By Cathie Ericson
“When I was just starting out, I didn’t realize where my journey would take me, but I have realized that it’s ok when the destination you start out with changes,” says PwC’s Rachel Frye.
“Start with a viewpoint, but know you might end up somewhere else, and that’s where you’re supposed to be.
An Unexpected Flight Pattern
Those statements might be considered world-class understatements when considering Frye’s path.
The best advisors are those who have learned the industry from the ground up, or in the case of Frye, from the air down. That’s because she started in the aviation finance industry in an unconventional way – as a pilot. While a flight student at the University of Oregon, she ended up working as an engineer at the airport, her first foray into adopting the attitude of “Sure, I’ll give it a go!” She found it to be a wonderful complement to her flight training to become immersed in aviation and learn the day-to-day operations, while building contacts with operations people and other engineers.
As she learned more about the private flying industry, she parlayed what she calls the “novelty factor” of being a woman into landing some private jet work.
But her ambition had always been to be a commercial pilot, following in the family footsteps of her dad who was a pilot, so she moved back to the U.K. to earn some additional licenses while working for an airline on the engineering side.
She was due to join KLM just prior to 9/11, when the job vanished as airlines stopped recruiting junior pilots. In the meantime, she received a phone call from an engineering contact of hers who had a client in the financial industry who needed some technical advice. Not knowing what to expect, she attended the meeting and was surprised to discover it was with members of the French, German and British governments, as well as representatives from huge international banks.
It turns out that it was the first time that the airlines had gone into bankruptcy on such a large scale, and the banks were in a quandary as to how to locate and bring back the myriad aircraft. It was uncharted territory, but Frye stepped in and developed a team, and for the next three years acted as a technical director repossessing the aircraft. “I could have felt like a fraud but since this had never done before, I didn’t know any less than anyone else – there was no right or wrong way to go about solving the problem.”
Once they had located and retrieved the aircraft, there was a new dilemma – how to sell or lease them. In an industry that is primarily relationship-driven, Frye stepped into this new role marketing aircraft and working with the law firms. When they had difficulty finding buyers, they turned to leasing and converted others from passenger to freight use. With some creativity, eventually every single bank got their money back.
While the work was a huge achievement in retrospect, she also knows that it was a terrible time in the industry and for her clients, and she found it fulfilling to help these companies who were in desperate need.
As word spread, she became known as the expert and found herself managing other airlines’ distressed assets. Then a leasing company asked her to run their marketing in the Middle East, which seemed like a good fit. While managing their portfolio, she spent time with the CFO and learned about financial modeling and structuring. A bank in Germany asked if she would be the assistant head of the aviation finance practice and with that, she had gone full circle to experience literally every sector of the aviation industry: from flying to engineering to marketing to finance.
“Most people have one of these skillsets, but it’s unusual for anyone’s experience to be so broad-based,” Frye says, emphasizing how useful it is to have the ability to walk into a meeting with an astute understating of the technical engineering side, even if they’re discussing marketing, for example.
When most firms shuttered their aviation practices during the economic crisis in 2009 and 2010, Frye decided to become an independent consultant until the dust settled, a role she ended up holding for seven years, leasing aircraft to companies, advising airlines and various governments, high net worth individuals who were investing, and even the military for the inflight refuelling fleet. This consultancy work culminated in being named “Interim Head of Aerospace Risk” at UK Export Finance, part of HM Treasury in London, immediately prior to joining PwC.
“While it was incredibly varied, it was also a little isolating,” she says. She wanted to step back into something more solid, but knew she could wait for the right role, which came when PwC asked her to head up their aviation sector in December. She finds it to be the perfect fit, because it’s as if she has her own business as she builds out her team, but with the brand equity of PwC.
And she knows without a doubt that she never could have landed where she is if not for the accumulation of her experience to date — connecting the dots, so to speak.
Frye looks forward to building out the team: While she appreciates that PwC is so forward thinking and takes a long-term view, her group’s challenge is to communicate to the industry that they can offer the broad range of skills and support that they do.
“I am excited to have such strong resources that will allow us to really build a center of excellence in aircraft finance,” she says. “We don’t just want to just advise the industry, but help evolve it and pull it forward.”
While it has been a niche area for some time, it is now growing rapidly due to the emergence of markets like Asia and India that are seeing passenger numbers increasing exponentially, bringing with them record aircraft orders. “There is unprecedented growth, and our role is to help our clients navigate the huge amount of change and capitalize on the opportunity,” she says, while also helping them harness new technologies to make the industry more efficient.
An Industry Where Women Can Take Flight
Frye has always seen her gender as a benefit, since she stands out and can quickly prove her expertise. But, she notes that the biggest barrier the industry faces is getting women to join at all. For example, when one of her fellow female classmates said she wanted to join cabin crew, Frye quickly asked why not flight deck, and was gratified when the friend subsequently became a pilot. The incident opened Frye’s eyes that it wasn’t an automatic choice or consideration for many women.
However, she doesn’t feel that the industry needs equality just for equality’s sake. “You need the best people in the role, and it should be irrelevant what gender they are,” she says.
She urges other women who might want to join the industry to remember that they don’t have to behave in a masculine way to get ahead. Women have an advantage with their high “EQ” and inquisitiveness, she finds.
Frye admits she is the first to say she doesn’t understand something, but finds men might also wonder but wouldn’t say it out loud. “That honesty comes across and works in your favor,” she notes. “It’s ok not to know everything and to ask questions. Being highly curious has informed my journey.”
Using Aviation As a Way to Open Minds
It goes without saying that Frye has a love of travel, which she has tried to instill in her children, ages 11 and 19, primarily to show them that the rest of the world isn’t like Western Europe. Her kids have a list and once a year she lets them choose a trip.
But she never forgets that these experiences are due to the magic of aviation. One highlight was a visit to Jerusalem which they found to be a melting pot of cultures. “We spent three hours learning history and cultures and having a delicious Arabic lunch with our host, and that evening we were back in London,” she says.
“I feel very strongly that if the planet is going to get better for any of us, we have to understand each other, and aviation is critical to that. The more we travel, the more understanding we have and the better our world will become.”
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.”
Mentoring Professional Women at Work while Navigating Sexual Politics
Career Advice, Mentors and Sponsors, Office PoliticsBy Cindy Krischer Goodman
The number of male managers who are uncomfortable mentoring women has more than tripled in 2018, with one in six male managers now hesitant to mentor a woman, a recent survey by the LeanIn.Org and SurveyMonkey found.
The survey results, considered a backlash from the wave of sexual harassment allegations known as the #MeToo movement, have sparked #MentorHer, a new campaign by LeanIn.Org. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and founder of the nonprofit LeanIn.Org is calling for male managers to commit to mentoring women as a crucial component for equality in the workplace.
“We are at a pivotal moment,” Sandberg’s LeanIn.Org has announced. The #MentorHer campaign comes as the world celebrates International Women’s Day, a global celebration in March to celebrate the achievements of women. This year’s theme is a call to press forward and progress gender parity, a message Sandberg’s campaign embraces.
So far, Sandberg’s #MentorHer campaign has the backing of more than 38 prominent leaders and CEOs, including Disney’s Bob Iger, General Motors’ Mary Barra and Netflix’s Reed Hastings, who have committed to mentor women within their organizations.
The #MentorHer campaign is call to action to keep progress moving forward in advancing women to leadership positions. In a study on men who mentor women , The Harvard Business Review found receiving mentorship from senior males can increase compensation and career progress satisfaction for women, particularly for those working in male-dominated industries.
Why is Mentoring Important?
Maria Bailey, CEO of BSM Media, a 20-year-old social media and marketing firm, received mentoring from a half dozen male business leaders during her career. The mentoring, she said, helped her rise within the corporate environment of large public companies, and later succeed as a business owner.
“The best mentorships are based on shared values and professional chemistry,” Bailey said,
“Some men may be afraid now, but that will weed out people whose intention is not as strong in creating a mutually beneficial mentoring relationship. If a man really wants to help a woman grow her business or grow in her career, he will do that because great leaders are fearless leaders.”
Business executive Erin Knight, founder of a LeanIn Circle in Miami, said mentoring programs formed by corporations embolden female employees to become leaders but need protocols in place to encourage participation for both the mentor and the mentored. She comments, “I believe this will allow men to feel more comfortable participating.” At the same time, she said, “Women should continue to conduct themselves in a professional manner and seek the support of both males and females who share the same degree of integrity and professionalism.”
LeanIn.Org’s new survey findings on male hesitation to mentor females come as women already are underrepresented in most organizations, especially at senior levels. If fewer men mentor women, fewer women will rise to leadership, according to the organization’s findings.
On its website, LeanIn suggests men find at least one woman to mentor. Once identified, the organization advises the mentor to take give women specific input on the skills they need to build, give women skills-based feedback to improve their performances, put women’s names forward for stretch assignments, advocate for and open doors for women, and include women in opportunities to build valuable relationships.
Mentoring is on the Rise
Corporate mentoring is on the rise with about 71 percent of Fortune 500 companies offer mentoring programs to their employees, according to a study of workplace mentoring programs by Chronus, provider of talent and career development software. The study found the mentoring programs led to salary grade changes, higher retention rates and more promotions for the mentee and the mentor.
The benefits of mentoring are clear but evidence documented over the last ten years suggests sponsorship can be even more important because it entails people advocating for you as well as offering advice. Workplace experts consistently find mentorship and sponsorship play a key role in promotions and raises, stretch assignments and flexibility.
Unfortunately, women are 54% less likely to have a sponsor and 24% less likely to get advice from senior leaders, according to Lean In research.
The nonprofit has concluded that we all benefit when a colleague shows us the ropes and sponsors us for new opportunities; particularly when they’re more senior, as men often are.
What Stops Men from Mentoring Women?
The 2018 Lean In survey found half of male managers are “uncomfortable” working alone with a woman. According to a story we wrote in theglasshammer.com in 2013, the Center for Talent Innovation report named The Sponsor Effect, states that “senior men shy away from mentoring or sponsoring junior women because of assumptions about what that relationship entails. “
In a Harvard Business Review blog post, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founding president and CEO of the Center for Talent Innovation, writes, “However, fear of being even suspected of an illicit sexual liaison causes 64 percent of senior men to pull back from one-on-one contact with junior women; conversely, for the same reason, 50 percent of junior women are hesitant to have one-on-one contact with senior men.”
How Can We Help Men Get Involved?
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, Wharton professor and business book author, has a few ideas. In his LinkedIn article titled Men Are Afraid to Mentor Women, Grant said men should hold themselves (and each other) accountable for parity, such as including women in meal outings. He also suggests men avoid running from discomfort and talk to women about what makes them comfortable or uncomfortable. Lastly, he advises men to mentor women in small groups if they are terrified of one-on-one.
Richard Outram, CEO of Financial Acumen, a financial consulting and leadership development firm, said he has and will continue to mentor women. Outram, a former executive at Burger King Corp, Sunglass Hut International, PRC LLC and PricewaterhouseCoopers, believes men who understand the value of the male/female mentoring relationships will continue as well. He states, “It’s eye-opening at times to put yourself in a female’s shoes. Women and men are wired in different ways and we can learn from each other.”
Outram said while some men may be reluctant in the wake of the #MeToo movement, more corporations are making diversity a priority and comments,
“A lot of companies are putting structure and accountability around mentorships to ensure they continue to happen,” He continues, “I won’t say it’s critical for a female to have a male mentor to get to the C-suite. There are female superstars who have made it on their own. But there are a ton of egos in the workplace, so you want a mentor who will help you through the challenges and do it with the right mindset.”
Opening Spaces to Value Women’s Voices: For Ourselves and Each Other
Career Advice, Guest ContributionGuest Contributed by Ilene C. Wasserman Ph.D
“I would like to think that things have changed for women at the workplace, but just when I let my guard down, I am reminded of the vestiges of the old patterns.”
Often, while working with senior executive women, I inevitably hear about the challenges of measuring up – of adhering to the standards that seem to be differently applied to men versus women. While ostensibly, conditions and opportunities have improved for women, the frequency intensity and amount of such comments seems to be on the rise. Some of what I am hearing includes:
For decades, my colleagues and I have listened to this pattern of gender dynamic in meetings. More recently, the research that is documenting this pattern and the impact that it has on collaboration and productivity at the workplace as well as new words that are being used to describe these behaviors is gaining attention in the popular press.
Professor Victoria Brescoll from Yale University asked professional men and women to evaluate the competence of executives based on who spoke more often. Men who spoke more often than their peers were rated 10 percent higher. However, when women spoke more than their peers, they were rated 14 percent lower. As noted by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg in a piece they wrote for the NYT January 12, 2015: Speaking While Female “women who worry that talking too much will cause them to be disliked are not paranoid; they are often right”.
Tali Mendleberg, from Princeton University goes on to say that while women may be confident in their views, “they’re not confident that what they have to say is valued, and that in turn shapes how willing they are to speak, and what is discussed.”
Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant are joining their voices on a regular basis to call attention to these and other issues of relationships at the workplace.
The pattern of “speaking while female” has consequences beyond the muffling of one person; rather it results in organizations and public forums missing out on a group of key contributors. It is critical that, together, we notice these patterns and be intentional about making changes such that all voices are heard.
In our book: Communicating Possibilities, we offer specific steps for noticing patterns using the acronym NOREN. NOREN stands for (1) Noticing, (2) Observing, (3) Reflecting, (4) Engaging, and (5) Noticing (Again). In this case, how might we NOTICE when some people are speaking more than others while others are being talked over? In another blog, I wrote about micro-inclusions. A micro-inclusion is an act of stepping up and calling attention to the pattern of a man’s re-statement of a comment previously made by women is acknowledged in a way that links backs to and acknowledges the initial contribution.
OBSERVING is the active process of looking at how I, we and the organization might miss out on the contributions of some who are either talked over, interrupted, or who may be silencing themselves due to being less confident in the value of their ideas or are concerned about the consequences of asserting their voices.
REFLECTING is the ongoing process of taking what we notice, and consider what we might do, interpersonally, on teams and as a whole organization to create new patterns that are affirming and inviting.
ENGAGING differently – taking leadership to break the pattern and create openings and be an ally, by intervening interpersonally in a conversation or meeting, or structurally by initiating forms of contributing that mitigate barriers to contributing, and,
NOTICING AGAIN what we are creating together. How do we enact changes that are affirming, inviting and hopefully enable all people to see what they have to gain by enhancing the fullest contribution of women and other marginalized voices?
Change is a coordinated effort. We as women can do our part in noticing how we inhibit and silence ourselves. AND women need allies with each other as well as with our male counterparts to notice these patterns and enact new ways of listening, hearing and acknowledging each other to create new and better patterns of collaboration.
Ilene Wasserman, President of ICW Consulting Group is the author of Communicating Possibilities: A Brief Introduction to the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM). She is passionate about helping her clients see the opportunities in diversity.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Are You Being Sustainable? Avoid Burnout and Disengagement at Work
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!Let’s talk about stress. We all have it, but it’s how we deal with it that matters.
Days can go past very quickly and the news cycle and social media only provokes our limbic reactions further. Are you getting good quality sleep? Are you actually benefitting from exercise or wearing yourself out? How is your stress level affecting your socio- emotional competencies at work? Or, in plain English, are you leading and managing less optimally than you could? Are your clients getting the best from you? Are you feeling mentally good about saying yes and saying no in the right ratio? What toll is it taking on your personal life?
Dr Karen Wilson and myself have developed a coaching program for high (insecure) achievers who say yes and more all the time and are very successful. But, we help you be sustainable in your behaviors, throw away the thoughts and actions that are holding you back and let you be human and great at the same time.
If you would like to enroll in our 16 week program that starts in June, we are now putting together that cohort. The cost is $4000 per person.
Please contact nicki@evolvedpeople.com telling us more about you.
Thought Leader: Grissel Mercado, Partner, Shearman & Sterling LLP
Thought LeadersElected to partnership just this past January, Grissel Mercado, shares her insight on her business, the industry and women in the law.
For more about Mercado’s background, read her Voice of Experience profile here.
A Busy Year With Many Successes
With a strong history and expertise in capital markets in Latin America, Mercado’s work there continues. Latin America capital markets have had a very interesting year; although a lot of market players thought there might be a slowdown given international developments such as Brexit and the Trump presidency, it has been a very busy year for the region, she says.
“Investors have continued to be attracted to a lot of issuers there, which has been very positive for our practice. But as I look into the future there will be more question marks with several countries going through elections in 2018. You are still prone to what’s happening socially and in politics when you work in Latin America, so it will be interesting to see what happens in 2018.” Mexico and Colombia are two countries where she has been the busiest, despite an expected slowdown.
Her toughest but most rewarding deal of the year took almost a year and half, but closed this summer. “You become so close to your clients when you spend that much time with them,” she says, adding how excited they were to complete the deal.
She is currently working on bond offerings for companies in Chile and Mexico, who are expecting to be some of the first issuers to launch transactions in early 2018. The practice has also been working on a variety of liability management exercises, including cash tender offers. And this is the time that many foreign private issuers registered with the SEC begin thinking about annual reports, which is where her corporate governance hat comes in, as she helps with prep work for those.
In the industry at large, she anticipates continued growth, even with the political and economic changes that the region is facing.
While there haven’t been too many regulatory changes per se, she anticipates her SEC registered clients will need help transitioning to XBRL, a business reporting language that uses tags for items in financial statements to allow financial information to be used interactively. While SEC registered domestic companies have been using this method for several years, 2018 will be the first year that foreign private issuers have to report in this way. The industry is also grappling to understand how the new MIFID II rules (i.e., product governance obligations applicable to manufacturers and distributors of financial instruments) will apply in the context of capital markets transactions led by non-EEA banks.
Social Issues Will Loom Large
For women, she finds that retention and promotion continue to be an issue. “Women enter law school and often even law firms as a majority, and then the ratio is completely flipped by the time we become senior associates and is even worse at partner ranks,” she notes.
She believes that law firms will retain women as they become more open to technological advances that other industries have already been using, such as work-from-home opportunities, which helps women who many times are the ones with more conflicting responsibilities, such as caring for children and elderly parents.
“If you can deliver top-quality work on time, it shouldn’t matter when and where you do it,” she points out. She sees that the millennial generation wants that for men and women. Firms will also benefit as women keep working rather than opting out. It’s vital to retain a female perspective, she says. “We view problems differently, and our clients are pushing to have these viewpoints at top levels.”
She appreciates that now as a newly-named partner, she has more of a voice in retention and recruiting and looks forward to a big year of transition. “Clients are used to seeing me lead transactions, but there will be an adjustment as I become the sole lead, and we’ll all work to make the transition as seamless as possible,” she says.
Women at Work: The Importance of Strategic Support
Career Advice, International Womens Day, Op-EdInternational Women’s Day is the perfect time to celebrate the many achievements of women, and think about what more can be done to help them achieve their career goals.
The good news: women are more confident and ambitious then ever. This is one of the findings of a new PwC report – Time to talk: what needs to change for women at work – which looks at the views of over 3,600 women around the world from employers representing 27 different industry sectors. We focused on women in the pipeline, aged 28-40, because it’s at this stage that we start to see female representation gaps widen and the challenges of combining personal and career priorities increase.
Leadership aspirations on the rise
Women are more career confident and ambitious than ever; 82% are confident in their ability to fulfil their career aspirations, 77% in their ability to lead, and 73% are actively seeking career advancement opportunities. Furthermore, they have strong leadership aspirations, with 75% of women saying it was important to them they reach the top of their chosen career, namely obtain a leadership position. Women are confident, ambitious and ready to progress.
But the survey also highlights we still have a long way to go and identifies three strategies which are essential to creating a more inclusive working environment. One of these strategies centers on the importance of strategic support, ultimately highlighting that support networks and advocacy go a long way. In a nutshell women need strategic support.
Women need strategic support to succeed
Think of this strategic support structure as a series of circles. In the middle is the individual woman: an ambitious skilled professional who needs the confidence to put herself forward to achieve her career and personal aspirations. Fundamental to this is the support she gets from the circles around her: her workplace and personal support networks.
In the workplace, she not only needs a manager who will help develop her talent and advocate on her behalf, but a series of informal and formal support people and programmes. She needs role models of both genders to look up to and learn from, mentors who help her navigate the path to success and sponsors who can push her to the next level. Personal experience has taught me just how critical sponsorship and advocacy is. The two biggest career milestones of my career, which involved me moving into new areas of the Human Capital spectrum in which I’d no previous experience, would simply not have happened without male sponsors who on each individual occasion were advocating that I was worth taking a chance on when I wasn’t in the room.
In the world outside of work, the third circle, she needs a supportive network, from parents to partner, and friends to peers, that reinforce her career ambitions and work life decisions. For example, women might need to enlist family members and other people to take on more home life or caregiving responsibilities in order to allow her to be successful at work. Interestingly, 84% of the women in our survey in a relationship identified as being part of a dual-career couple and 80% of the women in the survey said they have support from their family and/or partner in their career ambitions.
Self-advocacy pays off
Traditionally, women have been uncomfortable with self-promotion. Our research shows that when presented with a promotion opportunity, women are much more likely to expect to get a tap on the shoulder from their employer; expecting their hard work to be recognised as a symbol of their ambition to progress. They are also hesitant to put themselves forward where they feel they don’t meet all the job criteria for the role.
On the other-side of the spectrum, however, the good news is that women are definitely being more proactive in pursuing their career goals. They are more actively negotiating for and seeking out the experiences seen as critical to advancing their career such as high-visibility projects and stretch-assignments. And our survey showed it is working – there is a strong positive correlation that the women who negotiate are getting what they ask for.
Women won’t succeed without formal and informal support networks. In the workplace, the critical issue is finding the right mix of push and pull to help women simultaneously realise their personal and professional ambitions. And in their personal life, women need to discuss balancing their career and personal ambitious and asking for the help and support they need to achieve these.
Women are more confident and ambitious than ever before, but they need to be able to self-advocate and vocalise where they want to go. This blend of workplace and personal relationships and support is critical to supporting and reinforcing a woman’s self-belief and catalysing their self-advocacy.
My advice to women this International Women’s Day is:
1. Think about what you can do to solicit greater levels of strategic support.
2. Reframe the action of ‘self-promotion’, which has negative connotations for many women, as self-advocacy.
3. This month, put your hand up for a stretch assignment you may be hesitant about, say yes to something you are not sure you are ready for, or schedule time with your boss to make your career aspirations known. Realise the power of self-advocacy and relish the results.
I know it certainly has worked for me. I wouldn’t have been involved in leading this research publication if I didn’t put my hand up four years ago to lead PwC’s first global diversity thought leadership project, something I had never done before. That decision four years ago has led to me being involved in some of my most enjoyable and career developing work, in addition to raising my profile both within and beyond PwC.
Find out more about the importance of strategic support in PwC’s Time to talk: What has to change for women at work publication: www.pwc.com/timetotalk
Follow Aoife Flood at @aoiferflood.
Work-Life Integration…. Mixing Business and Pleasure Successfully
Career Advice, Work-LifeBy Chutisa Bowman
Why are some women executives able to mix business and pleasure more successfully than others? They do it because they are able to achieve better integration between work and the rest of their life. They function with the awareness that work and personal life are not competing priorities but complementary ones. In essence, they never lose sight of the fact that their personal lives have an impact on the way they approach their work.
Whether you have already reached the C-suite or are still working towards it, your ability to mix business and pleasure successfully is essential for personal effectiveness, peace of mind and success. Work-life integration is apparently a better choice, cognitively, than trying to balance between the two, according to research published in the journal Human Relations and the Harvard Business Review.
While the C-suite requires commitment, mixing business and pleasure should not be impossible. This is not about work life balance. It is about creating a life style that gives you whatever it is that you need in your professional and personal life. It’s about finding the combination of work and play, business and pleasure that works for you. According to the Medical Daily, keeping work and life separate is not best for wellbeing and performance. The most successful executives are those who have an ability to achieve professional success without always having to sacrifice the things that matter in their personal lives.
So how do you know you have what it takes to mix business and pleasure successfully and achieve work-life integration? A good place to start is to acknowledge that work and personal life are not competing priorities but complementary ones. You must stop being fixated on balance. Instead, put your energy towards integrating what makes your heart sing, what’s fun for you and what you love to do, into your daily life.
Here are three things you can do to develop this ability:
Assess your current position. Looking at yourself as you really are and your life as it is now, is the first step in restructuring your life. To truly integrate work and life successfully, it is crucial to become aware of where you are functioning from, that is creating the life you currently have. The moment you take the initiative to become aware of your points of view, habits and behaviours, you are on the path to having true work-life integration.
So, first ask yourself these questions –
If you answer yes to any of these questions, your life and your work are probably out of conscious integration.
Clarify what is important and what will work for you. Do you know what you want to create as your life? What do you really want to create as your future? What are your priorities (business, work and personal)? It is super-essential to be clear about your personal interests and concerns—to identify where work falls in the spectrum of your overall priorities in life.
To mix business and pleasure successfully you must cut through the charade about priorities. Begin by making your work priorities crystal clear, and define them in terms of possibilities, priorities and in terms of outputs. Simultaneously, set the important priorities, concerns, and demands outside the office that require time and energy. The target is to have a clarity about both the business and your individual priorities and then to construct a plan for fulfilling all of them.
To know what will work for you, you need to take into consideration that life is constantly changing. The right mix for you today may not be the right mix for you tomorrow or next week or next month. Over time your priorities change. The one way to know you have an integrated work-life is the feeling of accomplishment, fun and happiness you enjoy every day.
Make a conscious choice and commit yourself to embrace work-life integration. To make a conscious choice to create a meaningful existence where enjoyment exists amongst all areas of your life, you have to make a demand of yourself: “No matter what it takes, no matter what it looks like, I am going down this path.” Be willing to be vulnerable and to stay open to the new, the unfamiliar, and the unknown.
Be open to all possibility and be willing to look at what you can do that will generate different possibilities. Choose to be ever aware and mindful, ready to shift strategy and tactics as the situation requires. Having this awareness will prioritize the activities necessary for success. Priorities make it easier to say no to distracting initiatives.
Chutisa Bowman is a Pragmatic Futurist, author and curator of Generative Woman Blog. She is best-known for her work in strategic awareness, benevolent capitalism, prosperity consciousness, Right Riches for You and conscious benevolent leadership. Right Riches for You is a speciality program of Access Consciousness.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily thhose of theglasshammer.com
Listen More, Talk Less to Change Your World?
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!This International Women’s Day 2018 has positive messages regarding professional women’s careers. Messaging that women can go far and fast has never been stronger and some companies are making strides promoting women. Work for good companies, functional teams and good managers as happiness can happen at work and if you are not happy then take control of it.
Every day is women’s day on theglasshammer.com as we don’t just talk about what needs to happen (systemically and or individually) one day per year. For eleven years we have been asking you to #pressforprogress and we have been doing it too. By creating visibility of all types of professional women, celebrating women at work and reducing bias and stereotypes via our training and coaching as well as editorial articles based on research. It has not been easy work and we thank those of you who have persisted in trying to change the world around us.
So on this day and month we choose to look more broadly at the world to understand the narrow issue of advancing professional women at work. Why? Because we understand that the culture outside the office affects the culture inside the office.
International women’s day is a third world and first world issue as we see from the horror stories from near and far regarding how men’s needs are placed high above the human rights and freedoms of women. From #metoo in the States to tribal honor killings in India and Pakistan, the one consistent element seems to be that men are always given more power than women. And, if the small minority of bad guys chose to wield that power in an evil way (thankfully so many men don’t) the system and the cultural norms in first and third worlds are remarkably similarly weighted against women.
At least we are talking about inequities now in a way that never before have been up for discussion. But, how do we change things? Change is not easy as it requires systems, structures and policies (and their enforcement) to change. Behavior is like a river running its course, it just happens naturally and having to create a new pathway without a reason to do so is possible, but hardly probable without perturbation.
Sometimes we all need to feel uncomfortable in order to change. Nilofer Merchant writes in the HBR blog to Listen more and talk less to change someone’s mind. At first, reading this piece I felt sheer horror that girls were being traded for compensation. I felt my values being challenged on every level and I feel a rejection of the culture being described in the scenario to the point that I wondered why I was still reading it. Then, I read on. Ironically, the story was about listening without giving an opinion, in service of having people get to a change point of view themselves. Having no verbal opinion can be powerful in some cases where cultural norms will squash dissent or people that aren’t straight men.
This concept really stuck with me, not least because change is about exactly those three elements – culture, values and behavior and Warner Burke Professor of Organizational Psychology and Change Leadership always says “You cannot change the culture by changing the culture.”
In the continued work of finding a true level playing field, all of us need to understand how to challenge ourselves before we can challenge others.
The sheer idea of not having an opinion and voicing it is contra to most advice we see and having a voice for yourself and for the voiceless is a strategy that cannot be dismissed. But, isn’t it interesting as a career strategy to let people think its their idea?
If like me, you are fairly ambivalent about this then thats ok too! This is the time to have a voice because 2018 is a turning point for people and specifically women to be heard and believed. At work, there is a range of situations where you still aren’t being heard, from meetings where the guy next to you repeats exactly what you said, to no win conversations where power plays are present. My favorite books on this are by Deborah Kolb and Judith Williams who wrote Everyday Negotiations and by dear friend Carol Frohlinger’s and Lois Frankel’s Nice Girls series.
Have a good month, enjoy the #IWD celebrations!
Voice of Experience: Rachel Frye, Aviation Finance Advisory Leader at PwC Ireland
International Womens Day, Voices of Experience“When I was just starting out, I didn’t realize where my journey would take me, but I have realized that it’s ok when the destination you start out with changes,” says PwC’s Rachel Frye.
“Start with a viewpoint, but know you might end up somewhere else, and that’s where you’re supposed to be.
An Unexpected Flight Pattern
Those statements might be considered world-class understatements when considering Frye’s path.
The best advisors are those who have learned the industry from the ground up, or in the case of Frye, from the air down. That’s because she started in the aviation finance industry in an unconventional way – as a pilot. While a flight student at the University of Oregon, she ended up working as an engineer at the airport, her first foray into adopting the attitude of “Sure, I’ll give it a go!” She found it to be a wonderful complement to her flight training to become immersed in aviation and learn the day-to-day operations, while building contacts with operations people and other engineers.
As she learned more about the private flying industry, she parlayed what she calls the “novelty factor” of being a woman into landing some private jet work.
But her ambition had always been to be a commercial pilot, following in the family footsteps of her dad who was a pilot, so she moved back to the U.K. to earn some additional licenses while working for an airline on the engineering side.
She was due to join KLM just prior to 9/11, when the job vanished as airlines stopped recruiting junior pilots. In the meantime, she received a phone call from an engineering contact of hers who had a client in the financial industry who needed some technical advice. Not knowing what to expect, she attended the meeting and was surprised to discover it was with members of the French, German and British governments, as well as representatives from huge international banks.
It turns out that it was the first time that the airlines had gone into bankruptcy on such a large scale, and the banks were in a quandary as to how to locate and bring back the myriad aircraft. It was uncharted territory, but Frye stepped in and developed a team, and for the next three years acted as a technical director repossessing the aircraft. “I could have felt like a fraud but since this had never done before, I didn’t know any less than anyone else – there was no right or wrong way to go about solving the problem.”
Once they had located and retrieved the aircraft, there was a new dilemma – how to sell or lease them. In an industry that is primarily relationship-driven, Frye stepped into this new role marketing aircraft and working with the law firms. When they had difficulty finding buyers, they turned to leasing and converted others from passenger to freight use. With some creativity, eventually every single bank got their money back.
While the work was a huge achievement in retrospect, she also knows that it was a terrible time in the industry and for her clients, and she found it fulfilling to help these companies who were in desperate need.
As word spread, she became known as the expert and found herself managing other airlines’ distressed assets. Then a leasing company asked her to run their marketing in the Middle East, which seemed like a good fit. While managing their portfolio, she spent time with the CFO and learned about financial modeling and structuring. A bank in Germany asked if she would be the assistant head of the aviation finance practice and with that, she had gone full circle to experience literally every sector of the aviation industry: from flying to engineering to marketing to finance.
“Most people have one of these skillsets, but it’s unusual for anyone’s experience to be so broad-based,” Frye says, emphasizing how useful it is to have the ability to walk into a meeting with an astute understating of the technical engineering side, even if they’re discussing marketing, for example.
When most firms shuttered their aviation practices during the economic crisis in 2009 and 2010, Frye decided to become an independent consultant until the dust settled, a role she ended up holding for seven years, leasing aircraft to companies, advising airlines and various governments, high net worth individuals who were investing, and even the military for the inflight refuelling fleet. This consultancy work culminated in being named “Interim Head of Aerospace Risk” at UK Export Finance, part of HM Treasury in London, immediately prior to joining PwC.
“While it was incredibly varied, it was also a little isolating,” she says. She wanted to step back into something more solid, but knew she could wait for the right role, which came when PwC asked her to head up their aviation sector in December. She finds it to be the perfect fit, because it’s as if she has her own business as she builds out her team, but with the brand equity of PwC.
And she knows without a doubt that she never could have landed where she is if not for the accumulation of her experience to date — connecting the dots, so to speak.
Frye looks forward to building out the team: While she appreciates that PwC is so forward thinking and takes a long-term view, her group’s challenge is to communicate to the industry that they can offer the broad range of skills and support that they do.
“I am excited to have such strong resources that will allow us to really build a center of excellence in aircraft finance,” she says. “We don’t just want to just advise the industry, but help evolve it and pull it forward.”
While it has been a niche area for some time, it is now growing rapidly due to the emergence of markets like Asia and India that are seeing passenger numbers increasing exponentially, bringing with them record aircraft orders. “There is unprecedented growth, and our role is to help our clients navigate the huge amount of change and capitalize on the opportunity,” she says, while also helping them harness new technologies to make the industry more efficient.
An Industry Where Women Can Take Flight
Frye has always seen her gender as a benefit, since she stands out and can quickly prove her expertise. But, she notes that the biggest barrier the industry faces is getting women to join at all. For example, when one of her fellow female classmates said she wanted to join cabin crew, Frye quickly asked why not flight deck, and was gratified when the friend subsequently became a pilot. The incident opened Frye’s eyes that it wasn’t an automatic choice or consideration for many women.
However, she doesn’t feel that the industry needs equality just for equality’s sake. “You need the best people in the role, and it should be irrelevant what gender they are,” she says.
She urges other women who might want to join the industry to remember that they don’t have to behave in a masculine way to get ahead. Women have an advantage with their high “EQ” and inquisitiveness, she finds.
Frye admits she is the first to say she doesn’t understand something, but finds men might also wonder but wouldn’t say it out loud. “That honesty comes across and works in your favor,” she notes. “It’s ok not to know everything and to ask questions. Being highly curious has informed my journey.”
Using Aviation As a Way to Open Minds
It goes without saying that Frye has a love of travel, which she has tried to instill in her children, ages 11 and 19, primarily to show them that the rest of the world isn’t like Western Europe. Her kids have a list and once a year she lets them choose a trip.
But she never forgets that these experiences are due to the magic of aviation. One highlight was a visit to Jerusalem which they found to be a melting pot of cultures. “We spent three hours learning history and cultures and having a delicious Arabic lunch with our host, and that evening we were back in London,” she says.
“I feel very strongly that if the planet is going to get better for any of us, we have to understand each other, and aviation is critical to that. The more we travel, the more understanding we have and the better our world will become.”