Meyanna Jiang, Anisha George, and Holly Batchelor
Three colleagues on growing as a leader, connecting with mentors and “managing up.”
In the December edition of The Glass Hammer, three colleagues at Goldman Sachs delve deep, sharing their best practices for success – ranging from thinking strategically and helping to further their teams’ goals to balancing competing priorities and “managing up.” Meet the interviewees and hear their take:
· Holly Batchelor is a vice president in Securities, based in Hong Kong
· Anisha George is an associate in Compliance, based in Bengaluru
· Meyanna Jiang is a vice president in Controllers, based in New York
Reflecting on your career at Goldman Sachs to date, what advice would you share with individuals just starting out?
· Meyanna: Be curious in your work, and look for ways to keep yourself challenged. I try to do one thing that scares me each week, whether it be public speaking, or volunteering for a project that I might not know much about.
· Holly: The ability to grow and nurture your network is invaluable – you might not realize it now, but the people you work with and get to know at the beginning of your career can be hugely influential and helpful later on.
· Anisha: I have found that projects others were not interested in working on ultimately had the biggest impact on my career. In addition, I would remind others that each individual has a unique journey – everyone’s path to success is different. I have learned to find joy and meaning in my own journey by setting personal goals and working to achieve them.
What actions do you take throughout your day to ensure you’re best helping your team and furthering its mission and strategy?
· Holly: I try to share as much information as possible with my team and keep everyone in the loop. Work is more enjoyable and fulfilling when you know why you’re working on a task, and are aware of the strategy you’re helping to implement.
· Meyanna: When I introduce a new project or task for my team, I aim to provide sufficient context by explaining how this deliverable supports our firmwide or divisional strategy.
How do you allocate time for both strategic thinking and execution in your role?
· Holly: Knowledge is power. Having a sense of what the market looks like and what our competitors are doing allows me to develop a strategy for my team and our plan for execution.
· Meyanna: I like to think of this as “zooming in” and “zooming out.” If the CEO stopped by your desk while you were in the middle of analyzing millions of rows of data and asked, “What are you working on?” how would you respond in a sentence or two? This exercise helps me think strategically.
What recommendations do you have for balancing competing priorities?
· Holly: To-do lists! It’s important to stay on top of priority projects, even as things pop up that require immediate attention. I often use the “big rock, pebble, sand” analogy when thinking about what I need to set aside time for: the big rocks are my major tasks and strategic initiatives, the pebbles are shorter-term tasks of lesser importance, and the sand is minor tasks that aren’t essential to my success.
· Meyanna: Stay organized, whether it’s adding calendar reminders, writing to-do lists, or color-coding emails to help you stay on track. I also remind my team that it’s okay to push back on requests or to say “no” when needed. Unless you speak up, no one will know that you need help.
· Anisha: It’s important to remember that having a fulfilling life outside of work helps your career and your work product. It might seem unrelated, but I think you can bring a more positive energy to the office when you have personal interests that also motivate you.
Any lessons learned on the importance of delegating?
· Meyanna: I’ve learned that the worst thing you can do as a manager is to delegate a task and then take it back, because this demotivates the team and makes them feel like their work is not valued. I’ve also learned that I need to provide “air cover” and give enough space for my team members to fail safely.
· Anisha: I used to dislike delegating because it required me to put in extra time and effort, but over time I realized that I would not be half as successful as I am today if every leader who invested in me had felt the same way about delegating. You can’t lead if no one is following.
· Holly: Delegation gives you the capacity to stretch further to build your business, and it allows you to effectively train and coach the colleagues whom you are delegating work to. Delegating work to others also allows for greater diversity of thought and experience, which often leads to better solutions.
How do you “manage up” with senior stakeholders?
· Anisha: Before meeting senior stakeholders I make sure to always prepare – people want to feel that their time is being valued, and adequate preparation helps shape and inform your conversation. When you have a strong agenda and follow-up plan when connecting with stakeholders, “managing up” just happens.
· Holly: First, you need to identify who your stakeholders are and what is important for them. Then, determine how they like to be kept up to date – do they prefer face-to-face catch ups, e-mail summaries, a full business plan? Adapting your style to match theirs will have much more of an impact.
Do you have a mentor or sponsor? If so, how do you make the most of your conversations with them?
· Holly: I have mentors within and outside of the firm that I often reach out to for advice. I put notes in my calendar to schedule catch-ups with them in order to nurture the relationship, just as you would with a client or stakeholder in your business.
· Meyanna: I have relationships with both mentors and sponsors, and many of these connections have formed organically. Managers can be a great resource, too – they have introduced me to contacts in their networks. Prior to each conversation with them, I write down a few topics for discussion, such as challenges in my day job or planning for the next step in my career.
· Anisha: I have more than one mentor because I value receiving guidance from different stakeholders. My mentors have diverse perspectives and push me to evaluate situations in different ways.
Have you participated in mobility? Do you have any advice for colleagues interested in either switching roles or offices?
· Meyanna: If you are exploring a role switch, raise your hand. Mention to your manager or mentor that you are interested in learning more about a certain business or working in a different location. It is easier for them to help you if they know your interests. In the meantime, continue being a rock star in your current role and look for ways to give yourself exposure to areas you are interested in.
· Anisha: I recently accepted a new role in Goldman Sachs Asset Management and will be relocating from Bengaluru to Dublin in January. The best advice I received when I was considering mobility was to focus on “What?” and “Why?” – meaning, “What do you want to do long-term?” and “Why do you want to move?” Once you have answered these questions, your options will become more clear.
Do you have a personal development plan to keep yourself accountable?
· Meyanna: I recommend writing down your goals. My last set of short- and long-term goals were written on a post-it note stuck to a bar of chocolate. (My team knows I always keep chocolate at my desk.) As I slowly finished the chocolate bar, I found that I was able to complete my goals over time. In addition, I find that it is helpful to share your goals with a buddy, who can help hold you accountable.
· Holly: In the early stages of my career I didn’t have any plan other to absorb as much information as possible. That hasn’t changed, but I now also set career goals with deadlines based on discussions I have with my mentors and stakeholders – incorporating their input is important in order to set realistic goals.
· Anisha: I think about where I want to be in one year and in 10 years, and develop my short- and long-term plans to achieve those goals. It’s necessary to also be nimble and update your goals as your world evolves.
Beyond Networking: The Importance of Nurturing An Inner Circle of Women
Career AdviceThe more your network reflects an inner circle of women, the more effective it may be in supporting your growth and advancement. But even beyond networking, having women in your inner circle matters.
In the Harvard Business Review, Brian Uzzi, Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, writes about his research collaboration into what kinds of networks helped new men MBAs and women MBAs secure executive leadership positions.
For male MBAS, centrality is what mattered – not how big the network is, but being central within it or connected to multiple “hubs”- lots of contacts across different groups. The top quarter of central men obtained jobs that were 1.5 times higher in pay and authority than the bottom quarter.
Centrality also mattered for women, but the women that landed the executive roles with highest levels of authority and pay also had an inner circle of close female contacts in particular. The gender composition of men’s inner circle did not factor into success of MBA graduate placement.
“Women who were in the top quartile of centrality and had a female-dominated inner circle of 1-3 women landed leadership positions that were 2.5 times higher in authority and pay than those of their female peers lacking this combination,” Uzzi writes. “While women who had networks that most resembled those of successful men (i.e., centrality but no female inner circle) placed into leadership positions that were among the lowest in authority and pay.”
Insider Insight Goes Beyond Market Information
The researchers speculate that the inner circle of women is highly likely to provide insight into navigating the unique challenges that women face and to be a permissive space for asking questions outside of an official interview context.
“…because women seeking positions of executive leadership often face cultural and political hurdles that men typically do not,” Uzzi speculates, “they benefit from an inner circle of close female contacts that can share private information about things like an organization’s attitudes toward female leaders, which helps strengthen women’s job search, interviewing, and negotiation strategies.”
The most successful inner circles for women included women who were closely connected to one another but had fewest contacts in common, so as to each have a wider access to insight from more women.
Forget Networking. Nurture Real Connections.
If what likely matters in the inner circle of women is actually collaborating to support and lift each other, then it’s about building relationships you want to be in.
“I always say a woman alone has power; collectively we have impact,” writes Shelly Zalis, in Forbes, Founder and CEO of The Female Quotient. “Traditionally we have been taught to be competitive with one another, because there was such a scarcity of jobs at the top. It’s so clear that strategy doesn’t work.”
Zalis recommends to cultivate an inner circle of women by reframing networking so it’s not “work”: “When you create connections based on shared interests and goals, you’ll be more successful at your job, because people want to work with people they know and like.”
“My advice to women is to reframe what networking is,” says Gail Tifford, Chief Brand Officer of WW. “The fact alone that the word has “work” in it creates pressure for women to feel like it’s something they have to do, and then I see women stress about how to do it. Simply putting yourself in environments that give you the opportunity to meet with peers and get to know each other and share experiences can be a game changer. And chances are, if you make meaningful connections, they are ones that will last a lifetime.”
Relating is not something you “do”. It’s something you and others invest your time and energy in because it’s mutually enriching. Putting yourself into a space where you are sharing with women from diverse relevant backgrounds can magnify your shared sense of belonging and your opportunities.
“Networking is one and done…” writes Zalis.”A relationship, on the other hand, touches your heart and creates an everlasting partnership. To keep connections alive, they must be nurtured.”
Raise Each Other Up
Shedding a mindset of scarcity and competitiveness between women around opportunities also means a willingness to raise other women up, including according to Julie Koepsell, Managing Director of Fellow, creating opportunities for other women to shine, helping to remove obstacles to success, encouraging them, finding out what’s important to other women so you can support them, and leading with example.
“At first it may seem like you’re taking attention away from yourself,” says Rebecca Wiser in the Forbes article, cofounder and director of communications at Womaze, a self-empowerment app for women, “but you’re actually showing that you’re a supportive team player as well as an inspiring leader—and secure enough in yourself to praise others.”
Real leadership does not mean standing alone in the spotlight, or hoarding ownership of the light, but rather a willingness to witness it in others and collectively rise together. It means supporting others in lighting up so that we all shine more.
Perhaps it’s the “net” in networking that needs more emphasis, a circle of women helps to support, hold, lift and create something that catches more opportunities for all.
Extend Your Circle Outside Your Comfort Zone
As evidenced in the research study, diversification of even your inner circle matters when it comes to supporting each other into better opportunities. As Uzzi writes, “The more you associate with similar-minded or experienced people, the less likely you will be to diversify your network and inner circle.”
It takes some to bust out of gravitating towards those who already feel “like us”. Expanding the power of your tribe means expanding your willingness to connect beyond your comfort zone.
Two ways to do this is first of all, be willing to allow “random selection” to comprise your inner circle – Uzzi found that random grouping “raised the odds that female students will befriend those with experience and goals beyond their own, again expanding their knowledge and contacts in career-enhancing ways.”
Secondly, check into how closed your circle is. If the connections of the circle are too interconnected, then it may not be as expansive for each of you. Uzzi provides the examples of workplace or industry affinity groups.
Diversifying your circle creates circles rippling outward, and that shape reaches out to new opportunities and experiences.
Authors Bio: Aimee Hansen is a freelance writer, frequent contributor to theglasshammer and Creator and Facilitator of Storyteller Within Retreats, Lonely Planet recommended women’s circle retreats focused on self-exploration and connecting with your inner truth and sacred expression through writing, yoga, meditation, movement and ceremonies.
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2020
Black History Month, NewsTo celebrate and honor the Martin Luther King Jr.
Holiday, we wanted to put out a call out for amazing female executives in financial and professional services who identify as African American or Black women (British or American or from another nation) to be profiled as part of Black History Month coming up as a celebration of heritage here in the USA in February.
If you are a black female professional or are a woman of color in financial services, tech, law or Fortune 1000 we want to hear from you. As a continuation of our thirteen year campaign to ensure that we create a platform and a place to honor everybody’s unique story and career journey, we invite you to tell yours to inspire others.
We profile all types of people all year long so it is really Black History Month is a heritage celebration and we are totally cognizant around how a person chooses to identify as opposed to identities that we put upon people.
Our aim is to dispel stereotypes and “You, according to you, versus you according to them” and the perceptual gap of who you are in actuality as opposed to who others believe you to be, is everything.
Happy MLK day- celebrate history, his legacy and beyond that, think about how your actions can contribute to progress, equality and equity among people.
Email Nicki@theglasshammer.com if you are interested in having your career profiled
Beth Waldman, Strategic Initiatives Leader, Genpact Risk & Analytics
Movers and ShakersBeth Waldman of Genpact Risk & Analytics says, “Sponsorship is a key thread in my career, specifically in how I was thought of and connected with people that ultimately became my managers. Sponsorship to me went on to mean trust in me and my character and knowing that an introduction is one thing and the rest is up to you. Sponsorship can really set you up for success in your role, so when you have it, take full advantage.”
Beth started her career in 2000 with a job in advertising, at a Madison Avenue agency called DDB, known for its work with major brands like Hershey’s, Johnson & Johnson and Pepsi. The Bank of New York was her primary client and she worked her way up from group assistant to account executive. Beth was recruited by them, finalizing the switching of her path to the client side early in her career.
Beth relays how the early part of her career journey showed her how sponsorship can work, since the person who hired her in her first financial services job, saw her potential and continued to advocate for her once she was inside the bank. She comments,
“At The Bank of New York, I cut my teeth in financial services with RFP writing and some course work, then made my way into the corporate marketing organization, supporting and working on campaigns across several different lines of business including custody, alternative investments and institutional banking.”
After a short lived stint in advertising Prime Brokerage at the ill-fated Lehman Brothers, she moved into marketing in the financial services technology industry, mostly under the umbrella of FIS (then known as SunGard). The string of experiences there of corporate marketing and communications, demand generation, re-branding, and thought leadership creation led her to Genpact in 2014.
At the start of 2019, she made a major move, inside Genpact, going from marketing to strategy in the risk practice, focusing on financial crime compliance. The remit expanded to include all risk services, whether advisory and consulting, analytics or financial crime.
Today, she is the Strategic Initiatives Leader for Genpact Risk and focuses on engagement with key industry analysts and building out a risk & analytics advisory council. She comments,
“I’ve gone from leading small to mid-size, junior to mid-level, co-located, diverse, international teams to being an individual contributor that works closely with leadership. I appreciate the independence and the massive change in dynamic as I realized I enjoy a seat at the strategy table. It is good to understand what is important to you.”
Right now, Beth is thrilled to be scaling up Genpact’s risk & analytics advisory council and she is taking a program she built from a 1.0 to a 2.0 version with the full support of practice and company leadership. She is now focused on risk in financial services, in particular, regulations for banks and other companies handling payments; controls concerning financial crime compliance are the focus, albeit indirectly, of the work of the practice team. She adds,
“With a deep dive into this industry, the work I am involved with ultimately combats terrorist financing, human trafficking, and other crimes spawned from abuse of financial institutions. There is a virtuous nature to the work at the end of the day that I’m proud to be part of.”
Relationships Matter
Beth states that she is proud of the fact she has been recruited for each professional role she has held, including a few jobs that were created expressly for her. She comments that she believes that doing a good job and then keeping in touch with her clients, colleagues and managers is useful,
“I always keep up relationships, even if it’s using LinkedIn to stay connected to sponsors of mine. I have learned and have benefited from the value of networking. At the end of the day I believe it’s based on having strong rapport with my managers, colleagues and other stakeholders. More than once, a past connection/work relationship helped secure a new role for me when the new hiring manager sought out an endorsement for me and my character and work ethic.”
Thinking about advice to her younger self, Beth reflects that she singles out one thing: to be mindful that those around us have all had their own path to get where they are. She opines that respect is a valuable currency and establishing rapport with those you work with, especially outside your immediate team is valuable and always worthy of your time.
“You never know when you may find yourself in need of a sponsor, ally or someone to coach you – whether situationally or otherwise. Managers that spent months recruiting you can leave unexpectedly and you need to stand confidently on your own inside a new organization, as soon as possible.”
What have you learned that you want to share?
“My biggest learning moment was realizing frustration was stemming from boredom, when I was no longer learning in my role; that realization gave me the courage to seek out a new role and a new way of working entirely. I now realize I need to create and to start things and make them real; I prefer to be part of the change.
“Waldman also talks about pushing back, saying no and being authoritative without being interpreted as overly aggressive, as common challenges she has had and seen in others. Further to that, often being the only woman or one of very few women in the room is the reality but it doesn’t have to be a barrier. She offers,
“Don’t shy away from some level of self-promotion and showcasing your successes. You have to have them together (like a show reel) to access when needed.” She adds,
“Lead with your gut and your knowledge; don’t be intimidated if you can’t check every box of experience. Be realistic that no one is a rock star at their job on day one. A good attitude and willingness to get things done will serve you well. Have confidence in your own ability.”
Walking the Talk- role models to reality
Waldman admits that earlier in her career, any time she saw woman in a leadership position in the many financial institutions or other large companies she has worked for, she couldn’t help but gravitate towards them as she found female role models helpful. She wants to pay it forward herself and is currently part of the Women’s Leadership Program for AVP level women across her company of nearly 100,000.
“There are over 300 of us to start, with 30 ultimately making the final phase into a VP promotional pool of candidates. It’s my second leadership course for this band level at Genpact. In prior organizations, I was nominated for and took full advantage of various leadership and other programs. More than once I was sent to presentation-focused classes, where you had to present on camera and live in front of a room of people you were meeting for the first time.”
Outside of work, after a 30 year hiatus, Beth is playing piano again, taking lessons with her daughters who are eight and six. She enjoys travel and recently, she and her husband made it to Red Rocks in Colorado to see live music and states that her ultimate adventures are those with their children; skiing with her family being is her latest and greatest proud parent moment.
5 Negotiation Tactics Women Can Use to Fight the Gender Wage Gap
Guest ContributionNegotiation Tips for Women
Potentially the number one weapon in the arsenal against the gender pay gap is improved negotiation tactics for women. According to a recent Harvard Law article, studies surrounding the negotiation of salary demonstrate that male candidates tend to use tactics that achieve better results than women. Deeply ingrained societal biases surrounding gender roles prevent traditional male-centric negotiation strategies from being as effective for women as they might otherwise be. However, there are ways that women can significantly affect the gap by educating themselves in tactics that work well, combating gender biases and stereotypes.
University of Münster’s Jens Mazei and colleagues studied the strengths women had when compared to men in negotiation in a paper called “A Meta-Analysis on Gender Differences in Negotiation Outcomes and Their Moderators” published in the Psychological Bulletin. They discovered some intriguing ideas that indicated how women could leverage strategies that would narrow the gender pay gap significantly. Here are five findings to use in your negotiation approach:
1. Reframe the conversation: Mazei’s research indicates that due to a societal understanding of women as nurturing, women in negotiation are more effective when they consider the idea that they are working on behalf of someone other than themselves. When women come into a negotiation with a supportive notion that they are fielding a larger purpose, such as getting more for their team or even fighting gender inequality so that the next generation will get a fair shake, they tend to be more effective in negotiation.
2. Get used to the bargaining table: Like anything else, negotiation takes practice. Because, perhaps, gender bias perpetuates the attitude that it is unseemly for women to engage in negotiations, men generally have put a great deal more time into it. This lack of experience, however, is a large factor in the imbalance between men and women in this area. Getting as much negotiation experience as possible will help even the odds significantly. Practicing bargaining with others in simulation on a regular basis can have a very positive effect on the real process.
3. Informational gathering including salary transparency: Having all of the facts surrounding a position may be even more crucial for women in negotiation than it would be for a male candidate. According to Glassdoor, when women know the specific salaries, for example, of those that work in comparable positions, they have an improved ability to negotiate more equitable compensation. Indeed, companies that practice more transparency in salary have been shown to more actively lessen the wage gap in their workplaces. In addition, Mazei mentions, not only do women feel more confident in negotiation when they have this kind of information, because it is not subjective, it is easier for women to reference a concrete number without facing adverse reactions from men who might otherwise feel their authority challenged.
4. Control your visual cues: Understanding how you are presenting yourself when in an interview is obviously very useful. Some tactics that have been suggested when it comes to body language that helps women in negotiation is to make regular eye contact. Also, make low broad gestures that originate from the shoulders instead of at the elbow; this is something that expands your body allowing you to take up space more effectively. Making sure you are presenting yourself in a position of strength is something that male negotiators do regularly and should be a common practice for women as well.
5. Think about your word choices: According to executive speech coach Darlene Price, aspects of vocal inflection like upspeak can undermine the idea that you have confidence in your statement. So can putting qualifying words on the ends of otherwise concrete statements; it creates the impression of hedging. If you find you are adding phrases like, “Do you agree?” or “Right?” unconsciously to the end of statements, it is not supporting your cause and promotes the idea that you require validation for your thoughts.
It’s unfortunate that women need to work harder than men in the current system to achieve something as basic as salary equity, but many do. Employing negotiation tactics like these can help women to reach this desired reality more quickly.
Guest Contributed by Sierra Skelly
About the Author
Sierra Skelly is a creative writer and marketer from San Diego. She loves red wine, black coffee, and chilling murder mystery novels with a strong female lead.
The opinions and views expressed by guest contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of theglasshammer.com
Kate Ulrich Saracene, Partner, Katten
Voices of ExperienceWhile it helps to have goals, trying to adhere too closely to a roadmap can actually make you feel frustrated and overwhelmed. But being flexible can open doors, she finds.
For example, three years ago, she never imagined she would be a practice group leader for a law firm headquartered in Chicago while working remotely from her home in Rochester, New York. In light of the non-traditional path she took on her journey, her achievements shine even brighter.
Forging Her Own Way
What Saracene has found to be beneficial is the flexible work arrangement she has at the firm that allows her to work remotely from upstate New York where she lives with her two teenage children. She commutes to the Chicago and New York City offices a little less than half the time. “While my workday flexes from 6 a.m. to midnight, it has enabled me to be a better parent when I’m home,” she says.
The arrangement has been so successful, and has since attracted another partner to join her team at Katten. “Because the firm has been so flexible, I’ve been able to recruit talented people whom I’ve worked within the past, allowing the group to grow organically,” Saracene said.
As Saracene puts it, her career path from human resources professional to leader of Katten’s Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation practice was not typical.
After graduating from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in industrial and labor relations, she worked for Xerox as a labor relations specialist in Rochester, NY. When she was accepted to law school a few years later, she transferred to Xerox corporate headquarters in Stamford, Conn. and worked part-time as an employee benefits analyst while attending Yale. Once she received her law degree, she joined a law firm as an associate, counseling clients on labor and employment laws and drafting policies for employee handbooks among other responsibilities. Following the birth of her first child, she returned to Xerox for four years in a human resources position, enabling her to work part-time while maintaining a manager title.
Saracene never saw the job switch as a setback in her career; in fact, she believes this stint working in corporate employee benefits has been advantageous for her clients, as she better understands their needs. “I have walked in their shoes and speak their language, and I understand the operational things they need to be aware of and the consequences of my advice,” Saracene said.
She continued to work part-time for 13 years, eventually finding her way back to the law as an employee benefits attorney at her former law firm and serving as counsel advising clients on the complexities of laws and regulations for retirement, welfare and compensation plans. This transition to a tax counseling practice, from her prior legal stint as a labor and employment counselor and litigator, was the key that allowed her to move back to law firm life but with a schedule that was more predictable and manageable while she raised young children.
When the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010, Saracene became quite familiar with all the regulations, requirements and provisions of the legislation, turning herself into an authority on the topic who was regularly quoted providing legal analysis to national media publications and became a sought-after speaker on the subject. Saracene stepped off the partner track for three years after transitioning back to private practice but asked to be put back on in 2012 and within 18 months was named a partner. She joined Katten in 2017.
And therein lies a key to success that she shares with young associates: One path to moving up is to find a new area of the law where you are on equal footing with everyone else despite their experience, learn it and own it. If you are willing to tackle something new and master it, you can be an invaluable resource to your firm and clients.
Embracing Well-Being in her Personal and Professional Life
Over the years, Saracene has seen the importance of health and wellbeing. After becoming an avid yoga practitioner and then a yoga and meditation instructor, she has found ways to incorporate the benefits of those practices into the legal community.
For example, she is working with the local bar association on teaching mindfulness, where participants can earn ethics credits as she focuses on the brain science behind it and how the techniques can create a more successful lawyer ‘“ more calm and composed, able to think more deliberately and better manage clients and their expectations. “It’s become a passion of mine that I have been able to share with the law community and Katten specifically,” Saracene says.
Saracene has become integrally involved in launching a firm wellness initiative called Katten Well-Being 360 to provide attorneys and business professionals with resources aimed at encouraging greater attention to mental and physical health. She is vocal about the needs of attorneys, and that initiative now brings wellness-related items like aromatherapy stress balls to recruiting events, and she recently led a meditation session at a new partner orientation. “We are trying to work it into the fabric of the culture,” she says.
Regarding other aspects of wellness, she has learned that you have to think carefully about how to commit your time and therefore recommends outsourcing tasks that may not be a high priority or have a direct benefit for you personally doing them. For example, she is happy to have someone help around the house or to run errands, but she’s more reluctant to give up driving her kids to school or activities as that can be important together time.
“It’s always going to be challenging for moms to try to be the best parent possible while still being the best lawyer possible. It requires sacrifice, but the key is to look at things over a long horizon,” Saracene says, noting that there were times when her kids have seen her less because she’s more involved in her career, and times when she’s been less focused on her career because of her children. Her new remote work arrangement has helped her strike the right balance.
And as they get older, she finds new ways to be present in their lives. One of her favorite “escapes” has been combining philanthropy with travel. Volunteering with the International Fund for Economic Development (IFED), she has trekked to remote areas ‘“ introducing after-school programs in Paraguay and helping coordinate efforts to improve conditions at an orphanage in Bali ‘“ through a program championed by a former mentor at her law firm and his wife that they took on as a retirement project. This year, her son plans to join her on an IFED trip. “Everything comes full circle. He helped me build my career, and now his good works are allowing us to give back together.”
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2020: A Look Ahead for Executive Women and Real Change
NewsInsanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In December, we rounded up the year and the decade and stated that to see real change, we really need to do things differently as a society, as well as in companies. And, as leaders and managers and even as individual executives, we need to understand our personal role in change, collusion and status quo.
In 2020, we are going to continue our “tell your story around the campfire to the rest of the village” strategy. We want women to inspire other women and men for that matter, by sharing their personal and professional insights and experiences. In a world where we know women get written out of history or are statistically less likely to be credited for their achievement and contributions, we continue to dedicate the site to making sure there is a platform from which to talk your truth. Your truth is yours alone, but there are some universal truths that form a pattern that suggests there is much more systemic work to do on gender equity than most people want to admit.
We are still here and more committed than ever to telling your story. We are still committed to providing you with evidence-based solutions as it pertains to navigating and managing your career and life.
However, diversity is a misnomer of a word as it implies that the acceptable baseline is straight white men and the rest of us are somehow different. We are the norm just as much as they are and we are not in need fixing or blending or assimilating. Also, the thought of over half the population being different and somehow therefore needing a solution alienates men from participating fully and many of them do not actually gain from the outdated structures that keep us from being all valued as unique humans.
Let’s commit to getting past these remedial change conversations around unhelpful blame of men and ineffective burden solely on women to supposedly fix 100,000 years of societal dynamics in a coffee chat network format, which, if you stop and think about it, couldn’t be more ridiculous.
In 2020, let’s commit to stop pretending that awareness is enough, that research and facts alone can change deep structures that involve power of groups and individuals who frankly don’t want to give it up arbitrarily to an unknown faceless concept (who would?). Let’s do the work, one person at a time, regardless of who we are biologically, tone of skin, who we love, how we are, where we are from. Being a woman doesn’t make you unbiased against women. Being a person of color or LGBT doesn’t make you automatically a bias-free individual either. We all hold stereotypes ubiquitously; no one is exempt.
It is a disservice to not encourage individuals from differentiating themselves as there is no such thing as “all men or all women”. However, we do know there are real group-affiliated benefits from lingering historical power structures.
Let’s work harder to not project our ideals unto people and let them tell us who they are. Value positive behavior (even if that behavior is dissent) and not ideas about who we are due to the body we are born into. This is the future of work and society and we will all gain from it. The Howard/Heidi Rozen case study was twenty years ago whereby Heidi Rozen switched gender on her same paper which was presented under Howard with vastly differing reactions to when she presented it under Heidi. Can we for the love of progress, say that the next twenty years might have men and women evolving past their implicit cognitive biases to not be so laughable about how we judge women on likeability despite the same facts or results being there.
Write less and do more in 2020
We have over 4,000 “how to” articles in our archives for you to read for free. We have discussed and dissected research for 13 years but know that research alone has not moved the needle much. The research has been ignored and often conducted by firms that are, ironically, totally male dominated in their culture and managerial roles and numbers. We have to say no to the false prophets and dead poets trotting out the same old advice without deep structural or behavioral change on the company side. We are in a period of history where people myopically choose their facts and reject other versions, with an extreme disassociation in some cases. But we are still in the same place psychologically with the same neurobiology we have had for a while now, meaning we work within cognitive biases that accumulate from familiar and cultural messages. So, why are we are surprised at the slow-as-molasses progress?
The answer is complex
We have been coaching leaders, managers and executives (women and men) for the past eight years to empower them to design and achieve what they want from their career and life. We have been training inside firms on how to be a change leader, and we have been coaching and consulting with firms on how to create a better workplace. It requires change and those firms and individuals willing to do the work are to be commended.
Coaching humans is what changes the world for the better. Coaching leaders to be fair and at the same time coaching organizations to create the right culture and structures for people to go to work and feel the wind behind the backs for high performance and happy successes is the future.
We embrace working with individuals and organizations to understand where you are at. Then we work on what you want and where you want to be using a method designed primarily at Columbia University and evolved to encompass deeper disciplines, drawn from development and organizational psychology with contextual business models and frameworks, to create the change cognitively, emotionally, psychologically and behaviorally. Because we are individual/organizational psychologists, we know that your situation is very specific to you since your beliefs and behaviors are based on your life experiences and actual personality. We know that development work starts with you, whoever you are and whatever has shaped you. Wherever you work (team, firm, even location) will tone up or tone down certain behaviors because as Kurt Lewin, the forefather of organizational psychology, determined, behavior is a function of both your personality and the environment that you are operating in.
Join us, as evolved people. Be the change you want to see in the world.
By Nicki Gilmour, Founder of theglasshammer.com, Organizational Psychologist and Coach
Coaching is the Best Investment for Your Career and Self in 2020
NewsExternally, there are often barriers and we analyze that using organizational psychology models to understand what levers to pull within our control to overcome obstacles or to understand our own tolerance around staying or leaving a situation, manager, work team or spouse. But, internally there are usually behaviors and self- sabotaging hidden competing agendas in your subconscious that can stop the best of us from doing what we want or say we are going to do. New Year’s Resolutions being a great example of saying we want change and then finding ourselves doing the same old actions despite our best intentions.
Advancing in your career can be a linear vision of one (increasingly more senior) role at a time in the same firm or it could be a less linear picture with different roles, departments, firms and even industries. We work with ambitious women and men in financial and professional services, technology and Fortune 500 and who have three things in common:
We use coaching to meet everyone where they are because each human is a person with a personality which has collected and constructed over time a specific set of beliefs. Simply put, thoughts, with feelings attached to them. We take good, bad and neutral actions all day long, since whatever environment we are in contextually, brings out our behaviors which are amplified by our deep values and our motives to be there in any given situation and of course behaviors, usually the bad ones depend on our stress levels.
The surrounding team or firm (or location) culture matters as there are implicit as well as explicit norms of “how work gets done around here” and we understand how to give you frameworks so that together, we can understand how to get the most from wherever you are and support you in decisions around navigating the next steps in your career.
Individually (or if your company is investing in you), if you want to be coached as an executive manager or leader around being where you want to be behaviorally as a person and in your career (perhaps more sustainably and healthily in 2020), please get in contact with Nicki Gilmour, Head Coach, Founder of theglasshammer and organizational psychologist or book an exploratory call here to see if coaching can help you. We have a network of coaches and can find the right fit for you.
Erica Klinkowize, Managing Director, Global FICC ETF Trading, Bank of America
Voices of ExperienceIn July 2014, she made the leap to Bank of America and continued to work in the Liquidity space within Treasury until April 2019. After almost 20 years into her career, Erica shifted her focus from Liquidity and Treasury to Global Markets at Bank of America.
“I have spent the past 8 months building out the central Fixed Income ETF trading desk. While it was an extremely difficult decision to switch directions as it’s easier to stick with what you know, at the heart of it, this was a, likely, once in a lifetime prospect that I could not pass up. The opportunity to build out a new trading business at a world-class organization does not come along very often. To be offered the opportunity to co-lead the effort was, and still is, an honor.”
She comments that this experience has added a whole new set of skills to her personal and professional toolkit and has reinvigorated her for the challenges that lie ahead.
Learning Opportunities
Klinkowize, at the exact time of the financial crisis, began the Executive MBA program at Columbia Business School while working in the Securities Division at Goldman Sachs. These simultaneous experiences had a powerful impact on her and she comments that the combination of the two during this tough time “further framed my worldview and gave me a lasting perspective as I experienced the crisis at the forefront and, further, saw the crisis through the eyes of my classmates, over 50% of whom did not work in Finance.” During the crisis, Erica was part of the firm’s front line response to raising liquidity, and thereafter, experienced and helped shape the internal and industry change that comes after an event such as this. At the same time, she experienced the perspectives of her EMBA classmates, many of whom developed stark views of the Finance industry as a whole. She says, “Living through this permanently altered how I approach challenges at work, and provided me with a deeper understanding of what it means to manage risks. Further, I am grateful for the diversity of perspective my classmates provided me. While it was challenging to hear many of their views and personal experiences, in the end, it showed me the immense value garnered from consistently incorporating outside viewpoints into a decision-making process.”
Networking Matters
When Erica moved to Bank of America, she made a commitment to herself that she would focus on building support networks at the Bank.
“I am quite proud of the ongoing mentorship and sponsorship relationships I have been able to cultivate since I joined more than 5 years ago. I truly benefit from these consistent interactions, regardless of corporate title. It’s so important for us all to feel supported and connected in the workplace and to have a safe space to go vent, seek advice, or laugh. We can all benefit from hearing about each other’s successes and challenges and realizing other points of view. Through these interactions, we become grounded as humans and are reminded that we have more similarities than differences.”
When asked what is the one thing you know now that you wish you had known when you were first starting your career? She offers,
“I wish had known how to consistently return to a sense of serenity within the chaos, and that sometimes silence and observation are more powerful than words.”
She goes on to say how her start in finance was somewhat briefly detoured: she had secured a dream job working for Deloitte Consulting doing systems and business consulting right out of college but received a call that the company was pushing back the start date of her analyst class to January of 2002 due to the economic downturn that occurred as a result of the tech start-up meltdown of that era. She decided to take advantage of that time and worked at a job that still resonates with her. She relays,
“I ran the front desk of my dad’s dental office for a month. I never would have had that opportunity had Deloitte not given me some extra time and money. Almost 20 years later, and I can still remember details of the experience which I am sure have altered how I interact with people working in customer service.”
The decision to take a different path is very poignant as, later that year, the tragedy of 9/11/2001 struck and, she shares that if she had started at Deloitte on the original date, she would have been at the World Financial Center when the planes hit. Instead, she was sitting in her apartment in midtown, having moved in the weekend before. She comments,
“I believe that was the first time I truly understood how much of our careers and our lives are beyond our control and that we should look for the lessons in each experience, even if it takes decades to find them.”
When asked what advice would you give to young women entering this industry? Erica candidly answered that she advises young women to create support networks as soon as possible within the bank.
“Join Bank sponsored networks and seek out mentors immediately. Keep the consistency of these relationships no matter how busy you are with your day job. Take on a little bit more work in one of these organizations or do a favor for a mentor. You will not only feel more connected and supported as you go through the ups and downs of your career, but you will also likely gain sponsors who are critical to your success.”
She added that advice for her peers is exactly what she reminds herself to do as well.
“Seek out camaraderie, friendship, and support at work and give it back as much as you can. Remember to find laughter. Don’t be afraid to hold people to your high standards.” She continues,
“Don’t be afraid to continue to try new things and learn. Ask questions when appropriate. Try not to be so hard on yourself to have it all, all of the time. Remember to drink water and exercise. Take deep breaths. And remember to be compassionate to yourself the way you would be to a friend.”
Upon reflection around the career navigation journey, she believes that having a true sponsor is the key to getting promoted quicker, or even helping get back on track when one’s career takes a detour. She states,
“Once I truly understood what it meant to have sponsors and how to maintain sponsorship, I was able to more easily navigate difficult situations at work leveraging these relationships, and I was surprised at how beneficial they became when I was looking to make transitions. It’s critical to have senior people who will proactively support you when it comes down to a management decision about your career.”
For the past five years, Erica states she has been fortunate to co-lead a group of 10 women as part of a grassroots effort at the company that aims to connect women across the organization and provide ongoing support throughout their careers. She mentions that the success of these groups is dependent on the commitment of the leaders and the members to show up on a monthly basis. The interactions are in person and entirely confidential. Each group takes on its own format and agenda as needed, but there is a central repository for groups to share a myriad of discussion topics. She enjoys the group and finds that within a few months, the groups form their own identities which garners natural commitment from its leaders and members.
She adds, “My prior group maintained the same core group of women for 4 years and we provided each other with consistent and honest personal and professional support, and we became committed to each other’s successes.”
Year End Review 2019: Diversity and Inclusion in 2020 Must Be Done Differently
Year end reviewNeuroscience and behavioral science have the answers to the (lack) of gender equity issue. The questions are, do people want the answer? And are they prepared to what it takes to get there? The term “the glass ceiling” was coined 41 years ago by Marilyn Loden who argued that the “the ‘invisible glass ceiling’ – the barriers to advancement that were cultural not personal – was doing the bulk of the damage to women’s career aspirations and opportunities.”
To that point, 41 years later, companies are still doing one thing wrong when addressing the issue of gender. What is this core truth? It is written concisely in the London School of Economics editorial in Forbes and is as simple as this: we focus too much on the role of the individual in perpetuating or solving these issues. Resulting in blaming men and burdening women.
Why is progress so slow? The decade in review
First of all, progress is slow. The decade started with a flurry of great research from Catalyst and Sylvia Ann Hewlett offering strong answers like sponsorship over mentorship and increased pipeline attention for women in crucial moments. This was good work, helpful and even hopeful but lacked the much needed shift of work from individuals to systemic answers despite knocking on that door. Progress was derailed in my opinion by 2013 by the unwitting false prophecy of “Lean In” with a misleading mantra which distracted leaders and diversity people from the real work as this false single fix was what people wanted to hear. More work for the women, everything else untouched. This is a prevalent theme with employee networks and training courses this entire decade. The most recent episode in the news was the EY training asking women to act nicely around men course leak which someone finally recognized as worth a whistleblow.
Even “Lean In” has the conclusion in 2019 that the sane academics and theglasshammer have been suggesting all the while, which is that you do what you have to do to get the system to lean in as well in order to truly succeed. The book was useful as it sparked the beginning of the discussion around privilege, and Ann Marie Slaughter’s counter piece on the system was a way to introduce what systemic barriers meant for people entering the discussion. Sandberg’s later work with Adam Grant on was excellent as we know she personally did the work but the people who made her the poster child only heard the message of “its on the women to do more”. The brightest spots for me in this era of 2013-2018 were Herminia Ibarra’s Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader with act-first-internalize-later theory but in conjunction with the inside-out approach of challenge – whose beliefs you are running around with? – of Kegan and Lahey’s work Immunity to Change. Finally, there is Cordelia Fine’s book called Testosterone Rex stating that behavioral differences are cultural, not biologically natural, to debunk the faux brain science of the two thousand and mid-teens. I won’t name names, but even if you believe men are from Mars and women are from Venus (which I don’t), we are all conditioned by earthly norms developed from cultural (societal and inside whichever family you lived) messaging.
Legal Structures Do Matter Also
The World Economic Forum at Davos in 2018 proclaimed in their “Global Gender Gap Report” that at this rate it will take between 106 and 400 years to achieve gender equity. The US is ranked 51 in the global index, which includes economic participation, heath and survival, education and political (legal) empowerment. Iceland is ranked number one, with the Nordics filling the top four spots of getting there and UK sitting at number 15 in this global study. Guess what? Strong social fabric with less machismo, a safety net and laws that protect women seem to matter for gender equity. What we can learn from this report is that legal and policy support is fundamental to a gender equal society. The Equal Rights Amendment was still not ratified in the USA this decade, so women are technically not legally equal to men. Worth watching the documentary Equal means equal.
Does systemic change influence attitudinal change?
Yes, but only to the extent to which people can dissect their feelings around their thoughts. If someone has a strong belief system (say the implicit patriarchy and its schema of how society is constructed and run with normed and formed gender roles in this case of “diversity”) then it is harder for them to have attitudinal switches. However, if people have no feelings or the switch supports their feelings (and arousal such as fear is a common feeling) they are very easy to change their minds. Change in the status quo terrifies most people.
Also, we tend to have fixed ideas on the way it is and the “who is it.” This shows up as stereotypes, positive and negative, as we often forget how we naturally authorize men and deauthorize women all day long – and both sexes do it. We have written about how people hold stereotypes ubiquitously as many women have so much internalized sexism that they enjoy a massive benefit-of-the-doubt exercise on talent and competence as much as the next guy. Just this week Michelle Obama talked about not being so quick to defer and to resist a man’s presumption of power. Interestingly, if you read social media or onlne newsletter’s comment boxes, after a statement like this, someone (it is inevitable) says not all men, defensively of men, or worse, something personally dismissive (subconsciously racist) about Michelle Obama as a person. Observe your feelings and reactions as it is exactly this type of cognitive awareness that enables us to make choices such as language and nomination of the most talented person and get away from the binary of good or bad categorization that prevents you from uncovering biases and preferences. I mean literally Boris Johnson, said and did everything Theresa May had already done, but society and history will never remember that. This happens to women in meetings all day long.
It is not a battle of the sexes as that is a race to the bottom and we lose so much by generalizing all women or all men. Working on where cognitive process meets social conditioning is what the future of diversity needs, not HR compliance work on drinks parties or even panels (we have stopped holding them and ours were pretty groundbreaking). It is not Noah’s Ark with two of everyone and even if it was that, we have failed there too to gain real parity and have created all the wrong conversations.
It is costing everyone money by not changing. Possibly you personally. Practice forgiveness starting with yourself because we are all on a journey to evolve ourselves, our teams and society at large.
Awareness first, then doing the work to understand the very unique ways that each person needs to make the behavioral changes that creates success, sustainability and happiness is what we help leading women ( and men) in financial services and Fortune 1000 companies do with our coaching work. If you want to book a complimentary chemistry call with me to discuss if coaching could help you in 2020, book here.
We wish the readers of theglasshammer a happy and safe festive season. See you in January.
The “Big Rock, Pebble, Sand” Analogy – and Other Tips for Success
Rising StarsMeyanna Jiang, Anisha George, and Holly Batchelor
Three colleagues on growing as a leader, connecting with mentors and “managing up.”
In the December edition of The Glass Hammer, three colleagues at Goldman Sachs delve deep, sharing their best practices for success – ranging from thinking strategically and helping to further their teams’ goals to balancing competing priorities and “managing up.” Meet the interviewees and hear their take:
· Holly Batchelor is a vice president in Securities, based in Hong Kong
· Anisha George is an associate in Compliance, based in Bengaluru
· Meyanna Jiang is a vice president in Controllers, based in New York
Reflecting on your career at Goldman Sachs to date, what advice would you share with individuals just starting out?
· Meyanna: Be curious in your work, and look for ways to keep yourself challenged. I try to do one thing that scares me each week, whether it be public speaking, or volunteering for a project that I might not know much about.
· Holly: The ability to grow and nurture your network is invaluable – you might not realize it now, but the people you work with and get to know at the beginning of your career can be hugely influential and helpful later on.
· Anisha: I have found that projects others were not interested in working on ultimately had the biggest impact on my career. In addition, I would remind others that each individual has a unique journey – everyone’s path to success is different. I have learned to find joy and meaning in my own journey by setting personal goals and working to achieve them.
What actions do you take throughout your day to ensure you’re best helping your team and furthering its mission and strategy?
· Holly: I try to share as much information as possible with my team and keep everyone in the loop. Work is more enjoyable and fulfilling when you know why you’re working on a task, and are aware of the strategy you’re helping to implement.
· Meyanna: When I introduce a new project or task for my team, I aim to provide sufficient context by explaining how this deliverable supports our firmwide or divisional strategy.
How do you allocate time for both strategic thinking and execution in your role?
· Holly: Knowledge is power. Having a sense of what the market looks like and what our competitors are doing allows me to develop a strategy for my team and our plan for execution.
· Meyanna: I like to think of this as “zooming in” and “zooming out.” If the CEO stopped by your desk while you were in the middle of analyzing millions of rows of data and asked, “What are you working on?” how would you respond in a sentence or two? This exercise helps me think strategically.
What recommendations do you have for balancing competing priorities?
· Holly: To-do lists! It’s important to stay on top of priority projects, even as things pop up that require immediate attention. I often use the “big rock, pebble, sand” analogy when thinking about what I need to set aside time for: the big rocks are my major tasks and strategic initiatives, the pebbles are shorter-term tasks of lesser importance, and the sand is minor tasks that aren’t essential to my success.
· Meyanna: Stay organized, whether it’s adding calendar reminders, writing to-do lists, or color-coding emails to help you stay on track. I also remind my team that it’s okay to push back on requests or to say “no” when needed. Unless you speak up, no one will know that you need help.
· Anisha: It’s important to remember that having a fulfilling life outside of work helps your career and your work product. It might seem unrelated, but I think you can bring a more positive energy to the office when you have personal interests that also motivate you.
Any lessons learned on the importance of delegating?
· Meyanna: I’ve learned that the worst thing you can do as a manager is to delegate a task and then take it back, because this demotivates the team and makes them feel like their work is not valued. I’ve also learned that I need to provide “air cover” and give enough space for my team members to fail safely.
· Anisha: I used to dislike delegating because it required me to put in extra time and effort, but over time I realized that I would not be half as successful as I am today if every leader who invested in me had felt the same way about delegating. You can’t lead if no one is following.
· Holly: Delegation gives you the capacity to stretch further to build your business, and it allows you to effectively train and coach the colleagues whom you are delegating work to. Delegating work to others also allows for greater diversity of thought and experience, which often leads to better solutions.
How do you “manage up” with senior stakeholders?
· Anisha: Before meeting senior stakeholders I make sure to always prepare – people want to feel that their time is being valued, and adequate preparation helps shape and inform your conversation. When you have a strong agenda and follow-up plan when connecting with stakeholders, “managing up” just happens.
· Holly: First, you need to identify who your stakeholders are and what is important for them. Then, determine how they like to be kept up to date – do they prefer face-to-face catch ups, e-mail summaries, a full business plan? Adapting your style to match theirs will have much more of an impact.
Do you have a mentor or sponsor? If so, how do you make the most of your conversations with them?
· Holly: I have mentors within and outside of the firm that I often reach out to for advice. I put notes in my calendar to schedule catch-ups with them in order to nurture the relationship, just as you would with a client or stakeholder in your business.
· Meyanna: I have relationships with both mentors and sponsors, and many of these connections have formed organically. Managers can be a great resource, too – they have introduced me to contacts in their networks. Prior to each conversation with them, I write down a few topics for discussion, such as challenges in my day job or planning for the next step in my career.
· Anisha: I have more than one mentor because I value receiving guidance from different stakeholders. My mentors have diverse perspectives and push me to evaluate situations in different ways.
Have you participated in mobility? Do you have any advice for colleagues interested in either switching roles or offices?
· Meyanna: If you are exploring a role switch, raise your hand. Mention to your manager or mentor that you are interested in learning more about a certain business or working in a different location. It is easier for them to help you if they know your interests. In the meantime, continue being a rock star in your current role and look for ways to give yourself exposure to areas you are interested in.
· Anisha: I recently accepted a new role in Goldman Sachs Asset Management and will be relocating from Bengaluru to Dublin in January. The best advice I received when I was considering mobility was to focus on “What?” and “Why?” – meaning, “What do you want to do long-term?” and “Why do you want to move?” Once you have answered these questions, your options will become more clear.
Do you have a personal development plan to keep yourself accountable?
· Meyanna: I recommend writing down your goals. My last set of short- and long-term goals were written on a post-it note stuck to a bar of chocolate. (My team knows I always keep chocolate at my desk.) As I slowly finished the chocolate bar, I found that I was able to complete my goals over time. In addition, I find that it is helpful to share your goals with a buddy, who can help hold you accountable.
· Holly: In the early stages of my career I didn’t have any plan other to absorb as much information as possible. That hasn’t changed, but I now also set career goals with deadlines based on discussions I have with my mentors and stakeholders – incorporating their input is important in order to set realistic goals.
· Anisha: I think about where I want to be in one year and in 10 years, and develop my short- and long-term plans to achieve those goals. It’s necessary to also be nimble and update your goals as your world evolves.