OP-Ed: Six Hallmarks Of Rebuilding Strong Relationships at Work

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relationships at workAs we come out of the pandemic, rebuilding strong relationships at work will require special attention. Strong relationships are crucial for success and satisfaction – they determine the extent to which our managers, direct reports and even colleagues outside our area provide us the information, resources, and support we need as well as their openness to influence and willingness to work out difficulties.

Those relationships have suffered during the last 18 months. Tasks have been more foregrounded and personal connection backgrounded, as Zoom exhaustion, phone and email replaced the informal in-person contact that often builds connection.

Returning to working in person creates opportunities to build and rebuild strong, functional relationships. And there are challenges. We can’t just “flip a switch” and return to how it was before. Jobs have changed, and so have our needs. Some colleagues left and new ones were hired who we haven’t met in person. Some are happy to be back, others aren’t. Old habits and approaches might no longer work. We feel pressured to make up for lost time, leaving us without the luxury of letting new relationships develop over time. What to do?

We have studied what it takes to proactively build strong relationships quickly at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business for decades and know that relationships exist on a continuum from contact with no connection/casual to closer/more personal and ultimately to what we call exceptional. There are six hallmarks to moving along that continuum.

Six Hallmarks of Relationship Building

The first is I can be more fully myself and so can you. With someone new we tend to be cautious. As the relationship develops, we disclose more, which decreases misunderstandings and increases ways to connect. It also encourages the other to share, since disclosure tends to be reciprocal.

This relates to the second hallmark: both of you are willing to be vulnerable. What can I do to encourage you to disclose besides initiating? I can learn how to ask questions that convey I really want to know you and what matters to you. Reciprocal sharing and vulnerability build trust and understanding.

Disclosure feels risky. The third hallmark is therefore trust that what I share will not be used against me. That trust is built over time as you each take incrementally larger risks in becoming known to each other.

Fourth is, a willingness to be honest with each other. Do I know that you mean what you say so I don’t have to read between the lines or worry about what you are withholding and vice versa?

As we share more of ourselves, deepen our relationship, and work together, disagreements are inevitable, and conflicts might emerge. The fifth hallmark is dealing with disagreements and conflict productively in ways that further build the relationship.

The final hallmark is both of us are committed to each other’s growth. This may require raising difficult issues and giving challenging feedback, in service of each other’s learning and development.

Applying the Hallmarks In the Office

As we emerge from the pandemic, here is how these come into play. You have just returned to working in person and someone new has joined the team who you’ve never met or worked with. There are also team members with whom you are at the “mere contact” end of the continuum and others with whom you are a bit farther along. With some you are close. Maybe you have mixed feelings about some of these people. A couple of incidents during Zoom meetings annoyed you, which you didn’t raise. Time and performance pressures necessitate you move these relationships along the continuum to functional and robust quickly.

There are multiple ways to develop relationships and what is effective with one person might not be with another. With the new hire, you might start with sharing more of yourself as well as finding out how they like to get work done. For those where the relationship is not strong, talking about how each of you want to relate might help. In those cases where you’ve had negative interactions, it might be important to have an honest conversation about how to move past that and explore what there is to be learned.

People also differ in how they like to get work done. Some like to plan first, others like to take action to gather early data. Some are comfortable with risk, others more cautious, and so forth. Each of us has a strong preference for our style and yet organizations need them all.

In strong relationships we each leverage our style and work together productively. What do we do with conflict that arises when our styles differ? We learned firsthand when working together. David is a divergent thinker, always coming up with new ideas. Carole is more convergent and wants to “cut to the chase.” In discussing this openly, we realized we needed each other. If David was dominant, we might never have finished our book – if Carole’s was, our final product might not have been as good.

Returning to the office will require we double down on efforts to establish new relationships and reestablish previous ones. We can’t afford to “just let things develop.” We will have to make more intentional, conscious efforts. Doubling down requires paying even closer attention to how others get their work done and talking openly about preferences. We may need to be explicit and proactive. “I’m glad to respond to your requests, but it works better for me when I have advanced warning” could be all it takes.

Doubling down also means becoming aware of and willing to discuss entirely new issues, such as people’s preferences for in-person, hybrid or working at home for health reasons. We may need to be clearer about how tasks are to be divided up and handed off. Learning to empathize with someone whose pandemic experience (and post pandemic reality) is very different from ours will also matter.

We’ll need to respond differently to small annoyances, which are more likely when starting or reestablishing relationships. Your way of working bothers me a bit. But rather than just shoving my frustration under the rug and blaming you, this could be a sign we have something to work on and an opportunity for mutual learning and a better relationship.

To do this we will have to acknowledge the legitimacy of different approaches and further develop our problem-solving skills. It is less useful to try to convince the other and more useful to jointly explore what will work for both of us. That process, rather than distancing us, can further reestablish healthy work relationships and build even stronger ones.

Everything is unlikely to work out from the beginning, even with proactive outreach. Building and rebuilding relationships is a process that requires learning from what doesn’t work as much as from what does. It demands persistence, intention, and patience. But quickly building and rebuilding stronger relationships is well worth the effort.

David Bradford, Ph.D. is the Eugene O’Kelly II Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Leadership at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he helped develop Interpersonal Dynamics (aka “Touchy Feely”) as well as much of the school’s leadership curriculum. He is the author of numerous books, including Managing for Excellence, Influence Without Authority, and Power Up. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife of more than fifty years.



Carole Robin, Ph.D. was the Dorothy J. King Lecturer in Leadership and Director of the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows Program at Stanford Graduate School of Business before co-founding Leaders in Tech, which brings the principles and process of “Touchy Feely” to executives in Silicon Valley. Prior to coming to Stanford, she had careers in sales and marketing management and was a partner in two consulting firms. She lives in San Francisco, California, with her husband of 36 years.

A fuller description of these six hallmarks and how to use them to build relationships can be found in CONNECT: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues by co-authors David Bradford and Carole Robin. Crown Random House, New York. 2021. Their book also contains the lessons of “Touchy Feely” that thousands of students have consistently described for decades as life changing. Available in hardcover, audible and Kindle versions HERE.

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Grace Jamgochian: Partner, Mergers & Acquisitions, Shearman & Sterling

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Grace Jamgochian“Law professionals are not selling widgets. We’re selling thoughts. We’re selling our expertise. We’re selling relationships,” advises Grace Jamgochian. “So remembering the human nature of our business is so integral to what we do.”

Jamgochian speaks to why M&A is animating every single day, the pay-off of being goal-oriented and why it’s important to treat law as a service-oriented business.

Loving the Hub Responsibility of M&A

As a full-service Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) partner at Shearman & Sterling LLP (Shearman), Jamgochian works across a broad general corporate practice — from public M&A, to private M&A, to private equity — gravitating towards the areas of tech, media, and telecom, infrastructure, and consumer products.

“M&A is a quasi-business and business strategy function. We advise our clients on more than just the technical aspects of the law. We partner with them to achieve their objectives, and we work closely with our internal specialists to make sure all bases are covered,” says Jamgochian. “As an M&A lawyer, you’re responsible for managing, coordinating and completing the entire deal. I love M&A because that responsibility fits well with my personality and drives me.”

Jamgochian thrives on the pace, breadth, variety and overview that M&A demands of her at Shearman.

“Every day is different. I have a general sense of my to-do list but M&A is often a series of fire drills,” she says, “Being on my toes is the type of practice that I’ve always wanted, and that’s why I’ve continued in M&A for more than a decade.”

Jamgochian also enjoys the teamwork needed for M&A transactions. “M&A is the central hub for a deal. My group handles the “corporate” pieces but we also collect the input of specialists such as in IP, Tax, Compensation, Real Estate, and Regulatory. I view a transaction agreement like a complex puzzle, and each person contributes a few pieces into the big puzzle that I’m ultimately 100% responsible for,” she says.

Jamgochian credits a year-ish long stint as an in-house attorney at Thomson Reuters, right after graduating from Cornell Law School, with immersing her into the business perspective of law from the very beginning.

“While others used the Shearman associate deferral year in 2010 for non-professional pursuits, I chose to work at a client handling M&A and securities matters so that I could get my feet wet right out of the gate. Having this opportunity set me up to be a practical, business-minded and solution-oriented attorney from the start,” Jamgochian reflects. “A deal needs business-minded lawyers. It can’t just be working in theory. You need to assess and advise on the risks, but you also need a good dose of reality and know what market practice is.”

Being Goal-Oriented As Her Key to Success

Though Jamgochian is newly elected to the Shearman partnership this year, it’s been in her sights since she first began her law career. Her journey to partner felt both intentional and linear.

“Always give yourself options. From Day 1, I tried to put myself in a position to be partner down the road, even if I couldn’t predict the future and would have been open to other paths. I volunteered for basically everything, from deals to extracurricular responsibilities like involvement in inclusion networks and bar associations. If you want to be a partner, you don’t wake up one day and suddenly have the skills. You should start thinking about business development early on and what technical and “soft” skills you’ll need to develop,” says Jamgochian.

She says her colleagues would most likely also remark on her efficiency, organization and ability to carry through a goal to completion.

“I’m a goal-oriented person. If we all have an idea in mind of what we think should be the finish line, let’s get there and let’s be efficient about it,” says Jamgochian. “In order to do that, you need to be organized, create processes, reduce any inefficiencies of people not knowing what their role is and communicate clearly. That’s me in a nutshell.”

When it comes to her next level goal, Jamgochian would love to continue to develop herself as an M&A lawyer to rank among the top of her field.

Law is Foremost About People

Early on, it was imparted on Jamgochian that law is a service-oriented industry in which the business is “people” and “our minds”.

“We’re getting paid to think. It’s about essentially our brains and our relationships: these intangibles. So the thing that lawyers need to focus on and remember throughout our careers is our clients and to develop those relationships with clients,” says Jamgochian. “Provide them with the best legal advice, which is essentially your thoughts and expertise, but then also don’t forget that everything is people-based in law firms, whether your clients or those you work with.”

When it comes to diversity, M&A as an industry is a more white male dominated area in particular.

“I have definitely had occasions where I’m the only woman in a room of thirty people. Once you already have a male-dominated industry, then you have the lack of mentorship, you have the lack of role models and it kind of snowballs from that,” observes Jamgochian. “But I think all firms, and the industry itself, are trying to pull the reins in. Shearman is really focused on D&I efforts, plus an increasing client focus on diversity is also helping to increase the law firm diversity focus as well.”

Busy Summer and Time for Family

As it’s only a block away from home, Jamgochian has been working out of the office this year, where her workload — focusing largely on tech, media, and telecom and infrastructure — has continued to boom when she might normally see a summer slowdown.

She notes that with the change of executive administration, as well as regulatory and tax changes in the air, many people and organizations are wanting to work through deals quickly. So these days, her expertise is a commodity in fast demand.

Jamgochian’s husband is also a Big Law lawyer, and with both of them having a high-intensity lifestyle, time with their five year old son is precious. They enjoy weekend picnics in Central Park and being surrounded by family in New York City and nearby.

With a background in dance history, Jamgochian turns to movement as part of keeping her balance, which may very well help in flowing with the pace of her work. She also loves learning instruments and reading music to stay sharp – along with piano and flute, she has recently also taken up ukelele.

By: Aimee Hansen

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Aine Leddy: Information Technology Business Partner, AIG Investments

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Aine Leddy“Curiosity is a hallmark of who I am and has been a huge enabler to my success. I am trying to grow all the time,” says Aine Leddy. “One thing I found when I first came to the U.S. decades ago was that many people were specialized, deep and narrow. I always aspired to know a little bit about everything.”

Leddy speaks to elevating to the C-Suite, cultivating intellectual curiosity and being proactive in expanding your ability to lead.

Stepping up to the C-Suite

Irish by birth, Leddy emigrated to the U.S. in the late 80’s while training to be an oil trader. Finding that her personality was not suited to the aggressive trading environment, she moved into financial services at Morgan Stanley, where she received an analyst training that she likens to an in-house Executive MBA.

After holding a variety of financial roles across 22 years at the firm, she reached an inflection point while working as the finance partner to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the investment management division, Marianne Bachynski, AIG Investments+ Chief Information Officer, at the time. Technology was developing to become its own branch of the business, and Leddy was given the opportunity to step into a Chief Operating Officer (COO) role with overview of the IT business.

“I’m a big picture kind of person. I find closeness to decision-making and strategy very compelling. I love to ideate and be in a position where you can see ideas taking shape and then ultimately come to fruition,” says Leddy. “I enjoy the increased personal responsibility to make things happen as well.”

After a few transitions, Leddy began working at AIG in September 2020, motivated by the opportunity to learn about the insurance industry at a highly reputable firm, expand her skillset and reunite with Bachynski. While she has yet to be in the room with her team due to the need to work virtually, she’s been highly impressed by the collaboration, communication, cutting-edge performance, and progress on the big, gnarly technological issues like cloud migration.

Being Curious with Breadth

“I personally like to know enough about everything ‘to be dangerous’ and went out of my way to equip myself with that knowledge,” she says. “That curiosity has served me, particularly with my entreé into the tech COO world. I could show up at the table and enter right into a discussion about the business strategy and where technology fits in, and that was apparent to the people who have given me the opportunities.”

As a teacher’s daughter, Leddy prides herself on being super-prepared and putting the “sweat equity” into knowing her stuff, and it’s a hot-button for her to watch someone trying to wing it when they clearly haven’t done the same preparation. Despite this, she has learned to take in stride the out of left field questions as she is also prone to be the one to ask the question.

Being curious as a principle means the willingness to reveal what you don’t know: “I think a lot of women think it’s better not to ask because maybe you should already know. So, I might soften that by prepping my question with, ‘I probably should know this, but would you mind explaining it anyway.’”

Nine out of ten times, the person next to her will thank her for asking because they were wondering the same thing.

Taking Action in Empowering Yourself

Leddy emphasizes it’s critical to be solution-focused: “I do like to ideate and strategize, but I’m also an action-oriented person. You can sit around and admire the problem for a long time, but ultimately, you have to get the stuff done.”

She feels that taking personal initiative in growing yourself is foundational, as she, too, often hears people defer the responsibility of their learning limitations to their organization, when she argues you can be proactive yourself.

“Training is out there. It won’t always be the customized training that you do as part of the code of conduct or something like that,” advises Leddy. “But you can go and talk to someone with a different skillset than yours. There’s tons of information out there for you to train yourself, and there’s so much you can do for yourself in terms of expanding your horizons.”

When Leddy glances around her senior circle of peers at AIG Investments, and at some of her previous employers, she’s invigorated by the presence of women leaders. She has found herself fortunate to be in environments that reward intellectual curiosity, foremost, and where she felt she could be herself.

“Some women feel they need to be more aggressive to be successful. I never felt I had to be anybody other than who I am,” says Leddy. “When you bring your authentic self to the table in any situation, you’re going to be more successful.”

Being Willing to Move, But Also Move On

“You don’t realize how immersed you are in a culture until you have to get to know another one. I think switching companies taught me to be more open and not to bring my bias from another culture,” says Leddy. “That includes listening upfront and taking in how people work, work together and what’s important to leaders in one company versus another.”

Earlier in her career, while putting three children through college and being motivated by a compensation-focused opportunity, Leddy learned that you don’t always know whether something is going to be a good fit until you’re inside of it.

“I tell those I mentor that you cannot know all of the elements of anything ahead of time, you just can’t. So, if you want to switch departments or companies or even careers, you think you are going in with ‘eyes wide open’ but you may not be,” she says. “The lesson I learned is that if it’s making you miserable, change your situation as quickly as you can, learn from what you don’t want and then move on. Don’t stay where you’re unhappy.”

Staying True to What You Want

While Leddy feels she was most often mentored on business skills, her mentorship has always begun with listening into: what do they really want?

She’s found that it tends to be guidance on the softer side of matters, such as how she managed to get promoted while her kids were little and still feel present in the home. Leddy is known by her peers for being grounded and ‘unflappable’, and she carries that grounding to her mentees.

One thing she imparts onwards is never be afraid to ask for a raise or promotion but be solid in arguing your case for why you’ve earned it. She also advises to not get caught in emotional defeat when you don’t receive what you want, but be resilient, prepare to go back in and to argue your case again.

“I think women do ourselves a disservice, because we take things personally and get annoyed with our manager if we don’t get the raise or promotion,” she observes. “Whereas men seem to think, ‘If it doesn’t happen, I’ll get back in the ring and I’ll fight the good fight again next year.’ Ultimately, promotion is a numbers game. It can’t happen for everybody all of the time, so rather than take it so personally, elevate your case and prepare to ask again.”

Leddy has been married for almost 33 years and her three grown children are now in their mid-late twenties. She loves her Peloton bike and taking in the sun in her garden. She is a huge reader, a passionate etymologist and prides herself on living holistically to enjoy all aspects of her life.

By Aimee Hansen

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OP-Ed: 3 Ways For You To Be An Inclusive Leader.

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Inclusive Leader“The future doesn’t just happen- people create it through their action, or actions today” according to The World Futurist Society. 

If you are a leader, you probably want to be your best self when it comes to creating high performing teams where people can feel empowered and like they belong, regardless of who they are. But, often the demanding focuses of the day job can suppress the best of intentions and actions in this space. Ever wondered how to fix this?

Let’s start with why diversity and inclusion seems to be the slowest, toughest and least integrated part of most businesses.

Close to twenty five years ago in 1996, Robin Ely and David Thomas wrote an article in HBR called “Making Differences Matter” —outlining three paradigms or approaches to diversity. This is possibly the best single piece of work for companies to follow as a “how to” for creating a learning culture for effectiveness in all areas, and specifically diversity. Ely and Thomas themselves know their “learning and effectiveness paradigm” was not implemented, to the detriment of the theme, and patiently explained again to the world what needs to be done in their latest paper in November 2020 called “Getting Serious about Diversity: Enough Already with the Business Case”.

The approach that they so accurately describe is to create a learning organization, meaning —in my opinion and in plain language— do the right work, not some pretend moral endeavor which is supposed to lie in ethics, which only some are compelled by, and only to some degree even with the best of intentions. Also, stop approaching representation as counting or hiring two of each type onto Noah’s Ark, thinking you have to be a giraffe to sell to a giraffe.

Lastly, they rightfully point out to stop the fallacies of women being magical unicorns who make share prices rise alone due to their presence on boards and instead: understand the work, make mistakes and learn, integrate the work. Rinse and repeat.

Adding to this, I would say stop categorically believing women’s networks or other ERGs (employee resource groups) can take the place of a systemic change rooted in behavioral change—which needs everyone to buy in and change. Having a strategic network is different from being part of an ERG that wants to do philanthropy or overlooks the fact that it has no real authority or power, as it’s not inside the hiring or promotion discussions for every person in the firm, where the changes that actually need to happen for real outcomes take place. Lobby for change, educate and gather —as ERG’s are good for some things— but know what they are there for, and align goals and resources accordingly!

Here are 3 areas to consider on your leadership journey to grow into the leader you want to be:

#1 Know yourself

Start with you and understanding your styles and preferences regarding work. You can recognize that others have a different style to you, once you see styles for what they are and how they show up in communications, learning and thinking. How do you uncover your style? The fastest way is to work with a good executive coach who specializes in executive and leadership development, as opposed to straight career coaching.

But, if you don’t have access to that type of resource, then ask yourself: what are your style preferences when it comes to communicating and being communicated with? Are you direct and candid or do you prefer to couch your requests in sentences where the audience can hear a gentler message, sometimes amongst other messages? We are all different and there are many free versions of Myers Briggs and other great tools free online to start, such as SCARF (the neuro-leadership institute) and Emotional Agility report by Dr. Susan David. The Learning Styles Inventory (LSI) is not expensive and comes with a full explanation of how you learn and apply knowledge. Curious souls on their development journey will benefit.

We are all somewhat beholden to how we were raised in our families and societies, unless we have taken the time to disrupt that – which you can start doing today by reading Immunity to Change. Doing this with a coach, or even by yourself, will help you to understand what is stopping you from reaching goals in any sense, including D&I ones.

# 2 Take time to know others

Some cultures find it quite impolite to just ask and other cultures find it weird not to say what’s on your mind. Some people might not comply with what you culturally assume they might, so rule number one is don’t assume anything.

Regardless of which schools of thought you buy into, or where you were brought up, or the body and skin you were born into, the psychology of inclusion and high performance are the same. Simply put, nobody likes to have grind or experience hindrances and barriers in doing their job and everyone wants psychological safety. We are exploring what it means to speak up safely.

Personality-based theory from behavioral and organizational psychologists would argue that all behavior is a function of your personality (traits, that are mostly intrinsic), times or reactive to the environment you are operating in. So, if you are a less-than-calm type, stress and certain work cultures will accentuate your excitability for example and can seem volatile. We know that certain people are judged more harshly for anger in the workplace than others, with Serena Williams punished for expressing something that Novak and all the men readily get endorsed for as part of an aggressive champion brand à la John McEnroe.

Instruments like the Hogan, which you may have done via a coach or a training session, will tell you these things. For inclusion, this plays out in many ways including, for some, a skepticism when people don’t walk the talk which makes diversity fatigue kick in, or else an overly diligent approach under stress to stick to outdated playbooks because historically things were done a certain way and status quo is a safer path.

Know where you are honestly at on your own journey. Take an audit of what life experiences you have had, what exposure and connection you have had to people different from yourself. Be compassionate about it, as it is a journey and about building trust and forgiveness for ourselves and others. In a recent Pew survey about cancel culture, the highest amount of respondents believed that context is the most important factor to understanding past behaviors. We can give people room to learn and adapt and grow, educate not punish.

Take the time to ask people who they are including. Straight white men are not a homogenous group either, just as all women or LGBTQ or Asian or African Americans/Black people are not the same. We are individuals, so the career advice here is to ask questions so that people can tell and show you who they really are, what their work styles are and where their interests lie as it pertains to projects. Just because you met one person of color once or a gay cousin, doesn’t mean you know them all, we are not a melded persona and the color of one’s skin or who they take to dinner doesn’t dictate their thinking or work preferences in any way, so just ask open questions to learn more. I am spelling it out here, but are brains are wired to evaluate and label and to override. We think we have seen the movie and how it ends before, when we haven’t.

#3 Know the cultural norms in your firm

How does work get done around here? Who gets rewarded and why (which behaviors) and what is not tolerated? It is key to understand the general ocean you are swimming in and the direction of the currents to truly leverage systems, programs and processes that can help you positively impact culture and succeed in being a change leader. Going from status quo to a new world of meritocracy is a change project. Who are your allies? And who can you form coalitions with to create a more positive inclusive culture where people get to thrive, not just survive?

Start today. The journey is worth it and a leadership one. Anything less demotivates talented people, discredits true high team performance and denies the reality of the world around you. Build trust.

by Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder, Evolved People (theglasshammer.com)

If you want to be a leader, work with Nicki Gilmour – Founder of theglasshammer.com , organizational and leadership coach this summer. Book here for a free exploratory session and then decide if you want to commit to a six session pack for $2,200 this year.

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Marie Carr: Global Growth Strategy, Insurance and Financial Services, PwC US

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Marie Carr“I’ve spent my career helping companies grow in a way that takes advantage of disruption and new trends,” says Marie Carr.

From back when the internet seemed like an insecure and unproven place to do business to Artificial Intelligence (AI), Carr helps companies determine how to grow, particularly by taking advantage of technological changes that redefine customer interactions.

“People now want you to understand them,” Carr says of the client mindset: “I need you to understand me and frame things based not on what you want to sell me but on my unique needs.”

Carr champions adoption of new technologies that can help companies create better experiences for their customers, as well as actionable data that facilitates those positive experiences.

But what’s led Carr to where she is now and how has it related to her choice of careers? She cites motivation, how faith supports her, and how to find and respond to mentorship moments.

A Motivating Mission

“I went to business school to become a better entrepreneur,” says Carr, who decided early on to get her MBA at University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

She soon began to receive feedback that she’d make a great management consultant and realized that interning at a consultancy could support her education. She joined Diamond Technology Partners for a summer and twenty-five years later, long after PwC acquired the firm in 2010, she still loves where she is.

“I’ve been very blessed to work with leadership whose mission I believe in,” she says. “It’s easier to stay when you’re working with leaders who are building a culture that’s consistent with your values.”

She was initially inspired by Diamond founder Mel Bergstein’s vision in “forging a new path.” At the time, it was “unheard of” for a firm to grow to become publicly traded so that employees could own their own stake in it.

“To be able to work in something that you’re good at with like-minded people that also have a mission of greater good,” says Carr, “was a rare combination.”

With PwC, Carr found a new mission—to help build the advisory practice and ensure that what “was excellent about Diamond became part of PwC’s DNA.”

“Ten years later, folks who were younger consultants are coming into leadership positions and living those values,” says Carr. “It’s been a good journey.”

Overcoming Adversity and Keeping Faith

Carr feels her parents and faith instilled within her the ability “to never let temporary circumstances determine what your ultimate success is going to be.”

“Whatever adversity you have to overcome, overcome it,” says Carr, describing her parent’s motto, who both experienced tough challenges in childhood. “You can’t let the fact that there may have been discrimination stop you,” she says.

Raised in faith, Carr learned to trust in a greater power, which has enabled her to be comfortable in herself and have less anxiety than some in a high-pressure field.

“It’s not just about my own ability. I have confidence in and the ability to appeal to a force higher than myself. That’s helped me to be more patient, to put myself in other’s shoes, to not be so hard on myself,” says Carr. “You have to be able to center yourself, because you’re often going to find yourself in an environment that’s not going to affirm you. So, the ability to affirm yourself is really useful.”

Learning from Everyone

“I’ve learned a lot through observation. I’m very much a student of everyone. My dad taught me that ‘even the village idiot can teach you something’,” she says. “As I got older, I learned not to rush to judgment but instead ask, how do I learn from who I’m interacting with?”

She continues, “I’ve also found that people are very generous in helping you if you help yourself. Lots of people have given me advice in the moment, so I became good at getting feedback without being sensitive or defensive,” she says. “I’ve tried to learn from everyone, because there are a lot different paths to success.”

As she’s moved through her career, Carr has realized that she hasn’t always been aware of who’s advocating for her. As a result, she makes a conscious effort to advocate for others who she feels deserve a voice in the room.

Playing sports, particularly basketball, helped shape Carr’s approach. Being on a nationally ranked basketball team in high school meant being open to coaching and learning to do things differently to improve.

“Basketball is a team sport that really requires everyone to be able to fluidly move in and out of roles, that ability to adapt,” says Carr. “It has made me always look for what I could do to draw out the best of someone I’m working with.”

Leave It Better Than You Found It

Coming from a long line of ministers and pastors, Carr approaches management consulting as part of fulfilling her desire to serve.

Her mother advised her to always invest in people. For her, helping companies to grow and adapt is about affecting all the people who depend on the work to support their lives and families. She enjoys helping people and companies reach their highest potential.

Carr has run a financial summer camp on wealth empowerment and financial literacy for several years now, working in the community with younger generations to envision their possibilities.

“We’re accountable to making a difference in the world, says Carr. “You have to leave it better than it was when you got here.”

By: Aimee Hansen

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OP-Ed: 9 Ways Working Moms Can Successfully Work From Home with Their Children Present

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working momsWith the pandemic (hopefully) coming to an end and corporations getting back to business as usual, many U.S. workers (including working moms) aren’t quite sure they want to head back to the office in person, at least not full-time. Instead, some experts predict a Great Resignation is on the horizon, with many U.S. employees indicating they’d rather quit their jobs than go back to in-person office life as they knew it pre-COVID-19.

If you’re a working parent considering making your home your new permanent workplace, you’re bound to have some moments when your work and home life intersect. While it’s ideal to have your kids in child care or to have someone present and watching your kids while you work, sick days and school holidays will likely mean you’ll need to simultaneously juggle caring for your kids and caring for your work obligations at least some of the time this coming year. Here’s how to handle working from home with your kids present long or short term.

1.     Set Expectations. First, set expectations with your kids about the day’s activities and what you are doing and why. Ask them for what you need and explain the boundaries.

2.     Distract Wisely. Give them age-appropriate distractions; it can be helpful to only allow screen time at these moments to keep their attention longer. Have a reward system in place to reinforce good behavior.

3.     Plan Ahead. Try to set up calls on days or times your kids aren’t there or during normal nap times. Perhaps arrange for grandma or grandpa to stop by right before your call and read a favorite book to your child. Or ensure your calls are with another understanding parent if your kids are present. If you expect your kids to interrupt you, proactively let the person on the phone know in advance that it may happen, and explain the situation and how you’ll handle it.

Concentrate on your highest priority work to-dos and those that require the most intense level of attention first. Start your day before your children wake up. This valuable time will be free of interruptions and will have your full attention. If you only have time to work on a few things, make sure they’re the ones you really care about or that really need to get done.

4.     Get Active Early. Depending on your schedule, play with your kids early in the day. Kids hate waiting, especially for our attention. Instead of making them more and more frustrated as you make just 1 more conference call, give them the attention they need at the start of the day and get them moving with fresh air and exercise, if possible, early on. Take a walk outside with your kids first thing in the morning when you wake up. When you finally do need to sit down and hammer out a few tasks, they won’t be so antsy, and you’ll be able to fully concentrate.

5.     Think Outside the Box. Consider an alternative schedule, especially if you have a partner who is also working from home. Mom may take the 6:00 am to 2:00 pm shift with the kids, then “go to work” in her home office, and dad works 2:00 to 8:00 pm. Or divide up the day. Think about working in 2-hour shifts, switching off with your partner or another caregiver.

6.     Consider Your Space. Designate areas of your home for specific tasks, and create visual cues that let your kids know you’re off-limits while you’re in those spaces. Your garage, the basement, a bedroom — these can all serve as work areas. When you physically separate from your kids and take yourself out of their line of vision, you’re less distracted, and your kids are less confused about your accessibility. As the saying goes, “out of sight, out of mind.” A red stop sign or a cutout of a hand on your office door is a clear indicator even to young children that work is in session and reinforces that you’re not available at the moment.

7.     Create Structure. Set your kids up for success during important meetings by creating structure. For preschool and elementary children, set up interesting activity centers in their playroom with model clay, craft paper and markers, or books they can interact with while you’re away for a short time. For older children, make a list of 10 activities they can do when they feel bored and put it on the refrigerator as a reminder for the times you’re off-limits. Use times you’re completely off-limits to have them dedicate effort to traditional schoolwork or online learning.

8.   Feed the Beast. Plan ahead for food needs. Cut up fruits and vegetables in advance and put them into containers labeled “Meeting Snacks.” Make mini quesadillas with protein and veggies, cut them into triangles, and set them out right before your meeting starts. For older kids, set out ingredients for sandwiches or salad before you head into a session with a client or coworker so it’s easy for them to put together a snack while you’re away.

9.     Be Honest. Be transparent with your business partners about the fact your kids are in the home with you. The more honest we are about how our home and work lives intersect, the more we normalize that experience for others, and, ultimately, push employers toward considering our whole-person needs as they create policies and culture.

Above all, give yourself grace. Accept that when you’re trying to do two jobs simultaneously, you’re bound to sometimes be less than perfect at both of them. Take breaks with and without your kids. Definitely don’t add even more to your proverbial plate — the errands, the vacuuming, that toothpaste you still need to buy — it can all wait. And, remember, if you eventually find yourself longing for a little more separation between your work and home life, that’s okay, too.

Whitney Casares, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.A.P., is the author of The Working Mom Blueprint: Winning at Parenting Without Losing Yourself. She is the Founder and CEO of Modern Mommy Doc and host of The Modern Mommy Doc Podcast.

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Silke Soennecken: Head of Risk Management, Commerzbank New York

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Silke Soennecken“You are motivated and grow when you are being challenged,” says Silke Soennecken, “when you have to use your resources to get your head around things you didn’t think would ever happen.”

Soennecken speaks to growing through challenge, retaining your power as a woman and letting go for others to grow.

When Things Turn Upside-Down, Learning Curves Go Up

As a Managing Director at Commerzbank New York, Soennecken is tasked to oversee governance and strategy for all risk management in the region, and is responsible for the bank’s entire North American credit portfolio. Based at a branch rather than head office, she enjoys the vantage point of gleaning how initiatives flow and come together, while gaining insight into areas of risk management that interrelate with her expertise in corporate credit.

As a risk manager, she thinks that despite the challenge, it is precisely the unexpected and unprecedented moments that provide the strongest learning experiences and opportunities to grow your skillset.

She experienced this first-hand in September 2008, when she joined Commerzbank just one month before the financial world fell into crisis, and then again this past year with the pandemic. Now Soennecken approaches these big upheavals with some fascination by observing how various players respond and react to crisis on all levels.

She notes her “extremely analytical mind” gives her the ability to remain curious and agile, as she is naturally prone to dissecting how the many pieces of a system work together and interact with each other—including considering the consequences in a scenario when one piece fails.

Flipping the Worst-Case Scenario

Soennecken had a first-hand experience of a worst-case work challenge, when years ago, her firm initiated a significant restructuring. Consequently, she witnessed a mass exodus of her entire 25 person department over just a few months, including team members she thought she could not afford to lose.

Tasked with restructuring the department, and never imagining she would end up doing it alone, she recalls a “breakdown moment” in the bathroom after the last person announced they, too, were leaving. However, beginning with temporary patches, Soennecken stood up and began to rebuild the entire department.

Although she had a private office, she instead moved her desk to the middle of the open floor, where anyone who joined would have access to her. Only after a three-year journey rebuilding the team did she return to her office with an open door policy.

“Rebuilding was hitting rock bottom where there was nothing left, and then climbing out from there to create a completely new department,” she recalls. “I didn’t know what to do except to put myself right in the middle and build from the inside out. I was just put in charge and swam my way out. But when I look back, I’m proud of the approach I took, and of what I accomplished.”

For Soennecken, the most impactful part of this experience was learning via unsolicited team member feedback about how her collaborative approach positively impacted their individual and collective growth.

Staying Confident as A Woman

“I had the advantage that I found progressive male mentors that supported me,” says Soennecken, “but I also found a lot of opposition along the way for being a woman.”

Having worked in banking for a few decades, she remembers earlier in her career being the only woman in rooms of men where she was asked to pour the coffee. Though she recalls wondering ‘why her?’, the request wasn’t entirely out of the norm at the time, and she wasn’t equipped to confront it like women are today.

“I wasn’t entirely aware that I was sometimes being treated in a way I shouldn’t have been treated,” says Soennecken. “As a consequence, certain elements of confidence were lost along the way that I didn’t notice I was losing, until I look back now.”

Today, she can recognize the minimizing ways in which she was talked to or handled as a woman, and how that wore down her natural confidence, while other habits arose to compensate and created a double bind.

“I ended up being a little harder than I was expected to be. I even had a coach for supposedly being too straightforward when talking to people,” she says, “but I think it was, in part, a consequence of navigating through a world where I had to push with my elbows to try to be heard. Now I know that I could have used a more feminine approach to get what I wanted without having to try to act like a man.”

In retrospect, Soennecken observed she could have used her intuitive and relational skills—such as sensing someone’s feelings about confrontation or mirroring their conversational tendencies—to achieve the influence she instead struggled for.

“Our sensitivity as women can work against us, but I realize I could have used that sensitivity to my advantage in interrelating,” she reflects. “It would have spared me some stress along the way.”

The Danger of Over-Explaining

Soennecken believes that it is important to encourage gender diversity in managerial roles, but on the flip side, women need not be required to champion every woman when it’s more objectivity that is needed.

When asked, one way she’s personally observed how women can undermine their own power is by defending themselves too much in the meeting room.

“We often think we are being attacked personally,” she says, noting many moments when she’s listened to another woman get drawn into over-explaining herself, going further only to lose her ground.

“If you make yourself small by defending yourself too much, by giving a lot of explanation for something that could be a simple answer,” she continues, ”then you lose all your power and the advantage you might have had.”

‘Letting Go’ For Others to Grow

Over the years, Soennecken has adapted from guiding people with a hands-on approach, to guiding people while letting go.

“When you are hands on, you do things a certain way and tend to believe others should do it the same way. But people have different approaches, and it takes time to admit to yourself those approaches are fine, and so are the consequences,” she says. “You are supporting the growth of people by allowing them to also make mistakes. You’re going to support and guide them, but there’s purpose in delegating and giving others the opportunity to grow and shine in their own way.”

As a mentor, she notices when people are stuck: “You see that someone is in the wrong job, but they are afraid of changing, finding the right job and really being happy. They’re making a big effort, but they can’t grow because it’s not what they want to do.”

“The potential is in embracing the unknown, not in staying in their comfort zone, but you get a lot of resistance because most people don’t like change. The success story happens when finally somebody embraces the change that is good for them,” she says. “You can help them realize the potential is there, and trust and support them, but they have to ultimately make the decision.”

When it comes to finding fulfillment at work and advancing up the career ladder, Soennecken feels it’s about going beyond. Being interested and doing “the extra” is what creates the sense of fulfillment for her.

“If you come to work every day and you type five pages because your job is to type five pages, you’re not going to progress,” she gives as an example. “But if you come in every day, and instead of typing five pages, one day you decide the pages could be a different color or a different layout or you can type eight pages or a book, then you grow.”

Never Forget “The Little Heart”

“You cannot have a more loyal employee than if the person has a personal situation, and you show you can be supportive,” says Soennecken. “Never forget about the personal side of the people you work with. It’s what I call ‘the little heart’ and everybody has ‘a little heart’. Very often, I think about ‘the little heart’ of my colleagues, regardless of their role or responsibility.”

When it comes to non-business workplace issues, for example redesigning seating arrangements, she knows certain things are important to people, and if she can accommodate a request, she will. While you can’t please everyone, she has found it makes all the difference to thoughtfully consider all parts of someone in the decisions she makes.

Speaking of little hearts, Soenneken is the single mother of two bright, energetic twin six-year-old girls. She feels the pandemic has helped to highlight what is most important in life and is enjoying the unexpected, but welcome, togetherness with her family.

By Aimee Hansen

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Three Ways to Move Into The Self-Care of Thriving

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Self-CareAs we hit the midpoint of the year and get into summer, let’s take a break from going through the motions to re-evaluate and practice self-care: what do you need to do for yourself to restore and regenerate?

Too much of self-care talk focuses on topping up the energy you have depleted so you can survive the daily grind. Self-care is not really about getting by, but committing to yourself and your authenticity so you can thrive.

Prioritizing self-care is about restoring your energy and your connection within, so that life becomes more energy-generative.

Here are three ways to practice self-care so you can feel more alive in your skin:

1. Get Back Into Relationship With Your Body

How often have you overrode your body’s messages – be it forgoing rest, healthy food or physical activity – while striving to do everything else that seemed ‘more important’? Women are especially prone to burnout at work and the long hours game has a disproportionally damaging effect on women’s health.

Overvaluing the mental urge towards productivity while disconnecting from our physical bodies moves us away from health and the feminine wisdom of our bodies. When you lose intimacy with your body, you lose the ability to access gut feelings, intuition and valuable emotional guidance.

As Stephen Covey would put it in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you also make the mistake of prioritizing production at the expense of nurturing your production capability, which is only good for short-terms external wins but ultimately exhausts your ability to show up, especially for yourself.

This summer, really get into your body. Not just as a means to another end, such as running off the stress or shedding pounds. And don’t just recharge your body: you were not born to be a battery. Moving your body is not the same as being in a listening relationship with your body. Instead, re-attune to your body. Restore the connection with self, starting here.

Consider a yin yoga class, a restorative yoga class or perhaps 5 rhythms dance. Or let the sun pour in through your skin for twenty minutes. Do something new or slow or fast that brings your awareness back to the simplicity of your ‘being’ and the innate guidance of your body.

Your ‘doing’ will only benefit from bringing it into balance with your ‘being.’

2. Experience “Immersive” Time

“We wake up in the morning and we say, ‘I didn’t get enough sleep.’ And we hit the pillow saying, ‘I didn’t get enough done,’” says Brené Brown.

We conduct our busy work lives in linear time, which helps gives rise to the cultural narrative of scarcity, and the persistent feeling that you can never do enough. But the one-way march of time is just one left-brained frame for experience where we often end up “hustling for our worth,” as Brown puts it.

The seasons of nature and the physiology of the female reproductive body reveal the right-brained frame of cyclical time. What psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes as a state of Flow and the Greeks called kairos is yet another experience of time that is alive, creative, connected and synergistic.

“Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners, schedules, beepers…Kairos is transcendence, infinity, reverence, joy, passion, love, the Sacred… We exist in chronos. We long for kairos. That’s our duality,” writes Sarah Ban Breathnach, in her NYT bestseller Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. “Chronos requires speed so that it won’t be wasted. Kairos requires space so that it might be savored. We do in chronos. In kairos we’re allowed to be. It takes only a moment to cross over from chronos into kairos, but it does take a moment. All that kairos asks is our willingness to stop running long enough to hear the music of the spheres.”

This summer, drop into immersive time more often. A key quality is that the experience of presence and participation themselves are the reward of this time, not the result.

Perhaps it’s getting lost in adventures with your family or a deep conversation. Perhaps it’s a long walk or drive in nature. Reading a book. Cooking a homemade meal. Dancing or painting or writing or meditation or playing an instrument. Whatever activity makes you forget both yourself and the world because you are so inside of it, that’s the gold.

In a feminine sense of creativity, we do not forgo self-care in order to labor ‘at all costs’ for what is, relative to our health, an abstract outcome. We value and care for ourselves throughout the process as the experience is the creation. Tapping into immersive time increase your well-being, your creativity and your productivity, too.

3. Rediscover How To Use Your “No”

Halfway through the year is a good time to step back and ask where your time and energy is going and whether it’s adding up to create fulfilling meaning for you, rather than just ticking off your list or other’s needs.

As in Covey’s famous time management matrix, are you steadily putting energy and resource into the Quadrant 2 area of “not urgent but important” in your life? This is often the hardest area to devote yourself to when life pulls from all directions, so take a break to get an overview of your energy investment relative to your real values and desires.

More than ever, our energy is susceptible to be whittled away by low importance matters of false urgency, as 24/7 responsiveness and social media addiction has become normalized. Look at the hours you’ve spent on the phone in a day and ask if you deposited anything in the investment bank of your heart? How much was truly connection and how much was distraction?

When our commitments, as demonstrated by habit, are not aligned with our values-based desires, we begin to feel the pain of disconnection with self.

Realignment of energy with values is going to require emotional attuning.

One question that can be useful is to ask: What is the one thing I am getting angry/resentful for not doing? If you’re giving all your energy away except to the thing that’s really important to you, you will begin to feel like the world is crashing in on your personal boundaries. Now, how can you choose time to prioritize what you yearn for? Can you let discipline come from love?

As part of trauma exploration, Gabor Maté, M.D. talks about how most of us ‘wisely’ adapted to give up our authenticity for attachment as children. But when we continue to forgo our authentic needs, due to the stories and guilt we’ve cultivated, it causes stress, suffering and disease. He asserts that if you can’t say ‘no’, your body will.

According to Maté, women have a harder time saying no and suffer the health consequences. One essential step in self-care, and restoring your authenticity, is relearning how to give an authentic ‘no’ – whether in work or personal life.

Maté suggests to ask the following questions around saying ‘no’:

  • Where in my life do I have difficulty saying no?
  • What story did I tell myself about why I couldn’t say no?
  • Is that story really true?
  • What is the impact on myself when I don’t say no?
Thrive, Not Survive

This summer, think about self-care not as a way to survive the grind of your life, but to step a little further into thrive, whatever that authentically means for you!

By: Aimee Hansen

Note: We are taking a publishing break and our own advice and we will see you on Monday 12th July, and remember we have over 5000 articles to read in the archives if you are missing our cutting edge career insights!

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Erika Karp: Chief Impact Officer, Pathstone

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Erika Karp“I think that capitalism has the potential to be exceptionally productive. That said, we’ve messed it up. We’ve distorted it, and it has become a system that is extractive and exclusive,” says Erika Karp. “I think that’s really unfortunate. I want to be a part of a system that is regenerative and inclusive, and I still believe capitalism can be.”

Karp speaks to a childhood love for economics, why ESG takes the ideology out of sustainable investment and being the first out lesbian on her firm’s Wall Street trading floor.

From the Lemonade Stand to the Trading Room

Karp knew from when she was a child that she loved and wanted to be involved in trading and economics.

“While we don’t think about it that way, trading is part of human nature. As kids, we set up lemonade stands in our driveways in the suburbs of New York. Well that wasn’t quite interesting enough,” she remembers. “So I set up a stand with all my old toys, trinkets and baubles. It wasn’t so much about the money, but trading. I loved it.”

When Erika’s sister borrowed money from her as children, she’d pay Erika back with a little interest. And Karp recalls her father, a securities lawyer, getting off the phone with a client and saying: “It’s so wonderful when you’re involved in the stock market and on the phone, and on your word, on your honor, you can do important transactions with millions of dollars.”

Karp remembers that it was on your honor. From six years old, she didn’t know what a stockbroker was, but she knew she was going to be one.

Willing that Capitalism Can be Regenerative

Karp lists her personal values as nature and animals, access to water and the ocean, access to education and healthcare. Towards the end of her first 25 years on Wall Street, which culminated in her becoming Director of Global Sector Research at UBS Investment Bank, she was asked to manage the Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) team.

“I learned organically that when you look at the critical environmental and social and governance factors in a company, in an industry, in a sector – you really do get a lot of predictive insight into the long-term investing process,” she notes. “Being able to align my investment discipline and belief in capitalism with my personal values through the discipline of ESG analysis felt amazing.”

“To evolve capitalism towards something that’s more regenerative and more inclusive definitely takes a systems approach. That means understanding complexity, nuance and interrelationships.” As momentum gathered, Karp began to do work on sustainable investing in cooperation with World Economic Forum, UN Global Compact and the Clinton Global Initiative.

“As I got more involved, I felt a greater sense of purpose and urgency. So I founded Cornerstone Capital Group, which [was] a purpose-built research-driven impact investment advisor,” she notes. After bringing the business to $1.2 billion in assets under management, she took the plunge to merge her impact-focused firm with Pathstone, an independent registered investment advisory firm focused on families, family offices and institutions. It was a symbiotic merger, with Pathstone having a long-standing background in ESG analysis and a strong interest in expanding its impact orientation.

Taking the Ideology Out of ESG

“Years ago, I remember thinking even the word ‘responsible’ implies ideology, it implies right and wrong,” reflects Karp. “So the world of SRI was ideological, political, divisive and tree-hugging, and it just wasn’t adopted as real investing.”

“To some degree, I was subversive. I came to believe that over the long run, ESG factors are fundamentally important to get more predictive insight in the investment process,” she says. “So I was more pragmatic. I didn’t use words like ‘responsible’ or ‘sustainability’ or barely even ‘climate change’. I would talk ‘energy efficiency’ and ‘reputational risk” and ‘political risk’. I knew it was about sustainability in the back of my mind, but I talked about fundamental things to the industry, because I really believe it’s about investment outcomes.”

“Unlike SRI, on the ESG front, we can analyze factors objectively,” says Karp. “Whether or not this touches my values, does it touch a company’s revenues and costs and risk? It’s beyond being ideological now. It’s about investment.”

Karp was invited to join the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), an opportunity to create infrastructure in defining ESG criteria that matters to any given industry or company and offering standards for what to disclose based on material economic and profit outcomes.

“More and more people now understand ESG as an analytical discipline, so that’s great progress,” says Karp. She notes that myth-busting still is an active part of her work – for example busting the myth that ESG factors reduce returns when the research shows not only that this is incorrect, but that integrating ESG factors can potentially increase returns over the long term.

Karp points out the risk of ESG analysis becoming more popular is that it is done flippantly, rather than at a high quality level with skilled managers. She feels ESG practices will evolve with standard disclosure, and technology will become more skilled in discerning the signal from the noise in the data when it comes to informing investment impact and outcomes.

“ESG analysis is a discipline within finance that is the future of finance,” says Karp. “One day, all the different phrases – SRI and impact and values-based and double bottom line, we won’t use them. It’s just investing.”

Being A Leader, Not A Manager

“I would rather be a leader than manager. To be a good leader, you really do have to have a vision, a mission. I want people to feel inspired to get on board with what we’re doing and feel purpose and connection,” says Karp. “Management is structural and systems and measures and accountability are critical. But I don’t love management as much as I love leadership.”

As a lover of learning, Karp also feels she learns most when also teaching. With her wife being a clinical psychologist, she jokes she is clearly not afraid to be analyzed.

“Every leader has flaws. I think I am mostly able to hear about the things that I can do better. I want to evolve, teach and coach,” says Karp. “If I’m not listening or open to input as to how I can be better, that’s not facilitating what I want to do.”

“We have financial capital, human capital and natural capital, which is priceless. The intersectionality of these three forms of capital has to be valued,” she says, when she speaks to her leadership vision. “All need to be respected and they need to become regenerative as opposed to being destroyed or shifted around.”

“We know the value of financial capital – many trillions of dollars,” says Karp. “Could someone tell me the value of the last drop of water? That’s worth more than all the financial capital in existence. That’s how I think of things.”

Being The First Out Lesbian on The Trading Floor

“As a woman, to succeed, you can’t just be good. You have to be great,” says Karp. “I was experienced differently than many of the guys around me. So if I am assertive and articulate, I might have been perceived as pushy or aggressive. It’s hard work to gain respect and credibility while balancing not wanting to be seen as aggressive.”

Karp notes that as a woman, and being potentially more risk-averse, she has found herself and other women to often be more supported in their arguments: “In a conference room full of men, I may not be the first to speak,” she says, “but when I do, I have something to say that affects the thinking of the people in the room.”

“When it comes to being gay, that’s more challenging. While my clients or colleagues are processing ‘she’s gay’, are they also hearing what I’m saying? This is the case with any difference,” says Karp. “Whereas we now know difference has to be embraced, because it’s awesome.”

For the initial years of her career, Karp had been married to a man and was mostly closeted. Even after telling a close colleague, it took her years to come out, and she even recalls jumping out of her first Pride Parade in New York for the couple blocks around where it passed by her office building and jumping back in afterwards.

But after making director, and meeting her future wife, she came out 24 years ago. She did not experience the backlash she feared, and she says even if she had, she would not have cared.

“Even if it did affect my career in some way, I don’t care. I’ll never know. I don’t care, because I feel like being out has made me more productive, more creative, more content than I could have imagined back then,” says Karp. “But it was hard — I was the first out lesbian on a Wall Street trading floor.”

Karp found her firm to be receptive and open to learning, and she made a point of being purposely out and transparent to make it easier for those to come. She introduced a lounge for breastfeeding when she had her babies. Repeatedly, she went to HR at UBS with the questions that had never been asked: about covering costs related to becoming pregnant, about taking leave of absence when her wife carried the baby, about applying the financial assistance with the adoption process for her own children.

“Each time, they came back with a yes,” she says. “There are a lot of benefits we have now that are relatively standard at big investment banks, we didn’t have back then.”

Karp and Sari Kessler have had three marriages. Their first “illegal” wedding was 22 years ago in The BoatHouse in Central Park with their rabbi, friends and family. The second was on the first day that City Hall in Manhattan was giving out marriage licenses for same sex couples, also with her rabbi and this time, with their three daughters present (who are now 19, 16 and 13 years old). The third time was when federal marriage equality rights were granted.

Doing What She Is Meant For

“I know that I’m doing what I ought to be doing, and I know that I’m doing it in an important and honorable way,” says Karp.

She loves nature and water and says margaritas by the ocean with her family would be her happy place. She loves hiking, movies, playing cards and watching her daughters grow up, if far too quickly.

By: Aimee Hansen

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5 Ways To Become a Better LGBTQ+ Ally

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LGBTQ+ allyBeing an LGBTQ+ ally is being an advocate for, and active participant in, building cultural inclusion.

According to Fast Company, “Allyship refers to everyday acts which challenge behavioral norms and support members of marginalized groups through an awareness of the issues being faced by others.”

A team of professors in Harvard Business Review view “allyship” as: “a strategic mechanism used by individuals to become collaborators, accomplices, and coconspirators who fight injustice and promote equity in the workplace through supportive personal relationships and public acts of sponsorship and advocacy. Allies endeavor to drive systemic improvements to workplace policies, practices, and culture.”

Here are five ways to be an accomplice in creating cultural inclusion:

1. Cultivate Awareness and Empathy.

A lot of advice for being a better ally focuses on self-education. But what is the objective of that? Cultivating awareness and empathy.

A prerequisite of support is cultivating awareness of realities and painful disadvantages that you do not have direct experience of: becoming aware of the bias and discrimination and understanding why it causes harm. The absence of having to experience that reality is what we call ‘privilege’.

Allyship requires a willingness to open your eyes and place yourself in another’s shoes as they tell you how that experience exists for them through their eyes.

In their March 2020 survey of 2,000 LGBTQ+ employees and 2,000 straight employees, in partnership with NYC LGBT Community Center, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found an interesting insight.

Natural allyship is on the rise, because the separation between young LGBTQ people and their straight peers is more narrow. Compared to their older counterparts, straight employees under 35 are 1.6 times more likely to know LGBTQ colleagues, 3.6 times more likely to join ally programs and 3 times more likely to find value in colleagues being ‘out’.

The younger the employee group, the greater the awareness of discrimination. For example, only one-fourth of straight 55-64 year olds witnessed any discrimination in the past year, compared to 57% of their LGBTQ+ peers. But 85% of straight 18-24 year olds witnessed it, much closer to the 91% of LGBTQ+ who also did.

That change reflects a much smaller gap and increased sensitivity in the ability to see certain behaviors as harmful to certain groups, even if you do not belong to the group.

By expanding your exposure to the stories of others, whether through personal connection, documentaries, books or following LGBTQ+ leaders and media, you increase your awareness of the nuances of discrimination and build empathy. Start here: Are you aware of the common microaggressions that LGBTQ+ people experience?

2. Recognize Identity As Personally Defined and Fluid.

As theglasshammer covered recently, social identity is increasingly becoming more personal, intersectional, fluid and multiple. But more than anything, identity is increasingly self-identified. The myriad range of LGBTQ+ experiences are far from universal.

It’s important to realize that language matters, and not make assumptions about the identity or orientation of another person or about what that belonging means for them.

By allowing others to tell you about themselves through their voice, rather than make assumptions, you remain curious and allow others to find their authenticity. An inside-out connection that begins with the internal connection with self, and interacting with others and the world from the space of that inner truthfulness, is the basis of authenticity.

Being conscious of your own language helps to avoid making assumptions, such as using gender-neutral terms like ‘partner’. Honoring a person’s self-identity includes observing the personal pronouns that people choose for themselves and normalizing that choice.

Certain short-cut assumptions are well-conditioned in our brains, so it takes effort to not make those automatic leaps. But when it comes to another person’s life, it’s far more connective to show up by listening to them before you assert assumptions about who they are.

3. Embrace The Growth in Discomfort.

“Allyship is not knowing it all and never making mistakes. That’s impossible,” writes Freddy McConnell, host of Pride & Joy BBC podcast. “It’s putting in the effort and not expecting trophies.”

Allyship requires vulnerability, because you’re going to be clumsy at times. As McConnell writes: “When my friend came out to me as nonbinary, I practised their pronouns in private. Being trans does not imbue me with a special gift for unlearning familiar speech patterns.”

It’s not about getting it right or wrong, but about being open to learning. Before we challenge any unconscious bias, stereotypes or assumptions in the culture around us, we often foremost come to confront the existence of them within ourselves, even as part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Often the roots of rejection (of others and self-rejection) are shame-based beliefs and conditioning. Evolving involves unlearning that cultural conditioning, including the habit to shame ourselves if we get it wrong.

A willingness to be wrong, admit when you’re wrong, own your mistake and be receptive to guidance is what is valuable to a growth mindset and to keeping the focus on your intention of better allyship.

“Allyship is actually more about the mistakes than the things that you do right,” says human rights advocate Maybe Burke, who conducts allyship training on behalf of the Transgender Training Institute. “It’s about how you deal with those mistakes and move forward.”

4. Treat Ally as a Verb.

As suggested in a University College London (UCL) blog: “Think of ‘ally’ as an action rather than a label.” Being an ally is not about whether you consider yourself as an ally, but how you show up in support consistently.

In their research, BCG found that only 34% of straight employees always intervene when they see an encounter. As written in HBR: “When you witness discrimination, don’t approach the victim later to offer sympathy. Give him or her your support in the moment.”

Remaining silent is a comfortable form of passive collusion—it assures that heteronormative assumptions and microaggressions remain invisible, insidious and unchallenged within the fabric of an organizational culture, and puts the emotional burden on LGBTQ+ people to be the only ones calling out these behaviors. It also makes it more vulnerable for them to do so.

Are you willing to speak up when you hear something that feels wrong or discriminatory or does not sit well, inside of your heart? And will you be that voice in the room, even when the LGBTQ+ person may not be in it? Are you being an ally (verbing it) in the moment it’s called for?

5. Uplift LGBTQ+ Voices.

Ultimately, allyship embraces an interdependent lens: a culture is not really working for anybody if it’s not welcoming and nutritive for everybody. An organizational culture needs to be a win-win for all employees on all levels to be maximally effective.

That’s why performative allyship is dangerous—it comes from a place of ego protection, does not integrate win-win and keeps the focus on the appearance of allyship (the guise of doing good) rather than fundamentally being aligned to real organizational change for everyone’s good.

Performative allyship fears losing its position or does not really embrace the point.

Speaking up as an ally is not about speaking over, but raising everyone’s voice. Be willing to ask how you can support your LGBTQ+ colleagues in the way that is most meaningful for them.

While your voice will be needed as an ally, your success will be evidenced in the greater space for marginalized LGBTQ+ voices at the center, not the edges, of the organizational conversation—down to the small and casual daily interactions that form relationships and culture.

(If you are a leader who wants to develop your skills as an inclusive leader to leverage diversity and truly understand the topic as a strategic capability, work with Nicki Gilmour on this topic as she coaches male and female leaders and managers who are growing their skills and evolving their behaviors to lead the current and future top talent of their firms. For an exploratory call, please book a session here.)

By Aimee Hansen

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