By Stephanie Wilcox (Middlefield, CT)
“Women are the original prototype of a network,” said Susan RoAne, an influential networking and business communication expert and author of The Secrets of Savvy Networking. “They helped each other through famine and harsh times. They got together on the farm or in quilting groups, which were the first examples of historic networking groups, and they would quietly quilt and talk.”
Whether it’s over a quilt, lunch or the telephone, women still need their networks, including personal advisory boards and small strategic networking groups, and RoAne shares why they are so beneficial and how to build them.
“There is no question, you have to have personal networks,” said RoAne. “It’s necessary to have people whose feedback and opinions you respect and trust, and the feedback and opinions have to be entirely based on a person’s complete commitment to you, your success, happiness and joy.”
You need a group of three, four or five real friends who will form your personal advisory board to help with advice, career decisions and family/personal matters. Ideally, to have a diverse network, these people will be a mix of ages and will be smart, savvy, informed and experienced. Of course, these relationships will need to be built, but it won’t happen overnight. According to RoAne, it’s best to include people in your personal advisory board who you think have a good head on their shoulders. And do not include people who you don’t think are smart. “There are different kinds of smart,” she said. “Someone with a good grasp on the subject at hand or even someone with a good BS detector. That’s what smart CEOs do when building a team; they find people who balance them out.”
When is an ERG not an ERG?
NetworkingCorporate America has seen the rise of ERGs – Employee Resource Groups – to help advance women and minorities in the workplace. Though this is a good trend, an employee resource group will do no good if there is not a definitive, concentrated effort toward getting women into clout title positions i.e. CEO, CFO, COO, Boards of Directors. An ERG group simply for the purpose of having one only increases the perception of how progressive the company seems to be rather than actually advancing women through the barriers keeping them from corner offices. A female colleague sent me an email the other day about an ERG in her company that seems to the former rather than the latter.
The Fortune 500 company – who I’ll refer to as Company X to protect my colleague who works there – has created an Employee Resource Group called “Women Our Way.” The stated mission of Women Our Way is to “fulfill our vision by encouraging inclusion in the workplace. We will provide a voice to our leadership regarding barriers and opportunities. We will encourage women to maximize their potential and advancement through education, leadership, networking, and mentoring.” The question this mission statement does not address is: “To what end?” The company says they will provide a voice to their leadership regarding barriers and opportunities… but through what barriers and to what opportunities? Advancement to where? Middle management? Senior management? As mission statements go this one is vague and creates more questions than it answers. Mission statements as a whole have been a pet peeve of mine for years because they usually contain a lot of warm, fuzzy phrases that are more slogan than substance. We only need look to Patrick Henry for the best mission statement ever – “Give me liberty or give me death!” No ambiguity there. A lot of companies could learn from Mr. Henry’s example.
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The Female Mastermind: Developing a Professional Women’s Network
NetworkingAchieving a successful career depends just as much on your network as it does on your skills, knowledge, and experience. Though any professional connection you make is important, nothing impacts your career or has as much influence on your success as a group of likeminded women vested in each other’s success. Referred to as a “mastermind group,” these women work together to help each other identify strengths and weaknesses, sets goals and hold each other accountable to them, and share resources and valuable personal experiences.
There are many reasons why it’s important to align yourself with other professional women. First of all, professional women share a common and unique perspective on what success looks like and how to achieve it. They understand the challenges specific to professional women—especially for those who are also mothers—and can share advice on how to balance family and work without sacrificing your ambitions. Also, by holding each other accountable, the group increases the likelihood of each individual achieving her goals and finding success.
I asked one of my clients, author and organization consultant Lorie Marrero, a few questions about the benefits of a mastermind group. She said, “I get to be in a supportive but challenging group of peers of my choosing and am accountable to them for my goals and results.” In fact, the group helped her write her first book by making her accountable for regularly producing material. Because of her success, she recently made a commitment to the group to write a second book.
When I asked her what the key to a successful mastermind group was, Marrero responded with a few important considerations: Start by “identifying the right people to join you.” Potential members should think similarly to you, “but not so similarly that they won’t have a valuable perspective to share.” She also recommended selecting people who are willing to put into the group as much as they take out of it and emphasized the importance of making sure that potential members are honestly and wholeheartedly committed to the group.
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Building Your Strategic Personal Network
Networking“Women are the original prototype of a network,” said Susan RoAne, an influential networking and business communication expert and author of The Secrets of Savvy Networking. “They helped each other through famine and harsh times. They got together on the farm or in quilting groups, which were the first examples of historic networking groups, and they would quietly quilt and talk.”
Whether it’s over a quilt, lunch or the telephone, women still need their networks, including personal advisory boards and small strategic networking groups, and RoAne shares why they are so beneficial and how to build them.
“There is no question, you have to have personal networks,” said RoAne. “It’s necessary to have people whose feedback and opinions you respect and trust, and the feedback and opinions have to be entirely based on a person’s complete commitment to you, your success, happiness and joy.”
You need a group of three, four or five real friends who will form your personal advisory board to help with advice, career decisions and family/personal matters. Ideally, to have a diverse network, these people will be a mix of ages and will be smart, savvy, informed and experienced. Of course, these relationships will need to be built, but it won’t happen overnight. According to RoAne, it’s best to include people in your personal advisory board who you think have a good head on their shoulders. And do not include people who you don’t think are smart. “There are different kinds of smart,” she said. “Someone with a good grasp on the subject at hand or even someone with a good BS detector. That’s what smart CEOs do when building a team; they find people who balance them out.”
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5 Ways to Leverage the Power of Employee Resource Groups for Leadership Development
Expert AnswersPicture the most efficient, productive, and innovative organization you can imagine. What does it look like? Chances are that it resembles a highly-advanced form of an Employee Resource Group (ERG), also known as Affinity Groups or Business Resource Groups — a multi-disciplinary, globally dispersed, diverse yet inclusive organization — in which ideas flow up and down the hierarchy and across silos.
ERGs should be considered the best resource and opportunity for the next generation of women leaders, and other diverse talent, and here’s why. Today (or in the near future), ERGs enable women to:
1. gain exposure and visibility within broader networks
2. learn a broader set of skills by collaborating on ERG projects and initiatives
3. seize leadership opportunities within ERGs that they may not otherwise realize in their day jobs, and
4. contribute to their company’s “cultural competency” through participation in sales, market, and product development.
ERGs provide a win-win opportunity for employers and female employees because they will realize the value and bottom line impact of women who are empowered and connected like never before. JBC has developed the following insights to help women think most strategically about where they can gain leverage. We encourage women to take advantage of and leverage the existence of these networks, to not only grow their careers but also demonstrate the value of female talent, and markets, to organizations everywhere.
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5 Ways to Make Quality Time Count with Your Kids
Work-LifeA recent University of Maryland study, cited in this Washington Post article, finds that moms today are spending more time with their kids (an average of 14.1 hours a week) than they did 40 years ago (10.2 hours a week). But despite reports that moms are doing better balancing their time at home, many working moms still worry about spending quality time with their kids.
Alleviate the concern by focusing on the time you have together, and aiming for quality over quantity. Read on for five ways to spend time with your children and make it count.
1. Eat.
Eating is, of course, a necessity, but eating with your kids can have more benefits than just relieving hunger. Research has found that meal time together as a family can have numerous positive effects. For instance, Purdue University’s Center for Families says shared family meal times can contribute to “improving dietary quality, preventing obesity, enhancing language acquisition and academic performance, improving social skills and family unity, and reducing risk-taking behaviors.”
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Are Family-Friendly Benefits on the Decline?
Money TalksThe Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently released the results of its annual study [PDF], which gathers information on the types of benefits employers offer their employees. It was found that most benefits remained stable this past year, though many benefit offerings are down from five years ago. It was also discovered benefits for working parents took some unexpected turns.
One of the hardest hit areas was flextime, with only 49 percent of employers offering flextime in 2010, down from 57 percent in 2006. Paid family leave also took a major hit, with just 24 percent of companies currently offering it, compared to 32 percent in 2006. The findings, which are based on a survey of 534 human resources professionals, aren’t very surprising. During rough economic patches it is not uncommon to see medical benefits reduced or 401(k) matching eliminated. What is perplexing, however, is sorting through the numbers and not being able to detect any rhyme or reason as to why certain benefits stay, while others go.
For example, 7 percent of HR respondents said they plan to reduce or eliminate paid-maternity leave policies within the next 12 months, while paid paternity leave is offered by 17 percent of companies today vs. 13 percent in 2006. The figures are also similar for paid maternity leave and 16 percent of firms now offer adoption leave. So, how do companies juggle different family friendly benefits during a tough economy? And more specifically, why would they decide to cut flex time while increasing maternity/paternity paid time off? How are these tradeoffs considered?
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In Case You Missed It: Business News Round-Up
NewsThe Basel Committee on Banking Supervision revealed new capital requirements. The Bank of England kept interest rates unchanged. Yields on peripheral eurozone bonds rose with renewed sovereign debt issuance. A Beige Book survey revealed economic growth mixed or slow in USA.
Economic Backdrop
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Connect the Dots to Solve Workplace Conflict
Expert AnswersHandling conflict is a major part of leadership development. You can have the best product in the world yet, if the marketing team, sales team, or administrative team is at odds with each other the dissention will tumble to customers who will find another product elsewhere.
Think about the word conflict. What is your initial reaction? Do you think “Not another ##&%!! Issue?” Do you say “Not my fault” as you look for the nearest exit? How about playing Scarlett O’Hara brushing past the upset with “I’ll think about it tomorrow”? Or are you one of the few who says “Oh great, I know I can learn from this mess.”
Whatever your first response, be kind to yourself. Your knee-jerk reactions are those you have developed over time for security and survival. Yet, there is a better way. Once you learn to think in terms of connecting the dots of an experience you can find a better way to handle all conflict.
Begin to think larger, holistically, about “if-this-then-that.” When you think in terms of a system your thinking is integrated and interdependent. It takes into account the big picture and long range thinking.
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Innovation – The Key to Workforce Engagement
Office PoliticsThis article originally appeared on our new corporate citizenship site Evolved Employer.
Should companies encourage their workforce to innovate? Innovation is a big buzz word lately, with companies striving to embed it within their cultures and looking within their ranks for new ideas rather than outsourcing or working with consultants to find the next big product. But all the clamor has left some to ask – is innovation a distraction?
According to Businessweek contributor and founder and president of the Table Group Pat Lencioni, employees are being asked to do far too much innovating. He writes, “[business leaders] should stop overhyping innovation to the masses and come to the realization that only a limited number of people in any company really needs to be innovative.”
He continues:
Lencioni believes the relatively recent hyperfocus on innovation is causing business leaders to be seen as hypocritical – which actually decreases employee engagement. He writes:
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Encouragement vs. Criticism – How Should We Manage Rising Women?
Breaking the Glass CeilingIn a recent article, Peter Ranscombe quotes Laura Morse, visiting lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as saying that women get more encouragement than criticism. She also said that bosses should push their female employees to realize their full potential and instead of patting them on the head, they need to push them through the door.
After reading the article, I was curious about what female managers in the financial industry thought of regarding the “criticism versus encouragement” debate. Are women receiving more encouragement than criticism? Does that stunt their professional growth? And are their other differences in the way men and women manage office behavior?
Same But Different
Robin Ross, managing director of interest rate products at the CME Group, the largest futures exchange in the world, said even if her male managers held back because she was a women, she always saw herself as equal to her male counterparts.
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