Tag Archive for: career advice

How to be confident (even if you are not)

By Lisa Iarkowskihappy working women
Constant change and complex challenges at work can test the self-confidence of even the most accomplished of us. So how can we keep our confidence going strong, amidst the changes and challenges we’re facing? Studies in what social psychologists call “self-efficacy” may hold the key. Simply put, self-efficacy is our belief in our ability to accomplish a specific future task. When our belief in our ability is strong, we more readily take action, persevere through obstacles and adversity, and produce successful outcomes. And the stronger our self-efficacy, the more overall confidence we create for ourselves. The work of self-efficacy pioneer Albert Bandura and mindset expert Carol Dweck provides effective practices to help us strengthen our self-efficacy and build confidence for taking on future challenges.
 
Act – Learn – Succeed – Repeat
 
Bandura, identified “mastery experiences”— a cycle of taking action and succeeding–as the most effective way to increase self-efficacy, and thereby confidence. As authors Kay and Shipman discovered in their research for The Confidence Code confidence is both a product of and catalyst for action. When faced with a daunting challenge for which you are not feeling confident, ask yourself what other actions you can successfully take to practice using your relevant capabilities. Set SMART goals for those actions. For the cycle to work, choose stretch or “risk” actions in situations where you are assured of a successful outcome. The more you perform the cycle with successful results (even with different tasks and scenarios), the more self-efficacy and confidence you will develop to take action in new or challenging areas in the future.
 
As you work with the cycle, it’s crucial to practice learning from your experience. Psychologist Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset shows that effort, learning, and persistence are far more powerful pathways to success than a focus on innate talent or ability. Refocusing your mindset to what you can learn in any given situation will help you more readily take action and turn setbacks and failures into lessons learned for improvement, rather than personal defeats. Learning includes both your own self-reflection and getting feedback from others on how your efforts lead to success as well as how you work with obstacles and setbacks. The “STAR” question framework can help you and others reflect on your actions and lessons learned. Break down your experience with these four questions: What was the Situation (what, who)? What Task (intention, goal) were you trying to accomplish? What Actions did you take (what worked, what could work better)? What were your Results (how do the outcomes compare with your initial intent)? Learn from your experiences, and as you take on new challenges, begin with a growth mindset question: What can I learn from this experience?
 
Learn from Others
 
It’s easy to feel isolated when you are not feeling self-confident. But you don’t have to go it alone—nor should you. Bandura identified both learning from role models and verbal support from influential people in your life, such as mentors, as effective ways to increase self-efficacy.
 
Identifying role models who are similar to you and have succeeded in areas you want to succeed in is a powerful way of strengthening your belief in your abilities: “If other people like me can do it, so can I.” Start by identifying 2-3 role models. Then, look at the efforts they took to succeed. Finally, identify those efforts you can emulate.
 
A mentor–someone who believes in your capabilities and tells you so—can also be a valuable support to increasing self-efficacy and confidence. Maybe less obvious is the confidence you can gain from becoming a mentor yourself. In a recent discussion with theglasshammer.com, Erin Geiger, VP of Business Development  at Hackbright Academy in San Francisco, talked about the crucial role of mentoring—for both mentor and mentee–for building confidence in women engineers entering a competitive, male-dominated field. The San Francisco-based engineering boot camp for women includes a robust mentoring program and network that supports new engineers in and beyond the classroom. Geiger’s advice: “Become a role model and mentor. Let’s take an introvert. They may not think of themselves as a role model, but that confidence pushes out to others and it’s mutual. If somebody has a mentee, it can feed the confidence and morale of the most introverted introvert.”
 
Manage Your State
 
Bandura’s work shows that negative emotional and physical states, like stress or exhaustion, negatively influence our belief in our capabilities, weakening our self-efficacy and confidence. For example, if you feel exhausted during a presentation, you may find yourself believing that you are not a good presenter and then may shy away from a bigger role where presentations are featured. Chronic stress and exhaustion may be harder to pinpoint, but nonetheless they play a significant role in your self-efficacy and confidence. When you are not feeling confident about a task or situation, take into consideration your stress and tiredness as factors, obvious or not, and take steps to reduce them. Then revisit your situation and observe any change in your level of confidence. Likely you will find that you have a more productive, confident perspective that can support moving forward.
 
Using any one of these approaches, or better yet a combination of all of them, gives you a powerful practice for taking charge of your self-efficacy and confidence in even the most challenging situations.
 
Lisa Iarkowski is a Columbia University certified executive coach who helps women transition, reinvent, and reenergize their careers. Lisa has extensive experience leading and coaching individuals and teams in the publishing and technology industries. Lisa is a regular contributor to theglasshammer.com.
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Self-Regulation is the Key to a Successful Career

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 By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational PyschologistNicki Gilmour
Some people are blessed with an even temper and tactful diplomacy at work. The rest of us are not and we are in fact very human with buttons that can be pressed and triggers that can be triggered. It is entirely worth your while figuring out what your hot buttons are so that you know why they exist and then what to do to make sure you are in control of your reaction.

You don’t have to be a robot but you do need to know how to apply emotional intelligence (EQ). If you are short of EQ, then work with a coach to develop it and if you still don’t have it then you have to learn how to fake it until you make it.

Reactions matter. It’s a virtuous circle to stay calm and carry on.
People want to work with people who are going to show real but positive emotion regarding regular and especially stressful situations.

Equally, be aware of passive aggressiveness which is a productivity killer and is mistaken as self-regulation. It typically takes the form of team members leisurely ignoring each other and pursuing their own agenda. If you are saying yes to a task but really are saying no, then you should step back and think about other ways to communicate that you would like to do the task differently.

Treat others how you would like to be treated.

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Expert Tips on Giving a Presentation

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Guest contributed by Sarah Brown

presentation

Image via Shutterstock

Whether you are a student, a lecturer, a motivational speaker, a budding entrepreneur or a C-suit, when presenting on stage in front of an audience, engaging them and communicating your message can be a daunting task for more reasons than you can imagine. I would be trying to incorporate some of the most important ways to help you in writing a great presentation, become a better presenter and also how to best utilize props.

Although the first few words that come out of your mouth would be about introducing yourself, but you can make it more interesting by sharing your passion about your topic. It is not always about what you say, as a confident presenter with a good sense of humor can be more engaging than someone with equally good content but for instance has fear of public speaking.The first few sentences of your presentation should be able to grab undivided attention from your audience, arouse their curiosity about your topic so that they are completely sold on listening to what is coming next.

An hour’s presentation cannot be written in an hour or even in a day. The time you spend on research and finding the figures, and statistics to support your message is directly proportional to the success of the presentation. Have a rough draft of your presentation speech and the slides ready as early as possible so that you have time to revise it a couple of times. This allows you more time to add, delete, or restructure the content and will also help you convey your message more efficiently. If you write the presentation in the last minute, you might miss on adding important details and also might stray away from the real subject at hand. If you are ready with the final version a few days ahead of time, you can test it out on family and friends for practice. You can also record your presentation and watch it to weed out the obvious errors and flaws. You must carry a small cue card of 3 to 5 things that you feel must be mentioned and should not be left out at any cost and read it just seconds before going on the stage.

Using slides, video or any other media is quite imperative to a presentation. Slides or other media are supposed to carry minimal information and should be used to create relevance or generate specific emotions in the audience. One of the worst things you can do while presenting is reading out text from your slides, word to word. Not only do you look unprofessional and unprepared, you also waste the most resourceful element of presentation, and it drastically makes the presentation boring.

There are a few things that a presenter must keep in mind to avoid distracting the audience from the presentation. First off, one must dress up in a modest manner. Wearing bold colors might take the audience’s attention off the slides. Everyone should be proud of their fashion sense and body but do not forget that the center of attention needs to be the presentation and not the presenter. This might not be an unpopular opinion and might attract some controversy but let me assure you that this comes from some of the most respected male and female public speakers and is not just my personal opinion. Also, you must wear something that you can be comfortable in while looking dressed up. Wearing something you picked up a day before the presentation might not be the best choice as you never know how you can distract the audience while adjusting it. Ladies, if you are not comfortable in wearing high heels, ditch them now.

Watch the tone, speed and volume of your speech. You should not be going too slowly or too fast and also you should not be speaking too loud or too low. Find the right balance. Frequent usage of ‘um’ or ‘like’ should be avoided and replaced with quick pauses instead. Check out this amazing infographic from WalkerStone on Dos and Don’ts of presenting.

It is highly recommended that you test your presentation slides on the hardware available and also have a backup flash drive. At times things do not go as planned, be confident and do not get anxious on stage. If possible, have a contingency plan if your slides don’t work.

Best of luck.

Presenting

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Self-promotion v. corporate branding: a dilemma for women CEOs? Do women CEO’s do enough to promote their brands?

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Image via Shutterstock

Image via Shutterstock

Guest Contributed By Patricia Harden, President and CEO of Harden Communications Partners

In today’s media-saturated business world, a company’s image is inextricably linked to the reputation of the CEO. Wall Street analysts, marketers and corporate communicators understand the importance of a CEO’s personal brand and how it affects demand for a company’s products or services and its market value.

The “personal brand” of Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com or Tesla’s Elon Musk is an extension of the company. And there are any number of other high-profile male CEOs, who are recognized as industry leaders. How many similarly high-profile women CEOs are there? After HP’s Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, who both ran for public office, and a handful of others, it is hard to come up with names. Granted, unfortunately there are simply not as many women as men in the C-suite. However, perhaps the lack of women CEOs with well-defined personal brands is an issue that goes deeper than their respective numbers.

During my 25 years in corporate communications, I have observed many women CEOs that do not eagerly embrace communications tools and strategies to build a powerful personal brand. They are often more reluctant to express their personal values, beliefs and business philosophy than their male counterparts, and frequently, I see successful women leaders who want to stay on “safe” ground, sticking to unassailable fact-based positions.

What’s behind their reticence? I have a theory: On the way up, women CEOs worked incredibly hard just to prove they were as competent (and more so) as men. They had to show they were good team players in order to win the support of colleagues. Advocating a point of view, stretching the boundaries and sharing a bigger “vision” are leadership traits that are subjective, individual and highly visible. Given history, it’s not surprising that women CEOs may err on the side of staying low profile for fear of being criticized as “self-promotional” or grandstanding.

For example, we see women leaders who are press-shy, avoiding media engagement except in the most controlled situations. They seem reluctant to step outside what they see as the confines of their professional roles. One client refused to discuss her accomplishments in building a major data business from the ground up: “I’ll only talk about our product, not myself.” I call this “The Hillary Problem”: Feeling more secure in the role of competent project manager instead of inspirational, but potentially controversial, leader.

While the term personal brand may sound ego-centric, developing an authentic personal brand can add tremendous value to your organization. As a woman leader, what is your personal brand? I believe it is all about becoming known for what you stand for in addition to what you do in your job. Your brand is the “why” behind decisions, choices and results. Inevitably, the “why” involves some subjectivity – and this is where I see women reluctant to capitalize on the credibility that they have earned as CEOS and leaders. Yet I argue that it is absolutely mission critical: It might well be an essential, if unwritten, part of your job description.

Where to start developing a personal brand and leveraging it for the greater good of your company? By working closely with your in-house communications team and public relations advisors, you can develop a strategic plan that will establish and grow your personal brand. It’s not necessary to undergo a personality transplant and become a “celebrity” CEO or another Sheryl Sandberg. Rather, with the right advice and collaboration with professionals, select the issues, forums and communications channels that mesh with your core values and support your organization’s agenda.

“Leaning in” to build and maintain your personal CEO brand isn’t about self-promotion: it’s about advancing your own agenda and that of your company—to step out of your personal comfort zone for the greater good.

About Pat Harden

Patricia (Pat) Harden founded Harden Partners to help companies be heard, known and valued. Pat brings clients the benefits of a lifelong passion for communication and the desire to help organizations take their game to new levels.

Under her leadership, Harden Partners has grown steadily from a one-person consultancy to an award-winning, mid-sized agency, serving the financial, healthcare and professional services sectors.

An avid reader, theater-goer and traveler, Pat serves on the board of Theatre Bay Area and she and her husband enjoy making Pinot Noir from their home-based vineyard.
This is a Guest Contribution. The views and opinions of the Guest Contributor are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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Not to Be Missed Articles

Take a look at these popular articles previously published on theglasshammer.com

Why Leaders Need More than Mirror Reflections

Amidst increasing access to a broader worldview, we are paradoxically retreating into narrowing, amplified, separated tunnels of perspective.

 

 

Why You Should Avoid Overwork To Be Effective In Your Job

Recently 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.”

 

 

Why Storytelling Is a Leadership Asset That Takes Many Forms

You 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?

 

 

 

 

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8 Common Errors That Will Damage Your Career

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errors

Image via Shutterstock

Guest contributed by Jennifer Tait

From time to time, most of us see or hear about some crazy behaviour at work. Whether it’s a full-blown argument, a dramatic resignation or gross misconduct, you know that irreparable damage has been done to that person’s career.

However, it isn’t just the crazy moments like these that damage a career. There are actually a number of behaviours (and relatively common ones too) that cause your colleagues to view you in a negative light.

Here are 8 behaviours that you should avoid at work if you don’t want to damage your career.

  1. Boasting

Bragging about your achievements is a sure-fire way to make your colleagues dislike you. Generally speaking we simply don’t like people who boast about themselves and appear big-headed. Plus, if you’re shouting about your successes this makes others think that success isn’t a common thing for you, hence when you get it you have to shout about it.

On the one hand, it is important for you to promote yourself and your skills at work, however, you should always ensure that it is in a way that doesn’t come across as boasting.

  1. Taking credit for someone else’s work

It’s never a good feeling when someone steals your idea and naturally, it stirs up feelings of resentment. You should never take credit for someone else’s work as it shows that you have no regard for your team. It will cause significant damage to your working relationships and therefore also your career.

  1. Gossiping

We all love a bit of juicy gossip, but it’s important not to get caught up in it at work. If you get carried away chatting about your colleagues’ mistakes then the only person who is going to look bad is you. What you say about others may easily find its way back to them, so don’t be the gossip who spreads negativity.

  1. Going over someone’s head

While it’s not uncommon to go over someone’s head in an attempt to avoid conflict, this can come across as backstabbing. This tends to be a cause of even more conflict as soon as your colleague bears the brunt of your actions.

Going over a colleague’s head always makes them look bad whatever your intentions so do everything you can to resolve problems without getting others involved.

  1. Saying you hate your job

We all have our down days at work where things just don’t go our way. However, no one wants to hear about how much you hate your job. Being negative has an impact on everyone else’s mood in the office and good managers are quick to address anyone who is bringing the team down.

If you really need to vent, save it for when you get home.

  1. Having an emotional outburst

Being able to control your emotions is a skill that is central to your professionalism at work and the success of your career. An outburst of anger demonstrates that you have low emotional intelligence and will make your colleagues question whether you can be trusted to keep it together when it counts.

Emotional outbursts are a quick way to win yourself a lot of negative attention and in extreme cases to get fired. Keep your emotions in check and never make others feels that you are intimidating and unapproachable.

  1. Lying

Most people don’t intentionally tell lies at work. You may tell a small white lie in order to protect yourself or somebody else in your team, however if you’re found out it could be very damaging for your career.

Being caught in a lie will cause others to distrust you. Also, lying can be exhausting and is likely to cause you more stress and worry in the long term. If you can’t be honest and genuine in your workplace then you are unlikely to be happy there.

  1. Burning bridges

Your business connections and working relationships are so important to the success of your career. No matter how you feel about people, you should aim to never burn bridges as you never know when a connection will prove useful to you in the future (a broken connection can also prove quite harmful).

Quitting your job and leaving without notice, for example, will not only cause a lot of problems for your boss but also your colleagues who will have to take on your workload.

Bringing it all together

None of these common errors are particularly surprising, but they are something that many people forget about and dabble in from time to time. If you can avoid behaviours like these, you’ll have a better chance of maintaining strong working relationships that are key to career success.

About the Author

Bridgewater Resources UK work with market-leading businesses across the UK and Ireland, connecting top talent with outstanding opportunities. They offer roles within wholesale, distribution and manufacturing industries, recruiting highly skilled individuals at all levels.

Disclaimer: Views and opinions of Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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What Skills Differentiate Women Who Make It To The Top?

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top

Image via Shutterstock

Guest contributed by Steven Stein

What does it really take for women leaders to make it to the top in the business world? Over the past 20 years, we’ve compiled the world’s largest database of testing results on emotional intelligence—approximately 2 million people worldwide. The Emotional Quotients Inventory (EQ-i 2.0) is the first and most widely used emotional intelligence test in the world. One of the areas we look at is the relationship between emotional intelligence and success at work. In addition, we’ve looked at the role gender plays in how these emotional skills are expressed.

We were the first to document the differences between men and women’s emotional intelligence profiles. Interestingly, the results were consistent around the world. And while there’s no significant difference in overall emotional intelligence scores, there were differences in the types of emotional intelligence. Men scored higher in independence, stress tolerance and problem solving. Women, however, scored higher in emotional self-awareness, emotional expression and empathy.

Building on women’s strengths

In the early days of reporting on my organization’s emotional intelligence and organizational success research, I was challenged by a number of businesswomen. They told me that to be successful in the male corporate environment, such as in financial institutions and the tech industry, it was important to be tough. They thought that they had to be tougher than the men in order to succeed. Being aggressive, they said, was rewarded and the way to get ahead.

I thought differently. I suggested that women were generally better in interpersonal skills, empathy and emotional expression, and they should leverage these skills. While the traditionally male-dominant traits of stress tolerance, independence and using appropriate emotions in solving problems were important qualities for leaders, women’s skills in these areas did not lag behind the men’s. And to get ahead of the curve in leadership, the skills women already excelled in were the ones to focus on improving even more.

Women are moving the needle on defining leadership traits

One of our current research samples includes 280 executives who are about to be or are currently on boards of directors. These high-level executives, most of whom have worked their way up the organizational ladder, have acquired the skills one needs to make it to the top. The sample shows that women have essentially closed the gap in the areas where men traditionally score higher—independence, stress tolerance and problem solving. They have had to deal with stress throughout their careers and, at this stage, are more balanced in dealing with difficult situations. Also, they’ve been at a decision-making level for a significant amount of time and can manage the decision-making process well.

But the data also shows that women who make it to the level of senior executives moving onto boards bring some extra skills with them to the boardroom. These women outscore their male counterparts in emotional self-awareness, emotional expression and empathy. These skills have now emerged as defining future leaders.

What difference does it make having females on the board of directors?  The New York Times reported on a study by Credit Suisse looking at gender differences of board members. They examined almost 2,400 global corporations from 2005 to 2011, including the years directly preceding and following the financial crisis, and found that large-cap companies with at least one woman on their boards outperformed comparable companies with all-male boards by 26 percent.

The report continued, “Some might assume that there was a cost to this as well, that boards with women must have been excessively cautious before the financial crisis of 2008… Not so. From 2005 to 2007, Credit Suisse also found, the stock performance of companies with women on their boards essentially matched performance of companies with all-male boards. Nothing lost, but much gained.” Unfortunately, the number of women getting to the boardroom is still much lower than men.

Increase your emotional intelligence

Whatever your emotional intelligence strengths, you can develop and enhance the three specific traits exhibited strongly by women in leadership roles.

  1. Cultivate self-awareness. Practice can help you become more emotionally self-aware. Through activities like meditation and mindfulness, you can learn to focus more on what you’re feeling and why you’re feeling that way. Knowing yourself better will help you become more balanced and centered when dealing with stressful situations and people.
  2. Find the balance for emotional expression. Being emotionally expressive comes naturally for many people. There’s nothing wrong with letting others know when something is bothering you or when you’re pleased with someone’s work. Be honest and authentic. Expressing your feelings can make you more real and likeable as a person, especially when you learn to manage it well. On the other hand, being overly expressive or under expressive can lead to trouble.
  3. Make empathy your secret strength. Great leaders are empathic. They are able to listen to others and understand where they’re coming from. But don’t mistake empathy for believing you must give in to everyone’s wants and needs. Understanding another person’s situation helps you make better decisions about what feels right for you.

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Steven Stein, Ph.D., is a leading expert on psychological assessment and emotional intelligence. He is the founder and CEO of Multi-Health Systems, a leading publisher of scientifically validated assessments. Dr. Steven Stein is the author and coauthor of several books on emotional intelligence, including his new book, The EQ Leader: Instilling Passion, Creating Shared Goals, and Building Meaningful Organizations through Emotional Intelligence

Disclaimer: The views and advice given by our Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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Is It Possible to Be an Entrepreneur within a Corporate Structure?

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Business meeting with women and menGuest Contributed by Meg Schmitz

At some point in everyone’s career we begin to take inventory of what want in a job, what we seek for our professional growth and what brings us joy. In an ideal world, we’d all have jobs that don’t feel like work, pull a huge paycheck and allow us to achieve our goals. However, the reality is that many people, for reasons often beyond their control, leave work every day feeling unfulfilled – often, this is due to underutilizing a key skill set or feeling that potential is being left untapped.

For individuals who are drawn to entrepreneurship but don’t yet own a business, there’s a middle ground – the less-talked-about intrapreneurship. In a nutshell, intrapreneurs bring the entrepreneurial spirit to their corporate structure. This translates to freedom of thought, out-of-the-box problem solving, flexible brainstorming and long-range thinking that can be lost in the day-to-day grind. Intrapreneurs have the advantage of paycheck security and other benefits, all while being able to explore new avenues to sell a product or service in a role they already have familiarity with.

Another important component of intrapreneurship is the level of focus that intrapreneurs possess. An entrepreneur should view his or her company as a vision from starting point to end, but an intrapreneur works within the company to focus directly on a specific problem. Intrapreneurs, therefore, should have more directly applicable skills for a specific task. An intrapreneur takes risks, but those risks fall within the context of his or her job in the existing company. So, rather than focusing on the whole company, intrapreneurs hone in on the processes within it.

In this same vein, intrapreneurs are the primary forces of innovation within their companies. Like entrepreneurs, they look to provide solutions to unique, often market-driven problems. They focus on policies, technologies and applications that solve a specific problem, often resulting in productivity issues. In the same way that an entrepreneur starts a company to provide a service or product, an intrapreneur takes on a task within the company to strengthen it as a whole.

This sounds great, right? Somehow being able to balance your entrepreneurial ambitions with job security? Well, it’s not that easy – the first step is finding a company that’s open to intrapreneurs and their big ideas. When you’re looking for a job, make a point to find a corporate culture that supports your innovation, and actively interview for a culture that matches your values, goals and personality. Flexibility should be encouraged instead of suppressed, and the company should be comfortable with out-of-the-box thinking. It’s also worth considering exploring if the company has the budget – and internal capacity – to make the changes you might bring. Flexibility is key, but the space for implementation of your new ideas is what will actually allow intrapreneurs to fully realize their ideas.

What do intrapreneurs look like? They’re often independent, willingly autonomous individuals who like to thoroughly investigate every facet of a problem they’re presented with. They don’t respond well to micromanagement as they feel it stifles the experimental and creative processes. They’re free thinkers, but appreciate the overarching structure of a company that they feel aligns well with their values, goals and career direction. They’re the building blocks of their company’s executive teams and are a driving force behind innovation and forward motion.

If you see yourself in the description of an intrapreneur, you’re not alone – women make great intrapreneurs. We’re better equipped to challenge the status quo – we’ve been doing it as long as we’ve been alive! Fighting is in our blood, and we have great ideas that are well thought out and adaptable. Young women, in particular, have shown increasingly entrepreneurial ambitions, but many lack the experience or resources to pursue their own business at this time – however, entrepreneurially minded women may find that bringing a spirit of intrapreneurship to their corporate jobs gets them quite far. In fact, most businesses celebrate having women in higher-level positions, so why not harness this positive energy and look at ways to challenge the status quo further with big ideas, long-range thinking and out-of-the-box problem solving?

Meg Schmitz is an independent consultant of FranChoice based in Morton Grove, Ill. Her free services aid individuals along their path to professional independence, while developing a plan to achieve personal lifestyle goals through franchise investments. Contact Meg at MegSchmitz@FranChoice.com.

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Why Are Women Underrepresented in These Key Job Markets?

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Image via Shutterstock

By Tiffany Rowe

Our technological world is expanding at an astounding rate and jobs in the STEM industry remain in high demand. Those holding degrees in math, technology, engineering, and the sciences have, in many cases, their pick of lucrative and rewarding jobs. When you add an advanced degree in one of those subjects or in business then the opportunities are seemingly endless.

However, while the world as a whole is contributing to advancements in these areas, the people who secure these jobs are overwhelmingly men. Women are represented equally in some of these fields but engineering and computer science degrees are given to only about 29 percent of female undergraduates. University classrooms where STEM classes are taught are generally filled with male students. Some women are the sole representatives of their gender in these classes.

Many of us have long been told that this gender gap in these fields is related to the notion that girls receive less encouragement than their male counterparts to tackle these subjects during their lower educational years. While this can’t be proven, the simple fact that men far outnumber women in the STEM industries can’t be ignored.

While you may hear many different reasons why this occurs, we’re going to look at some solutions that can help women boost their power in the STEM job market and bring their unique talents to the industry.

Erase the Stigma

Many people erroneously believe that girls are not supported nor encouraged to take on advanced classes in mathematics and sciences during their younger years or that they’re not as capable as boys are. Factually this is untrue as both boys and girls show equal results on aptitude tests for these subjects.

Women and girls are more than capable of learning the fundamentals of higher mathematics and sciences when they’re given the opportunity. However, the stigma still exists that girls are less capable of excelling at these subjects than boys are. Younger children are experiencing less of this today than they were even just a few years ago, but young women in high school and college may still feel that these fields are not right for them or that they won’t succeed.

What Parents and Educators Can Do

While educational trends and how they focus on female students are changing, there are still many things that parents and educators can do to encourage interest in these subjects. Childhood curiosity knows no gender so if your daughter shows an interest in computers, math, or science do all you can to encourage that.

Learning how to write code comes very easily for younger children just as foreign languages do. If you’re an educator, encourage your school district’s administrators to implement these classes for children in lower grades. There has been a push to encourage more coding education, backed by the likes of Amazon, Google, Code.org, and more. As of just a few years ago, only 0.4 percent of college-bound women intended to major in computer science.

What Women Can Do for Themselves

Many women who have already attended university and achieved a degree in an unrelated field may think they’re now unqualified for any type of job in the STEM industry. Fortunately that’s not always the case. Many women who have undergraduate degrees in arts or humanities can take additional classes to better familiarize themselves with the fundamentals.

Earning online MBAs is a great way to get an edge in the industry. Advanced business degrees almost always include the option to narrow the focus of the program and these focuses do include some science and technology. Plus, innovations made in science and technology are useless unless the right person has the business and marketing skills to introduce them successfully to the public or direct them to the proper channels for further research and development.

It’s very easy to realize that, given the complex nature of our changing society and environment, that people with the technological skills and education to continue to make advancements for the benefit of society are invaluable. In fact, our lives and the lives of generations to come may depend on the technology we perfect and discover today. All of us can only benefit from having as many people tasked with solving complex problems as we can and that needs to include women. And with the right education, encouragement, and tools there’s no reason that can’t happen.

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To work with M&A: Young Women Lawyers May Be Missing Out

female lawyers featuredBy Aimee Hansen

Women lawyers are underrepresented in M&A primarily because they are less likely to enter and stay in the field. But some M&A women partner lawyers wonder if young lawyers know what they are missing.

The gender gap in M&A

A study of more than 17,500 lawyers at 25 law firms nationwide found that women held 48 percent of first and second year associate positions (corporate: 43 percent, M&A: 40 percent) but only 18 percent of senior equity partner positions (corporate: 16 percent, M&A: 15 percent).

While a glaring gap in women between the associate level and equity partner level exists across law, the distinguishing M&A gap is at entry level. Female enrollment in M&A courses (37%) was also noticeably below enrollment overall (45%), showing that law students are disinclined to enter, and/or discouraged from entering, the lucrative practice of M&A.

The survey’s authors speculate that perceptions about M&A keep women out, such as being testosterone-fueled, more demanding, and not family-friendly.

Being a woman in M&A

Clare O’Brien, Partner at Shearman & Sterling, entered M&A as a third year associate only because the firm had a mandatory rotation policy back then.

“I actually didn’t really want to go to M&A because it had a reputation of being very ‘male’ …” says O’Brien. “That’s a cautionary tale, in the sense that if I’d had my druthers, I wouldn’t have chosen to rotate to the M&A team, but I was really glad that I did.”

M&A law is skewed male, and investment banks (with which M&A lawyers regularly interact) more so, but O’Brien says being a woman has not impeded her advancement.

“Nobody made me feel less competent or less able than any of my male colleagues. I got opportunities to do the same sort of work, the same level of responsibilities and the same exposure to clients as my male colleagues,” O’Brien shares. “From my point of view, my preconceptions were not, as a general matter, actually born out in practice. Maybe I was lucky to work with the people I did, or maybe the preconceptions are a little bit unfair.”

Here are some of the rewarding aspects of M&A that you may not know about:

Being central to people and process

“I think it’s one of the more interesting practice groups to be in, because in a transactional practice, M&A tends to be the hub, and so people who work on the M&A team are generally responsible for the transaction documents,” says O’Brien, “which means we get to solicit and receive input from other practice groups and then incorporate that input into the transaction documents.”

According to O’Brien, more exposure to the processes of client decision-making and multiple practices positions an M&A lawyer well if she or he decides to transition to an in-house or business position.

“You are more of a generalist than any other practice area,” says O’Brien, ”which, I think, makes you a better lawyer. And you generally have closer contact with the business people than people working in other practice areas.”

Learning on an on-going basis

“We have a very cross-border practice, so, at least in my work, you get confronted with different legal regimes and questions that you don’t know the answer to and have to find out, so you’re constantly learning,” says O’Brien. “That may be true of other practice areas, but my sense is that they are more jurisdiction-based than M&A.”

This growth opportunity includes the latitude to learn about M&A as you enter the field. Among a recent panel of six senior M&A women lawyers at BC Law, few had either interest or experience in finance during underground or law school.

Having satisfying work flow

M&A lawyers report that it’s gratifying to move through the finite deal-making process from beginning to end, and that a transaction-based practice offers a sense of completion.

“The work has a flow to it, which is satisfying in the sense that you get to work on a transaction, you get to understand at least some of what your client does, as well as the business that is the subject of the deal, you get to draft and negotiate the transaction documents, and get to a signing, and then a closing,” says O’Brien. “Each signing and closing represents a milestone, and therefore an accomplishment.”

In the panel, M&A lawyers also expressed that the hands-on immediacy of the work (as opposed to litigation on past damages) and tangibility make it rewarding.

Leveraging strategic and relationship-building skills

While M&A is more associated with masculinity, much of the skills required – collaboration, listening and consensus building – are more “stereotypically” feminine.

“I think you get to be a better listener, and to exercise diplomatic skills…What you’re trying to do is to find solutions instead of erecting roadblocks,” says O’Brien, “so you have to be creative and prepared to think outside of the box. You have to be able to listen to the other side’s concerns, why they don’t want to do what you want them to do, and then, where possible, find a compromise.”

“You can’t just pound the table and say ‘it’s my way or the highway’ because that often won’t work,” says O’Brien, “and your client won’t thank you for it because your client wants to get a deal done and wants somebody who can help it do that, rather than hinder that.”

When it comes to the broader benefit of women in deal-making, a recent study of S&P 1500 companies found that organizations with a higher proportion of women on the board pay less for both acquisitions (15.4 percent less for each female director) and takeovers (7.6 percent less for each female director).

What about the schedule?

Flexibility is increasing in firms and much can be done remotely during the valleys of work, but peaks are both exciting and intense. When signing or closing a deal, being in the same room for extended hours with the client and the other side is often still necessary.

“What can be hard is the unpredictability of your schedule,“ says O’Brien. “If your client wants to do a deal and it happens they want to do it over the weekend, you have to do it over the weekend.”

O’Brien emphasizes the importance of building up a support network you can rely on, and notes that M&A lawyers usually have the means to pay for that support. Also, finding flexibility, one senior M&A lawyer reports arranging her summers off with her kids.

“I think what you have to do is say OK, when I’m ready to have a family, I’m going to have a family,” says O’Brien. “If you’re waiting for the right time, there’s never going to be the right time, so you have to go ahead and do it when it’s right for you.” O’Brien’s own daughters are eleven and seventeen years old.

Is M&A for you?

Like any area of practice, M&A will not be for every women lawyer, but if you can get beyond the dissuading preconceptions, you may find yourself surprised.

“In my view, M&A is one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting practice area in corporate law, and the perceptions that women are less welcome, and are less successful, are overblown.” says Shearman & Sterling’s O’Brien. “If you decide that you want to pursue a corporate practice that is transactional, and if you’re interested in being intellectually challenged and interacting with people on a constant basis, you should seriously consider becoming an M&A lawyer.”

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