Tag Archive for: career advice

Mentee to Mentor: Enhancing your Career through Diverse Perspectives

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Guest contributed by Financial Women of San Francisco Board Member Shelby Duncan

A few years ago , I discovered the Financial Women of San Francisco (FWSF), a community of women who work in financial services and are dedicated to advancing the careers of women.

After learning about the organization and the importance of their mission, I applied for a scholarship and was fortunate enough to become a recipient. Not only did I receive financial support, but I was given the opportunity to work with a mentor. I had been fortunate enough to have informal mentors throughout my college career, but was extremely fortunate to be given three women from FWSF, all in varying stages in their careers, lives, and outlooks, to support me as formal mentors as I stepped into the corporate world for the first time. The wealth of knowledge and combined experience that they were able to share taught me an insightful and valuable lesson – the greater my mentorship network, the more I could learn and subsequently contribute to my community.

Image via Shutterstock

Image via Shutterstock

I applied this knowledge as I began my career – identifying mentors, creating partnerships across my organization, and directly expanding my network by asking for further referrals. I built mentoring relationships with C-Suite men with 30 years of corporate experience, senior women of color seeking to innovate within financial services, and hard-working software developers beginning their careers in the United States having transitioned from careers in India. In building these relationships across a diverse community of people I have been able to see life through many lenses and have benefited from others’ knowledge, intelligence, innovative thinking, and in some cases, their mistakes. The diversity of their perspectives has allowed me the freedom to be more creative and identify solutions to complex problems. The balance in the advice I have received has made me confident that I am being steered in the right direction by the leaders in my life.

For several years now, I have continued to foster my relationships and identify new mentors. As I have progressed in my career, I have had the opportunity to be a mentor myself and have enjoyed helping mentees as they strive to create and meet new career goals.

Here are my steadfast tips and tricks for being a successful mentee:

1. Give back to your mentor – Ask yourself, “What can I do for my mentor?” Mentors set aside time, share contacts and other resources in support of your growth. It’s imperative to identify opportunities to give back and support your mentor. This can come in the form of supporting an organization they are part of, for example volunteering time; supporting them at a speaking engagement by sharing the event with your network and introducing them to people you know; or introducing them to one of your other mentors.

Oftentimes, mentees believe they don’t have much to offer their mentor based on their age or level of experience – but that is not the case! Time, energy, and a fresh perspective are important resources to share with your mentor.

2. Seek diverse mentorships – Leverage your network to identify diverse mentors. Look across industries, levels of experience, age, gender, and ethnicity to cultivate a well-balanced outlook.

3. Maintain the relationship – Building relationships is easy, but maintaining them requires thoughtfulness and time. Be sure to establish a plan with your mentor to determine how often they would like to meet, a location that is convenient for them, and always be willing to treat for coffee or lunch. Ask thoughtful questions about their work, and frame questions that ask for advice. Get to know them, as they are investing their time in getting to know you!

Mentorships are invaluable relationships that are imperative to growing, maintaining and propelling your career. I know that my successes are not solely my own, but a function of the leaders who support me. With that, I encourage you to reflect on the mentors in your life, identify opportunities to gain new mentors, and consider becoming a mentor yourself.

I recently read an amazing book called “We Should All Be Feminists” and here the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (LINK PLEASE TO BOOK) states,
“Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes.”

We Should All Be Feminists, to me, is one of the most critically important works I have read. Written by an immensely insightful and accomplished author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, deeply inspires me as her work is centered on the empowerment of women and their use of community as a tool to reach their objectives. She acknowledges that the collective is more powerful than the individual and that diversity – in gender, ethnicity, culture, and age – are some of societies’ greatest assets. I couldn’t agree more.

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One Simple Step to Bust Out of Your Career Rut

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Sad businesswomanGuest contributed by Elizabeth Crook

There’s an epidemic in our country that’s impacting 40% of our population.

It’s lowering our immune systems, disturbing our sleep, breaking up our relationships, and creating depression and unwanted weight gain.

The epidemic seems very benign – it’s so common we often ignore it.

It’s called job dissatisfaction.

Historically there been more heart attacks on Monday morning than any other time of the week because so many of us are dragging ourselves to jobs that have depleted us. And even though the research was probably done on men, the implications for women are profound. Having the “wrong” job is not good for you.

Why do we stay?

Three simple reasons:

  • We are good at these jobs,
  • We may be too busy or too conscientious to recognize how stuck we are
  • We don’t know how to leave them.

We’ve been given accolades and compliments all our lives for what we do. We may be keeping our families afloat with these jobs. Our work may serve our social life or give us a strong sense of identity. We feel responsible to our team, our boss, or the company

Along with all that, we tend to see other options as more limited than they really are. We may even believe the industry or functional area the only ones we can be in, so we stay. And stay. And stay. Until our health is bankrupt, our relationships are compromised, and our dream of what we wanted has been lost.

Sound familiar? Don’t despair.

As a CEO coach and corporate strategist, many people from diverse arenas come to me because they want more than anything to love their work, but they don’t know how to get there.

Enter the energize/deplete paradigm.

In your everyday work, you encounter tasks that energize you and work that depletes you. Most people have don’t spend time thinking about it. However, identifying them is the is a big step toward getting to work that feeds your soul (and your bank account).

The first question to ask is: What do I know how to do?

Make a list. Brainstorm. Don’t hold back. Write down all those things you know how to do – think processes, not contents. This can include things beyond your work like your family or social life or even volunteer assignments. This isn’t your job description. This is what you know how to do.

The start of your list might look something like this:

  • Engage people in solving problems
  • Analyze data
  • Create narratives that give meaning
  • Recruit and hire people
  • Develop budgets
  • Manage projects
  • Manage people
  • Teach and mentor
  • Persuade
  • Sell ideas
  • Develop systems and processes
Identify the energizing activities.

Make a star next to the activities on your list that energize you – those things that even if your are working hard at them, you feel good doing them. Time passes in a minute when you are doing things that energize you, even if they take all day.

Do you feel depleted by managing people but are in a managerial position? Do you feel energized by being with people, but your work is behind an admin desk where you never get to interact? Are you energized by being creative, but your work is about collecting data?

Your starred activities are signposts, leading you to work that will feed your soul and make you feel like you are living large.

Your work now is to begin to increase the activities that energize you.

Shift your focus.

This may mean delegating the work that depletes you (anything that is not energizing you may very well be depleting you) or talking to your boss about shifting your focus at work towards what energizes you.

What if this list shows that nothing you do at work energizes you? What if all of your energizing how-tos are ones that you do out of work?

That’s fantastic information. And it might mean an overhaul of what you do for work. Chances are you can stay in your industry, but you may have to change what you do in this industry.

The Amazing Result.

What’s amazing about this simple exercise is that it activates something called the reticular activating system in the brain. The reticular activating system is the part of our brain that begins to notice red cars right when we decide we want a red car. Once we become aware of what energizes us, our subconscious begins to move us toward it.

As soon as we identify what depletes us, our defense system will begin to find ways to move away from those activities.We find ourselves making decisions about work that lead us toward those activities that we love.

Can it really be this simple?

Try it. See what happens.

Elizabeth Crook has been the CEO of Orchard Advisors for over 20 years, helping CEO’s grow their bottom line and have more fun. She believes that if everyone had the work and life they love, we could change the world! Her book, Live Large – The Achiever’s Guide to What’s Next will be released May 2017.

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

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Developing Mental Complexity Will Help You at Work (and Life)

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woman thinking - pipelineBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

The world is increasingly complex and can be quite confusing these days.

How do you ensure you have the guts, glory, stamina and agility to survive all this change?

Mental complexity is the answer according Harvard psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey in their book “Immunity to change”. This is my personal favorite book right now for two reasons; I am writing a paper on behavioral change and also am grateful for the change I have personally experienced from committing to examining paradigms that no longer serve me.

This work can take the guise of coaching but touches on all aspects of your existence and is a vehicle for a happy sustainable life in my opinion.

Kegan and Lahey talk about how we tend to be in one of 3 “minds” or mindsets when it comes to our mental complexity levels and this has nothing to do with IQ.

So, level one is a “socialized mind” and is where the majority of people operate. Certainly, junior and middle managers can be successful here as part of being here requires following, caring what people think of you and generally towing the line be it within a corporation, culture or even a religion. People here are good team players. But, what does one lose by seeing life though this lens? If you do not fit with what the norm is, you might find yourself feeling inadequate and uncomfortable or undeserving in some way.

At work, you may be at the mercy of the effects of politics and feeling not aligned (and in society too). You will fight yourself to get aligned and reduce your cognitive dissonance. At what cost?

The next “mind” is the “Self-authoring” mind which with this increased mental complexity, you can relegate others opinions (and even your own opinions) to an appropriate place where they can be referenced within a bigger system than your own direct value set. Therefore, outliers from yourself and others will not consume you, and instead give you the power to bed the author of our own reality. You get to direct the movie in your head.

I can personally attest when I stared to think with this self-authoring mindset it was growth. It changed my life and I see it work well for my coaching clients and when (if) they get there then I can honestly say the ball is in their court which usually results in happier choices and happiness with choices made as well as robust future decision making ability.

This is particularly good for people who have set high standards for themselves or seek approval from others. This level of processing information will move you from having subjective feelings and suffering the emotional fallout from them to seeing things more objectively and in perspective.

By learning to look at as well as through certain lenses, you can evolve and as Kegan and Lahey put it “not be forever captive of one’s own theory, system, script, framework or ideology”. Then, you can start to be in the zone of the “Self-transforming mind” where expansiveness around what you see and hear at work is not uniquely filtered to meet your informational needs. In plain English, you can make meaning on a big picture level and not feel the anxiety around how it effects you which if you are in the socialized mind, will trigger you and make you take it personally. You can care and not be consumed by caring. Doesn’t that sound amazing?

So, how do you build mental complexity to thrive at work and in a crazy world? Tune in next week to find out more….

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Does Hollywood’s failure to pass the Bechdel test have a negative effect on the workplace?

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hollywood-signGuest contributed by Beth Leslie

When critiquing the feminist credentials of a film, a good place to start is the Bechdel Test. To pass, a movie must fulfil three simple criteria: It has two named female characters, who talk to each other about something other than a man. Just under half of all films fail.

For comparison, when IMD compiled a list of films that botched the “Reverse-Bechdel Test” they managed to think of four.

Of course, blatant sexism in any aspect of life is distressing in and of itself. But media is influential. How much of an impact does a lack of female investment bankers, superheroes and whip-wielding archaeologists have on the career aspirations of real-life women?

Movies Influence Us

Movies matter. Study after study shows how the film industry can shape and influence politics, constructions of cultural identity and social change. How on-screen women are portrayed, therefore, affects real-life ideas about real-life women.

The Bechdel Test highlights the industry’s shortcomings in this regard: on-screen, women appear half as much as men and speak significantly less than them. They are rarely the lead or even co-lead, and they are over-sexualised and disproportionately young.

Over and over again, therefore, we watch men being dominant and women being marginalised. The idea becomes cemented in our mind, so that when we actually experience men disproportionately directing discussions or taking on positions of responsibility we accept it the norm.

We learn to associate masculinity with leadership and women with “sexy lamps”. When it comes to hiring and promotion decisions, we are already primed to see men as influencers, winners and go-getters. We want our high-fliers to be heroes, so we compare candidates against our established notions of what a hero looks like.

We see quintessential ‘good guys’ – the James Bonds, the Tony Starks – repeatedly sexualise the women they work with and think that such behaviour is acceptable. We search for examples of heroines who are over thirty-five or intellectually superior and, finding none, disparage experience and intellect as valid indicators of a women’s worth.

Women Don’t Work in Films

Work and the workplace is often represented in films, and it is usually depicted as an unrealistically masculine space. Male characters are notably more likely to have an identifiable job than female characters. They are also substantially more likely to occupy senior roles – women make up just 3% of fictional C-Suite executives. Of the 129 influential family films identified by the above study, not one showed a female character at the top of the financial, legal, journalism or political sector. (In contrast, there were 45 depictions of powerful male politicians alone.)

Gender stereotypes are endemic in film. In the hospital wards of Hollywood, 89% of nurses are women but only 10% of doctors are. The number of female engineers, soldiers, and officials is so low as to almost be negligible. The suggestion is therefore that women aren’t workers, and they certainly aren’t successful workers. By associating career progression so strongly with men, the movie industry depicts working itself is a “masculine” trait. Considering we learn about the world through media, this is disturbing.

Of course, women are underrepresented in senior positions and masculine professions, but not to the extent they are on-screen. This suggests that Hollywood is not so much reflecting reality as reflecting a conception of reality where different genders conform to markedly different life paths. By exaggerating existing stereotypes, it amplifies the pressure to conform to said stereotypes.

We Are Limited by Our Expectations

We grow up watching TV, and it influences our dreams and ambitions. Little girls seem particularly susceptible to emulating the actresses they see on screen – one study found that admiring a star whose characters’ smoke vastly increases the risk of becoming a smoker. Such admiration is particularly problematic if many of the characters we identify with are deficient in ambition and career success.

We cannot be what we cannot see, and the lack of professional representations of women, particularly in the boardroom or STEM industries, makes it harder for young women to conceptualise themselves as such figures. Movies show girls a version of happiness which involves playing the sidekick of a successful man, so women who want to be happy learn to copy this formula. Movies show young girls visions of themselves as pretty PAs or charming caregivers, and suggest that this is what women should be.

There is a solution: put more women in the film industry. When women create films, they invariably pass the Bechdel Test (and other measures of gender equality) with flying colours. Unfortunately, sexism has worked its wrecking hand here too: just 7% of directors, 20% of writers and 23% of producers are women.

Beth Leslie writes graduate careers advice for Inspiring Interns, a recruitment agency which specialises in matching candidates to their dream internship. Check out their graduate jobs London listings for roles, or if you’re looking to hire an intern, have a look at their innovative Video CVs.

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

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The Gender Pay Gap

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This month we celebrate Equal Pay Day. Take a look at these informative Pay Gap articles previously published on theglasshammer.

This 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.

Closing the investment gap for women as well as the better- documented pay gap needs to happen. What is the investment gap? And why are most women, even highly paid professional women still missing out? Sallie Krawcheck just wrote a post about the cost of not realizing what we are missing financially by not investing properly on LinkedIn.

money money moneyYou don’t need to work in a male dominated occupation to find your pay check weighs light relative to your male colleagues – particularly, if you’re in business.

In March 2015, the US Census Bureau released the latest pay statistics from 2013, including median earnings by detailed occupation, showing that full-time working women earn 78.8% of what full-time working men do. The census data revealed that across 342 occupations, women (barely) out-earn men in only nine.

Narrow the Hidden Executive Pay Gap Starting Now

Woman-on-a-ladder-searchingWomen reaching for the top rungs of the executive ladder will want to watch for the hidden pay gap. As Bloomberg writes, “Even top female workers can’t catch a break when it comes to pay inequality.”

As women move to senior ranks, the gender pay gap widens. Your best career management play? Begin closing it now.

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The Juggle: 3 Tips to Get Stuff Off Your Plate

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 By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Pyschologist

juggle

Image via Shutterstock

Unless you are a fully fledged workaholic ( I used to be one and I know many), you may want to work a little less and do a little more of just about everything else. With the exception of chores which are few people’s idea of fun.

So, how it is possible to live and love in an urban place, give it your all and maybe just maybe have time for other areas of your life, be it having children or not having children. I say that with caution as people get derailed quickly and fall into 2 camps when it isn’t about that division it is about the unification of the truth that we all do work more than ever.

Here are my three tips to get you closer to nirvana.

TIP 1: What tasks at work are non crucial and can be delegated, dumped or reframed to matter more strategically and therefore become worth doing?

TIP 2: How can you break cultural norms in a ‘face time” environment to show that results orientated work and productivity are winners?

TIP 3: At home, what life hacks can you apply to boring admin and chores to outsource or reduce them? Get a system or actual people involved to help you free up your time to live the dream. If you feel your other half needs to do more, tell me what they need to do and when as maybe they just do not know?

Most importantly, it is worth your while to step out of the weeds and look at the big picture – what do you want personally and professionally to happen in the next 24 -36 months?

Best of Luck

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Responsibility – Tick, But Resource Control is Zero

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Slowing downBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

A bad work day can consist of a scenario when you do not manage the team but are on the hook for delivery of the product. Sound familiar? Literally, this happens everyday to many people and it is a problem that creates issues and looks like a lack of skill and efficiency because team A promised the client something but they had no control over team B actually building the product.

Would you take the responsibility of protecting the free world, if you were not allowed the nuclear codes? Most of you will say no to this yet I see so many people taking on outrageous projects and knowingly being on the hook for things that they literally have zero control over the delivery of. How can you avoid this seemingly inevitable situation?

A good case in point is diversity work.

I see a lot of great women heading up women’s networks and being tasked with creating a bigger pipeline of women in the firm. Unless you have serious formal hiring capabilities as your new day job or the ability and full power to rework all the talent processes in the firm plus all the time in the world and renumeration to do it, then why would you say yes to this? From a transformative outcome frame, you should say no since this has no resource or execution control attached to it.

Unless, the goal is advocacy in which case that is fair enough as advocacy is important but rarely formally transformative. Advocacy is what men do every single day for each other so getting them to do it for you is a strong step in the right direction as is getting women to stop burying each other to protect the patriarchy (which runs deep as we know in recent times).

Also, really good development that understands the nuances of being different to the blueprint is never wasted- train and educate as you go in these networks if formally this is not an option (arguably it should de organized and paid for elsewhere but it is often not the case). A network can be a good container to supply unique content to certain audiences who potentially face shared challenges that are systemic in nature.

Remember, only you know what you want to spend time and energy on and how to create goals that are reachable. It is worth thinking about activity versus productivity and outcomes since you all have lives and goals inside and outside of work. Reduce stress by aligning your responsibility and authority on tasks that become the sum of your job!

If you are interested in hiring an Executive Coach to help you navigate your career then email Nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com for further informatiom

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Want to Win in the Fight For Female Talent? Urgent Change Needed!

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Contributed by Aoife Flood. Based in Dublin, Ireland, Aoife is Senior Manager of the Global Diversity and Inclusion Programme at PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limitedaoife flood featured

Around the world, the workplace gender gap is an area in need of immediate and serious attention and at PwC we believe that we must, and can, drive change more quickly.

The good news is we’re seeing a tidal wave of organisations across the world inject greater urgency into their efforts to tackle gender imbalances, in fact 87% of CEOs globally told us they are actively focused on talent diversity and inclusion. The bad news is we are still decades away from achieving gender parity in the corporate world, and in most countries in the world women still remain underrepresented at every level in the corporate pipeline.

One lever that organisations across the world can leverage to incite more rapid change is their attraction and selection efforts. To create energy and debate in this area I had the privilege of leading a ground-breaking global research study focused on gender inclusive recruitment. And I’m very excited to share that we released the results of this research in PwC’s Winning the fight for female talent report in honour of International Women’s Day.

Female hires in hot demand

The report makes one thing clear, explicit hiring targets have emerged as a core driver of change, in fact 78% of large organisations told us they are actively seeking to hire more women – especially into more experienced and senior level positions. As organisations fight to attract female talent – particularly at levels and in sectors where they’re currently underrepresented – we’re now seeing competition for female talent escalate to a whole new level.

Yet, 30% of women globally said they feel employers are too biased in favour of men when it comes to attracting talent, compared with 13% of men. This is a number that has been on the rise when we consider specifically women from the millennial generation; 16% of female millennials felt this way in 2011, 25% in 2015 and 28% feel this way today.

There is also a clear mismatch between the views of women and employers regarding the barriers limiting greater levels of female recruitment. Of the top five barriers employers identify, four explicitly point to external factors, such as the lack of a sufficient candidate pool (37%) and our industry sector not being viewed as attractive by women (24%). While of the top five barriers identified by women, four explicitly point to internal systemic challenges within employer attraction and selection activities and processes. For example, the impact of gender stereotypes in the recruitment process (45%) and concerns over cost and impact of maternity leave (42%).

Focus on gender inclusive recruitment is critical

Simply focusing on hiring more women, will not be sufficient. Yes, organisations will need to get really good at knowing where to find and how to attract female talent, but that’s not all. They also need to look inside, and transform the objectivity of their own recruitment and selection process and activities if they are to succeed in fostering fair and equal recruitment. And female talent today have their finger firmly on the diversity pulse, 56% of women – rising to 63% for women who are starting out on their careers – said they look to see if an organisation has made progress on diversity when deciding whether or not to work for them. Furthermore, when deciding to accept their most recent position, 61% of women looked at the diversity of the employers leadership team and 67% explored if the employer had positive role models they felt where similar to themselves.

Opportunities for career progression – yes please

Opportunities for career progression, competitive pay, and a culture of flexibility and work-life balance come out as the three most attractive employer traits for men and women overall. Women starting their careers, and female millennials (born 1980-1995) rank opportunities for career progression as their most attractive employer trait. While women with career experience who have recently changed jobs say a lack of opportunities for career progression is the top reason they left their former employer.

Traditional stereotypes associated with gender or life stage, for example, the over association of career ambition with men, and flexibility and work-life balance demands with women, specifically mothers, are well and truly out of date. To be a magnet to the modern talent pool, organisations must equip themselves to offer opportunities for career progression, a culture of flexibility, and competitive pay as workforce-wide realities for all their talent. And to attract the best and brightest male and female talent, they must also make these an integral part of their talent brands and talent systems.

In today’s highly competitive job market, it is incumbent on every organisation to revisit its policies and processes to make sure they are meeting the needs of the modern workforce, in particular the woman of today who is truly a trailblazer. Women today are looking for much more from their careers than previous generations – and organisations need to keep up if they are to secure the talent they need to grow their business.

We invite you to find out more by visiting www.pwc.com/femaletalent.

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Career Fantasy – A Future Job or a Serious Distraction to Your Success Right Now?

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woman thinking - pipelineBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Pyschologist

Most people have a career fantasy. What do I mean? Well, think about it right now; do you want to start a business that involves a cozy bed and breakfast in your favorite holiday spot? Or a cupcake business or a dog groomers? You get the picture and feel free to insert your own fantasy here as most of us have them.

You are not on your own as many folks day dream their way through their current job with a future fantasy of how the future might be.

It is real? Is it a fantasy? Does it matter? I think it matters for two reasons.

Firstly, if it is real, then what is stopping you from doing it on the sooner side? When pushed, my clients often realize that they have gotten no further than the headline and a surefire way to test your own assumptions is to start researching the feasibility and competition of the future industry you are considering entering. if you get this far, then maybe it is not a fantasy, maybe you are on the way to being an entrepreneur? Next step then is to perhaps apply SMART goals? Deep dive into real possibilities as it might be the ride of your life.

However, if you really do not want to own a B&B to the north, south, east or west of where you are now, you might find that out by truly not wanting to do any research or upon investigation find it not to be a viable job. If that is the case, then what role does it serve in terms of your mental involvement at work- is it keeping you engaged at work or distracted and disengaged?

Arguably, having a little dream can be a lovely way to keep you working so that you can save up for it, at least in your mind’s eye and this is a motivator (retirement is a different thing to being a business owner unless you can afford a working hobby).

But, what you do not want to do is to mistake this future perfect state as a “grass is greener” option instead of actually understanding why you do not like your job today. Examine with a coach what is really going on to see how to work out how to stay successfully or leave successfully but not to live in a dream your life away state so that you cannot engage in the present. Talk to a professional coach about real options for your future career and take a vacation to recharge if you feel like a rut is forming so that you can enjoy the present.

If you are interested in hiring an Executive Coach then email nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com for a no obligation chat

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Black History Month

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We hope you have enjoyed our featured articles and career profiles during Black History Month.

Take a look at some of our Featured Black History Month articles from previous years:

Black-History-MonthBlack History Month 2016 – Honoring African American Women in Business

In honor of Black History Month 2016, this month The Glass Hammer will feature interviews with notable African American women at leading firms on their career experiences, aspirations, and advice for other women in their field. Theglasshammer.com all year long and over the past nine years ensures we profile women of all social identities and experiences and we have always stated from the beginning that we want our readers to have many different role models.

diverse women in the boardroomBlack History Month Coverage: Diversifying Diversity for Better Results

Leadership diversity pays off, and a new study by McKinsey “Why Diversity Matters” has the hard numbers to prove it. It also points out that most corporate diversity programs don’t go far enough to be inclusive of ethnically diverse leaders. The Glass Hammer has long upheld the “business case for diversity,” and senior women in the corporate space will be pleased to see statistically significant results supporting this argument.

black female leader featuredBlack Women in Business: An update on progress

When we talk about the progress that has been made by women in corporate America, using gender to mean ‘all women’, what we’re actually referring to is the progress and gains that have been made by white women.

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