn’t had to think about it [when I was running my own company] and all of a sudden I was in a position where I had to choose to explain.”  She decided to “come out” to her boss in an indirect way, through an offhanded mention of her same-sex partner in casual conversation.  And, she added, while her boss was noticeably surprised, it was “no problem.”  She continued, “It was just a very interesting sort of experience from that social/work perspective.”   To avoid the same awkward situation in the future, she decided to head up the company’s LGBT initiative.  “I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone,” she laughed.  “I was excited about the opportunity to lead the group.  And it was an easy way to “come out.”  I just say, ‘Oh, by the way I lead the Pride group.’” 

But for lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT)-identified individuals who have chosen not to “come out” as LGBT in the workplace, simple coffee break conversations represent a potential minefield.  While heterosexual couples comfortably discuss their significant others, LGBT employees who choose to remain closeted may not be as comfortable.

Anika K. Warren, co-author of “Building LGBT-Inclusive Workplaces,” the recently-released Catalyst report on LGBT employees in corporate Canada, says that even the simple question of weekend plans, posed to a LGBT co-worker who is not “out” can cause significant added stress: s/he may have to edit activities that might “out” her/him or must be particularly conscious of the pronoun used for her/his significant other.  

Warren, a scholar with over 10 years of work on LGBT issues, says that the “hetero-normative assumptions” of heterosexual co-workers is one of the main stumbling blocks.  “The everyday assumptions that people make create a hostile work environment for people who don’t have similar experiences or who don’t necessarily want to share their experiences.” 

So what stops people from disclosing to co-workers that they are LGBT? Warren said, “Although there are diverse perspectives among the LGBT community in general, we’ve identified for the purposes of our research that employees who were not out in the workplace were not out for one of two reasons: either they have a preference to keep their personal and professional lives separate or they fear potential repercussions.  For those employees that are out at work, they cited a range of reasons—personal and professional—including the desire to (1) be authentic (2) form stronger relationships, (3) become role models, and (4) combat homophobia directly.”

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Simmons Survey: Businesswomen Take Risks Too

Contributed by Michelle Fabio

A recent survey of more than 650 managerial women by the Simmons School of Management in Boston has concluded that women business leaders are indeed risk takers, contrary to the common misconception that they are risk-averse; as a glaring example, according to the report, the current financial crisis is often characterized by the media in gendered terms and phrases such as “credit default swap cowboys” with “too much testosterone” in Wall Street’s “Wild West” atmosphere.

Although most mainstream research regarding risk-taking often focuses on hypothetical allocation of financial resources, when the definition of “risk” is expanded to include professional and business opportunities as it was in the Simmons’ survey, the results show that between 56% and 80% of women business leaders are risk takers, especially involving pursuing major changes, new programs, new jobs, and major business development opportunities.

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The Trouble with Working Women

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womenladder.jpgBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

Based on the BBC2 documentary “The Trouble with Working Women,” which ran last week in the UK, it appears that the trouble with working women is, well, men.

“Think manager, think male,” says Professor Ryan from Exeter University, as she stands in front of a board covers in statistics showing that women get a raw deal in the workplace. Only 19.3% of MPs are women. Women earn an average of 17% less than men. Thirty thousand women each year lose their jobs because they are pregnant.

Newsreader Sophie Raworth, who herself has three children under the age of five, visits a boxing club where the trainers tell her that a woman’s place is in the home. She smiles politely while looking like she wants to clock the guy. Later, a roving video both gives members of the public the chance to spill their private thoughts about women at work and I’m surprised at how easy it was for the BBC to find people willing to confess that men should be the breadwinners and women should stick to the kitchen.

Thirty years ago the feminist movement had it cracked – by now we were all supposed to be equal. Another statistic comes through the voiceover: at the rate we’re going it will take another 50 to 60 years to get near equal. The BBC is nothing if not fair, so the presenters visit a woman who runs her own small business and won’t recruit women of child-bearing age. “It’s not illegal,” she says. She doesn’t want to risk everything she’s put into the business by having to bail a woman out during maternity leave.

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