Guest contributed by Lisa Levey
Most millennials, particularly those that are highly educated, see an egalitarian marriage as the ideal.
Yet despite improvements, a clear divide persists in how women and men perceive – and experience – gender equality.
Men are far more optimistic about progress for women in the workplace and both genders don’t see eye-to-eye regarding what the other contributes to the care of the home and family. A 2017 study across eight countries found men were more likely to perceive housework and childcare as equally shared and both genders saw themselves, not their partners, as the ones scaling back on their careers after becoming a parent.
This blog shares hidden truths, based on extensive research and personal experience, about what does help to make gender equality not just an aspiration, but a reality, or far more of one.
Understanding the cycle of inequality:
It’s difficult for couples to appreciate, before children, the powerful forces that drive ambitious women and men, professional equals, to devolve into gendered norms after becoming parents. The story often goes something like this:
A child joins the family. Dad takes little time away from work, feeling the intensity of professional demands and the fear that prioritizing family will jeopardize future career prospects. While on parental leave, mom becomes the undisputed parent expert, owing to her daily immersion caring for their child. When mom returns to work, she becomes the flexible parent, typically by default. If like most new fathers, dad works more hours than before children, feeling the familiar professional pressures heightened by a powerful awareness of his provider role, one society continues to place disproportionately on his shoulders.
Dad continues his career climb, feeling an increased drive to maximize his income and professional potential. Meanwhile mom struggles mightily to combine her former professional life with motherhood. At work her inability to be all in, given her role as the primary parent, leads to misguided beliefs about her professional commitment and leadership potential. She feels disoriented and angry. She wonders why her life as a mother bears little resemblance to before, while her husband’s, pre versus post-child, seems little changed.
Understanding how parenthood comes to be the death knell of gender equality for so many couples with egalitarian intentions, puts couples in the driver’s seat, enabling them to navigate the challenges and make choices that keep them firmly on the gender equality path.
Cultivating a partnership mentality:
As couples feel the egalitarian ideal they highly value slipping away, it becomes natural to channel their anger and frustration at one another. A far better solution is for them to instead spend their precious energy to collectively identify, and employ, the levers of change they can influence such as simultaneously adapting work schedules to enable greater sharing at home and considering the tradeoffs involved with buying a bigger house.
Egalitarian couples come to see their partner on the same team rather than as the problem. Anchored by a shared perspective, possibilities open up as couples work together to navigate the real problems – the rampant attitudes, policies, and practices – that keep women and men from what they deeply desire: to be both successful, committed professionals and involved parents.
Planning ahead:
So often couples talk in broad strokes, with few specifics about having children, often underestimating the impact on many aspects of life – work, marriage, finances, and time. What helps is getting clarity on what’s most important for each person individually, and collectively as a couple, in this next phase of life.
Beginning with the question – What will it look like to nurture two professional careers once we become parents? – helps couples to create a joint work-life vision for their growing family. Discussing questions like those below enables couples to start imagining and planning how the first phase, of parenting pre-school children, could work.
- How much child care feels comfortable?
- How will we manage child care when the normal routine breaks down?
- What will stay the same – and what will need to change – in how we manage our professional lives?
- How will we ensure that the work-life model we’ve put into place is working?
These discussions help create a compass that guides decision making as couples confront the inevitable complexities, choices and tradeoffs required of dual-career parents. The goal is not to have all the answers but rather to begin a conversation, one that will stretch over decades, about how to put the puzzle pieces of their lives together in ways that seek to preserve the gender equality they value.
Prioritizing the couple relationship:
Becoming parents often leads to putting the couple relationship at the very bottom of the priority list. But women and men who seek a long-term, egalitarian relationship do so at their peril. The ongoing investment of time and attention is foundational in cementing the egalitarian mold for combining careers and caretaking.
What this means is the couple relationship needs to be on par with – if not more important than – either children or work. Egalitarian couples walk in each other’s shoes, intimately understanding all it takes to make the engine of work and family run. This sharing facilitates the depth of connection that helps relationships endure long beyond the child rearing years.
Supporting atypical gender norms:
Armed with the understanding that powerful norms reinforce traditional gender roles, egalitarian parents work pro-actively to counter them. That could mean: saving money well before a child is born or adopted, allowing dad to also take an extended parental leave or dad clarifying new boundaries at work, enabling him to more equally share the demands of being a caregiver,enabling his partner to keep investing in her career.
Supporting atypical norms could mean mom fighting her tendency to over manage at home, instead treating her husband as a true co-parent, or bringing down the pressure by relaxing her cleanliness standards, instead prioritizing time for connection and fun.
Confronting the challenges to gender equality in a world of gender inequality is easier when it becomes a parenting goal. In interviewing couples seeking to walk the egalitarian path, I heard them repeatedly describe how meaningful it felt to show their children that women and men can be amazing caretakers and ambitious professionals. Stopping to consider what messages their behaviors send to their children helps mothers and fathers to step back and readjust when inevitably, they veer off course from their egalitarian ideal.
Living within your means:
Money plays an outsized role in a couple’s ability to create an egalitarian partnership and it’s not just about the pay equity gap. Rather couples at their financial edge feel the need to maximize income, often leading to privileging the more lucrative job and through time widening the gap in importance and earnings between their two careers.
The problem with the more lucrative earner being seen as having the primary career is that it greatly reduces his, or her, ability to make choices, such as putting limits on excessive work demands or leaving a job that’s unhealthy or a poor fit. Creating an economic buffer allows couples to pivot as needed, all the while continuing to value both careers.
Though dual career couples are ubiquitous, egalitarian couples are not. The difference is both nuanced and profound. For couples who want equality to characterize their lives together as parents, it requires awareness and skill to write their own work-life script, because even in 2018 the egalitarian model of careers and kids remains the road far less travelled.
About the author
Lisa Levey is a veteran diversity consultant, working with leading organizations to assist them in realizing the underutilized leadership potential of women. Her current work focuses on engaging men as allies and partners. As a consultant, she led the design and development of the Forte Foundation’s Male Ally signature resource platform. She blogs for the Glass Hammer, the Huffington Post and the Good Men Project on gender issues.
Her award-winning book The Libra Solution spotlights the obstacles and enablers to gender equality for dual-career professionals raising children. Lisa and her husband Bryan, a technology executive, have been featured in Fast Company magazine and on ABC News with Charlie Gibson in stories about their egalitarian work-life approach. Their coaching practice Genderworks supports dual-career professional couples in laying a foundation for, and navigating the obstacles to, gender equality as parents. Lisa earned an MBA with highest honors from the Simmons School of Management and a BS with distinction from Cornell University in applied economics
Mover and Shaker: Virgen Tracey, Senior Team Leader, WEX
Movers and ShakersKnowing and understanding that it’s ok to take risks because that’s how you will grow and learn has helped forge a successful career path for WEX’ Virgen Tracey.
She is quick to point out that there’s never a dumb or perfect idea, and just because you’ve been somewhere longer, it doesn’t mean you have all the answers. In fact, the best ideas often come from fresh thinking.
“I always tell my team that you can’t learn if you don’t make mistakes, and it’s true for me, too. Realizing that the next time I’ll better know what to do has allowed me to grow in my career and as a person,” she says.
For Tracey that 20 years of growth has brought a thriving career at WEX as a leader, taking on diverse roles within the contact center that have allowed her to conquer a new challenge every day.
“Being able to take risks in my role has been a huge learning point for me. We think outside the box every day, not only from a professional standpoint, but as a rapid-growth company, we must be able to embrace change,” she says. Tracey credits her ability to lead by example, to “walk the walk,” as a key force for building credibility and trust and having a followership that has made her a successful team leader.
Leading the Contact Center To Success
Joining WEX fresh out of college, Tracey knew she would have to work hard, but also learn to be open to change to make the most of the startup environment. And, at the forefront of her mind was the realization that the company had earned a great deal of respect and customer trust that they would deliver excellent service, and her role was to stand by those ideals. She appreciates that she has been there throughout the growth of the company, fulfilling her belief that her hard work would pay off.
Right now, she’s excited to be working on supporting with implementation of the Salesforce service cloud application into the contact center. They are currently piloting it with 50+ employees across the organization, and she says it has been a game changer for how it’s going to increase efficiencies and gives insight into how to better support the customer to provide a better agent and customer experience. “Using this tool allows us to increase the information we have at our fingertips, directing us to what we need to change and enhance for better employee customer satisfaction and efficiency.”
After the full roll-out to more than 130 employees in the South Portland contact center, she will then support with spearheading the roll-out in the contact center in Ogden, focusing on ensuring the impact is minimal.
Mentors Lead the Way
To Tracey, a role model is someone she can look up to, but is also a mentor who can provide support and feedback to help her grow based on what they’ve seen in their interactions.
Over the years she says she has been honored to work with many successful individuals who have helped show her the ropes, in both IT and leadership roles. “If I wanted to know how others got to where they are today, I had to seek out the opportunities to network and find mentors,” she says. She credits a willingness to being open to listening to their stories about the best practices that worked for them and how they got on the path that led them to their end result of success.
And now she is focused on being a role model to others, taking what she’s learned by seeking out opportunities to learn from others and sharing that knowledge. “I can’t wait for the moment that I report to many of my team members whom I have helped nurture to a place of leadership,” she says.
Currently she is part of the pilot of WEX’ mentoring program where she is paired with a mentee, which has helped give her confidence and also will expose her entire team tåo the many benefits of formal mentorship to encourage new styles and ways of thinking.
Melding a Busy Professional and Personal Life
With three kids, ages 6, 15 and 19, there is never a dull moment, particularly when travel softball is part of the picture. “I love watching my 15 year old daughter play, and notice her development and how she gives 100 percent on and off the field. It’s such an inspiration as a work ethic,” Tracey says, noting that watching her hard work and openness to coaching is a lesson she herself can bring back to work.
Aside from giving “200 percent” to work, which has paid off in being tapped for her fifth upcoming President’s Club, Tracey always takes time to be present in her family life…but admits with a laugh that she also will never turn down a trip for shoe shopping. Most importantly she loves spending time with her husband and kids and enjoying any free time they have together.
Reluctant Leaders – Why You Might Be Readier to Lead than You Think
Career Advice, Guest ContributionGuest contributed by Sarah Dixon
Ann thought that she knew herself well.
At 45-year-old, she’d been tested by life often enough to know her strengths and weaknesses. She’d done a few personality tests over the years and had a handle on how she worked most effectively at work.
Then Ann’s firm called in team-building experts, who carried out personality evaluations on the whole team. As Ann read her report, she saw something that she’d never considered before. She had tested well for leadership ability.
Ann had never thought of pursuing more responsibility in her career. Work, for her, had always taken a second place to looking after the children. But with the kids at university, Ann began to think about the possibility. Once she turned thought into action, it wasn’t long before she started rising through her organisation.
This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, let alone to Ann. Many of the qualities that make a good leader are gained through the sort of life experiences that women deal with day in, day out. There are examples of these kinds of experiences throughout this article, but these are not the only way those qualities can be acquired. Hopefully they will enable you to identify a similar experience in your life, if you have not had that particular one yourself.
Empathy
There have been many studies over the years which have shown that women are more empathic than men. While this empathy is sometimes perceived as a weakness, when you’re building a team being able to understand your staff and find ways to motivate them has obvious advantages. Rather than adopting a dictatorial style, it allows you to build a deeper connection with staff which pays dividends in terms of loyalty and commitment.
Empowerment
Girls compete, women empower – or so the meme goes. But this isn’t just about feminism and giving your fellow females a leg-up. Managers who delegate tasks within their team, and give their staff the tools they need to excel are more successful than their more controlling counterparts. As women, we spend a lot of our time facilitating for others. Whether it’s our partners, children, or friends we are used to supporting others to achieve for themselves. Carrying this instinct into a leadership role brings you a loyal, talented and effective team.
Resilience
Whether it’s banging your head on the glass ceiling, or dealing with the sorts of experiences highlighted by the #metoo campaign, women have a head start in continuing in the face of adversity. Resilience doesn’t mean bullishly pushing on regardless of what comes your way. Cassandra Stavrou of Propercorn wrote in The Telegraph explained how for her, resilience was about thinking strategically rather than simply being strong. It led her to develop recognisable packaging to ensure that her boxes were not lost in vast warehouses.
Communication
Because women take on the burden of emotional labor, we also become adept as communicators. Being well organized, and finding the right words to get things done are skills that we often overlook, simply because they are taken for granted by society as a whole. But if you’ve ever had to talk down a toddler who has been given triangles of toast when they wanted squares, you’ve been prepared for negotiation. Handling relationship breakdowns gives us experience in making deals, even when the stakes are high. Life teaches us the importance of saying what we need to say.
Accountability
Ultimately, a good manager needs to be able to hold their hand up and take responsibility if things don’t go to plan. If someone on your team screws up? The buck stops with you. But, doesn’t it always? Whether it’s birth control, avoiding sexual assault or many other issues women are constantly being asked to stay accountable for the actions of others. While those expectations are often unfair, perhaps the silver lining is that they prepare us to be willing to shoulder the burdens of our team.
No Better Time
There is perhaps no better time than the present to look for more responsibility. The world is changing. Women’s voices are finally being heard and men are beginning to really see the equality problem. We can hope that the coming generations will find their lives so much easier, their paths to leadership more assured.
But for those of us who find ourselves standing on the threshold of management via a more circuitous route, we can take comfort in the fact that while the journey may not have been easy, it has at least prepared us for what is to come.
Sarah Dixon writes for Inspiring Interns, which specializes in sourcing candidates for internships and graduate jobs.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Time to look for a new job
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!So you figured out that you need a new job!
There are many ways to start a job search yet sometimes it can seem so daunting to start the process.
There are general strategies to job hunting, such as if you know vaguely the target companies that you would like to interview with then start investigating the opportunities there. LinkedIn is a great way to see if you know anyone directly or indirectly at your preferred firms and a good place to start is to mine your current network to build your future one. Apply to job postings but know that any personal connection will probably help you so it is worth checking your network and refreshing your relationships with coffees and lunch with influencers and mentors.
What people don’t tell you is that what you will want to do in the hunt matters. What you tell yourself and your own perceptions of yourself will also matter as does your confidence and level of extroversion.
If you don’t know what is next, it is worth working with a coach ( such as myself and the vetted coaches who partner with theglasshammer) to help you refine what is the next stage of your career and help you secure the job you want, whether it is within your current industry or perhaps a pivot into something new altogether?
Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com is you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work.
Voice of Experience: Rupa Briggs, Counsel, Capital Markets, Shearman & Sterling
Voices of ExperienceIf you’re interested in doing something, be proactive and ask for it, recommends Rupa Briggs, who was just promoted to counsel as of March 1.
She notes that when you first start out you should work on as many different projects as possible to figure out what you like, and focus on building a strong reputation because competence begets more work. “Sometimes we tend to be ‘good girls,’ and don’t necessarily ask for opportunities, but you can’t be passive about your career. You must be in the driver’s seat,” she says. Because while people may have good intentions and want to be helpful, only you can plan the road map to get to your next steps.
Growing Her Career at Shearman & Sterling
After starting her legal career at a different firm, Briggs joined Shearman & Sterling in 2016, impressed with its capital markets platform and seeing vast opportunities for advancement and growth.
Over the years, she has become a trusted advisor to her clients, the professional achievement she is most proud of so far. “As a junior associate, you spend most of your time learning the deal process and how you fit into the larger picture, but as you continue to develop as an attorney and your knowledge of the substance of your practice grows, your interactions and client relationships begin to change,” she says. “It was so satisfying and rewarding when clients were directing questions to me in the first instance, instead of to a partner or senior associate,” she says, adding that it was very confidence building.
Currently Briggs is working on a couple of healthcare-related IPOs, which she finds exciting and interesting since it’s such an important milestone in these companies’ evolution to help them reach the next step in commercializing their drug or product. The space she is working in is cutting-edge and includes smaller biotechs focusing on, in some cases, rare diseases and medtech companies with innovative products for large patient populations.
“For me it’s tremendously satisfying because you see the impact these drugs or products will have on individuals, and you know that even in the context of an IPO, you are making a difference by helping the company raise the capital they need to get to the next level.”
Other exciting areas that will impact the world of business and financial markets are blockchain and artificial intelligence. Briggs sees that regulatory issues related to these emerging technologies will continue to evolve, and she watches with interest to see how clients will integrate these technologies into their own businesses and how Shearman & Sterling can help them navigate the challenges from a regulatory standpoint.
Women Need To Advocate Together
Briggs has found that it can be more challenging for women to develop the informal networks that men generally have. Because law partnerships tend to be male-dominated, many women face a dearth of role models. She encourages women to focus on building their own informal networks. “We put our heads down and work hard, but there are other skills and elements that are necessary to become successful that we don’t always know about.”
One ally is the firm’s WISER (Women’s Initiative for Success, Excellence and Retention) group, which she co-chairs, that offers both the opportunity to network and to learn more about these informal norms, while also building the professional development skills that women don’t as easily pick up, from building your brand to establishing and maintaining trusted relationships with clients.
She believes that men might naturally have more avenues to learn these skills and market them – so it’s important for women to support one another in creating those paths if they are not emerging.
On that note, she recommends building networks with both senior and junior women and urges senior professionals to pay it forward and serve as a mentor that a junior person can turn to for advice. “Being available and engaged with other women is the key to retention,” she says. She looks forward to helping further build the WISER program as it continues to focus on providing women at the firm with the tools to build their careers and professional relationships.
As mom to an active preschooler, Briggs says she focuses less on achieving work/life balance than just making sure she’s doing her best. “It’s easier to manage what’s going on and integrating work and life when you are engaged. The personal and intellectual satisfaction I receive from the practice spills over nicely to make all the parts of my life blend successfully.”
Voice of Experience: Helena Yoon, Principal, Assurance, PwC
Voices of ExperienceSometimes you have to take risks and run toward the fire, says Helena Yoon, a Principal at PwC, a philosophy that has helped her create a rich and varied career.
Building an Agile Career at PwC
Yoon started as an intern at PwC more than 20 years ago. Although the common thread throughout her career has been a focus on clients, her roles have been in a wide variety of departments. Each time she left for maternity leave, she transitioned her portfolio to others on her team, and then would reinvent herself each time she returned, coming back to a different role. This allowed her to gain experience in compliance, regulatory audit and consulting.
“The strategy bolstered my career by forcing growth and change agility,” she notes, adding that her career success is proof of how she’s been able to handle the challenges.
“When I returned from my first maternity leave, I encountered some challenges and wondered how I could succeed professionally. Fortunately, I had a mentor who rallied around me and helped me work through how to balance and achieve what I wanted. Now, I see what a benefit it was to learn how to reinvent myself – the change agility has been invaluable to my career.”
Today she serves a mix of audit and non-audit clients in audit and consulting roles. The crux of everything she does is helping others maximize their potential, whether they’re clients or her internal team. “I’m proud that others can be more effective because of the work I do,” she says.
Yoon is fascinated by the changes that will be brought about by applying automation and analytics to her teams and clients, and seeing how business will be transformed as a result. Historically, large volumes of data sat in disparate locations, but now, there’s a way to pull the pieces together and turn data into meaningful information that can be applied to improving business.
Empowering Women in the Workplace
Yoon recommends women take the time to invest in relationships. “My tendency early on in my career was to put my head down and focus on the work at hand, and as a relational person, I wish I had known to nurture and invest in others right from the start.” Sometimes women tend to be comfortable in what they’re doing, but Yoon says we need to disrupt that, especially in professional services.
“A world of opportunity is open, but I spend a lot of time with younger women, and one theme I consistently hear is that they don’t see as many role models as males do, which makes it harder to envision the future three or four jumps ahead.” Fortunately, she says, advances are occurring that will make professional services more accessible to women. As one example, recently PwC announced the firm is expanding parental benefits, which will make a great difference for returning moms. The new and creative addition is that they will follow eight weeks of paid leave with four weeks of a reduced work schedule at one’s regular full-time pay.
“I creatively eased my way back myself, but now it’s an official program, which I think will really help retention,” she says.
As a wife and mom to four children ages 12, 10, 8 and 6, Yoon loves the dynamics and relationship between them. For example, her oldest went away for a youth group retreat, and the others missed him so much, they cried. Yoon was moved by the degree to which her children relied on one another and valued their time together as a family.
In addition to nurturing her close-knit family, Yoon says they love to entertain and take family vacations. She is also very actively involved in her church and is a board member at the Stamford Symphony.
Forget Work-Life Balance – Try Work-Life Harmony Instead
Career Advice, Guest ContributionGuest contributed by Rae Steinbach
More than ever, the importance of finding and maintaining a healthy work-life balance is being talked about.
However, at times the somewhat elusive goal of perfect equilibrium between our work and personal lives can seem to be unobtainable, especially in a world where we are constantly connected and always available via various forms of technology.
This availability and connection can obscure the line between work and play. Are you working when you check your emails over a morning coffee before making your way to the office? Is attending to personal needs during work hours your prerogative?
These days, delineating where work ends and your personal life begins is even more difficult. However, you can also leverage the transforming expectations and more easily integrate work with life, and vice-versa. Instead of being concerned with how taking a midday break to go to a workout class will affect your performance appraisal, be more comfortable in embracing how this is important in maintaining work-life harmony and stay later at work that day if necessary.
Explore What Harmony Looks Like
According to some experts, achieving a balance between work and the rest of your life has little to do with an equal distribution of your time. Rather, it is about prioritizing achievement and enjoyment each day. Instead of treating your job as a strictly metered necessity to pay for the other elements of your existence, try aiming for harmony. This means working more when needed to achieve business goals, and switching focus and energy to yourself and family when necessary.
Many of us are already taking this tactic to reduce stress and get more out of each day. A recent survey by Randstad found that around half of us deal with personal matters during work hours and work responsibilities in our personal time. Furthermore, more businesses are happy for their workers to do this, as long as the work gets done.
By allowing for the fluidity of life, we are able to find a more harmonious flow to our day that is also a benefit to the company. For example, prioritizing a morning exercise class can keep our minds sharper in the office, and attending to emails in the evening once our house is quiet ensures we are ready for the next day’s priorities.
The Ideal Life
Thanks to social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, it’s easy to think that almost everyone you know is living the dream. The truth is, most of us present our best side to the world and the less attractive parts of our existence are glossed over or completely left out.
While many of us curate the content we expose about our lives, research has found that more than 75% of people on social media lie about their lives. It is helpful to keep in mind that the carefully curated images and updates from others’ lives leads to negative self-comparison, and the extent of social media interaction can undermine our meaningful, real-life experiences.
To avoid the negative impact of aiming for perfect balance in our lives and competing with misleading social media updates, it is important to focus on the important things: creating harmony between our work and personal lives, making time for fun, achieving our goals, and acknowledging that the rhythm of our lives has little to do with the lives you are viewing through the filtered lens of social media.
Don’t get hung-up on a perfect work-life balance. Instead, dance to your own tune of work-life harmony. Integrating the two creates a healthier coexistence that will let you thrive more easily in both aspects of your life.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Tips on successful career networking
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!, Guest ContributionGuest contributed by Avery Philips
Before you step foot in any networking event, it’s best to have some questions prepared to avoid those awkward moments of silence.
Ask these questions the next time you’re at a networking event to secure connections:
These kinds of questions show your interest in the other person and allow for longer conversations. You can also learn something new and discover the kind of connections they have with other people. Finally, by offering your services to prospective business connections, they may offer their services in return.
Utilize Alumni Networks
As it turns out, a college education can provide a lot more than a degree and student debt. Alumni associations like Arizona State’s offer a wide variety of networking resources to help you advance in your career. Here’s are some best practices for alumni networking you can do:
Explore Other Networking Groups
Although the college you graduated from offers a wealth of networking resources, there are plenty of other networking outlets at your disposal. That way, networking can work for you instead of the other way around. Here are a few you should look into:
Networking is a must if you want to be successful in your career. Who you know can be just as important as how well you do your job. By following these tips, your networking skills will be as stellar as your job performance, opening the doors to many job opportunities for you.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Mover and Shaker: Yin Seo, Technical Product Manager, Laserfiche
Asian American Heritage Month, Movers and ShakersBy Cathie Ericson
Work is much different than school, Yin Seo realized early on.
“At school, everything is laid out and you know the success metric you are working toward, but in the professional world, there’s no answer key,” she says. “Everything you are doing is brand new and something that no one else has done, so what separates good employees from exceptional employees is that the exceptional ones are able to decide for themselves what is best for the team and the organization. You will never be given an assignment where someone else knows the answers.”
Advancing New Ways of Working
Seo started as a software automation engineer right out of UCLA but transitioned from coding to a subject matter expert role, where she worked more closely with clients. Soon she was overseeing an entire development team as well as the designers for a software division, which she found to be her true calling — managing the project development life cycle. There she made several impactful changes, including transitioning the development process to a “scrum” format, which she found to be superior as a way to emphasize the team mentality while implementing quicker turnarounds.
She remains passionate about project and product management and has since become certified as a Scrum Master and Project Management Professional. While the “agile” way of doing things has been successful for some time with software companies, it is moving into other industries as a best practice, validating that the technique will work for any type of project management.
She then moved to Laserfiche, a leading global provider of enterprise content management software, where she has spent the past seven months as a technical product manager, learning a new industry and new software.
Currently Seo oversees two teams working on advancing the company’s business process automation product suite. “My teams have been working really hard, and it’s exciting to see the fruits of their labor,” she says, adding that as a product manager, the most important aspect is making sure that what they’re building delivers value to customers.
One major accomplishment she has already achieved was being asked to give the keynote address at the annual Laserfiche Empower Conference, attended by more than 3,000 people. She had only been with the company for less than three months when she was invited to speak, which was a huge vote of confidence, but the other reason the accomplishment feels so significant is because previously she had been terrified to speak in public. “This was validation that I had moved out of my comfort zone to where I could handle it,” she says.
Using Strengths to Navigate Challenges
While there is a well-known dearth of women in software development, Seo sees that a major barrier for women to succeed lies in confidence. She believes that when young women see those numbers, they start to create a narrative about why there is a lack of women, which can create doubts: Are we not good enough? Is it too hard?
She urges young women to look past the statistics. “We want to be judged by our work, based on merit, and so we need to do the same for ourselves. We need to help the numbers grow, but not let them define us.”
And, she also reminds professionals at every level that they have to keep growing their skills. “If you are not improving, then you are technically losing ground since everyone else is focused on getting better.” As she points out, these skills might not always tie directly to your career; for example, for her it was improving her public speaking acumen.
An avid rock climber, Seo sees the sport as a perfect metaphor for the tech industry and pursuing goals. In rock climbing, climbers refer to every route as a “problem,” each with a grade, and as you get more experienced and stronger you can conquer higher grades – just as in business. “I’ve been learning that a lot of success comes from technique, and every problem has different solutions that you can solve in different ways,” she says.
Rock climbing also comes with its own set of stereotypes; for example that you have to be tall and have significant upper body strength, but Seo has found that you don’t have to be a certain body type to climb well. “My husband and I climb together, and he’s a little better, but there are some problems I can solve that he can’t. I am shorter but have less weight to pull up and am more flexible so you always have to use your strengths to your advantage.”
Just like in the business world.
Hidden Truths about Making Gender Equality Possible for Ambitious, Dual Career Couples
Career Advice, Guest ContributionGuest contributed by Lisa Levey
Most millennials, particularly those that are highly educated, see an egalitarian marriage as the ideal.
Yet despite improvements, a clear divide persists in how women and men perceive – and experience – gender equality.
Men are far more optimistic about progress for women in the workplace and both genders don’t see eye-to-eye regarding what the other contributes to the care of the home and family. A 2017 study across eight countries found men were more likely to perceive housework and childcare as equally shared and both genders saw themselves, not their partners, as the ones scaling back on their careers after becoming a parent.
This blog shares hidden truths, based on extensive research and personal experience, about what does help to make gender equality not just an aspiration, but a reality, or far more of one.
Understanding the cycle of inequality:
It’s difficult for couples to appreciate, before children, the powerful forces that drive ambitious women and men, professional equals, to devolve into gendered norms after becoming parents. The story often goes something like this:
A child joins the family. Dad takes little time away from work, feeling the intensity of professional demands and the fear that prioritizing family will jeopardize future career prospects. While on parental leave, mom becomes the undisputed parent expert, owing to her daily immersion caring for their child. When mom returns to work, she becomes the flexible parent, typically by default. If like most new fathers, dad works more hours than before children, feeling the familiar professional pressures heightened by a powerful awareness of his provider role, one society continues to place disproportionately on his shoulders.
Dad continues his career climb, feeling an increased drive to maximize his income and professional potential. Meanwhile mom struggles mightily to combine her former professional life with motherhood. At work her inability to be all in, given her role as the primary parent, leads to misguided beliefs about her professional commitment and leadership potential. She feels disoriented and angry. She wonders why her life as a mother bears little resemblance to before, while her husband’s, pre versus post-child, seems little changed.
Understanding how parenthood comes to be the death knell of gender equality for so many couples with egalitarian intentions, puts couples in the driver’s seat, enabling them to navigate the challenges and make choices that keep them firmly on the gender equality path.
Cultivating a partnership mentality:
As couples feel the egalitarian ideal they highly value slipping away, it becomes natural to channel their anger and frustration at one another. A far better solution is for them to instead spend their precious energy to collectively identify, and employ, the levers of change they can influence such as simultaneously adapting work schedules to enable greater sharing at home and considering the tradeoffs involved with buying a bigger house.
Egalitarian couples come to see their partner on the same team rather than as the problem. Anchored by a shared perspective, possibilities open up as couples work together to navigate the real problems – the rampant attitudes, policies, and practices – that keep women and men from what they deeply desire: to be both successful, committed professionals and involved parents.
Planning ahead:
So often couples talk in broad strokes, with few specifics about having children, often underestimating the impact on many aspects of life – work, marriage, finances, and time. What helps is getting clarity on what’s most important for each person individually, and collectively as a couple, in this next phase of life.
Beginning with the question – What will it look like to nurture two professional careers once we become parents? – helps couples to create a joint work-life vision for their growing family. Discussing questions like those below enables couples to start imagining and planning how the first phase, of parenting pre-school children, could work.
These discussions help create a compass that guides decision making as couples confront the inevitable complexities, choices and tradeoffs required of dual-career parents. The goal is not to have all the answers but rather to begin a conversation, one that will stretch over decades, about how to put the puzzle pieces of their lives together in ways that seek to preserve the gender equality they value.
Prioritizing the couple relationship:
Becoming parents often leads to putting the couple relationship at the very bottom of the priority list. But women and men who seek a long-term, egalitarian relationship do so at their peril. The ongoing investment of time and attention is foundational in cementing the egalitarian mold for combining careers and caretaking.
What this means is the couple relationship needs to be on par with – if not more important than – either children or work. Egalitarian couples walk in each other’s shoes, intimately understanding all it takes to make the engine of work and family run. This sharing facilitates the depth of connection that helps relationships endure long beyond the child rearing years.
Supporting atypical gender norms:
Armed with the understanding that powerful norms reinforce traditional gender roles, egalitarian parents work pro-actively to counter them. That could mean: saving money well before a child is born or adopted, allowing dad to also take an extended parental leave or dad clarifying new boundaries at work, enabling him to more equally share the demands of being a caregiver,enabling his partner to keep investing in her career.
Supporting atypical norms could mean mom fighting her tendency to over manage at home, instead treating her husband as a true co-parent, or bringing down the pressure by relaxing her cleanliness standards, instead prioritizing time for connection and fun.
Realizing the power of modeling for your kids:
Confronting the challenges to gender equality in a world of gender inequality is easier when it becomes a parenting goal. In interviewing couples seeking to walk the egalitarian path, I heard them repeatedly describe how meaningful it felt to show their children that women and men can be amazing caretakers and ambitious professionals. Stopping to consider what messages their behaviors send to their children helps mothers and fathers to step back and readjust when inevitably, they veer off course from their egalitarian ideal.
Living within your means:
Money plays an outsized role in a couple’s ability to create an egalitarian partnership and it’s not just about the pay equity gap. Rather couples at their financial edge feel the need to maximize income, often leading to privileging the more lucrative job and through time widening the gap in importance and earnings between their two careers.
The problem with the more lucrative earner being seen as having the primary career is that it greatly reduces his, or her, ability to make choices, such as putting limits on excessive work demands or leaving a job that’s unhealthy or a poor fit. Creating an economic buffer allows couples to pivot as needed, all the while continuing to value both careers.
Though dual career couples are ubiquitous, egalitarian couples are not. The difference is both nuanced and profound. For couples who want equality to characterize their lives together as parents, it requires awareness and skill to write their own work-life script, because even in 2018 the egalitarian model of careers and kids remains the road far less travelled.
About the author
Lisa Levey is a veteran diversity consultant, working with leading organizations to assist them in realizing the underutilized leadership potential of women. Her current work focuses on engaging men as allies and partners. As a consultant, she led the design and development of the Forte Foundation’s Male Ally signature resource platform. She blogs for the Glass Hammer, the Huffington Post and the Good Men Project on gender issues.
Her award-winning book The Libra Solution spotlights the obstacles and enablers to gender equality for dual-career professionals raising children. Lisa and her husband Bryan, a technology executive, have been featured in Fast Company magazine and on ABC News with Charlie Gibson in stories about their egalitarian work-life approach. Their coaching practice Genderworks supports dual-career professional couples in laying a foundation for, and navigating the obstacles to, gender equality as parents. Lisa earned an MBA with highest honors from the Simmons School of Management and a BS with distinction from Cornell University in applied economics
Doing the work of others
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!What are you recognized and rewarded for?
How does what you are supposed to be doing and get paid for, stack up against the other stuff that just creeps in? Task creep as its known happens to most of us, but in excess it can stop you from optimally performing,make you tired and stop you from getting to your real work.
Think about what your job is supposed to be as defined by your boss, your year end review criteria and the job spec and then think all the other things that happen 9-5 beside the official stuff. Be a team player by all means but learn to recognize systemic dysfunction.
Make a list of what you do every day for a period of a week to see what is officially within your remit and what creeps in there. It might be illuminating to see how you are paid for driving the train but also at times asked to lay the track, clean the engine etc which is time consuming and often not conducive to your time management or skill set.
Contact nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com is you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work.