Tag Archive for: career advice

Things to Negotiate for….Besides More Money

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Smartly dressed young women shaking hands in a business meeting at office deskYou’re no stranger to the idea of salary negotiation when it comes to career advancement, but that’s just one of the fringe benefits up for discussion at the bargaining table on your road to the C-suite. You can’t go in assuming that certain perks like maternity leave or promotions are a given. Be prepared. One of the most effective tools at your disposal is your bargaining power.

Be Bold

Sheryl Sandberg discusses many of these points in her book, “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.” Don’t be afraid to go to the table knowing what you want for the future of your career. Take charge, as Sheryl writes:

“Taking initiative pays off. It is hard to visualize someone as a leader if she is always waiting to be told what to do.”

That doesn’t mean you should storm through the office door and make outrageous demands, expecting them to be met instantly. Approach the situation with the right information and engage in tactful and professional discussion. Not sure exactly what that means or what those negotiations should entail? Here are six topics to keep in mind, and how you should approach them.

1. Flex Time

In the modern workplace, there are actually more people than you think working outside of the office with more flexible, nontraditional schedules. In a 2013 survey by the research group Catalyst, four out of every five respondents holding graduate-level degrees said they had some kind of work flexibility with their employer – that’s a whopping 81 percent.

In order to secure that type of perk at your next position, you’ve got to go in knowing exactly what you want from the flex time – both the when and the why. Your employer is going to be more keen to accept this stipulation if you have a detailed plan heading into negotiations. Be sure that you’ve cross-referenced any existing flex-time policy with the HR department to cover all your bases.

2. Professional and Personal Development

Make sure your future employer knows about your interest in professional and personal development. Continuing to learn and grow in your chosen profession keeps your skills innovative and creative, which will enrich the working environment for those around you as well. In fact, this type of incentive is among one of the most sought-after additions to an employment package by millennials. Consider asking about family friendly programs that encourage a work/life-balance, one of the most important points for Gen Xers.

3. Promotions

If you find yourself facing your annual review, consider your promotion options. Don’t be afraid to demonstrate how you’ve added value to the company, and why you should be considered for compensation.
Of course this doesn’t just magically happen one day by telling your boss you’re a rock star and should be paid accordingly. You need to work on cultivating a relationship and proving you are a valuable member of the company – these real bosses will give it to you straight.

In fact, a study done by Accenture in 2011 found that 85 percent of employees out of the 3,400 companies it surveyed got something – whether a large increase in salary to some kind of other incentive – simply by asking for a raise.

4. Maternity/Paternity Leave

Unfortunately, this is still an issue. In all the developed nations of the world, the U.S. is currently the only one that does not offer federally mandated parent leave. In OECD’s 2014 family database document, America literally has 0s across the board. You are not guaranteed anything.

Luckily most companies that want to retain talented staff recognize the importance of maternity/paternity leave. You could piggy-back your discussion concerning flex-time as well, and increase your chances of extending time at home with your new addition.

5. Vacation Time

Other than maternity leave, vacation time is also extremely important. Again in the U.S., the average employee has less vacation time than most other advanced economies in the world. Typically, a worker is only entitled to 10 days of paid vacation and six holidays, but even these are not guaranteed – quite different than the 30 days in France or 20 in New Zealand.

As you well know, this is where your bargaining power and value to the company can come in handy to secure more than the 10 days. Use tact, and also offer solutions for the time you are requesting to be away For example, tell your boss “I’ll be out of the office, but regularly checking my emails.

It’s important that you take advantage of complete time away from the office for a recharge. You’ll be more of an asset to your company when you return re-energized and refreshed.

6. Big Project Participation

If you really want to put yourself out there and be bold, ask to swim in the deep water, rub shoulders with the executives and request to work on the interesting projects that are happening in your company. This will help you get noticed, and you can also take the opportunity to cultivate mentoring relationships at the leadership and management level.

By Sarah Landrum

Sarah Landrum is a Penn State graduate, marketing specialist, freelance writer and the career expert behind Punched Clocks.
 
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Making sure you are in the running for a promotion

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women shaking handsIf you are lucky enough to work for a really great company that has a robust, unbiased, transparent talent process then you can probably skip this post. But wait, not so fast, how can you tell if your firm is good at ensuring that the best talent regardless of any other factor gets promoted?

I can think of three ways to heighten your chances

  • Ask what the process is
  • Ask what you have to do specifically to get to the next level/beyond
  • Make sure you have sponsors to broaden and deepen your portfolio of work because women still mostly get promoted on past performance as opposed to some men truly get promoted on what others think they will be capable of growing into (future potential not fact- yes this still happens)

Here is the kicker. I have done several consulting projects with women’s networks and I even wrote a Masters thesis at Columbia University on how networks can be formally connected to the talent process (sadly, often they are not related to a direct promotional path and interestingly this if often due to the resistance of the women inside the network-which in part is often due to the reason the network exists is to provide a container for shared experiences). So, if you want your membership of a network to be part of your strategy to advance, then make sure it is doing that and ways to tangibly use it include access to senior management, find a sponsor and more that we have covered in the past 4-5 weeks in this column.

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire a coach to help you navigate your career

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Mansplaining: It’s Time to Interrupt

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Business meeting with women and menMansplaining. If you’ve lived and breathed in this world as a woman, you’ve experienced it. If you work in a male-dominated office, it might be served up as a daily side with your coffee.

Recently, Chicago Tribune workplace columnist Rex Huppke declared: “Mansplaining — whether you like the term or not — is real. That’s not up for debate.”

Huppke called it “a slow drip of sexism”. How much is your office environment dripping with it?

What is Mansplaining, exactly?

In The Salon, Benjamin Hart argued that the term “mansplaining” lost its potency, as well as its real utility within gender dynamics discussions, when it became popularly used and broadly defined as a man explaining something to a women in a condescending or patronizing manner.

Hart asserts it’s morphed into an “increasingly vague catchall expression” of “men saying things to, or about, women.”

“Mansplain” is thrown about liberally. Jimmy Kimmel mansplained speech coaching to Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The Financial Times recently referred to the EU referendum in the UK as at risk of becoming a “giant exercise in ‘mansplaining’”, due to media domination by male voices. Women called for Trump to mansplain his Clinton “women card” accusation. Even a collection of mansplaining moments shows a diversity of takes on what it is.

Merriam Webster takes a hard line on its specific definition: “when a man talks condescendingly to someone (especially a woman) about something he has incomplete knowledge of, with the mistaken assumption that he knows more about it than the person he’s talking to does.”

Other than a sinking feeling in your stomach and increasing desire to find a conversational back door, what are the tell-tale signs of mansplaining?

1) It feels like a “manologue”

One sure-fire sign you’re being mansplained to: you’re not speaking or discussing. Instead, you are being spoken at or spoken over, often for a frustrating duration of time.

Mansplaining carries a trademark air of wisdom-wielding, knowledge-imparting, and time-taking. You may also have the feeling of being verbally cut-across.

Mansplaining, in a two-step conversational dominance maneuver, often follows immediately after manterruption – “unnecessary interruption of a woman by a man”.

A 2014 informal experiment by empirical linguist Kieran Snyder in a tech workplace found that in conversations of four or more, men interrupted at twice the rate women did, and were three times more likely to interrupt women than men. (Women interrupt women, too.)

Dr. Arin N. Reeves also conducted an observational study across 41 hours of meetings, calls, and panel discussions. Not only did Reeves observe that men interrupt far more, but also that 89.3% of men’s interruptions of women (and only 42.6% of men’s interruptions of men) were intrusive interruptions – “intentionally or unintentionally usurping the speaker’s turn at talk with the intent of ceasing the speaker’s ability to finish organically.”

Women were most commonly intrusively manterrupted on panel discussions, although men weren’t “aware” of doing it. Less than 1/5th of all women’s interruptions of anyone were intrusive.

2) It wasn’t solicited

Mansplaining is not a direct question followed by a direct explanatory answer. That’s just explaining.

Mansplaining is more of an unsolicited espousing of lengthy information and proffered opinions, which seeks to ensnare you in its immanent glow of intelligence, and which may or may not follow a question.

In the Chicago Tribune article, Elly Shariat, founder and CEO of shariatPR, tells of a former boss who pulled her aside to advise on the health implications of her shoe choices, for example.

3) Major assumptions are at play

The biggest thing about mansplaining is that it’s based on a culturally embedded assumption. At the core, men often assume they know more or better than women, and culture mirrors this.

Although she didn’t coin the word itself, mansplaining’s popular origin is attributed to Rebecca Solnit’s 2008 essay entitled “Men Explain Things to Me”, in which she tells about a cocktail party experience where a man asked her a question about her writing and then interrupted her to tell her at length about a very important book that she should read – which turned out to be her book, and he hadn’t even read it, just the review.

Solnit wrote, “Men explain things to me, and to other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field, that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.”

What can we do about it?

No matter how narrowly or broadly you define it, mansplaining reinforces a power imbalance. It reinforces the male domination of meeting conversations and rewarding of men for talking more.

Here’s a thought: interrupting mansplaining might be a necessary, career-building skill.

In her experiment, Snyder found that women interrupt less and very rarely interrupt men (only 13% of the time). But which women were entirely responsible for that 13% of interrupting men? The only three senior women in the study – who all interrupted men (as well as women). In fact, these women were three of the four biggest interruptors in the study.

Snyder wrote, “The results suggest that women don’t advance in their careers beyond a certain point without learning to interrupt, at least in this male-dominated tech setting.”

The most empowering thing women can do when faced with mansplaining?

Put acquiescence away. Interrupt this nonsense, and be heard.

By Aimee Hansen

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How networks can increase motivation, well-being and even increase performance

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Professional-networking-advice featuredLast week we talked about how having psychological safety at work is a key to feeling happy and performing well. We have also talked about employees networks recently and there is a case to say that the two are connected and if you can find support and connection here, then why not join one? They could be good for the soul and tangibly useful for tips to advance and a place to find mentors and sponsors. Maybe chatting with peers around a number of subjects will be valuable to you, ranging from social matters such as juggling parental/elder care commitments to a specific project that you want to talk more about. Either way, networks create space and time to talk in, learn in and connect with others in.

It is worth noting three things about networks though. Firstly, not everyone is created with the same amount of desire for contact and affiliation and it is wrong to assume that your need to feel part of something is equal to the next person. As an executive coach, I firmly believe that you should know yourself first ( psychometric tests will help us give your data back to you on this matter).
Secondly, it is also wrong to assume that all women are this or that. We are individuals with varying degrees of extraversion, confidence etc just as men are. What is systemic are the assumptions around what we are however and that is where you get to choose how to fill in the gaps when people think they know you. Remember you, according to you and you according to them are sometimes distant cousins.

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Contact nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com if you would like to hire a coach to help you navigate your career

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4 Reasons to get involved in your women’s network (or other Employee Resource Group at work)

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Professional-networking-advice featuredLast week, I rather scathingly pointed out that taking on the responsibility to hire and promote women via your women’s network was to put it diplomatically, a long haul strategy.

This week I am going to outline what you should do in your network (and why you should join it)

  1. Advocacy is a powerful tool- advocating for an issue to be paid attention to is often where change starts. Advocating for others is powerful also (sponsorship) and finally advocating for yourself is crucial, raise you hand and put yourself out there for the next promotion or job.
  2. Personal visibility and access to people you would not otherwise have access to (this is a way to start a conversation with senior people)
  3. Networking with each other – peer, higher and reverse mentoring and connections are always a good thing to propel you forward in everyday work – knowing who to ask to get stuff done is what it is all about.
  4. Learning in a specific container creates mental and physical space, hence we hold panels at theglasshammer.com where people can mark time in their calendar to learn new insights.

More on this all summer long.

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Female Leaders Share Their Strategies On Creating Change at 5th Annual Navigating your Career Event

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glasshammer event

By Melissa Anderson

Women leaders from the financial and professional services industries, shared their advice on how women can be agents of change at The Glass Hammer’s fifth annual career navigation event at PwC’s headquarters last Wednesday, sponsored by PwC, TIAA and Voya Investment Management.

“Change leadership starts with people who want to do better,” said The Glass Hammer’s CEO Nicki Gilmour as she opened the event, encouraging the audience to probe the speakers with difficult questions.

“We’re here to talk about how we can lift as we climb.”

The panel was moderated by Mary McDowell, an Executive Partner at Siris Capital Group and was a panelist at theglasshammer.com’s women in technology event last Fall.

Panelists included Christine Hurtsellers, Chief Investment Officer of Fixed Income at Voya Investment Management; Liz Diep, Assurance Partner for Alternative Investments at PwC; Pam Dunsky, Managing Director of Client Services Technology at TIAA; and Deborah Lorenzen, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer for Global Product and Marketing at State Street Global Advisors.

While the panelists’ careers varied significantly and were spread across different industries, one factor emerged that all of them seemed to have in common: intention. Whether describing their career paths, discussing their experience mentoring, sponsoring and networking, or talking about the ways in which they lead change toward workforce diversity at their companies, it was clear that the women went about their business with purpose.

For example, in discussing how she chooses junior staffers to mentor or sponsor, Diep says,

“You have to seek out those people you want to mentor and sponsor – you can’t be a passive participant if you want to see change,” she said. Mentoring someone means serving as their sounding board and offering advice on career advancement, while sponsorship involves putting forward one’s personal capital behind closed doors to expand their career opportunities.

Diep mentioned that a motivating factor to grow in her own career is to see more junior colleagues progress along with her and how walking the walk on “lifting as we climb” strategy is important to her When discussing how she keeps her network fresh, Diep described how she blocks time on her calendar months in advance for networking coffees and lunches, and fills in the “who” later on.

Hurtsellers described how she tries to proactively work with other leaders in her company to develop a business plan that increases diversity.

“Being a female business leader in a very male-dominated industry can be quite a lonely spot,” she said. Clients are beginning to require asset managers to disclose their numbers on staff diversity during the RFP process; but Hurtsellers said that’s not enough.

“We need more than a check-the-box mentality around diversity to effectively tackle the issue. I try to challenge a bit of the establishment thinking,” she said. “I ask the elephant-in-the-room-type questions like ‘How do you get women into financial services if they don’t think that the industry matches their values?’”.

Hurtsellers further stated that she felt being a woman in a male-dominated industry can also be a competitive advantage if you’ve worked to build a personal brand, like authenticity.

“But it has to come back to who you are – be true to yourself,” she said.

Similarly, Dunsky shared how she had established a brand for herself earlier in her career, only to revise it later on.

“Earlier, my brand was being really hard working – but, I realized, you don’t just want to be known as a hard worker,” she said. “After taking a step back, I realized it’s not the only thing I want people to say about me.”

Dunsky said she started thinking more critically about what she wanted to be known for: leadership, the ability to execute, being able to guide and direct and grow her team.

“You have to be conscious of what your strength is,” she said. Sometimes a strength can be a weakness if it bars advancement to the next level, she explained. That’s why it’s important to always be thinking of your strengths and what you can build upon to help get to the next level.

“You want your brand to be natural – so people can conceive of you doing it,” she said.

Lorenzen added that being true to yourself is critical to advancement. Trying to ‘be one of the guys’ to blend in can ultimately hold you back, and so will shying away from big opportunities. She advised to take calculated risks early and often.

“Show up and say yes when you are asked, even if you only have 50% [of the qualifications], because the men will say yes if they only have 25%,” she said.

Finally, during the question and answer segment, one audience member asked a question that must have been top of mind for many of the guests.

Being head of a business unit or a partner at a firm comes with a lot of power that enables women at the top to open difficult conversations about diversity, she reasoned so the question is ‘How can someone be a change agent earlier in her career when there is a greater risk of retaliation for speaking up?’

To get to the top as a woman in a male-dominated industry, you have to stand up for those conversations throughout your career, said Lorenzen.

“If you fail to raise your voice on matters of ethics and therefore accept a status quo at odds with your beliefs, you won’t be happy,” she said. Of course, she continued, there is a measure of balance to find. It’s important to choose the right battles to fight.

Lorenzen continued “You have to choose when to speak up. It never gets any easier, and opportunities arise throughout your career to do the right thing. It is about leading from where you are.”

Summing up the evening’s discussion, McDowell said, “Be of good courage, build great relationships, don’t forget your peers and be true to yourself.”

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Why Real Executive Presence is Not Only About Making Impressions

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

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

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

An Elusive Bridge Between Ability and Success

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

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

“Executive Presence” Brings Men to Mind

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

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

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

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

Are the Characteristics of Executive Presence impossibly male?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When women have equal presence in executive roles.

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

By Aimee Hansen

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11 Ways Mentors Can Help You Succeed – And How To Get Their Help

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11 Ways MentorsMost successful women will tell you that mentors made a big difference in their careers. Their mentorship may not always translate into breaking through the glass ceiling, but mentors can help your work performance, help you achieve success in a company and also help you be more fulfilled in your work.

Here are 11 ways a mentor can help you during 4 general stages of your career:

Stage 1: Newbie: Your Mentors Help You Acclimate to a New Job or Work Environment:

1. Find Your Way and Learn the Rules: Bonnie Marcus, author of The Politics of Promotion, says, “The mentor can offer advice on how to best navigate in the new work environment and give information about the people and politics.” A mentor within your company can help you understand corporate expectations—both spoken and unspoken rules. They can point out mistakes if they see you in action. Your mentor can help you feel comfortable operating within that environment.

2. Identify your skill set and anything missing that you need to work on. In my second job out of business school, a mentor suggested I attend trainings in time management and organization, which helped me be more effective in my job.

3. Model what works: Ask your mentors to share their stories of what’s worked in their careers and what hasn’t. Learn from your mentors’ experience. Beth B. Kennedy, a Leadership Coach who has taught many Leaders how to begin a successful mentoring relationship, shares the success of a client whose mentor taught her “excellent delegation and time management strategies” that led to the client’s success and promotion.

Stage 2: Strategic: Your Mentors Help You Plan Where you are Going for a More Successful and Fulfilling Career:

4. Create a Vision: A mentor can help you think about where you want to go in the long run and what can help you get there. This type of mentor can be someone in your workplace, someone in your field, or more of a general business coach, perhaps even someone you hire.

5. Look for Resonance: A mentor or coach can help you assess how well your current environment fits your values, skills and interests. You will be happier with a job and environment that resonates.

6. Help you define success: Long term success is not only about what a company or environment defines as success. Says Amy Beilharz, former corporate executive turned serial entrepreneur and business coach shares that as women, group goals, our relationships and contribution to a larger cause are all important to feeling fulfilled in our careers.

Stage 3: Mobile: Your Mentors Help You At Key Decision Points

7. Solve Problems: You can turn to your mentors for feedback on any challenges you are experiencing, offering possible solutions to problems, as well as general strategies that have worked for them in similar situations.

8. Evaluate Job Offers: You may be offered a job within your own department, another part of your company or even your own company. Sometimes it’s hard to see all the ramifications of taking a particular job—both for short-term fit and also for its long term strategic value. A mentor can help you see all angles and evaluate the fit.

Stage 4: Successful: Your Mentors Help You Get Where You Want to Go:

9. Help You Network: Marcus says mentors can introduce mentees “to potential allies and champions.”

10. Get You Noticed: Beth B. Kennedy, a Leadership Coach who has taught many Leaders how to begin a successful mentoring relationship notes, “A current client of mine learned strategies from her mentor that led to her promotion. Her mentor taught her ways to raise her visibility in an authentic way.

11. Your Mentors Can Serve as Sponsors: Marcus points out that at the upper echelons, it’s not just about mentoring. To get promoted, women need sponsors who are willing to introduce their mentees to the right people and suggest them for promotion.

12. Look Outside Your Company: External mentors in your field can help you look beyond your company for opportunities. They may help you decide what you are looking for, introduce you to contacts of theirs, or even help you get into their own organizations.

Where to Find a Mentor? Cultivate mentors within your company and outside of it. Kennedy offers the possibility of someone “from a different department to add a more systemic and strategic perspective.” Your boss can also be a good mentor, depending on the person.

How to get mentored? Kennedy says that, “The best mentoring relationships take place when they’re not forced mentoring programs. A proactive way to get a mentor is to begin the process in a more unofficial way.”

How?

a) Identify someone who has been successful in your organization or field in a way that resonates with you or that has certain skills and relationships you’d like to emulate.

b) Get to know them. Kennedy suggests you ask for a brief meeting or coffee, nothing fancy.

c) Kennedy says, “Asses the synergy.” What does your gut tell you about the mentor? “Does the possible mentor have the time and energy to mentor?”

d) After a few casual meetings, Kennedy says you can then ask the person if they would be your mentor. “Share your expectations. Some of the best mentoring relationships my clients have shared with me are the relationships that meet once a month and the mentee brings questions and an agenda. The mentee needs to be proactive and discuss their needs.” It’s also a good idea to share articles on mentoring and “other best practices with your mentor.”

e) At some point you want to evaluate the effectiveness. Kennedy suggests an assessment six months or a year down the road. If it’s not working, you can thank your mentor and move on to someone new.

Don’t wait for someone to offer to mentor you. Start to think now about specific ways you want a mentor to help you and list people who might be of help. You can have more than one mentor at a time, too. Ask other women about their mentoring experiences, as well. And if your company has a mentoring program, find out how one gets chosen to participate. No one goes it along in the corporate world. The support of your mentors can be one of the most important determinants in your success.

Guest contribution by Lisa Tener

Lisa Tener is an author, trainer and four-time Stevie Award winner, including the Silver Stevie Award for Mentor/Coach of the Year 2014. Lisa serves on faculty at Harvard Medical School’s CME publishing course  and blogs on topics like how to choose a literary agent. You can also find her posts on the Huffington Post. Follow Lisa on twitter @LisaTener and Facebook.

Guest advice and opinions are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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Why Working For a Good Company Makes a Big Difference

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happy man with womenI coach women across many firms, most in the financial services industry and most in a variety of roles and although there are very individual reasons why people come to me for coaching ranging from wanting to leave to wanting to stay and get a promotion and sometimes when they have been a casualty of a restructure. While the old adage “people leave managers not firms” is definitely true, I have to say that I more and more see people leaving companies due to the fact they just do not believe that they are getting the best ROI for their time and energy spent. For years, we were told that women do not ask for promotions and pay increases and this is frankly nonsense as they are asking in various ways but sometimes just not being heard due to systemic issues at companies that are less evolved.

In short, working for a progressive company makes all the difference as the water is provided for the fish of all types and no one is left grasping for basic air supply.

If you are looking to go further then consider getting a coach. Not all are created equal and I would recommend people with coaching certificates from good universities or else coaches with an organizational psychology background as they can help you spot the company’s good points and flaws on a systemic level so we are not just telling you to lean in. Isn’t it time that the companies leaned in?

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work

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Is it time for a vacation?

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Beach-chairsAre you feeling overworked and not as productive as usual? Maybe it’s time for a vacation.

Science indicates that breaks help increase productivity and whilst short breaks during your working day may improve concentration, longer breaks and vacations can improve overall job performance. They help improve the state of our mental health by giving us better life perspective and making us more motivated to achieve our goals when we return to work.

So, my advice this week is to take more vacations, as recharging your batteries can make you more productive! On that note, whilst I’m on vacation in Florida, Career Tip will return next week.

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Contact nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work

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