“Be Bold and Take Risks to Be an Agent of Change”
“If you expose people who are smart and hard working to opportunities – and provide them with an access point to begin a career – success follows,” says Goldman Sachs’ Erika Irish Brown.
As Goldman’s new Chief Diversity Officer, Brown is responsible for driving inclusive culture initiatives and efforts related to the firm’s recruitment, retention and advancement of diverse professionals.
She notes she is genuinely passionate about promoting diversity and inclusion in the financial services industry. “The sense of purpose I have for my work drives me every day.”
A Beneficiary and Proponent of Diversity and Inclusion
Brown’s first introduction to financial services came via a year-long internship as a college student, which was offered specifically to students from underrepresented minority groups by a state-run bond agency. She describes the internship as a huge win given her alma mater – the State University of New York at Albany – did not send a high volume of graduates to Wall Street at that time.
This internship helped her land an analyst role at Lehman Brothers, which she says was a life-changing opportunity. “Very often, people ask me, why am I so committed to diversity and inclusion?” says Brown. “One reason is because I got my start on Wall Street as a beneficiary of what we now call a diversity and inclusion program.”
After working in investment banking at Lehman, Brown went on to issue bonds for the City of New York and served as a Presidential appointee at the US Treasury in the Clinton administration, ultimately earning her MBA from Columbia University and serving in roles at Morgan Stanley and Black Entertainment Television. She enjoyed the financial markets, the fast-paced nature of her work and the variety of people she was able to work with, but added: “It was a different time – gender, ethnic diversity was low.”
Brown took an interest in the diversity and inclusion (D&I) space, serving as a recruiting liaison for both on-campus and experienced hires – on top of her day job as a banker.
Prior to the financial crisis, Brown began her first ‘official’ diversity-focused role, once again, at Lehman, where her team focused on enhancing diversity at the vice president level and above. Post-crisis – and a brief stint on the Obama administration’s Treasury transition team – Brown joined Bank of America, where she built a team focused on executive diversity recruiting. From there, she went on to serve as Bloomberg’s chief diversity officer, building the company’s D&I platform from the ground up.
“Being considered a subject matter expert on diversity globally has made me very proud,” says Brown. “This is not easy work, it is not easily measured and you have to be bold and take risks in order to be an agent of change.” This risk-taking has led Brown to Goldman Sachs, where she has a large, global platform to influence diversity.
Evaluating and Developing New Approaches at Goldman Sachs
“It was important for me to come in and listen, learn and talk to people,” says Brown of her approach to her new role at the firm last year. “I wanted my expertise to be informed by the culture here.”
After connecting with stakeholders across regions and divisions and gaining a global perspective, she now feels well informed to have opinions, make assessments and execute on the best practices and strategies that will work for Goldman Sachs.
Brown outlines some of the many opportunities in the D&I space she hopes to focus on in the coming months:
- Enhance the Goldman Sachs brand as an employer of choice in diverse communities;
- Embed D&I practices into all aspects of the Talent process;
- Advance the firm’s inclusive culture and work environment; and
- Ensure accountability for furthering D&I at every level
Her team has the support from CEO David Solomon and the firm’s Global Diversity Committee. Brown notes that it is crucial to have senior leadership setting the tone – particularly when diversity impacts each and every area of a company, from business performance to client engagement.
“Today, no topics are off the table in the workplace, and people expect to bring their authentic selves to work,” says Brown. “I’ve seen firsthand that this approach has been adopted at Goldman Sachs as well.”
Recommendations From a Life-Long Learner
Describing her roles at several investment banks and why young women should pursue financial services careers, Brown says, “The skills sets you develop in a short period of time, the amount of responsibility and high bar for expectations, and the seniority of people – both internally and clients – that you engage with is empowering.”
Her advice to women as they progress in their careers is to continuously innovate and be life-long learners.
“Ask yourself – are you pushing the envelope, taking risks and being ambitious,” says Brown. “We should all reflect upon our legacy and ensure we make a difference in our workplace – it can be anything from launching a new product to creating opportunities for others.”
Outside the office, Brown continues to push for change in her community. As vice chair of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, she works to ensure the Central Brooklyn community has access to housing, education and economic development opportunities, arts and cultural activities and capital for small business owners.
Brown stresses: “giving back is important to me – anything I can do to contribute and give back to others, I’ll do.”
And, a mother to three sons, Brown also keeps busy on the slopes, skiing in the winter with her family and cheering on from the sidelines of elite AAU basketball games. “We’re very active as a family, and our time together is so important and a priority to me,” she says.
Op-ed: Make Asset Management More Visible as a Career Choice to Women and Girls
Career Advice, Op-Ed, Women's History MonthWhen I tell people what I do for a living, I am often met with puzzled looks.
These experiences always remind me that asset management is a complex and often misunderstood business – despite the fact that the industry is inextricably involved in the financial and retirement plans of most Americans. Since it is Women’s History Month with International Women’s Day celebrations still resonating, with the theme #betterforbalance, it is a great time to talk about realities, myths and opportunities that come with working in asset management. And, how it is an underdiscussed career path that many women could take, in many forms, either on the retail or institutional side of the business.
My Journey to Co-lead Portfolio Manager
I’ll admit, when I started my career as an elementary school teacher, I would have had the same reaction. However, 29 years ago my path took a sharp turn that caused me to fall into asset management in a most unconventional way. After my son was born with a serious heart defect, I needed to stay home to care for him while my husband worked during the day. But the tremendous financial implications of his illness and of life in general did not allow me to remain unemployed. So, I found a job working the midnight shift at a call center for a local financial firm. This job allowed me to learn about the financial markets and various product offerings from the ground up. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it would be the stepping-stone for a successful career as a portfolio manager at Wells Fargo Asset Management. I currently, along with my team, manage about $4 billion in assets.
Still today, if you ask a high school or university student who is exploring career options or majors what a fund manager or asset manager does, most do not know. Sadly, if they do know anything, it may not be something positive. Hollywood, the media and politicians often portray the financial services industry – and Wall Street in particular – as immoral, driven by greed and selfishness.
In all honesty, asset management, like most industries, has produced its fair share of bad actors. And the financial crisis of 2008 further tarnished the reputation of financial services overall.
Yet the true value of asset management is rarely discussed, which is unfortunate. I firmly believe that the majority of asset management professionals go to work each day with the goal of creating wealth for their clients and helping them prepare for their financial needs, both for today and for the future. Today, our industry in some way manages about $28 trillion in retirement assets in 401(k) plans, pensions and other vehicles.1 Our mission is to help people achieve their dreams, such as sending their children to college, buying their first home, preparing for retirement or something much bigger.
Asset management provides a worthy and fulfilling career – a notion that I believe remains widely misunderstood. For example, I know the returns we generate for our clients are meaningful and make a significant difference in their lives. And without finance, the economy would not grow, creating fewer jobs and hurting all of us, no matter your profession or financial standing.
How do we change the perception?
To start, we need to educate people at younger ages about financial literacy and encourage them to practice responsible money management skills. This is something I am both passionate about and involved in with high school-age kids today.
We as an industry must also stop talking in jargon that is difficult for a mass audience to understand.
In addition, asset management and financial services in general need a pipeline of curious, dynamic-thinking, and diverse people. To attract the right talent, our industry must do more to educate everyone about the value that we provide to individuals, families and society.
We need to more actively embrace diversity, including encouraging young women equally and early to be interested and confident that they belong in the asset management field – and maybe, most importantly, that they are needed because of their skills.
In research conducted by Wells Fargo Investment Institute,2 we found that women’s attributes such as patience (trading less), discipline (through asset allocation) and a willingness to learn (seeking advice from an investment professional) have allowed them to earn higher returns on their investments for the risks they do take. That is essentially the essence of investing – maximizing returns in the face of risk.
We must find ways to communicate the financial stories of success. Hollywood may have immortalized the slogan “greed is good” with many of the recent depictions showing a persistently evil industry – but that just isn’t so. Nest eggs have grown, college educations have been paid for, endowments have been built up and civic building projects have been completed. These are just a few examples of how society has benefited from the industry.
I am grateful for my career in asset management, a field that thrives on the many strengths and attributes of women.
Celebrating Entrepreneurs and Equality: How Did You Recognize International Women’s Day?
International Womens DayIn honor of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, the actions of women entrepreneurs and leaders are being recognized by governments, businesses and society more broadly throughout March.
First recognized in 1908 by 15,000 women who marched on New York City, calling for improved working conditions and the right to vote, International Women’s Day is now celebrated globally each year on March 8. This year, International Women’s Day is focused on the theme of #BalanceforBetter with the aim of achieving a gender-balanced world.
Some of the fantastic International Women’s Day events that were held by government-related and cultural-affiliated entities in 2019 included:
Corporations are also recognizing the importance of a gender diverse workforce by hosting events in recognition of both International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month. View the full list of nearly 600 events listed on the official International Women’s Day website.
Businesses have a crucial role in recognizing the importance of a gender diverse workforce. Goldman Sachs is one of them. The firm has long been a leader in research that sheds light on the important role and untapped potential of women in the global economy.
Insights Driven by Data
Consider this: women make up about 40% of all employees at S&P 1500 companies, but just 6% of CEOs. And across the U.S. economy, women are paid about 20% less than men.
In Closing the gender gaps: Advancing women in corporate America, the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute looks at possible explanations behind these gaps. These include frictions between home and work; the double-edged sword of “family-friendly” policies; gender-specific expectations about appropriate behavior, norms of leadership and definitions of success; the allocation of commercial opportunities; and bias, whether conscious or unconscious. The report offers strategies that firms can use to help level the playing field, such as helping women re-enter the workforce or “upshift” their careers, carefully reviewing compensation and promotion practices, and adding women to companies’ boards.
Taking Action
Goldman Sachs has extended its commitment to female economic empowerment through two flagship platforms – 10,000 Women, an ongoing initiative to foster economic growth by providing women entrepreneurs around the world with a business education and access to capital, reaching women from over 50 countries globally; and Launch With GS, Goldman Sachs’ commitment to invest $500 million in women-led companies and investment managers, as well as to build a global network of business leaders to facilitate connections, share ideas, and uncover opportunities. Additionally, the firm has been focused on its internal efforts supporting opportunity at all levels.
Collectively, Goldman Sachs has four key initiatives that are focused on women’s empowerment – academic, philanthropic, commercial and cultural pillars – called When Women Lead. This is driven by the idea that when women lead, everything changes.
The Role of Philanthropy
One of the initiatives that GS recently launched is the “Portraits” campaign – instead of the traditional CEO oil painting in a gilded gold frame, the campaign makes the portrait subjects graduates of the 10,000 Women program, Goldman Sachs’ global initiative that fosters economic growth by providing women entrepreneurs around the world with a business and management education, mentoring and networking, and access to capital. The portraits are accompanied by the name plaque “CEO.”
An accompanying video brought to life one 10,000 Women scholar’s story, Ayo Megbope, as her CEO portrait is unveiled and brings to life her role as an entrepreneur. Filmed in Ayo’s hometown of Lagos, Nigeria, the video juxtaposes her story against the arrival of her CEO portrait to hang on the wall of her business.
Looking Ahead
As we reflect upon this year’s International Women’s Day, the advancement of women in the workplace – and more broadly the state of diversity in the corporate world – is top of mind. While some progress has been made, there is still ample room for further improvement.
To that end, Goldman Sachs is committed to having women represent 50 percent of the firm’s global talent over time, and as an initial step, is working toward ensuring women make up 50 percent of the firm’s incoming analyst class by 2021. We continue to work toward these goals.
Defy Conventional Leadership Wisdom to Achieve Breakthrough Performance
Career Advice, Guest ContributionLeadership is experiencing a metamorphosis today.
Its tried-and-true competencies are being tested (and sometimes even crushed) in our chaotic, always-on, hyper-connected, and competitive world. Conventional wisdom simply doesn’t have the same impact in the context of this new business environment.
Their strategic choices were oddly counter-intuitive, undeniably successful, and downright fascinating. Here are six behaviors that break the mold.
1. Shaking off the age-old bias for action and perfecting the use of the strategic pause.
Successful leaders in the modern era seem to have adopted a new habit. Instead of making action the default for every challenge, these leaders are pairing that alternative with an opposite response. It’s not about replacing action, which we know is a necessary leadership ingredient. We still need to reach our goals, meet deadlines, and produce results. This is different.
They think of it as developing a companion habit that celebrates being rather than doing. It involves a strategic pause. A mental time-out. Space for their brains to percolate. Whatever we call it, this new habit requires consistently taking some time away from the chaos of business to let ourselves think.
2. Escaping from the prison of their own perspectives and passionately seeking out cognitive diversity.
Modern leaders know that their own decision-making doesn’t come from a mentally neutral position, so they push themselves to uncover other angles. Not a polite, obligatory surveying of the crowd to reach consensus, but a mold-breaking, eyebrow-raising exploration to prove themselves WRONG.
These leaders aren’t just finding success through an openness to new ideas; they passionately seek them out. They value cognitive diversity and invite team members to challenge them with radical alternatives. They let go of the need to validate their own perspectives, and they focus all of their energy on finding the best solution to meet shared goals. No matter where those solutions might originate.
3. Ditching the need to let hard data drive every decision and welcoming the insights of soft intelligence.
Trailblazing leaders today have recognized the tendency to be held hostage by information overload. Even though it feels unnatural, they give themselves permission to break free from their dependence on data. Do they still value the facts? Definitely. They just work to gain a broader context about its meaning. They’re willing to be informed by data but not ruled by it.
Leaders who are open to the idea of Whole Data—a more comprehensive view of the facts— stretch beyond the usual quantitative boundaries to incorporate intangible elements. They better serve their teams and their customers by paying attention to stories and narratives, emotions and attitudes, worries and complaints, risks and vulnerabilities. They search for the qualitative information that paints a more vivid picture.
4. Dropping their dependence on the usual routine and letting go of outdated tasks and deliverables.
Today’s forward-thinking leaders have realized that everything consuming their time must earn the right to be on their to-do lists. To establish that competition, they have adopted a new approach that defies their normal logic.
Most leaders have a competitive streak that pushes them to take on more rather than do less, but they are seeing the wisdom in that concept. Narrowing their focus to expand their perspectives. Minimizing their actions to maximize performance. Doing less to achieve more. Through the ingenuity of letting go, they are finding abundant success.
5. Defeating the drag on their communication and creating positive experiences that expand their influence.
Modern leaders embrace the idea of disrupting their typical approach to communication. They start in reverse. Instead of trying to determine what information needs to go out, they concentrate on the end result. What impact do they want to make? What are the challenges and perspectives of their audience members? What experience would they like to create?
With that in mind, they peel away all the layers of complexity that have been clogging up their communication and get down to messages that are authentic and engaging. They present them in novel ways. They aren’t afraid to open a window into their motives and rationale. And they create a meaningful, compelling experience that communicates in a more powerful way.
6. Committing to metaphorically resigning their roles as experts and approaching tasks with the spirit of a beginner.
Modern leaders are accelerating their careers by breaking free from the expert trap. They no longer allow themselves to remain captives of their expertise. They are finding the courage to change the tired, old narrative with a new attitude, some genuine vulnerability, and the never-ending desire to learn.
Success for these leaders means deliberately putting themselves in positions to humbly learn and grow. Every single day. They have learned to value questions just as much as the answers. And, perhaps more importantly, they work hard to ask the right questions—many of which start with, “What if…?”
While these exciting new principles are remarkably effective, the most compelling thing about them is the way they are applied. It’s a selective process. Not a simple swap of out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new. There’s a firm acknowledgement that the old rules aren’t completely obsolete. The most successful leaders have a knack for knowing when to stick with the traditional approaches and when to break away. They’ve adopted a new brand of wisdom, and they know when to use it.
About the Author
Sara Canaday is a leadership expert, keynote speaker, LinkedIn Learning instructor and author. She works with leaders and high-potential professionals from organizations around the world to expand their capacity to innovate, influence, engage, and perform. Her new book, Leadership Unchained: Defy Conventional Wisdom for Breakthrough Performance, is now available on Amazon. For more information, please visit SaraCanaday.com.
Voice of Experience: Busisiwe Mathe, Partner/Director, Risk Assurance Cyber Security and Privacy; PwC
Voices of Experience“I believe that there was a lesson I needed to learn in everything I have experienced in my career,” she says.
A Varied Career Brings Success
Mathe began her career with PwC in 2004 and throughout her tenure has garnered experience in external and internal audits, technology transformation projects, business continuity management, cybersecurity and privacy, including stints abroad in the New York and Atlanta offices.
As the chairman of the South Africa PricewaterhouseCoopers Governing Board, Mathe serves as a member on the PwC Africa Governance Board and currently oversees the firm’s Africa Cyber and Privacy business.
It’s a crucial line of business, considering the prevalence of cyberattacks, including ransomware, that have increasingly plagued companies both globally and locally in the last 18 months.
While the attacks used to be concentrated to one specific sector or industry, they have become more widespread across all industries, and are moving from information technology into the operational technology environment. That concern was noted in PwC’s 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey, which showed cyber threats staying among the top 5 risks identified by CEOs.
Helping Women Achieve Success
Mathe believes that one of the top barriers for women in the industry is actually based on a false notion—the fact that most women view it as a technical industry where you have to have earned a technical or IT-related degree. However she finds that to be restrictive, as cybersecurity has both technical and non-technical aspects and thus offers a wide range of career lines one can follow. But that assumption leads to a second challenge, which is that the lack of women in the industry means that it is harder for young woman looking to enter the profession to find mentors or others to look up to.
She encourages women considering the industry to realize that the sky is the limit, and the variety of positions offered make cybersecurity a fantastic place to thrive. And she encourages her peers to focus on mentoring the younger generation—making it a priority to support STEM initiatives or even start their own to encourage women pursuing these important fields.
PwC is a supportive place in that sense, as Mathe underscores that the PwC Africa leadership team is firmly committed to diversity and inclusion, having adopted the Global Inclusion Index locally as a tool to continuously assess progress. In addition, all partners and staff take mandatory unconscious bias training, focusing on four dimensions of diversity: gender, race, sexual orientation and generational diversity. That has paid off in more women achieving leadership roles; in fact 45 percent of the partners named in the most recent cycle of promotions were women.
A Full Life Outside Of Work
“My family is my foundation; I would not be where I am had it not been for my strict, yet loving, father who told me at a very young age that I could achieve anything I put my mind to, and my mom who played a significant part in the woman, wife and mother I am today,” Mathe says. She carries out those lessons with her own family, which includes a supportive husband, whom she calls “one of her biggest cheerleaders,” and eight-year-old twin boys.
She also coaches and mentors students and young professionals through partnerships with organizations like Youth Leadership and Entrepreneurship Development (YLED) and the DreamGirls Academy. “I enjoy mentoring and coaching both at work and outside work by partnering with NGOs that empower young girls in believing and shaping their dreams,” she says.
Happy International Women’s Day 2019. Does Change Start Here?
Career Tip of the Week!, NewsCelebrations and recognition of women and women specific issues are being highlighted today around the world and inside corporate offices. Celebrating and making people aware of amazing women and their accomplishments is excellent. Shedding light on social, economic or cultural issues that do not get enough attention is also great. Better to have it, than not have it for sure.
However, does change happen because of it? No, change requires more than a day of talking and a hashtag (which by the way is officially #balanceforbetter which hints at two things, balance of power, not just more balance for women)
But, when all is said and done, it is just a hashtag that means pretty much zero when it comes to actual behaviorial change or any action for anyone whatsoever. Now that we have named the elephant in the room on the sheer vacancy of going through the motions of pretense, perhaps we can talk real talk about change?
Awareness is the first step. But, only the first step in change.
How do we achieve parity. equality, equity or meritocracy?
I like the #biascorrect idea that Catalyst is motioning this IWD (International Women’s Day). Stereotypes limit us. Anyone who has ever been stereotyped will tell you that. Catalyst provide resources to address that bias and in this instance, convey that words matter.
What is less discussed, are the false positive stereotypes and head starts that many women and many men but not all, give to men as leaders and heads of teams, families, power structures generally. That is the balance of power piece we really need to discuss.
What can you do?
Recognize that you probably implicitly have bias. We all do. I coach people to examine their paradigms regularly, as your mental model is formed via your life experiences and their context. That means, you probably are operating off ideas that your family and society told you was the “way it is” and that way it was, was steeped in notions of one gender’s needs being met before others.
Socialization, not brain differences feed into cognitive process whereby we place evaluative meaning on everything. Men are not from Mars and Women are not from Venus. We are all from Earth. The backlash we are seeing is due to people trying to maintain a historically granted place of power and is not surprising. The protection of the patriarchy by women, is to do with their socialization under men’s rules and women’s place in the structure of society so far, secure but secondary so fear on an unknown alternative prevents change and fuels racism, nationalism, and is why we see sexism by women against women.
We need to educate everyone on the benefits of equality and equity as the patriarchy is a system not a gender or a person and does not serve very many people other than the bad guys ( their reckoning is here, though) in this modern world.
It is only when we stop our bias cognitively, and make efforts to behaviorally change that we can be freed from false expectations around diversity parties, celebrations and hashtags actually changing anything. Stop asking the women to balance for better and start asking everyone to stop believing everything they think to be true. Test assumptions for best results.
Enjoy this satire piece in The NY Times today. I could not agree more.
Enjoy the day, however you spend it.
Op-ed: To Achieve #balanceforbetter in the Workplace, Reinvent Family Leave Policies
Op-Ed, Women's History MonthIcelandic primary school children born in the 1970s and ‘80s expressed disbelief when told that a man could be President.
Their mental map didn’t include little boys aspiring to the presidency — because all they’d ever known was a female president. It’s a favorite anecdote of mine because it flips common gender stereotypes while cementing their power.
Gender equality leads to better outcomes for everyone, a theme International Women’s Day elevates this year with their #balanceforbetter theme. At PwC, we approach IWD as another opportunity to challenge stereotypes. The most limiting stereotype at work is that women are predestined to be caregivers. Outdated family leave policies lie at the root of gender inequality in the workplace and beyond. Until they’re refreshed to give individuals and families more choices, women will continue to make up a minority of leaders.
PwC’s US CEO, Tim Ryan, recently said, “Together a new employer-employee relationship can expand what the old one did for decades, create shared prosperity and hopefully build better and more meaningful work and lives for millions.” Expanded family leave and a simple but intentional change in nomenclature will anchor this transformed relationship, paving the way for true gender equality in the workplace.
PwC found that the expectation of work-life balance is exactly the same between male and female millennials; research shows that men and women experience similar levels of work-life conflict and that fathers experience more work-life conflict than mothers. I can say anecdotally that the men I know take their caring responsibilities just as seriously as the women; and that my colleagues and friends without kids don’t value their family, friends, or time any less than those with kids. PwC’s cutting-edge research on engagement drives home the point that the most successful leaders of tomorrow must discover how to deliver great performance by helping people individually thrive.
Beyond the essential birth and recovery period that women must continue to take, women and men should have equal access to time off and flexibility in coming back to work after the birth or adoption of a child. Furthermore, all employees should be offered a minimum amount of leave to care for the people they love. Employees are unique in their needs and the most successful companies will offer benefit choices that work for everyone. Companies and governments should be racing towards inclusive family leave policies, not plodding towards them – and some are beginning to show significant progress.
Culture Matters but Policy Helps
Territories leading in family leave policies are — not coincidentally — also top of the World Economic Forum’s Gender Equality Index. Iceland, a perennial leader on the Index, grants three months of non-transferable parental leave to both mothers and fathers and an additional three months of leave to couples to share as they choose. Its success lies in the uptake: about 90% of Icelandic fathers take the leave.
Netflix offers 52 weeks of paid family leave to women and men (and, with 41% female employees is one of tech’s leaders in gender equality across its staff population); Google and Facebook offer equal family leave to women and men. Last year, PwC US introduced six weeks of fully paid parental leave for all employees, with about 72% of new fathers using the full amount. Employees also have the option to implement a phased return to work after parental leave, allowing new parents to work 60% of their contracted hours at full pay for four weeks following a paid parental leave of absence. Other types of caregivers can receive four weeks of paid leave in order to care for certain family members with serious health conditions. PwC UK offers eligible parents of either gender 22 weeks of full pay and is encouraging more dads to feel like they can take it. Breaking through assumptions about men’s role in families and changing attitudes will be key to capitalizing fully on the good policies that already exist.
To be sure, gender equality is a complex issue with children socialized from a young age to play into narrow roles – and this calcifies the stereotypes that play out later in life. Even in countries with longstanding progressive parental leave – like Sweden – deeply embedded gender stereotypes from sources, namely, the media, hinder gender equality progress.
Globally, women continue to bear the bulk of unpaid care work. Leave to care for children and other loved ones matters now as it has never before because the workforce has transformed, while policies and even norms have stagnated. Many leave policies are woefully out of date, constructed to serve a majority of mothers who didn’t work outside the home and a majority of fathers who were happy to leave domestic duties to their wives. Around the world, family leave policies vary dramatically, with some countries lacking any mandated paid parental leave (United States), and others offering up to three years (Germany, Eastern Europe). In the UAE, new fathers get two days of paid leave, while in South Africa and India they get five. Research shows that new mothers are penalized financially at work, while new fathers are rewarded and these outdated or unfit leave systems perpetuate that trend. It’s not the fact of a woman having a child that hurts her career, but the assumptions that she is less competent and less willing to take on high-profile assignments.
When these policies were crafted, zero percent of corporate workers had caring responsibilities. Today, according to a recent HBR study, seventy-five percent of all workers have care responsibilities, regardless of gender, and regardless of whether they are single or coupled. Families have also evolved: same-sex, single parents, and blended families are exponentially increasing. It’s important to note that leave policies shouldn’t be limited to caring for children, but can and often do also encompass caring for partners/spouses, parents, grandparents, nieces/nephews, or other close family members. Many corporations don’t directly address leave for anyone other than children.
The imperative is there
According to a 2016 study, only 36% of companies have a global parental leave policy covering multiple types of leave, 94% include maternity leave, 76% include paternity leave, and 73% included leave when adopting children. Our leave policies are no longer fit for purpose.
We must provide more support and choices for our diverse workforce and use the term family leave to describe anything other than a woman’s short-term medical leave, when recovering from childbirth. Family leave is not only a gender-neutral term, but covers a wider swathe of employees and accounts for the changing family and household dynamics of today’s world.
About the author
Dale Meikle is the Global People Experience Leader at PwC International
Connect on LinkedIn
Follow on Twitter @dmeik
Effective Networking for Female Professionals: The Old Girls Club?
Career Tip of the Week!, NewsIt is Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day this week (Friday 8th March, 2019) so tune in for hard hitting editorial on women’s advancement at work, like we do the other fifty weeks of the year also.
According to a new study published last month, women should be networking with other women as well as men if they want to land more prestigious and better paid jobs. This study of suggests women need a women-only inner circle and a larger, well-connected network generally. The study analyzed the peer networks and job placements of 728 students at leading university, representing two class years, from an MBA program in 2006 and 2007. All of the graduates landed leadership jobs, so the (well respected) researchers ranked the positions according to prestige and other factors. The subjects studied consisted of 542 were men and 186 women, which is roughly consistent with the researchers’ findings that women make up about a quarter of business school students nationwide. The conclusion being that a person’s network composition regarding gender split can predict the career success of women. Wired magazine broke down the study and talked to the study authors and interpreted the study with the main message being women and men who are connected to other well-connected peers across their social network do better. In addition, it is extrapolated that women thrive from “gender-specific private information and support.” And men do not need insider information to thrive and advance because, wait for it ‘work is built for them’. Words that interested me from the study’s lead author, Northwestern University data scientist, Brian Uzzi, he goes on to state,
“Quite frankly, most of the jobs are still male-dominated and therefore the kind of private information that’s so important to help women get ahead isn’t as important to men’s advancement,”
Despite Brain Uzzi being possible the leading network expert, a respected expert in social psychology with a very respectable body of work that no one can argue with and some really good advice, it is hard to accept that his conclusion from just final job outcome is the end of the story.
For me, it is very much the opening of the conversation around bias, gender stratification and gender roles, because people decide if the men and women of this study get hired and people negotiate offers for salaries. That is to say, a man and a woman could have made the same connection at the same networking mixer, but the man got hired.
But, if we take this study at face value, then we can conclude that this is not new news as we know women have to work twice as hard at networking just as they do with other areas.
Uzzi shares his opinion on how he feels women should behave via his interpretation only of the results,
“When it comes to networking, women need two things and men only need one, so for every one contact a man makes, a woman has to split her time between the contact that’s going to give her market information and the contact who’s going to give her private information. If you’ve got to split the time between the two, you’ve got to be very smart about the kinds of choices you make.”
It is not a revelation that women have to work harder or are given less credibility for the same thing, or are dinged for same traits. Nor is it a shock to most of you that you do get the scoop from other women, because it could be friendship or a deeper phenomenon involving “out group” dynamics. Call it what you will, because what is real that we pay the same money for those MBAs so we need a way to ensure we get the same Return on Investment as literally the next guy. And for the love of golf, do not ask us to play unless you want to and even then, you are not one of them.
A step backwards?
What this research does not talk about is what men can do to prevent women from having to make choices. You can be a good man yet not be a man who advocates for women to have equal pathways to success.
Then, #metoo comes along with the shouts of “not all men” which of course is entirely valid because we all know some really great caring men who understand consent and respect and where the lines of proper behavior lie. The problem with the “not all men” chant is that it can silence the nuance of useful conservation around “although you do not, but by virtue of a legacy power structure you probably could be you were inclined to, therefore how do we ensure the bad guys are stopped by a new structure so you do not ever have to feel lumped in with them, because you are in fact part of the solution”. Instead, out of fear many men have taken a step back from interacting with women at work. Not helpful. Just actually more indulgent of a privilege to withdraw of a historically dominant group instead of facing the work that has to be done. Some people do not have that privilege to say no without consequence.
Networking past the biases and fear
Most networking information is entirely based on men networking with men with male examples given as an argument for basing your connection on hobbies and passions. Herminia Ibarra’s work clearly delineates the differences between personal, operational and strategic networks and is worth a read.
In this era of strong gender roles still being perpetuated by most people, men and women alike (granted glimpses of hope around understanding the negative effects on boys as well as girls of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity), it no shock that men continue to network with each other in the way they have always known how, excited primal physical arousal states usually with sports and competition. Which is why we have to believe there are physiological differences without believing we are beholden to them. We all have the ability to disrupt our cognitive process with a behavior change. That goes for women too. Start with your own biases. How much do you do love the patriarchy? Odd question you might think, but really look at to what extent do you favor men and boy’s needs over those of women and girls? This question is not about whether you like men or whether you believe in raising strong daughters or whether your husband does the dishes. It is a question about your own value sets, deep, intrinsic ones that are probably buried in your unconscious and then how that affects your conscious and unconscious behaviors.
Why do you go to women for information and perhaps comfort but not for promotion, stretch projects and general greatness? Why do men get immediate credibility and do you give it freely while in parallel asking women to prove themselves?
As we enter the hoopla, ceremony and celebration of International Women’s Day, the question to ask yourself is where are you on this spectrum of consciously and unconsciously endorsing for men because they are men, because it’s a spectrum we are all on.
Voice of Experience: Beth Renner, National Director of Philanthropic Services, Wells Fargo Private Bank
Voices of ExperienceAs a mentor, Beth Renner knows that women often need to find their voice—and when they do, it can be a powerful booster charge to their career.
As she recounts, she was recently working with a long-term mentee who had finally applied for a position. When Renner had asked why she had hesitated, the mentee said she believed she didn’t have the entire skill set, but as they walked through the skill set and experience, it became clear that the position was a perfect fit. “Sometimes the biggest challenge is the messages we tell ourselves.”
Finding the Ideal Niche to Blend Personal and Professional Interests
Renner’s clear confident voice has brought her a 28-year career in the financial services industry, during which she has essentially touched every part of a financial services company. She started on the retail bank side as a personal banker; then was a credit officer with a small business lender; went into the fiduciary side as a private banker and trust manager, where she subsequently oversaw the fiduciary investment and brokerage side; and for the past eight years has worked in philanthropic services, where she currently has $26 billion in charitable assets under management for clients.
“The lifeblood of our business is the advice we provide our clients around their donations and assisting nonprofits in making sure they are sustainable,” Renner explains. Having always been personally involved in charitable work with both her time and treasure, the chance to marry that in her professional life is the achievement of which she’s most proud.
“For me it’s not about achieving a certification or designation, but about what I do every day, and I’ve really found a home for myself in this area that allows me to align my personal and professional values,” she says.
A Sea Change in the Philanthropic World
As the country prepares for an impending generational “wealth transfer,” Renner finds several themes consistently emerging. First, as a matriarch or patriarch who is naturally at the maturing point is engaging in legacy planning, they are asking how they can ensure that their values will be represented. The goal is to engage multiple generations from the family in their philanthropic pursuits.
Others are wrestling with the question of how much to leave their kids and wondering how to engage philanthropy as a tool to stave off entitlement.
“Donors are viewing themselves as an investor in these causes more than ever before, and we are adjusting the advice we provide them to create a more disciplined process.” To that end, she has helped develop a series of philanthropic planning modules that they are currently honing through focus groups, and she looks forward to rolling them out. “It’s a pleasure to be able to work more deliberately on these issues and adjust our business to how our clients are telling us they need counsel.”
Renner has become attuned to the absolute value of listening with intention and mindfulness which is helping inform this new initiative. When her father passed away shortly after she turned 50, she hit a point of reflection. “It causes you to look at things differently, and one of the things that has stuck with me is the art of listening and how it helps you understand others and yourself. Being mindful means that if I’m in a situation where I’m listening to clients or my team and find myself having an internal reaction, it spurs me to dig deeper to figure out where it’s coming from.”
Finding a Mentor Helps Your Career Path
One thing Renner learned from her mentor early on in her career was to focus on developing transferrable skills. For example, you don’t just want to be an expert in credit analysis, but you need to know how to solve complex problems. “In any position, consider what skills you can learn that you don’t yet have or want to cultivate,” she says.
And today she encourages women to be intentional about mentoring other women. “Don’t wait to be asked; when you see someone with potential, proactively reach out to them,” she suggests. That’s because we all are a collection of our past experiences and to give someone that gift of your accumulated knowledge will allow them to make progress faster.
She takes that outlook to her work on Wells Fargo’s Women’s Team Member Network, a diversity and inclusion employee resource group she finds valuable for its focus on broadening everyone’s lens around diversity and how to foster and develop it.
Her outside philanthropic pursuits are a perfect match for her professional life: She is absolutely passionate about the American Red Cross, and is the national chair of the women’s giving group called the Tiffany Circle. The group has flourished in five different countries, and in her role she helps develop the strategy around mobilizing this women’s segment. “A lot of the work I do at Wells Fargo helps the Red Cross with their fundraising and stewardship because I can share national trends and the emerging role that women are playing in philanthropy,” Renner says.
Erika Irish Brown, Chief Diversity Officer, Goldman Sachs
Voices of Experience“If you expose people who are smart and hard working to opportunities – and provide them with an access point to begin a career – success follows,” says Goldman Sachs’ Erika Irish Brown.
As Goldman’s new Chief Diversity Officer, Brown is responsible for driving inclusive culture initiatives and efforts related to the firm’s recruitment, retention and advancement of diverse professionals.
She notes she is genuinely passionate about promoting diversity and inclusion in the financial services industry. “The sense of purpose I have for my work drives me every day.”
A Beneficiary and Proponent of Diversity and Inclusion
Brown’s first introduction to financial services came via a year-long internship as a college student, which was offered specifically to students from underrepresented minority groups by a state-run bond agency. She describes the internship as a huge win given her alma mater – the State University of New York at Albany – did not send a high volume of graduates to Wall Street at that time.
This internship helped her land an analyst role at Lehman Brothers, which she says was a life-changing opportunity. “Very often, people ask me, why am I so committed to diversity and inclusion?” says Brown. “One reason is because I got my start on Wall Street as a beneficiary of what we now call a diversity and inclusion program.”
After working in investment banking at Lehman, Brown went on to issue bonds for the City of New York and served as a Presidential appointee at the US Treasury in the Clinton administration, ultimately earning her MBA from Columbia University and serving in roles at Morgan Stanley and Black Entertainment Television. She enjoyed the financial markets, the fast-paced nature of her work and the variety of people she was able to work with, but added: “It was a different time – gender, ethnic diversity was low.”
Brown took an interest in the diversity and inclusion (D&I) space, serving as a recruiting liaison for both on-campus and experienced hires – on top of her day job as a banker.
Prior to the financial crisis, Brown began her first ‘official’ diversity-focused role, once again, at Lehman, where her team focused on enhancing diversity at the vice president level and above. Post-crisis – and a brief stint on the Obama administration’s Treasury transition team – Brown joined Bank of America, where she built a team focused on executive diversity recruiting. From there, she went on to serve as Bloomberg’s chief diversity officer, building the company’s D&I platform from the ground up.
“Being considered a subject matter expert on diversity globally has made me very proud,” says Brown. “This is not easy work, it is not easily measured and you have to be bold and take risks in order to be an agent of change.” This risk-taking has led Brown to Goldman Sachs, where she has a large, global platform to influence diversity.
Evaluating and Developing New Approaches at Goldman Sachs
“It was important for me to come in and listen, learn and talk to people,” says Brown of her approach to her new role at the firm last year. “I wanted my expertise to be informed by the culture here.”
After connecting with stakeholders across regions and divisions and gaining a global perspective, she now feels well informed to have opinions, make assessments and execute on the best practices and strategies that will work for Goldman Sachs.
Brown outlines some of the many opportunities in the D&I space she hopes to focus on in the coming months:
Her team has the support from CEO David Solomon and the firm’s Global Diversity Committee. Brown notes that it is crucial to have senior leadership setting the tone – particularly when diversity impacts each and every area of a company, from business performance to client engagement.
“Today, no topics are off the table in the workplace, and people expect to bring their authentic selves to work,” says Brown. “I’ve seen firsthand that this approach has been adopted at Goldman Sachs as well.”
Recommendations From a Life-Long Learner
Describing her roles at several investment banks and why young women should pursue financial services careers, Brown says, “The skills sets you develop in a short period of time, the amount of responsibility and high bar for expectations, and the seniority of people – both internally and clients – that you engage with is empowering.”
Her advice to women as they progress in their careers is to continuously innovate and be life-long learners.
“Ask yourself – are you pushing the envelope, taking risks and being ambitious,” says Brown. “We should all reflect upon our legacy and ensure we make a difference in our workplace – it can be anything from launching a new product to creating opportunities for others.”
Outside the office, Brown continues to push for change in her community. As vice chair of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, she works to ensure the Central Brooklyn community has access to housing, education and economic development opportunities, arts and cultural activities and capital for small business owners.
Brown stresses: “giving back is important to me – anything I can do to contribute and give back to others, I’ll do.”
And, a mother to three sons, Brown also keeps busy on the slopes, skiing in the winter with her family and cheering on from the sidelines of elite AAU basketball games. “We’re very active as a family, and our time together is so important and a priority to me,” she says.
Change Your Mindset To Change the World (and Your World)
Black History Month, Career Tip of the Week!As we close out our Black History Month coverage this week, and in a direct follow up to my Op-ed on mental constructs regarding Race and how to talk about racism.
I ask how can you ensure your network is not just full of people like you, who hold the same constructs and therefore everyone can easily have confirmation bias? Bad for business with potential ‘groupthink’ coming into play, and bad for personal growth.
I am going to ask you to check whether you walk the talk on having an inclusive network.
Does your network consist of people who look, think and act like you, in every way? I am here to ask what can you gain by broadening your horizons?
How can you ensure you are getting to know perspectives that are different from yours? Equally, how can you explore enough when you are getting to know someone, to find out if that person who do not look like, can actually be very similar? How can you not presume or make assumptions based on stereotypes? It is hard because you brain “goes” there and research from the fields of neuroscience and social science’s “ladder of inference” can be shared with you in one sentence here. Simply put, your brain tricks you into thinking you have seen this before and you know what this is about. Guess what? You don’t know what is coming next, whether it is your brain seeing four red cars and subliminally telling you the next car will be red. Or whether your brain tells you that leaders are always better if they are tall white men even if you don’t know the person himself but in concept only. Or you do know the person and you dismiss their flaws and give unearned credibility to them due to concepts.
My point is, appearances can be deceptive. We are all made up of complex identities, no one is simple or one dimensional and we all have a gender (male is a gender too), ethnicity (maybe we need a new word as it implies white protestant as a benchmark baseline ), orientation (straight is an orientation too), nationality, work position, parent or not parent status, even golfer or not golfer status. Most of us, have had some affiliation to a legacy or current dominant group. We can go through life like that, easily. I had very little perspective for example of what it meant to be a Catholic growing up in Belfast as my class and religion meant I was never really stopped by army or police or had to deal with thugs and gangs and any resemblance of poverty. Bombs yes, they were everywhere and random, but the everyday drag and bias of being in the minority and less powerful group in my society, no. Yet, my mindset was one of scarcity, fear, paranoia and being aware to this day of the so-called “other”. I am not saying I am freed 100% from my sectarian constructs – maybe 99%, but I know that i see parallels in the USA with race and that is why I know for sure that people can take the diversity journey and grow. As Maya Angelou said, “when you know better, you do better.”
So, where do you start?
Step 1: Take the time to understand your values because values are espoused versions of your implicit beliefs. Chances are you are running the same old program that was handed to you in childhood via your direct environment, family structures, institutions such as school and church/temple/mosque, and the overall society you were born into and whatever norms that group had in play.
Step 2: Write out every construct you have been told such as “Trust is earned” or “X, y, z is the way it is”. What do you tell yourself when you are in varying situations as who to hire for the project, who to cut from the project, and who to promote? What do you tell yourself when you are stressed at work and having less than optimal interactions?
Challenge the and every single line by asking yourself simple questions such ‘Do I believe this, truly?’ or an advanced version of this could be ‘How else can I look at this?’ or ‘Is this still working for me now?’ and “how is this actually something that was given to me by my father/mother/granny, and is not actually how i feel at this time?”
If you would like to work with me as a coach on personal and professional growth and renewal, with real insights for you, about behaviors and the context of the operating system you are in. Please book a free exploratory time with me. Life is too short to carry outdated constructs around. Grow! Whether it is individual, or organizational change, it does not happen without awareness as the starting point.