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
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
Behaviors of the Incumbent Leaders and Their Effects on the Rest of Us.
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!The CEO Genome Project states that there are four behaviors that show up for senior leaders to set them apart.
A Genome project on anything is fascinating to me as it of course only can replicate on what went before and I am interested in futurism in conjunction with historical trends. Why? because otherwise from day dot until the end of time, we are going to have to live in denial that the legacy masculine trait data is skewing the potential of women and ironically modern evolved man. Why no one has really dwelled on this is a bit of mystery to me, or is it a conscious or unconscious omission? If we only talk about how old testosterone straight white American men have led, how do we expect women or other men who naturally are or aspire to not fit the mould of the stereotype?
The effect of us bowing to the patriarchy is serious. Lewinian Theory ( the foundation of organizational psychology and systems thinking) suggests that behavior is a function of our personality and the environment we are operating in. In real life, just about all of us can point to a female leader who has assimilated to what I like to call “Jack Welsh in a skirt” mode and with disastrous results for her and most who have to be part of that team. Yet, to punish that individual is to misunderstand the systemic forces and rewards that are real and active as long as the masculine trait pattern of leadership is considered the only one, or the superior one.
I have zero interest in stereotyping men into one group. I think there are amazing men out there but they too are subject to systemic forces that make them behaviorally choose (albeit consciously) to be people that given other conditions, they might not be.
This work is the key to Diversity. Diversity is culture work, it is not Noah’s Ark and until companies truly view it this way, there are only strategies to provide not real change to achieve.
So, in the meantime, if you want to navigate your career optimally and authentically, consider working with a coach who can help you.
Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com or nicki@evolvedpeople.com for a free 15 mins exploratory session.
Voice of Experience: Kimberly Hendry, Director of Global Operations, Corporate Payments at WEX
Voices of Experience“I wish I had learned earlier in my career not to take things personally as it can create obstacles in your day-to-day interactions and detracts from your overall work experience,” says WEX’ Kimberly Hendry.
“I have realized I wasted a lot of energy getting frustrated by things that weren’t being done to offend me. I have come to learn it is just business.”
Over the past few years she has concentrated on honing her skills in initiating difficult conversations, whether it’s letting someone go or helping to address team conflict. “You have to be willing to push through, and it’s important to remember that it’s probably not going to be as hard as you think it is, and ultimately you’ll be glad you had the conversation when it’s over.”
That attitude and acumen for tackling tough situations has propelled her through her upward rise in the fields of risk management and payments.
Setting the Groundwork for the International Stage
After graduating from college, Hendry held a variety of roles, primarily in management and operations, in industries ranging from banking to investments to public utilities. While her work took her from Boston to Phoenix, her home state of Maine called her back in 2007, and she returned there through a job at WEX. She started in risk management roles when the company was small – just the bank with no international subsidiaries – and her career has grown exponentially as WEX has.
Along the way she has managed a variety of components of risk. For the past two years, she has overseen a direct line of business’ global operations, rather than working across lines of businesses, a different role in that her teams are responsible for the day-to-day functions of client relationships. Now, she manages far-flung teams in London, Melbourne and Singapore, among other global locales.
“My career at WEX has been amazing in that I can grow globally and manage teams outside the United States with all the challenge and opportunities that presents,” she says. Coincidentally, it’s a position she had intended to hold even as a teen: As she perused her high school yearbook recently, she noticed that she had listed “international business” as one of her goals. “I can truly say, ‘mission accomplished,’” she says, given WEX’ international reach.
One of the achievements she is most proud of so far is also internationally related: In 2014 she worked in the U.K. for seven months setting up a joint venture between WEX Europe Services and Radius Payment Solutions Ltd. Highlights were taking over the European ExxonMobil card program and setting up a risk management division.
Currently, Hendry is immersed with integrating a family-owned business WEX acquired in the fall. While she’s “built and fixed a lot of things” over the years, she notes how different it is to help move staff into her organization – tapping into a different range of skill sets in order to address divergent operational cultures and the impact it has on the new staff to be brought onboard. “We have to focus on the success of both the financial product and the people piece simultaneously,” she says.
Looking more broadly at industry trends, another constant goal is working to help WEX address how to increasingly move to a closed loop network, improving margins by reducing the number of middle men.
Taking a Moment to Appreciate Success as Part of an Integrated Life
While the highly technical field of risk and payments can sometimes be intimidating to women, she has found it to be an excellent place to build a career, provided you are comfortable knowing you will largely operate in a male-dominated environment. For example, she says it’s not uncommon to be the only woman at a group of 30 people at a business dinner. “You will often be outnumbered, but that’s ok; you just have to be confident in who you are and what you bring to the table.”
On that note, she urges women in her position to never neglect to appreciate their accomplishments. She reminds herself often, in fact, to stop and enjoy where she is, the fruits of her labor and the road it took to get there.
“Women are frequently so focused on what’s next – how to advance and where you need to develop – that we don’t take the time to enjoy what we have accomplished,” Hendry points out. “While the next steps may be important, we shouldn’t become fixated on them at the expense of what we’ve already accomplished. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves.”
As a wife and mom to two boys, ages 15 and 12, she relishes family time and being outside – whether it’s hiking with her dog in the woods, skiing or running marathons and half marathons. They cherish their travel time together and she integrates history whenever possible, for example, sneaking in an event called “Tea with Eleanor” last summer when the family visited Campobello Island, where Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to spend time with his family. As Hendry says, “my boys may not appreciate the history lessons now but hopefully some day they will.”
Workplaces that Work for Women: Experiences Matter – The 2018 Catalyst Awards
Career Advice, NewsMy takeaway from the 2018 Catalyst Awards and Dinner is that owning your experiences is the first step and the second step is to not let them negate other people’s experiences if you are truly going to be a man or a woman who is going to see progress in our lifetime for gender equity.
Catalyst, the oldest and leading research and advisory nonprofit organization for advancing women at work, has a conference that is second to none for translating theory and research into practice with CEOs of major companies and theglasshammer.com was honored to attend the annual conference.
‘Workplaces that work for women, are workplaces that work for everyone’ was the theme and mantra of the day, with great companies getting to share some of the best practices that they have implemented to understand results beyond the rhetoric. And, the sub theme of the day was how to be a male ally or gender champion as men in the room spoke of how they wanted to see change. A stunningly sincere and impactful dinner speech by Carnival Corporation (Cruise Lines) CEO Arnold W. Donald, the dinner chair of the gala, created a genuine sense that some men really get it. Quoting Maya Angelou saying “When you know better, you do better” regarding gender equality and diversity. Mr. Donald spoke of his own experiences as a man of color while acknowledging humbly and implicitly that he knows experience does not in itself equal enlightenment; although for me, he was the most enlightened man of the day. It is so important to hear people and more importantly men to acknowledge that other people may individually or systemically due to their social identity (gender, ethnicity, orientation, nationality) have experiences that are not yours and that does not invalidate yours or theirs. I heard this man recognize his male privilege in a way which showed me real commitment to being an ally because his foundation was one of acceptance, not denial around his own gender’s historic position at work.
Deborah Gillis, President and CEO of Catalyst spoke at lunch regarding this topic of “how to” be a male ally or champion of women, advising the confrontation of the fact the level playing field has not always been there, and how men can “call it out” when everyone’s voices are not being heard.
She stated that Catalyst wanted to send out a beacon of hope in this watershed moment of #Metoo. She asked rhetorically, “How can we focus (on work), if we don’t feel safe?” and later in breakout sessions, Hilton panelist Laura Fuentes, SVP, Talent & Rewards, and People Analytics reiterated the need for psychological safety. Fuentes commented that behaviorial data was part of the ongoing evaluation and development process for managers which created an accountability to those who they lead and to the values and culture of the firm.
This method of actually measuring opinion and perception was also discussed by panelists from West Monroe Partners who took steps to formalize policy and communicate it in their firm. They did this so that perceived cultural norms such as time off and flexibility could be used positively and inclusively for all and equally implicit negative norms could be addressed also. Betsy Bagley, Senior Director and Consultant, Advisory Services, Catalyst and Katherine Giscombe, PhD, Vice President and Women of Color Practitioner, Advisory Services, Catalyst skillfully moderated this discussion around what actually can be done to create better workplaces for women with an organizational model worth checking out in Catalyst resource section.
Carla Harris, Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley led a superb closing session with her usual candid and engaging style, opening with, “we cannot manage, the way we were managed”.
Harris explained first how to get to management and the important difference between performance and relationship currency. In her “pearls” (of wisdom) session, she explained how sponsors do not need to know the good, the bad and ugly, but rather, “the good, the good and the good”. She advised women and men in the audience to understand that performance currency has diminishing returns, as the baseline is always to do a great job but to understand that over time people come to expect excellence from you. She stressed the importance of relationship currency in the advancement formula. She also stressed the importance of improvement via feedback saying, “data is your friend, you cannot fix it, if you don’t know its broken.”
Regarding leadership and change regarding diversity, Harris stated, “I cannot believe that three decades later, we are still talking about the business case for diversity. If you still aren’t clear,” she quipped, “I will tell you right now” and went on to explain that it’s about innovation and to innovate you need a lot of perspectives and that comes from multiple experiences and that experiences are born from having different people in your team.
Harris explained that people need to be courageous in soliciting other people’s opinion and that the trait of courageousness is needed for intentionality to happen for change with accountability and consistency present.
The initiatives that were recognized this year were The Boston Consulting Group with their Women@BCG, IBM with Leading the Cognitive Era Powered by the Global Advancement of Women, Nationwide with Our Associates’ Success Drives Business Success and Northrop Grumman Corporation with Building the Best Culture, Leveraging the Power of Women.
Great work, Catalyst! And good luck to Deborah Gillis in her new role.
Becoming a Great Leader: Managing Conflict in Teams
Career Advice, LeadershipGuest contributed by CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke
Let’s face it: Most of us hate conflict. Even the toughest among us are at least a little uncomfortable with it. When faced with it, many leaders and executives tend to opt out.
But, here’s the truth: The best and most creative solutions often happen when people opt in to conflict. Not an all-out brawl or a name calling wrestling match, but a quality sharing of how we really feel about a decision or an issue. To do this a leader must create optimal conditions and their job isn’t to have the right answer, but to create the space for the project, team, or organization to wrestle together to collaboratively come up with an answer and move forward.
Our decade and a half of experience working with teams shows that when even one person listens to and reflects on the opposing opinion of a peer with genuine curiosity, the change in the room is palpable. That combination of vision, opinion, and passion, when combined with curiosity, leads the entire team to new possibilities. That’s the role of a healthy dose of curiosity.
Too often a leader unwittingly defuses the tension by determining the right answer, Maybe you have as a leader or have seen leaders cutting off discussion and taking things off-line when people get too emotional or listening to the loudest or the favorite voice, the one whose thoughts are usually the same as the leader’s.
The Value of Vulnerability and Curiosity
When teams are vulnerable and curious, they use the natural energy of conflict and discover that it isn’t my way or your way, but a whole new way. New ideas emerge. Instead of a fight, there is magic.
It starts with people opting in, becoming vulnerable, and revealing what they really think, feel, and want. This allows for a free flow of opinions which can be more or less judgmental but if combined with curiosity, not righteousness or defensiveness) can use the energy of conflict to become a smarter and highly innovative team.
We’ve seen it time and time again in our work. Teams that master the use of vulnerability and curiosity produce creative and innovative solutions not just once, but over and over again. They are more resilient and they bounce back from setbacks and failure. People on these teams feel engaged and fulfilled, and they have more fun. Just an aside: It’s probably no surprise that vulnerability and curiosity work wonders in personal relationships too.
Either of these qualities can instantly transform a team in conflict. Put them together and teams make quantum leaps forward. It only takes one individual to make a difference.
And, remember that you don’t have to let go of your judgments or opinions. Curiosity means having your judgments and being open and interested in a different perspective. Being curious means considering that there may be more than one right way, reality, or answer.
Stopping the fight for your right way and being open to the ideas of others and taking an interest in how the other person came to his or her conclusion. Listening with the willingness to be influenced via an open mind.
Some helpful phrases that help demonstrate curiosity and elicit another’s response are:
So, want to transform your team? Here’s how:
The benefits of being curious include getting outside of your own story, which opens a greater pool of information to generate creative ideas. This can strengthen the team’s learning and growth.
Making the other person feel heard and considered can shift the energy from defense to cooperation, opening the door to new, creative possibilities and therefore transitioning the focus of the team from power struggles to idea expansion.
About the author
CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke are business consultants, speakers, and co-authors of The Beauty of Conflict: Harnessing Your Team’s Competitive Advantage (November 1, 2017).
They and their organization, specialize in helping professional women, leaders, teams and entire companies learn how to transform conflict into creativity and innovation.
Many thanks
Disclaimer: The views and opinions of Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Productivity – Is It All About Prioritizing to Feel Good at the End of the Week?
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!We all have tasks within our job that we like better than others, and most of us have some level of procrastination ability with the tasks we like less.
So, I use a system that works for me and it may work for you depending on several factors including how you think, learn and approach work as discussed in our “Do you know how you learn” career tip
I like to write down on a Monday morning all the things I need to do this week and then I assign priority- one being needs to happen ( like this weekly career tip column), to sales work (which I quantify by how many people I will talk to in a week), to admin and even life admin. Some things have a two, three, four or five assigned to them. If I get through all my ones, and half of my twos then by the end of the week I feel a sense of achievement and can have a reward of some kind. Possibly because I score very low on hedonism on the Hogan personality test this works for me and I can understand how other people would not like this feeling but the point is, there are ways to know yourself and get a system that works for you.
The next week I look back at the same list and ensure things dont stay low ranked. Even if it’s something I hate doing, I commit to making it a one within 3 -4 weeks( if that works for whatever the task is).
Have a go! It might help.
If you would like to figure out more about how you optimally work, Nicki is a qualified organizational psychologist and Exec coach. Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com or nicki@evolvedpeople.com for a free 15 mins exploratory session.
Voice of Experience: Elizabeth Martin, Partner, Goldman Sachs
Voices of ExperienceBy Cathie Ericson
“You have to be the author of your own path, and realize that you are going to do your best work when you are passionate about your goal,” says Goldman Sachs’ Elizabeth Martin.
Throughout her career, she tended to take career risks by shifting towards emerging problems or business trends versus following the more traditional banking path that had been successful for her predecessors. “It’s about ensuring you can make yourself relevant as the markets change, so you can maintain your career trajectory.”
Building a Career on Variety and Risk Taking
Martin joined Goldman Sachs in 2000 as a lateral hire from a different bank. “It felt like a big risk to change jobs, but I wasn’t being stretched in my first analyst role. I wasn’t learning from my manager and colleagues,” she says, adding that she realized early on that if your manager is not invested in advancing your career, you’re wasting time. “Since that point, I’ve recognized the importance of working for people who see your success as a measure of their personal and commercial success as well.”
Martin got her job in what you might call “the old-fashioned way,” passing out her resume on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs’ New York headquarters. Proving that even previous managers can be sponsors throughout your career, she was offered a role after receiving a review from her boss at a past internship with a competitor of Goldman Sachs.
For eight years, Martin worked in derivatives trading, a role she loved because derivatives give you the ability to constantly innovate solutions to new challenges facing clients. “Some women shy away from trading roles because they don’t see role models in the seats,” she says. But she notes, “Trading is about becoming an expert in how to value an asset and predict how the price may change over time. It’s a job that facilitates a huge amount of freedom to learn about different markets, asset classes, and emerging global trends, and also trains you in how to take calculated risks in life and in your career.”
During the financial crisis, her experience with derivatives and emerging financial regulations led her to shift to working alongside senior leaders to identify and implement a forward-looking strategy to address changes in the operating environment. She enjoyed being in strategy, where she had a seat at the table in adapting the business model to maintain a market leading position for their Equities business. The role also allowed her to engage with people across all divisions of the firm. “Investing in a broad network is critically important to your career. You make better and faster decisions if you have a broad set of perspectives upon which to draw.”
Two years ago, Martin joined Goldman Sachs’ electronic trading business, where the firm uses technology and quantitative analysis to decide when and where to trade a stock. When an opportunity arose to move to London last year, she jumped at the chance to work and live internationally.
Her career at Goldman Sachs has been varied – from New York to London, with roles in trading, derivatives, management and execution. “If you embrace change, Goldman is a great place to have a career,” she says.
Managing through Change in your Career and Life
The changes continue today: Like every other industry, the use of technology and data has altered the role of Goldman Sachs in the markets. Increasingly, trading occurs through a global network that connects clients to the firm and to marketplaces all over the world. She explains that technology has also allowed Goldman’s clients to reach places where they do not have a physical location – a game changer in accessing new markets around the world.
Martin notes that following the introduction of MiFID II, Europe has gone through “some of the most transformative market regulations in history,” and the result has been large investments in equities and electronic trading to ensure they earn the trust of clients to provide the best possible experience when executing trades at Goldman Sachs. “Markets change all the time. We never have a lack of interesting, global, technical problems to solve.”
Just like the markets have changed, so did what Martin wanted from Goldman Sachs throughout her career. “At the beginning of my career, I was more focused on short-term milestones, like the performance of my business that month,” Martin says, “but over time, I learned that what I really cared about was the cumulative impact in my life – my career is an important aspect of my life but not my only priority.”
Making partner was one of her greatest achievements “because it recognized my contributions to the firm over my career, but also because it happened just after I had three amazing daughters in five years. I’m very passionate about my career and my family.”
Martin also knows the value of a family who supports her career. “Having a partner who is empathetic to the challenges of working women and fully supports my ambitions… even if that means he needs to take a share of school drop offs…has certainly been a key ingredient in striking some balance in my life.”
A result of her childhood outside of Boston, her favorite way to spend family time is skiing, particularly now that the Martin family can venture across Europe. “Most of my favorite childhood memories are skiing with my family. Exploring the mountains with my kids is exhilarating.”