By Lisa Iarkowski
The digital age is upon us, for better and for worse. As anyone with a smart phone can attest, technology is advancing faster than ever. At the touch of a button, we skype with family overseas, share information with coworkers, check in with our kids, and track our daily steps. As individuals, we are adapting relatively quickly but many businesses are having a hard time keeping up with the rapid pace of technology and are struggling to redesign their organizations to remain competitive. Deloitte’s 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report suggests businesses around the globe are ill-prepared to build the organization of the future. In their survey of 10,000 organizations across 140 countries in a broad cross section of industries, Deloitte reports that 88% of businesses say that building the organization of the future is important or very important, but only 11% of businesses say they are prepared to do so. Deloitte shares trends and “new rules” organizations need to follow to redesign their organizations for the future.
The New Rules
Organization 21—Designed with You in Mind
The organization built for the future will be organized for learning, innovation, and customer impact. What can we expect?
Employee experience at the center. Successful organizations will prioritize and reshape the employee experience by creating a more holistic, work-life balanced, end-to-end recruitment-to-retirement experience that their employees are seeking. Employees can expect more help with balancing personal and professional demands, compensation, financial and nonfinancial benefits (such as meals, leaves, vacation, fitness, wellness programs), and rewards and recognition designed to make people’s lives better.
How we work together. The traditional hierarchical structures will give way to agile networks and small, project teams empowered by team leaders and fueled by collaboration and knowledge sharing. Employees will have greater support for risk-taking, creativity, and innovation. There will be more opportunities for greater input, influence, and leadership. In the future organization, leadership is a role anyone can play.
Who we work with and the skills we need. Teams will be more diverse. The traditional workforce will continue to be augmented with contingent workers, contractors, and crowds. Essential human skills will be augmented by technology (robotics, artificial intelligence) to perform nonessential tasks. Research by Deloitte in the United Kingdom finds that the future workforce will require a “balance of technical skills and more general purpose skills such as problem solving skills, creativity, social skills, and emotional intelligence.”
How leaders lead. Still crucial, leadership will align with the future organization’s focus on learning, innovation, and customer impact. Effective leaders of the future are agile, collaborative and team-based. A leader’s success will be measured less by their expertise or judgement in a given area, and more by their agility and creativity, their ability to build and lead teams, and to utilize resources such as client teams and crowds to solve new business challenges.
How we grow our careers. Careers for employees and leaders will be built on advancement through many assignments and diverse, multi-functional experiences, as opposed to a linear, hierarchical progression up the ranks. Employees will see growth opportunities through increased training and support on the job, continuous feedback on goals and performance, and more access to continuous learning through flexible, mobile, on demand content.
Get Ready for the Future – Now
How can we survive the shift and prepare ourselves to thrive in the future organization? Here are some suggestions:
Build your change muscles. You can get more comfortable with change. In fact, your happiness at work depends on it, as change is not going away, ever. Knowledge is your super power here. The more information you have, the more you understand the change, why it’s happening, and what it means to you personally, the easier change is to roll with. If you find yourself feeling resistant, ask yourself “what else do I need to know about this?” Armed with information, ask yourself “where’s my opportunity?” Focus on your opportunity. Of course, if a change still seems like a bad idea, then bring forward the risks and provide alternative solutions. Super Power Booster: Step it up a notch and become a change leader in your organization. Volunteer to be part of a team or lead on a change that is meaningful to you. Offer to mentor others struggling to adapt, or offer to mentor a senior leader who needs to know how changes are affecting employees.
Take small bites, chew thoroughly. Change can feel overwhelming because there is just so much of it. It can help to break down changes into smaller pieces and do one of thing at a time. Multitasking is not your friend here. While it feels like you are doing more, you end up more stressed and not as productive as when you focus on one thing at a time. This approach can also help you build capacity to try new things and take risks (which are both future organization skills you’ll need). Super Power Booster: Work with your team to select one change you want to make on a project—just one. Pilot that change, set two milestones to assess how it’s going, and make changes as needed. Set the expectations upfront that the team should expect to tweak how things are working based on their feedback.
Make Friends with Tech
Admit it, often we’re drowning in email, tweets, texts, and meetings. As teams become increasingly global and augmented, we need help simplifying and organizing how we communicate, share information, and meet. Collaboration tools like Workplace, Slack, Basecamp, Asana, Trello, and Workboard may be options. Investigate tools your organization uses now or is planning to implement. As your organization continues to bring new technology solutions online, be open to training and learning. Super Power Booster: Experiment or pilot one collaboration tool to simplify how your team communicates and works together on one project. Assess how it’s working.
Build Your Essential Skillset, Continuously
More and more, essential human skills will be augmented by technology to perform nonessential tasks. Essential human skills for the future workforce include project management, listening, and moral and ethical decision making, empathy, communication, persuasion, personal service, and strategic decision making. Managers who can coach and develop staff will be in demand, as will leaders who demonstrate agility, collaboration, resilience, and systems thinking. Invest in your own training and learning in these essential skills. Leverage your organization’s training programs or create your own through external resources like Udacity, Udemy, Coursera, NovoEd, and edX which offer accessible, low-no cost high quality-learning. Deloitte reports that skills are becoming obsolete at an accelerating rate, with learned skills having a half-life of only 5 years. Expect that keeping your skills fresh will be an ongoing process of growth that will help you stay competitive. Adopt a continuous learning mindset, where your learning is “always on.”. Power Booster: Create a learning plan with milestones to grow and practice your skills in areas that are crucial to your continued development and success. To increase your knowledge about other functional areas, reach out to colleagues or consider asking to work on a short-term project in another functional group.
Own Your Career
More career development help is a promise of the future organization. But no one cares more about your career more than you, and this is a good time to revisit or create your career development plan. As organizations shift into matrix or lateral structures, how you can advance within the organization will change. Your plan should consider how organizations of the future will create advancement opportunities, and can include assessing what is meaningful to you, your professional and personal goals, and how you want to invest in your own learning and training, as well as how you can balance your personal and professional demands. Check with your HR rep: your organization may already have career development tools that they use or recommend. Another thing to keep in mind is that talent recruiters are relying more on social media beyond just LinkedIn, with Twitter, Facebook, Glassdoor, Pinterest, and Quora. Consider pushing your professional presence beyond LinkedIn; get active on social media to create a dynamic professional presence. Super Power Booster: Work with a career or executive coach to help you create a career development plan. Find a mentor or sponsor in your organization who can guide and promote you in creating advancement opportunities to grow your career.
Many of you are already doing these habits and actions. You are the future!
Voice of Experience: Sharon Trulock, Counsel, Shearman & Sterling
People, Voices of ExperienceBy Cathie Ericson
It’s ok to lighten up once in a while, says Shearman’s Sharon Trulock. “Not everything is life or death and even when you make mistakes, you will survive them,” she says, noting that it takes experience to figure out how to put missteps in context and know you will move on.
She looks back on her earlier years and urges young women to be more confident in themselves. “Starting out as a young lawyer especially in an area of the law where there are complicated issues and a high learning curve, it’s natural to doubt yourself, no matter how hard you try,” she says, but that can make you look less professional and confident in your answers. While you should never pretend to know something you don’t, it’s important to realize that law is a field of continual learning.
A Steady Career in a Field She Loves
Trulock always knew she wanted to attend law school so it was an easy decision to go right out of college. After earning her law degree from Harvard Law School, she joined another firm but subsequently left to join Shearman in 1989 and has been there ever since. “I’m proud that I have earned my position as a respected professional based on all I’ve learned, and I never thought I would have learned so much over the course of my time here.”
Each day brings with it new variety – right now she mentions that everyone is waiting with baited breath to see what will happen with tax law, and she notes that the entire concept of digitization impacts everyone, whether it’s knowing they need to create a digital estate or making sure that electronic signed documents are safeguarded as carefully as paper ones.
Becoming Assertive for Clients’ Best Interests
When considering challenges to women in the industry, she makes a distinction between actual barriers and personality types. “One thing I’ve struggled with myself is the need to be more assertive and not apologize for everything. You want things to be perfect for the client, but it’s not your fault if the law says they can’t do something,” she says. In those moments, she has to rely on the message that the law says one thing, and they need to comply, within a given set of options. “Some people are just naturally more assertive, but it’s not necessarily a specific trait that is male or female.”
Along the way, she has been an active participant in Shearman’s noted women’s networking group WISER (Women’s Initiative for Success, Excellence and Retention). “It’s well organized and beneficial to everyone in the firm as well as our clients – male and female.” Trulock especially enjoys the opportunities she has to participate in give-and-take discussions where each participant is able to learn from the others and find out something new.
An avid traveler who loves to experience different places, Trulock gravitates toward tropical locations, having just returned from Hawaii, with a hope to someday visit two places on her bucket list — Australia and New Zealand. “I find I am already planning my next vacation when I finish the first,” she says. She also enjoys the time she spends with her family and dog.
The “New Rules” and You: How to Thrive in the Organization of the Future
Career AdviceBy Lisa Iarkowski
Image via Shutterstock
The digital age is upon us, for better and for worse. As anyone with a smart phone can attest, technology is advancing faster than ever. At the touch of a button, we skype with family overseas, share information with coworkers, check in with our kids, and track our daily steps. As individuals, we are adapting relatively quickly but many businesses are having a hard time keeping up with the rapid pace of technology and are struggling to redesign their organizations to remain competitive. Deloitte’s 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report suggests businesses around the globe are ill-prepared to build the organization of the future. In their survey of 10,000 organizations across 140 countries in a broad cross section of industries, Deloitte reports that 88% of businesses say that building the organization of the future is important or very important, but only 11% of businesses say they are prepared to do so. Deloitte shares trends and “new rules” organizations need to follow to redesign their organizations for the future.
The New Rules
Organization 21—Designed with You in Mind
The organization built for the future will be organized for learning, innovation, and customer impact. What can we expect?
Employee experience at the center. Successful organizations will prioritize and reshape the employee experience by creating a more holistic, work-life balanced, end-to-end recruitment-to-retirement experience that their employees are seeking. Employees can expect more help with balancing personal and professional demands, compensation, financial and nonfinancial benefits (such as meals, leaves, vacation, fitness, wellness programs), and rewards and recognition designed to make people’s lives better.
How we work together. The traditional hierarchical structures will give way to agile networks and small, project teams empowered by team leaders and fueled by collaboration and knowledge sharing. Employees will have greater support for risk-taking, creativity, and innovation. There will be more opportunities for greater input, influence, and leadership. In the future organization, leadership is a role anyone can play.
Who we work with and the skills we need. Teams will be more diverse. The traditional workforce will continue to be augmented with contingent workers, contractors, and crowds. Essential human skills will be augmented by technology (robotics, artificial intelligence) to perform nonessential tasks. Research by Deloitte in the United Kingdom finds that the future workforce will require a “balance of technical skills and more general purpose skills such as problem solving skills, creativity, social skills, and emotional intelligence.”
How leaders lead. Still crucial, leadership will align with the future organization’s focus on learning, innovation, and customer impact. Effective leaders of the future are agile, collaborative and team-based. A leader’s success will be measured less by their expertise or judgement in a given area, and more by their agility and creativity, their ability to build and lead teams, and to utilize resources such as client teams and crowds to solve new business challenges.
How we grow our careers. Careers for employees and leaders will be built on advancement through many assignments and diverse, multi-functional experiences, as opposed to a linear, hierarchical progression up the ranks. Employees will see growth opportunities through increased training and support on the job, continuous feedback on goals and performance, and more access to continuous learning through flexible, mobile, on demand content.
Get Ready for the Future – Now
How can we survive the shift and prepare ourselves to thrive in the future organization? Here are some suggestions:
Build your change muscles. You can get more comfortable with change. In fact, your happiness at work depends on it, as change is not going away, ever. Knowledge is your super power here. The more information you have, the more you understand the change, why it’s happening, and what it means to you personally, the easier change is to roll with. If you find yourself feeling resistant, ask yourself “what else do I need to know about this?” Armed with information, ask yourself “where’s my opportunity?” Focus on your opportunity. Of course, if a change still seems like a bad idea, then bring forward the risks and provide alternative solutions. Super Power Booster: Step it up a notch and become a change leader in your organization. Volunteer to be part of a team or lead on a change that is meaningful to you. Offer to mentor others struggling to adapt, or offer to mentor a senior leader who needs to know how changes are affecting employees.
Take small bites, chew thoroughly. Change can feel overwhelming because there is just so much of it. It can help to break down changes into smaller pieces and do one of thing at a time. Multitasking is not your friend here. While it feels like you are doing more, you end up more stressed and not as productive as when you focus on one thing at a time. This approach can also help you build capacity to try new things and take risks (which are both future organization skills you’ll need). Super Power Booster: Work with your team to select one change you want to make on a project—just one. Pilot that change, set two milestones to assess how it’s going, and make changes as needed. Set the expectations upfront that the team should expect to tweak how things are working based on their feedback.
Make Friends with Tech
Admit it, often we’re drowning in email, tweets, texts, and meetings. As teams become increasingly global and augmented, we need help simplifying and organizing how we communicate, share information, and meet. Collaboration tools like Workplace, Slack, Basecamp, Asana, Trello, and Workboard may be options. Investigate tools your organization uses now or is planning to implement. As your organization continues to bring new technology solutions online, be open to training and learning. Super Power Booster: Experiment or pilot one collaboration tool to simplify how your team communicates and works together on one project. Assess how it’s working.
Build Your Essential Skillset, Continuously
More and more, essential human skills will be augmented by technology to perform nonessential tasks. Essential human skills for the future workforce include project management, listening, and moral and ethical decision making, empathy, communication, persuasion, personal service, and strategic decision making. Managers who can coach and develop staff will be in demand, as will leaders who demonstrate agility, collaboration, resilience, and systems thinking. Invest in your own training and learning in these essential skills. Leverage your organization’s training programs or create your own through external resources like Udacity, Udemy, Coursera, NovoEd, and edX which offer accessible, low-no cost high quality-learning. Deloitte reports that skills are becoming obsolete at an accelerating rate, with learned skills having a half-life of only 5 years. Expect that keeping your skills fresh will be an ongoing process of growth that will help you stay competitive. Adopt a continuous learning mindset, where your learning is “always on.”. Power Booster: Create a learning plan with milestones to grow and practice your skills in areas that are crucial to your continued development and success. To increase your knowledge about other functional areas, reach out to colleagues or consider asking to work on a short-term project in another functional group.
Own Your Career
More career development help is a promise of the future organization. But no one cares more about your career more than you, and this is a good time to revisit or create your career development plan. As organizations shift into matrix or lateral structures, how you can advance within the organization will change. Your plan should consider how organizations of the future will create advancement opportunities, and can include assessing what is meaningful to you, your professional and personal goals, and how you want to invest in your own learning and training, as well as how you can balance your personal and professional demands. Check with your HR rep: your organization may already have career development tools that they use or recommend. Another thing to keep in mind is that talent recruiters are relying more on social media beyond just LinkedIn, with Twitter, Facebook, Glassdoor, Pinterest, and Quora. Consider pushing your professional presence beyond LinkedIn; get active on social media to create a dynamic professional presence. Super Power Booster: Work with a career or executive coach to help you create a career development plan. Find a mentor or sponsor in your organization who can guide and promote you in creating advancement opportunities to grow your career.
Many of you are already doing these habits and actions. You are the future!
Carving Out Your Time – Simplifying for Success
Career Advice, Guest ContributionGuest contributed by Daria Rippingale, CEO, BillPro
Image via Shutterstock
Recently I was having a drink with a friend of mine and she was telling me about her newest obsession, the New York Times best seller The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. In it she describes a method of decluttering your home that, according to Kondo, refocuses your mind and your life on the things that “spark joy” for you. Essentially, all of the items in your home should bring you some level of joy, while not adding to your stress, so that you can focus on the most important elements of your life.
The end goal is having a home that is clutter free and creates a relaxing environment. Each possession that takes up space should be meaningful – every piece of clothing, every book, every trinket is chosen with purpose and conviction. Anything that gets in the way of the end goal, anything that isn’t regularly used or doesn’t bring happiness, gets tossed.
I left that conversation thinking about clearing out the clutter in our personal lives and how that applies to our work lives, too. We hear the phrase “Do more with less” all the time, but I cringe at the idea of what that traditionally means – longer hours, the same amount of work done by fewer people and usually a drop in quality as a result.
I know from my own experience that with a little practice and some creative ideas, you can streamline your days, making every minute of your work-life meaningful and therefore less stressful and more effective. De-cluttering your work and even your company will allow you to live the true spirit of “doing more with less”.
Below are a few of my essential strategies:
Hone in on your objectives
Firstly, be clear about your goals and objectives, both for you and for your company. Having the destination in mind will make the trip a lot quicker. To continue the travel analogy, your goals are like your True North on a compass. True North is the objective to which all your projects should lead.
Take time to muse over what those goals and objectives might be. Try setting aside time, once a week, to get away from the rush of the office and just think. It probably sounds counter-intuitive to saving time, but the results can be astonishing. Take a walk, sit with a notepad in a quiet room, or do anything where you won’t have too many distractions, allowing you to fully focus on your thoughts. Stepping back from the daily grind, even for 15 minutes, lets you focus on what is really important.
Once you’re clear on where you’re going, it becomes easier to look at your current and upcoming projects and use your compass to guide you towards True North. Focus on the projects that will move you towards your destination. The others are just “busy work” and will only act as barriers to achieving the important things that do “spark joy”. Merely being busy isn’t the same as being productive. Activity doesn’t necessarily equal results.
Ensure that your team is clear on what their objectives are too. Communicate with them as to how their individual projects will lead to the desired destination. Empower them to identify “busy work” and to ask questions about processes and projects that don’t seem to fit with what the organization is trying to achieve.
Simplify Your Work Day
Clearing the decks of focus-stealing “busy work” will recover lost time at the macro level. Simplifying your day-to-day work stream will recover that time at the micro level. Start by eliminating the two biggest hindrances to your productivity – emergencies (that rarely are) and interruptions.
Start each day by looking at your to-do list and calendar, not your email. This sets your mind in motion on what needs to be done instead of what has already happened. Take a few minutes to order your task list for the day. Be sure to tag tasks that are high value and focus towards True North, not just urgent. Completing the high value tasks will return greater rewards on the time you invest in them.
The next time thief to tackle is interruptions, and the biggest culprit here is email. Email is like a spoiled child who wants your attention, and they want it now.
Start minimizing the impact email has on your day by turning off email alerts. If you’re like me, you know there is a never ending stream of messages, so there really is no need to be constantly reminded. Allow yourself 15-20 minutes for checking in and responding to your emails in between larger tasks, making it a welcome distraction rather than an annoyance.
When you’re ready to corral your email even more, consider the advice of Tim Ferriss from The 4-Hour Work Week. He suggests only checking your email twice a day and using an auto responder stating the times you intend to review messages. For emergencies, they can always call.
Lastly, take 30 minutes before you finish up to reflect on the day. Examine what you accomplished, and what the value of those tasks were. Check your calendar for upcoming meetings and deadlines. This keeps you in that proactive state of mind instead of reactive, and prevents you from feeling anxious about the next day’s tasks.
If you want to do more with the time available to you, start by taking the time to focus on your True North – what’s important to your own goals and to the company. Use this as a compass to guide everything you do. Remove those projects that are simply “busy work” and concentrate on the tasks that move you forward. I believe that focusing on objectives and on simplifying everything has truly been integral to my success in leading the BillPro team on the journey of rapid growth. Certainly, without a sharp focus on the destination, we would not be in this position today.
BillPro CEO Daria Rippingale is considered a global authority on merchant processing. As an industry leader in e-commerce innovation, her fresh thinking regarding international payments and risk reduction has brought thousands of previously unserved merchants into the global marketplace. Follow on Twitter @BillProPayments
8 Common Errors That Will Damage Your Career
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!, Guest ContributionImage via Shutterstock
Guest contributed by Jennifer Tait
From time to time, most of us see or hear about some crazy behaviour at work. Whether it’s a full-blown argument, a dramatic resignation or gross misconduct, you know that irreparable damage has been done to that person’s career.
However, it isn’t just the crazy moments like these that damage a career. There are actually a number of behaviours (and relatively common ones too) that cause your colleagues to view you in a negative light.
Here are 8 behaviours that you should avoid at work if you don’t want to damage your career.
Bragging about your achievements is a sure-fire way to make your colleagues dislike you. Generally speaking we simply don’t like people who boast about themselves and appear big-headed. Plus, if you’re shouting about your successes this makes others think that success isn’t a common thing for you, hence when you get it you have to shout about it.
On the one hand, it is important for you to promote yourself and your skills at work, however, you should always ensure that it is in a way that doesn’t come across as boasting.
It’s never a good feeling when someone steals your idea and naturally, it stirs up feelings of resentment. You should never take credit for someone else’s work as it shows that you have no regard for your team. It will cause significant damage to your working relationships and therefore also your career.
We all love a bit of juicy gossip, but it’s important not to get caught up in it at work. If you get carried away chatting about your colleagues’ mistakes then the only person who is going to look bad is you. What you say about others may easily find its way back to them, so don’t be the gossip who spreads negativity.
While it’s not uncommon to go over someone’s head in an attempt to avoid conflict, this can come across as backstabbing. This tends to be a cause of even more conflict as soon as your colleague bears the brunt of your actions.
Going over a colleague’s head always makes them look bad whatever your intentions so do everything you can to resolve problems without getting others involved.
We all have our down days at work where things just don’t go our way. However, no one wants to hear about how much you hate your job. Being negative has an impact on everyone else’s mood in the office and good managers are quick to address anyone who is bringing the team down.
If you really need to vent, save it for when you get home.
Being able to control your emotions is a skill that is central to your professionalism at work and the success of your career. An outburst of anger demonstrates that you have low emotional intelligence and will make your colleagues question whether you can be trusted to keep it together when it counts.
Emotional outbursts are a quick way to win yourself a lot of negative attention and in extreme cases to get fired. Keep your emotions in check and never make others feels that you are intimidating and unapproachable.
Most people don’t intentionally tell lies at work. You may tell a small white lie in order to protect yourself or somebody else in your team, however if you’re found out it could be very damaging for your career.
Being caught in a lie will cause others to distrust you. Also, lying can be exhausting and is likely to cause you more stress and worry in the long term. If you can’t be honest and genuine in your workplace then you are unlikely to be happy there.
Your business connections and working relationships are so important to the success of your career. No matter how you feel about people, you should aim to never burn bridges as you never know when a connection will prove useful to you in the future (a broken connection can also prove quite harmful).
Quitting your job and leaving without notice, for example, will not only cause a lot of problems for your boss but also your colleagues who will have to take on your workload.
Bringing it all together
None of these common errors are particularly surprising, but they are something that many people forget about and dabble in from time to time. If you can avoid behaviours like these, you’ll have a better chance of maintaining strong working relationships that are key to career success.
About the Author
Bridgewater Resources UK work with market-leading businesses across the UK and Ireland, connecting top talent with outstanding opportunities. They offer roles within wholesale, distribution and manufacturing industries, recruiting highly skilled individuals at all levels.
Disclaimer: Views and opinions of Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Voice of Experience: Alica Pavukova, Partner, PwC Slovakia, CEE
Voices of ExperienceWhen you live in a culture, rather than just visit it, you learn to adapt your own style to day-to-day norms in that new environment, says PwC’s Alica Pavukova. “You can bring that knowledge back home and utilize it in a broader way, which can help create better relationships and rapport if you learn how to cooperate and exist in different environments.”
A Career Built on International Travel
That philosophy has led Pavukova far in her diverse career with PwC. After earning her degree in mechanical engineering, traveling around US for a year, she attended a recruitment meeting at Coopers and Lybrand where she realized she really enjoyed audit work, so much so that she has been there for 26 years.
Her tenure there has allowed her to fulfill her passion for not only travel but really immersing herself in cultures with a wide variety of international experience. She began with a project in Russia; then went to the U.K. for six months and subsequently transferred to Melbourne for 18 months where she became a senior manager. In fact, she credits her mobility and experience in in different cultures as a fundamental reason for her success.
Seventeen years ago Pavukova returned to the Slovakia office, where she continued to help grow a profitable division – from six people to now more than 250 in audit and 550 overall — and now leads assurance and audit, as well as serving as the diversity and inclusion leader overseeing 28 countries in CEE.
That’s one of the achievements she is most proud of, expanding the diversity and inclusion footprint through the introduction of a an awards competition for business women in Slovakia, run in conjunction with a reputable economics magazine, that helps bring attention to successful women in local corporations. She is also proud that PwC in Slovakia has been instrumental in the Initiative of Diversity Charter, spearheaded by EU, where companies sign a diversity charter, acknowledging that they implement polices to promote diversity and inclusion.
Championing Women in the Workplace
As the leader of the audit practice, she plans to continue the success they’ve had so far developing future leaders by working with the pipeline of managers and developers to ensure there is equal access to promotions. The D&I element in CEE has been very successful thus far, currently 30% of the partners are women, one of the leading regions globally, although they realize there is always room for growth.
As a diversity leader, Pavukova sees unconscious bias as an ongoing issue. First, people need to identify their own biases, and then through accountability training, leaders can be given objectives to promote diversity and ensure the pipeline for partner and manager promotion takes into account all forms of diversity.
While she acknowledges there are some barriers for women, she says the greater question is about how you look at them: For example, PwC’s CEE levels are impressive with a 50 percent balance throughout the organization below partner level and 30 percent at partner level, which is better than most, yet still she sees the falloff as careers escalate.
Of course, some women decide after starting a family that they don’t want to progress in their career, but she knows there must be many who want to continue, but the work and family environment don’t support them in the way that’s most conducive, and then their mindset confirms it.
Pavukova believes that three components must mesh for it to work: First, employers need to create work environments where mothers are encouraged to work, through flexibility and maternity/paternity leaves; second, working parents must support each other and mutually participate in the activities of running the family; and finally, women themselves must not constantly create guilt but rather feel proud of their success. There’s a simple reason: She believes that when kids are grown, they will recognize their moms’ achievements.
She herself is an excellent example of realizing that work/life balance and serving as a role model. She and her husband and two sons love sports and travel and try to combine them; for example on a recent trip to Costa Rica where they hiked, surfed and more.
Opportunity to Nominate an Inspiring Woman to Be Profiled on the Glass Hammer
FeaturedDo you know an inspiring woman from the Corporate world of Financial and Professional Services that you would like to nominate to have their career profiled on theglasshammer.com?
In the following Months we are celebrating Spotlight on Asia, Latina Leaders and Women in Technology. Included below are examples of profiles previously published on theglasshammer
Voice of Experience: Stephanie Hui, head of the Merchant Banking Division in Asia Pacific Ex-Japan, Goldman Sachs
“But over time, I realized we are in the business of taking calculated risks and just keeping my head down to produce top quality work while hoping others would notice would not make me a leader.
Voice of Experience: IIka Vazquez, Advisory Partner, PwC US
“We assume someone is noticing our great work and will reward us, but the reality is that you can speed up the process if you talk about your success to people who are influential. Your elevator speech gets better the more you give it and can help you establish a personal brand.”
Move and Shaker: Ciara Quinlan, Head of Electronic Principal Trading FX, Rates & Credit, UBS
Few would call banking a “flexible” career, but UBS’ Ciara Quinlan has found the secret to success in balancing work with family life.
“When it comes to being a great mum and achieving my career goals in parallel, I’m a believer in having it all,” she says. “I took off the time I wanted when I had my son four years ago, and initially came back part time while managing to roll out a major project and advance my career at the same time.”
This is a fantastic opportunity and If you know of a woman you would like to nominate then please put the nomination forward to louise@theglasshammer.com by the following dates. We will let you now as soon as possible if your nomination has been successful.
Spotlight on Asia: August 2
Latina Leaders: August 10
Women in Technology: September 1
Men Who Get it: Lance A. LaVergne, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Talent Acquisition Strategy & Practice, Wells Fargo
Men Who "Get It", PeopleNumbers talk, say Wells Fargo’s Lance LaVergne, and one of the most powerful ways to point out the importance of diversity is through the data. “The numbers can tell a compelling story and show you where you have areas of opportunity,” he says.
His approach is to start with the baseline assumption that the company recruits great people, so if these smart, capable people come in and then have an under-performing experience, a company really needs to consider other environmental factors . And if data doesn’t work, he appeals to hearts and minds: “To be effective, all your people need to be experiencing the organization in a positive way.”
With enough of these conversations and effective solutions, people will commit, he says. “If you are trying to promote meritocracy and are significantly represented in one particular group, chances are we’re missing some of the best people available,” he points out.
A Career Built on a Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
Currently a senior vice president within enterprise talent acquisition, LaVergne leads the strategy and practice team, which includes targeted recruitment of diverse groups such as veterans and people with disabilities. In this role, he oversees all recruitment marketing, advertising and employer branding, including social media and candidate experience, as well as the assessment team, which builds out their online and written assessments.
But his diversity journey began in 2000 when he joined Goldman Sachs as the diversity officer for the investment management division, holding a number of diversity and recruiting roles since then. Prior to joining Wells Fargo, he spent three years as chief diversity officer for NY Life and also headed talent acquisition at Alcoa.
He has seen the industry evolve from the mid-90s when his employer Merrill Lynch was engaged in diversity activities, but it wasn’t until he took the role at Goldman that he came to appreciate the value and importance of diversity and the impact that this type of work can have on individuals and the broader organizational ecosystem.
“My goal is to help level the playing field and create an equal set of opportunities for all demographic groups, as I have seen how the connection between diversity and inclusion and talent management is inextricable,” he says. “If you’re effective at diversity and inclusion, then more than likely you’ll be good at overall talent management.”
Over the years, he has observed the challenges that people from underrepresented groups face in large organizations, which is why he has been committed to addressing the issues and helping people overcome those challenges. “Typically, diversity initiatives start with gender and ethnicity, and then as the analysis broadens, you are able to identify other differences in people’s backgrounds that can inhibit their progression and success in an organization, such as sexual orientation, socioeconomic status or generational difference.”
When thinking of gender equality, LaVergne notes that even in industries and companies with broad representation of women, it often still remains a pyramid, where the closer you get to the CEO, the lower the gender representation becomes.
He finds that as companies analyze the experiences women have, they recognize the need to understand why women are either not progressing or are opting out at certain career inflection points and to implement programs that address the declining representation curve. “Once you understand the issues, then you can design initiatives that specifically focus on those issues.”
The strategy has to be two-pronged: greater visibility and talent development for women as they are progressing and then fixing the institutional barriers that exist. They have to happen simultaneously, he points out.
At Wells Fargo, 33% of its Board director nominees are women and the company has a strong record of recruiting, promoting, and rewarding women at all levels of the organization.
Coaching Men and Women
Because he works in HR, LaVergne has ample opportunity to mentor women within his department, but he also advises women in other lines of business on how to navigate the culture and different work situations. And since male perspectives may be different, he finds he’s often called on to provide insight into how to interpret interactions. He also frequently serves as a network broker to help plot strategies for garnering better visibility.
When working with leaders to help them appreciate the experiences of those from underrepresented groups, LaVergne knows it’s important to have a variety of tactics available to address blind spots, employing different strategies based on his relationship with the person. If he knows them well, he can be direct about dynamics and approach the situation head-on.
But if it’s not someone with whom he has a relationship, he employs a more diplomatic approach: He’s found it helpful to share analogous situations that help them appreciate the circumstances. “When you start to make it a little personal, people can better understand the issues you are trying to discuss,” he notes. A favorite example is asking men if they’ve ever been to a women’s club meeting where they were the only guy, and to recall how it felt to stand in a corner by yourself because no one talked to you. “When I say, ‘Imagine if you had to do that every day,’ they really start to understand how it feels to be a woman in an often male dominated industry.”
Finally, he believes people must be mindful of language. One of his least favorite “proof points” for the importance of diversity is “It’s the right thing to do.” That’s because, unfortunately, when times get tough and hard decisions are made, people get real focused on business and the “right thing to do” can get lost in conversation.
On that same note, he says that it’s important to use language that affirms a group’s ability to succeed, cautioning others to avoid any language that undermines or questions the capabilities of underrepresented groups.
“We don’t have enough women,” or “We just need to hire more minorities,” can indicate that the company is making concessions or compromises to achieve diversity. “Instead we need to talk about the value of diversity and the skills, attributes and achievements different people bring,” he says. “We have to recognize the success that comes when we incorporate different viewpoints and backgrounds.”
LaVergne also went on to say,
What Skills Differentiate Women Who Make It To The Top?
Career Advice, Guest Contribution, Men Who "Get It"Image via Shutterstock
Guest contributed by Steven Stein
What does it really take for women leaders to make it to the top in the business world? Over the past 20 years, we’ve compiled the world’s largest database of testing results on emotional intelligence—approximately 2 million people worldwide. The Emotional Quotients Inventory (EQ-i 2.0) is the first and most widely used emotional intelligence test in the world. One of the areas we look at is the relationship between emotional intelligence and success at work. In addition, we’ve looked at the role gender plays in how these emotional skills are expressed.
We were the first to document the differences between men and women’s emotional intelligence profiles. Interestingly, the results were consistent around the world. And while there’s no significant difference in overall emotional intelligence scores, there were differences in the types of emotional intelligence. Men scored higher in independence, stress tolerance and problem solving. Women, however, scored higher in emotional self-awareness, emotional expression and empathy.
Building on women’s strengths
In the early days of reporting on my organization’s emotional intelligence and organizational success research, I was challenged by a number of businesswomen. They told me that to be successful in the male corporate environment, such as in financial institutions and the tech industry, it was important to be tough. They thought that they had to be tougher than the men in order to succeed. Being aggressive, they said, was rewarded and the way to get ahead.
I thought differently. I suggested that women were generally better in interpersonal skills, empathy and emotional expression, and they should leverage these skills. While the traditionally male-dominant traits of stress tolerance, independence and using appropriate emotions in solving problems were important qualities for leaders, women’s skills in these areas did not lag behind the men’s. And to get ahead of the curve in leadership, the skills women already excelled in were the ones to focus on improving even more.
Women are moving the needle on defining leadership traits
One of our current research samples includes 280 executives who are about to be or are currently on boards of directors. These high-level executives, most of whom have worked their way up the organizational ladder, have acquired the skills one needs to make it to the top. The sample shows that women have essentially closed the gap in the areas where men traditionally score higher—independence, stress tolerance and problem solving. They have had to deal with stress throughout their careers and, at this stage, are more balanced in dealing with difficult situations. Also, they’ve been at a decision-making level for a significant amount of time and can manage the decision-making process well.
But the data also shows that women who make it to the level of senior executives moving onto boards bring some extra skills with them to the boardroom. These women outscore their male counterparts in emotional self-awareness, emotional expression and empathy. These skills have now emerged as defining future leaders.
What difference does it make having females on the board of directors? The New York Times reported on a study by Credit Suisse looking at gender differences of board members. They examined almost 2,400 global corporations from 2005 to 2011, including the years directly preceding and following the financial crisis, and found that large-cap companies with at least one woman on their boards outperformed comparable companies with all-male boards by 26 percent.
The report continued, “Some might assume that there was a cost to this as well, that boards with women must have been excessively cautious before the financial crisis of 2008… Not so. From 2005 to 2007, Credit Suisse also found, the stock performance of companies with women on their boards essentially matched performance of companies with all-male boards. Nothing lost, but much gained.” Unfortunately, the number of women getting to the boardroom is still much lower than men.
Increase your emotional intelligence
Whatever your emotional intelligence strengths, you can develop and enhance the three specific traits exhibited strongly by women in leadership roles.
* * *
Steven Stein, Ph.D., is a leading expert on psychological assessment and emotional intelligence. He is the founder and CEO of Multi-Health Systems, a leading publisher of scientifically validated assessments. Dr. Steven Stein is the author and coauthor of several books on emotional intelligence, including his new book, The EQ Leader: Instilling Passion, Creating Shared Goals, and Building Meaningful Organizations through Emotional Intelligence
Disclaimer: The views and advice given by our Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Women Leaders as Agenda Movers: Leveling the Playing Field
Career Advice, Guest Contribution, Men Who "Get It"Recently I was asked to give a talk to a forum attended by fifty women executives. The topic was based on my new book and was titled, “The Agenda Mover: When Your Good Idea Is Not Enough.” Two days before the talk, two invitees objected, or at least questioned, my legitimacy, and pointedly asked the organizers “What does a man know about women and leadership?”
My response was that, indeed, I had no expertise that was unique to the challenges of being or aspiring to be a woman leader. My expertise is in the micro-political skills that any leader—no matter what their personality, background, age, gender—needs in order to move their ideas, their agendas, and their change efforts forward.
I am the first to admit that every leader brings to their agenda mover challenges their unique voice, their unique skills, and their unique narrative. Leaders face different burdens. While, for some, due to societal expectations and pressures, the burdens are greater, the core skills of leadership are ubiquitous.
If you want to succeed in an organization, if you want to move your idea forward, if you want to drive your career—to lead any effort, you need to have mastered political competence. That is, you must acquire and develop the micro-skills overcome resistance, mobilize support, and go the distance. Leaders of all stripes need to understand that a good idea is simply not enough. As a leader, you need the skills of political competence.
Having trained leaders at all levels of numerous organizations, I have determined that there are four fundamental agenda-moving skills:
1. Anticipate. When innovating and creating change, your idea is inevitably going to impact others. You have to anticipate how others will react to your idea. You need to know whom you’re dealing with, interpret their intentions, gauge their resistance, and expect the arguments that they will make against your idea.
Successful leaders spend as much time formulating their plan as they do mapping the political terrain and working out how they will present and justify their ideas to others. They expect resistance, and have made plans to overcome the naysayers.
2. Mobilize. You can’t do it alone. To achieve results, you have to work with a coalition of supporters who share your goals. Coalitions not only lighten the workload, but they reinforce your credibility and protect you—and your team—against unexpected setbacks.
To mobilize others, you must be careful to focus your message, be smart about timing the release of your messaging, astute about language, and perceptive about your audience. Support can be weak or strong, or middling, and politically competent leaders know when lukewarm support is enough to get their agenda accomplished, and when they have to press harder for a greater degree backing.
3. Negotiate. You have to negotiate support. You have to show others that there is little risk in joining you in your effort. Give a sense that you are fine without them, but it would be nice to have them along on the effort. Show prospective coalition members what they can gain from aligning their interests with yours. Getting the buy-in is about shifting your focus from your passion to really seriously thinking about where others are coming from, and what would motivate them to join your effort.
4. Sustain. You have to keep working after your coalition is in place. It falls on your shoulders as the leader to maintain traction, create short-term wins, create short-term victories, supply resources, and reinforce an optimistic outlook.
Sometimes agenda movers make the mistake of front-loading their effort on the coalition creation stage, and slack off once the coalition is formed. You can’t let your enthusiasm flag as you head toward the finish line. Make sure your coalition becomes a focused, agile, coordinated, forward-moving team.
After my talk, one attendee came up to me and said that the agenda moving skills were something that she learned late in life. She also mentioned that young men are taught the ropes of the political games well before young women. Isn’t that the sad truth?
Considering the challenges that women face, mastering the skills of an agenda mover is just but one more step to leveling the playing field.
About the author
Samuel B. Bacharach is the author of THE AGENDA MOVER: When Your Good Idea Is Not Enough (Cornell University Press, 2016). He is also co-founder of the Bacharach Leadership Group, which focuses on training leaders in the skills of the Agenda Mover, and is the McKelvey-Grant Professor at Cornell University.
Disclaimer: Views and opinions of Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
Men Who Get It: Adam Quinton, Founder and CEO of Lucas Point Ventures
Featured, Men Who "Get It", People“If there’s a key word that resonates with me, it’s ‘fairness,’” says Adam Quinton. He feels that while most workplaces claim to be a meritocracy, there are a host of issues you’ll notice, if you’re paying attention, that make it not quite as meritocratic as you thought.
And that’s an issue that he has seen play out particularly in the context of early-stage financing, the space where he works. “If you’re looking at the companies of tomorrow, there’s a lot of evidence based on who gets funding that it’s not a level playing field.”
Understanding the Diversity Barriers
With a long history in financial services, from big companies to startups, Quinton has seen many scenarios where diversity has been important, and is currently working to champion diversity and level the playing field in the venture capital arena.
In fact, more than 80 percent of the companies in which he has invested have at least one female founder. This compares to the average of one in five startups which receive seed funding and just one in 10 startups which receive venture capital funding.
“Unless you believe that female entrepreneurs are not as capable, as innovative or as driven as men, then that disparity seems weird and feels unfair. However, to me it also feels like a compelling investing opportunity others are missing.”
He notes that most early stage investors are not as objective as they think they are, and that Silicon Valley’s belief that it is the ultimate meritocracy is part of its problem. In early-stage investing, this phenomenon is known as “patent recognition” – a polite way of saying investors tend to be biased towards founders and ideas that they have seen succeed in the past. Hence, he describes, “the stereotype of the 20-something white guy wear in a hoodie from an elite school as the model Silicon Valley entrepreneur.” That contributes to the reality that women, people of color and others outside that stereotype find fund raising much harder.
Besides being unfair, he laments the huge source of economic loss and of innovation resulting from venture capitalists essentially sidelining more than half of the population. “That lack of fairness has non-trivial societal and economic consequences,” he notes.
Rooting Out Unconscious Bias as a Sponsor and a Mentor
To Quinton, being a sponsor is crucially about advocating for people who are “not in the room.” And while he accepts that mentoring is a valuable way to offer advice, he argues that sponsorship is a more important relationship because the sponsor is staking their reputation on their protégé. “It takes courage to put your own credibility on the line for someone else; even when it’s the right thing to do, there is an element of risk.”
To combat unconscious bias, Quinton says it’s key to understand that even with the best intentions we all are certain to be impacted by it ourselves; as he says “it is part of the human condition.” Hence he shares his view that engaging in personal discovery will serve you well. For example, even though you may think you’re the least racist person you know, embedded in your unconscious brain may be something you might not like. “You can’t advise other people how to act without knowing yourself.”
And that, he says, is how you can start “being the change you want to see.” To the extent you understand yourself and the complex issues that surround decision-making, you can be more be sensitive to bias and stand up to it when you see it, even in a situation that might look trivial. For example, if you’re in a meeting and a man interrupts a woman, you have to be conscious of this “micro inequity.” In fact, research shows that men interrupt or talk over women twice as often as women interrupt or talk over men. To disrupt this example of bias, he suggests a participant speak up and say, “Hey, I didn’t get all of your point Susan; where were you headed?”
Another issue he notes that might appear to be trivial is where people sit in meetings. He sees a tendency for the Type A person, usually male, to sit next to the leader in the “seat of power.” That’s where he believes it is up to the meeting leader to conduct the micro-intervention, being conscious of who sits where and making sure that voices get heard equitably.
And it is important to question your own decisions. “When you have a discussion about a promotion, reflect on why you suggested one colleague over another. Was it for fact-based and objective reasons, or were you jumping to conclusions based on your own biases?” he says.
Breaking Barriers through Mentorship
One suggestion Quinton has for mentorship is to work with someone at least two degrees of difference from you – where difference means both obvious physical factors, such as gender, race and age, but also factors that are not as obvious which may include disability or veteran status. In his view, making the conscious effort to mentor people who are “more” different brings the mentor greater understanding of the situations and challenges of others, as well hopefully as bringing benefits to the mentees.
Words of Advice for Leaders
Finally, he recommends that leaders “Think like a fox and understand like a hedgehog.” When considering decision making, people can typically be categorized into one of two buckets: Hedgehogs have one strong and fixed view of the world, while foxes are a more flexible and prepared to change their minds.
We want motivated leaders who can stick with the mission, he says, but that can be a derailing characteristic if they don’t think like a fox and react when there’s other mounting information that conflicts with their approach.
“The world is a complicated and unpredictable place,” Quinton says. “The leaders of the companies I work with have a strong vision of where they want to get to, of course. But the best ones are constantly questioning and testing their ideas and approaches. They are not locked into one strategy for all time and hence can pivot when the evidence — and their gut — point in a new direction.”
Save
Save