Guest contributed by Lisa Levey
Gender diversity is on the radar in corporate America after more than 10 years of research highlighting the economic benefits of women in leadership roles.
Companies have invested in gender initiatives that aim to support women’s advancement and diversify the leadership pipeline. Some companies have been at it for multiple decades. Yet, the results seem to be much ado about nothing.
McKinsey and LeanIn’s 2017 annual Women in the Workplace report on the state of women’s advancement recounts the sad tale – women fall behind early in their careers and the gender gaps widen at each step along the career ladder. And year after year the changes are marginally positive at best.
So what is going on? Why despite much effort on the part of organizations does the big picture of women’s place in corporate America look eerily similar to 10, 20, or more years ago?
The truth is that despite much effort, corporate work environments – developed by and for men – continue to be defined by masculine rules of engagement. In multiple ways, so many women at work continue to feel like a square peg in a round hole.
Masculine and Feminine Behavioral Norms Diverge
To understand the disconnect, let’s begin with the well-researched premise that masculine behavioral norms are deeply linked to hierarchy. Men think in terms of competition and increasing their relative positioning, aka power and status. Dominance behaviors often define their approach.
Translated into the workplace, this looks like men bragging about their accomplishments – accomplishments that often are inflated. This looks like talking over others and mansplaining – talking without interruption – to control the floor or from lack of self-awareness. This looks like posturing and talking a big game to get the upper hand in a negotiation. This looks like sexualizing women – perhaps unintentionally – or intentionally with the goal of marginalizing them by seeking to ‘keep them in their place.’
Women have been socialized to equalize, rather than to differentiate, resulting in a predisposition to share rather than to concentrate power. Stephen Lukes, a sociologist who has written extensively about power, contrasts the approach of getting an individual to do something they may, or may not, want to do with a far more sophisticated and cooperative alternative in which both those who do – and do not – benefit from the status quo have agency to influence the system. Women tend toward the latter.
Translated into the workplace, this looks like sharing credit, even in situations where others played a small role. It translates into women being more soft-spoken and less likely to put someone on the spot. It translates into women focusing on shared goals, rather than power differentials, in negotiations.
The Rockefeller Foundation commissioned Korn Ferry to study women CEOs to learn how more women can make it to the top. What they found was, in comparison to their male counterparts, women CEOs demonstrated far more humility, were more likely to credit others as playing a central role in their shared success, and were significantly less likely to self promote.
Leadership = Men, Masculine Norms Prevail
Not surprisingly, leadership in the business world has been defined through the gender lens of masculinity, rendering women lacking. How many times has it been said, “she lacks gravitas” or “she doesn’t have enough executive presence to be a leader.”
Studies show that women are deeply drawn to a sense of purpose and meaning, often connected to helping others and to women’s vision of making the world a better place. A longitudinal study of more than 700 engineering students at premier universities found that a central reason so many women leave the engineering field was a disconnect between their drive to solve problems that make a difference in people’s lives and their workplace experience of corporate proclamations rather than demonstrated commitment to improving society. Similarly the Korn Ferry study reported women leaders were driven by a strong sense of purpose, perceiving their companies as positively impacting the world.
Research by the OECD [an organization focused on promoting policies that improve the economic and social well-being of people worldwide] and UNWomen show that when women have greater access to economic resources, they spend those dollars on things like health care and education, bettering not only themselves and their families but also their communities in the process. Yet in the business world, where cold, hard analytical thinking is king, male leaders denigrate women’s emotions, marginalizing women by characterizing them as ‘not tough enough to make the hard decisions’ or ‘lacking business acumen.’ Why then are men, driven by emotion as they make risky trades on the stock market and pursue questionable acquisitions, [most of which provide NO economic benefit to shareholders,], praised for their gutsy decisions and held blameless for failures rationalized as the cost of doing business?
For most professional women, advancement is very important but, it is not their only goal. Thus, they are more likely to forgo an opportunity that does not fit into the big picture of their life at that time. Commitment and hard work are not an issue for women but the all-in, all-the-time definition of leadership that prevails is.[i] How many women start their long workdays having already fed their children, thrown in a load of laundry, answered some emails, made lunches and maybe even started dinner? Yet women receive messaging that they aren’t committed enough!
Bain & Company’s 2014 US gender partity research found that while women start out with as much, or more, career ambition than their male peers, after two short years on the job, their career aspirations decline precipitously while men’s remain constant.
Why the big drop? Women continually encounter the masculine leadership norm of the ideal worker who is singularly focused because they have a partner who deals with all the rest. What if we stopped telling women they aren’t committed enough at work? And what if we start telling men that they and their loved-ones are paying the emotional price for their no limits, masculine leadership model?
To make matters worse, it seems that no matter how women behave, they just can’t seem to get it right. Women who meet stereotypical gender expectations of being nurturing and accommodating – are deemed likable but “not leadership material” – while women who are assertive get kudos for possessing leadership potential but also judged as lacking interpersonal skills. Leadership or likeability – it seems women can only pick one.
The Problematic Value Proposition for Aspiring Women Leaders
When women in the pipeline look up, they see struggle because of their gender, little support to figure it out, and the need to combat even greater – not less – gender bias with each step up the corporate ladder. Feminine behavioral norms are devalued and even when women behave like men, they’re still judged lacking. Why then are we surprised when women don’t say, “Please sign me up for more of that?”
McKinsey and LeanIn’s 2017 Women in the Workplace report captures the struggle. Women progress at a slower rate than their male colleagues, despite asking for promotions at comparable rates and being no more likely to leave their companies. In fact, men report they are more likely to receive raises and promotions without even having to ask. Women in the study were nearly 5 times as likely as men to report gender played a role in their chance for a promotion or raise. Is it any wonder why women lose optimism in their career potential?
While men are doing more at home than their father’s generation, women continue to disproportionately shoulder the load at home, in many cases enabling their partner’s singular work focus. And the cycle continues!
Meanwhile many men can’t even see that the playing field is tipped, essentially invalidating the lived experience of their women co-workers. It makes me think of the many women’s voices that have been twisted and silenced for so long when calling out sexual harassment. Finally in this Harvey Weinstein epoch, women are being heard.
Contributor Bio
Lisa Levey is a veteran diversity consultant, having worked with leading organizations for more than two decades to assist them in realizing the underutilized leadership potential of women. Her current work focuses on engaging men as allies and partners. She led the design and development of the Forte Foundation’s Male Ally signature resource platform for engaging men in diversity work and architected a pilot program to launch corporate male ally groups. She blogs for the Huffington Post and the Good Men Project on gender norms at work and at home. In the spring of 2018 partnering with her husband Bryan, Lisa is launching Genderworks, a coaching practice for dual-career professional parents to support them in navigating the obstacles to gender equality at work and at home. Lisa earned an MBA with highest honors from the Simmons School of Management and a BS with distinction from Cornell University in applied economics.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Voice of Experience: Paula Moreira, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs
Voices of ExperienceThe body and top of the pyramid are driven by effort and personal mission, respectively. Those traits, combined with her drive, have fueled Moreira’s career.
A Career Spanning Regions
Moreira’s interest in finance is rooted in lessons her parents ingrained in her early on. “They taught me how important it is to work hard and dream big to attain financial independence,” Moreira says.
That’s one reason a career in finance had always appealed to her, as she knew that industry would give her ample opportunity to achieve those goals. She studied industrial engineering to develop her technical expertise, and then began her finance career at a French bank. She soon moved to Credit Suisse, which gave her the opportunity to work in New York. “I had always dreamed about working in that important financial center,” she says of her initial move from Brazil to New York.
While in the US, she pursued an MBA at Harvard Business School to complement her technical background with stronger management and leadership abilities. After completing her MBA in 2002, she began working on Goldman Sachs’ Latin American sales desk. Moreira was so excited to get to work that she cut short a vacation and began taking Spanish classes to sharpen her language skills.
She moved back to Sao Paulo in 2010 and has been there since, leading a team focused on serving Brazilian banks, asset managers, hedge funds, pension funds and insurance companies. Moreira has found the most rewarding aspect of her career to be building a successful team who is connected, committed to helping one another and working toward the same objective. Moreira is also fulfilled by providing her clients with superior support and ensuring they achieve their goals.
Identifying Transformative Trends
Currently, Moreira is particularly excited about growth dynamics in Brazil, as the country emerges from a difficult recession. She notes that as part of the cyclical rebound in the country, rates have been cut by more than a half, causing dynamic changes in the market. Moreira explains that significant investments previously allocated to money market funds are now being funneled to alternative asset classes like hedge funds – one of her biggest client bases – as well as investments in structured products and equity. “There is a significant opportunity to capture these trends in a country that is experiencing a big cyclical rebound,” she notes.
Moreira has also been interested in the impact of technology on the trading business, particularly the rise in electronic execution among credit, rates and commodities clients, a trend that has already been incorporated into foreign exchange trading. “It’s important that I connect my clients to our global platforms,” and notes, “I love my job because I’m constantly learning from my clients as well as other GS colleagues.”
Helping Advance Diversity
Last year, Moreira joined the Brazil Management Committee. This is in addition to her responsibilities as co-chair of the Brazil Diversity Committee, and she also previously served as co-head of the Brazil Women’s Network. During her tenure as co-chair of the Women’s Network, she learned firsthand how the network connects individuals and helps attract, develop and retain women. She also greatly enjoyed her role organizing content-rich events for members that were focused on topical issues in the workplace, such as the “confidence gap” many women face.
She has particularly enjoyed recruiting others to pursue careers in financial services by dispelling the perception that it’s hard to be a woman in finance. “It’s important to be present at schools and show people that they can reconcile work with personal lives and having a family,” she says. She hopes that her efforts will help plant the seeds for a more diverse workforce down the road.
“Because of cultural bias, many women lack confidence, and it’s vital to break these barriers and make sure women realize there are no obstacles in what they can achieve,” Moreira says. “I really hope that parents would ask their daughters to complete the same tasks that they ask of their sons in order to instill confidence and ambition in their daughters.”
Asking for Help – and Helping Others
Moreira knows that no one can do it alone, and she has learned to recognize the importance of asking for help and, in turn, helping others. “We often don’t ask for help, even though people feel rewarded when they have the chance to be the helper.” This realization has helped her to be more upfront about asking for support in both her personal and professional life.
She tries to make room in her personal framework for equal focus on family, work, and health, and often tries to organize weekend activities that bring family, friends and exercise together. She is proud of the wonderful family she has built with her husband, three daughters and two stepsons, and hopes she can inspire others.
The Growth Mindset as a Career Strategy
Career Advice, Next LevelImage via Shutterstock
By Lisa Larkowski
Life-long learning is more than a slogan.
Apparently even the brightest amongst us are limited if we do not continue to grow and evolve. This is commonly talked about as mindsets. A fixed mindset is a belief that intelligence and ability are set and unchangeable, while a growth mindset believes that intelligence and ability can be improved through your efforts, strategies, and help from others. Mindset researcher and expert Carol Dweck herself has tried to set the record straight and debunk the popular misconception that there are “pure” mindsets. Dweck in a 2016 Harvard Business Review article states “Everyone is actually a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets, and that mixture continually evolves with experience.”
What is the “Bright Woman effect”
The “Bright woman effect” sprang out of a phenomenon called “bright girl effect” in research which showed that girls had more fixed mindsets than boys, and in particular, the more intelligent the girl, the more likely she was to have a fixed mindset as opposed to a growth mindset. This helped explain why highly intelligent girls tended to give up faster than others when faced with new or difficult challenges. The line of reasoning followed, then, that if you were a bright girl with a fixed mindset, then your fixed mindset would follow you throughout your life. tle :
New research from Case Western Reserve University shows that the so-called “bright girl effect” does not persist into a “bright woman effect.” The research smashes two misconceptions, the first being that highly intelligent women have fixed mindsets. And secondly, that each of us has either a fixed or growth mindset that endures through our lives. It turns out that we have both fixed and growth mindsets. That they are changeable. And as Carol Dweck has indicated, that with effort, we can tip the scales in favor of growth mindset. The “bright woman effect” is a long-held assumption that the more intelligent a woman is, the more likely she is to have a fixed mindset as opposed to a growth mindset. But until now, no studies focused on the connection between intelligence and mindsets in adults.
Case Western’s examination of three separate studies shows that the “bright girl effect” does not endure into adulthood. The studies revealed fixed and growth mindsets in both men and women, but they were not consistent with gender or intelligence. As the researchers concluded, “There is limited evidence for a “bright woman effect” which is good news contrary to what it sounds like because the study’s results suggest that fixed and growth mindsets can shift over time and with circumstances.
Gimme Growth
It goes without saying that growth mindsets are more productive than fixed mindsets.
Growth mindsets are associated with greater success confronting challenges, taking risks, persisting in the face of adversity, and succeeding by learning from mistakes and setbacks. Fixed mindsets lead to lack of persistence, inaction, and harsh self-judging and “create an urgency to prove yourself over and over again.” Who wouldn’t want to get rid of fixed mindsets and bring more growth mindsets into their lives? Ironically, the key to getting more growth mindset lies with our fixed mindsets.
In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck suggests practices for working with fixed mindset triggers as the first step in journey towards what she calls a “true growth mindset.” Here are two things to consider.
Embrace your fixed mindsets. Notice when they are present, observe them, and most important, try not to judge them. Fixed mindsets can show up in situations where we feel challenged, stressed, overwhelmed, criticized, when setbacks occur, or when we see colleagues succeed. Become curious about your reactions. Ask yourself: How do I feel and react in challenging situations? Am I reacting with anxiety, anger, incompetence, or defeat, or instead with curiosity to learn more? Accept your thoughts and feelings and work with and through them, as much as you need to. You can even give your fixed mindset a name or a persona to help you call them out when you notice them.
Intentionally shift to growth mindset. When you notice your fixed mindsets showing up, actively shift yourself into growth mindset by asking yourself questions like: What can I learn from this? How can I improve? What steps can I take to help myself? This begins to loosen the grip of your fixed mindset and open you up to learning, possibility, and forward movement.
Make Friends with Your Fixed Mindsets
Shifting from a fixed to growth mindset is possible, but it takes work. It requires recognizing the situations or events that trigger us into a fixed mindset in the first place. It means looking at our feelings and reactions and then working with those with self-kindness and non-judgment.
Our mindsets are not written in stone. The more we can recognize and work with our fixed mindset triggers in the areas that challenge us, the more we can take charge of our reactions and bring more growth mindset and its benefits into our lives.
The Business Case for Gender Diversity: Necessary But Not Sufficient
Career Advice, Guest ContributionImage via Shutterstock
Guest contributed by Lisa Levey
The business case or economic justification for gender diversity is front and center in any discussion of the subject.
Yet as a veteran diversity consultant, I don’t see the business case is getting the job done. It’s not that the business case is unimportant. Clearly, it’s critical but while the business case is necessary, it’s not sufficient.
There has long been evidence of the links between gender diversity and positive business outcomes – enhanced financial performance, greater creativity and innovation, and less risk among others. In 2008 the U.S. and the world fell into an economic downturn of epic proportions. Yet as late as the spring of 2007, the International Monetary Fund or IMF was messaging continued optimism for the global financial markets.
How could the IMF – explicitly tasked with monitoring the health of global financial markets – have missed the signs? An independent study found that ‘groupthink’ fueled by lack of diversity in perspective was to blame and gender diversity is a powerful means to bring that diversity of perspective to the table.
In June 2011 Christine LaGarde became the first female leader of the IMF replacing her predecessor Dominique Strauss-Kahn who was at the helm in the run-up to the global financial crisis. In 2016 LaGarde was unanimously voted for another 5 year term.
The IMF example powerfully illustrates the limitations of the business-case only bias characterizing our current approach to justifying a focus on gender diversity. If bringing the world’s economies to their knees does not provide sufficient evidence of the business case for diversity – and the economic hazards of homogeneity – it’s clear the business case must only be a piece of a bigger puzzle.
Most white men approach gender diversity, all diversity truth be told, with trepidation. They experience the topic as harmful, fraught with conflict and risky. For some men, the very idea of enhanced gender diversity elicits anger. They perceive women’s initiatives as reverse discrimination and see support for greater gender diversity as undermining their professional security and status. Gender diversity makes many men feel awkward, confused and guilty; they keep their distance thinking, ‘I’m not one of those guys. I’m a good guy. I’m not doing anything wrong.’ But of all men’s problems with gender diversity, the biggest barrier to their involvement is indifference and apathy. In their mind’s, gender diversity is a women’s issue.
But that is where they would be completely mistaken!
Diversity is about evolving work cultures so that men can be the far more engaged fathers they long to be. Diversity is about men being able to take paternity leave – without career penalty – so they can experience the profound bonding with their child in his or her earliest days. Diversity is about men’s wives and partners being paid equitably, so she can contribute more financially, and he can feel less financial pressure. Diversity is about men’s mothers being able to reenter the workforce after divorce so that she can support herself and rebuild her self-esteem, in many cases. Diversity is about men’s sisters who want to leave unfaithful or violent husbands but don’t feel financially able to do so.
Diversity is about men’s daughters having the same professional opportunities as their sons and their sons having the same opportunities to be involved parents as their daughters. Diversity is about men’s daughters not having to deal with the sexually inappropriate norms that are pervasive in the workplace. Diversity is about men’s female bosses, many incredible mentors, not getting the opportunities they deserve because they’re deemed too nice – or not nice enough – to be a senior leader.
Diversity is about men recognizing that many of their seemingly harmless behaviors – assuming a new mother is not up for the challenge of a new job or stretch assignment without even asking her, making sexual jokes that demean, talking over women in meetings, paying the women you manage less than the men because you can – don’t just affect those other women. They affect his women [and girls] too by normalizing and perpetuating the status quo.
While gender diversity is the smart thing to do in a business sense, it is also the right thing to do in so many ways. We shouldn’t be so reluctant in the business world to say that aloud! Helping men realize the connections between gender diversity at work – and in their lives outside of work – has been an enormous missing link. Gender diversity is not just about men helping women to thrive at work. It is about men being full partners in driving change because they know just how much gender diversity at work is connected to so many parts of their lives and has repercussions far beyond their workplaces.
My vision is for white men to be an important voice at the diversity table, listening, sharing, and working to co-create new norms. Gender diversity is not a zero-sum game. It’s about evolving the work world for the 21st century in ways that improve the lives of women and men.
When we talk about gender diversity, in addition to articulating the economic case, let’s also talk about how it deeply affects men – the people they care about, the values they hold, the lives they want to lead, and the world they want to create for themselves and their children.
Contributor Bio
Lisa Levey is a veteran diversity consultant, having worked with leading organizations for more than two decades to assist them in realizing the underutilized leadership potential of women. Her current work focuses on engaging men as allies and partners. She led the design and development of the Forte Foundation’s Male Ally signature resource platform for engaging men in diversity work and architected a pilot program to launch corporate male ally groups. She blogs for the Huffington Post and the Good Men Project on gender norms at work and at home. In the spring of 2018 partnering with her husband Bryan, Lisa is launching Genderworks, a coaching practice for dual-career professional parents to support them in navigating the obstacles to gender equality at work and at home. Lisa earned an MBA with highest honors from the Simmons School of Management and a BS with distinction from Cornell University in applied economics.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Getting visibility for career advancement
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!It is important for bosses, sponsors and even peers to know what you are capable of and see what projects you are working on. Externally it is good to be seen by people in other firms too as although you might choose to be a “lifer” in one firm, you may also one day look for a change. Building a network is crucial to a career that is broad and long as people drive processes and innovate new products.
For eleven years here at theglasshammer.com we have profiled a senior woman on a Monday in our Voice of Experience column and on some Thursdays we profile Mover and Shakers and Rising Stars. We also have addressed intersectionality since the beginning, making sure in our profiles, interviews and panel events that all types of women are visible.
We have written over 800 profiles in total and we have not finished yet so as we look ahead for the rest of 2018, we are looking for great women to profile in financial and professional services and Fortune 1000 companies for the rest of the year. Thematically. we are looking for LGBTQIA Leaders for our June Pride series and then Men who Get it for July and then Latina leaders for September.
Please apply to louise@theglasshammer.com if you wish to be considered as a “profilee”.
We do not cover entrepreneurs for one reason that we have had in place from the beginning and that is because women are often encouraged to leave big business. Our site has always been about navigating your career inside industries (money, oil, big law) that have formal and also implicit male structures and hierarchies
Voice of Experience: Pamela M. Harper, Griesing Law, LLC
Voices of ExperienceDomain expertise is not sufficient for success, says Pamela Harper.
“Being able to navigate the political landscape is just as important as being technically competent.” And, she adds, it’s distinct from knowing the unwritten rules, but includes the ability to understand the subtle nuances that comes with time and expertise. “What is unsaid is often more important than what is said.”
Two Disciplines Create a High-Powered Career
After earning graduate degrees in both law and business, Harper worked at a law firm where her career took a turn to industries that she never would or could have anticipated, such as aviation, consulting and money management, with each position allowing her to use skills she had developed in grad school.
“People had questioned why I attended both business and law school, but both degrees have proven to be invaluable. I wanted to do whatever I could to gain a competitive edge, and this combination has supplied that for my entire career.”
One of the professional achievements she is most proud of so far was being part of a team that built a comprehensive compliance program for an institutional money management firm. To ensure they were as thorough as possible, they took the extra step of subjecting it to a voluntary third-party audit, a precaution that is rarely taken.
To this day, she says her former team still receives recognition for the robust compliance controls that were put in place. “Many small money management firms don’t realize that compliance can be a competitive differentiator,” she notes; instead they see it as a cost and therefore don’t allocate sufficient funds. “Forward-thinking companies consider it a form of revenue protection and therefore a risk management tool.”
As chair of her firm’s Corporate Transactions and Compliance practice group, Harper is intrigued by two current issues in corporate compliance: First, she notes that the level of misconduct that has been witnessed recently has been staggering, but she believes it will lead boards to pay an increased amount of attention to the impact of corporate culture on business strategy and reputation.
“Ignore it and the result will be decreased brand equity and diminished shareholder value. Boards will start taking these issues seriously and give them the attention they deserve,” she says, adding that while culture is often perceived as a HR issue in reality, it is a risk issue. “There will be a higher level of scrutiny and attention, and the complacency that has allowed boards to willfully ignore misconduct and aberrant behavior will no longer be acceptable.”
Second, she finds that very few boards have separate stand-alone compliance committees and even fewer have members who are knowledgeable about corporate compliance. The prevailing trend has been to draw potential board members from the ranks of current or former CEOs, but she noted that as board refreshment occurs, hopefully companies will begin to consider candidates with backgrounds in corporate compliance and risk management.
As part of her focus on compliance, Harper is undertaking the process of becoming a FINRA arbitrator. She says that given the repercussions of the Madoff affair, she has been surprised by the number of people who are neither savvy about their investments or their rights as investors. “Being part of a panel that can deliver recommendations on how to resolve those types of conflicts is very interesting to me.”
A Firm That Supports Women – Every Day
Currently Harper is thriving at a woman-owned law firm, which she says embodies the highest caliber of legal services, while creating an environment where women don’t have to make an artificial choice between succeeding in their careers and having a thriving personal life. “Those shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, and we have created a unique culture that doesn’t assign origination credit, which contributes to a collaborative team environment and deters intra-office competition.”
She has found over the years that women in the industry face one challenge that men don’t: “Regardless of your credentials and intellectual bandwidth, you still have to prove yourself every day. Period. Women do not have the luxury of mediocrity.”
One key way to bolster your career is to recognize the difference between what a mentor and a sponsor can do for you. “A mentor is nice to have and will give you general advice, but a sponsor — someone who typically occupies a positon of power and is invested in your success — is a must-have,” she says, adding that they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
And she urges even women who have achieved a high level of success to remain intellectually curious. “It’s easy to become stale when you reach a certain point professionally and personally, but it’s vital to keep growing.” That’s always part of Harper’s plan; in addition to her work with FINRA, she is planning to earn a certificate in the business of art.
Further indulging her passion for art, Harper serves on the board for the Center for Emerging Visual Artists and also is an avid supporter of cancer research.
Mover and Shaker: Heather Andrews, Vice President of Strategic Accounts, WEX Corporate Payments
Movers and ShakersThat philosophy, along with her willingness to step through open doors – even the scary ones – has fueled her career trajectory.
Capitalizing on New Opportunities Brings Success
Although Andrews studied psychology, she didn’t see a clear path for a career without attending grad school, but was ready to enter the working world. She accepted an offer doing retirement plan education, which opened up an exciting world as she became increasingly interested in the role that employee communications play in benefits and helping employees engage in their future.
It was an especially pivotal time in the industry as 401(k)s were increasingly usurping defined benefit plans, creating new choices for employees and new roles for organizations to manage around this reality. She returned to school to earn her master’s degree in leadership and change management in organizations, which meshed well with her psychology background, and then branched off to do some independent consulting where she could assist organizations confronting major system changes.
Along the way she engaged with a startup tech firm that was building a new benefits platform to consult on their business and communications planning. It ended up being a major opportunity as the company grew rapidly as the first online benefits platform to hit the market. Andrews wore all the customer-facing hats and stayed with the company as it was acquired to become Evolution1and eventually WEX Health.
Helping grow that business from being the fifth person to its success today is the professional achievement she is most proud of so far. “Being part of that groundbreaking team as the business grew from something so small and new to influencing an entire industry and becoming something of such incredible value was so exciting,” she says.
Moving from healthcare to the corporate payments executive leadership team offers a new world for Andrews to explore. “It’s a huge change that really allows me to stretch my brain,” she says. “I realize that a lot of faith has been put into me in this role at a critical time of growth, change and risk, and that’s motivating. It inspires me to make a difference.”
Growing Along the Way Through Personal Lessons and Mentors
When she first entered the corporate world, Andrews held a common perception, that she wasn’t sure how much of an impact one individual can make. That was part of what she loved about consulting: Seeing that people can make a major impact from the start, particularly if they can confidently work with professionals at all levels, unafraid to let their opinions and ideas be heard even if they get shot down.
And she knows that much of her success has come from leveraging personal and professional relationships. “Ethics and hard work have been important factors in my career, but I know that doors were opened for me because people had faith in what I can do, and then I was not afraid to step through them,” she says, adding that success comes when you lean forward and take chances, especially when you’re part of an entrepreneurial organization.
One role model who stands out is a female attorney at WEX Health who shared insights on why female business leaders have to be true to themselves, never compromising what they believe in and exuding confidence that you can accomplish it.
In addition, she cites WEX’s Integrated Leadership Development Program as having been crucial to her success at WEX for the networking and coaching it provided. “I have this fantastic coach who is also a woman who has been through a diverse and rich career,” she says. “This perspective as a successful woman in business helps me navigate what I need to do next as I continue to grow my career.”
But you don’t need a formal program to grow: Andrews finds life lessons all around her, from leaders on any stage, whether professional or political, who are able to balance assertiveness with having the grace to hear and respect people around them. “They are able to use that professional fire to be successful but maintain high ethical standards that they aren’t afraid to share vocally. I admire people who are unafraid to step out and say ‘I don’t care what others think; this is what I believe is right.’”
And sometimes we experience a hard-earned lesson, says Andrews, as she recalls a time early in her career when she was still working on retirement plans. She made a bold promise about how easy a migration would be, without fully thinking through how a failure to deliver might affect her equally young client. When the project ended up being more complex than expected, this client was taking the heat internally. “I didn’t embrace her vulnerability, and I lost her trust. This incident has always stood out to me as a reminder that you have to understand your counterparts and the position you’re putting them in by what you’re promising.”
Of course, inspiration also comes from home, as Andrews finds through her husband and four boys, who range in age from 15 to five. “I see myself through their eyes and want to be an example because every single day will impact their lives.”
Treasured family time includes an annual summer trek to a new national park, and winters spent skiing and snowboarding. This activity has an ulterior motive, she laughs. “Hopefully if they have a winter sport they like, they will stay in Minnesota close to me.”
Day-to-day, whatever they do, they do it together, whether it’s sports, music or academics. “We also take the time to volunteer together, as a family, which I believe is important to provide a positive influence that will affect how they are as adults.”
Let’s Move from a Gender War to a Gender Partnership
Career Advice, Guest ContributionGuest contributed by Lisa Levey
Gender equality is not about winning a war!
The war metaphor distracts us with finger pointing, blaming, and endlessly seeking to justify who’s the perpetrator and who’s the victim. The war metaphor keeps us stuck. The reality is we all – both women and men – fall victim to highly gendered thinking. We are stuck in gender binaries and it has been, and in many ways continues to be, our conditioning.
In an experiment that has been repeated many times and redesigned in multiple ways, both women and men demonstrate a male-bias for leadership positions in the workplace. The experiment might go something like this: participants are asked to rate the resumes of candidates for a leadership position. They are told that each group will be evaluating the strength of one among multiple candidates. What the participants don’t know is that everyone is looking at the same exact resume. The only thing that has been changed is the name and gender [and in other experiments the race or ethnicity] of the candidate. Both women and men evaluate the supposed male candidate more favorably, even indicating he should be paid more.
The Revolution of Declining Expectations
Several years ago at the pinnacle of the financial implosion, I listened to Harvard Law Professor Nancy Gertner’s keynote address at a women’s leadership conference where she passionately described the women’s movement in the 1970’s as a revolution focused on changing the workplace and changing families, not about women having the choice to work outside the home. She went on to say that far too little had changed in either sphere and that change requires viable alternatives, which remained elusive, with companies overwhelmingly still family unfriendly and as a result, continued skewed gender norms at home. Retired Federal Judge Gertner [appointed during the Clinton administration] described the current state as the Revolution of Declining Expectations which needed to be remedied by igniting the consciousness of women and men[LL1] [LL2].
Yes, women can be a top leader -but if she has children, she had better be a good mom first. And men get major kudos for being an involved dad, BUT he better be a breadwinner too or we’re not quite sure what to make of him.
Both men and women suffer from a dissonance between their egalitarian ideology and their behavior. Take for instance the common scenario where a man strongly espouses gender equality, yet somehow that doesn’t translate to his negotiating a parental leave for more than a paltry week or two or realizing that his relationship to work must evolve if he plans on being a co-parent rather than a parent-assistant. No more flying out to a client on a day or two’s notice or heading out for 18 holes of golf, feeling fully justified because he spent an hour on Saturday morning playing with the kids.
I saw this dissonance in stark relief as a member of a research team examining millennial dads. In The New Millennial Dad: Understanding the Paradox of Today’s Fathers, two-thirds of men reported they should share care of their children equally with their spouse but only one-third actually did so. At the same time, over 90% of millennial fathers indicated wanting greater responsibility and men were twice as willing as women to seek advancement, even if it meant more time spent at work.
Similarly, a woman passionate about gender equality, especially about her husband sharing the load at home, fails to realize that her dictating the terms of engagement when it comes to parenting and household management renders him a servant, not a partner. Instead of grabbing the baby in frustration if dad doesn’t know what comforting techniques work best, she – and he – are better served in the long-run by her encouraging his efforts and giving him alone time with the baby when he can develop his comforting repertoire. And, if she blows a gasket when her husband returns from school shopping with their daughter sporting – to mom’s mind – an awful haircut, she must realize her parenting micromanagement not only saps his confidence but chills his desire to be involved.
The Mirror Image of Gender Inequality
The metaphor I’ve coined to illustrate the complexity of gender, and the fight for equality, is that of a mirror image.
Men, because of their gender, enjoy a privileged status in the workplace, which I’ve seen is highly challenging for many men to see or accept. His path upward is facilitated by countless subtle and not-so-subtle norms, ranging from male senior leaders who see in him themselves earlier in their careers, his knowing – having been schooled in the masculinity code – the importance of self-promotion for advancement, and his intense commitment and singular focus on work fueled by having a spouse or partner who is accountable for home and family management.
Similarly women, because of their gender, enjoy a privileged status as a parent and the leader at home. Everyone assumes a mother knows how to nurture a child instinctively, rather than the reality of her building skill through trial and error. School and camp default to mom as the go-to parent, even if dad explicitly asks to be called first, as my husband and I witnessed year after year after year. If a woman decides to step out of the workforce for a time, because the pressure at work feels too great and/or she wants to spend more time with her child, she is comforted by the familiar trope that she is being a good – no better – mother. But it’s hard to imagine a man feeling supported to stop working – or even cutting back at work – so he can be a better father. Ask dads who are the primary caretakers, as I have, about feeling welcomed into the mom clique at school or on the playground. While some have a positive story to tell, it’s far more common to hear about their feeling excluded, literally like the odd-man out
While women continue to struggle for their rightful place at the workplace leadership table, similarly men continue to struggle for their rightful place at home and as a parent/ caretaker for their loved ones.
The Power of Gender Partnerships
For the last 2 ½ years, I have seen the type of consciousness raising that Judge Gertner described as a remedy for the Revolution of Declining Expectations in a very unlikely place, the campuses of elite business schools. It began with my attending the first event hosted by the Harvard Business School Manbassadors, a group of men who sought to support gender equality at business school and in the workplace. Over more than two years, I have been researching male ally groups across the country and it has given me great hope for the future of gender equality.
These young men work closely with their female peers who are involved with women’s leadership groups on campus. They have candid conversations about gender, educate themselves about gender inequalities at work and at home, and work together to affect change.
I have been deeply inspired listening to young men share their desire to be a good partner in fully supporting their girlfriend’s/ wife’s career aspirations and being an inclusive leader that facilitates the professional development and advancement of women and men. They see supporting gender diversity and gender equality as both the smart thing as well as the right thing to do. They have seen the struggles of their sisters, mothers, friends and work colleagues and they have heard the challenges of their female business school peers. They want to make it better, not only for women but for themselves too. They don’t want to be absent dads and they’re tired of the locker room talk and behaviors. It doesn’t square with the women they see all around them, including the women they care about in their lives.
Male ally groups have provided a powerful forum for men to get involved and to transition from ‘the problem’ to ‘part of the solution.’ Working side-by-side with their female peers, these men and women are grappling with gender in all its complexity and seeking to rewrite the gender rules.
Rather than sapping our energy fighting with one another, or becoming resigned to ‘that’s the way it is,’ women and men can be far more effective working together to make gender equality real and not just aspirational in our lives.
That my friends, is key to getting us unstuck!
Contributor Bio:
Self-Awareness – What Can You Not Access Yourself and What to Do About That?
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Reading is the supreme life hack – medium.com recently declared gifting a list of psychology and philosophy books, a couple of which got added to my (long) reading list.
Reading is an executive habit, with top executives reading at a much higher rate than others, with some stats quoting one book per week. But, it is what you do with what you read that counts.
Behavior change is notoriously hard for anyone. Addiction theory and neuroscience tells us that it takes sixteen weeks to bring a habit.
There is no doubt that our habits are socially acceptable like over working, over extending and never believing enough is enough. Then there is the whole topic of feeling worthy! Our fires are fueled by our self- talk, our mental models and our beliefs – implicit and explicit. Are you consciously goal setting or is the driver of your bus your unconscious mind? Just what role does the belief set that has been formed since childhood play right now? Our fear can fuel us without us ever realizing the agenda it creates while we go about our business.
Are you ready to talk about it and go on a journey of discovery?
Work with nicki@evolvedpeople.com as your executive coach to kill those gremlins!
Voice of Experience: Ilona Steffen, Global Head of Marketing and Insights, PwC
Voices of ExperienceThey all worked differently, and I realized there were a variety of options for having success in both the workplace and family life, from having nannies to a husband who stayed home to stepping out for a period,” says PwC’s Ilona Steffen.
As for style, she noticed some were very warm and tuned-in, with high emotional intelligence, while others exhibited more “male” traits in their style. “The No. 1 most important aspect for me was to find my own style by watching others. I saw some whom I knew would never be me, and others that exhibited a style I was more comfortable with, and that gave me role models and context which allowed me to see myself down the road,” she says. She recommends that women notice the various role models all around, and seek them out to have conversations and be highly aware of what might work for you.
A Career Planned with Balance in Mind
Steffen is what she calls “unusually planful,” and it shows in the great care she took to look ahead at her career aspirations. She thought early on about the professional implications of being a woman and how many years of experience she needed under her belt to be prepared to have a child. That’s why she chose an accelerated course of work that offered a great deal of work experience in her early 20s.
“It’s smart for mothers to have those conversations early with daughters to help them see how many years they’ll want to be working before they feel comfortable taking a break, as it is different for different careers,” she advises.
Steffen started in banking in Germany and then attended business school in New York which broadened her horizons and introduced her to consulting, which appeared to be a career where you could advance quickly. Her bosses would ask why she was in a hurry, but her life plan dictated that she reach a senior point before she had children to make it easier to achieve the flexibility she needed.
She found consulting to be fast-paced with its non-stop travel, but it was a good fit because it allowed her to grow at an incredible speed; then when she and her husband decided to start a family, she knew it was time to find something that would allow her to be at home more, to be the type of parent she wanted to be.
Her role at PwC has been ideal because it allows her to apply what she had learned in her client-facing career to internal strategy, combined with flexibility. Currently, she is leading the Markets & Insights (M&I) team which is part of a new global marketing organization at PwC. Despite it being a highly demanding role, some of it she can do remotely which helps create a bit of balance for family time.
As part of her M&I role, created last summer she was tasked with building a global thought leadership capability for PwC, a charge that has allowed her to build a new team, hiring 12 people in the last four months. “Our firm wants to be sought after in the areas where we excel, which means elevating how we write, what we write and how we position ourselves through content and ideas, to build the business around ideas,” she says.
Building this leading-edge content has exposed her to the interesting perspective of how
people consume information and how PwC can add value as they experiment with new formats and delivery mechanisms to meet audience demands, such as higher expectations for business content and a shorter attention span.
“Some people want visuals; others stories; so we are constantly thinking through how content is evolving and getting the right piece to the right person in the right way to have the impact we want,” she explains. That of course means they have to produce a prolific number of content assets around one topic, committing to an area over a sustained period of time to offer a variety of channels and formats.
Her first piece of thought leadership was developed 15 years ago and now she is responsible for a large team and transforming what thought leadership looks like at PwC, while still in an environment where having a career and being a good parent is possible.
Paving the Way for Others
“Everyone needs to find a purpose in what they do, and mine is to replicate my experience for others. Over the years I have had dozens of accomplished women who were in the same spot and needed an option that would allow them to balance,” she says. “I have made that my personal purpose — to help others find that opportunity.”
Steffen leads a diverse team, with a high proportion of career-oriented, successful women who are also moms. They don’t want to slow down, but need different parameters, where they can hold a smart job and continue to learn and grow while being the parent they want to be.
She said at the time her path was unusual, but she made it clear it was non-negotiable and then worked extra hard to prove she could be just as good or better when working from home and accomplishing as much or more than others. While her bosses initially saw it as a temporary solution, she was proud she had the courage to do it and now is glad she has the chance to motivate others to do the same — to be clear on what you need, but also work extra hard to prove to others that it can be done.
She finds that while travel and face-to-face meetings can be harder for parents, technology is improving to eventually bridge the gap, and the speed in which it is advancing gives her hope that these opportunities will continue to grow.
With both she and her husband as working parents to two children, ages 11 and 13, Steffen notes you have to be smart about how you set up your private life and hobbies. “I shifted them to activities the family can do together, such as breeding cats and bunnies, to make sure that the hours we spend together meet my personal self-fulfillment and happiness, but also allow us to do things together as a family.”
Women in Corporate America Continue to Feel Like a Square Peg in a Round Hole
Career Advice, Guest ContributionGuest contributed by Lisa Levey
Gender diversity is on the radar in corporate America after more than 10 years of research highlighting the economic benefits of women in leadership roles.
Companies have invested in gender initiatives that aim to support women’s advancement and diversify the leadership pipeline. Some companies have been at it for multiple decades. Yet, the results seem to be much ado about nothing.
McKinsey and LeanIn’s 2017 annual Women in the Workplace report on the state of women’s advancement recounts the sad tale – women fall behind early in their careers and the gender gaps widen at each step along the career ladder. And year after year the changes are marginally positive at best.
So what is going on? Why despite much effort on the part of organizations does the big picture of women’s place in corporate America look eerily similar to 10, 20, or more years ago?
The truth is that despite much effort, corporate work environments – developed by and for men – continue to be defined by masculine rules of engagement. In multiple ways, so many women at work continue to feel like a square peg in a round hole.
Masculine and Feminine Behavioral Norms Diverge
To understand the disconnect, let’s begin with the well-researched premise that masculine behavioral norms are deeply linked to hierarchy. Men think in terms of competition and increasing their relative positioning, aka power and status. Dominance behaviors often define their approach.
Translated into the workplace, this looks like men bragging about their accomplishments – accomplishments that often are inflated. This looks like talking over others and mansplaining – talking without interruption – to control the floor or from lack of self-awareness. This looks like posturing and talking a big game to get the upper hand in a negotiation. This looks like sexualizing women – perhaps unintentionally – or intentionally with the goal of marginalizing them by seeking to ‘keep them in their place.’
Women have been socialized to equalize, rather than to differentiate, resulting in a predisposition to share rather than to concentrate power. Stephen Lukes, a sociologist who has written extensively about power, contrasts the approach of getting an individual to do something they may, or may not, want to do with a far more sophisticated and cooperative alternative in which both those who do – and do not – benefit from the status quo have agency to influence the system. Women tend toward the latter.
Translated into the workplace, this looks like sharing credit, even in situations where others played a small role. It translates into women being more soft-spoken and less likely to put someone on the spot. It translates into women focusing on shared goals, rather than power differentials, in negotiations.
The Rockefeller Foundation commissioned Korn Ferry to study women CEOs to learn how more women can make it to the top. What they found was, in comparison to their male counterparts, women CEOs demonstrated far more humility, were more likely to credit others as playing a central role in their shared success, and were significantly less likely to self promote.
Leadership = Men, Masculine Norms Prevail
Not surprisingly, leadership in the business world has been defined through the gender lens of masculinity, rendering women lacking. How many times has it been said, “she lacks gravitas” or “she doesn’t have enough executive presence to be a leader.”
Studies show that women are deeply drawn to a sense of purpose and meaning, often connected to helping others and to women’s vision of making the world a better place. A longitudinal study of more than 700 engineering students at premier universities found that a central reason so many women leave the engineering field was a disconnect between their drive to solve problems that make a difference in people’s lives and their workplace experience of corporate proclamations rather than demonstrated commitment to improving society. Similarly the Korn Ferry study reported women leaders were driven by a strong sense of purpose, perceiving their companies as positively impacting the world.
Research by the OECD [an organization focused on promoting policies that improve the economic and social well-being of people worldwide] and UNWomen show that when women have greater access to economic resources, they spend those dollars on things like health care and education, bettering not only themselves and their families but also their communities in the process. Yet in the business world, where cold, hard analytical thinking is king, male leaders denigrate women’s emotions, marginalizing women by characterizing them as ‘not tough enough to make the hard decisions’ or ‘lacking business acumen.’ Why then are men, driven by emotion as they make risky trades on the stock market and pursue questionable acquisitions, [most of which provide NO economic benefit to shareholders,], praised for their gutsy decisions and held blameless for failures rationalized as the cost of doing business?
For most professional women, advancement is very important but, it is not their only goal. Thus, they are more likely to forgo an opportunity that does not fit into the big picture of their life at that time. Commitment and hard work are not an issue for women but the all-in, all-the-time definition of leadership that prevails is.[i] How many women start their long workdays having already fed their children, thrown in a load of laundry, answered some emails, made lunches and maybe even started dinner? Yet women receive messaging that they aren’t committed enough!
Bain & Company’s 2014 US gender partity research found that while women start out with as much, or more, career ambition than their male peers, after two short years on the job, their career aspirations decline precipitously while men’s remain constant.
Why the big drop? Women continually encounter the masculine leadership norm of the ideal worker who is singularly focused because they have a partner who deals with all the rest. What if we stopped telling women they aren’t committed enough at work? And what if we start telling men that they and their loved-ones are paying the emotional price for their no limits, masculine leadership model?
To make matters worse, it seems that no matter how women behave, they just can’t seem to get it right. Women who meet stereotypical gender expectations of being nurturing and accommodating – are deemed likable but “not leadership material” – while women who are assertive get kudos for possessing leadership potential but also judged as lacking interpersonal skills. Leadership or likeability – it seems women can only pick one.
The Problematic Value Proposition for Aspiring Women Leaders
When women in the pipeline look up, they see struggle because of their gender, little support to figure it out, and the need to combat even greater – not less – gender bias with each step up the corporate ladder. Feminine behavioral norms are devalued and even when women behave like men, they’re still judged lacking. Why then are we surprised when women don’t say, “Please sign me up for more of that?”
McKinsey and LeanIn’s 2017 Women in the Workplace report captures the struggle. Women progress at a slower rate than their male colleagues, despite asking for promotions at comparable rates and being no more likely to leave their companies. In fact, men report they are more likely to receive raises and promotions without even having to ask. Women in the study were nearly 5 times as likely as men to report gender played a role in their chance for a promotion or raise. Is it any wonder why women lose optimism in their career potential?
While men are doing more at home than their father’s generation, women continue to disproportionately shoulder the load at home, in many cases enabling their partner’s singular work focus. And the cycle continues!
Meanwhile many men can’t even see that the playing field is tipped, essentially invalidating the lived experience of their women co-workers. It makes me think of the many women’s voices that have been twisted and silenced for so long when calling out sexual harassment. Finally in this Harvey Weinstein epoch, women are being heard.
Contributor Bio
Lisa Levey is a veteran diversity consultant, having worked with leading organizations for more than two decades to assist them in realizing the underutilized leadership potential of women. Her current work focuses on engaging men as allies and partners. She led the design and development of the Forte Foundation’s Male Ally signature resource platform for engaging men in diversity work and architected a pilot program to launch corporate male ally groups. She blogs for the Huffington Post and the Good Men Project on gender norms at work and at home. In the spring of 2018 partnering with her husband Bryan, Lisa is launching Genderworks, a coaching practice for dual-career professional parents to support them in navigating the obstacles to gender equality at work and at home. Lisa earned an MBA with highest honors from the Simmons School of Management and a BS with distinction from Cornell University in applied economics.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com