By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
“Our goal is to bring greater visibility and access to those minority individuals who have demonstrated a potential for senior leadership,” said Nancy Sims, President of the Robert Toigo Foundation. The Toigo Foundation has worked to help diverse candidates enter the financial services industry for almost 22 years. According to Sims, Toigo’s mission and work is grounded in the belief that diverse teams deliver better results—at all levels of leadership. In 2000, the organization recognized the need to do more to prepare younger generations of leaders to enter the industry and introduced leadership development and career management services as part of its programming. Today, the Foundation’s focus is on this initiative, Leader 20/20, and ensuring diverse professionals have the skills and support to lead organizations and drive industry change.
One way the Foundation is reaching out to women and minority individuals is through its new All A Board initiative – preparing diverse high performing professionals to enter board service.
While at the core of the All A Board initiative is addressing the “supply side” by building a clearinghouse of qualified minority director candidates, Sims said, “All A Board provides thought leadership and networking with other organizations who share in our goal to promote diversity leadership , and later this year formalized training components to help candidates take their experience and leverage it for the next level.”
Toigo’s All A Board initiative is complimentary to CalPERS and CalSTRS’ diverse director initiative. The two pension funds recently announced their Diverse Director DataSource, or 3D, as a platform to launch diverse Fortune 500 board candidates into the limelight. 3D has been launched as an independent entity, owned and operated by The Corporate Library.
Anne Simpson, Senior Portfolio Manager, Investments, Global Equity at CalPERS, said, “The underlying issue is that we need the companies we invest in to grow, thrive, and survive over the long term. Boards are desperately in need of new talent and companies are coming to us asking if we can recommend candidates.”
To Fix the System, Coach Men on Gender Issues Too
Managing ChangeThis past April, the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. released a report stating that inadequate career development has kept women from reaching the top ranks of the corporate ladder. The findings were based on a 2011 survey of 2,525 college-educated men and women, including 1,525 individuals employed by large companies. According to McKinsey, companies must groom female middle managers for advancement. Joanna Barsh, a McKinsey senior partner who co-wrote the report, said companies need to “spend more time coaching women and offering more leadership training and rotation through various management roles before their ambitions sour.” Other recommendations to remedy the problem included having more women seek out mentors, as well as “putting women in programs that would help them develop and get over the next promotion hurdle.”
According to Marcia Reynolds, a master certified coach, the problem is that these recommendations primarily focus on fixing the women, instead of on fixing the system that created the problem. In her column addressing the McKinsey report, Reynolds even cites a recent Harvard Business Review article that found that companies that are committed to putting women through mentoring and training don’t necessarily promote them; they just make them busier. This is something echoed by career coach Roy Cohen, who says that many women – and men – go through coaching programs and don’t get promoted for a variety of reasons and it’s unfair to expect high-ranking women to personally reach out to women currently climbing the corporate ladder.
“There aren’t enough women in the top ranks of corporations and those who are there are already stretched too thin,” Cohen said. “Just because a woman has become successful doesn’t mean we should set a different standard for her. Women should be able to be as political and self-serving as their male counterparts. There’s this double standard where we expect women to take the higher road, but it’s unfair to burden them with these responsibilities. Women should be able to behave as badly as men. We set women on pedestals – and then look at their flaws.”
Relying on women to fix the system isn’t going to work – and it’s not fair. Shouldn’t men be engaged in this effort as well?
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Women and Complexity: Strategic Multitaskers
Industry Leaders, LeadershipAre women better than men at understanding and managing complexity?
We’ve all heard that one reason women make great leaders is because we are better at multitasking. Juggling work, family, household, and personal responsibilities, we’ve become particularly skilled at working in complex environments with many variables and competing objectives at stake, and coming up with solutions for issues that have many different angles.
Sure – it makes sense. But until recently, women’s legendary multitasking abilities seemed they could also just be a myth – that women cope well in complex situations simply because we have to. Are women good at multitasking because of neural wiring? Or are we good at multitasking because of societal pressures? Maybe there’s no difference between men and women when it comes to our ability to handle complex situations.
But, in fact, recent university research is suggesting otherwise. Studies show that women’s brains have, in fact, developed to make complex, strategic decisions – exactly the kind of solutions today’s business leaders need to be equipped for. Here’s how.
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5 Essentials To Build Employee Trust: Behaviors That Are Sometimes Forgotten Along The Way
Industry Leaders, LeadershipDepending on your organizational structure, the leadership hierarchy may be very flat or may have several tiers. Either way, how managers, directors and vice presidents interact with their employees has a direct impact on morale and productivity.
Trust plays a major role in the corporate culture. It’s built over time and is very fragile in the workplace. Over the last decade, studies have shown workplace trust diminishing.
If you are standing on the corporate ladder in a management position, you can lead your team to success by building and maintaining their trust by engaging in 5 essential behaviors. Here’s how.
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US and China Announce Partnership to Develop Female Leaders
Managing ChangeIn early April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, along with Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong, announced the launch of the China-U.S. Women’s Leadership Exchange and Dialogue (Women-LEAD) with the hope of increasing dialogue between high-level Chinese and American women leaders and expanding exchanges on gender equality between organizations, think tanks, and universities.
Women-LEAD will be led by the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues and the All China Women’s Federation (ACWF). The initiative was launched just as the U.S. and China completed their second high-level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange (CPE). These exchanges have been taking place since the late 1950s, with the goal of enhancing international understanding through educational, cultural, and humanitarian activities involving the exchange of ideas and experiences among those of different countries and diverse cultures. During the most recent CPE, teams from the U.S. and China identified more than 40 joint outcomes in the fields of education, science and technology, culture, and women’s issues.
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Ending Bias Against Flex Workers: Measuring Quality Over Quantity
Expert AnswersMy teenage son set me a riddle recently: “A man and his son were injured in a car crash. They were taken to hospital as the little boy was wheeled into emergency surgery the operating surgeon said, “Oh no, that’s my son!” How could that be? Actually I had heard it before and so I knew the answer. The surgeon was his mother. It is funny to think that this old riddle is still doing the rounds. Is it still a surprise that the surgeon could be female? The point of my telling this is that in that moment of working out the answer, people still toy with the boy having two dads as the solution rather than the surgeon being female. This is a neat example of unconscious bias.
These days people know better than to openly discriminate on the basis of gender, race or disability. However, what is much harder to control are our unconscious biases. These biases make some of the headline statistics harder to change. In the UK, the University of Sheffield’s Institute of Work Psychology points out that the unemployment gap between ethnic minorities and the general population has been around 15% to 16% for the past three decades. Women are still a minority when it comes to senior positions. Women represent 13% of FTSE 100 directors and more widely, in Europe, just 10% of the highest level executives in the top 50 publicly quoted companies are female.
So what’s the answer? Offering flexible working to women during the phase of their career where they are seeking balance is critical. However, you need to be sure you are not unconsciously biasing your views of their performance as a result of them being part-time.
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Voice of Experience: Alison Rose, Head of Corporate Coverage and Client Management, EMEA, Global Banking & Markets, Royal Bank of Scotland
Voices of ExperienceAlison Rose’s advice for women in banking is to seek out and learn from the women who have gone before. She said, “Seek out role models and invest time your network. Role models are very helpful, particularly in an industry that is male dominated.”
Particularly sage advice, and after all, she should know. Having risen to the role of Head of Corporate Coverage and Client Management for the EMEA region in the Global Banking & Markets division of RBS, Rose is quite a role model herself. Now also leading the firm’s diversity initiative, she is a passionate supporter of attracting and retaining women in the industry.
“Helping women be successful is incredibly exciting and rewarding personally, but it’s also a critical business issue,” she said.
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Delivering Diverse Directors: The Pipeline and the Pool
Managing Change“Our goal is to bring greater visibility and access to those minority individuals who have demonstrated a potential for senior leadership,” said Nancy Sims, President of the Robert Toigo Foundation. The Toigo Foundation has worked to help diverse candidates enter the financial services industry for almost 22 years. According to Sims, Toigo’s mission and work is grounded in the belief that diverse teams deliver better results—at all levels of leadership. In 2000, the organization recognized the need to do more to prepare younger generations of leaders to enter the industry and introduced leadership development and career management services as part of its programming. Today, the Foundation’s focus is on this initiative, Leader 20/20, and ensuring diverse professionals have the skills and support to lead organizations and drive industry change.
One way the Foundation is reaching out to women and minority individuals is through its new All A Board initiative – preparing diverse high performing professionals to enter board service.
While at the core of the All A Board initiative is addressing the “supply side” by building a clearinghouse of qualified minority director candidates, Sims said, “All A Board provides thought leadership and networking with other organizations who share in our goal to promote diversity leadership , and later this year formalized training components to help candidates take their experience and leverage it for the next level.”
Toigo’s All A Board initiative is complimentary to CalPERS and CalSTRS’ diverse director initiative. The two pension funds recently announced their Diverse Director DataSource, or 3D, as a platform to launch diverse Fortune 500 board candidates into the limelight. 3D has been launched as an independent entity, owned and operated by The Corporate Library.
Anne Simpson, Senior Portfolio Manager, Investments, Global Equity at CalPERS, said, “The underlying issue is that we need the companies we invest in to grow, thrive, and survive over the long term. Boards are desperately in need of new talent and companies are coming to us asking if we can recommend candidates.”
Read more
Women on Top: The Newest Innovation in Technology Event
Industry Leaders, Leadership, Women in ITDr. Whitney was the keynote speaker at The Glass Hammer’s event Tuesday night entitled “Women on Top: The Newest Innovation in Technology.”
The event, sponsored by Barclays Capital and American Express, was held at the Barclays Capital headquarters in New York. Moderated by Avis Yates Rivers, President and CEO of Technology Concepts Group, the panel speakers included Sarah Sherber; Head of Securitized Products IT and Cross Product Operations Technology, Barclays Capital; Linda Albornoz, B2B Payment Solutions, American Express Technologies; Augusta Sanfilippo, Managing Director, Cash Securities Operations IT, Citi; and Mary Cecola, CIO Asset Management Business Solutions, Deutsche Bank.
When trying to plot out a career, the panel advised, simply do what you love. Albornoz said, “Follow your bliss. Find the thing you’re engaged by and enjoy doing. Because you’re going to spend a lot of time doing it!”
Sanfilippo agreed. She said, “Passion… is something you have to stay true to no matter what you do. Make sure you manage your career. Don’t make someone else manage your career for you.”
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Voice of Experience: Lis Brown, Application Management Outsourcing (AMO) Lead, Accenture
Voices of ExperienceLis Brown, Accenture‘s Application Management Outsourcing (AMO) Lead, based in Singapore, is perhaps the most enthusiastic evangelist we’ve interviewed yet on the importance of relationship-building in the tech industry. According to Brown, working in IT is all about networking and building deep relationships.
“Don’t underestimate the power of networking. You don’t have to come out with your guns blazing to network,” she joked. “But in all that you do, you will become known.”
She continued, “And for women working in the tech space, you’ll be known as ‘the woman who…’ This is something that will just happen, but make sure it happens because you know something as well as someone. I’m probably best known for my ability to build relationships with clients at all levels.”
After over two decades in IT, with a career that has spanned the globe, Brown should know. She has been a passionate supporter of women taking charge of their professional growth in the tech space, as she continues to grow her own career.
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How to Build a Winning Team
Industry Leaders, LeadershipA successful team begins with a great leader. To be a great leader, there are some basic, important qualities one must possess: sincerity, integrity, technical ability, a positive attitude, good communication, and trust. The most effective leaders take it a step further by surrounding themselves with individuals who complement each other’s strengths and offset one another’s weaknesses.
Creating effective teams is a challenge in any organization, but a great leader will reap the benefits of this rewarding experience by fostering a positive atmosphere of collaboration and teamwork. Making others feel important and appreciated is a sure way to win the trust and support of employees as you all work toward a common goal. To build a winning team, a leader must keep the following in mind.
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