Tag Archive for: career advice

Jobs for the Girls? Management Jobs, Gendered Roles and the Wage Gap

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Group Of Women Meeting In Creative Office

By Cindy Goodman

Women’s representation in management is higher than it’s ever been, but advancement it seems appears to happen more in certain professions than others.

As women make up most of the new management jobs created from 1980 to 2010, but they do so in fields that are female dominated and have the largest gender wage gap.

By using data on full-time managers from the U.S. Census and American Community Survey for the years 1980 and 2010, researcher William Scarborough found of the nearly 4.5 million new jobs in management created since 1980, women have obtained the majority of them. In 1980, not a single management occupation was majority women. By 2010, some occupations are female-dominated while others are male-dominated.

The research shows women have high representation in management in fields such as health services, education administration, and human resources and low representation in management in professions such as computer information, transportation, architecture and engineering. In addition, women still make up less than one-quarter of chief executives and public administrators.

Scarborough told The Glass Hammer what he found surprising was the positive advancement women have made into management positions in the field of finance. “Culturally, finance has been seen as more of a masculinized profession, but the research shows 54 percent of management jobs in finance are held by women,” he said.

Scarborough said he also found it surprising that only 23 percent of CEOs of companies of all sizes in the U.S. are women, according to the Census. The percentage is unchanged since 1980, he noted.

At a recent Women’s Leadership Summit, KPMG Chairman & CEO Lynne Doughtie shared her thoughts on female representation in management. “We still have a lot of work to do to advance women in leadership roles and into roles that have been traditional been held by men. We need more role models to give women confidence to pursue those unconventional careers.”

Striking, though not surprising, Scarborough’s research found women are paid less than men as managers across all occupations. He also found the more women managers in a profession, the higher the gender wage gap.

For example, women have made big advancements in management in the medical administration and health services field, according to Scarborough. In that profession, 70 percent of managers are women, up from 47 percent in 1980. “It’s one of the fastest-growing fields in the country, which is good news for women in management. However, the bad news is that there is a 20 percent gender wage gap in management positions in that field, which means the women in management are underpaid,” he told The Glass Hammer.

On April 10, Equal Pay Day, LeanIn.org president Rachel Thomas, discussed the organization’s fight to educate people and companies about the gender pay gap, including the even larger gap for women of color. “No matter how you slice it, women are paid less than men,” she told CNBC.com. “The more educated women are, the larger the gap is.” Thomas said one in three men don’t believe the pay gap exists. Her organization encourages employers to conduct pay audits and be aware of bias in performance reviews. She also encourages women to aggressively negotiate their salaries.

Some companies are setting organization-wide goals around gender parity, recognizing that when women rise, their representation in management lifts the entire organization. In a report titled Getting to Equal, Accenture, a global consulting and professional services firm, found women are three times more likely to rise in organizations with women already in leadership and where there is a women’s network. Accenture found when women rise, men do, too.

Now, the consulting firm has set bold goals of achieving a gender-balanced workforce by 2025 and ensuring 25 percent of its managing directors are women by 2020. Globally, 32 percent of Accenture’s newly promoted managing directors are women. “There are companies that talk about gender parity, and companies that do something about it,” said Pierre Nanterme, Accenture Chairman & CEO on a video that accompanied the Getting to Equal report. “Companies should have equal numbers of men and women. It means pay and access to leadership opportunities should be equal. My pledge is to continue to drive this at agenda at Accenture and to evaluate and accelerate opportunities to bring more women into leadership roles.”

Of course, it’s not as easy as merely setting goals. In a dialogue prepared for International Women’s Day, Meggy Chung, co-lead for Citi Women Affinity in Singapore, stated to create an inclusive culture, managers need to be educated on unconscious bias and the importance of inclusive behavior, and organizations need to create opportunities to involve women in franchise-wide networks or initiatives. They also need to offer a mentoring platform that is accessible, she said, and noted that career progression for women is generally more difficult than men because of several factors, including how women’s identity is perceived in a corporate environment. A different support system to help women goes a long way in pressing for progress in this space, she said.

To move toward gender equality: Scarborough sees several steps that can make a difference. He believes diversity training is a start, along with setting goals as Accenture has done, and holding managers accountable for diversity on their staff. “It’s really about thinking about your environment and what strategy will be most successful in creating gender parity in your organization,” he said.

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Tips for Women on Negotiating Salary Now That Equal Pay Is Mandated

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Guest contributed by Susan Brennan

On April 9, a US appeals court ruled that a woman cannot be paid less than a man for the same job simply because they had a prior lower salary.

While this is certainly progress in the right direction, it will be interesting to see how companies enforce and track this in action.

Do you cringe a little when you think about salary negotiations? While negotiating your salary might feel like something you would rather avoid, deciding, whether or not, to accept a salary offering and having the confidence to negotiate for higher, is a skill that take you well beyond your life right now.

However, pay secrecy or being discouraged to discuss salary is a real thing that many people, especially women, deal with. According to a survey from the Institute of Women’s Policy Research, 51 percent of women reported, “The discussion of wage and salary information is either discouraged or prohibited.” And with women in the United States earning on average 80 cents to every dollar a man makes, the time for women to feel confident to earn what they deserve and have these conversations is now.

Here is a guide on salary negotiating from the moment you receive the offer to the moment you and your future employer agree upon a number.
  • Before the offer—and even the interview—do your homework so you have data to back up your case

Before you start talking numbers, figure out how much you need to live by doing an inventory of your fixed expenses. This is called determining your bottom line. What do you have to pay every month rain or shine; rent, child care, food, car payment? This isn’t necessarily the number you should settle for, but it will give you your bottom line—then build up. Caveat: Employers do not care what your expenses are, so don’t use this as an argument for more money.

  • Know your worth

There are a lot of resources to help you determine what the market is paying for similar positions and experience levels. Websites like Glassdoor and Payscale allow you to plug in a job title and years of experience and get a range for what the market will bear for that kind of role. The numbers will take into account geography and a number of other factors that have an impact. Across industries, pay gaps vary. For example, female doctors earn significantly less than male doctors, an average of 28 percent.

There are also some awkward situations you need to be ready for, such as:
  • On the first interview, you’re asked about your salary expectations. A good (and honest) response is to tell the interviewer that at this point, you’re focused on learning more about the role and what you will be doing before moving forward with salary. If you absolutely need to answer, never provide a single number; have a range ready based on your research so you have data to back you up. If you’re asked about salary on an online application, try to skip that question or enter a range if possible; otherwise enter the high end of your range.
  • You get the offer at a lower salary than you expected. First, express that you are excited about being offered the position and the value you can add to the company. Then add something like this (given that you’ve done your homework on fair market salary): “I did want to talk to you more about the base salary because I’ve done research around comparable roles with my background in [insert experience], and my expectation was that I would be in the range of [insert range here] and I’m wondering if there’s room to negotiate.” And make sure you also ask questions about benefits such as health coverage, retirement matching, and vacation; they can add a lot of value and should be taken into consideration.
  • You want to negotiate the salary. Should you email, meet in person, or make a phone call? The natural tendency for a difficult conversation is to email, but when it comes to salary it’s very important to have a conversation if you can. You can certainly send email to say you would like to talk more about the offer, but set up a time to talk. It will help both of you get a good read on each other, and you can get answers quickly. If the answer is “No” to negotiation, ask when you could expect to get closer to your range. “How do people in this position historically move up the range? How often will I be reviewed and see salary increases?”
  • You get the call with the job offer and salary you want. Should you accept? First and foremost, do not say “Yes” right away, as it binds you without knowing the full terms of the offer, including benefits and reviews. Pause, take a deep breath, be gracious; and buy some time. A good response: “I’m thrilled to get the offer and I will definitely take some time to think about it. Could you send an email with all of the details and we can schedule a follow up call to discuss?” This is important: Do not make verbal acceptance to an offer without reviewing all the details! It may seem counterintuitive to pause after all your work negotiating, but there are a lot of other details that are part of the offer. The contracts are typically written by a lawyer or human resources personnel and can be binding— even if you’ve only made a verbal agreement. Carefully review the agreement once you receive it.

The bottom line of successful salary negotiation especially for women: Know your budget and have data on the market range (versus a single number) to back up your worth. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you deserve; but make sure you are vision-driven—the value you will add to the company—and data-informed.

Susan Brennan is Associate Vice President of University Career Services at Bentley University and co-host of the career advice podcast Counter Offer, the podcast that helps you love Mondays. Over the past decade, she has put Bentley on the map for delivering impactful career education and outcomes, with 99% of first-year students participating in her team’s ground breaking career development course and 97% of 2017 graduates employed or attending graduate school within six months of graduation.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer

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Are You a Sexist Woman at Work? Part Two

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Following on from last week’s column on how our brains assign positive and negative traits to men and women without asking us, we look at how we all hold bias ubiquitously.

Or in plain English, women can be as sexist and upholding of the patriarchy as men. How does this play out in the workplace? It appears in small and large ways in offices, hospitals, orchestras, schools and governments.

When some women work for female bosses, the experience can sometimes be perceived by them as less than optimal? Is the female boss truly awful as an individual ? Maybe or maybe not, as we can look to deep behavioral theory to explain why people act the way that they do. Social psychology theory by Lewin suggests that behavior is a function of a person’s personality activated by the environment that they are operating in. So, when you are working for a female boss who happens to be taking on traits that you do not expect her to (as a woman), you might consider that this boss might be beholden to the systemic forces that encourage behaviors that are activated in their personality. She might have consciously or unconsciously chosen that path as assimilation is what most career blogs and experts have spat at women for the last thirty years. Doesn’t make it right, but certainly explains things.

Or it could be you who has deep rooted issues about who the boss should be? You could be jarred as she isn’t meeting your stereotypical traits imagined for her as a female manager. This is only worsened by the gender segregation that is peddled falsely as brain science. Men are not from Mars, Women are not from Venus. Newsflash, we are all from Earth and we all need to do a better job on Earth at reducing bias that comes with instant thoughts of who the other person is. We all are socially conditioned to believe the differences between the sexes are the same for everyone and this discredits the real work of letting people speak and act as individuals at work while understanding that by virtue of having a social identity, has legacy trait and role assumptions in society and therefore at work too. Outwardly we see gender, ethnicity etc as a feature of the human in front of us but we have to stop that from being a definition of capability and capacity and actual experience.

Are you wrestling with challenges at work? Consider coaching with nicki@theglasshammer.com

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Recovering from a Mistake at Work

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Sad businesswoman

By Cindy Krischer Goodman

Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada studied gender differences in apology behavior of men and women ages 18 to 44 and found women apologized more and felt they had caused offense more.

To recover from a mistake, career experts advise walking the line between apologizing and expressing confidence you can handle tough situations going forward.  Even if handled well, there could be lasting repercussions or lingering distrust. The more glaring and costly the mistake, the more it could affect your job security. It is important to acknowledge you recognize the mistake’s seriousness and are prepared to accept the punishment management doles out without complaining, including being taken off a client’s account or moved to another department. The next step is working hard to rebuild trust.

“It’s going to sting for a while,” said Leadership Coach Monique Catoggio. “But we have to be really aware of how we’re behaving and make sure others are seeing we understand the mistake, are making positive changes, and are dedicated to not making the same mistake again.”

Catoggio, founder of Illumined Life Leadership in Miami, said part of being a leader is role modeling for team members how to bounce back gracefully from a slip-up and learn from what went wrong.

In real life

A marketing director at a Miami accounting firm read a news article about her firm’s acquisition, she realized she had made a mistake. She had misspelled the name of the acquired firm in the press release that went out to hundreds of news outlets. She knew she quickly needed to fix the situation and prepared a new press release to distribute, labeling it “correct version.” Next, she went to her boss with an explanation, and the details of how she corrected her mistake.

At some point, everyone inevitably makes a mistake at work. Sometimes the slip up is small, such as sending an email out addressed to the wrong person. Sometimes it is big, with the potential to be costly for the organization.

Reacting timely and honestly to a costly error can make a difference. You don’t want your boss to learn about the mistake from a co-worker in another department, or worse, a customer. Admitting to a mistake, rather than allowing others to come to their own conclusions, helps assure your boss or client can trust you to be upfront and honest. Career experts advise against fessing up by email, insisting it’s better to have a verbal dialogue in which emotions can be conveyed. As a manager, you may need to take responsibility for an error someone below you made. In doing so, you will need to commit to finding out how the blunder happened, putting in new protocol, and monitoring your team closely so it doesn’t happen again.

In seeking out the root cause of the mistake, you will need to dig deep to understand if you need to be more patient, less distracted, ask more questions or double check facts. You want to discover any fundamental flaws in processes and uncover the actions over which you had control. Your goal should be to make sure you and your team learn from the mistake to ensure it never happens again.  Most important, approach your boss or your customer with proposed solutions for how to make things right.

Learning from mistakes

As many people have discovered, mistakes that initially seem costly, have potential to be opportunities. Paul Schoemaker, entrepreneur, consultant and educator who has taught at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, believes success is the sum-total of many mistakes. As the author of  “Brilliant Mistakes: Finding Success on the Far Side of Failure,” he has said, “If you want your team to get better, first, teach them to frame any mistake as a learning opportunity.”

Schoemaker believes sometimes making mistakes can be the quickest way to discover a problem’s solution. For example, a mistake that initially seems costly based on previous operation methods could end up saving a company money in a changing business environment. In developing a mechanism to prevent re-occurrences, you could discover a more efficient way of getting work done. And, by working hard to remedy the situation with the customer, you could build a stronger relationship.

Success in learning from a mistake may require involvement from another person, someone objective who can give advice, identify training or help with solutions. They may know of someone that has bounced back from a similar mistake and a way to deal with the situation that you don’t.

Going forward, you will need to re-prove yourself on each new assignment and possibly even in your daily activity. Meanwhile, expect to be treated as if on probation; you will need to get past self-doubts, take every measure to ensure the mistake isn’t repeated, and show you are doing your best work. It may take time, but the goal is to prove to management, your colleagues and yourself that you are still trustworthy in your role.

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Are you a sexist woman at work? Part One

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Recent revelations about banks paying women less for the same job seemed to surprise everyone, yet nobody, given the recent wake up call that we aren’t as avant garde on equality as we once thought.

Let’s assume good intentions for now and review the brain science behind managers and leaders’ decisions to promote and pay men more than women for the same job.

How is this still all happening in 2018? Simply put, it is our brains fault and how we give the benefit of the doubt to certain people based on their social identity (sex, race, nationality, class etc) and the associative brain process kicks in. Basically, what we have seen before generates positive and negative stereotyping that we silently attribute without knowing the individual (if we let that happen).

The brain and the way it processes information actually puts association to things in the ‘collection’ stage of data which was not previously believed to be the case. Literally if you see (or moreover don’t realize you have just seen) four red cars go past and then a blue one, your brain is busy assigning category and value to observed data without your conscious knowledge or permission. Likewise, pattern breaking is hard for the brain regarding that a leader/techie/mechanic/astronaut looks like based on images it has seen before.

Many social psychologists, naming two here; Chris Argyris (and his ladder of inference which can be used today by you in meetings for better bias breaking) and Virginia Schein have been telling us for years that we think our way into biased decisions unconsciously is based on our own beliefs. Now, neuroscience concurs that our brains trick us into thinking some people belong in a job because of their category type and the implicit value assigned to it. Notice use the of word “belong” because deserving on actual present moment merit has nothing to do with past patterns of other people’s performance. The average brain in its categorization of things and does not even attempt to predict future shapes and sizes of anything, hence it was Steve Jobs and not just anyone who could think up the iPod by looking at the walkman. It does however work pretty hard to tell you what is unfamiliar to you as Dr Banaji and colleagues’ impressive body of work on cognition and unconscious bias work has shown around ethnicity and gender.

So, here is the bad news, even as a woman your brain exercises bias against other women. Your whole life you have lived in the operating system of the patriarchy with more boys and men in leading roles from the first book you read, first job worked at, to the movies you watch. Then there is the messaging you heard from your grandparents and everyone else around you and how you were supposed to be as a girl and then a “young lady” then a nice woman. If you broke from heteronormative cisgender or even ethnicity molds, you got to have a pejorative label. Sound familiar? You can be a nice or nasty women and that doesn’t even begin to address the intersectionality issues that create much worse dichotomies or lose-lose stereotypes for non majority grouped people.

There is good news and that is you can override your cognitive processes. Recently, 3 out of 10 school children when asked to draw a scientist drew a woman. That is the best ratio we have ever seen, but we have ways to go.

You can start to be conscious of your thoughts and feelings in crucial moments like hiring and challenge your own assumptions around the constructs and paradigms you are holding. Put them on the table, shed light on them and see if they serve you and your mission? If you espouse a goal or a way of being, what are you actually doing behaviorally and not doing to achieve that goal?

How do your thought patterns match up to the person who you say you are? How do your unconscious beliefs help or hinder you at work?

Book an exploratory session with Executive Coach and theglasshammer.com‘s founder Nicki Gilmour (nicki@theglasshammer.com) to figure out how to get what you want today!

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The Growth Mindset as a Career Strategy

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Image via Shutterstock

By Lisa Larkowski

Life-long learning is more than a slogan.

Apparently even the brightest amongst us are limited if we do not continue to grow and evolve. This is commonly talked about as mindsets. A fixed mindset is a belief that intelligence and ability are set and unchangeable, while a growth mindset believes that intelligence and ability can be improved through your efforts, strategies, and help from others. Mindset researcher and expert Carol Dweck herself has tried to set the record straight and debunk the popular misconception that there are “pure” mindsets. Dweck in a 2016 Harvard Business Review article states “Everyone is actually a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets, and that mixture continually evolves with experience.”

What is the “Bright Woman effect”

The “Bright woman effect” sprang out of a phenomenon called “bright girl effect” in research which showed that girls had more fixed mindsets than boys, and in particular, the more intelligent the girl, the more likely she was to have a fixed mindset as opposed to a growth mindset. This helped explain why highly intelligent girls tended to give up faster than others when faced with new or difficult challenges. The line of reasoning followed, then, that if you were a bright girl with a fixed mindset, then your fixed mindset would follow you throughout your life. tle :

New research from Case Western Reserve University shows that the so-called “bright girl effect” does not persist into a “bright woman effect.” The research smashes two misconceptions, the first being that highly intelligent women have fixed mindsets. And secondly, that each of us has either a fixed or growth mindset that endures through our lives. It turns out that we have both fixed and growth mindsets. That they are changeable. And as Carol Dweck has indicated, that with effort, we can tip the scales in favor of growth mindset. The “bright woman effect” is a long-held assumption that the more intelligent a woman is, the more likely she is to have a fixed mindset as opposed to a growth mindset. But until now, no studies focused on the connection between intelligence and mindsets in adults.

Case Western’s examination of three separate studies shows that the “bright girl effect” does not endure into adulthood. The studies revealed fixed and growth mindsets in both men and women, but they were not consistent with gender or intelligence. As the researchers concluded, “There is limited evidence for a “bright woman effect” which is good news contrary to what it sounds like because the study’s results suggest that fixed and growth mindsets can shift over time and with circumstances.

Gimme Growth

It goes without saying that growth mindsets are more productive than fixed mindsets.

Growth mindsets are associated with greater success confronting challenges, taking risks, persisting in the face of adversity, and succeeding by learning from mistakes and setbacks. Fixed mindsets lead to lack of persistence, inaction, and harsh self-judging and “create an urgency to prove yourself over and over again.” Who wouldn’t want to get rid of fixed mindsets and bring more growth mindsets into their lives? Ironically, the key to getting more growth mindset lies with our fixed mindsets.

In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck suggests practices for working with fixed mindset triggers as the first step in journey towards what she calls a “true growth mindset.” Here are two things to consider.

Embrace your fixed mindsets. Notice when they are present, observe them, and most important, try not to judge them. Fixed mindsets can show up in situations where we feel challenged, stressed, overwhelmed, criticized, when setbacks occur, or when we see colleagues succeed. Become curious about your reactions. Ask yourself: How do I feel and react in challenging situations? Am I reacting with anxiety, anger, incompetence, or defeat, or instead with curiosity to learn more? Accept your thoughts and feelings and work with and through them, as much as you need to. You can even give your fixed mindset a name or a persona to help you call them out when you notice them.

Intentionally shift to growth mindset. When you notice your fixed mindsets showing up, actively shift yourself into growth mindset by asking yourself questions like: What can I learn from this? How can I improve? What steps can I take to help myself? This begins to loosen the grip of your fixed mindset and open you up to learning, possibility, and forward movement.

Make Friends with Your Fixed Mindsets

Shifting from a fixed to growth mindset is possible, but it takes work. It requires recognizing the situations or events that trigger us into a fixed mindset in the first place. It means looking at our feelings and reactions and then working with those with self-kindness and non-judgment.

Our mindsets are not written in stone. The more we can recognize and work with our fixed mindset triggers in the areas that challenge us, the more we can take charge of our reactions and bring more growth mindset and its benefits into our lives.

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Getting visibility for career advancement

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Visibility matters in your career.

It is important for bosses, sponsors and even peers to know what you are capable of and see what projects you are working on. Externally it is good to be seen by people in other firms too as although you might choose to be a “lifer” in one firm, you may also one day look for a change. Building a network is crucial to a career that is broad and long as people drive processes and innovate new products.

For eleven years here at theglasshammer.com we have profiled a senior woman on a Monday in our Voice of Experience column and on some Thursdays we profile Mover and Shakers and Rising Stars. We also have addressed intersectionality since the beginning, making sure in our profiles, interviews and panel events that all types of women are visible.

We have written over 800 profiles in total and we have not finished yet so as we look ahead for the rest of 2018, we are looking for great women to profile in financial and professional services and Fortune 1000 companies for the rest of the year. Thematically. we are looking for LGBTQIA Leaders for our June Pride series and then Men who Get it for July and then Latina leaders for September.

Please apply to louise@theglasshammer.com if you wish to be considered as a “profilee”.

We do not cover entrepreneurs for one reason that we have had in place from the beginning and that is because women are often encouraged to leave big business. Our site has always been about navigating your career inside industries (money, oil, big law) that have formal and also implicit male structures and hierarchies

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Self-Awareness – What Can You Not Access Yourself and What to Do About That?

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By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Reading is the supreme life hack – medium.com recently declared gifting a list of psychology and philosophy books, a couple of which got added to my (long) reading list.

Reading is an executive habit, with top executives reading at a much higher rate than others, with some stats quoting one book per week. But, it is what you do with what you read that counts.

Behavior change is notoriously hard for anyone. Addiction theory and neuroscience tells us that it takes sixteen weeks to bring a habit.

There is no doubt that our habits are socially acceptable like over working, over extending and never believing enough is enough. Then there is the whole topic of feeling worthy! Our fires are fueled by our self- talk, our mental models and our beliefs – implicit and explicit. Are you consciously goal setting or is the driver of your bus your unconscious mind? Just what role does the belief set that has been formed since childhood play right now? Our fear can fuel us without us ever realizing the agenda it creates while we go about our business.

Are you ready to talk about it and go on a journey of discovery?

Work with nicki@evolvedpeople.com as your executive coach to kill those gremlins!

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Behaviors of the Incumbent Leaders and Their Effects on the Rest of Us.

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By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

The CEO Genome Project states that there are four behaviors that show up for senior leaders to set them apart.

A Genome project on anything is fascinating to me as it of course only can replicate on what went before and I am interested in futurism in conjunction with historical trends. Why? because otherwise from day dot until the end of time, we are going to have to live in denial that the legacy masculine trait data is skewing the potential of women and ironically modern evolved man. Why no one has really dwelled on this is a bit of mystery to me, or is it a conscious or unconscious omission? If we only talk about how old testosterone straight white American men have led, how do we expect women or other men who naturally are or aspire to not fit the mould of the stereotype?

The effect of us bowing to the patriarchy is serious. Lewinian Theory ( the foundation of organizational psychology and systems thinking) suggests that behavior is a function of our personality and the environment we are operating in. In real life, just about all of us can point to a female leader who has assimilated to what I like to call “Jack Welsh in a skirt” mode and with disastrous results for her and most who have to be part of that team. Yet, to punish that individual is to misunderstand the systemic forces and rewards that are real and active as long as the masculine trait pattern of leadership is considered the only one, or the superior one.

I have zero interest in stereotyping men into one group. I think there are amazing men out there but they too are subject to systemic forces that make them behaviorally choose (albeit consciously) to be people that given other conditions, they might not be.

This work is the key to Diversity. Diversity is culture work, it is not Noah’s Ark and until companies truly view it this way, there are only strategies to provide not real change to achieve.

So, in the meantime, if you want to navigate your career optimally and authentically, consider working with a coach who can help you.

Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com or nicki@evolvedpeople.com for a free 15 mins exploratory session.

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Workplaces that Work for Women: Experiences Matter – The 2018 Catalyst Awards

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By Nicki Gilmour, CEO of theglasshammer

My takeaway from the 2018 Catalyst Awards and Dinner is that owning your experiences is the first step and the second step is to not let them negate other people’s experiences if you are truly going to be a man or a woman who is going to see progress in our lifetime for gender equity.

Catalyst, the oldest and leading research and advisory nonprofit organization for advancing women at work, has a conference that is second to none for translating theory and research into practice with CEOs of major companies and theglasshammer.com was honored to attend the annual conference.

‘Workplaces that work for women, are workplaces that work for everyone’ was the theme and mantra of the day, with great companies getting to share some of the best practices that they have implemented to understand results beyond the rhetoric. And, the sub theme of the day was how to be a male ally or gender champion as men in the room spoke of how they wanted to see change. A stunningly sincere and impactful dinner speech by Carnival Corporation (Cruise Lines) CEO Arnold W. Donald, the dinner chair of the gala, created a genuine sense that some men really get it. Quoting Maya Angelou saying “When you know better, you do better” regarding gender equality and diversity. Mr. Donald spoke of his own experiences as a man of color while acknowledging humbly and implicitly that he knows experience does not in itself equal enlightenment; although for me, he was the most enlightened man of the day. It is so important to hear people and more importantly men to acknowledge that other people may individually or systemically due to their social identity (gender, ethnicity, orientation, nationality) have experiences that are not yours and that does not invalidate yours or theirs. I heard this man recognize his male privilege in a way which showed me real commitment to being an ally because his foundation was one of acceptance, not denial around his own gender’s historic position at work.

Deborah Gillis, President and CEO of Catalyst spoke at lunch regarding this topic of “how to” be a male ally or champion of women, advising the confrontation of the fact the level playing field has not always been there, and how men can “call it out” when everyone’s voices are not being heard.

She stated that Catalyst wanted to send out a beacon of hope in this watershed moment of #Metoo. She asked rhetorically, “How can we focus (on work), if we don’t feel safe?” and later in breakout sessions, Hilton panelist Laura Fuentes, SVP, Talent & Rewards, and People Analytics reiterated the need for psychological safety. Fuentes commented that behaviorial data was part of the ongoing evaluation and development process for managers which created an accountability to those who they lead and to the values and culture of the firm.

This method of actually measuring opinion and perception was also discussed by panelists from West Monroe Partners who took steps to formalize policy and communicate it in their firm. They did this so that perceived cultural norms such as time off and flexibility could be used positively and inclusively for all and equally implicit negative norms could be addressed also. Betsy Bagley, Senior Director and Consultant, Advisory Services, Catalyst and Katherine Giscombe, PhD, Vice President and Women of Color Practitioner, Advisory Services, Catalyst skillfully moderated this discussion around what actually can be done to create better workplaces for women with an organizational model worth checking out in Catalyst resource section.

Carla Harris, Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley led a superb closing session with her usual candid and engaging style, opening with, “we cannot manage, the way we were managed”.

Harris explained first how to get to management and the important difference between performance and relationship currency. In her “pearls” (of wisdom) session, she explained how sponsors do not need to know the good, the bad and ugly, but rather, “the good, the good and the good”. She advised women and men in the audience to understand that performance currency has diminishing returns, as the baseline is always to do a great job but to understand that over time people come to expect excellence from you. She stressed the importance of relationship currency in the advancement formula. She also stressed the importance of improvement via feedback saying, “data is your friend, you cannot fix it, if you don’t know its broken.”

Regarding leadership and change regarding diversity, Harris stated, “I cannot believe that three decades later, we are still talking about the business case for diversity. If you still aren’t clear,” she quipped, “I will tell you right now” and went on to explain that it’s about innovation and to innovate you need a lot of perspectives and that comes from multiple experiences and that experiences are born from having different people in your team.

Harris explained that people need to be courageous in soliciting other people’s opinion and that the trait of courageousness is needed for intentionality to happen for change with accountability and consistency present.

The initiatives that were recognized this year were The Boston Consulting Group with their Women@BCG, IBM with Leading the Cognitive Era Powered by the Global Advancement of Women, Nationwide with Our Associates’ Success Drives Business Success and Northrop Grumman Corporation with Building the Best Culture, Leveraging the Power of Women.

Great work, Catalyst! And good luck to Deborah Gillis in her new role.

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