Tag Archive for: Aimee Hansen

LGBT Leadership Update: Rising Corporate Activism and Executive Pride

, ,

LGBT flag featuredBy Aimee Hansen

With June, we turn to Pride Month on the diversity calendar, so let’s focus our spotlight to recent progress on advancing LGBT inclusive business cultures and LGBT executive leadership.

Corporate Activism Defends LGBT Rights

Recently, state law setbacks to the LGBT community (and human rights) have one positive side effect: they’ve led to a collective backlash from companies and employers who have united to defend LGBT rights.

Repeatedly, companies have been asserting to state lawmakers that upholding LGBT rights is a necessary condition for attracting and maintaining the best talent for businesses.

Since North Carolina passed an anti-discrimination law that failed to protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, over 200 business leaders – including CEOs and executives of major companies such as Apple, Bank of America, Citibank, Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft, and more – have signed an open letter to the state governor calling for a repeal to the “HB 2” law, stating that “such laws are bad for our employees and bad for business”.

Canceled plans by Paypal, Deutsche Bank and performance artists are estimated to have cost the state “tens of millions in dollars of losses”. Meanwhile, companies also joined in activism with an open letter to state leaders in Mississippi to repeal “HB 1523”, which gives individuals or organizations license to discriminate against LGBT people based on religious justification.

In the Harvard Business Review, author Andrew Winston points out that business has been ahead of the public curve when it comes to LGBT rights. Winston notes that over half of Fortune 500 companies were offering domestic partner benefits ten years ago when only 35% of Americans supported gay marriage (and 55% opposed it), and that today corporate adoption of anti-discrimination policies based on gender identity (66% of companies) outpaces public acceptance of transgender rights.

In the case of LGBT rights, Winston argues the moral imperative of non-discrimination in the workplace and the economic motivation to thrive with diverse customers are so understandably linked that business is “pro-actively influencing societal norms.”

LGBT Diversity Associated with Stock Performance

Influencing policy is part of the equation, but building an LGBT-inclusive culture is another thing. When LGBT employees do not feel free to be themselves, when they feel they have to “hide in plain sight”, it’s proven costly not only to employees but to business.

When diversity is celebrated and genuinely fostered, not only individual productivity but company productivity seems to benefit. According to a recent report by Credit Suisse, the stock of companies that exhibit LGBT diversity outperform the stock of companies that do not.

LGBT diversity was factored by companies that have openly LGBT leaders and senior management, are voted as leading LGBT employers, or have many employees in local LGBT business networks.

The LGBT basket of 270 companies outperformed the MSCI ACWI by 3% annually since 2010, as well as outperforming a custom basket of companies in US, Europe and Australia by 1.4% annually.

The correlation of LGBT diversity with performance is important, since according to the report, 72% of senior LGBT executives say they have not come out at work, which is not surprising when it’s still legal to fire someone based on sexual orientation in over twenty states and based on gender identity in over thirty states.

Celebrating LGBT Executive Role Models

Celebrating diversity at the very top, for the first time in the three years since its introduction, a woman topped the 2015 list of the 100 Most Powerful LGBT Executives in the World, named by OUTstanding and the Financial Times.

Inga Beale is the first female CEO of Lloyd’s of London and openly bi-sexual. As she told The Guardian, “It’s not about me. It’s about what you do for other people. For me, it’s so important because you need these role models.”

According to OUTstanding as reported in Entreprenuer, recognition is critical since closeted LGBT employees are 70% more likely to leave a company within the first three years.

The list of LGBT power executives, for which activism outside of the workplace is also taken into account, included several from the finance world, including Accenture’s Sander van‘t Noordende (10), Citi’s Bob Annibale (28), Goldman Sach’s Gavin Wills (36), and PwC’s Andy Woodfield (78) and Mark Gossington (82).

Speaking to the inclusive culture fostered at Accenture, Sander van’t Noordende has said, “Only when people are comfortable in their workplace will they be able to get the best out of themselves,” advising individuals to not only value their difference, but also find a company that values their difference too.

Promoting LGBT C-Suite Leadership

Stanford is also stepping up to encourage aspiring LGBT executives to value their difference. Stanford Graduate School of Business introduced the Stanford LGBT Executive Leadership Program, which will first take place in late July 2016 and is accepting applications until June 24th.

With a focus on fostering authentic and impactful senior LGBT leadership and network building, Stanford states, “This is the only Executive Education program of its kind offered by a leading business school to address the significant gap in leadership for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people in the C-suite.”

According to program co-director Tom Wurster, the one-week training is ideally aimed at “the LGBT executive with a minimum of 10 years professional experience and 5 years of management experience who is preparing to take on more significant leadership roles.”

More visible leadership within more significant leadership roles – out and proud and C-Suite is the call.

Save

Save

/by

Why Real Executive Presence is Not Only About Making Impressions

,

Smartly dressed young women shaking hands in a business meeting at office desk

When it comes to possessing successful leadership behaviors, C-Suite females rate themselves virtually the same as male executives. But having what it takes to be a leader and being perceived equally as one are different things.

In a recent INSEAD article, Dr. Caroline Rook shared that an investigation of 1,167 female and male C-suite executives revealed “no meaningful differences between the way men and women rate themselves on twelve leadership behaviors attributed to successful global leaders.” In fact, Rook found that in some industries women were more likely to self-rate rate higher than men did on emotional intelligence and team-building.

An Elusive Bridge Between Ability and Success

Experts may advise on how to cultivate it or even be aware of what detracts from it, but executive presence remains elusive. Fast Company has called it “the intangible career trait that you need to succeed.” It’s easier to recognize than describe. It’s been approximated with the words “gravitas”, “charisma”, and the ability to “command a room.” It’s also been called the “workplace X factor”. Executive presence seems to be a Gestalt mosaic of qualities exuded by select leaders which, subjectively perceived, makes their whole greater than the sum of their parts.

Silvia Ann Hewlett, Ph.D., author of Executive Presence: The Missing Link Between Merit and Success, told Fast Company that executive presence is “a measure of image – a dynamic mix of gravitas, communication, and appearance.” According to Hewlett and many other experts in this space, executive presence is the bridge you build between your abilities and advancing – because merit alone is unlikely to get you there.

“Executive Presence” Brings Men to Mind

In their study, “Understanding Executive Presence: Perspectives of Business Professionals”, researchers Gavin Dagley and Caderyn Gaskin explored executive presence through in-depth interviews with 34 Australian business professionals with expertise in the effectiveness of organizational executives.

The researchers concluded that “a person with executive presence is someone who, by virtue of how he or she is perceived by audience members at any given point in time, exerts influence beyond that conferred through formal authority.”

Because executive presence is easier to perceive than describe, the researchers began with asking the participants to nominate four people who they thought of as having executive presence, and from that point they explored what executive presence was.

71% of participants brought up and described male examples, women doing so (75%) even more than men (65%). None only brought up female examples. Some participants realized during the interview they were speaking only about men, and self-corrected to include women, but their initial inclination was already clear.

Are the Characteristics of Executive Presence impossibly male?

The researchers found that executive presence is to some extent in the eye of the beholder. One person may perceive an executive to have substantial presence, while others may be less impressed.

They also found that executive presence is not entirely impression-based, something a leader exudes from the first impression. Rather they found that sustained perceptions of executive presence were a sum of initial contacts and evaluations over an extended time of more exposure.

Of the ten characteristics of executive presence they identified, five were based on impressions during brief contacts which we would argue are heavily gendered making it tricky for women to be measured with the same yardstick since historical notions of status are just so, well, male?

  • Status and Reputation – an “initial aura of presence” based upon strong reputation, impressive networks, senior roles held, and significant achievements – “reputation” is the key word
  • Physical Appearance – appearance (“looking the part”), stature, and non-verbal body language such as posture, eye contact, and walk
  • Projected Confidence – displaying outward calmness, composure, and a sense of self, emotional intelligence, dignity, elegance, style, a “sense of authority” or charisma
  • Communication Ability – ability to communicate messages simply, clearly, convincingly and appealingly; effective use of voice; ability to make themselves heard
  • Engagement Skills – ease and manner in which executives engaged with others, with skills such as “eagerness”, “charm”, “apparent sincerity”, “quiet wit”, and “friendliness”
  • The other five characteristics were more evaluation-based and built over time and exposure and are more gender neutral, based more in substance and integrity than status and style. They included, for example:
  • Interpersonal integrity – acknowledging others contributions, “being inclusive”, remembering the last conversation with someone, showing the “human touch”, relationship-based interpersonal sincerity
  • Values-In-Action – acting in accordance with personal values, showing integrity –being “genuine”, “authentic to her values,” “courageous – speaks from the heart,” “tough-minded,” “authentic with follow through,” and “trustworthy”
  • Intelligence and Expertise – quality task-focused thinking, observed as “impressive intellect,” “knowledge in areas of focus,”“considered when expressing views,”“long-term insightful thinker,” “excellent judgment,” and “quiet wisdom”
  • Outcome Delivery Ability – ability to deliver key outcomes, including solid decision-making, commitment, being flexible, being energetic and hard-working, and achieving delivery through others
  • In many ways, these characteristics are more important to leadership than the impression-based, gender-biased measurements that have become attached to executive presence short-hand.
Gender and “Executive Presence”

Dagley and Gaskin found that “executive presence is located in the perceptions of audience members rather than being something inherent in the executive.” Executive presence might be the bridge to the executive office, but it’s also subjectively defined by who is present in it.

The research shows how women can more broadly build the bridge of their executive presence, how you can recognize existing strengths and fill in your own personal gaps. But how executive presence interacts with gender is embodied in the word. The most likely reason “executive presence” brings men to mind first is that men are over-represented in the corporate executive suite.

When will “executive presence” bring women right to mind?

When women have equal presence in executive roles.

That’s a bridge that requires collective organizational and cultural building.

By Aimee Hansen

/by

Apples-to-Apples, the Gender Pay Gap Exists

, , ,
money money moneyThis week we hit “Equal Pay Day” on Tuesday, a day which symbolizes the extra days women must work to make the same salary as her male peers did last year.

According to the Demystifying The Gender Pay Gap survey by Glassdoor, the biggest myth about the gender pay gap is that it doesn’t exist at all, as 7 in 10 employees across seven countries assumed men and women received the same pay for the same work. But even when narrowed down to an apples-to-apples comparison within companies, researchers found a significant gender gap exists.

The Apples-to-Oranges Gap

Every time the gender pay gap comes up, it seems we have the apples-to-oranges data and the apples-to-apples data. Apples-to-oranges data compares men’s earnings to women’s earnings without breaking down the factors at play.

The recent Catalyst data summary of Women’s Earnings And Income reports that in the U.S. in 2014, women earned 79% as much as men in annual earnings. Based on Census data of median weekly earnings in 2015, full-time working women earned 81% as much as men, but only 72% as much within full-time management, professional, and related occupations.

Data has shown that female income tends to level off around age 35-40, as gendered workplace penalties reach full swing, while male income doesn’t level until 50-55 years old. The American Association of University Women reports that “women are typically paid about 90 percent of what men are paid until around the age of 35, at which point median earnings for women start to grow much more slowly than median earnings for men. From around age 35 through retirement, women are typically paid 75 to 80 percent of what men are paid.”

This difference has a significant impact on women’s lives, resulting in an average of $10,800 less in annual earnings, or nearly a half million dollars across a career, and a dramatically lower retirement security (44% less median income) for longer-living women, which ultimately spells an economy issue.

The Apples-to-Apples Gap

In their recent survey, Glassdoor created apples-to-apples salary comparisons by factoring in “differences in education, experience, age, location, job title, industry and even company.”

In the U.S, they found an apples-to-oranges 24% pay gap, or that women earned 76% as much as men. When they controlled for age, education, and years of experience, the gap was 19%.

When they looked at the same job title at the same employer at the same location, the highly “adjusted”apples-to-apples gap was still 5.4% – women earned 94.6 cents on the dollar of her male peer sitting next to her.

For a full-time working woman at median earnings, that’s a $2,140 loss per year. But for a woman who earns $100,000 a year, the loss is $5,400 annually.

The “adjusted gap”also increased with age – 6.2% at 35-44 years old, 9.5% at 45-54 years old, and 10.5% at 55-64 years old.

Among industries, the “adjusted”pay gap for insurance was among the biggest at 7.2% and finance was 6.4%. Among occupations, C-Suite professionals had one of the largest gender pay gaps (27.7%).

Apples-to-Oranges Is Still a Gender Bias Issue

Gender bias is still a significant driver of an apples and oranges comparison – it’s a big factor of the context that makes the difference exist at all.

According to Robert Hohman, CEO of Glassdoor, “occupational sorting”explains 54% of the overall “unadjusted”pay gap – the sorting of men and women into different industries and different roles in the economy, through non-subtle and subtle societal influences.

Education and experience were minor factors of explanation (14%). In fact, an April Gender Pay Inequality report from the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee stated, “The typical woman with a graduate degree earns $5,000 less than the typical man with a bachelor’s degree,”and that “women’s median earnings are lower at every level of education.”

Sincerity Is Transparency

The gender pay gap has been stagnant for the last decade 2006 to 2015 (change was 20 times faster in the preceding decade) and is not except to close until 2059.

Recent executive proposals by President Obama to target the gender pay gap by having the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission collect companies salary data has prompted reactions of government overreach, but the overall intention is to get targeted with a persistent problem.

As long as the persistent gender gap belongs to everyone, it belongs to nobody, and that’s why transparency matters. 70% of employees feel salary transparency is good for employee satisfaction and for business.

Certainly, a pointed finger sparks transparency, especially if it’s being pointed publicly or by shareholders, and especially if there’s nothing to hide. With the recent Glassdoor finding that female computer programmers experience one of the highest “adjusted”occupation pay gaps at 28.3%, the big names in Tech have been coming out to champion their equal pay.

On Monday, both Facebook and Microsoft announced publicly that men and women earn equally at their companies. Amazon and Apple have publicly stated similar findings based on employee pay surveys, prompted by shareholder proposals requesting disclosure of pay equity assessments, filed or co-filed by Pax World. Intel also shared their equal pay findings recently.

Now what if companies began to feel the same external pressure to disclose their C-Suite pay findings around that whopping 27.7% discrepancy?

When it comes to the gender pay gap, it seems the only real language of sincerity is indeed transparency, and companies have the chance now to use it.

By Aimee Hansen

/by

Stoking Your Intrapreneurial Spirit

,

thought-leadershipHow can you make a sideways step within your job yet still move your career ahead? The opportunity, even demand, is intrapreneurship.

Intrapreneurship is entrepreneurship, but within the context of a larger organization. An intrapreneur is “an employee of an established organization with an entrepreneurial mindset,” who thinks more like a start-up owner.

Alyson Krueger writes in Fast Company, “Obviously there have always been go-getters in companies who try to move the needle forward and push the status quo. But never before has there been such a push for employees to take ownership of their own corner of a company.”

Asserted in Entrepreneur, “intrapreneurship is the new entrepreneurship.”

Satisfaction and Engagement Meets Innovation and Leadership

A survey from University of Phoenix School of Business found people who are satisfied in their job are nearly twice as likely to report having the opportunity for intrapreneurship (61%) compared to those who are not satisfied (33%). It’s logical that organizations are being advised to foster entrepreneurial cultures as a way of attracting talent as well as increasing employee engagement.

Murray Newlands writes in Inc., “Intrapreneurs will become the building blocks of a company’s executive teams and leaders. They are the driving force that moves a company forward and they will inevitably rise to the top of the company as they understand the company from all levels. Starting from the bottom, they will see the company as a set of processes in which every process must evolve.”

Intrapreneurs shake up the ladder, which is one way to change the gender status quo. They do not obey traditional career paths, but creates new ones, while changing how things work from the inside-out. There are many articles that advise on the skills to be effective as an intrapreneur. But the first word that comes to mind when we hear entrepreneurial is spirit.

Here are five qualities that seem across the board inherent to stoking your intrapreneurial spirit.

Quality 1: Relentless Curiosity.

Intrapreneurs see the opportunity for something that is not yet there, which takes curiosity, perceptiveness, intuition, and being attuned to seeing trends before others. They also have to be able to question and “challenge current business practices,” not simply fall in line or put their heads-down and get on with it. Intrapreneurs don’t stay in the box. They question the box. Coming up with ideas is a mindset, and it’s value does not hinge on the success or failure of one idea.

According to Claudia Chan, founder of S.H.E. Globl Media, in Fast Company, intrepreneurial employees are asking questions such as,“What do I want to create that is going to fill a white space? What doesn’t exist that needs to exist? There is a hole and they want to fill it. There is a problem, and they want to solve it.”

Quality 2: Risk-Taking Creativity.

Chan writes, “If you’re not uncomfortable or scared, you’re not driving innovation.”

Intrapreneurs bring creativity where it did not exist before, in the form of ideas, processes, and solutions, and they embrace a spirit of uncertainty. As a visionary, you cannot know exactly what you’re doing, because what you’re doing has not been done before. It’s very important to be knowledgeable and leverage your strengths, but also find the right point to make the leap.

Susan Folley of Corporate Entrepreneurs, LLC writes, “This is the great divide between traditional leaders and intrapreneurs – the known and unknown. It is the difference between playing it safe or taking a risk, relying on past experience or experimentation, needing detailed information to decide or leveraging what you know, minimizing risks or maximizing value, asking for what you need or leveraging what you’ve got. They see what is possible. It’s a mindset, a way of operating that is foreign to many of us.”

Quality 3: Daring and Vocal Courage.

Intrapreneurship takes a willingness to step up with your ideas and be vocal, even finding a way to visualize them so they become more accessible to others.

As shared in her book Daring Greatly, researcher Brené Brown asked Kevin Surace what the biggest obstacle to creativity and innovation was, and he replied that it is the fear of even putting your ideas out there due to worries about ridicule or being belittled, yet “innovative ideas often sound crazy and failure and learning are a part of revolution.”

So it’s necessary to stoke your courage, but according to Brown the culture matters. Ask if the culture you’re in is also rewarding the value of creative courage. If you’re a woman of intrapreneurial spirit full of ideas, be in an environment in which you and your ideas will flourish.

Quality 4: Passionate & Adaptable Resilience.

Once you’ve put yourself out there, it’s important not to let your ideas die upon rejection of one articulation, but foster resilience and passion towards getting to the best work, just as a writer may have to find the real story one hundred pages into her first draft.

Rich Maloof writes in Forbes, “find a granular element of the concept that is undeniably of value.” You can always find the new simplified starting point and with iterative progress, your Plan D may be ten times better than Plan A started out.

Quality 5: Contagious Collaboration.

A large part of intrapreneurship is being able to “assemble” the right team around an idea and foster an enthusiastic start-up mentality – all hands-in, less silos and more shared accountability. If intraprenership requires a learn-by-doing approach, you’re going to need a passionate team willing to learn and relearn with you. You must be able to make a personal vision a team vision.

Intrapreneurial women will not be the first up the ladder. Instead, they’ll invent a new platform to stand on, from which the view looks different for everyone.

By Aimee Hansen

/by

How Digital Could Deliver Workplace Gender Equality in 25 Years

,

By Aimee Hansen

Women-on-computerAn increasingly digital workplace may have brought debatable impacts such as the 24/7 work week and scattered listening, but according to Accenture’s latest findings, it also has the potential to bring global workplace gender equality a lot closer to reality.

Earlier this month, we wrote about how the United Nation’s International Women’s Day 2016 effort emphasized accelerating gender equality. A new report from Accenture entitled “Getting to Equal: How Digital is Helping Close the Gender Gap at Work,” asserts that digital is a key factor in accelerating gender equality in the workplace.

Accenture’s report finds that doubling the pace of “digital fluency” among women could double the speed of gender equality at work.

Rather than waiting until 2065, doubling the pace at which women become frequent users of technology would bring workplace gender equality in developed nations by 2040.

Rather than waiting until 2100, workplace gender equality could be brought forward in developing nations by 2060.

The Relationship Between Digital Fluency and Gender Equality

Accenture’s report comes as global talent shortages are being highlighted by the World Economic Forum as well as Manpower Group, while women remain an underrepresented presence that could become part of an evolving and flexible workforce increasingly enabled via technology.

Combining survey data (nearly 5,000 men and women in 31 countries) with published data on digital usage by country to create an econometric model, Accenture analyzed the effect of digital fluency on gender equality throughout the career cycle for an individual. Researchers also looked at the relationship between gender equality and digital fluency across nations.

In their report, digital fluency was correlated with women’s career achievement. The U.S., Netherlands, UK, and Nordic countries have both the highest digital fluency and rank among the top performers in workplace equality.

Large gender gaps in digital fluency exist in Japan, Singapore, France, and Switzerland, and closing them would increase gender equality in the workplace.

In countries like India and Indonesia, generally low levels of digital fluency, and gender gaps within them, are holding back women’s progress.

Nations like Saudi Arabia and Japan illustrate that digital fluency is not the only factor at work, since deep-seated cultural factors also hold gender gaps wider than expected based on the model.

Though it may be argued that over time digital, and its ability to amplify the voices that are so often disenfranchised, could play into challenging the cultural factors that disempower women.

Digital Fluency as an Accelerant, Especially For Women

Accenture concludes that digital skills are helping to narrow the workplace gender gap and level the playing field and that digital fluency acts as an accelerant in every stage of a woman’s career from education and employment to advancement because technology removes many of the barriers that prevent women from working more flexibly. Digital fluency helps men and women but the
the researchers of the report found that being digitally fluent held even stronger positive effects for women than for men.

Accelerating Education

The report showed that when men and women have the same level of digital fluency, women have achieved a higher rate of education.

Women are not simply becoming better educated than they were before. They’ve become better educated than men in 16 of the 31 countries.

Digital fluency played the greatest role in enabling women to access education in developing nations – with 68% of women saying Internet was important to their education (versus 44% in developed nations).

Accelerating Employment

Digital fluency allows for more flexibility in the workplace, which is helping to close the employment gap between men and women in many countries, as more women are more able to find and participate in work.

The report found that “While men and women alike are liberated by the balance that work flexibility affords, women appear to derive greater value from it.”

In the survey, 72% of women (and 68% of men) said that women’s employment opportunities increase as digital fluency increases, with nearly half of women reporting they used digital to access job opportunities and work from home.

Accelerating Advancement

While digital fluency also proved to help accelerate women’s career advancement, the relationship was less significant. The report found that “while digital fluency is having a positive impact on pay for both men and women, the gap in pay between genders is still not closing.”

What is changing is the expectations that it’s possible to close the gap within a foreseeable future, as nearly 60% of Millennial women aspire to be in leadership positions and feel skilled for it, and nearly 3/4 of respondents agreed “the digital world will empower our daughters.” Mind you, those digitally native daughters with better education than their male peers and expanded access to work of many forms across many countries.

According to Julie Sweet, Accenture’s group chief executive for North America, “This is a powerful message for all women and girls. Continuously developing and growing your ability to use digital technologies, both at home and in the workplace, has a clear and positive effect at every stage of your career.And it provides a distinct advantage, as businesses and governments seek to fill the jobs that support today’s growing economy.”

/by

Why You Should Avoid Overwork To Be Effective In Your Job

,

women stressedRecently in Fortune, Besty Myers, founding director of the Center for Women and Business at Bentley University, called the 24/7 workday “the biggest setback for women in corporate America.”

Professor Robin Ely of Harvard Business School has said the 24/7 work culture “locks gender inequality in place.”

But this is not an article about gender. The chronic overwork culture doesn’t need to change only because it works against women: it needs to change because it’s not working.

Sarah Green Carmichael, senior associate editor of Harvard Business Review (HBR), posed in a recent article that the bigger question is not what has driven us to a 24/7 work culture, or who is to blame, but rather, “Does it work?”

The answer, according to many studies related to employee effectiveness, is no. Within her article, Carmichael highlights that a culture of chronic overwork backfires on employees and companies. Yet the number of hours worked has increased by 9% in the last 30 years. It seems Corporate America is clinging detrimentally tight to the false truth that overwork is a requirement for effective employees and driving company-level success: overwork is overvalued.

Here are four solid reasons why you shouldn’t chronically overwork if you wish to remain engaged and effective in your job and why your firm shouldn’t want you to, either. May this provide insight both for you and the men and women you manage.

1) Overwork may lower your engagement with work.

According to Gallup, nearly 61% of college graduates feel disengaged at work – meaning not “intellectually and emotionally connected,” even when they are physically present in the office, resulting in a major ROI loss for companies.

Data shows that 2/3 of employees feel overwhelmed and 80% would like to work fewer hours. The 24/7 work culture and feeling overwhelmed are major contributors to disengagement. While an “always on” expectation makes it difficult to mentally switch-off, research has suggested that being able to psychologically switch-off from work protects both well-being and work engagement.

If you feel you can never turn off, it would seem you begin to tune out. To stay engaged at work, it’s important not to give into the expectation to live it.

2) Overwork may hurt your productivity.

Research showed that a company couldn’t tell the difference in performance if an effective employee was working 80 hours or just pretending to, so working longer hours may not mean accomplishing more, career-wise too. As graphed in The Economist, longer hours are correlated with decreased productivity. In fact, research has even shown that when working hours are excessive, cutting hours back can actually increase your productivity.

Also, in research with a consultancy firm, required and predictable time-off from work including being digitally switched-off, increased productivity – even if time completely off had to be strictly enforced because employees were in the habit of being constantly switched on. Not only did it improve communication, learning and the client product, but it also resulted in greater job satisfaction, sense of work/life balance, and commitment to managing a career at the firm.

3) Overwork may hinder your ability to lead effectively.

As Ron Friedman writes in an HBR article, while putting in the excessive hours may have marked you as motivated and helped your “early career advancement,” maintaining overwork as part of your work identity once you’ve already arrived to a position of leadership can significantly damage your career prospects.

Leaders need to disconnect to optimize the interpersonal skills, critical thinking, and visionary skills important to their roles. Overwork contributes to mis-reading others (often negatively) and emotional reactivity such as lashing out. Management performance also depends upon judgement, and being tired from overwork impairs your decision-making abilities and clarity of perspective when it comes to identifying problems and creative solutions.

An overworked leader, concentrating to the point of fatigue, is often a cloudy leader, who is also more vulnerable to technology distractions, such as the 3pm workplace Facebook rush.

As Reid writes, overworking also models the behavior as an expectation for those you manage, and there’s enough evidence in this article alone to illustrate why that’s a questionable management practice.

4) Overwork may harm your health.

On top of compromising your job effectiveness, overwork compromises your well-being, a major component of feeling satisfyingly engaged in your work. Studies have shown that overwork is associated with emotional exhaustion and impaired sleep, which is a massive performance killer in addition to compromising health.

It’s also associated with depressive symptoms, heavy drinking, and long-term with heart disease and impairment of brain function when it comes to reasoning. Nothing about this says top management potential. If you’re to be a thriving executive, it’s probably best to start as a thriving human.

What Can You Do To Be More Effective?

But you’re still surrounded with a culture of overwork, so what can you do?

Friedman recommends starting with these small behavior changes:

Find a way not to have your smartphone at your side constantly when away from work, interrupting your present – instead check it with intention. Program evening emails to arrive in the morning, so they don’t catalyze a back and forth conversation after hours. Discern when a response is necessary immediately from when it’s not. Find an activity that you’re excited to leave work for, something else that will give you a sense of gain. While at work, schedule a few breaks in your day so that you can step away, clear your head, and refresh both your energy and perspective.

It’s clear that when you chronically over-extend yourself at work, you may still be there or still be on, but you stop being the same employee. Being an effective leader means managing the asset of your leadership effectiveness, not working until it’s lost to diminishing returns or worse.

By Aimee Hansen

/by

Why Storytelling Is a Leadership Asset That Takes Many Forms

,

women working mentoringYou can call storytelling a fine art, a talent, a method, a skill, the mark of a leader or all of the above. But what proves effective storytelling is a powerful leadership asset? Well to get technical about it, neuroscience does.

Research into the neurobiological impact of storytelling by Paul Zak shows that stories change the activity in people’s brains. Powerful character-driven stories produce neurochemicals that enhance our sense of empathy (thinking, feeling, and responding the same way as the character) and motivate us toward cooperative behavior – “stories bring brains together” and people with them.

Paul Zak recommends professionals to begin every presentation with a “compelling human-scale story.” His experiments in business settings show that emotive character-driven stories equate to better understanding and greater retention of your key speaking points weeks later. “In terms of making impact,” he writes, “this blows the standard PowerPoint presentation to bits.”

A Core Leadership Skill That Leads?

David Hutchens, author of Circle of the 9 Muses: A Storytelling Field Guide for Innovators & Meaning Makers says that leaders are “rediscovering that story is the most efficient path to creating connection, engagement, and shared meaning.”

According to Hutchens, leaders are connecting the power of stories with the ability to address pressing issues facing organizations such as capturing decisions, knowledge and wisdom after the event; engaging Millennial talent through organizational purpose; creating value; and defining individual and organizational identity.

Certainly top female executives such as Meg Whitman and Indra Nooyi leverage the power of stories in public speaking. We also recognize stories for their potential and power to make diversity personal, inspire women on pathways to leadership, and to advance gender equality.

We know stories are integral to leadership. According to researchers and consultants Stort and Nordstrom in Forbes, “Proper storytelling just might be the most impactful leadership method yet.”

And leadership communications expert Dianna Booher writes, “Storytelling makes leadership possible. A leader without the ability to tell a great story has lost the platform and power to persuade.”

Going even further, perhaps stories are leadership. Research by Parry and Hansen transcends “the notion that leaders tell stories”, and instead proposes “that stories themselves operate like leaders” or “the story becomes the leader.”

Ways Stories are Used in Everyday Leadership Situations

Stories clearly play a starring role in pivotal and powerful leadership moments. We tend to think of the big impact presentations, heroic personal tales, and big organizational stories. But storytelling is also integrated into everyday leadership situations in various ways.

Finnish researchers Auvinen, Aaltio, and Blomqvist sought out “storytelling managers” (managers who often integrate stories into leadership situations and conversations), identified by those reporting to them, to understand why they brought narration into leadership situations and how it related to trust-building.

They examined managers’ use of story or narratives and the intention behind using stories. They identified seven categories of influence that stories were used for, of which there are likely multiples more. The first two are:

Motivation – Motivating co-workers to carry out tasks, adopt behavior, or achieve goals. These stories often brought in comparison or competition and/or revealed values and attitudes as encouragement to elevate the game.

Inspiration – Inspiring a shared vision and energizing towards higher order goals. These stories often brought in faith and supremacy over competitors through a focused collective effort.

We often equate leadership storytelling with motivating and inspiring – epic stories that lay out a great quest or heroic stories that portray triumph over adversity to reach an ultimate goal.

In Forbes, Stort and Nordstrom identified four great stories leaders tell to engage people, which seem to fall mostly in these categories:

  • Organizational stories which fosters connection and unite in purpose – such as the founding story or the strategic story
  • Pivotal stories that illustrate big thinking or mindset shifts to overcome big challenges
  • Teamwork stories which illustrate hard work, challenges to the status quo and dramatic breakthroughs
  • Great work stories recognizing individual achievement and performance

They note that stories play a huge part in showing appreciation, as research has shown that among people who report the highest morale at work, 94% agreed their managers are effective at recognizing them, or telling stories about their work.

The storytelling managers also used stories for other more subtle purposes:

Prevent/defuse conflict – Making co-workers feel involved and defusing a negative atmosphere. These stories used humor or personal experiences to break the energy.

Influencing boss’s thinking – Managing up. Opening a manager’s perspective by promoting creative or new thinking. For example, conveying a changing market by telling a personal story that leads to discovery of a new insight or new reality.

Discovering a focus – Empowering co-workers to freely explore new ways of doing things, to shake up what’s not working. These stories might focus on examples of big unexpected changes or setbacks that ultimately catalyzed success or new advancements by wiping or changing the slate, blessings in disguise.

Direct trust-building – Showing empathy, identification and concern, or role-modelling. For example, cheering up a co-worker through an empathetic story of shared experience; revealing a story of personal vulnerability/failure to encourage self-trust or persistence; or sharing a personal story in which the manager has role-modelled or championed behavior they seek to identify and encourage in the team.

Dianna Booher notes in her top storytelling tips that while stories need an identifiable hero, leaders also have to be careful not to always position themselves as hero. She shares, “Audiences relate more often and learn more from ‘failure’ stories.”

Mutual trust-building – Sparking iterative trust-building storytelling. For example, first sharing a personal anecdote that demonstrates a value, or illustrates trust in and alignment with the organization, in order to encourage mutual discussion and trust.

Author and consultant Terrence L. Gargiulo writes, “The shortest distance between two people is a story.” Leaders bring in stories to close that gap and inspire greater bonding and cohesion.

While no storyteller can ever control the impact of their story, congruency between various stories a leader shares and walking the walk behind the words are both important factors for trust and credibility.

Not Just For the Big Meetings

There are countless ways to use story as a leader, countless ways to get better at storytelling, and countless resources for doing so. But above all, storytelling is accessible to all managers. Stories aren’t just what top executives pull out at the annual review meeting or when introducing the next new initiative.

Storytelling can be naturally weaved into many leadership situations. Tomorrow you might tell a story about the exceptional contribution of one team member, the strategic insight that dawned on you in the most unlikely of contexts, or that devastating failure that was a huge gift only in retrospect.

Sometimes, the shortest distance between you and a moment of defining leadership might just be a story.

By Aimee Hansen

/by

Building Executive Presence with Your Professional Bio

,

People around a laptopYour professional bio is often the first impression you make when it comes to your executive presence. So how do you get the words right, before you even speak a word?

“Your bio is a strategic play and should be treated as such. A bio can help you get hired, gain visibility, and win you serious respect,” writes Meredith Fineman in the Harvard Business Review, advising from her work on personal branding.

Here’s insight into how you can overcome mistakes that undermine the impact of professional bios and achieve executive presence with yours.

AVOIDING COMMON MISTAKES

Be Consistent Across Platforms

Look at every place your bio appears as a potential touchpoint for elevating your profile and career, and make it the same message. Fineman finds that a big mistake is lack of consistency across platforms. She writes, “If a journalist or recruiter cannot figure out who you are in under 30 seconds (because you have six different bios in six different places), you’ve lost your chance.”

Fineman recommends that everyone have a consistent two-line bio, short bio, and long bio. When it comes to the short versions, she advises to find the 15-second version of yourself professionally, “Think of it as trying to give your bio as an elevator pitch.”

Keep It Fresh

If you’re not updating your bio every six months, then you’re at risk of letting it go stale. Even if your position stays the same, you can reflect new achievements or experiences you’ve collected. Fineman recommends to set a calender reminder.

Use Your Last Name

It sounds more professional and carries more gravitas than your first name when linked to accomplishments.

Use Active Voice & Verbs

Research has identified significant differences between how men and women talk about their career accomplishments (women tend to understate them), and suggests that women can enhance their executive presence by ensuring confident expression about their accomplishments. The bio is an opportunity to do this in writing.

Fineman writes, “When someone has used the passive voice in their bio, it always feels to me like they’re trying to downplay their achievements. The point of your bio is to emphasize your achievements.”

She recommends to eliminate soft language like “trying to” or “attempting to” when speaking about current efforts. “That makes it sound like you’ve already failed. Remove it. You are not attempting to do it, you are doing it.”

Include Selective Achievements & Expand on Them

Your bio is an opportunity to choose your strongest achievements, purposefully include them, and convey what’s so compelling about them. Fineman argues you can’t do that with a list.

Being selective about achievements you include and put meat on them, while drawing in passions. Fineman advises, “This is a professional bio, so while you can include your hobbies, choose carefully and be straightforward rather than coy.”

Include Links To Outcomes & Actions

Treat your bio as a showcase for your work, and make it easily accessible – press releases about awards, pieces you’ve written, published results of your work, visible outcomes. Equally if there’s a call-to-action possibility, such as booking you to speak at an event, link it.

GOING FURTHER – CREATING EXECUTIVE PRESENCE

Beyond getting basics right, your bio is an opportunity to convey your executive presence. This may be especially important for women because executive presence is in the eye of the beholder and it’s more likely to be conferred upon men.

In an article entitled Executive and Board Candidate Bios: Executive Presence on Display, Paula Aisnof, Principal & Founder of Yellow Brick Path, shares perspective on how you can.

Try asking these questions.

Could I change the name & mistake it for somebody else?

Aisnof comments that most corporate bios are highly undifferentiated, providing little insight into the person behind the words, “Change the names and locations and those bios could be about 80% of executives.”

A good way to avoid this is to immerse yourself into creating your bio, whether you’re writing it. When leaders hands-off delegate their bio, they delegate their personal brand. Aisnof writes,“One reason for the overwhelmingly blandness is that bios are frequently written by third parties who do not necessarily understand the executive’s story or the targeted audience.”

If you want your bio to be involving, get involved with it.

Does it tell a story that builds my executive presence?

“Whether used for business purposes, for advancing an executive’s visibility through professional or community activities, or for job search,” writes Aisnof, “executives these days must reach beyond being a commodity in an overcrowded market of similarly accomplished peers.”

Her advice is that bios need to have a story that “entices the reader to want to get to know the executive personally and understand his or her unique talents and value.”

Harness the persuasive power of storytelling for your personal brand. This doesn’t mean turning your bio into a mini-novel or downgrading its professionalism. It means ensuring your bio reflects an engaging narrative of how your achievements, experience, and journey reflect your unique talents and value. Does it tell a story about how you’re a thought leader? Strategic foresight and execution has been identified as one of the seven skills you need to thrive in the C-suite.

Does the first paragraph bring me to life as an executive?

Aisnof advices, “The bio should immediately and accurately create a picture of the person being described, portray a person with distinguishing capabilities and qualities, and communicate the subject’s level of authority, responsibility, and expertise.”

Do you know what motivates you, what makes you excellent at what you do, why people like to work with you, and what others say about you? Aisnof has previously found that an executive brand comes down to “essense factor – who they are”, “guru factor – what they know”, and “star factor – what they do and how they do it.”

Have I given compelling and differentiating specifics?

Emphasize specifics, not generics. Don’t highlight “leadership skills”. Instead, demonstrate what makes you a remarkable leader.

“It is the specifics that set the executive apart from other great leaders and outstanding communicators,” writes Aisnof. In the best bios, the reader will come to the conclusion that the executive is exceptional based on the information presented rather than being told by the executive that he or she is great.”

The same goes for accomplishments. Aisnof urges, “These should be earthshaking, company-saving, award winning events supported by quantitative results where possible and be related to the interests of the targeted audience,” without disclosing sensitive corporate or client information.

Is this a board candidate bio?

If so, then Aisnof recommends including: any boards – including non-profit on which you already have served; reflecting any corporate, civic, or charitable-focused leadership roles that demonstrate ability to guide an organization; any awards especially outside your company that have recognized your accomplishments; and any media coverage, publications, or speaking appearances. Ask from the selection committee perspective: “What is the most important and differentiating contribution the executive would be making to the group?”

When embraced, managing your bio can be part of strategically managing your career advancement.

By Aimee Hansen

/by

Hispanic Heritage: Latina Women are Ready to Lead. Are Companies Ready?

,
female leader

This article forms part of our Latina Leaders celebration in honor of Hispanic Heritage month in the USA.

As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 2015, Latina executives remain scarce in the corporate landscape. But ambition to lead, and ability to bring leadership advantages, are not scarce.

Walmart’s EVP and COO Debra Ruiz ranks 28 in Fortune’s current 50 Most Powerful Women in Business 2014 list. Latina Style celebrated ten executives in February, with Calline Sanchez, VP of IBM Enterprise, taking Corporate Executive of the Year 2014. Ana Dutra made history when she was appointed the first Latina president and CEO of the Executives’ Club of Chicago.

But with the growing influence of Latinas, there are too few, even dangerously too few, Latinas helping to steer companies.

In 2014, Latinas in the USA workforce (9,838,000) comprised 14% of female jobs. 26.1% were in management/professional occupations, holding 8.8% of women’s positions. 9.4% were in management, business, and financial operations, holding 9.1% of female positions. Latinas are the most under-represented females in managerial and professional jobs.

While Catalyst 2015 data indicates Latinas make up 6.2% of S&P 500 employees, they hold only 3.1% of first/mid-level positions, 1% of executive/senior level positions, and no CEO positions. Hispanic women occupied only 4.4% of S&P 500 women-held board seats in 2014, less than 1% of total board seats. The HACR CII data echoes the same numbers of non-representation.

Is the Path to Entrepreneurship More Accessible?

As written by Samantha Cole in Fast Company, “Women need to see someone else succeed—to know that their dreams are possible, and attainable by someone who’s not so different from them.”

For Latina business women, the majority of public role models aren’t somewhere up the corporate ladder. They’re braving the path of entrepreneurship.

Nely Galan, first Latina president of a U.S. Television Network turned media mogul notes deep cultural barriers to success in traditional pathways. She says Latina women are “a secret weapon to the economy” and encourages them to take business into their own hands to harness the economic pull they hold.

At its own risk, corporate America may be sending the same message.

According to an entrepreneurial report from the Center for American Progress, female-owned businesses increased by 59% between 1997 to 2013, while Latina-owned businesses increased by 180% during this same time, with 944,000 Latinas running their own businesses and turning $65.5 billion in receipts. Currently at 17%, Latinas will make up a fourth of the American female population by 2050.

Women entrepreneurs see it as an opportunity to be their own boss, have greater control over their destiny and pursue their passion. But roadblocks also lead Latinas onto the entrepreneurial path.

The report notes many challenges in organizations raised by all women of color that, despite the very real risks, may encourage Latinas to go it on their own. Across accountancy, securities and law, barriers included a lack of role models, low access to high-visibility assignments and client-facing opportunities important to career advancement, marginalization by stereotypes and exclusion from networks.

Stepping Into Latina Leadership – A Sum Greater Than Its Parts

The key to the advancement of Latina professional women is a corporate culture that supports it.

“[You] need to be in a company that embraces women,” Ileana Musa, managing director and Head of Global Client Segment and Strategy for Merrill Lynch and Chair of Women of ALPFA, recently told the Latin Post. “That gives you the resources and creates an environment where you can thrive.”

2015 Latina Style Top 50 companies are making progress, especially financial players in the top ten ranks including Accenture (#4), Prudential (#5), and Wells Fargo (#8). But we still await more tangible and visible outcomes in executive representation.

On that note, Musa also recommends that Latinas take risks and use their cultural assets in rising to leadership, rather than allowing their leadership potential to be defined by the circumstances.

Musa stated, “I don’t think Latinas recognize their strength and influence.” She spoke about cultural strengths in leadership. “From an early age we learn to bring others in, we work well in teams,” she said. “It is cultural, using that strength is a huge [advantage] in the workplace.”

Research also reflects that Latina leaders experience distinctive challenges but on the flip-side they possess culturally-derived leadership assets.

Latina leaders face an intersectionality of identities – being Latin, a woman, a leader. Many Latinas are actively connected in their culture and seeking to integrate at work. The whole is distinct, greater, more complex and more connected than the sum of its parts.

Qualitative research into Latina leadership has illustrated core challenges such as lack of mentors, lack of opportunities, and cultural and family obligations. These factors can also contribute to creating internal barriers to leadership.

But distinctive challenges comes with distinctive advantages. What Latina women bring to leadership is much greater than the sum of their identities.

Bonilla-Rodriguez observed that Latina leaders self-define towards transformational leadership, motivating followers to become leaders themselves, and participatory leadership, enabling group democracy and making everyone accountable for results.

Research participants believed effective Latina leaders possess five categories of characteristics:

  • High Integrity—Ethical, honest, moral, responsible, and trustworthy.
  • “Marianismo”— compassionate, good listener, understanding, service oriented and willing to sacrifice
  • “New Latina” — ambitious, assertive, competitive, hard-working and determined
  • Transformational Leader—team-building charismatic, collaborative, politically savvy, leads by example, good communicator
  • Visionary—creative, committed, flexible, passionate, and risk taker

Research suggests that Latina leaders translate distinctive cultural implications– such as “marianismo” – into their leadership style by being empathetic and nurturing team leaders. Latina leaders have self-reported to be natural and skilled networkers, able to build connections beyond boundaries, leverage them towards achieving, and harness community.

Visible Change

The influence of challenges faced by Latina women along their leadership journeys cannot be separated from the leaders they become – leaders that overcome obstacles, make things possible, bridge cultures, and transcend roles.

If you’re a Latina leader in finance, STEM, or any other field of influence, your visibility matters if women are to follow in your footsteps. As stated by Dr. Frances Colón, Acting Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State, “They can’t be you if they can’t see you.”

But with the inherent power of Latina leadership, it seems to us the big question may not for long be: When will Latina women rise to executive leadership in major, existing firms?

It may instead be: How will they come to change leadership as they rise?

By Aimee Hansen

/by

Is Authentic Leadership Stuck on Gender Norms?

,

female leaderThe ironic thing about authentic leadership is that it’s defined by others.

You can aspire to act authentically as a leader based on what it means to you, but authentic leadership ultimately gets attributed to you -not by you.

We’ve seen how defining authenticity too narrowly can become a self-defining box that holds you back from growing as a leader, keeping you from daring to evolve into unfamiliar territories which could catalyse growth to expand.

Authenticity – What does that mean for women?

According to Dr. Helena Liu and her co-authors Cutcher and Grant in their study “Doing Authenticity: The Gendered Construction of Authentic Leadership”, authenticity is not a trait that we “have” or “are”, but a performance we “do”. So too, they argue, citing many studies, is gender. The researchers argue that looking at authenticity as a genderless true-to-self concept is a fallacy.

Authentic/inauthentic, when we’re talking subjectively about people, is a binary and limiting social construct. Just like gender. The two are interwoven in the representation of authentic leadership.

The research found that when it comes to how high profile leaders are perceived, authenticity is socially co-constructed by the media and gender expectations play a big role. The study found “doing authenticity requires leaders to conform to gender norms.”

Liu and colleagues analyzed verbal and visual media representations (across 266 articles) of two CEOS, one male and one female (first and only to date), of Australia’s largest banks before and after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).

They wanted to explore how Mike Smith of ANZ and Gail Kelly at Westpac “performed authenticity” for the media as well as how the media drew on gendered stereotypes and norms in constructing the leaders as either authentic or inauthentic as industry conditions changed.

Their research illustrates how a woman whose leadership publically benefited from the outsider-inferred status of gender norms also found her authenticity conditionally latched to them.

Capitalizing on Gendered Leadership

Before the crisis arrived, the researchers found that both CEOS seemed to “perform” and were depicted with highly gendered leadership styles. Each leader seemed to play on their gender capital and the media verbally and visually accentuated gender norms.

Mike Smith used sporting metaphors to talk about himself and the company, positioning himself as a tough trainer who would get the weak athlete (ANZ) strong again. Media and imagery reflected him as bringing a “hyper-masculine”, “James Bond” “change agent” style approach to the leadership. He tended to be depicted on his own, with salient positioning, as the essence of the message.

Recruited to WestPac from her position as St George CEO, Gail Kelly’s idealogical focus on “customer satisfaction” and her “people-orientation” were emphasized as core to her success record.

Her leadership was depicted as “family-friendly” and her firm as “family.” Media and imagery focused on relationships with customers and staff, depicting her as a heralded industry outsider with “her personal demeanour” and emphasis on promoting work/life balance. Imagery emphasized her “feminized warm and relational image,” and she was usually depicted visually with others to convey relationship-building.

According to Liu’s piece for a volume about “Gender, Media and Organization”, “the media by and large heralded Kelly’s gender as a welcome change from the traditional image of a banker” with her leadership identity resting “on assumptions of femininity as inherently caring and nurturing.”

Both leaders were cast in a narrow box of gendered leadership and each were constructed in the media as doing authenticity, or “doing gender in line with stereotypes.”

When Gendered Leadership Backfires on Authenticity

When the global financial crisis hit Australia Mr. Smith’s language in the press included “carnage”, “an Armageddon situation,” and a “financial services bloodbath” and the media reflected back with talk of “plenty of financial firepower,” the “largest war chest,” and a “no nonsense officer.” ANZ’s rapid acquisitions were “applauded by the media and framed as reflecting the bank’s newfound strength and aggressive strategy of international expansion.”

But according to the study, in the context of Ms.Kelly’s leadership the media depicted the financial crisis as “an uncertain and fragile situation that invited careful and considered response.” When she took pro-active and decisive action to raise interest rates first and acquire St George, Kelly’s leadership was seen as out of step with the both the situation at hand as well as her caring and nurturing leadership identity. Her authenticity was thrown into question across the media, and actions were depicted as “predatory,” including a reference to the merger as “akin to a mother eating her children.” Her attempts to revive positive “family” metaphors fell flat.

Both CEOs took action, but because the situation and their leadership was constructed through gendered norms, the actions they took were rendered authentic or inauthentic. Aggressive action suited Smith’s gendered leadership persona in the aggressive situation he was framed in but betrayed Kelly’s gendered leadership persona in the fragile and uncertain situation she was framed in, in which she was expected to care and nurture.

How Can You Avoid Being Boxed In?

The research highlights how gendered norms can become defining to leadership identity and make authenticity highly conditional upon performing them. How can women avoid being boxed in?

“Ithink that gender norms, like what we saw in the media during the crisis permeate Western organisations and societies, but the corporate world is especially prone to the reproduction of gender stereotypes,” Liu shared. “Stereotypical assumptions often manifest in mundane and seemingly innocent practices, such as sexualised banter and informal networks and bonding, which can work to further marginalise women from leadership.” She continued, “I would stress that structural inequality should not be ignored and can ultimately be challenged through more reflexive and progressive practices from those who are often relegated to the margins of leadership.”

Liu advises women to be aware of the box, and defy representing your leadership only within it.

“I would suggest women who aspire to leadership need to remain aware of the wider gender norms that constrain their exercise of leadership and their pursuit of authenticity,” Liu told theglashammer.com.

“As Gail Kelly demonstrated, women can communicate compelling leadership personas that speak to gender norms around being attentive, responsible and people-oriented in order to assert their right to lead. At the same time, there is immense promise for women (and men) who may choose to reject and subvert gender norms through their leadership work. They can pay attention to how they frame themselves when they communicate with their employees and peers and potentially engage more proactively with the media to project more nuanced images of themselves as embodying both feminine and masculine qualities.”

“With increased representation and visibility of female leaders, including those who may not occupy formal positions of leadership but nevertheless engage in ‘leading’,” she shared, “I’m optimistic that we will see that women leaders are diverse, well-rounded and irreducible to gender stereotypes.”

Theglasshammer.com hopes she is right.

By Aimee Hansen

/by