By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
To Kelly Hoey, business strategist and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Women Innovate Mobile, leaving her corporate job was a surprise. “I call myself an accidental entrepreneur,” she said.
But, she firmly believes striking out on her own was the right choice. “I tell people this all the time – my life was easier when I practiced law. But I can’t imagine doing anything else now. Do I have moments of doubt? Yes. But I need to pursue this and see where it goes.”
Now, her role at WIM, an accelerator for mobile-focused start-ups founded by women, helps bring her true passion – mentoring – to the fore, as she works to inspire and ignite the next generation of women in the technology space.
“When I started practicing law, I was in Toronto, Ontario. And I had an extraordinary mentor. He was a mentor to all of his younger staff and he would say, ‘I’m training my assassins.’ He wanted the people he trained to be better than him,” Hoey recalled.
The experience had a profound impact on her own career development and goals. “I think for me generally, being seen as and being a great mentor is my greatest professional achievement.”
She continued, “Last August, for my birthday, someone who is a friend and mentee to me handed me a logo in a frame, and said, ‘Kelly, you’ve inspired me to start my own company.’ To be an inspiration to someone – that to me was just jaw-dropping.”
Voice of Experience: Hanna Derry, Managing Director, Technology, Blackrock
Voices of Experience“Be visible,” advised Hanna Derry, Managing Director of Technology at Blackrock.
Derry, who is a COO for one of Blackrock’s global software development divisions, encouraged senior women in financial services technology to recognize their capability for leadership. By talking about their own story, she explained, women can illuminate new pathways for young people advancing their careers.
“Be a visible female leader to set an example for younger women – as well as younger men,” she said. “Be available to mentor so people can hear your story. People want to know your story.”
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Yes…Extroverts and Introverts Can Lead Brilliantly!
Expert AnswersThere is not one single way to lead. Don’t get me started. Nothing irritates me more than hearing from so-called experts that, in their boundless benevolence, they are bestowing on us mere mortals the five laws of management or seven rules of success or three indisputable truisms of leadership.
In reality, as you have already recognized, everyone is unique. Given this basic fact of human nature, how could there possibly be one set of rules on how to manage effectively? There can’t and there isn’t.
The singular method towards being a stellar manager is by channeling yourself.
Yet, many of us expend much time and energy telling ourselves what we should do to be a successful manager. The root of this buzz-kill is the false, damaging belief that we inherently lack some secret management juice that enables ‘real’ leaders to charismatically inspire the masses to do their bidding. Do yourself a favor. Notice when you think to yourself that you ‘should’ engage in some behavior to lead effectively. Replace the ‘should’ with a ‘shouldn’t.’ Because when you work too hard to convince yourself you should do something to succeed, it almost always means you shouldn’t. The key to being the best manager you can possibly be working with – rather than fighting against – your natural strengths.
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Empowering the World’s Women Would Fuel Economic Growth
Featured, Managing ChangeLast week, the World Economic Forum released its Global Gender Gap report for 2012. As usual, Nordic countries dominated the top of the index, which ranks countries on how close they are to minimizing the gap between male and female equality.
In the report, the WEF also highlights a large group of countries, like Japan, Quatar, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia, that have made investments in women’s health and education, but have not removed barriers to women’s participation in the workforce. The study authors, Ricardo Hausmann, Harvard University; Laura D. Tyson, University of California, Berkeley; and Saadia Zahidi, World Economic Forum, believe that by removing the barriers to women’s workforce participation in these countries, the global economy would grow significantly.
Focusing on women’s health and education are only two steps toward equality. Empowering the world’s women at work would fuel economic growth in their own countries and around the globe.
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Do We ‘Think Crisis—Think Female’?
Managing ChangeErin Callan, Zoe Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Patrica Russo: these are the names of women who have been put forth as victims of the notorious glass cliff in the recent past.
The glass cliff, it has been theorized, is when women take on the mantle of leadership during a time of crisis. The position is highly visible and comes with a lot of potential power – but the risk of failure is high; so high in fact, that the board or management committee decides it’s time to try something completely new and different to try and get it right: put a woman in charge.
Often the person peering over this glass precipice is charged with an impossible task, lacks the resources or training to overcome the challenge, or is simply scapegoated for circumstances beyond their control. That’s why it’s called a glass cliff – it’s a gender-based assignment at a very high level, for which failure is eminent.
Glass cliff skeptics suggest that women in such situation select these roles for themselves – if they fail, it’s their own fault and gender bias has nothing to do with it, they argue. On the other side of the coin, the glass cliff theory runs a dangerous risk of treating women as passive puppets – assuming they had no choice or agency in taking on the task.
A new study in the journal Psychological Science refutes both claims – and examines how women and men judge perilous jobs differently, while at the same time corporate management may have a role to play in the unusually high ratio of women to men in these risky roles.
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Is the Law Firm Leadership Track Fair?
PipelineThe National Association of Women Lawyers and the NAWL Foundation have released [PDF] their 7th annual report on women in top law firms, and the numbers are similar to what we have seen before. Too similar, in fact. The percentage of women equity partners is only barely 15 percent and the number of women non-equity partners is only 26 percent. Similarly, women only hold 20 percent of governance committee roles, and only four percent of firms have a female managing partner.
“We are disappointed that women lawyers are still not reaching the highest levels of big firm practice or leadership in significant numbers,” said NAWL President Beth Kaufman, Partner at Schoeman Updike & Kaufman LLP in New York.
The study polled AmLaw 200 firms to examine the differences in pay and promotion between men and women lawyers. And, in fact, women are earning less than men at every level, with the biggest gap at the equity partner level (89 percent). NAWL identified that one potential reason for the discrepancies between men and women concerning pay and promotion may be the pipeline and a rigid structure of advancement at many law firms.
In a profession where rapid advancement up a tightly-defined ladder is the standard path to prestige, women are often pushed out of leadership. “The Survey has repeatedly found that law firm structure has important effects on women’s career paths,” said Barbara Flom, author of the report and Secretary of The NAWL Foundation.
Flom believes that by changing the rules of the advancement system (or rather, creating more paths to success within the system), women would benefit significantly. And so would firms, which would reap the rewards of greater leadership diversity.
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Women and Power: Do We Get It?
Ask A Career CoachThere is a large space between having power and being powerful. Women have historically had a love hate relationship with power. Personally, I am one of them. In some situations in my corporate career, I was in positions of great power but had a hard time exercising it. As women, we have fought throughout history for our rights to be empowered. Why then can we be so ambivalent about power when we get it?
Here’s a personal story that illustrates the point. A few years ago, my company asked me to move to Mexico to turn the business around from our rapid market share declines. I had P&L responsibility, leadership for all functions (including a manufacturing plant and R&D), in total an organization of about 600 people. I felt energized by the challenge. Our turnaround strategy included rapid new product introductions and our team came together to make this happen.
Here was the challenge: our local plant manager, who also had a reporting relationship into the global supply chain head, was hyper-focused on lowering costs. New products would increase plant costs so he was resisting the launch plan. Who had the power to make the call? Technically, me, as I was the P&L leader. Did I exercise that power? Not really. Not the way most men would. Make the call. Move on. Instead of asserting, I found myself negotiating, cajoling, bridge-building. It was a longer and frankly much more painful process, and I didn’t necessarily feel very powerful through it.
Sound familiar?
The story ends well. We tripled our rate of innovation, regained market share and profit. However, the experience taught me important lessons about power. Here’s what I learned about what keeps women from exercising power as men do.
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What Not to Say to a Pregnant Co-Worker
Office Politics“My wife stayed home when our kids were little.”
“I’m sure you’ll be checking in from home.”
“We need to stick with business attire here.”
These were all comments that Kathy D., Esq., from Indianapolis heard from colleagues during her two pregnancies. And she’s not alone: countless other women find themselves bombarded with unwanted—and sometimes downright rude—questions about their pregnancy once coworkers learn about their condition.
Jennifer Wong, founder and CEO of Alt12, which creates mobile apps for pregnancy, health, and parenting, worked for a corporation when she had her first child. Wong says her announcement was met with a “Congratulations. Now how are you going to get your work done?” attitude.
“The immediate questions were about when exactly I was planning to be gone, what was my coverage plan, and would I be working during the 11 weeks I’d be on maternity leave,” says Wong. “Because I was very career driven and 34 years old when I was pregnant—an age many consider to be ‘old’ to be having kids—I got comments from coworkers like, ‘I never thought you would have kids’ or that I would probably need more time to recover because I’m older. The most annoying comments came from those who assumed I was going to give up my career and not come back after my maternity leave.”
Whether the comments relate to if you’ll return to work, how you’re going to manage juggling everything, or the riskiness of having a child after a certain age, it’s important to know how to address them. On the flip side, if you’re working with pregnant colleagues either as an employee or employer, you should know what kinds of comments and behaviors might land you in hot water or subject you to legal action. Our expert panel provides insight on what to say and what to avoid.
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Voice of Experience: Joyce Ulrich, Chief Information Officer, Legg Mason
Voices of ExperienceJoyce Ulrich, Chief Information Officer at Legg Mason, is still learning to get comfortable with her position as a role model. “Some women in the firm have said to me that ‘you are a role model,’” she explained. “A role model is someone whose behavior you emulate, and I had never thought of myself in that way.”
Ulrich, who has spent her entire career in financial services, and all but three of those years in technology, has developed a clear perspective on how women can thrive in the field – and how companies can help them achieve a leadership position.
She encouraged women with less career experience to enter technology, and to figure out what they’re passionate about. “Be a geek. Find your passion for the technology and exploit that. Be flexible and open to learning new things, and don’t be afraid to approach different territory. And especially don’t be afraid to approach new territory that is currently dominated by men.”
As for advice for women who are more senior, she continued, “As I survey the landscape, I’m not sure that as women we’re necessarily good at playing by rules of the old boys’ network.” So we have a choice: we can learn to play by these obscure rules, or not, but what I would really prefer is for the rules to go away altogether.”
“I want to lead by example,” she added, “I have always tried to lead an honorable life. I hope that is what makes me a potential role model.”
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Life After Corporate: Kelly Hoey, Co-Founder, Women Innovate Mobile
Life After CorporateTo Kelly Hoey, business strategist and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Women Innovate Mobile, leaving her corporate job was a surprise. “I call myself an accidental entrepreneur,” she said.
But, she firmly believes striking out on her own was the right choice. “I tell people this all the time – my life was easier when I practiced law. But I can’t imagine doing anything else now. Do I have moments of doubt? Yes. But I need to pursue this and see where it goes.”
Now, her role at WIM, an accelerator for mobile-focused start-ups founded by women, helps bring her true passion – mentoring – to the fore, as she works to inspire and ignite the next generation of women in the technology space.
“When I started practicing law, I was in Toronto, Ontario. And I had an extraordinary mentor. He was a mentor to all of his younger staff and he would say, ‘I’m training my assassins.’ He wanted the people he trained to be better than him,” Hoey recalled.
The experience had a profound impact on her own career development and goals. “I think for me generally, being seen as and being a great mentor is my greatest professional achievement.”
She continued, “Last August, for my birthday, someone who is a friend and mentee to me handed me a logo in a frame, and said, ‘Kelly, you’ve inspired me to start my own company.’ To be an inspiration to someone – that to me was just jaw-dropping.”
Read more
EU Quota Plan to be Revised
Industry Leaders, LeadershipEarlier this week, the EU shelved Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding’s plans for a vote on boardroom gender quotas for European companies. Reding’s suggested legislation would require all EU companies with more than 250 employees or making €50 million per year to ensure their boards were 40% female.
Upon coming into office, Reding had threatened to enact the quotas if EU countries didn’t begin to take gender diversity more seriously and implement their own targets. When they showed little progress this year, she turned around with a plan to enact the quotas rule. If companies didn’t comply, they would face stiff penalties.
The rule was put forth for debate by the EU’s executive body on Tuesday, and when it was clear that the majority didn’t support the quotas, the vote was scrapped. But, according to Reding and her allies, they intend to come forward with a compromise plan for another vote in November.
As the New York Times reported:
A vote on a revised proposal has been set for November 14.
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