Image courtesy Bank of America
By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
Last night, the Financial Women’s Association hosted a discussion with Sallie Krawcheck, President of Global Wealth & Investment Management for Bank of America, as part of the organization’s Distinguished Speakers Series.
The candid (and often humorous) discussion touched upon career development, the state of the financial services industry, trust, and what it means to be in transition. The point Krawcheck kept returning to, though, was the importance of keeping a long term view – both in terms of the markets and in professional growth.
Regarding the state of the financial industry’s efforts to advance women in leadership positions, she said, “The industry has been working on it for a while. Progress in some years is good, and in other years it is limited.”
Many companies in the financial services industry operate in a state of crisis, she explained, working to beat quarterly results, rather than looking out for the long term good of the firm. And this behavior transfers to the firms’ hiring processes as well. Because these banks are constantly in crisis mode, managers choose to promote the so-called safe choices – people who look and behave similarly to the ones already in charge. “This goes against giving people who not just look different, but think differently” opportunities for promotion, Krawcheck said.
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Ask-A-Career Coach: How Does a Company Select From a Big Pile of Resumes?
Ask A Career Coach, NewsI was recently on a recruiting project, helping out a non-profit with dozens of open jobs. You would not know there is 10% unemployment at this place because they can’t hire fast enough to keep up with their needs. I see this feast or famine phenomenon often as a recruiter – either the company has nothing and no reason to call people in; or they are so busy, they don’t have the time to call people in.
Either way, companies are likely not going to call people in for interviews.
WHAT?!?! Am I saying that companies need to find the best and the brightest but they won’t take the time to do that? Yes, I am saying exactly that.
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Should Women Act Like ‘Self Aggrandizing Jerks’?
Breaking the Glass CeilingIn a recent blog post, Clay Shirky, a world-famous new media scholar and consultant, wrote, “not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks.”
This is bad for women, he reasons, because, “people who don’t raise their hands don’t get called on, and people who raise their hands timidly get called on less. Some of this is because assertive people get noticed more easily, but some of it is because raising your hand is itself a high-cost signal that you are willing to risk public failure in order to try something.”
Men, on the other hand, seem to have less of a problem with stretching the facts in order to promote themselves. “There is no upper limit to the risks men are willing to take in order to succeed, and if there is an upper limit for women, they will succeed less.”
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Helping Professional Women Band Together and Build Strengths
Featured, NetworkingThere has been a noticeable change in the way women help other women in the workforce.
“In the past 10 years, I have seen a huge push among senior level women who are passionate about mentoring,” said Jo Miller, Founder of Women’s Leadership Coaching “to help emerging women leaders gain access to networks, role models and opportunities.”
Miller offers seminars, coaching programs and webinars that are designed for businesswomen to create roadmaps into leadership positions. She launched a webinar series as a cost-effective solution for career advancement and advice. Divided into two categories to meet the needs of emerging and executive leaders, the webinars feature speakers who have broken through the glass ceiling and want to share their experiences with other like-minded women.
Miller also speaks at seminars and workshops regarding career advancement for women. Topics include winning at the game of office politics, creating your own brand as an emerging leader and becoming a person of influence.
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Voice of Experience: Barbara-Ann King, Head of Investments, Barclays Stockbrokers
Voices of ExperienceBarbara-Ann King is not your stereotypical stockbroker. In May this year she will be jumping out of a plane to raise money for Breakthrough Breast Cancer. “I am a great believer in giving things a try, because if it does not work out you can try something else,” she says, “and I believe that leadership, or the best leaders, are those who are willing to go outside their comfort zone.”
King took another leap over ten years ago, when she moved from a legal and management consultancy career to alternative investment management. It turned out to be a shrewd move, as she has risen through the financial services ranks to become Head of Investments at Barclays Stockbrokers. However, it wasn’t a structured step on her career journey. “To be honest there was no master plan, it just happened,” she explains. “I was working on a project that involved private equity and got head hunted by a bank for a role that I had no interest in, fed this back and was then asked to consider another role in the start up of a ‘new’ department of alternative investments – the industry was not even called that at the time, it was called ‘special funds’.”
King liked the team at Citigroup and sees herself as a natural entrepreneur and ‘builder’ so she gave the role at serious consideration – and took it. “It sounded fun so I took a leap of faith,” she says. “It turned into a multi billion revenue business and with it I moved to New York and took a global senior management role.”
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On Your Bookshelf: The Mentor’s Guide
Mentors and SponsorsDoes your company have a mentoring program? Were you considering signing up to mentor a colleague? You have great timing – January is National Mentoring Month.
We previously reported on the benefits of having a mentor at any stage in your career, but how do you actually go about mentoring someone? Dr. Lois Zachary, President of Leadership Development Services, contributed her insight to our article, but she is also the author of The Mentor’s Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships.
The Mentor’s Guide gives you a concrete process to follow in order to build a successful and mutually beneficial mentoring relationship. Zachary’s approach is much like a business project, and as the mentor, you are the project manager.
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Importance of the Long Term View: Sallie Krawcheck at the FWA’s Distinguished Speakers Series
Industry Leaders, LeadershipImage courtesy Bank of America
By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
Last night, the Financial Women’s Association hosted a discussion with Sallie Krawcheck, President of Global Wealth & Investment Management for Bank of America, as part of the organization’s Distinguished Speakers Series.
The candid (and often humorous) discussion touched upon career development, the state of the financial services industry, trust, and what it means to be in transition. The point Krawcheck kept returning to, though, was the importance of keeping a long term view – both in terms of the markets and in professional growth.
Regarding the state of the financial industry’s efforts to advance women in leadership positions, she said, “The industry has been working on it for a while. Progress in some years is good, and in other years it is limited.”
Many companies in the financial services industry operate in a state of crisis, she explained, working to beat quarterly results, rather than looking out for the long term good of the firm. And this behavior transfers to the firms’ hiring processes as well. Because these banks are constantly in crisis mode, managers choose to promote the so-called safe choices – people who look and behave similarly to the ones already in charge. “This goes against giving people who not just look different, but think differently” opportunities for promotion, Krawcheck said.
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Why Accountability is What Matters: Achieving Critical Mass with Targets or Quotas
Breaking the Glass CeilingIn March 2010, the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women will undertake a fifteen-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration. It was at this meeting in China that a group of 50,000 people representing 189 governments actively agreed a goal to increase women in leadership positions.
The magic number became known as the 30% solution, the idea being that once women reached a Critical Mass in an organization, people would stop seeing them as women and start evaluating their work as managers. This theory was originally developed more than 40 years ago by Harvard academic Rosabeth Moss Kanter in her book Men and Women of the Corporation.
Fifteen years after the Beijing Declaration, Norway is the only country to have progressed towards this goal via legislation – championed by someone who definitely doesn’t meet the profile of a typical feminist. Norwegian politician Ansgar Gabrielsen is a Pentecostal Christian, and an archetypal alpha-male businessman. His reasons seem logical and resource driven.
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A Leg Up: Women for Boards
NewsThe UK has a new initiative for women who want to make it to the top: Women for Boards, sponsored by MWM Consulting, aims to support female high-fliers in their drive to become non-executive directors for major companies.
“Female board directors remain rare and still face a steep climb to the top,” says Rebecca Fitzpatrick, spokesperson for Women for Boards. “Women for Boards is targeting highly qualified women, who for whatever reason so far have lacked visibility, and helping them to gain their valuable first board position. This will not only bring greater diversity to the Boards to which they are appointment, it will also help these women develop the experience to take on other Non-Executive roles in the future, potentially on larger boards.”
The aim is to build a groundswell of women in FTSE 250 and 350 companies, with an eventual goal of giving these women the skills they need to take on more responsibility as non-executive directors of FTSE100 companies.
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One Chicago Group’s Dynamic New Approach to Improving Women’s Advancement
NetworkingFor all the progress women have made in the workplace, the numbers just aren’t showing it. One Chicago group is shaking its head at the statistics and looking at ways to increase the amount of women on corporate boards.
The Chicago Network, an organization dedicated to connecting and promoting high-profile women, has published an annual Census for the past 12 years. Taking a look at the top 50 publicly reported companies in the Chicagoland area, from Fortune 500 and Crain’s Chicago Business, the group determined that in 2009, growth had slowed for women climbing the corporate ladder.
“Roughly 15% of board seats are filled by women in the top 50 publicly reported companies in Chicago,” said Cheryl Francis, the Chair of The Chicago Network. “When we first started publishing the Census, women filled 10% of board seats but there has been very little movement since 2003.”
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Cracks Begining to Show in California’s Glass Ceiling – Where and Why
Breaking the Glass CeilingFor the past five years, the UC Davis Graduate School of Management has worked in conjunction with the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives (FWE&E) to collect the data for their Study of California’s Women Business Leaders, which takes a census of California’s women directors and officers and sheds light on the lack of female representation found in these roles. For many of us already aware of the dismal numbers in which women are represented in c-suite positions and on boards across the country, it will come as no surprise that 2009’s study found that women continue to remain one of California’s most untapped resources.
The Bay Area: A Contradiction in Gender Representation
Nationally, only 15.2 percent of board positions are held by women and the numbers aren’t much better in California. FWE&E CEO, Wendy Beecham, has the unique perspective of having the area where she both lives and works be a representation of the best and worst of California. Beecham is a major proponent of diversity in the boardroom and her Palo Alto, CA office serves the entire Bay Area. Oddly enough, the Bay Area has both the highest and lowest numbers in the state for women directors. In San Francisco County, 15.7 percent of board positions are held by women, which is the highest in the state and higher than the national average. Just a little over sixty miles away; however, the booming Silicon Valley in Santa Clara County, considered the high-tech hub of the country and home to technology giants like Adobe Systems, Apple, eBay, and Google, continues to remain an all boy’s club with just 8.2 percent of board positions being held by women.
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