By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
New research [PDF] out of INSEAD, the world’s largest graduate business school, shows that women leaders experience less stress at work when they feel good about… being women. This finding may seem simple and obvious, but the rigorous study delves deep into identity theory around leadership and gender, with quantitative research on over 600 female leaders across the globe.
The study, “Me, a woman and a leader: Antecedents and consequences of the identity conflict of women leaders,” was written by INSEAD researchers Natalia Karelaia and Laura Guillén. They found that, especially in male dominated organizations, women leaders experience significant conflict regarding their social identities as both a leader and a woman.
Many women in the study reported spending all day conforming to an aggressive, stereotypically “male” leadership identity at work. Feeling forced to behave in a way that was inauthentic to their more traditionally “female” gender identity – warm, nurturing, cooperative – left these women unhappy at work, stressed out, and unmotivated to lead.
These women saw leadership as something the had to do, rather than something they wanted to do.
But, the research shows, this identity conflict seemed to diminish in companies that were more gender balanced at the top, middle, and entry level. In fact, working in organizations where being a woman is seen as explicitly positive left them more motivated to lead.
“By reducing identity conflict, a more positive gender identity increases the joy of leading and decreases the sense of obligation to do so,” Karelaia and Guillén write.
Spouse Out of Work? What to Do
Work-LifeDespite the slowly churning economic recovery, massive layoffs continue to occur with frightening frequency. For example, with 2013 barely underway, big banks across Wall Street began announcing plans for large-scale layoffs, and other industries will likely follow.
Might your spouse or partner be among those let go? It’s something that paired professionals have to worry about. Even if your own job seems secure, the loss of a partner’s position can wreak financial and emotional havoc on your household and threaten the lifestyle to which your family has become accustomed.
Business owner Lisa Adams recently lived through her husband being out of work. Though he began a new job in January, it required the couple to relocate, adding another layer of stress to an already difficult situation. Adams and her spouse found the loss of her husband’s income hard to manage as well. “We lived within a three months’ severance and no unemployment since he worked for a nonprofit,” she says. “Financially extremely challenging.”
What should professional women do—financially for their family and emotionally for their partner or children—if their spouse or partner loses their job? The Glass Hammer asked Roy Cohen, author of The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide, for his advice. “This is one of the greatest challenges professionals and their families may ever face: unemployment and job loss,” says Cohen. “Its impact on families is enormous and the effect of long-term joblessness has yet to be fully understood or examined.”
He adds that how parents manage the stress and hardship of job loss will have a significant impact on how their children approach change and loss in their own lives. “It is a great opportunity to model the very best behaviors and to show children that it is possible to navigate change successfully and with confidence rather than fear,” says Cohen.
Cohen offers these suggestions on how spouses and significant others can provide support during a job search, for better or worse.
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Enabling Women to Be Authentic Fuels the Desire to Lead
Industry Leaders, LeadershipNew research [PDF] out of INSEAD, the world’s largest graduate business school, shows that women leaders experience less stress at work when they feel good about… being women. This finding may seem simple and obvious, but the rigorous study delves deep into identity theory around leadership and gender, with quantitative research on over 600 female leaders across the globe.
The study, “Me, a woman and a leader: Antecedents and consequences of the identity conflict of women leaders,” was written by INSEAD researchers Natalia Karelaia and Laura Guillén. They found that, especially in male dominated organizations, women leaders experience significant conflict regarding their social identities as both a leader and a woman.
Many women in the study reported spending all day conforming to an aggressive, stereotypically “male” leadership identity at work. Feeling forced to behave in a way that was inauthentic to their more traditionally “female” gender identity – warm, nurturing, cooperative – left these women unhappy at work, stressed out, and unmotivated to lead.
These women saw leadership as something the had to do, rather than something they wanted to do.
But, the research shows, this identity conflict seemed to diminish in companies that were more gender balanced at the top, middle, and entry level. In fact, working in organizations where being a woman is seen as explicitly positive left them more motivated to lead.
“By reducing identity conflict, a more positive gender identity increases the joy of leading and decreases the sense of obligation to do so,” Karelaia and Guillén write.
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Being Authentic – What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Ask A Career CoachAre you an authentic leader? It’s a big topic. Carl Jung said, “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” It’s the topic of my upcoming book. It’s a topic that’s very personal to me and it’s a topic that is very universal. We feel our best and most inspired when we can be authentic – and we create the greatest contributions to our workplaces when this happens. Yet, there are many challenges to our being authentic leaders.
One of them is love. For Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d write a blog post about “what’s love got to do with it” – with being authentic.
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Breaking the Ice with New Clients
Next Level“Don’t be the faceless name who’s suddenly appeared on the client’s bill.”
–Julie A. Fleming, JD
Many people, particularly in the professional services, establish long-term relationships with clients that may span years or even decades. Yet when you’re first assigned to work with new clients at the beginning of a project, you may know nothing about them.
How can you establish rapport and trust with a new client and learn how to break the ice? For answers, we asked a panel of professionals across the legal, finance, and technology industries for their experience and insights.
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How Do You Define a Good Company for Executive Women?
Industry Leaders, LeadershipLast week the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE) released its 2013 Top 50 Companies for Executive Women list. The annual list has served to continuously raise the bar on what it means to be a “top company.”
For example, Carol Evans, CEO of NAFE and President of Working Mother Media, explained that initially, to make the list, a company had to have at least one woman on its board of directors to even apply for consideration. But, as more companies elected women to their boards, NAFE bumped that requirement up to two women per board two years ago.
“We are hoping to raise it to three in the future,” she continued. “And you do get more points for having more than two women on the board now.”
Beyond the boardroom, NAFE also takes into account factors like advancement programs, the numbers of women rising to the top, the percentage of women running billion dollar divisions, the percentage of women reporting to the CEO, the percentage of women in the top 10% and 20% of earners at the company, and the percentage of women leading profit and loss functions.
All of these factors reveal whether a company enables women to take charge as leaders. But, Evans says, even though companies are evolving to be more female-supportive, it’s not time to celebrate just yet. There’s still a long way to go.
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Voice of Experience: Maura O’Sullivan, Partner, Finance, Shearman & Sterling
Voices of ExperienceAfter over 25 years in law, Maura O’Sullivan, a partner in the Finance Group at Shearman & Sterling, has developed a keen understanding of how to serve clients and how to do exceptional work. But she’ll never forget the early days.
One of her early assignments as an associate sparked her interest in complex deals and taught her the importance of making a difference on behalf of clients. “News Corp is a big player today,” she recalled, “but in the early ‘90s, it was having financial difficulty. As a member of the Shearman & Sterling team advising News Corp, I helped negotiate a workout of all of its debt globally. There were over 100 different credit facilities and about 150 lenders involved.”
Even by today’s global standards such a level of complexity would be considered significant – but at the time it was almost unheard of. She explained, “The corporate organization chart – if you put it on the wall – covered 10 feet. I spent my mornings talking with European lenders, my afternoons in the US, and my nights with Australian and Japanese banks. We got all of the lenders to agree to a standstill.”
“That, as a deal, will always stand out because of the sheer complexity and the opportunity to be creative. Starting with News Corp and continuing to this day, workouts and restructuring are among the more interesting things that I do. I like to find solutions that help my clients.”
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Tips on Coaching the Next Generation
Mentors and SponsorsEarlier 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.
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Davos: Women and the Leadership Gap
Industry Leaders, LeadershipTwo years ago, the World Economic Forum introduced a gender quota of sorts – to raise the percentage of women at its annual event in Davos, which I called “embarrassingly low.”
In 2010, only 17 percent of attendees were women, so the WEF decided that moving forward, for every four men each company sent to Davos, they’d have to send one woman. This year, after two years of the quota system at the elite gathering, well, not much has changed. The percentage hasn’t risen at all. In 2013, only 17 percent of attendees were women.
What’s going wrong?
According to The Guardian’s Jane Martinson, many companies are sending only four men, and forfeiting their last ticket rather than send a woman. And as Quartz’s David Yanofsky wrote, “Comparing the conference’s gender bias to that of the world population–49.7% women–means that one is 66% less likely to encounter a female participant at Davos than almost anywhere else in the world.”
But in truth, the 17 percent ratio is simply business as usual. As Barnard College President Debora Spar wrote last September:
The Davos gender gap is just a representation of a larger problem – a global leadership gap that leaves fewer women in charge of a world that sorely needs them. After all, if some of the best leaders aren’t making it to the top simply because they are female, that means some sub-par leaders are taking their place simply because they are male.
Apparently, our institutions would willingly withstand underwhelming leadership rather than do the hard thing and look beyond the “think leader, think male” stereotype – and this should call into question every other lazy decision these institutions have implemented.
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The Art of Giving Effective Feedback
Managing Change“The most important thing to remember when giving effective criticism is that it is feedback, not failure. The whole reason you give criticism is to help one grow.”
–Elle Kaplan,
CEO & Founding Partner,
Lexion Capital Management LLC
When it comes to workplace critiques, perhaps the only thing more challenging than receiving criticism gracefully is giving it effectively. While at first blush it may seem this is one area where it’s easier to give than to receive, providing difficult feedback to employees or peers is not for the faint of heart.
Those who are “people pleasers” may have a particularly tough time delivering news that no one wants to hear, for fear of being disliked as a result. They may therefore hold back accurate information, skewing reviews to avoid negative comments. This is a mistake, because when criticism is given badly, it can be ignored or even result in the opposite of what was intended.
The good news is, you can learn to give more effective criticism and help advance your own career at the same time. Here’s how.
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Thinking of starting a part-time business? Careful of that non-compete clause
Expert AnswersPutting your professional skills to use in a personal sideline can offer great financial rewards, personal satisfaction and learning opportunities. What’s more, with increasing use of the internet and flexible working patterns, it’s becoming more feasible to combine your own business with full time employment. Before you get started however, you’ll need to consider the implications of non-compete clauses in your current employment contract.
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