Tag Archive for: career advice

How To Stay Motivated During Your Job Search

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Guest contributed by Amelia Knott.
Don’t let the process get you down.Frustrated blonde woman sitting at a computer
 
With hiring practices that often tend to favor more youthful applicants, it can be tough for seasoned professionals to reenter or reconfigure their place in the workforce. And while this may be a numbers game —more jobs for the entry-level folks— the grind of applying to and being rejected from jobs can be highly demotivating. However you can take comfort in knowing that you aren’t alone in feeling this way, as thousands of people across the country struggle to shift their careers everyday. Here are some of the best ways they’ve found to stay motivated and surmount challenges:
 
Define your goals and strategy
 
Before you begin the job search process, figure out the logistics first. Consider what sources you will use to seek jobs, update your resume, and determine whom to use as a reference. You will also want to set a schedule for yourself, treating the job search itself as a part-time or full-time job. This means maintaining a regular sleep schedule and setting aside blocks of ‘work time.’ Set reasonable goals each week, such as sending out five resumes. Then address the larger goal of what your ideal job looks like, and aim close to it throughout the process.
 
Choose your jobs wisely
 
As a seasoned professional, you’ve probably gained a high degree of specialty in your particular field. This is an admirable quality, as it demonstrates expertise, grit, and oftentimes company loyalty. However because of this, the job pool will be somewhat smaller. Avoid applying for jobs in which you are clearly overqualified, jobs seeking entry-level or recent graduate status, or jobs that aren’t congruous with your resume (unless you intend to make a concentrated effort to switch fields and establish how, for example, your accountancy skills translate into fundraising skills). To find a good fit, check out specialized job boards that let you sift through listings by category and other criteria.
 
Network in your industry
 
Staying consistent with your networking functions can do wonders to advance your job search. It can also provide social support from others who understand what you’re going through and who may be able to offer advice or job leads. For maximum effectiveness, stick to networking within your industry by attending conferences or joining relevant groups on social media. If you want to go broad, consider networking at events for professional women.
 
Offer to volunteer
 
As a financial service professional, you’ll find lots of opportunities to volunteer your time and skills. Check in with your local non-profits to find out if there is any way you can help. You can also find a full list of registered charities through the government. Many smaller organizations don’t have a dedicated accounting staff, so your expertise may be a welcome relief. Plus, volunteering will fill in the employment gap on your resume.
 
Enjoy the time off
 
While this period of shifting jobs may be a bit stressful, try to make the most of the time off. Spend some time with your family, take a little vacation, or simply indulge in some ‘me time.’ The relaxation can help you de-stress and maintain a positive outlook.
 
Ultimately you have the power to make this job search a positive and productive one. It will likely take you some time to find a suitable job, and you may experience some rejection along the way. Don’t let that distract you from the fact that you are already an accomplished professional. Sometimes there are elements at play beyond your influence—often to do with the position receiving a large pool of applicants. Keep your focus on achieving personal and professional growth during the process, and trust that your goals will be realized.
 
Amelia Knott works at Aubiz.net – a free online ABN lookup tool. She is passionate about new marketing trends and branding strategies. She shares her insights through blogging.
 
Opinions and views of Guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
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New Year, New You. Same Job?

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Slowing downBy Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

The holidays are often a blur but can be a time of reflection for some who want change in their jobs and careers as the year turns. Now is a good time to think about what you want out of life for the next 2-5 years.

If you like what you do, then you still should be thinking about a pay rise, a promotion and the bonus discussion that is looming in the next 30-90 days for most people in financial services.

When asking for a raise, there are two schools of thought. One strand of research says that women simply just do not ask for more money. The other branch of research suggest that women do ask but are not heard and more practically buffered with reasons why they do not get the same as men for the same job done. Policies such as percentage incremental increases for example contribute to systemic bias if women are hired at 10-30% less than the guy beside them anyway.

My advice, go big or go home. Explain in detail at every opportunity what you do prior to the annual review so that every step of the way, managers and HR know why you should be rewarded for your work. Then ask. Ask again. Ask for benchmarks. Ask what you need to do to get to the figure or grade you want. Never give up.

If you are in a place where you know that it is time to leave then work with your coach to reason out your thinking a little on what is motivating you to leave. Next week, we will look at why leaving can be a great path forward also. Face your fears and address what is fear and what is real. This way, you start the year empowered to make the right career decisions.

Nicki Gilmour is an industrial psychologist and qualified career coach as well as Founder and CEO of glasshammer2.wpengine.com

If you wish to be coached by Nicki in 2017 she is taking on a small number of (paying) individual clients this year- please apply nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com

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2016 Did Not Go The Way You Planned? Plan a Stellar 2017

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Hello 2017

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

As the year draws to a close this December, it is a good time in all the holiday madness to do some reflection at the end of a busy and often surprising year for many.

What has gone well for you this year? What would you do differently? How would you do it again?

It can be useful to do an “after action review” of some of the interactions and situations that occurred for you in your home and work life to see what you have learned. We cannot change some of the outcomes, but two things are under our control, how we react to what has been handed to us and secondly what behaviorally we will do different in the hope of different outcomes in 2017.

If you did not get the job you wanted this year, even if you were truly ready for it then it is worthwhile to understand which parts where truly down to you (skills, traits, behaviors and even take a hard and honest look at mistakes) and what was really not to do with you. What do I mean by that? Simply put, culture and trends, was the country, firm or team trending in a certain way? Always understand the external environment that you are operating in. Secondly, did others have false perceptions about who you are or what you are capable of? Understand what is really you and what is imagined about you and then try your best to close that gap positively and navigate the rest of it as gracefully as possible.

Lastly, make sure the system is not flawed and that meritocratic processes are in place so that a clear and fair promotional criteria will reward those who deserve the job.

It is not lost on me that while writing this advice to you that politics does not abide by these rules, but I am confident that good firms do, so as Goethe said ” Choose wisely, your choices are brief but endless.” My advice for reviewing 2016 and planning for 2017 is exactly that.

If you are interested in hiring an Executive Coach to help you navigate your career then please contact nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com for a no obligation chat to discuss options

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Why Leaders Need More than Mirror Reflections

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female-leaders-looking-in-her-mirror-reflection-featuredBy Aimee Hansen

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

One of the clearest examples is the side-by-side blue feed, red feed posted by The Wall Street Journal. These views are never side-by-side but rather constructions of completely different realities.

Social media (with Facebook at top) is a news source for 62% of U.S. adults, and when our Facebook newsfeed is increasingly a tunnel lined with mirrors, the sum reflection is silos of distortion.

Diversity of thought is a muscle that is essential to leadership, and one that we may be getting weaker at flexing when it comes to developing our worldview in our personal and societal lives. Whatever we practice, we become better at. So arguably, we are getting better at listening to people who think like we already do.

To be effective leaders, we have to increasingly be more vigilant about the practice of inviting diversity of thought in, even when it’s difficult to do so.

How Facebook Is Narrowing Our Feedback Loop

As highlighted in the The New York Times, it’s our interaction with social media that both biases and narrows our exposure to different viewpoints and different stories.

Frank Bruni writes, “The Internet isn’t rigged to give us right or left, conservative or liberal — at least not until we rig it that way. It’s designed to give us more of the same, whatever that same is: one sustained note from the vast and varied music that it holds, one redundant fragrance from a garden of infinite possibility.”

When our ideas and perspectives are not challenged, but only reinforced by our customized curation of news through interaction with social media,“we retreat into enclaves of the like-minded” with increased speed and depth, while missing out on a breadth of perspectives.

According to the NYT, “Technology makes it much easier for us to connect to people who share some single common interest,” said author Marc Dunkelman (“The Vanishing Neighbor”), and easier to avoid “face-to-face interactions with diverse ideas.”

According to network scientist, Vyacheslav Polonski writing for the World Economic Forum, previous research has shown that increased contact with people who share our previously held beliefs makes those beliefs more extreme.

We become more confident, vigorous, and emboldened as we begin to adopt a new group identity. At the same time, we becoming increasingly ignorant to the dynamics of alternative world views. There is both power and peril.

Confirming Our Own Biases

According to The Guardian, “Since online content is often curated to fit our preferences, interests and personality, the internet can even enhance our existing biases and undermine our motivation to learn new things.”

One bias that is supported by echo chambers is confirmation bias, where we look to see our own preconceptions confirmed rather than fully taking facts, data, or opposing viewpoints into consideration. We are drawn to prove ourselves right by consuming information that matches our opinions even though “being exposed to conflicting views tends to reduce prejudice and enhance creative thinking.”

As Warren Buffet said, “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” With too much information to deal with, it’s a survival strategy to ignore most of it, but we tend to selectively ignore what does not agree with us.

The Boardroom Echo Chamber

If we want to know more about the dangers of decision-making inside of a (digital) echo chamber, we can look to the corporate boardroom, because that has existed mostly as an echo chamber for decades.

In 2015, Fortune 500 companies filled 399 vacant or newly created seats, the highest number of seats since Heidrick & Struggles began tracking. But when faced with a record opportunity to increase diversity, the Fortune 500 boardroom stuck to its own kind.

Tapping from the “usual suspects” (73% of appointments were current and former CEOs and CFOs), the range of industry backgrounds narrowed, women appointments stalled, Latino appointments remained flat, and Asian-American appointments fell. The only improvements in diversity were African-American (1% point) and international experience (32.2% points).

In sum, older white male seats or new seats were filled with older white males with international experience. From the perspective of social diversity, boards elected more mirrors to reflect similar viewpoints, not more windows to bring in diverse perspectives.

Diversity Makes Us Smarter

According to the Harvard Business Review, the key differentiator of leadership (and the career arc of a leader) is a process of inclusiveness in decision making, the ability to take into account a 360 degree context.

Underlining the importance of gathering multiple perspectives, Associate Professor Laurence Minksy and Julia Tang Peters write, “Habitual outreach prevents insular thinking, opens doors to ideas and collaborative relationships, expands problem-solving perspectives, and increases the range of resources for implementation.”

As reiterated by Scientific American, social diversity enhances creativity, encourages the search for novel perspectives, and leads to better decision-making and problem solving. Katherine W. Phillips, a Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics, writes, “Simply interacting with individuals who are different forces group members to prepare better, to anticipate alternative viewpoints and to expect that reaching consensus will take effort.”

“Being with similar others leads us to think we all hold the same information and share the same perspective,” writes Phillips. This keeps us from effectively processing information, and hinders creativity and innovation. Whereas in a context of diversity, we are less complacent with our perspectives and begin to consider alternatives even before personal interaction takes place.

“Simply adding social diversity to a group makes people believe that differences of perspective might exist among them and that belief makes people change their behavior,” writes Phillips. We work harder on both a cognitive and social level, become more diligent, and more open-minded because we anticipate it will take more to come to a consensus.

Also, disagreement with those who are socially different to us also does more to spark our consideration.

“When we hear dissent from someone who is different from us (eg. by race or political party), it provokes more thought than when it comes from someone who looks like us,“ writes Phillips. “When disagreement comes from a socially different person, we are prompted to work harder. Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homogeneity simply does not.”

Your Diversity Muscle

As Phillips points out, diversity of thought is a muscle we have to exercise. “You have to push yourself to grow your muscles.”

So as a leader, ask yourself where are you allowing yourself to be drawn into an echo chamber? Are you being inclusive in your own decision-making?

And, where in your workplace do you see a tunnel of mirrors in need of some windows?

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Time Gaps in your Resume? Turn Black Holes into Wins

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CV / ResumeGuest Contributed By Sharon Nir

Recruiters and hiring managers have unconscious and conscious bias and judgement based on employment intervals can be one of the greatest organizational impediments for success.

But if organizations attempted to understand black holes in employee resume the way astrophysicists strive to understand black holes in the universe, they could uncover concealed information about candidates that could prove valuable for the position, but might not be attained through interview, questionnaire or psychological assessment. Therefore, instead of distracting interviewers away from employment gaps, interviewees should pull future employers right into them.

Show you’re a good match

Many valuable organizational resources are consumed during the hiring process; therefore, organizations do their best to find the most promising candidates. One approach to an applicant’s assessment is based on the concept of “fit”. Three different types of “fit” exist— the first two are relatively easy to attain, the third is legendary. A person-organization fit is focused on how well an individual “fits” within the organizational culture. A person-job fit is focused on how well an individual “suits” the job he or she is hired to do in two aspects: personality and skills. The legendary option is the combination of the two in which a candidate demonstrates both organizational and job fit.

Candidate’s evaluation based on the level of “fit” is essential, because in many cases, it predicts the future success of the recruitment. In this context, the employers’ tendency to mind the gap could be explained by their look for “fitted” employees, which in their opinion translates to well-planned, long-term objectives achieved by following a gap-free career path. Additionally, employment gaps predominantly create a big question mark, and most organizations do everything they possibly can to avoid any kind of ambiguity. Therefore, the candidates have the responsibility to replace question marks with exclamation points and prove they are a perfect match for both the job and the organization.

Before you apply for a position, perform a thorough study of the company’s mindset. On the website, focus on the mission statement, values, and social responsibility initiatives or activities. Sign up for the company’s newsletter, which is a great resource for learning about the organizational culture, latest news, and employees’ appreciation. Additionally, search for recent articles about the company.

Then go back to your resume and elaborate about previous positions that are aligned with the organizational culture, mission, and social responsibility commitment at the expense of positions that are not. In the cover letter, explain how the skills and the experience you’ve gained during your employment gap would come in handy in the position for which you are applying. During the interview, gravitate the conversation towards the black holes and give specific examples of the way your core competencies, which you’ve acquired throughout the gap period can be valuable to the organization.

The past counts but the future is pertinent

The 21st century’s lifestyle dictates modifications. Gone are the days when people worked from nine-to-five, were mostly involved in physical labor, and remained in the same work place for forty years. Today, we live in a fast-paced, ever-changing business environment that promotes employment mobility and career transformations. In such eco-systems, employment gaps could be one of the best predictors of employees’ growth and future successes, because like in the universe, black holes exhibit a strong gravitational pull that could help evaluate candidates’ personalities beneficial to the position and the organization.

If you are an educated, skilled professional with employment gaps, you could contribute more to organizations than a similar candidate without gaps. You are the employee any smart forward-thinking organization would like to have. You are a curious, creative, risk-taking, self-directed, adaptive, agile, and adjustable individual who may exhibit unique problem-solving skills, which are powered by a situation analysis and a complex decision-making process.

The fact a skilled technical writer took off a year or two to write her debut novel and DJ-ed on the weekends to support her family presents a candidate who is responsible, creative, and dedicated to her mission. If an IT project manager traded her career for her family for a few years that should suggest she has her priorities straight, possesses a high-risk tolerance, and follows her values and beliefs. A successful art teacher in her 40s who took off a few years and returned to school to study architecture should give a clue this candidate has a vision, and she is unwilling to settle for anything less than what she can achieve.

Candidates with these exclusive core competencies are the catalysts of innovation and growth. They are organizations’ most-prized possessions, and most likely, they would be the ones to help the organization achieve and sustain the competitive advantage. Therefore, stop feeling inferior and instead display pride, and show you’re the organization’s legendary option as you fit both the job and the organization due to your unusual or creative career path.

A word to employers

Employers should keep in mind that hiring a candidate with employment intervals is anything but compromising. Important to remember is that a candidate with years of work experience from which she didn’t take on growth challenges is worthless to the organization, while a candidate with a modest experience from which she evolved and changed is invaluable.

Sharon NirAbout the author

Sharon Nir is the author of The Opposite of Comfortable: The Unlikely Choices of a Career Immigrant Woman (Viki Press/May 2016). Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, she holds a Bachelor of Art degree in Language and Literature from Tel Aviv University, and an MBA in Marketing and International Management from Northeastern University of Massachusetts. Sharon, her husband and two children reside in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Visit sharonnir.com and connect @sharonvnir and facebook.com/sharonvnir for more info.

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‘Surround Yourself’ with Guys Who Get It!

Business meeting with women and menGuest Contributed by Rayona Sharpnack

We have only to watch the progress of the U.S. presidential campaign to understand that bias (against any underdog group) and bullying are contagious. But so, in my belief, are courage, integrity, and commitment as demonstrated by the male professional athletes who have stood up to say, “not in my locker room!”

In these days fraught with public statements about women as sex objects, as inferiors, as people easily dissed and dismissed, we need to consciously refocus our attention on men who respect and value us. Even more, we need to think and talk widely about the corporate and government leaders who champion women and our achievements.

This is not only to keep our own spirits up, but to have an impact on the young men around us, especially those in our families. A variety of research has shown that boys, more so than girls, are particularly sensitive to social influences and role models. With the powerfully negative male role-modeling broadcast daily from the campaign trail, we owe it to our boys to show them men with positive attitudes toward women.

Where to find them? On an international level, you can start with President Obama’s “This is what a feminist looks like” moment and Justin Trudeau’s now-famous answer to the question of why 50% of his cabinet is female.

Our partner, theglasshammer also has been an inspiring place to see a series of articles on individual “Men Who Get It.” There are good guys out there, young and old and male MBA students who have chosen to support gender equality and take what they’ve learned into the companies they are going to work for can be seen on the Forté Foundation’s page on Men Making a Difference.

Dr. Michael Kimmel also gives a worthwhile TED talk showing that men who support gender equity will be happier, healthier, and even more sexually satisfied. And he does it with panache and humor!

We are hosting Guys Who Get It Awards, a celebration luncheon in San Francisco on Jan. 26, 2017, to acknowledge the vision and leadership of C-level executive men from Fortune 500 companies who really “get it” about Gender Partnership™. We will be honoring male leaders from across industries and government to showcase that such partnership is not only possible, but is already being achieved by these executives with great results. (Each award-winner has at least 35% women on his leadership team.) Attendees will learn about their best practices and how these “guys who get it” are working to establish gender equality as a cultural norm within their organizations – or their city. (One of our winners is the mayor of a major U.S. city.) We hope you can join us there!

Rayona Sharpnack is CEO and founder of the Institute for Gender Partnership and the Institute for Women’s Leadership

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Women and STEM: Why We Need to Reclaim Our Belonging

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women in technologyBy Aimee Hansen

We are increasingly conveying a new message to our daughters and nieces when it comes to girls’ and women’s place in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics): You belong.

“Ada Twist, Scientist” by Andrea Beaty held the top spot on the NYT best sellers among children’s picture books for four weeks as of October 16th (still in the top 10), joining Beaty’s “Rosie Revere, Engineer,” on the list for 76 weeks now.

In August, “Ada’s Ideas: The Story of the Ada Lovelace, the World’s First Computer Programmer” by Fiona Robinson was released. More of the books we give to our children to read are saying, STEM “is for girls” – and not only that, but they are exploring themes like passion, perseverance, and the value of failure.

Ada matters, and so does recognizing all the forgotten or overshadowed women in STEM, because it’s not that women are just entering these fields now, thank you very much. It’s that girls and women are being desperately courted back into them.

A Broken STEM Narrative

In an episode entitled, “When Women Stopped Coding,” NPR noted that women were a pioneering, rising presence in computer science until a stark turning point in 1984: when computers came into homes and the cultural narrative began glorifying them as toys for the boys.

From that year, the rising cultural narrative pushed girls out at home while talented women dropped out of tech in schools. In 1984, women represented 37% of computer science majors and despite the rising demand, today it’s 18%.

This was not the first time capable women were written out of the STEM story, just a recent one. The tired narrative that women don’t belong in STEM replays through the industry stereotypes and cultural dynamics that keep women away, throw an extra hurdle in their path, or drive them out.

Every time a new study (2016) shows that “woman” is still perceived by both men (even more so) and women to be incompatible with “successful scientist” (or programmer, or engineer, or executive, or leader), it’s proof that a limited narrative is still being internalized by our culture.

This “STEM is for men” narrative is dangerous, because it’s also written women right out of a rising proportion of high-reward, high-in-demand jobs. Bad for women, yes. And crippling for the U.S. economy.

Talent Shortage and Competitive Lag

A new report from Accenture entitled “Cracking the Gender Code: Get 3x More Women In Computing” calls the current lack of women a “national crisis with severe implications for America’s place in the global economy and for the future of women.”

Consider that women take home half of computing degrees in Malaysia and nearly half of engineering degrees in Indonesia. In the USA, women receive just 18% of computer science undergraduate degrees and 19% of engineering degrees.

The Accenture report states that job growth within the computer industry is growing at three times the national average, creating unmet demand. In 2015, there were over half a million open computing jobs in the U.S., but only 40,000 computer science graduates.

By 2018, it’s estimated that 2.4 million STEM jobs will be unfilled. The report points out that the shortfall of analysts in the U.S. is greater than the surplus of analysts in India and China combined. Increasingly these jobs are newly emerging jobs that haven’t existed before, requiring new specialized skills.

The glaring reality is that STEM needs women if the U.S. economy hopes to retain any leadership in digital innovation.

Women Sidelined Within Economy

An AAUW report states that engineering and computing represent 80% of the jobs in STEM, offering the highest return on investment and best job prospects.
Studies have shown that STEM jobs pay women better relatively to other jobs.

But women are least represented in engineering (13% of jobs) and computer science (26%), and the Accenture analysis showed that the gender pay gap within U.S. computing roles widened by 48% between 2011 and 2015, as women are missing out on the high-value roles.

Bringing women back into computer science isn’t just about progress in STEM. It’s about “bringing women back to the center of our economy.”

Encouraging Girls and Young Women In Tech

The Accenture report recommends a three-stage strategy to “more than triple the number of women working in computing in the U.S. to 3.9 million by 2025”, or 39% of the workforce. This would generate nearly $300 billion in additional cumulative earnings for women.

“The keys to improvement include: sparking the interest of girls in junior high school, sustaining their commitment in high school where early gains are often lost,” states the report, “and inspiring college undergraduates by reframing computer curriculums.”

Equal exposure is not enough, but actually re-tailoring educational programs towards girls, young women, and women – at all levels. Interventions at the college level would only result in 1.9 million in computing in 2025 (1.2 million now).

The first-ever technology and engineering literacy test in 2014 found that eighth grade girls (45%) were more proficient at engineering and technology related tasks than boys (42%).

A few years later, those same young women are less likely to take the related AP exams (only 20% of computer science exam takers) and less likely in their first college year to intend to major in these fields.

Accenture states that 69% of the potential growth in the computer pipeline is down to attracting girls at junior high age, as 74% of women in computing now were exposed in junior high.

This demands exposing girls to coding in more attractive ways (eg gaming), changing stereotypes, and increasing awareness of all parties (teachers, parents) about how computing can help change the world for the better.

Multiple initiatives here and globally are dedicated to recruiting girls and women into STEM- such as Million Women Mentors, the WISE campaign which seeks to bring one million women into STEM in the UK, and Girls Who Code.

At the high school level is when interest in computer science drops. The report recommends redesigning high school courses, creating grassroots campaigns around the difference STEM can make, and attracting more women teachers.

Supporting Women In Tech

At the college level, we’ve witnessed that strong, focused efforts can result in dramatic changes.

In 2016, Dartmouth graduated more female (54%) than male engineers, a first for a national research university. The program features more collaboration, a supportive network with diverse role models, and a “hands-on, project-based” approach, which exposes students to engineering who may not have chosen it.

In 2016, Harvey Mudd graduated a majority of women in computer science (54%) and physics (52%) for the first time ever, having already graduated a majority in engineering two years ago. Importantly, 64% of the 2016 computer science graduates who had accepted a full-time job had a position in the tech industry, compared to 30% in 2011. Only ten years ago, women were only 10% of computer science majors.

Under President Maria Klawe since 2006, Harvey Mudd has famously made three key changes that removed obstacles for women, such as reworking introductory courses to attract women and integrating research opportunities, and it only took a few years to quadruple CS majors and less than a decade to arrive to the landmark classes of 2014 and 2016.

At Harvey Mudd in 2017, six of the school’s seven department chairs and 38% of its professors will be women.

Biasing Recruitment towards Women

It’s not surprising that a slew of diversity apps designed to help to mitigate bias in hiring and promotion have been rising out of Silicon Valley, in many cases led by women who have faced bias in action in the tech industry.

These ideas help reduce the biases that keep women and minorities out of tech roles. But after such acute exclusion with such growing demand, it will take more than eliminating bias against women to address the massive talent gaps. It will take educational strategies that lean in towards girls and women.

Representation, visibility, and mentorship of women in these fields remains paramount. It starts to rewrite the broken cultural narrative and reminds both girls and women that we do belong – from our children’s books to our leadership.

Being visible is arguably the most influential thing an engineer, scientist, programmer, mathematician, and executive in any of these fields can do to encourage change.

Because it’s not just that girls and women belong. It’s that they are needed.

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Looking to get to the C-Suite? Here are six steps to career success

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Women-Cheering-featuredGuest Contributed by Morag Barret

Career paths can be unpredictable, peppered with pivot-points, and rife with opportunities that can make – or break – your trajectory. The path to the C-Suite isn’t a straight line, nor is it one you can coast along. If you aren’t scared just a little bit along the way, you probably aren’t moving fast enough or taking (informed) risks!

Getting to the C-Suite can be a daunting journey for even the most seasoned professionals. Hard work alone is not enough, and can actually keep you stuck at your current career level rather than catapult you forward.
If hard work isn’t the answer, how do you get to the C-Suite? I called several leaders that I know and respect for their advice. Here’s what they had to say:

Never stop learning

Pay attention to the leaders you admire and seek to understand what makes them stand out. “The biggest mistake a leader can make is to stop learning,” shared Rose Else-Mitchell, Executive Vice President at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

“Modeling continuous learning creates a culture that benefits everyone, encourages risk, innovation and self-responsibility.”

Seek out daily opportunities to learn and demonstrate your readiness for a promotion. Don’t wait for a bigger title to show others that you’re capable of operating at that next leadership level today.

Have a vision

“Hope” is not a strategy to adopt when it comes to managing your career. Whether your goal is to achieve the top job, move to a vice president role, or from manager to director, you need a plan — and to execute that plan!

“Make sure it’s your plan.” advises Barbara Dondiego, CMO at AVOXI. “If you choose to ‘Lean In,’ make sure you understand your reasons for doing so. Run towards the hard problems that others step away from. It’s the best preparation for the C-Suite you can ever have.”

Broaden your point of view

In the early stages of our career, we tend to have a narrow point of view, and be focused on our immediate function and area of expertise. Success in the C-Suite requires that you have a broad leadership point of view.

Susan Reynolds, former COO at Naviasys, recommends that you “be a business person who understands your business or profession. Focus on what matters to your company and know your stuff. Make your company profitable by contributing to the skills of your group, and be accountable for the failures, as well as the successes.”

As a CXO, you’ll need to understand the whole business: from finance to operations, technology to HR. Get involved and volunteer for cross-functional projects. If you’re not equipped to spend time in these parts of your organization, then take a class, study, seek out a mentor from across the company, and start talking the language of business.

Nurture professional relationships

“Success in your career is driven by the relationships you form,” says Judy Batenburg, SVP of IT Services at Starz. “Get to know your allies, those who can help you move forward, and also those who might hinder your success. Work to cultivate strong professional relationships.”

Relationships matter, especially when it comes to moving your career forward. Why? Because the senior roles aren’t (usually) filled as a result of a job advertisement or resumes submitted online. Before a senior role even hits the job market, conversations will have been held along the lines of, “Who do we know that could fill this role?” “Who do we want to invite to join our team?”

Make sure to cultivate your professional relationships now, so that your name is the first that is suggested. Your future career progression may depend on it!

Invest in your support network

Shannon Sisler, SVP of Talent Management Human Resources at Western Union, recognized that as she moved through her career, there were ever increasing personal and professional demands on her time. Having a strong support network is vital, and can include someone that takes care of the yard, more flexible child support, an awesome assistant at work, a personal trainer, and even someone that can ensure you get regular date nights with a partner. Shannon advises: “Don’t feel guilty asking for help… you can’t be everything to everyone. Invest your efforts in the personal and professional areas that matter most!”

Don’t watch the game. Play the Game.

As you climb the corporate ladder, you will encounter hurdles. You can either rail against the system and refuse to play – or, you can choose to learn the game, play the game, and ultimately change the game.

Simone Reynolds, Chief Human Resources Officer at Coalfire Systems Inc. advises “Be authentic! Don’t change to fit the mold instead stay within the guardrails and be authentically you. In doing so you build trust, and the ability to influence others in a multitude of ways. The best way to change things is to work the system not revolt against it.”

Your Steps to the C-Suite

There is no one path to reach the C-suite. This is your career journey to find and forge. You can either wing it and hope that your smarts land you your dream role, or you can be deliberate, thoughtful, and take control of the process. Experience has shown that the latter approach is more likely to result in a successful outcome. Only you can choose to invest the time in developing your self and demonstrating your leadership capabilities that set you up for success today — and for tomorrow.

Morag Barrett is the best-selling author of Cultivate: The Power of Winning Relationships and CEO of SkyeTeam, an international HR consulting and leadership development company. Morag’s experience ranges from senior executive coaching to developing leaders and teams across Europe, America and Asia. SkyeTeam works with clients in a range of industries including: Healthcare, Telecoms, Mining, Manufacturing, Engineering, and Technology. www.skyeteam.com

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How Professional Women Can Turn Anticipation Into a Leadership Boon

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Managing ChangeSpell “words” backwards, and it becomes “sword.” When it comes to language in management meetings, it turns out that women wield a double-edged sword, a way of either weakening or strengthening their leadership position through the way they wield their words.

Research has found that as they speak, women tend to be more likely to be simultaneously aware of the concerns and agendas of others, and to adjust their language to reflect this. Professor Judith Baxter, Professor of Applied Linguistics at Aston University, UK calls this “double-voicing.”

Simply put, the ability to strategically incorporate what you anticipate others are thinking or feeling as you speak can be a career-boosting skill in your back pocket, if wielded selectively and well.

Anytime you are not only speaking your thoughts or views but are at the same time reflecting and incorporating what you believe others may think or feel into what you say, you’re double-voicing. You’re voicing for yourself and for those you’re speaking to or with.

It’s a “double-edged sword” which you might be using to undercut your leadership presence. But used strategically, it’s a masterful skill you can harness as a powerful leadership asset.

Women and Double-Voicing

In studying top-level conversations across seven major companies in the UK, Baxter found one fundamental distinction between male and female leadership language: “Women were four times more likely than men to be self-critical, qualify their comments, speak indirectly or apologetically when broaching difficult subjects with board members or when managing conflict.”

Baxter argues in a Babel article that as women climb the corporate ladder, in order to gain acceptance and approval they practice “serious linguistic work such as the carefully judged use of apology, humour, self-mockery, understatement, implied meaning and deference in order to minimise direct confrontation or criticism from male colleagues.”

How Double-Voicing Can Dilute Your Leadership

We already know that women’s words often are not treated the same as men’s in the office. When women are more assertive with their words, they can be judged more harshly than men are, for going against gender norms. So there’s strong reasons why women adapt how they speak.

But it’s harmful when women habitually use their tongue to weaken their own leadership stance. According to Baxter, double-voicing can be used to deliver “self-inflicted wounds.” For example, when double-voicing is used to pre-empt how others might perceive you as the speaker, you simply deflate your own authority and words.

This might sound like, “I realize I’m not the expert, but…” or “Sorry if I’m speaking out of turn, but…” or “I don’t mean to be difficult, but…” In her observations of top meetings, Baxter heard one woman caveat that she was “talking too much,” having taking only spoken twice, and watched the men nodding in agreement.

As Baxter told Virgin, women use double-voicing “to pre-empt criticism from colleagues and not to appear demanding or boastful. Double-voicing makes women seem less threatening to colleagues, both male and female.”

But trying to disarm the perceived critical viewpoint of others, when it comes to your authority or expertise as a speaker, has the reverse impact. When a woman hedges the very act of speaking, she is stealing the power of her words before she even gets them out. Baxter consistently found this kind of double-voicing was viewed negatively by all colleagues, damaging to the leadership positioning and authority of women.

Double-voicing can also take more seemingly benign forms that still undermine speech. “I probably haven’t understood you correctly, but…” or “I have probably got my wires crossed but should we consider…” or “You have probably thought about this point already, but…” This puts the speaker on the back foot.

How Double-Voicing Can Strengthen Your Leadership

In her book, “Double-voicing at Work: Power, Gender and Linguistic Expertise,” Baxter asserts that double-voicing is a form of “linguistic expertise.” The challenge is to use it deliberately.

Baxter writes in a Babel, “I suggest that double-voicing need not be a sign of weakness, but could actually be a source of strength.” She notes, “Double-voicing could be a highly sophisticated strategy to consolidate team relationships while achieving a female leader’s own agenda.”

According to Baxter, double-voicing can be used to “draw out a colleague who is silent, or to silence another who is outspoken, and to anticipate an emerging conflict and to soothe it into resolution.” Above all, it can help you communicate more effectively and inclusively as a leader.

If effective leadership means moving towards social awareness (not just self), being inquisitive (not directive), building power with (not over) colleagues, as well as showing an outward focus in your language, then double-voicing is a very powerful leadership skill when applied well.

For example, when applied not to second-guess your contribution as a speaker, but demonstrate insight and forethought about how others may feel about the content you are sharing, double-voicing can be “a highly constructive tool for leadership.”

It’s a skill to be able to anticipate the likely thoughts of the audience and incorporate those thoughts into your message to bring others onside as you are speaking. It’s a skill to reflect awareness of cultural or situational expectations. It’s a skill to pre-empt or diffuse criticism or agendas that could dilute the impact of the core point you are getting across. It’s a skill to reflect the perceived audience perspective in a way that builds greater solidarity with you as the speaker.

This could sound like, “The first question you may raise is…”, “Right now, you are probably wondering about x, and I’ve thought about that..”, or “At this point, we may all be asking ourselves…”

Double-voicing used intentionally, powerfully and iteratively reflects a “sophisticated linguistic expertise.”

Women’s voices are too seldom heard in the top executive offices and boardrooms for lack of representation. A woman’s double-voicing may reflect an internalization of the dialling down of women’s voices, a trace of acknowledgement that her voice is new here and has not always been validated.

But it’s time to self-validate. Flip double-voicing around as a leadership asset, and it’s one way to dial female leadership right up.

By Aimee Hansen

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Forming and Keeping Women’s Initiative Programs: Tips from the Trenches

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Image via Shutterstock

Image via Shutterstock

You know we have to focus on a problem when the number of men and women starting off in law firms is 50/50 but then women are only at a 22% partnership level,” Shira Nadich Levin, partner at Cooley LLP alerted a special seminar of the Legal Marketing Association’s Metro New York chapter dedicated to developing business for female lawyers.

The solution? Some suggest that a Women’s Initiative can go a long way in helping solve this issue.

But how do you start one and, harder still, how do you keep it going? Here are some anecdotes from the event that hold true all year around.

Ms. Levin, who chairs Cooley’s Women’s Initiative, along with Julie Cohen, Marketing Director at Sidley Austin LLP; and Tracy Fink, Director of CohnReznick’s Executive Women’s Forum (EWF) offered their advice and experiences to an audience in position to effect change – business development leaders at many of the top law firms. Their top tips included:

Tip #1 Start with a clear mission and stick with it. “We plan meaningful events and experiences that create value to those who attend,” said Ms. Fink about the mission of the Executive Women’s Forum, which she created as a business development initiative for CohnReznick, the accounting firm where she was in a marketing director role.
Ms. Fink formed the EWF a little less than a decade ago, when women’s initiatives were not as prevalent as they are now. Women were struggling with balancing their lives and “we didn’t have Millennials who were very vocal about the workplace.” The Forum has since become a huge success, aligning with the strategic goals of each office, including bringing in business, enhancing the firm’s brand, and creating a haven for female employees and clients to develop and deepen relationships.

Tip #2 Be flexible and listen to your members. Ms. Fink envisioned that the Forum would offer events on substantive issues. What she found is that “women came and said, ‘we want to talk about what really matters in our lives.’” So, programs today are an eclectic mix of business and life skills, such as the power of kindness, mindfulness in the workplace, and a women’s golf event. “Through the EWF, we’ve introduced more than 350 women to golf,” she stated.

Tip #3 Think of events that allow members to “loosen up.” One particularly successful event that Ms. Cohen hosted for her group at Sidley featured a female poker expert who taught the group how to play poker and use poker skills to present themselves to clients and peers. “We had more than 150 people. The women were letting their guard down, and they used the time to connect with clients,” she related. The program received such great feedback that the group did a follow-up event a few months later for an “open play” poker session that attracted even more attendees.

Tip #4 If a program doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to tweak it. Cooley’s Women’s Initiative replaced their traditional mentoring program with what it calls “connection circles.” They firm came up with this, explained Ms. Levin, when the members realized a strict mentoring program that paired mentors to mentees was not effective enough and required constant follow-up with each mentor to make sure the system was working. The firm instead created groups of eight to 11 female members at various levels who get together informally. “We even planned somebody’s wedding at our last gathering,” she joked. But these gatherings enable the members to form much better connections than one-on-one pairings.

Tip # 5 Seek creative solutions to members’ problems. The Cooley’s Women’s Initiative created the liaison program as another way to improve life at the office for women attorneys. This program came about in a year when several young women happened to take maternity leave at the same time. When they returned, the women all felt that their re-entry was not really noticed. The firm, as a result, now assigns a liaison to each woman on leave to keep in touch during her leave and help with issues upon her return. “It has made a complete difference with little effort,” Ms. Levin reported.

Tip # 6 Pay no heed to the naysayers. All three panelists cited the usual resistance from within the firm: why should there be a group just for women? “Because,” said Ms. Fink, “when women succeed, everyone wins.” In a professional world where clients expect diversity from their law firms, “creating that culture is important,” said Ms. Cohen. “There’s no shortage of information on the business case for diversity,” Ms. Levin added.

“Creating a committee won’t solve all your problems,” stated Ms. Cohen, “but you can empower women to go up to the men who meet on their own and say ‘I’d like to join you next time.’”
Rosemarie Yu is Principal of Yu Communications, a New York-based communications consultancy specializing in professional services. She can be reached at ryu@yucommunications.com

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