By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
Earlier this week, American Banker published its lists of the Most Powerful Women in Banking and Finance, and Women to Watch. For a decade now, the magazine has celebrated the achievements of top women in the industry.
But as Heidi Miller, retired president of JP Morgan’s international business, suggests in her blistering article accompanying American Banker’s list, gender parity hasn’t come nearly as far in that decade as she’d hoped. She writes, “The value of an initiative like this one is that it creates visibility around an issue that still, after all these years, needs every bit of attention it can get.”
Miller points out that even though there are some women in senior management at financial services companies, there aren’t many of them. So many believe the industry to be a paragon of meritocracy – yet, she continues, simply taking a look at who’s in the c-suite should be enough to show anyone that it’s not.
Heather Landy, Editor in Chief of American Banker, agreed. “You would think – even hope – that ten years on, we would no longer need it. Women absolutely remain the exception to the rule when it comes to senior leadership in many industries, including financial services. Because of that, we absolutely do need to continue to publish rankings.”
Drawing attention to the few senior women who have made it to the top reminds us of the systemic challenges in getting there. It pushes us all to work to topple these barriers, and encourages senior women reach out a hand to younger generations climbing the ladder as well. Finally, it expands the vision of what a leader can look like for both women and men.
Why We Need to Keep Celebrating Powerful Women
Featured, Industry Leaders, LeadershipEarlier this week, American Banker published its lists of the Most Powerful Women in Banking and Finance, and Women to Watch. For a decade now, the magazine has celebrated the achievements of top women in the industry.
But as Heidi Miller, retired president of JP Morgan’s international business, suggests in her blistering article accompanying American Banker’s list, gender parity hasn’t come nearly as far in that decade as she’d hoped. She writes, “The value of an initiative like this one is that it creates visibility around an issue that still, after all these years, needs every bit of attention it can get.”
Miller points out that even though there are some women in senior management at financial services companies, there aren’t many of them. So many believe the industry to be a paragon of meritocracy – yet, she continues, simply taking a look at who’s in the c-suite should be enough to show anyone that it’s not.
Heather Landy, Editor in Chief of American Banker, agreed. “You would think – even hope – that ten years on, we would no longer need it. Women absolutely remain the exception to the rule when it comes to senior leadership in many industries, including financial services. Because of that, we absolutely do need to continue to publish rankings.”
Drawing attention to the few senior women who have made it to the top reminds us of the systemic challenges in getting there. It pushes us all to work to topple these barriers, and encourages senior women reach out a hand to younger generations climbing the ladder as well. Finally, it expands the vision of what a leader can look like for both women and men.
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Off Balance: Unequal Work-Life for Parents and Non-Parents?
Work-LifeDo parents get a better deal in the office when it comes to work-life balance? An increasing chorus of workers says yes. A recent article in The New York Times called “When the Work-Life Scales Are Unequal” garnered hundreds of comments reflecting conflicting viewpoints on how to address the perceived inequity.
Some interviewed for the article shared their experience of having to work up to 70 hours a week to pick up the slack covering for colleagues who were on “kid duty.” One interviewee was quoted as saying, “Parents are a special class and get special treatment,” noting that unlike many of the parents with whom she worked, she often sacrificed her own family duties to care for her elderly grandparents because of work commitments.
Marketer Allison Hart says that the conversation brought back memories of serving as an EVP of marketing for an international company earlier in her career. “There were always stacks of work to get done but the hallways were empty by late afternoon because it was Back-to-School night, or Halloween, or recital night, or Little League playoffs, or someone had the chickenpox,” says Hart.
Hart added that while there always seemed to be a good reason for parents to leave work before the end of the day because of their kids, as a single person with no children, she felt she had no comparable “need” to leave early. “I used to joke that if I needed to get my hair done, I would tell people I had a parent-teacher conference, even though I have no children!” says Hart.
Many non-parents chimed in to explain that they feel left out by flex initiatives aimed specifically at moms and dads. This could lead to resentment between the groups, and a difficult office environment. How can managers allay these tensions?
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Flex Execs: How to Get Your Teammates on Board with Your Telecommuting
Featured, Office PoliticsIf you use flex time at work or telecommute, you may find, like Rodney Dangerfield, that you “don’t get no respect.” A report by The Center for Work & Family notes that a primary challenge for organizations that use telecommuting is the “perceived difficulty in monitoring employee performance and measuring employee productivity.” In other words, many office-bound managers and colleagues think flex workers aren’t pulling their weight.
Yet ample research has proven otherwise. A July 2012 study by Stanford University [PDF] researchers found that employees with flexible work arrangements are actually more productive than their office-bound counterparts, despite skepticism over its effectiveness suggested by phrases like “shirking from home.” In the study, telecommuters took 15 percent more calls, worked 11 percent more hours, and had 4 percent higher overall productivity than office colleagues.
In her book Innovations in Office Design: The Critical Influence Approach to Effective Work Environments, author Diane Stegmeier reported on a wide range of studies that echo Stanford’s findings:
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Just How Much Does Emotional Intelligence Matter?
Expert AnswersIt is widely accepted that soft skills make an important difference in how people feel and respond to their boss and senior management. If they feel they are valued, appreciated and heard, they are engaged and motivated to achieve goals set out by leadership.
An indicator of how well we use our soft skills is our level of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is that “something” within us, that something that helps us to sense how we feel and enables us to sympathize with others. Emotional intelligence gives us the ability to be present and listen to someone when they most need it. It is that part of us encouraging us to make good decisions and communicate effectively despite negative emotions and stress.
The four main skills of emotional intelligence are:
Some of us are born with a great deal of emotional intelligence; others are not. Most of us are not aware of how our emotions may be adversely affecting our thinking and our reactions. The good news is that we can learn to increase our emotional intelligence. We can take a simple test to determine our EQ, our level of emotional intelligence. I recommend doing this, as the skills we can measure are the ones we can best improve.
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Wall Street Women and the Power of Networking
NetworkingNetworks can provide many means for support – a way to find out about new jobs or projects, a group of friends with whom to laugh or cry, your own private strategic advisors – and sometimes all of these things at once. The first generation of women on Wall Street learned this very quickly.
“I think networking is critical for advancing in any position, and probably more so for women in finance,” explained Melissa Fisher, author of the new book Wall Street Women.
Fisher’s book is an ethnographic account of the first generation of women to enter the world of finance as professionals. She began following their careers more than two decades ago, and the book relates their career challenges and triumphs from the ‘60s and ‘70s onward. One of the key strands her research revealed was the value of networking – from the very start of their careers and all the way through to today.
“These women are still relatively young, in their 50s and 60s,” Fisher pointed out. “We should be using them as a resource to understand women in the workplace. This is a generation that opened doors – and we need to keep the door open. We can learn a lot from them.”
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Executive Acceleration: Learning from Industry Leaders
Industry Leaders, LeadershipThe number of women making $100,000 or more has grown at a faster pace than it has for men in the United States according to The Washington Post, and Pew research has shown that women are the higher-income spouse in 1 of 5 marriages. Six percent of women earn at least $100,000, and as of 2011, the Catalyst Census showed that women account for 7.5 percent of executive officer top earners in the Fortune 500 companies.
But even though the gap is narrowing incrementally, it’s no news that women still lag behind men in holding top positions in these same companies, and are still paid less than their male counterparts. The perennial questions remain: how can executive women continue to break through these barriers and position themselves to change these statistics? And what can those who aspire to continue their leadership climb learn from other women leaders?
Sharon Hadary and Laura Henderson have attempted to tackle these difficult conundrums in their new book just released this month: How Women Lead: The 8 Essential Strategies Successful Women Know. Hadary and Henderson, who have served on advisory boards for companies like Wells Fargo, KeyBank, and IBM, shared their advice for how women can get ahead—particularly women execs in financial services and tech industries.
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Why Forgiveness is an Essential Leadership Practice
Expert AnswersI was with a good friend and former colleague this week and she was sharing about her family ritual of Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement). Yom Kippur is the day when Jews try to amend their “behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God and against other human beings.” In her family tradition, my friend and her husband talk with their two young kids and ask for forgiveness for hurts. I mentioned to her how fantastic it was that the Jewish faith teaches kids and reminds adults how to take responsibility for their actions and how everyone both learns to ask for forgiveness and also give forgiveness. In my executive coaching work with clients, I’ve discovered that forgiveness is a great leadership practice for our work lives as well.
Have you ever felt slighted by others at work? Do you think you’ve ever hurt a work colleague by your actions? I know I probably thoughtlessly hurt people (and there are definitely a few I am sure I thoughtfully hurt!). My biggest challenge in forgiveness happened when a former boss of mine wanted to transfer me to a different assignment prematurely. She had someone else she wanted to bring in and didn’t even have the courtesy to talk with me herself about her plans. Instead she sent the HR person in. I wasn’t ready to change assignments and she certainly hadn’t consulted me about the change. I was confronted by a sense of failure at leaving a job half-completed and a sense of shame associated with the failure. I carried that hurt and anger for a long time. Then, I saw a Buddhist saying that resonated with me “You are not punished for your anger. You are punished by your anger.” I decided to just let it go.
My anger had definitely impacted my ability to work with her and also my engagement in the work. The lack of trust between us impacted the business and impacted my team. What finally enabled me to let it go was when I acknowledged the emotions in the stages of grief and realized the blessings of that hard experience. The experience had helped me learn about forgiveness. It helped me be humble in the face of failure, learn resilience, and certainly put me on the path to doing what I do now.
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Sharing Global Best Practices for Boardroom Gender Parity
Industry Leaders, LeadershipBy now, you probably know about Norway’s 40% gender quota for corporate boards. You probably also know that a number of countries in Europe are following suit, and that the UK is looking for ways to increase the representation of women in the boardroom. You may also know about the SEC’s rule in the US for public companies to disclose how diversity is considered in filling board seats.
But what do you know about efforts on behalf of countries like Argentina, Brazil, Morocco, or the Philippines to increase the percentage of women directors? In an increasingly global business environment, knowledge about local efforts toward gender equality can be incredibly useful for women in the corporate space.
That’s one reason the law firm Paul Hastings has just released its second gender parity report, Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Women in the Boardroom. Tara Giunta, Litigation Partner at Paul Hastings and co-editor of the report, explained, “In the Second Edition of the report, we focused on corporate governance codes and listing rules, and found that, in a number of countries, diversity was being included. I found it very encouraging as offering a potentially useful strategy and tool to increase diversity on the boards of US companies.”
She continued, “We were hoping that as a law firm, we could contribute to the discussion on gender parity by examining what are the strategies being deployed by different jurisdictions, and identifying the tools and approaches and best practices that can be shared across jurisdictions.”
She added, “As a global law firm we have the ability to bring that to a discussion on a global basis.”
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Maternity Leave in the UK: What You Need to Know
Work-LifeIt is a well known fact that women working in the UK are legally entitled to maternity leave according to UK employment law. However, the exact details of maternity leave rights and obligations are perhaps less well known, and this can make enforcing your maternity leave rights that much more difficult.
Maternity leave: The basics
All female employees are entitled to statutory maternity leave regardless of the hours they work, the job they do or the length of time that they have been with their employer. To exercise this important legal right, it is vital that you notify your employer of your pregnancy at least 15 weeks before your baby is due (around the 24th week of pregnancy). Use an MATB1 form to do this, available from your midwife or GP.
You can start your maternity leave any time from 11 weeks before the baby is due (around the 29th week of pregnancy), although it is worth noting that if you have time off related to your pregnancy within four weeks of your due date then your employer is entitled to commence your maternity leave at that point.
You do not have to take the full statutory maternity leave of 52 weeks (26 ordinary weeks and 26 additional weeks) if you do not wish to, however you are obliged by law to take at least two weeks off work (four if you work in a factory). If your child is stillborn anytime after 24 weeks, you are still entitled to take full statutory maternity leave.
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Voice of Experience: Cindy Davis, Shareholder, Financial Institutions Group, Greenberg Traurig
Voices of ExperienceEven when she was in high school, Cindy Davis knew what she wanted to do for her career. “I wanted be a corporate lawyer, doing deals, and advising executives,” she recalled. She went on to study accounting at the University of Massachusetts, not because she wanted to be an accountant, but because she thought it would give her a competitive edge as a corporate lawyer.
Davis explained with a laugh, “I was one of the few people who went to law school who always wanted to be there.”
After graduating from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, she took a job at a small firm, then gradually moved to larger and larger firms, before winding up at Paul Hastings, where she spent fifteen years, ultimately becoming partner. In 2009, she moved her practice to Greenberg Traurig as a shareholder.
Davis said she is fueled by her enthusiasm for new deals. “I love getting calls from a client on a new transaction. It’s very satisfying to cross the finish line on a particularly complicated deal and then move onto the next one.”
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