Your professional bio is often the first impression you make when it comes to your executive presence. So how do you get the words right, before you even speak a word?
“Your bio is a strategic play and should be treated as such. A bio can help you get hired, gain visibility, and win you serious respect,” writes Meredith Fineman in the Harvard Business Review, advising from her work on personal branding.
Here’s insight into how you can overcome mistakes that undermine the impact of professional bios and achieve executive presence with yours.
AVOIDING COMMON MISTAKES
Be Consistent Across Platforms
Look at every place your bio appears as a potential touchpoint for elevating your profile and career, and make it the same message. Fineman finds that a big mistake is lack of consistency across platforms. She writes, “If a journalist or recruiter cannot figure out who you are in under 30 seconds (because you have six different bios in six different places), you’ve lost your chance.”
Fineman recommends that everyone have a consistent two-line bio, short bio, and long bio. When it comes to the short versions, she advises to find the 15-second version of yourself professionally, “Think of it as trying to give your bio as an elevator pitch.”
Keep It Fresh
If you’re not updating your bio every six months, then you’re at risk of letting it go stale. Even if your position stays the same, you can reflect new achievements or experiences you’ve collected. Fineman recommends to set a calender reminder.
Use Your Last Name
It sounds more professional and carries more gravitas than your first name when linked to accomplishments.
Use Active Voice & Verbs
Research has identified significant differences between how men and women talk about their career accomplishments (women tend to understate them), and suggests that women can enhance their executive presence by ensuring confident expression about their accomplishments. The bio is an opportunity to do this in writing.
Fineman writes, “When someone has used the passive voice in their bio, it always feels to me like they’re trying to downplay their achievements. The point of your bio is to emphasize your achievements.”
She recommends to eliminate soft language like “trying to” or “attempting to” when speaking about current efforts. “That makes it sound like you’ve already failed. Remove it. You are not attempting to do it, you are doing it.”
Include Selective Achievements & Expand on Them
Your bio is an opportunity to choose your strongest achievements, purposefully include them, and convey what’s so compelling about them. Fineman argues you can’t do that with a list.
Being selective about achievements you include and put meat on them, while drawing in passions. Fineman advises, “This is a professional bio, so while you can include your hobbies, choose carefully and be straightforward rather than coy.”
Include Links To Outcomes & Actions
Treat your bio as a showcase for your work, and make it easily accessible – press releases about awards, pieces you’ve written, published results of your work, visible outcomes. Equally if there’s a call-to-action possibility, such as booking you to speak at an event, link it.
GOING FURTHER – CREATING EXECUTIVE PRESENCE
Beyond getting basics right, your bio is an opportunity to convey your executive presence. This may be especially important for women because executive presence is in the eye of the beholder and it’s more likely to be conferred upon men.
In an article entitled Executive and Board Candidate Bios: Executive Presence on Display, Paula Aisnof, Principal & Founder of Yellow Brick Path, shares perspective on how you can.
Try asking these questions.
Could I change the name & mistake it for somebody else?
Aisnof comments that most corporate bios are highly undifferentiated, providing little insight into the person behind the words, “Change the names and locations and those bios could be about 80% of executives.”
A good way to avoid this is to immerse yourself into creating your bio, whether you’re writing it. When leaders hands-off delegate their bio, they delegate their personal brand. Aisnof writes,“One reason for the overwhelmingly blandness is that bios are frequently written by third parties who do not necessarily understand the executive’s story or the targeted audience.”
If you want your bio to be involving, get involved with it.
Does it tell a story that builds my executive presence?
“Whether used for business purposes, for advancing an executive’s visibility through professional or community activities, or for job search,” writes Aisnof, “executives these days must reach beyond being a commodity in an overcrowded market of similarly accomplished peers.”
Her advice is that bios need to have a story that “entices the reader to want to get to know the executive personally and understand his or her unique talents and value.”
Harness the persuasive power of storytelling for your personal brand. This doesn’t mean turning your bio into a mini-novel or downgrading its professionalism. It means ensuring your bio reflects an engaging narrative of how your achievements, experience, and journey reflect your unique talents and value. Does it tell a story about how you’re a thought leader? Strategic foresight and execution has been identified as one of the seven skills you need to thrive in the C-suite.
Does the first paragraph bring me to life as an executive?
Aisnof advices, “The bio should immediately and accurately create a picture of the person being described, portray a person with distinguishing capabilities and qualities, and communicate the subject’s level of authority, responsibility, and expertise.”
Do you know what motivates you, what makes you excellent at what you do, why people like to work with you, and what others say about you? Aisnof has previously found that an executive brand comes down to “essense factor – who they are”, “guru factor – what they know”, and “star factor – what they do and how they do it.”
Have I given compelling and differentiating specifics?
Emphasize specifics, not generics. Don’t highlight “leadership skills”. Instead, demonstrate what makes you a remarkable leader.
“It is the specifics that set the executive apart from other great leaders and outstanding communicators,” writes Aisnof. In the best bios, the reader will come to the conclusion that the executive is exceptional based on the information presented rather than being told by the executive that he or she is great.”
The same goes for accomplishments. Aisnof urges, “These should be earthshaking, company-saving, award winning events supported by quantitative results where possible and be related to the interests of the targeted audience,” without disclosing sensitive corporate or client information.
Is this a board candidate bio?
If so, then Aisnof recommends including: any boards – including non-profit on which you already have served; reflecting any corporate, civic, or charitable-focused leadership roles that demonstrate ability to guide an organization; any awards especially outside your company that have recognized your accomplishments; and any media coverage, publications, or speaking appearances. Ask from the selection committee perspective: “What is the most important and differentiating contribution the executive would be making to the group?”
When embraced, managing your bio can be part of strategically managing your career advancement.
By Aimee Hansen
Voice of Experience: Susanne V. Clark, General Counsel, Senior Managing Director; Centerbridge Partners, L.P.
People, Voices of ExperienceClark has lived the philosophy of “smart risks,” with a career path that has involved a series of decisions to step outside of her comfort zone, each of which added a new layer of experience.
She began her career as a capital markets lawyer at Shearman & Sterling and after a few years joined Goldman Sachs in its Investment Banking Division, which expanded her responsibilities and skills to the broad range of investment banking services. She later joined a team working for Goldman’s public parent company, which extended her responsibilities and had the benefit of allowing her to see the business through an even broader lens, interacting with all of Goldman’s divisions including sales and trading, prime brokerage, research and asset management.
She became increasingly curious about asset management from Goldman’s dealings with fund clients, took a leap and reached beyond her historical skill set to join Amaranth Group, her first experience working directly for an investment adviser. From there, she took her first general counsel role at Basso Capital Management, which she found was a perfect place to learn how to hold her own as a general counsel. From there, she joined Centerbridge Partners, a private investment firm that manages capital for the world’s most prominent pensions, endowments and foundations, where she is a Senior Managing Director and the firm’s chief legal officer. In each case, she let the excitement of a new challenge overtake the fear of failure.
At Centerbridge, she has designed and developed its Legal & Compliance department, which she credits as the professional achievement she is most proud of so far, having built the department from the ground up, but with ample credit to her team for their role in the department’s success. “We have a diverse team of professionals who are dedicated to each other and their work. It is a pleasure to step back and observe how capable they are,” Clark said.
Confidence Counts
Clark knows that it’s good to be humble, but cautions women not to confuse humility with unhelpful and unnecessary self-deprecation. She says that early in her career, she wrote in a self-evaluation that she needed to “gain confidence in her new role.” Although her intent was just to set personal goals, that comment found its way into the next year’s review – “Be more confident.” Clark recalls. “Seeking to convey that I was eager to learn, I unwittingly created a false impression that I was unsure of myself. It was a good lesson to have learned early on.”
An Ideal Industry for Women
Clark finds there is an inaccurate presumption that the asset management industry is a man’s world. “In fact, investment firms are a great place for women because there is no glass ceiling. In general most asset management firms are meritocracies where success is defined and driven by one’s work product and results,” she says. “It’s a dynamic industry that offers great career mobility for motivated professionals who do excellent work.”
Making an Impact
She has been following recent studies on board composition, which show that better decision making occurs on boards of directors that include women. And she has started to see more and more women in the GC seat within the fund industry. “It excites me to see these high-impact women at complex firms who are doing a great job for their firms.”
During her early years in large organizations, she participated in and benefitted from programs that focused on career development. At other firms, she finds the approach may be more organic, but equally powerful provided that the organization is focused on the growth of its professionals, as is the case at Centerbridge. Whether large or small, she believes that firms benefit from good managers who prioritize the career development of others.
Outside of the firm, Clark participates in various mentoring platforms and professional peer groups – including a few for C-suite women – where she has “made many long-standing friendships.” She notes that “These groups provide a context for exchanging professional insights, sharing pitfalls and triumphs, establishing connections and collecting wisdom that covers the full career arc.” Among Clark’s favorite mentoring moments was the fast-paced award-winning Minute Mentoring® program, which she describes as speed dating for career success.
Clark’s philanthropic activities are largely focused on education, including sitting on the board of an independent school in Connecticut. She also participates in a foundation that focuses on education. Though it’s not limited to girls, the group benefits girls as well as boys by helping them develop their confidence and a wide range of life skills.
By Cathie Ericson
Building Executive Presence with Your Professional Bio
Career Advice, Next Level“Your bio is a strategic play and should be treated as such. A bio can help you get hired, gain visibility, and win you serious respect,” writes Meredith Fineman in the Harvard Business Review, advising from her work on personal branding.
Here’s insight into how you can overcome mistakes that undermine the impact of professional bios and achieve executive presence with yours.
AVOIDING COMMON MISTAKES
Be Consistent Across Platforms
Look at every place your bio appears as a potential touchpoint for elevating your profile and career, and make it the same message. Fineman finds that a big mistake is lack of consistency across platforms. She writes, “If a journalist or recruiter cannot figure out who you are in under 30 seconds (because you have six different bios in six different places), you’ve lost your chance.”
Fineman recommends that everyone have a consistent two-line bio, short bio, and long bio. When it comes to the short versions, she advises to find the 15-second version of yourself professionally, “Think of it as trying to give your bio as an elevator pitch.”
Keep It Fresh
If you’re not updating your bio every six months, then you’re at risk of letting it go stale. Even if your position stays the same, you can reflect new achievements or experiences you’ve collected. Fineman recommends to set a calender reminder.
Use Your Last Name
It sounds more professional and carries more gravitas than your first name when linked to accomplishments.
Use Active Voice & Verbs
Research has identified significant differences between how men and women talk about their career accomplishments (women tend to understate them), and suggests that women can enhance their executive presence by ensuring confident expression about their accomplishments. The bio is an opportunity to do this in writing.
Fineman writes, “When someone has used the passive voice in their bio, it always feels to me like they’re trying to downplay their achievements. The point of your bio is to emphasize your achievements.”
She recommends to eliminate soft language like “trying to” or “attempting to” when speaking about current efforts. “That makes it sound like you’ve already failed. Remove it. You are not attempting to do it, you are doing it.”
Include Selective Achievements & Expand on Them
Your bio is an opportunity to choose your strongest achievements, purposefully include them, and convey what’s so compelling about them. Fineman argues you can’t do that with a list.
Being selective about achievements you include and put meat on them, while drawing in passions. Fineman advises, “This is a professional bio, so while you can include your hobbies, choose carefully and be straightforward rather than coy.”
Include Links To Outcomes & Actions
Treat your bio as a showcase for your work, and make it easily accessible – press releases about awards, pieces you’ve written, published results of your work, visible outcomes. Equally if there’s a call-to-action possibility, such as booking you to speak at an event, link it.
GOING FURTHER – CREATING EXECUTIVE PRESENCE
Beyond getting basics right, your bio is an opportunity to convey your executive presence. This may be especially important for women because executive presence is in the eye of the beholder and it’s more likely to be conferred upon men.
In an article entitled Executive and Board Candidate Bios: Executive Presence on Display, Paula Aisnof, Principal & Founder of Yellow Brick Path, shares perspective on how you can.
Try asking these questions.
Could I change the name & mistake it for somebody else?
Aisnof comments that most corporate bios are highly undifferentiated, providing little insight into the person behind the words, “Change the names and locations and those bios could be about 80% of executives.”
A good way to avoid this is to immerse yourself into creating your bio, whether you’re writing it. When leaders hands-off delegate their bio, they delegate their personal brand. Aisnof writes,“One reason for the overwhelmingly blandness is that bios are frequently written by third parties who do not necessarily understand the executive’s story or the targeted audience.”
If you want your bio to be involving, get involved with it.
Does it tell a story that builds my executive presence?
“Whether used for business purposes, for advancing an executive’s visibility through professional or community activities, or for job search,” writes Aisnof, “executives these days must reach beyond being a commodity in an overcrowded market of similarly accomplished peers.”
Her advice is that bios need to have a story that “entices the reader to want to get to know the executive personally and understand his or her unique talents and value.”
Harness the persuasive power of storytelling for your personal brand. This doesn’t mean turning your bio into a mini-novel or downgrading its professionalism. It means ensuring your bio reflects an engaging narrative of how your achievements, experience, and journey reflect your unique talents and value. Does it tell a story about how you’re a thought leader? Strategic foresight and execution has been identified as one of the seven skills you need to thrive in the C-suite.
Does the first paragraph bring me to life as an executive?
Aisnof advices, “The bio should immediately and accurately create a picture of the person being described, portray a person with distinguishing capabilities and qualities, and communicate the subject’s level of authority, responsibility, and expertise.”
Do you know what motivates you, what makes you excellent at what you do, why people like to work with you, and what others say about you? Aisnof has previously found that an executive brand comes down to “essense factor – who they are”, “guru factor – what they know”, and “star factor – what they do and how they do it.”
Have I given compelling and differentiating specifics?
Emphasize specifics, not generics. Don’t highlight “leadership skills”. Instead, demonstrate what makes you a remarkable leader.
“It is the specifics that set the executive apart from other great leaders and outstanding communicators,” writes Aisnof. In the best bios, the reader will come to the conclusion that the executive is exceptional based on the information presented rather than being told by the executive that he or she is great.”
The same goes for accomplishments. Aisnof urges, “These should be earthshaking, company-saving, award winning events supported by quantitative results where possible and be related to the interests of the targeted audience,” without disclosing sensitive corporate or client information.
Is this a board candidate bio?
If so, then Aisnof recommends including: any boards – including non-profit on which you already have served; reflecting any corporate, civic, or charitable-focused leadership roles that demonstrate ability to guide an organization; any awards especially outside your company that have recognized your accomplishments; and any media coverage, publications, or speaking appearances. Ask from the selection committee perspective: “What is the most important and differentiating contribution the executive would be making to the group?”
When embraced, managing your bio can be part of strategically managing your career advancement.
By Aimee Hansen
Mover and Shaker: Julie Moog, Director, Business Information Security Office, TIAA-CREF
Movers and ShakersMoog began her career as an intern with Ernst and Young’s technology risk services department, which then translated into her first full-time role post-graduation. She spent the next five years there handling a myriad of responsibilities from internal audit to regulatory compliance to vendor management for several financial services firms. The work often had to be completed quickly and under pressure since she was with the clients for a brief amount of time. “I loved being a consultant because it gave me deep insight into the financial services sector and provided an excellent base from which to launch my career. You have to be a problem solver with quick turnarounds but high-quality work,” Moog says.
Her decision to leave EY presented her with an important learning moment. Leaving a first job that had been such a positive experience is always challenging because it is all that you know. “You may waver over whether you are making the right choice,” she says, “but in hindsight it was the best thing that I could have done.”
Moog then became an information risk manager within the investment bank side of JP Morgan Chase, supporting emerging markets for the Americas. The new role entailed frequent travel to South America and fascinating new learning experiences dealing with international regulators and requirements.
She was given the opportunity to oversee a strategic front office application that the firm was deploying across their fixed income, currencies and commodities platforms. She helped design and implement the controls, before walking international regulators through the control suite that they had developed. Moog then moved into the corporate risk management team where she was the global lead of application assessment services, rolling out solutions firm-wide.
Tackling New Challenges
From there she went to work at TIAA-CREF within the IT risk management team. She created the BISO (Banking Information Security Office) organization, acting as a liaison between information security and both technology and business partners. The goal of the BISO is to work with senior technology leaders and their business partners to understand risk and cybersecurity topics, from regulatory requirements to the types of services provided by the greater team.
This past December, Moog was promoted to the Information Security Officer for TIAA-CREF’s Trust Company in addition to continuing to head the IT BISO organization. “It’s a great opportunity and challenge that I’m looking forward to,” she says, adding that although she had been in the risk space and security officer role for many years, she never had this level of responsibility. Moog is responsible for the strategic direction of the entire program and reports to the board of directors. “I’ve worked closely in the past with the CIO and CTO but I have never shared in the boardroom on a day-to-day basis. This elevated level of responsibility is an exciting new phase for my career.”
Mentoring and Sponsorship
Although she hasn’t had a formal sponsorship arrangement, Moog has benefitted from informal relationships over the years, starting at EY where there was a strong community of women in all different phases of their careers. “I continue to leverage that network in seeking advice on career and personal choices,” she says adding, “You have to view any mentoring or networking relationship as a two-way street.”
To create a strong community in her current role, Moog and her co-chair launched TIAA-CREF’s Information Security Women’s Leadership Group in 2015. The group’s objective is to build strong women leaders within the cybersecurity team. The group offers education and training, community outreach and networking opportunities. “We wanted a way to engage with each other since we’re in different locations,” she says.
The group has had a successful first year, focusing on both technical hard skills and soft skills for employees, as well as planning a variety of events that are open to everyone in the company. In addition, they organized a Cyber School Challenge for 600 students in the Charlotte area that discussed cyber bullying and issues around creating a positive digital footprint – a program which they intend to expand this year.
Balancing Career and Home Successfully
While there were many moms who worked in the community where she grew up, her own mom stayed at home while Moog and her siblings were in school. When Moog entered the workforce as an intern, she remembers noticing the women who held the title of partners. “Something clicked in me, because I had never really thought about where my career could take me. It was eye-opening to get that long-term perspective that women can succeed in both their personal and professional lives.”
Moog’s father was the primary breadwinner, but she recalls that he was still present in their lives, prioritizing the importance of being home for dinner and coaching teams for her and her siblings. “His work/life balance and work ethic both really stood out to me. He excelled professionally and maintained a high-quality, ethical career path and choices, but was still present in our lives,” Moog says.
As she is newly establishing her family, she strives to emulate his path. “Your career is important but family always comes first and in our fast paced, 24/7 society you can sometimes lose sight of that.” Outside of work, Moog has one focus – her son William who is 18 months. “My husband and I are consumed, and we love every second of it.”
Can Stock Exchanges lead the charge on board diversity?
Pipeline, Women On BoardsRead more
Leading an ERG or a network? How do you get recognized for your work?
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!My first piece of advice is to communicate what you are doing so that senior people can see your leadership skills. This is a good time to ask yourself, is this group institutionally supported? One way to check if it is, is to look at whether it is mandated from the top and has actual participation from leaders and managers in a meaningful way. If it is pure grassroots from the “bottom up” chances are you are not on senior people’s radar for the work that you are doing. Also worth considering is the question – is this network connected to the talent strategy? if not, wine and cupcakes are fine, but don’t expect to be the next CEO because of it.
By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist
Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work
Voice of Experience: Joan M. Dillon, Senior Equity Analyst, Voya Investment Management
Voices of ExperienceDillon has been a healthcare equity analyst for the past 24 years, 17 investing on the buy-side. It was a path she pursued partly based on an interesting college course on investing and portfolio management. A friend mentioned that Dillon was “really good at doing homework,” a skill honed through many hours logged in the library. “This concept resonated with me, and I decided that I should pursue a career in which you never stop learning; where focus and dedication matter; and where complicated projects are the norm – that’s a financial analyst,” Dillon says.
Prior to joining Voya, she was a senior analyst assigned to the health care and consumer staples sectors at Equinox Capital Management.She also served as health care analyst with Dreyfus Corporation, JPMorgan and CS First Boston.In the Wall Street Journal’sAll Star Analyst Survey for 1997, Dillon received the top award as “Best Stock Picker in Health Care Services”.
Her interest in the field is buoyed through the research she does on pharmaceutical and biotech companies, where she learns about new therapies in drug development, makes financial models on the earnings opportunity and calculates the stock’s potential value.She cites several new therapies targeting cancer and Alzheimer’s disease that are in late stage clinical trials and could be on the market helping patients over the next two to three years. “When people find out that you analyze health care companies, they often tell you about the medicines they take and ask you if there’s something new or better coming. So I can be pretty popular at a BBQ,” she says with a laugh.
Advice for Moving Up
Dillon knows the value of keeping your eyes open for opportunities, whether it’s asking your manager for more responsibility or a promotion, spending time working on a team you haven’t worked with before or raising your hand for new projects. She advocates settingprofessional goals every year and viewing your career in annual increments. Sometimes achieving the goal can mean you have to take a class after work or get an advanced degree, as she did, earning her MBA while working full time at an investment bank. Or, it might mean you have to join a new firm to work with different people and gain new experiences.
She also underscores the importance of taking the time to deliver your best work. No matter what the assignment, Dillon recommends over-preparing and practicing, especially when you are presenting to a group, and she always advises people to view their work with a critical eye. “Your work is you. Triple check it because it should always be the best it can be.”
That advice applies at every stage, but Dillon says that especially when you are new, you should be extra cognizant of the impression you are creating. “You’re the person who has a lot to learn so you should always be early to meetings – whether you’re walking in or dialing in. That shows interest, initiative and that you care,” she says. “And those are some traits that help lead to success…no matter what your level.”
By Cathie Ericson
Perspective Taking: How to Utilize It & Benefit from It
Office PoliticsIt could be that you are expressing yourself in a way that makes perfect sense to you, but not to those who you are trying to communicate with. Often someone involved with in-house dispute or adversarial negotiation cannot see the same solutions that a person standing outside the situation can. Sometimes it is necessary to consider a problem from a different vantage point.
Read more
Why Talk is Expensive When it Comes to Boardroom Diversity
Career Advice, Women On BoardsAs much as highlighting the potential that companies could realize if only women were in the decision room, recent findings quantify the tremendous losses that companies are bleeding right now by their absence. The lack of women in boardrooms and executive positions is, plain and simple, being identified as self-sabotage for organizations.
Male-Only Executive Boards Create an Opportunity Cost
Recent research by Grant-Thorton has revealed that the opportunity cost for companies with male-only executive committees in the S&P 500, FTSE 350, and CNX 200 across the US, UK, and India was a whopping US$655 billion in 2014, and US $567 billion in the US alone, or 3% of GDP. The loss results from lower return on assets.
It turns out that talk is not cheap. When it comes to gender diversity at the executive level, talk alone is very expensive. (As is “action” that is PR-strong but falls short of robust follow through on outcomes.)
Only 35 of US S&P 500 companies have at least one woman executive in the boardroom (a far lower ratio than UK or India), but those companies with female executive presence on the board outperformed the all-male executive majority by 1.91%.
Francesca Lagerbeg, global leader for tax services at Grant Thornton said that corporate culture “kick(s) the can down the road” when it comes to board diversity not because they don’t know it’s necessary, but out of short-term fears of what it takes to implement real change.
“These companies are suffering now,” Lagerbeg says. “A lack of action now will make it all the more difficult to respond in the future when both problems are likely to be more acute.”
Executive Women in the Boardroom Equal Better Decisions
What’s noteworthy about this study is it hones in specifically on the presence of at least one female executive within the boardroom, holding female non-executives aside, as plumping up boardroom statistics mostly with female non-execs (UK) still leads to power imbalances on decisions.
“The research clearly shows what we have been talking about for a while: that diversity leads to better decision-making,” said Lagerbeg. “We only looked at listed companies in three markets and the figures are compelling. Now imagine extrapolating the results for all companies globally.”
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently asserted that more women on the boards of financial institutions leads to stability. Iterating opportunity cost, the IMF report states, “Women’s financial exclusion limits the growth-promoting potential of finance and it may also prove costly in terms of lower financial stability.” The authors wrote “…on average, stability is significantly higher in banks with a higher fraction of women in the board of directors.”
Research has also demonstrated that companies with a compelling track record of promoting female executives consistently perform better across 18 measures of profitability.
Despite This, Gender Parity Is A Long Way Off
It’s contrary to the nature of businesses not to evolve when compromised operational strategies lead to loss, but that’s happening on a macro level.
It will take 28 years to achieve gender parity in the boardroom at the present rate of change and that’s not even specific to executive seats.
Forbes contributor Sabina Nawaz asserts that real change will take more than current low levels of consistent jogging towards an abstract goal. Nawaz argues it takes real intensity, including: honest assessments of the presence of women in leadership roles, programs to meet quantifiable metrics by a determined date, and transparently published results. But too many companies are still talking and denying instead of committing.
What If You Don’t Want to Wait?
What about women who want a board seat and don’t want to wait until 2042 before it might be fair game? What about women who don’t want to wait for their company to catch up to the business impact of her voice?
Slow progress is not the same as no progress. This year, there are 11 women executives that are new to Fortune’s 2015 list of Most Powerful Women. Women are gaining ground on leadership positions within boards as well as representation on the committees that select new members.
Just because many companies are self-sabotaging their growth does not mean you have to do the same. If you want a board seat, beginning to make your bid is far better than biding your time until it’s easier to do so.
Forge Your Connections
Develop your connections to existing board members and seek sponsors. The recommendation of board members is the strongest factor in new member selection. If you don’t know the board, it’s unlikely they know you. Take the risk of going beyond your comfort zone with connections.
Be Visible
Janice Ellig, chair of the Corporate Board Initiative of the Women’s Forum of New York, recommends to “pat yourself on the back in a very visible and confident way.” Ellig advises women to “value their ambition” and “stand up and make it known” that you want a CEO or board position.
Actively Seek
Jan Babiak suggests that since 70% of board roles are attained through existing board/management networks, it’s important to cast wide. Connect with high-level professionals outside of your immediate field of work because opportunities may be found where you’re not looking.
All in all, it’s a wake up call to companies: Waiting for gender executive diversity to get easier? It’s a strategy that is costing you.
By Aimee Hansen
Professional Women in France: The Chutes and Ladders
Career Advice, NewsNajat Vallaud-Belgakem, the French Minister of Women’s Rights said that quotas at top tier positions are only part of the solution. She cites training and increased opportunity at the bottom rungs of French companies are what’s truly needed to change French society. Currently, French women are over-represented in part-time jobs which have little chance for career advancement.
And of those women who are well represented, they seem to be concentrated in a few key areas such as the retail and service industries. Vallaud-Belgakem recently said that only 12% of France’s working population is employed within a mixed gender profession. This is evidence of a strong culture of professional segregation alive in France today. Most French industries are either overwhelmingly male or female dominated.
French politics today remains, like certain industries a definite old boys club. The Assemblée Nationale, the Lower House of France’s congress, remains resolutely male, with only 18 per cent of seats held by women. And with the introduction of the quotas in 2011 some big parties have shown they prefer to pay fines rather than introduce the mandatory numbers of women to their ranks.
A Socialist woman politician, who asked not to be named, recently told the Independent that macho attitudes remained dominant in French politics, even on the supposedly progressive Left. “If a man makes a mistake, he’s a poor politician or a poor manager. If a woman makes a mistake, then she is the mistake. She should never have been appointed in the first place.” This attitude is characterized by an incident where Cecile Duflot, the former Housing Minister, appeared in the National Assembly wearing a white and blue summer dress, she immediately received catcalls from other members of the national assembly. The anonymous Socialist politician said: “It is difficult for some French men. But the world is changing, whether they like it or not.”
This seems to characterize a prevalent belief in French society that women are not suitable for leadership. Florence Montreynaud, a leading feminist activist in France stated,“It is still very difficult for a woman to be accepted in a position of power in this country. It may not always be easy for women elsewhere but it is very, very difficult in France. Here, if a man has a strong personality, people say: ‘Isn’t he a powerful character?’ If a woman has a strong personality, they say: ‘isn’t she a difficult person? Isn’t she impossible to work with?’” Montreynaud says this feeling is sometimes characterized in the way French media refer to prominent French women. “Have you noticed, that prominent women in France are called by their first names? It is always Segolene, not Madame Royal. It is Atomic Annie, not Madame Lauvergeon. In a whole page of articles in Le Monde about Madame Nougayrède’s departure, she was constantly referred to as Natalie. That disgusts me. It is way of diminishing people, infantilizing them.” When it comes to high power business roles this attitude can make it hard for women to be taken seriously. “What is very difficult in France is for a woman to be both powerful and feminine. They have to dress like men, with severe suits and short hair, if they want to be half-way accepted,” said Montreynaud.
The present reality and the future progress
But attitudes in government and business seem to be changing. Initially many high profile businesswomen opposed the encroachment of quotas. Some believed that the tight deadlines would result in a wave of unqualified women into high level positions and result in even more discrimination. But after years of trying to change what is seen as the old guard, many now see the quotas a something of a necessary evil. Anne Lauvergeon, the chief of the nuclear power giant Areva said, “The situation in France is abnormal. If we cannot manage otherwise then let’s make things move with quotas.”
Since the introduction of the quotas back in 2011, the rate of women serving on boards of directors or supervisory boards of prominent CAC 40 companies rose by 7.4 points. In just 5 years this rise has tripled the amount of women in these key advisory roles. According to the Ethics and Boards Cabinet, on the 1st of June 2014, 30.3% of boards of directors and supervisory boards within CAC 40 companies were women. France as a whole has had the largest increase in its share of women in governance roles out of all countries within the European Union with an increase of 17.4%.
But despite the progress in general governance bodies within large French companies there is still a long way to go when it comes to the feminization of French executive boards. Between September 2013 and June 2014 the rate of women in CAC 40 companies and SBF 120 companies increased only 0.3 and 0.1 points respectively. This puts these executive boards as of June 2014 at a low 10.3% and 12.1%.
By Ben Rozon
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