By Aimee Hansen
Leadership today is not crying out for people who are destined to be great. It’s crying out for people who are dedicated to being present.
We don’t need bigger beacons to admire at the top, but human beings who can connect and be here now.
According to Gallup, 85% of employees are not engaged or actively disengaged at work. Forbes found that more employees (65%) would rather see their bosses fired than receive a raise. Research reveals a massive chasm between leaders’ self-perception and how their employees see them. One McKinsey study found that 86% of leaders rated themselves as inspiring, but a Gallup survey found 82% of employees see their leaders as uninspiring.
“Around three years ago, we started to see more and more leaders today being overwhelmed, being always on, not being able to keep up,” says Jacqueline Carter, partner and North American Director of Potential Project and co-author of “The Mind of the Leader – How to Lead Yourself, Your People and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results.
“This is equally evidenced by research that shows what we’re calling ‘a real crisis in leadership,” says Carter. In partnership with HBR press, her organization conducted interviews with 250 C-suite executive interviews, assessed 35,000 leaders and reviewed previous studies.
Leadership Begins in the Mind, and With You
“An unmindful leader is someone who is distracted all the time, who has a hard time getting things done, probably not very calm, maybe stressed,” says Carter. Mindfulness develops the ability to say: “Okay, no matter how chaotic it is out there in the external reality, I can maintain a sense of focus and of discipline and of calm in my internal reality.”
But most leaders don’t feel that way.
“The Mind of the Leader” research found that 73% of leaders feel unmindful most of the time and 67% of leaders feel their minds are simply cluttered. Attention itself has been touted as the world’s scarcest resource in the book, “The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business.”
“If we don’t have the ability to understand and lead our own mind, we’re certainly not able to be effective for ourselves,” notes Carter, let alone able to understand our people or the “collective minds of the organization” so that we may lead effectively.
Three Steps to Start Your Own Mindfulness Practice
1) Start a 10 minute guided practice with this app: Research shows that after 14 days, 10 minutes a day, you can actually see the impact of feeling a little more focused, more calm, more clear-minded.
2) Take stock of distractions: Carter advises to take stock of what keeps you from being focused (eg phone on in meetings). Minimize the amount of habits that distract you and create scattered feelings, tension or stress to increase your focus.
3) Stop the multi-tasking: According to Carter, multi-tasking is a myth (the brain conclusively shows we can’t give real attention to two things at once, we just flit between). We can reduce our stress levels by not scattering our attention.
When it Comes to Effectiveness, Mindfulness is a No-Brainer
Mindfulness practice cultivates self-awareness, which is a foundation of good leadership. Mindfulness has been associated with benefits such as enhanced focus and better task performance, enhanced work-life balance, more creativity and innovation, better decision making and problem-solving, more ethical decision making, increased job satisfaction, fewer sick days and more retention.
On a personal level, mindfulness can bring better sleep, enhanced attention, decreased stress, reduced cellular aging, increased emotional intelligence, and also benefits for the immune system, brain, heart and blood pressure.
What is also required, according to Carter, “is not letting our egoistic tendencies drive our behaviors” while “bringing more compassion and kindness into our work places, for strategic reasons, not just because it sounds like a nice idea.”
Why Leaders Need to Watch Their Ego
The research found that when we rise in leadership, it’s incredibly difficult not to develop a big ego. Leaders are listened to, surrounding with people who praise them, paid more and maybe have the fancy corner office.
“There’s all these subtle things that tell the brain, basically, you’re important,” says Carter. “And ego naturally grows.” So, rising into leadership has a tendency towards corrupting our behavior to be ego-driven.
For example, Carter points out, “One of the things about having a big ego is that we’re more susceptible to confirmation bias. We want to see things through the lens of the way we want to see things.”
Mindfulness practice is a way of training your mind to break unconscious biases, to affect how you relate and respond – to stay open, fluid and and respond rather than react.
“We know that we are emotional beings as opposed to rational beings. Too many programs that focus on unconscious bias appeal to our rational approach: ‘Okay, I understand diversity is good’. But we also understand that doesn’t change our behaviors,” asserts Carter. “If we all knew the right thing to do and that enabled us to do it, we’d all be exercising, we’d all be eating well.”
“It’s the same thing with unconscious bias,” says Carter. “The motivation needs to be there, which is the awareness piece, but we also need to train ourselves to be able to overcome those biases that are so unconscious they’re much more difficult to tap into.”
Mindfulness Cultivates Presence and Self-Care
“When somebody is more centered and more grounded (not about being arrogant) but has a strong sense of themselves, you feel that, and you respect them more,” says Carter. “It’s easier for people to listen to those people, because they draw people in.”
The more we cultivate presence, according to Carter, the more we can overcome the cultural addiction to action. More presence means less hustle.
“Being more mindful enables you to set more boundaries, and that was true for all the leaders we spoke to, but certainly the female senior leaders…” says Carter. “It’s a combination of being able to be mindful about what you can do and what you can’t do, and be okay with the fact that you may let people down, but you need to be able to take care of yourself.”
Presence helps us discern what is necessary, what we can put our focus on effectively, and what we can accept and release from our control.
“In our research, it was amazing to see how basically the higher you got in an organization, the higher the level of the executives, they all took time to exercise, they slept well, even despite ridiculous travel schedules and ridiculous scopes of jobs,” says Carter. “It was really clear that if you don’t start taking good care of yourself and setting good boundaries and saying no at an earlier level of your leadership journey, you’re gonna burn out.”
“Presence Pays”
Research shows a direct correlation between a leaders’ mindfulness and the well-being and performance of their people.
“Human beings know when people aren’t present with us,” says Carter. It’s un-motivating, inefficient and costly.
“When you look at how distracted people are, at turnover rates, lack of engagement, you can make a pretty strong business case that being present with people, being kind to people, being about others not about ourselves, it’s not just nice to have,” said Carter. “It’s pretty critical to be successful in business today…we look at it as ‘presence pays’.”
“What we’ve found in our experience of training people to be more present is it actually saves time because if I know that I’m heard, I’ll stop talking. My message got across,” says Carter. When we don’t feel heard, we’ll keep trying to be – we’ll keep on talking.
Presence can be as simple as sticking around for a real answer to “how are you?”. On the contrary, “if you go to a meeting, and half the people are on their devices, you should just get up and leave. Seriously,” says Carter. “You’re wasting your time because of lack of presence.”
Presence, paired with compassion, creates a sense of meaningfulness and connection, and that matters when in inspiring others and earning their trust. Research has shown that a lack of trust ultimately erodes performance and the bottom line.
“We are wired to want to fit in and want to feel valued. And when feel heard, when we feel like we matter, and when we then are able to connect with other human beings, it enables collaboration, it enables the right conversations to happen, including tough conversations,” says Carter. “If I give you feedback and I’m distracted, that’s gonna be horrible for you. But if I give you feedback because I really care about you and I really want you to get this didn’t work out well, you can completely receive that. It’s the power of presence to be able to have both tough conversations as well as nice, engaging moments of meeting effectiveness.”
The Lone Leadership Ideal Is Dead
“What has been an iconic idea for a long time of a single, solitary leader – the great leader theory – is really dead.” says Carter. “The pace of change that all of us are experiencing regardless of what industry we’re in – the disruption, the distraction, the pressure – is just too complex and too much for any one individual to have all the answers.”
Nobody, and especially Millennials, want “some great person (often some ‘great man’) on a pedestal they don’t connect with,” said Carter.
Meaning, purpose and connection is what most of us want.
Got promoted? 7 Tips When Choosing a Successor
Career AdviceGuest Contribution
As you get promoted, you may be asked to help to select the right person to take over when you leave.
If legacy is important to you, you’ll probably want to have time to train your successor to handle their new role just as expertly as you do now.
Here are seven ways to make the process better for everyone.
1. Make Development the Focus
All too often, leaders make the mistake of scouting out employees with the same traits and skill sets and spend less time on what potentially a successor could do. A smooth transition includes not only figuring out who can do the job as well as you but it’s also about giving them the tools they need far in advance of the time they’ll have to use them.
So, as you begin to think about finding your successor, keep in mind that their confidence and hard work aren’t enough to ready them for your role. Development training should be part of the plan, too. Many companies have made this mistake, promoting someone into a position that they certainly have earned from successes as an individual contributor or even as a manager in another team, but for which they don’t particularly have the right skill set for this next role.
So, make sure development is at the heart of your succession plan. It’s not just workplace mentoring or shadowing, although those are important methods, too. Development is all about learning leadership skills that will make the promotion into a starring role more natural. Conferences or workshops can provide training, also, and reinvigorate leaders-in-training in their current positions.
2. Choose the Right Person
The first step in the process is to find the right candidate to take over for you. You might know exactly who that person is already, and it might be someone who works closely with you or someone who is excelling in a role that’s tied closely to yours. Consider the person’s skill set and make sure they’re already knowledgeable in some of the areas you deal with on a day-to-day basis. For extra padding, you could select more than one potential successor and, through training, see who is the best fit.
3. Consider the Logistics – And Revisit Regularly
When is it a good time to start succession planning? There is not one answer here, and it is depends on how senior you are and what is talent process is. Thomas Collura, partner at Hodgson Russ, says that the biggest mistake is failure to properly plan for succession early and neglecting to revisit those plans. As the business changes, so should your plans. Be open with your successor as well so that any changes can be considered well in advance.
4. Look to the Future
You shouldn’t make your succession plan with just the present taken into consideration. Instead, it’s vital that you have a broader outlook as you sit down to determine who’s right for the role. In the short term, someone just like you could be the solution, but, in the long run, you might make a mistake. Every company’s plans and forecasts are different, but you should know the trajectory of your role before you choose the replacement person.
5. Avoid Any Bias
Whether we like it or not, there are unconscious biases that come with the hiring process. They’re deemed to be unconscious because they’re not something we do purposefully, but these tendencies can stifle workplace diversity.
Taking certain precautions can prevent yourself from falling into this trap. Some hiring managers look at resumes without considering the candidate’s names so that gender bias can’t come into play. This practice could rule out any race-related biases, too.Of course, choosing a successor might mean you’re selecting candidates you already know. In this case, practice staying open to picking a new leader who’s not exactly like you.
6. Be a Mentor
Once you’ve narrowed in on the person or people who have the potential to take over in your absence, you should provide on-the-job training as well as the leadership development mentioned above. A great way to teach someone how to do your job is to show them first-hand, and a mentoring program would allow you to do that with ease. There are more benefits to mentoring than just training a successor. It makes all employees more skilled in their roles, and it makes them feel more satisfied with the workplace because it provides them opportunities to learn and grow. So, offer the program on a broader scale, but ensure your mentees are those who you’ve earmarked as potential leaders. That way, they can learn directly from you.
7. Write It All Down
Finally, as you wind down your role and prepare to hand over the reins to your successor, do one last thing to make it all simpler — provide them with a written set of instructions. Yes, it’s old school, but it’s also extremely helpful. All of your in-person training was great, but there are always going to be critical pieces of information that are worth repeating — write those down.
Not only will this make the succession plan easier for your replacement and your company, but it will make you feel at ease about everything, too. If you’re devising the right strategy for easing the transition, you care — and you can walk away knowing that you handled it well, chose the right person and prepared them as best you could. And there’s no better feeling to have when moving forward than that.
Disclaimer: The opinion and views of Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Mover and Shaker: Cassandra Cuellar, Associate at Shearman & Sterling
Hispanic Heritage, Movers and ShakersBy Cathie Ericson
Being inquisitive and asking a lot of questions is one of the best ways to move ahead, whether you’re working with a partner or client, believes Shearman’s Cassandra Cuellar.
In addition, she recommends that professionals always maintain a positive attitude, showing up and treating every day like a new day. “It’s a stressful job, and you have to recognize that your role is to find a way around issues, to find a solution that will meet the client’s ultimate goal whether it’s an internal or external client.”
Honing a Specialty That Always Has Emerging Challenges
After growing up in a small town in Texas, Cuellar came to Austin in 2003 to attend University of Texas – the first lawyer in her family — and has been there ever since. While attending law school, she clerked with the firm Andrews Kurth, where she received an offer to work with the Emerging Companies group. She worked there for seven-and-a-half years until this March when the group of 14 attorneys and associated support staff moved over to Shearman and Sterling LLP.
Currently she is working with companies that are exploring very cutting-edge fields. For example, she is enjoying the challenge of developing two areas in the practice — cryptocurrency and digital assets – and helping move them more into the mainstream. “We have to take them out of the hands of the fringe groups and make them more accessible so people will become comfortable with crypto and blockchain,” she notes.
Another exciting area of growth is in AI. She has a client who focuses on looking at manuscripts and movie scripts for patterns that resonate, which she says is the type of task that AI will revolutionize by applying a more systematic approach.
Learning By Doing
Cuellar describes her first two years as an “unending learning moment.” At the time, she was working with several junior attorneys who left for various reasons so she seized the opportunity to fill the gaps. While it entailed many late nights, in hindsight she sees that taking on these various extra projects was the best possible thing she could have done to propel her career. “I was able to learn from mistakes and now have a vast background which helps me recognize things that I wouldn’t have noticed before.”
While embracing those kinds of opportunities can grow your career, she also finds incredible benefits in taking advantage of mentoring, whether formal or informal.
In fact, at an earlier position that didn’t offer a formal program, she sought out other attorneys to help give her advice. “People are more than willing to have conversations with you when you show you appreciate their time,” she says.
At Shearman, she recognized the culture of mentorship and support the minute she came over. “Female partners whom I don’t even work with have reached out, which was so impressive that these busy women would welcome me and offer their support,” she says. One in particular who stands out is partner Sarah McClean, whom she notes has been very conscious about developing a team of great women and inviting her to immediately get involved.
Another option Cuellar took advantage of was getting involved with industry organizations, which she finds particularly important for minority lawyers. She has enjoyed the four years she’s been involved with the Hispanic National Bar Association, which offers avenues for professional development and advancement; for example, she has had the chance to make pitches to corporations and gleaned immeasurable professional development opportunities from sitting in and learning from other attorneys
Because she places great importance on developing the pipeline of younger lawyers, she’s also been involved with a UT group called Minority Women Pursuing Law, which works with first-generation law students to offer counsel on job hunting. Each year Cuellar presents on what they should know as college students about what law schools and law firms are looking for to help give them a leg up.
Married with two dogs, Cuellar loves to cook and barbeque at home, and she and her husband enjoy frequent visits to their families in south Texas.
Mover and Shaker: Liliana Bauer, Marketing Director, WEX Latam
Hispanic Heritage, Movers and Shakers“I once heard that we should listen before acting and think before reacting.
The adage is one that has stuck with me and that drives my leadership style in a significant way,” says WEX’ Liliana Bauer. “Thinking for ourselves, rather than just repeating the ideas we hear, makes a big difference in how we conduct our lives and make appropriate choices.”
And she adds, “If we seize opportunities, take our goals seriously and maintain our enthusiasm—always respecting everyone else in an ethical way—we will arrive at the destination we choose.”
A Career Built On Accepting Challenges
That ethos has helped Bauer build a multi-layered career. She attended school in Brazil, earning both a bachelor’s degree in marketing and communications from Mackenzie University and an MBA from Fundação Getúlio Vargas University.
After graduating, she began her career with Coca-Cola, holding roles in divisions including promotions, product management and customer loyalty. She then spent nearly a decade at Citibank, responding to the centralized structuring and implementation of the B2B and institutional marketing in Brazil, where she handled marketing strategy, as well as overseeing PR and corporate communications for all business units. Her last role at Citibank was as a regional marketing manager for the Latin American region’s 24 markets, reporting to Miami and New York.
In 2011, she joined HSBC Latin America as a senior marketing manager, responsible for global banking and markets, private banking and asset management. She also oversaw planning and marketing effectiveness for HSBC’s corporate segments, where together with the countries and the global team, she developed the department’s strategic and business information for the executive committees of the region, as well as results analysis and financial control. In addition, she was responsible for the Latin American marketing for the Global Banking and Markets segment, reporting directly to London.
Prior to joining WEX, she served as a marketing executive at credit card issuer Banco Bradesco Cartões, where she oversaw strategic marketing management and payments solutions studies.
She then joined WEX Brazil as a marketing director, responsible for implementing strategies to strengthen the company’s market presence through business plan and strategy execution.
A self-described “builder,” focused on getting things done in a straightforward manner, Bauer says that one of her major achievements at WEX so far has been creating a strategic marketing mindset, from building a successful team to shaping, driving and maximizing marketing activities, including focusing on analyzing results and repositioning products.
One of the projects she is most excited about right now is her role with one such repositioning of their major product—focusing on the value proposition definition and planning larger market penetration that is driven by market research and customer surveys.
That quest for data inspires her whole career, as she finds that much of her success comes from constantly questioning assumptions, both in information she hears and where the market is trending, what the target audiences are exposing and how her team is reacting. “When making decisions about the direction of my career, I try to take a high-level, long-term perspective, based not only on what things look like, but on what they really are, what is behind each scenario, and what the legacy of my decision will be,” she says.
Surrounding Yourself With the Right People and Company Culture
Over the years Bauer has been fortunate to work with many inspirational professionals, and she’s appreciated their role in patiently showing her how to meet their expectations while advancing her own career. “I’ve always paid a lot of attention to their behaviors and decisions, learning how to drive efforts in a more constructive way, while achieving the best and fastest results,” she says.
One role model who stands out is Francine Suescun, whom Bauer describes as “a great teacher and a wise leader,” adding, “She has a broad range of experience and the ability to integrate actions in an end-to-end process, guaranteeing successful delivery of every project. Besides that, she always tries to make wherever she is a better place—thinking of others rather than just taking actions that benefit herself,” an example that Bauer is quick to thank her for, telling Suescun that she is the one responsible for the professional profile Bauer has today.
In addition to surrounding herself with smart role models, she has wisely chosen the company she works for, saying that at WEX all people are seen and equally accepted—and recognized for their achievements—regardless of gender, age, department, education level or other defining elements. She finds that during business meetings, leadership summits or social celebrations, people from different locations and ages, men and women alike, interact on equal footing, listening to one another and keeping an open mind.
The same dynamic occurs on her team, where position and gender don’t matter. “If an employee is committed to doing good work, bringing relevant information or just taking advantage of an opportunity to improve their understanding about something, we respect them the same way,” she says.
Another important part of the WEX culture is the focus on work-life balance. Bauer has been able to devote time the past two-and-a-half years holding various roles for a social entity teaching English to low-income students, from ages 10 to 83. “It is such a valuable opportunity to learn from those students as they develop, and those people have played a crucial role in changing my life,” she says. “Interacting with others who have the same objectives, intensity and wishes is what makes us feel part of a society in such a special way.”
An avid traveler, Bauer has visited more than 50 cities in Brazil and 15 countries around the world. “When we interact with people from a different culture, with different points of views and experiences, we are able to rethink the prejudices we have and our previously established opinions and see how the vast resources of ideas can move the world forward,” she says.
Is Being Liked an Important Element for Public Speaking?
Career Advice, Guest ContributionGuest contributed by Beate Nimskly
What are the obstacles that keep you from presenting on stage or in a business meeting joyfully?
And what would change in your life if nothing could stop you from delivering your message to the crowd?
We in some way confuse the issue that the speech has nothing to do with the person itself but the way she is able to connect with the audience. Don’t wish to be liked, rather place the focus on wanting to influence so strongly that most of the public will really get what you have to gift and remember you as inspiring and energetic.
Be aware that no matter what you do some will like you and some will dislike you. People have the tendency to compare. This is especially true for women in business – women will be compared with other women and men too.
You are not comparable because you have something to deliver that no one else could. Concentrate on that. You are different than others and that is what counts.
Content is King
The content you are looking for is how your message fits into the reality of your audience. What are they able to hear? What is their problem? What do they want to change and could not until now because they had no idea, no sense that other things are possible? What are they willing to receive?
You could do a story around the topic with one of your customer who was struggling with a similar situation your audience has. Explain his difficulties, how he suffered, that he wanted to give up and then what possibilities opened up when he was willing to do something different. Make your customer the hero not yourself. Be so precise in how your customer or colleague or your friend changed and what he did exactly to overcome the complexity of the situation that there is no doubt at all that you have been the one who accompanied him – without mentioning that.
The Difference in Preparation
Who are the participants in your meeting, in your audience? Where do they come from? What background do they have? What position in business do they have? What is it your audience wants to get from you?
No matter who they are they want to be inspired. Find out which words they use so you can talk to them in their language. Prepare yourself in the way that they have the sense you speak with them on their level like a private one on one conversation.
The Difference in Questions
Know what you want them to do after they have left the meeting, the presentation or the event.
And ask them a lot of question during your speech like:
As well include questions like:
These questions keep your audience in a constant search for new possibilities. It makes them feel alive, more connected to themselves and pro-active.
Energy is the Key
Your energy is the key to success. Why? Every word you say has energy behind it. And not only the spoken word influences the audience. It´s more the tone and the body language that counts.
So, ask yourself questions like this:
Space and Consciousness
Space within yourself allows you to connect with others on another level. You can do breathing exercises to experience space within yourself. You could do Yoga or meditation to experience space. If you are the space, you have no resistance to whatever people are asking or are talking about you. You just let it go through yourself with no attachment at all.
And no matter what people say you could say to yourself: “Interesting point of view that they have this point of view.” With this you free yourself from your own judgment about them and as well from their judgment about you. If you practice “interesting point of view” all day long in your normal daily life you will experience more freedom with everything. This is the space of all possibilities.
You are now able to act and react with ease and flexibility in the given situation. That inner freedom gives you access to consciousness. Consciousness includes everything and judges nothing. Everything you do, everything you experience is a way to more awareness. There is no right or wrong. There is always awareness and the choice to be or do something different the next time.
You don´t like me? Interesting point of view.
Beate Nimsky is an inspirational catalyst for change, who works with CEOs, business owners, entrepreneurs and leaders in companies developing their leading abilities. She has been a pioneer in consulting and implementing value driven cultures in companies for more than 25 years. Her new book Ask – And Create Your Life will be published in summer of 2018.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
2018 Latina Leaders- Hispanic Heritage Month
Career Tip of the Week!This week’s column is a nod to our celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month series this week and throughout the month.
Latinas at the highest echelons are still underrepresented but we wanted to spotlight the top Latina leaders in business show you the Latina professionals that are making it happen. The future is now, progress is being made and more Latina women are running companies and raising capital for entrepreneurial ventures than before.
Career advice for Latina women may seem on the surface to be the same as for advice for any other woman from any other background. Why? Because it is only by varying degrees of believing and adhering to the patriarchy as an operating system, that makes each woman who is reading this abide or dissent from the cultural norms and gender roles they are messaged from birth.
If you are messaged values of a collectivist society versus those of an individualist society, you may show common traits. This is a more accurate way of actually having a career conversation about the context in which a person is operating in also, because the term “Hispanic” is perhaps something that is so inaccurate and unfair since it assumes that all Spanish-speaking people from over a dozen countries are the same, yet it equally assumes that all English-speaking people are not the same. That is an uneven start and can lead to greater stereotyping.
Beneath the surface, career advice could differ greatly for aspiring Latina leaders, because going against the grain is easier said than done in families and firms alike. This is where collectivism as a theory meets the reality of living in an individualistic culture.
Also, everyone has different personalities and value sets so many women do want to care-take more and play a larger family role, but to reduce it to a binary is a problem. And, many (not all) Latina women are faced with this binary in choosing to comply or dissent against the gender roles set, and dissent against the historical family structure expectations.
My advice is let’s start asking what each individual woman wants, instead of assuming we know that their social identity is all that they are (ditto anyone else for that matter.)
If you are a Latina, a constant strategy is to individuate yourself as a person to remind people who you are and what you want and what you are capable of, not who they think you are!
Nicki Gilmour, CEO of theglasshammer.com offers Executive and Career coaching in Spanish and English. For an exploratory call contact nicki@theglasshammer.com o reserva aqui.
Voice of Experience: Agostina Pechi, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs
Voices of Experience“If you work hard and are consistent, you will get there,” says Goldman Sachs’ Agostina Pechi. Yet, she adds that you have to balance that patience with an ability to speak up and vocalize your intention to take on additional responsibility. “You have to make sure that management is aware of the work you are doing,” she says, adding that “mentors and sponsors who can vouch for your work are extremely valuable.”
Building an Expertise in Latin America
After studying economics at Torcuato Di Tella University in Argentina, Pechi moved to London to work for Deutsche Bank in their emerging markets group. Her work at Deutsche Bank took her to Mexico City and then to New York, where she worked as part of the Latin American coverage team. Through working in different environments and under different supervisory styles, she gained what she believes to be an important skill for success: adaptability.
In 2013, Pechi decided to move to Goldman Sachs. “I found it valuable to be based in the headquarters, close to leadership and decision making,” she says. She was tapped to build a Latin American institutional coverage team for the firm that has since expanded its coverage to smaller market countries.
“It was extremely rewarding to know that the firm trusted us to produce in these markets that don’t have as much access to Wall Street and liquidity in their currencies.” She says that the firm’s increased involvement in smaller markets has fostered its reputation in the region, generating new business, with revenue comparable to that of larger economies. “Direct investment is key for these economies to grow – it’s important for them to obtain financing to facilitate investments in key areas such as infrastructure, and it has been rewarding to help clients in these regions achieve their goals,” she says.
Pechi considers the growth of fintech to be one of the most important rising trends, namely due to the way the sector will disrupt existing business methods. She believes that Goldman Sachs is on the cutting edge of this change, and will be able to expand product offerings and support a greater array of clients.
“History has shown that doing things the same way because that’s how it has always been done is a disadvantage, and I believe we are at the forefront of the radical change that is coming,” Pechi says.
Sharing Her Passions With Others
At Goldman Sachs, Pechi is highly involved with two affinity networks. She sits on the steering committee of the Hispanic and Latino network, which provides tools and guidance to Latino individuals to navigate and excel in their careers. She is also co-head of the Securities Division Women’s Network, which hosts monthly meetings, events and a “Strategic Insight” series designed for women to connect with senior management across different divisions. The program has been so successful that other businesses across the firm have expressed interest in replicating it. She is currently in the midst of helping to plan a half-day seminar where network members will have an opportunity to interact with senior leaders of the firm.
She enjoys mentoring other women and recommends to others, “Surround yourself with people who believe in you along each step in your career.” She goes on to note, “Great leaders are innovative, and we will succeed when we realize we can’t all look at the world in the same way.”
Outside of work, Pechi channels her passion for improving her community into Project Art, a program that uses space in public libraries for children in under-resourced areas to meet and make art. The program has spread across the country to become the largest arts-related after-school program in the United States. Since Project Art relies on free public spaces instead of renting pricey classroom space, the majority of funding can go to hiring great teachers and acquiring materials. Pechi, who has a two-year-old daughter of her own, appreciates the chance to offer an avenue for children to stay busy after school and to learn to communicate through the arts.
“Helping communities around me is an important part of my life,” she says.
Another form of art is also important to her — dancing tango, which she learned in Argentina from her grandparents. Two years ago when she was involved in planning efforts for the firm’s Hispanic Heritage Month, she arranged for an external dance team to perform the tango – and even performed alongside them.
Why We Must Bring Mindfulness To Leadership
Career AdviceBy Aimee Hansen
Leadership today is not crying out for people who are destined to be great. It’s crying out for people who are dedicated to being present.
We don’t need bigger beacons to admire at the top, but human beings who can connect and be here now.
According to Gallup, 85% of employees are not engaged or actively disengaged at work. Forbes found that more employees (65%) would rather see their bosses fired than receive a raise. Research reveals a massive chasm between leaders’ self-perception and how their employees see them. One McKinsey study found that 86% of leaders rated themselves as inspiring, but a Gallup survey found 82% of employees see their leaders as uninspiring.
“Around three years ago, we started to see more and more leaders today being overwhelmed, being always on, not being able to keep up,” says Jacqueline Carter, partner and North American Director of Potential Project and co-author of “The Mind of the Leader – How to Lead Yourself, Your People and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results.
“This is equally evidenced by research that shows what we’re calling ‘a real crisis in leadership,” says Carter. In partnership with HBR press, her organization conducted interviews with 250 C-suite executive interviews, assessed 35,000 leaders and reviewed previous studies.
Leadership Begins in the Mind, and With You
“An unmindful leader is someone who is distracted all the time, who has a hard time getting things done, probably not very calm, maybe stressed,” says Carter. Mindfulness develops the ability to say: “Okay, no matter how chaotic it is out there in the external reality, I can maintain a sense of focus and of discipline and of calm in my internal reality.”
But most leaders don’t feel that way.
“The Mind of the Leader” research found that 73% of leaders feel unmindful most of the time and 67% of leaders feel their minds are simply cluttered. Attention itself has been touted as the world’s scarcest resource in the book, “The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business.”
“If we don’t have the ability to understand and lead our own mind, we’re certainly not able to be effective for ourselves,” notes Carter, let alone able to understand our people or the “collective minds of the organization” so that we may lead effectively.
Three Steps to Start Your Own Mindfulness Practice
1) Start a 10 minute guided practice with this app: Research shows that after 14 days, 10 minutes a day, you can actually see the impact of feeling a little more focused, more calm, more clear-minded.
2) Take stock of distractions: Carter advises to take stock of what keeps you from being focused (eg phone on in meetings). Minimize the amount of habits that distract you and create scattered feelings, tension or stress to increase your focus.
3) Stop the multi-tasking: According to Carter, multi-tasking is a myth (the brain conclusively shows we can’t give real attention to two things at once, we just flit between). We can reduce our stress levels by not scattering our attention.
When it Comes to Effectiveness, Mindfulness is a No-Brainer
Mindfulness practice cultivates self-awareness, which is a foundation of good leadership. Mindfulness has been associated with benefits such as enhanced focus and better task performance, enhanced work-life balance, more creativity and innovation, better decision making and problem-solving, more ethical decision making, increased job satisfaction, fewer sick days and more retention.
On a personal level, mindfulness can bring better sleep, enhanced attention, decreased stress, reduced cellular aging, increased emotional intelligence, and also benefits for the immune system, brain, heart and blood pressure.
What is also required, according to Carter, “is not letting our egoistic tendencies drive our behaviors” while “bringing more compassion and kindness into our work places, for strategic reasons, not just because it sounds like a nice idea.”
Why Leaders Need to Watch Their Ego
The research found that when we rise in leadership, it’s incredibly difficult not to develop a big ego. Leaders are listened to, surrounding with people who praise them, paid more and maybe have the fancy corner office.
“There’s all these subtle things that tell the brain, basically, you’re important,” says Carter. “And ego naturally grows.” So, rising into leadership has a tendency towards corrupting our behavior to be ego-driven.
For example, Carter points out, “One of the things about having a big ego is that we’re more susceptible to confirmation bias. We want to see things through the lens of the way we want to see things.”
Mindfulness practice is a way of training your mind to break unconscious biases, to affect how you relate and respond – to stay open, fluid and and respond rather than react.
“We know that we are emotional beings as opposed to rational beings. Too many programs that focus on unconscious bias appeal to our rational approach: ‘Okay, I understand diversity is good’. But we also understand that doesn’t change our behaviors,” asserts Carter. “If we all knew the right thing to do and that enabled us to do it, we’d all be exercising, we’d all be eating well.”
“It’s the same thing with unconscious bias,” says Carter. “The motivation needs to be there, which is the awareness piece, but we also need to train ourselves to be able to overcome those biases that are so unconscious they’re much more difficult to tap into.”
Mindfulness Cultivates Presence and Self-Care
“When somebody is more centered and more grounded (not about being arrogant) but has a strong sense of themselves, you feel that, and you respect them more,” says Carter. “It’s easier for people to listen to those people, because they draw people in.”
The more we cultivate presence, according to Carter, the more we can overcome the cultural addiction to action. More presence means less hustle.
“Being more mindful enables you to set more boundaries, and that was true for all the leaders we spoke to, but certainly the female senior leaders…” says Carter. “It’s a combination of being able to be mindful about what you can do and what you can’t do, and be okay with the fact that you may let people down, but you need to be able to take care of yourself.”
Presence helps us discern what is necessary, what we can put our focus on effectively, and what we can accept and release from our control.
“In our research, it was amazing to see how basically the higher you got in an organization, the higher the level of the executives, they all took time to exercise, they slept well, even despite ridiculous travel schedules and ridiculous scopes of jobs,” says Carter. “It was really clear that if you don’t start taking good care of yourself and setting good boundaries and saying no at an earlier level of your leadership journey, you’re gonna burn out.”
“Presence Pays”
Research shows a direct correlation between a leaders’ mindfulness and the well-being and performance of their people.
“Human beings know when people aren’t present with us,” says Carter. It’s un-motivating, inefficient and costly.
“When you look at how distracted people are, at turnover rates, lack of engagement, you can make a pretty strong business case that being present with people, being kind to people, being about others not about ourselves, it’s not just nice to have,” said Carter. “It’s pretty critical to be successful in business today…we look at it as ‘presence pays’.”
“What we’ve found in our experience of training people to be more present is it actually saves time because if I know that I’m heard, I’ll stop talking. My message got across,” says Carter. When we don’t feel heard, we’ll keep trying to be – we’ll keep on talking.
Presence can be as simple as sticking around for a real answer to “how are you?”. On the contrary, “if you go to a meeting, and half the people are on their devices, you should just get up and leave. Seriously,” says Carter. “You’re wasting your time because of lack of presence.”
Presence, paired with compassion, creates a sense of meaningfulness and connection, and that matters when in inspiring others and earning their trust. Research has shown that a lack of trust ultimately erodes performance and the bottom line.
“We are wired to want to fit in and want to feel valued. And when feel heard, when we feel like we matter, and when we then are able to connect with other human beings, it enables collaboration, it enables the right conversations to happen, including tough conversations,” says Carter. “If I give you feedback and I’m distracted, that’s gonna be horrible for you. But if I give you feedback because I really care about you and I really want you to get this didn’t work out well, you can completely receive that. It’s the power of presence to be able to have both tough conversations as well as nice, engaging moments of meeting effectiveness.”
The Lone Leadership Ideal Is Dead
“What has been an iconic idea for a long time of a single, solitary leader – the great leader theory – is really dead.” says Carter. “The pace of change that all of us are experiencing regardless of what industry we’re in – the disruption, the distraction, the pressure – is just too complex and too much for any one individual to have all the answers.”
Nobody, and especially Millennials, want “some great person (often some ‘great man’) on a pedestal they don’t connect with,” said Carter.
Meaning, purpose and connection is what most of us want.
How to Optimize Your Retirement Savings When Changing Jobs
Career Advice, Guest ContributionGuest contributed by Sarah Landrum
You consider many factors when transitioning from one position to the next.
How quickly will you adjust and pick up new duties? Do you fully understand your benefits? How do you take your old accounts with you?
Reconciling new benefit offerings with old accounts from previous employment, such as an existing retirement, gets confusing when you’re taking in too much information all at once.
The good news: That money you worked so hard to save for retirement belongs to you, wherever you go. Here’s what to do with it.
Look at Your Retirement Goal Status First
Before you consider what to do with your money, now is the time to look at where you are with your retirement goals. Are you working toward a secure retirement? Look at your total retirement goal and potential withdrawals every year and play with projections for your current contributions and new employer matching contributions while weighing your circumstances.
For example, say your current retirement savings is $100,000, and you expect an income increase of 2 percent. You can factor this into your retirement plan along with Social Security benefits and other income to stay on track with your goal. Don’t forget to factor in if you’re married, since adding a spouse affects your Social Security benefits.
Options for Your Existing 401(k)
Here’s where it gets tricky. Your old 401(k) account belongs to the prior employer, but the money belongs to you. Here are the four options you have for what to do with your existing 401(k), as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each avenue.
1. Keep Your Old 401(k)
Look at your existing balance and reread the terms. You may have to move your money since the account belongs to the employer. Otherwise, the old 401(k) usually sits there without contributions from you or the employer. Different rules exist for different employers regarding what’s done with the money, with some automatically cashing out your funds to you or transferring the amount to a new IRA for you. If a check is made out to you, the company automatically cuts out a 20 percent portion to cover taxes. Check with your prior employer and reread the terms.
2. Transfer the Money to the New 401(k)
When your new company offers a 401(k) or other retirement option, consider transferring the money from your old account to the new one. Ask: does the new plan terms accept transfers from prior 401(k) accounts? What fees apply?
Sticking with a 401(k) option over an IRA has its advantages. Money must come out as of age 70.5, but if you’re still working, you can delay distributions with your current employer 401(k) plan until your actual retirement date and maximize your earnings. In the case of bankruptcy, your 401(k) remains protected, but IRA exemption stops after $1,283,025. At age 55, you can also take cash penalty-free from your 401(k) if you leave your position.
3. Move It to an IRA or Roth IRA
Skip thoughts of 401(k) confusion and transfer your balance to an existing IRA if you have one — or open a new IRA. A perk of a traditional IRA is the avoidance of taxes by transferring the money to this type of retirement account, but a Roth 401(k) must be transferred to a Roth IRA. You must look carefully at terms and fees when rolling over to an IRA. Otherwise, you may pay more than transferring to the new employer 401(k). Companies are required to provide reviews of annual investment costs and disclose administrative fees.
Younger baby boomers change jobs about 12 times over the course of their careers, and leaving 401(k) plans behind overlaps multiple funds that may exceed your risk tolerance and age. If you’ve left more than one plan behind, consider rolling retirement accounts into an IRA. Many IRA plans contain lower investment costs and options to invest in exchange-trade funds (ETFs) to reduce costs and risk.
However, mutual funds and ETFs come with expense ratios, which vary whether that’s an IRA or 401(k) — look closely at costs, talk with your broker or ask for the disclosure of fees and ratios yourself. Slowly decreasing your stock investment amounts in your portfolio reduces your risk as you and your portfolio age.
4. Withdraw the Balance
It’s best to wait until you reach age 59.5 to withdrawal your retirement balance, or you face paying on the withdrawal as taxable income. Plus, you experience the joy of the 10 percent penalty due to the withdrawal of your balance and your funds won’t grow.
Most advise against withdrawing retirement balances unless you’re facing an emergency you need to pay a significant amount of money toward quickly. What you consider an emergency may not be worth it in the end, such as buying a house, paying credit card debt or helping your kids offset unplanned college costs. For example, it’s better to take an approved IRA distribution for college costs than to face the 10 percent tax penalty for withdrawal. You can slowly replace the distribution over the years but paying thousands in a tax penalty hurts your take-home income and drastically reduces your retirement earning benefits.
In the end, you selected the retirement strategy that best-suited your long-term goals but changing jobs and emergency life situations arise that prompt you to take another look at your approach. Multiple accounts are difficult to manage and rolling over everything into a single account or Roth IRA outside of your 401k may reduce fees and boost your earnings in the long-term. You’ve come this far and likely know what you want to invest in. Go with the plan that best meets those needs, and if that means transferring funds to the new employer’s 401(k) — do it. If you have or are taking on significant debt, go with a plan that protects your assets and reconsider any emergency needs. Then, update your retirement plan with a strategy that optimizes your savings.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer
High Stakes: Changing Careers at the End of Your Long Career in Financial Services
Career Tip of the Week!What do you do if you really feel that you need a change?
First of all, talk to a coach to make sure that you don’t just need a vacation.
Coaching to stay in the game is often a lifesaver as it can give you some strategies to delegate work or navigate the inevitable politics in a way that doesn’t drain you. But, at face value let’s say you are ready or at least ready to think about making a change.
The first thing to do is look at where you are at in your life? Here are things to consider if you are in the “last 2-5 years” of your current fast pace, Fortune 500/financial firms work stage and now want to do something more meaningful with your time and energy for the next chapter. It is not retirement we are talking about here, it is about transition. This column is about the very specific transition of high flyers who have slogged under the boomer and generation X structures of facetime and fitting in, into their next chapter of purposeful, less rigid work.
What do you want to do with your time and energy for the next five to fifteen years?
If you are like many of the senior level, talented, smart and well-paid women who work in financial services and who hire me to work on how to do something other than the massive role they are currently doing, then think about these factors:
1. Is it really about the money?
The money is keeping you in to a degree and creating some inertia around change. It’s hard to take a pay cut and it’s hard to think about walking away from a pile of vested equity (and there are ways to not do the latter) but nobody is saying leave tomorrow and getting a plan is key. If mortgages are nearly or already paid and the kids are in college or are set up for that experience financially, it is possibly not entirely about the money.
2. Is it about your identity?
When you have worked so hard and built an identity around the job, people are often worried about the loss of that identity in various ways (from actual self- concept change and the psychological effects of that, to status and to relating to others).
3. Is it about a fantasy?
So, you may have come to the conclusion, that you do not want to be CEO or on the Exec Committee. You might be C- level, SVP level, or Managing Director level and you might be ready to declare this the pinnacle of corporate life and guess what? Giving yourself permission to do what you actually want to do is actually pretty important. The trick is to explore what you really want to do next (and that could be making it to CEO also). Look beyond the fantasy and allure of running away and opening a Bed and Breakfast, north, south, east or west of where you live now! If it’s a business, great then let’s see how serious you are about doing the business plan and figuring out that landscape for real. Really testing your assumptions about what you want to do next, whether be your own business or a non-profit gig or even running for office, it is good to consider in detail (viability check) what that will look like with a coach while safely cashing in on the (big) day job from a comfortable office with a view.
Work with Nicki Gilmour as your Executive Coach- book a complementary exploratory call here or email her on nicki@evolvedpeople.com – the sister coaching business to theglasshammer.com
Voice of Experience: Shveta Verma, Senior Director, Diversity and Inclusion, PwC India
Voices of ExperienceOver the years PwC’s Shveta Verma has found that that the local culture can make it more challenging for women to develop the confidence to speak up and ask for what they want and need and trust their own voice.
“Women here are brought up being told that they are embodiment of love, care and sacrifice; with all this conditioning, everything else around them supersedes their own interests and what they want,” she says. With that in mind she urges younger women to take charge of their careers and make decisions that matter to them.
“Never give the reins to anyone else to steer the direction or acceleration of your career,” she says. “There will be times where family and children take priority and work takes a back seat or vice versa, and this is natural and shouldn’t cause guilt. Above all else, love yourself immensely and choose to be happy every day of your life.”
Finding her Niche by Helping Advance Others
Over two decades in the human capital function, Verma has spent time in a variety of roles from a beginner to a leader. Her longest stint has been at PwC where she has spent almost 15 years, currently overseeing the diversity and inclusion function for both India and PwC Global.
In fact joining PwC is the professional achievement she is most proud of, a journey that began when she was working in the human capital function of Jaypee Hotels at Agra, a hotel that was a regular offsite destination for PwC. “I still remember that afternoon in 2002 very vividly… I was admiring the quality of people and at that moment I silently prayed to be a part of PwC someday,” she says, adding that she hails from a small town in India where no female from her immediate or extended family had ever gone out to work. “I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to step out and be able to attain professional fulfillment. I believe that my joining PwC was the biggest turning point of my life.”
While there she has seen multiple highs and lows, mergers and demergers, but her biggest moment was in April 2012 when she took on a new role as India human capital transformation leader. With no existing role model in place, she carved out the function herself, aligning with the global network which enabled her to focus on developing and implementing a variety of initiatives for the diversity office, including focuses on generational differences, flexibility and social responsibility.
In her current role, she finds that being part of the global team offers the ability to influence change through the length and breadth of the organization and across territories; at the same time being exposed to the multifold nuances that come to play when implementing policies, such as local legislations, cultural dynamics, workforce profile, leadership commitment, organization maturity and many more. One of her most exciting projects this year has been helping create pay equity and inclusive recruitment policies.
Overseeing a Sea Change in D&I
Her role is an exciting one because she sees a huge shift in the mindset towards D&I in India. While a lot of Indian organizations are still struggling to really understand what it means and where to start from, she finds there is an increased realization and energy to focus on creating policies and nurturing an environment that creates inclusion. This focus may lead to a variety of changes concerning D& I, including organizations defining what it means for them and then aligning their diversity strategy with how it impacts the business performance by bridging talent and skill. She also sees an increase in the use of technology and AI at every stage of talent decision-making to remove bias and then deploying analytics to create a diversity strategy and plan, assess key diversity metrics and create accountability.
While there have been many advances for women in India, she finds that there are still few powerful examples of women role models in workplaces. She urges her peers to focus on creating an enabling environment within their teams for younger women to progress and then mentor and guide them. “Let them know that someone is watching over them; there is sufficient space for all of us to move forward.”
PwC India is spearheading a number of initiatives designed to counteract this low representation of women in leadership positions. Special programs designed to prepare them for leadership roles include Reach Out, a networking and mentoring program created in partnership with four other organizations. They also connect newer professionals with high-performing senior women employees to provide them the right enablers to promote growth to leadership positions. “Towards Leadership Program”, which prepares the participants (including men and women) by providing them with key skills, to take on leadership roles.
“As the workforce of the future becomes increasingly diverse, it is imperative that we tap into the potential of our women employees, especially at the mid-management level,” she notes. This can happen by creating an environment for women to achieve their full potential, in both their business and personal lives, and thus reduce attrition.
That was the impetus behind the “WoMentoring program,” introduced for women managers to be mentored by senior leaders of the organization at this critical level where talent is experiencing personal life cycle changes and professional aspirations which impact their career decisions to stay or leave the organization. “We believe that our ability to support and mentor our managers in these stages will go a long way in retaining them and providing a nurturing and developing environment,” Verma says.
Throughout her busy career, Verma finds that her fitness regime keeps her going. A marathoner, she is also training to be a triathlete. In addition she loves theatre — although she finds it more challenging now to find the opportunities to indulge, she won various awards for her acting skills during her college days. “My best way to beat stress now is cooking with my 12-year-old son and going for my long runs,” she says.