By Cathie Ericson
For Bob Miller, family has helped drive the realization that leaders play a key role in championing diversity.
He has heard stories from his wife, a Hispanic professional, about subtle challenges she has faced in the workplace in the past as a woman and as a minority.
As a father to a son and daughter, he finds the idea that his daughter would face challenges in the workplace that his son would not face to be unacceptable; likewise, he finds the thought that either his son or daughter would face unfair challenges based on the color of their skin to be unacceptable.
A Diverse Career Path Helps Create an Open Mind
Miller has held a wide variety of roles over the years, including seven years as an officer in the U.S. Navy, three years working for a small construction company and three years working for a small consulting firm prior to coming to Booz Allen Hamilton, where he’s been for 16 years. Throughout his 29-year career, he says he has been privileged to supervise and work for and with a diverse, talented staff.
“I believe that by building diverse, highly functioning teams, you can achieve outstanding results,” he says, adding that staying balanced and building strong and loyal teams has allowed his teams to prosper regardless of market conditions.
Over the years, he has routinely worked with and been an advocate for women, often in traditionally male-dominated fields including the military, construction, engineering and government consulting. “I have always believed in ‘fairness,’ and the idea that hard work should pay off, and have been surprised to learn that is not always the case,” Miller says.
“Hard work, talent, drive and results should be what matter regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or identity.” Therefore, he believes that executives must utilize their positions to ensure that talented people have opportunities to excel and meet their career goals as well as achieve work-life balance.
Keys to Effective Mentorship and Talent Development
Over the years, he has had the opportunity to both mentor and sponsor several women and has also volunteered to be the diversity and inclusion champion for his current business unit of 1,300.
That entails evaluating and promoting opportunities to further diversify talent. A diverse and inclusive environment takes into account all levels of your organization, including recruiting and hiring. Cultivating a diverse initial talent pool can be achieved by targeting specific universities and employee resource groups, as well as ensuring that your organization is attractive to diverse candidates. “You have to be able to proudly discuss your company and its commitment to diversity to attract the kind of candidates you seek,” he notes.
Then, it’s crucial to retain talent by making sure you tailor your mentorship, guidance and leadership to all individuals to make sure they feel valued and are getting the support they need through robust programs.
A seasoned mentor and sponsor himself, Miller says a key component is understanding where your employees are in their career and where they want to go. “Help the person envision a path to achieve their goals and then support them on the journey,” he says, which can sometimes entail tough love. “It will not help the person if you gloss over weaknesses or blind spots.”
Part of a manager’s role is recognizing that talent comes in many forms and fashions; for example, someone quiet and reserved may be best in a given role even though they don’t command the spotlight in the same way as others.
And then make sure that talented individuals see themselves reflected at all levels of an organization so they can envision and realize a path to achieve their goals.
Also remember that as career paths and goals change, sometimes you no longer are the person who can do the best job as a mentor. By revisiting the relationship over time, you can be sure you are on the same page throughout the journey or even be willing to suggest another sponsor if that is appropriate given changing circumstances.
The Role of Unconscious Bias
Miller recently participated in training in unconscious bias, which was insightful in illuminating times he had unwittingly showed unconscious bias. One example involved a talented mid-level leader with enormous potential for upward mobility who recently became pregnant with her second child. Miller initially considered assigning the managing role for an upcoming major proposal to another capable leader, specifically to protect this female employee from the stressful and long hours of the proposal. However, upon reflection, he realized that she needed to be given the opportunity to decide whether she could take on that role or not, rather than depriving her of a career-developing opportunity without giving her a voice.
What Leaders Can Do
Leaders have a key role to play in ensuring an inclusive environment. The first step is to make sure the environment is safe and respectful for everyone, including men, women, multicultural staff, and people of varied religions, beliefs and different sexual orientations. “Respond quickly and decisively when you see evidence to the contrary,” he says.
It’s also important to take a look at the roles you assign people; for example, mix up who takes notes at a meeting.
Then, expand opportunities throughout your team. “Many times we have our ‘go-to,’ people and we end up overly stressing a few and not realizing the potential of others,” Miller notes. “We need to make a conscious effort to constantly step back and think about all the talented people on our teams and afford opportunities for those staff to prosper.”
Make sure the firm has policies that support an inclusive environment. “Try to find a way to offer a ‘yes’ in work schedules and work-life balance, especially for employees who are caring for children or elderly parents. Don’t make employees choose between work or life. Find ways they can have both.”
Finally, he advises that leaders give credit where credit is due. People will be more apt to speak up with diverse opinions if you don’t just reward people who parrot the ideas presented by others.
“We achieve better results when we avoid group think and have honest and open dialogue where everyone knows their opinion has merit, and they are not afraid to share,” Miller says.
5 Secrets to Ditching Limiting Beliefs and Living Your Dream
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!, Guest ContributionGuest contributed by Diana Faison
Image via Pexels
Do me a favor? Close your eyes and visualize achieving everything you want for yourself professionally. Two conditions are you cannot remain in your current position and no matter what you choose to do, you cannot fail. Allow your mind to imagine two or three possible paths—think big and aim high!
What are you doing? Why can’t you be doing it now? Many of us admire big thinkers and high achievers but we seldom see ourselves in that role. Why is that?
The answer is limiting beliefs—those thoughts that keep you from doing what you dream.
Limiting beliefs in women stem from multiple sources. One are outdated gender stereotypes that box us into traditional gender roles “Women are not supposed to be ambitious.” “Women should be nurturers, not leaders.” They also originate in the dark place within ourselves where self-doubt and denial reside. This is often referred to as the “impostor syndrome”
Many women want to stay comfortable in their current state rather than challenge themselves to achieve everything they are capable of. How can these women leaders be helped to recognize and replace these limiting beliefs with positive messages. The truth is we can ALL learn to funnel our energy in a positive direction. All of us can take steps RIGHT NOW to change our limiting beliefs.
Here’s how:
Dream bigger and aim higher. We often are mired in our perception of reality and focus on what we cannot do. If you cannot see it, you will never become it. Go tell someone your secret career dream, and remember play big, aim high.
Take a chance on you.Explore outside your comfort zone. Maybe that means accepting that stretch assignment opportunity or better yet go and ask for that stretch assignment!
Ask yourself: ‘What gives my life meaning and a sense of purpose?’Then, ask yourself: ‘What am I doing to address that purpose?’ If you struggle to answer either question, it’s time to go and find that life meaning and sense of purpose.
Create meaningful relationships. Research supports the idea that women are over mentored and under sponsored. Create meaningful relationships by nurturing connections with men or women you admire and respect or with whom you want to work. Reciprocate and offer your help. Eventually, one or more of these people will become a sponsor for you and can open doors and opportunities.
Act with courage!Just say yes. Trust yourself to know that you’ll figure out You are smart. You are capable. Take a leap of faith and take a chance on you.
By challenging ourselves to dream bigger and aim higher, we become better, stronger, female leaders. So, ditch those limiting beliefs and go get ’em!
Diana Faison is co-author of newly-released The Influence Effect: a new path to power for women leaders and partner at leadership firm, Flynn Heath Holt.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Developing Yourself for Your Next Role – One Task at a Time
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!All jobs consist of are tasks and we prefer some tasks over others.
Make 3 columns and in the first list what you like doing. In the second column, list what you are good at (task wise) as these lists might differ.Then in the third column list what you really don’t like doing. This is a great way to start to thinking about transferable skills for the job that you do want to do next.
So many people spend time in roles where the expected promotion takes them into work they simply don’t like doing (for example, managing more people). The thing is,you have choices, it is your life.
Be honest with yourself, how strategically important are the tasks that you are avoiding? Do they rank highly for your current role? How will they play into your future role?
If there are skills that you need to develop, consider setting time aside formally in your calendar to undertake them on a regular basis as habit can be a great way to embrace them.
But, if you realize that you need to be developing a different set of skills for your next role, then try to identify what those might be.The gap may be small and easy to bridge, or not, but at least you will have a sense of perspective on what you have to do.
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: Anna George, Head of Product Asia Pacific, WEX Inc.
Voices of ExperienceBy Cathie Ericson
“Take every opportunity because you never know where it may lead you,” says WEX’ Anna George, and certainly that has been a theme in her varied career path.
A Divergent and Successful Career
George’s first job was selling advertising space, but she very quickly learned that it was not her forte. She moved into the payments industry quite accidentally, she says, via Coles Financial Services, where she worked in operational roles while studying for her degree in Business Information Technology.
She then worked for GE for 15 years where she earned steady promotions and advanced in a variety of roles from business analysis to project management and process improvement. She eventually landed on product management as a real passion because it required the depth of knowledge and experience she had gained throughout her career. Three years ago she moved across to WEX to head up its product and innovation function.
Currently she is working through new product launches that will meet WEX’ business objectives of diversifying its portfolio. One truth she has learned over the years that applies to all her current endeavors is to always understand your customers’ and stakeholders’ needs in order to provide the right solution to the initiative or problem you are trying to solve.
One trend George finds particularly interesting is the upcoming disruption of blockchain and the importance of understanding the use cases relevant to the industry. “This is a game changer, and we need to get on the front foot,” she says. In addition, she cites 4IR, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, as another area that will provide efficiencies once the ethical considerations are ironed out.
While George has had a number of professional achievements, including winning a recent Women in Payments innovation award, she is most proud of her role in developing team members and mentoring professionals who have gone on to become great leaders in various organizations.
She strives to help women overcome the stumbling block of knowing where to start and how to access the industry. One way to gain that expertise she recommends, is to start your career with a large organization and then work hard across diverse functions to build a skillset that can then be adapted to any industry. Finding a strong leader whom you can trust to help you with challenging decisions and advice is a must at every level.
Enjoying Travel and Giving Back
Married for a decade to an IT project manager, she says he helps keep their lives organized. They enjoy traveling with their six-year-old daughter, and George herself has a passion for traveling and experiencing new cultures, having visited 24 countries so far, with many more still on the bucket list, including a trip to Ireland this spring with the company’s President’s Club.
Men Who Get It: Bob Miller | Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton
Men Who "Get It"By Cathie Ericson
For Bob Miller, family has helped drive the realization that leaders play a key role in championing diversity.
He has heard stories from his wife, a Hispanic professional, about subtle challenges she has faced in the workplace in the past as a woman and as a minority.
As a father to a son and daughter, he finds the idea that his daughter would face challenges in the workplace that his son would not face to be unacceptable; likewise, he finds the thought that either his son or daughter would face unfair challenges based on the color of their skin to be unacceptable.
A Diverse Career Path Helps Create an Open Mind
Miller has held a wide variety of roles over the years, including seven years as an officer in the U.S. Navy, three years working for a small construction company and three years working for a small consulting firm prior to coming to Booz Allen Hamilton, where he’s been for 16 years. Throughout his 29-year career, he says he has been privileged to supervise and work for and with a diverse, talented staff.
“I believe that by building diverse, highly functioning teams, you can achieve outstanding results,” he says, adding that staying balanced and building strong and loyal teams has allowed his teams to prosper regardless of market conditions.
Over the years, he has routinely worked with and been an advocate for women, often in traditionally male-dominated fields including the military, construction, engineering and government consulting. “I have always believed in ‘fairness,’ and the idea that hard work should pay off, and have been surprised to learn that is not always the case,” Miller says.
“Hard work, talent, drive and results should be what matter regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or identity.” Therefore, he believes that executives must utilize their positions to ensure that talented people have opportunities to excel and meet their career goals as well as achieve work-life balance.
Keys to Effective Mentorship and Talent Development
Over the years, he has had the opportunity to both mentor and sponsor several women and has also volunteered to be the diversity and inclusion champion for his current business unit of 1,300.
That entails evaluating and promoting opportunities to further diversify talent. A diverse and inclusive environment takes into account all levels of your organization, including recruiting and hiring. Cultivating a diverse initial talent pool can be achieved by targeting specific universities and employee resource groups, as well as ensuring that your organization is attractive to diverse candidates. “You have to be able to proudly discuss your company and its commitment to diversity to attract the kind of candidates you seek,” he notes.
Then, it’s crucial to retain talent by making sure you tailor your mentorship, guidance and leadership to all individuals to make sure they feel valued and are getting the support they need through robust programs.
A seasoned mentor and sponsor himself, Miller says a key component is understanding where your employees are in their career and where they want to go. “Help the person envision a path to achieve their goals and then support them on the journey,” he says, which can sometimes entail tough love. “It will not help the person if you gloss over weaknesses or blind spots.”
Part of a manager’s role is recognizing that talent comes in many forms and fashions; for example, someone quiet and reserved may be best in a given role even though they don’t command the spotlight in the same way as others.
And then make sure that talented individuals see themselves reflected at all levels of an organization so they can envision and realize a path to achieve their goals.
Also remember that as career paths and goals change, sometimes you no longer are the person who can do the best job as a mentor. By revisiting the relationship over time, you can be sure you are on the same page throughout the journey or even be willing to suggest another sponsor if that is appropriate given changing circumstances.
The Role of Unconscious Bias
Miller recently participated in training in unconscious bias, which was insightful in illuminating times he had unwittingly showed unconscious bias. One example involved a talented mid-level leader with enormous potential for upward mobility who recently became pregnant with her second child. Miller initially considered assigning the managing role for an upcoming major proposal to another capable leader, specifically to protect this female employee from the stressful and long hours of the proposal. However, upon reflection, he realized that she needed to be given the opportunity to decide whether she could take on that role or not, rather than depriving her of a career-developing opportunity without giving her a voice.
What Leaders Can Do
Leaders have a key role to play in ensuring an inclusive environment. The first step is to make sure the environment is safe and respectful for everyone, including men, women, multicultural staff, and people of varied religions, beliefs and different sexual orientations. “Respond quickly and decisively when you see evidence to the contrary,” he says.
It’s also important to take a look at the roles you assign people; for example, mix up who takes notes at a meeting.
Then, expand opportunities throughout your team. “Many times we have our ‘go-to,’ people and we end up overly stressing a few and not realizing the potential of others,” Miller notes. “We need to make a conscious effort to constantly step back and think about all the talented people on our teams and afford opportunities for those staff to prosper.”
Make sure the firm has policies that support an inclusive environment. “Try to find a way to offer a ‘yes’ in work schedules and work-life balance, especially for employees who are caring for children or elderly parents. Don’t make employees choose between work or life. Find ways they can have both.”
Finally, he advises that leaders give credit where credit is due. People will be more apt to speak up with diverse opinions if you don’t just reward people who parrot the ideas presented by others.
“We achieve better results when we avoid group think and have honest and open dialogue where everyone knows their opinion has merit, and they are not afraid to share,” Miller says.
Tips for Women on Negotiating Salary Now That Equal Pay Is Mandated
Career Advice, Gender Pay GapGuest contributed by Susan Brennan
On April 9, a US appeals court ruled that a woman cannot be paid less than a man for the same job simply because they had a prior lower salary.
While this is certainly progress in the right direction, it will be interesting to see how companies enforce and track this in action.
Do you cringe a little when you think about salary negotiations? While negotiating your salary might feel like something you would rather avoid, deciding, whether or not, to accept a salary offering and having the confidence to negotiate for higher, is a skill that take you well beyond your life right now.
However, pay secrecy or being discouraged to discuss salary is a real thing that many people, especially women, deal with. According to a survey from the Institute of Women’s Policy Research, 51 percent of women reported, “The discussion of wage and salary information is either discouraged or prohibited.” And with women in the United States earning on average 80 cents to every dollar a man makes, the time for women to feel confident to earn what they deserve and have these conversations is now.
Here is a guide on salary negotiating from the moment you receive the offer to the moment you and your future employer agree upon a number.
Before you start talking numbers, figure out how much you need to live by doing an inventory of your fixed expenses. This is called determining your bottom line. What do you have to pay every month rain or shine; rent, child care, food, car payment? This isn’t necessarily the number you should settle for, but it will give you your bottom line—then build up. Caveat: Employers do not care what your expenses are, so don’t use this as an argument for more money.
There are a lot of resources to help you determine what the market is paying for similar positions and experience levels. Websites like Glassdoor and Payscale allow you to plug in a job title and years of experience and get a range for what the market will bear for that kind of role. The numbers will take into account geography and a number of other factors that have an impact. Across industries, pay gaps vary. For example, female doctors earn significantly less than male doctors, an average of 28 percent.
There are also some awkward situations you need to be ready for, such as:
The bottom line of successful salary negotiation especially for women: Know your budget and have data on the market range (versus a single number) to back up your worth. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you deserve; but make sure you are vision-driven—the value you will add to the company—and data-informed.
Susan Brennan is Associate Vice President of University Career Services at Bentley University and co-host of the career advice podcast Counter Offer, the podcast that helps you love Mondays. Over the past decade, she has put Bentley on the map for delivering impactful career education and outcomes, with 99% of first-year students participating in her team’s ground breaking career development course and 97% of 2017 graduates employed or attending graduate school within six months of graduation.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer
Are You a Sexist Woman at Work? Part Two
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Or in plain English, women can be as sexist and upholding of the patriarchy as men. How does this play out in the workplace? It appears in small and large ways in offices, hospitals, orchestras, schools and governments.
When some women work for female bosses, the experience can sometimes be perceived by them as less than optimal? Is the female boss truly awful as an individual ? Maybe or maybe not, as we can look to deep behavioral theory to explain why people act the way that they do. Social psychology theory by Lewin suggests that behavior is a function of a person’s personality activated by the environment that they are operating in. So, when you are working for a female boss who happens to be taking on traits that you do not expect her to (as a woman), you might consider that this boss might be beholden to the systemic forces that encourage behaviors that are activated in their personality. She might have consciously or unconsciously chosen that path as assimilation is what most career blogs and experts have spat at women for the last thirty years. Doesn’t make it right, but certainly explains things.
Or it could be you who has deep rooted issues about who the boss should be? You could be jarred as she isn’t meeting your stereotypical traits imagined for her as a female manager. This is only worsened by the gender segregation that is peddled falsely as brain science. Men are not from Mars, Women are not from Venus. Newsflash, we are all from Earth and we all need to do a better job on Earth at reducing bias that comes with instant thoughts of who the other person is. We all are socially conditioned to believe the differences between the sexes are the same for everyone and this discredits the real work of letting people speak and act as individuals at work while understanding that by virtue of having a social identity, has legacy trait and role assumptions in society and therefore at work too. Outwardly we see gender, ethnicity etc as a feature of the human in front of us but we have to stop that from being a definition of capability and capacity and actual experience.
Are you wrestling with challenges at work? Consider coaching with nicki@theglasshammer.com
Voice of Experience: Jennifer Hanes, Head of Investment Management and Operations, Buy Side Solutions at FIS Global
Voices of Experience“When you make a commitment to focus on developing an area of domain expertise and own it, you’ll earn the credibility you desire,” says FIS’ Jennifer Hanes, offering words of advice for career novices.
“Define success for yourself; no one can give you the road map, so decide the most important criteria for success as it pertains to you, and then focus there.”
Several Industries Contribute to Career Growth
Hanes herself knows the importance of carving out a path that’s unique but beneficial for each individual. She earned undergraduate degrees in journalism and French in hopes of pursuing a career in international advertising, but at the time she graduated there were no professional jobs readily available. Having spent summers in the financial services industry, she took a position in investment banking as a research analyst. She earned her Series 7 and other designations to come up to speed quickly.
While she gained valuable experience, she decided that wasn’t the career for her, so she moved to a small firm in the municipal bond industry as the fourth employee, learning on the job and completing a master’s in business administration at night. She worked there for several years until it was acquired by Thomson Financial, which offered her more opportunity in a wide variety of roles including product management, business operations and marketing, as well as more international experience.
In 1999 she got the “dot com” bug and was lured by the possibility of something entirely different to join a company that specialized in antiques. While it was short-lived, she acquired a helpful perspective on the internet industry, but decided to move back to a bigger firm in the financial services field where she could return to a more international role. She joined SunGard, which became FIS, and has steadily grown with the firm, occupying roles from marketing to business operations and strategy. Currently she runs FIS’ global software and services portfolio business of fund and investor accounting, transfer agency, risk management, reconciliation, pricing and financial reporting solutions.
While she is proud of her many business-related outcomes in delivering top and bottom-line results, she finds her most satisfying professional achievement to be the impact she has had on developing her team members over the years and helping them flourish in their careers.
Right now, Hanes says she is inspired by the chance to see the strategy that her team has developed come to fruition as they execute on a more holistic and integrated business model that clients have been looking for. “It’s exciting to see something all the way through from strategy to execution and the positive effect we are having on clients as we use innovative technology to help them drive better business performance.”
She also is excited to see how artificial intelligence and its predictive analysis capability is being used to create ever more clever ways to take huge volumes of data and crunch it down to find patterns to drive investment returns. And, while less buzzy, she says that another exciting development to watch is how firms can create efficiency by leveraging automation and robotics in back office procedures to drive bottom-line profitability, achieving better results while saving time and effort.
Career Advice To Reach The Top
Looking back over her career, Hanes suggests that those starting out consider the value of networking and how helpful it can be. “As I got older and more confident in my abilities networking became easier, but it’s wise to start early.” She has found value in seeking out diverse perspectives from a variety of industries to solve problems and explore areas like people and project management that are not industry-specific.
Hanes believes that professionals at all levels should make deliberate time for mindful reflection. “We live in an era when everything is instant, and tons of information is coming at you constantly, but you need time to think and process, particularly when it comes to complex issues.” She advises women to find time to efficiently digest and reflect – such as while you’re exercising or commuting – to arrive at better answers.
Cognizant of the need to devote time to balance her career with other pursuits, Hanes has helmed a book club for 22 years and enjoys spending time cooking. Married with two grown sons in their 20s, she has been fortunate to have been able to take them on many of her travels, which has contributed to their increased awareness of diversity in the world.
Hanes also takes time to give back, sitting on the board of her alma mater, the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She also is on the board of the industry association NICSA, whose member firms include major asset managers, servicers and large banking institutions. They are at the beginning stages of looking at partnerships for a diversity initiative, underscoring how a deliberate focus on diversity should ultimately drive better business outcomes.
Recovering from a Mistake at Work
Career Advice, Managing ChangeBy Cindy Krischer Goodman
Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada studied gender differences in apology behavior of men and women ages 18 to 44 and found women apologized more and felt they had caused offense more.
To recover from a mistake, career experts advise walking the line between apologizing and expressing confidence you can handle tough situations going forward. Even if handled well, there could be lasting repercussions or lingering distrust. The more glaring and costly the mistake, the more it could affect your job security. It is important to acknowledge you recognize the mistake’s seriousness and are prepared to accept the punishment management doles out without complaining, including being taken off a client’s account or moved to another department. The next step is working hard to rebuild trust.
“It’s going to sting for a while,” said Leadership Coach Monique Catoggio. “But we have to be really aware of how we’re behaving and make sure others are seeing we understand the mistake, are making positive changes, and are dedicated to not making the same mistake again.”
Catoggio, founder of Illumined Life Leadership in Miami, said part of being a leader is role modeling for team members how to bounce back gracefully from a slip-up and learn from what went wrong.
In real life
A marketing director at a Miami accounting firm read a news article about her firm’s acquisition, she realized she had made a mistake. She had misspelled the name of the acquired firm in the press release that went out to hundreds of news outlets. She knew she quickly needed to fix the situation and prepared a new press release to distribute, labeling it “correct version.” Next, she went to her boss with an explanation, and the details of how she corrected her mistake.
At some point, everyone inevitably makes a mistake at work. Sometimes the slip up is small, such as sending an email out addressed to the wrong person. Sometimes it is big, with the potential to be costly for the organization.
Reacting timely and honestly to a costly error can make a difference. You don’t want your boss to learn about the mistake from a co-worker in another department, or worse, a customer. Admitting to a mistake, rather than allowing others to come to their own conclusions, helps assure your boss or client can trust you to be upfront and honest. Career experts advise against fessing up by email, insisting it’s better to have a verbal dialogue in which emotions can be conveyed. As a manager, you may need to take responsibility for an error someone below you made. In doing so, you will need to commit to finding out how the blunder happened, putting in new protocol, and monitoring your team closely so it doesn’t happen again.
In seeking out the root cause of the mistake, you will need to dig deep to understand if you need to be more patient, less distracted, ask more questions or double check facts. You want to discover any fundamental flaws in processes and uncover the actions over which you had control. Your goal should be to make sure you and your team learn from the mistake to ensure it never happens again. Most important, approach your boss or your customer with proposed solutions for how to make things right.
Learning from mistakes
As many people have discovered, mistakes that initially seem costly, have potential to be opportunities. Paul Schoemaker, entrepreneur, consultant and educator who has taught at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, believes success is the sum-total of many mistakes. As the author of “Brilliant Mistakes: Finding Success on the Far Side of Failure,” he has said, “If you want your team to get better, first, teach them to frame any mistake as a learning opportunity.”
Schoemaker believes sometimes making mistakes can be the quickest way to discover a problem’s solution. For example, a mistake that initially seems costly based on previous operation methods could end up saving a company money in a changing business environment. In developing a mechanism to prevent re-occurrences, you could discover a more efficient way of getting work done. And, by working hard to remedy the situation with the customer, you could build a stronger relationship.
Success in learning from a mistake may require involvement from another person, someone objective who can give advice, identify training or help with solutions. They may know of someone that has bounced back from a similar mistake and a way to deal with the situation that you don’t.
Going forward, you will need to re-prove yourself on each new assignment and possibly even in your daily activity. Meanwhile, expect to be treated as if on probation; you will need to get past self-doubts, take every measure to ensure the mistake isn’t repeated, and show you are doing your best work. It may take time, but the goal is to prove to management, your colleagues and yourself that you are still trustworthy in your role.
Changing Jobs: What Financial Benefits Do You Need to Think About Besides Your Salary?
Career Advice, Guest ContributionGuest contributed by Marisa Joseph
The excitement of a new career path, or even taking on a different role within your current company, can be accompanied by new (and sometimes overwhelming) personal and professional considerations.
And, for women who’ve spent more time establishing their careers, these considerations can vary significantly from those just starting out.
When approaching this transition, be sure to evaluate (and understand) the potential impact on your lifestyle that a new job might bring, along with how your short- and long-term financial goals could be impacted each step of the way. One in four Americans feel some level of financial anxiety, according to a 2017 Northwestern Mutual survey, making addressing these considerations – no matter the stage of your career – a key step to moving forward with confidence.
Before you accept the offer, ask yourself a few questions:
1. What’s going to happen to my non-cash bonuses? If you received stock options at the company you’ll be leaving, make sure you’re aware of the implications when switching jobs. Review your offer letter and/or employment agreements to ensure you’re cashing out your stock options within a stipulated time of departure, and checking on potential tax implications.
2. Is my tax bracket going to change? Depending on your new salary, you could be bumped into a different tax bracket. By meeting with an accountant, you can better prepare yourself for offsetting a potential tax increase.
3. Is your potential employer offering other benefits that are important to you? Maybe you’re looking for a more flexible schedule in your new job, or perhaps the opportunity to go back to school. Remember to highlight these possibilities in conversations with your potential employer. Ask also about a sign-on bonus or annual incentives, as well as termination provisions, to ensure you’re maximizing your financial options.
Once you’ve begun your new role, take the time to review your benefits package to update or supplement as necessary.
Below is a list of what you should review:
1. How am I handling my retirement plan? Your new job may provide you with the opportunity to contribute to a company-sponsored retirement plan, such as a 401(k) or Roth IRA. If this is something you took advantage of at your previous job, a financial planner can help determine if rolling over your old plan – or keeping your money where it is – is the best option for staying on track with your retirement goals. And, if this is a new opportunity for you, make sure you review what your employer is willing to match so you can maximize your contributions.
2. What are my insurance options? Your new employer may also offer insurance plans for employees, which could include health, dental, disability and life insurance. By thoroughly reviewing your benefits, you can identify any gaps in what your employer is willing to offer for baseline coverage, and where you may want to purchase additional protection. Ask yourself also; will I need to pay more in premiums, copayments or deductibles for my family? Consider again talking with your financial planner for help navigating your options and understanding any of those gaps in insurance.
3. Is there a waiting period before my disability (and/or life) insurance coverage begins? Sometimes, new employees are required to wait 90 days before they become eligible to receive coverage. Find out if you fall into this category, and from there, identify if supplementary insurance could be an option to protect you and your family during the gap.
Finally, once you’ve made it though the first several months at your new job, it’s time to evaluate one more crucial metric.
1. Am I happy? While your job may have come with perks like the ability to have more discretionary income or additional vacation days, these can sometimes seem less attractive when coupled with demanding hours or difficult relationships with coworkers. Does the new job fit with your lifestyle? Is it putting you closer to achieving your long-term financial and professional goals? Consider discussing your thoughts and options with a trusted friend, mentor or coach to map out the next steps of your plan.
By keeping in mind this checklist of questions, you’ll be on your way to embracing your new position feeling confident and prepared.
Guest contributed by Marisa Joseph http://marisajoseph.nm.com
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Are you a sexist woman at work? Part One
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Let’s assume good intentions for now and review the brain science behind managers and leaders’ decisions to promote and pay men more than women for the same job.
How is this still all happening in 2018? Simply put, it is our brains fault and how we give the benefit of the doubt to certain people based on their social identity (sex, race, nationality, class etc) and the associative brain process kicks in. Basically, what we have seen before generates positive and negative stereotyping that we silently attribute without knowing the individual (if we let that happen).
The brain and the way it processes information actually puts association to things in the ‘collection’ stage of data which was not previously believed to be the case. Literally if you see (or moreover don’t realize you have just seen) four red cars go past and then a blue one, your brain is busy assigning category and value to observed data without your conscious knowledge or permission. Likewise, pattern breaking is hard for the brain regarding that a leader/techie/mechanic/astronaut looks like based on images it has seen before.
Many social psychologists, naming two here; Chris Argyris (and his ladder of inference which can be used today by you in meetings for better bias breaking) and Virginia Schein have been telling us for years that we think our way into biased decisions unconsciously is based on our own beliefs. Now, neuroscience concurs that our brains trick us into thinking some people belong in a job because of their category type and the implicit value assigned to it. Notice use the of word “belong” because deserving on actual present moment merit has nothing to do with past patterns of other people’s performance. The average brain in its categorization of things and does not even attempt to predict future shapes and sizes of anything, hence it was Steve Jobs and not just anyone who could think up the iPod by looking at the walkman. It does however work pretty hard to tell you what is unfamiliar to you as Dr Banaji and colleagues’ impressive body of work on cognition and unconscious bias work has shown around ethnicity and gender.
So, here is the bad news, even as a woman your brain exercises bias against other women. Your whole life you have lived in the operating system of the patriarchy with more boys and men in leading roles from the first book you read, first job worked at, to the movies you watch. Then there is the messaging you heard from your grandparents and everyone else around you and how you were supposed to be as a girl and then a “young lady” then a nice woman. If you broke from heteronormative cisgender or even ethnicity molds, you got to have a pejorative label. Sound familiar? You can be a nice or nasty women and that doesn’t even begin to address the intersectionality issues that create much worse dichotomies or lose-lose stereotypes for non majority grouped people.
There is good news and that is you can override your cognitive processes. Recently, 3 out of 10 school children when asked to draw a scientist drew a woman. That is the best ratio we have ever seen, but we have ways to go.
You can start to be conscious of your thoughts and feelings in crucial moments like hiring and challenge your own assumptions around the constructs and paradigms you are holding. Put them on the table, shed light on them and see if they serve you and your mission? If you espouse a goal or a way of being, what are you actually doing behaviorally and not doing to achieve that goal?
How do your thought patterns match up to the person who you say you are? How do your unconscious beliefs help or hinder you at work?
Book an exploratory session with Executive Coach and theglasshammer.com‘s founder Nicki Gilmour (nicki@theglasshammer.com) to figure out how to get what you want today!