Tag Archive for: career advice

Op-ED: The Power of Intentioning: Are you ready to answer the #1 most important question for your life?

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Power of IntentionGloria Feldt, Co-Founder & President of Take The Lead, shares on the life-changing power of intentioning for women, as revealed in her newest book.

On a spectacular Arizona day in late January, 2020, when you can be lulled into thinking all’s right with the world, I was hiking with a friend. Then boom! I tripped on an unseen pebble, put my hand out to catch myself and knew immediately from the snap and the pain that I had broken my wrist. The first broken bone I’d ever had.

It’s never the mountains that trip you up. It’s the pebbles on the path.

Within 6 weeks, as everything shut down because the whole world had been tripped up by coronavirus, I realized I should have seen it as an omen. The year of broken bones I called it. Broken almost everything. More like two years now. And when will it stop?

We’ve all been through a difficult time of so much loss and grief.

The pandemic tripped us up. Ground us to a halt. Changed so much about how we see the world and each other. Maybe it changed how you envision your career and life from now on.

So there’s no better time to answer the question that prompted me to write my book, Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. This is without a doubt the #1 question you need to answer to be in the driver’s seat for the rest of your life, not the backseat wondering where life is going to take you next.

Your power TO WHAT?

What does that mean? Here’s the backstory.

I started writing Intentioning well before Covid-19 reared its ugly head. I interviewed over a dozen women whose stories form the basis for a new set of Leadership Intentioning tools to build on the 9 Leadership Power Tools in my last book, No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power.

In No Excuses, I explored women’s culturally learned relationships with power. I realized ambivalence about power was a key to why women hadn’t reached parity in leadership of any sector despite all we’d done to open doors and change laws. So much female potential was not being realized.

We needed a different idea about power than the oppressive narrative of history that’s based in fighting and wars and the assumption of scarce resources. By shifting the paradigm to the expansive, creative, generative, abundant idea of power TO, women’s would say, “I want that kind of power.”

Now, after a decade of teaching and coaching women how to embrace their power on their own terms, I realized the necessary next step is to ask, “the power TO WHAT? How am I going to use my power once I know I have it?”

Your answer will enable you to clarify your intentions.

Identifying and getting what you want out of life can seem like a daunting task, even more right now, when you may be uncertain about whether you’ll be working from home, whether your children will be safe, and if your job will exist at all. And it isn’t automatic that a woman will want to walk through an open door or even see it as a possibility. She may feel ignored or not respected, exhausted from experiencing microaggressions. She may fear she’ll be passed over for a promotion at work, that it’s too late to start over when her profession or company changes, or that for whatever reason she’s not good enough.

This doesn’t have to be how you live your life and I don’t want it to be that way for you.

Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic and another pandemic of belatedly acknowledged racial injustice created huge disruptions in every part of our economy and social structures.

But that is, or can become, a good thing.

We are in a season of disruption. We are in a season of rebirth. The two have much in common.

Disruptions of this magnitude are the best opportunity we will ever have to make long needed structural changes. Because when the world is in chaos, people and organizations have to think differently to survive. Ideas that wouldn’t have been considered previously become solutions.

So here’s a quick overview of the 9 Leadership Intentioning Tools that will enable you to achieve your goals once you answer that #1 question for yourself:

The Self-Definitional Leadership Intentioning Tools

  • Uncover Yourself – what sets you apart is what gets you ahead, and the keys to your best future are already in your hands
  • Dream Up – if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.
  • Believe in the Infinite Pie – when we use our power to build rather than rule over others, we learn that the more there is for everyone, the more there is to go around.

The Counterintuitive Leadership Intentioning Tools

  • Modulate Confidence – self-doubt can have a positive value.
  • Strike Your Own Damn Balance (and love your stress) – you get to choose what matters to you and reject the rest.
  • Build Social Capital – relationships are everything and will ultimately help you as much as educational qualifications or work experience.

The Systems Change Leadership Intentioning Tools

  • Be “Unreasonable” – sometimes you have to break the rules and invent new ones to get where you want to go.
  • Unpack Implicit Bias and Turn Its Effects on Its Head – you can make its effects your superpowers.
  • Clang Your Symbols – they create meaning, which brings others into the story, the most essential function of leadership.

I wish you great intentioning.

Bio: Gloria Feldt is the Co-Founder & President of Take The Lead: Breakthrough diversity and women’s leadership  solutions for individuals and companies, and author of Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. On her website, you can get her free workbook that accompanies the book and will help you answer your #1 question, get the most from these tools, and make a plan to achieve your highest and best intentions.

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How Neurodiversity Can Enhance Your Organization

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neurodiversityRoben Dunkin, chief operations and innovation officer at PGIM, talks about the importance of neurodiversity in creating a culture of innovation in the workplace.

A Lesson From Mom

When she was just a little girl, Roben Dunkin received one of the biggest lessons that would later help shape her nearly three decades in the finance industry, most recently as chief operations and innovation officer at PGIM, the $1.5 trillion asset management business of Prudential Financial Inc. It was a lesson she learned from her mother, a teacher at a school for children on the autism spectrum. Meeting the children her mother worked with and seeing how she related to them was eye opening.

“The autism spectrum is such a broad range of so many different ways the brain works,” Dunkin says. “I could see my mom’s frustration, because the ability to communicate for some of these kids wasn’t there. But at the same time, I saw her compassion and patience. She found a way to understand what each one of them needed and she found a way to get through. She never gave up on anyone.”

That experience was something that stuck with her as she began her career in finance at Lehman Brothers, where she rose to global head of sales and investment banking technology.

“What I learned from my mom actually makes me a good manager—having that patience, and really trying to understand the different levels of how people communicate with each other,” Dunkin says. “It’s not just people with autism, everyone is so different and kind of quirky in their own way. Within my own family, we have a lot of dyslexia and ADHD. When you grow up with that around you, you learn that some people need extra time and attention to bring out their best. And their best might astound you. Not everyone understands that. They think if someone has one of those conditions, they’re not smart, or they’re not good enough.”

After Lehman’s failure in the financial crisis, Dunkin joined Credit Suisse and became a leader in the firm’s technology organization. In a position to influence the company’s talent strategy, she set her sights on changing management’s perception of what traits made a valuable employee.

The Great Untapped Population

“Everyone seems to understand now how important diversity is to a company, but too often, they overlook a large part of our population that is truly underserved, but also incredibly talented—one that crosses, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and national origin,” Dunkin says. “People across the neurodiverse spectrum, which includes everything from Asperger’s and autism to ADHD and dyslexia, have to face a stigma. Their levels of unemployment are quite higher than the general population—as high as 80%.”

And yet, Dunkin points out, even if someone doesn’t have any of these conditions, they almost certainly know someone who does.

“Earlier in my career, one of my peers had a son who had Asperger’s syndrome and couldn’t get a job. And we talked about how so many people who are on the spectrum, their brains think differently—sometimes they can see patterns other people can’t, they go about solving problems differently, and that can be a good thing. We started just kind of brainstorming, asking, ‘What can we do about this?’”

The idea that Dunkin and her colleague eventually developed was to actively seek out neurodiverse individuals for a pilot program in data science—specifically, to identify anomalies in data surrounding trade fails. Trade fails can happen when there are mistakes in processing or mismatched information, and they can be a costly problem for a firm. One of the goals of Roben’s team was to discover if there were particular clients, types of trades, or other patterns that would help them identify where problems might occur. While AI and machine learning could parse huge amounts of data, the computers had their limitations. There were still reams of data to filter out.

Participants in the pilot program, as it turned out, were quick to find patterns others had missed. “They were able to look at the data and pinpoint the issue, pinpoint the problem. They had the ability to redirect the technology to ask the right questions. That’s such a specific skill set that most of us really have to learn. There seemed to be an innate ability in some of the people that we were working with to be able to do that,” Dunkin says. “It was just really impressive the amount of positive feedback that we got from people working with the individuals in the pilot program. And those participants—they were so thrilled to be employed and really contribute. It was so rewarding on so many levels.”

Dunkin doesn’t want to make it sound simple, because it isn’t. A lot of legwork went into making sure the program was set up for success.

The Right Goals, The Right People, The Right Projects

It’s the same work Dunkin is putting in now to establish the neurodiversity program at PGIM, with one big difference.

“We’re not looking to narrowly focus this on one area of the business,” Dunkin says. “Individuals on the spectrum have skills and interests that are just as diverse as their neurotypical peers, and we see this as something we want all our asset managers to be involved in and benefit from.”

That begins with a firm commitment from the top.

“Neurodiversity can be a very emotional topic,” Dunkin says. “Recently we had a panel with many of our senior leaders at PGIM, some with children who are on the spectrum, even leaders who identify as neurodiverse themselves. The head of our largest asset management business spoke at length about his two sons who have autism. We had hundreds of employees attend and it was game changing for a lot of people who were able to put their hand up and self-identify. We broke through a lot of walls.”

Secondly, for a neurodiversity program to succeed, managers need to be trained and prepared to work with individuals who may miss social cues. Those managers need to be clear about expectations and literal about tasks.

“Cues and signals that we might expect would be normal are not normal for a lot of people on the spectrum. So you have to ask questions differently—you have to be more nuanced, and can’t worry about body language and eye contact. Job interviewers and managers should be able to understand how to engage with people differently,” Dunkin says. “It’s important to learn where someone is on the spectrum and understand how to help them thrive and deliver their very best. Do they feel more comfortable emailing, do they not do well in a group setting? You want to always be learning how you can give and receive feedback so you can course correct relatively quickly.”

The remote work environment brought on by the pandemic has added to this challenge.

“In some cases, if you talk to some of the people who are on the spectrum, they’re loving remote work, because they don’t have to interact with people in person,” Dunkin says. “At the same time, for a manager, it makes it even more difficult to engage with that individual and make sure they feel included.”

Finally, Dunkin says you need to connect individuals with the right projects, with a clear business case and business value.

“You can’t necessarily put someone on a trading desk environment, but you can put someone on in a data science role. So it’s being very clear about matching the person and the right skill set with the right job and being really explicit about what you’re aiming to accomplish,” Dunkin says.

Why all this matters

“The financial services industry is struggling to hold onto talent,” Dunkin says. “And here is a talent pool that is able and willing to work, and has skills to contribute in the right roles.”

Her prior experience tells her the effort is worth it.

“It’s hard to find data scientists—you can’t train them fast enough. And we know there’s high attrition rates in data science—when you train them, they leave. But our neurodiverse employees in the pilot program were super loyal. We built a team of data scientists from scratch who were able to help us leapfrog ahead quite drastically to meet our goals. We’d done right by them, we gave them a chance, and they rewarded us by staying with the company.”

Dunkin believes that attention paid to neurodiversity in an organization has a much wider impact on company culture, leading to better outcomes for all employees.

“The pandemic has been a very challenging time,” she says. “We’re all uncomfortable, we’re all re-learning how to interact with each other, we’re all working differently. We all need compassion and patience. If we’re not using this moment to identify talented individuals inside and outside our organizations and do what we need to do to support them, then we’re wasting a golden opportunity.”

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OP-Ed: The Three Personality Traits Most Prone To Burnout

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burnoutFirst, let’s get one thing straight: burnout is not an individual problem; it’s an organizational problem that requires an organizational solution. Self-care has been the prevention strategy du jour for decades. And yet burnout is on the rise. Why? Because we’re ignoring the systemic and institutional factors that are the real causes of burnout – things like workload, lack of control, poor relationships, and other root causes that cannot be solved with yoga and vacation time.

If you are feeling burned out, know that it’s not your fault. But focusing on what we can do to help ourselves is the part we can control in a world full of the uncontrollable. And if you happen to exhibit one of the following personality traits, you are more prone to burnout.

Neuroticism

Neuroticism is one of the “big five” higher-order personality traits in the study of psychology. If you dig into the definition, it makes sense that this trait correlates to higher rates of burnout. Individuals who score high on the neuroticism scales are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. People who are neurotic respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult.

In her 2018 dissertation, “The Relationship Between Big Five Personality Traits and Burnout: A Study Among Correctional Personnel,” Sharon Maylor of Walden University found that neuroticism was the only personality trait that was associated with all three dimensions of burnout.

Conversely, it’s important to see the value in this personality type. We tend to give personality traits like these a bad rap, but there are upsides. People with the neuroticism trait tend to be:

  • Highly analytical and hyperaware of threats or dangers
  • Cautious and less likely to make impulsive decisions
  • More accountable and will take personal responsibility for errors

There are obvious potential benefits to tending toward neuroticism on the team, but you need to be mindful of the downside to avoid burnout.

Introversion

It is a myth that introverts fear or dislike others and are shy and lonely. This is not the case. They simply have nervous systems more suited to spending time in a calm environment with one or a few friends.

Although their nervous systems may be dissimilar to those of extroverts, that doesn’t mean that introverts aren’t just as effective. “Extroverts are routinely chosen for leadership positions and introverts are looked over, although introverts often deliver better outcomes. They’re not perceived as leadership material,” says Susan Cain, bestselling author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, and a frequent speaker on introversion and extroversion in the workplace.

According to Cain’s research, the power of introverts can be identified in the following behaviors. They:

  • Tend to be more productive than extroverts and less likely to become distracted
  • Explore subjects in more depth
  • Are great listeners, which helps them in problem-solving scenarios
  • Are often creators; writers and artists are more likely to identify as introverted
  • Have a strong capacity for empathy
  • Are moderators and can calm stressful situations
  • Are more cautious and better at managing risk

However, since the physical office can be a highly social place, research suggests that introverted people are at greater risk of developing burnout than extroverted people.

Introverts working virtually in most situations, minus a global lockdown, are removed from the noise, the hustle and bustle of a buzzing office, the potential disruptions that cause a lack of psychological safety, and the pressure to conform to those office norms. What if we made workplaces free of these kinds of strain?

Just ask Cain, who shared in our interview, “The best workspaces allow people to move freely between solo and shared spaces. Sometimes we want to work alone. Sometimes we crave company. Sometimes we want both of these things in the space of a single morning. Why not design around these natural preferences? Radically open office plans don’t actually increase collaboration or decrease loneliness. On the contrary, they create giant rooms full of worker bees wearing headphones.”

Perfectionism

If you’re prone to perfectionism—specifically, perfectionism concerns— you run a high risk of burning out. Broadly defined, perfectionism is a combination of exceedingly high standards and a preoccupation with extreme self-critical evaluation. Scientists Joachim Stoeber from the University of Kent discovered that our desire and subsequent efforts to achieve perfectionism are acceptable as long as we can emotionally handle scenarios when we don’t achieve it. When we start to believe that everything we do must be perfect and anything less means a failure, or that others may judge us as a failure, then this becomes detrimental to our mental health.

Someone who struggles with perfectionist concerns may exhibit the following traits:

  • Maintaining a rigid self-evaluative style that looks at events in all- or-nothing terms, for example, you’re either a winner or a loser.
  • Overgeneralizing negative events by making a rule after a single event or a series of coincidences. For example, someone is passed over for a promotion, and the narrative is now, “I will never move up in this company.” These “always” or “never” statements frequently appear in a perfectionist’s vocabulary.
  • Ruminating about past failures. Being unable to let go of mistakes and assuming they will come up again in the future.
  • Having a strong need for self-validation, for example, always questioning their self-worth. In some situations, they will subconsciously seek out ways to prove they are “right.” They believe their self-worth is constantly threatened.

According to researchers Andrew Hill and Thomas Curran in their article “Multidimensional Perfectionism and Burnout: A Meta- Analysis,” “Perfectionistic concerns are associated with considerable strain that render individuals vulnerable to the accrual of stress and subsequent burnout. In summarizing current understanding of the perfectionism–burnout relationship, then, it is the harsh self-evaluative processes central to perfectionistic concerns that are understood to fuel the perfectionism–burnout relationship, rather than perfectionistic strivings.”

Authors Mick Oreskovich and James Anderson suggest that we need to consider the following, if we experience perfectionist concerns:

  1. Identify the difference between power versus powerlessness over people, places, things, and situations; if we stop trying to control everything, we will find more joy. It may be a challenge to surrender, but it is necessary to prevent burnout.
  2. Understand the differences between self-knowledge and self-awareness (self-knowledge is what we believe to be true about ourselves; self-awareness is seeing ourselves as others see us). These insights are rarely the same yet are equally important.
  3. Accept help.
  4. Take care of ourselves so that we can take care of others.

Jennifer Moss is an award-winning journalist, author, and international public speaker. She is a nationally syndicated radio columnist, reporting on topics related to happiness and workplace well-being. She is the author of THE BURNOUT EPIDEMIC: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It.

{Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted from The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It by Jennifer Moss. Copyright 2021 Jennifer Moss. All rights reserved.}

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14 Key Career Insights From Latina Leaders in Business

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Latina Leaders in BusinessAfter sharing top tips on self-promotion from Latina leaders in business as part of our Hispanic Heritage month coverage, The Glass Hammer continues our two-part feature with more key insights from Latina leaders we’ve interviewed across the past years:

1. Value Those Who Show Up For You

If you want people to take personal interest in developing you, value the gift of energy and time they give, advised Cassandra Cuellar, Attorney at Shearman & Sterling.

“People are more than willing to have conversations with you when you show you appreciate their time,” said Cuellar. “Female partners whom I don’t even work with have reached out, which was so impressive that these busy women would welcome me and offer their support.”

Update: Cassandra Cuellar remains an Attorney in Shearman & Sterling’s Emerging Growth practice group, with the firm now for over 3.5 years.

2. Embrace the Learning Phase

You’re not expected to be an expert when you begin, emphasized Lina Woods, as Director, Global Digital Go-To-Market Leader at PwC.

“There were times of stress when I should have realized it was okay to learn along with everyone else,” realized Woods, ”and I see now that I could have harnessed that perceived vulnerability and realized you should just dive in and do your best.”

Update: With PwC for over five years, Lina Woods was appointed to Managing Director and Commercial Product Strategy Leader in June of this year.

3. Balance Intuition with Receptivity

Growing as a leader means both trusting yourself and being receptive to feedback, observed Priscila Palazzo, as Legal Director at WEX Latin America.

“While law might appear to be my main job, I also excel at understanding people and their behavior,” said Palazzo. “It’s important to be open to new ideas and thoughts, but especially to feedback. If you seek it out and reflect on it, it can help show you areas where you can grow and improve. As women, we tend to follow our hearts and intuition, but we need to balance that with feedback.”

Update: With WEX Brazil for over seven years, Priscila Palazzo is General Counsel.

4. Look Up And Around

You benefit hugely by looking up from your work and connecting, noted Anita Romero, General Counsel, Global Consumer at Citibank.

“When you’re first starting out, you’re so focused on doing excellent work that you don’t realize the many benefits of seeking advice from peers in your network,” said Romero. “People learn over time, but had I known that up front it would have really helped.”

5. Be Resilient With Your Vision

It’s easy to lose faith at obstacles, but Cristina Estrada, Head of Derivatives for the Latin America Financing Group, Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs, encouraged to keep the course.

“Pursuing what you are passionate about and chasing your dreams are key to having a successful career,” said Estrada. “Being patient is important though: there are ups and downs in everybody’s journey. Persistence and seeing beyond occasional difficulties pay off.”

Update: With Goldman Sachs for nearly 17 years, Cristina Estrada remains in her position.

6. View Detours As Opportunities

What appears as a career deviation may become your next adventure, guided Isela Bahena, Managing Director, Private Infrastructure Group at Nuveen Real Assets.

“It might seem scary, but looking back I see a lot of growth when I took those chances. There will be challenges, but sometimes the bridge is going to look different when you actually cross it,” said Bahena, known by junior colleagues for being calm amidst changes. “I tell them that’s because in the long run I always see them as opportunities.”

Update: With Nuveen Real Estates for over 3.5 years, Isela Bahena remains in her position.

7. Be The Change

Be the change the you wish to see, championed Elizabeth Nieto, as Global Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at MetLife.

“Women who have power can continue to push the envelope on women’s interests. We can complain about where we are or focus on what we’re achieving. Things may not be perfect in the corporate world, but we’ve accomplished a lot and we have to build from here,” encouraged Nieto. “Our daughters are watching us and making decisions about their lives based on how we make decisions about our own lives.”

Update: After nearly seven years at MetLife and a two year stint at Amazon, Elizabeth Nieto became Global Head of Equity and Impact at Spotify in March.

8. Create the Belonging

Women need to become aware of the barriers they impose upon themselves and invite each other in too, emphasized Yesi Morillo-Gual, as Founder and President of Proud To Be Latina.

“I started Proud To Be Latina because of some of the challenges I faced in my own career. These included things like not knowing how to navigate the landscape, not knowing about the unwritten rules, not having a lot of support, and also not really believing that I belonged because the majority of my colleagues did not look like me,” said Morillo-Gual. “There is a sense that we don’t belong, or that we have to leave who we are behind in order to advance our careers. We tend to question ourselves and our abilities.”

“I often hear women say that corporate America was not designed for them, and in response I tell them that corporate America may not have been designed for me, but I was designed for corporate America,” she added.

Update: Yesi Morillo joined Cushman & Wakefield as Director, Global Head of ERGs & External Partnerships in April.

9. Ask For Support

Getting past the notion of being the totally independent woman is hard but it’s also growth, shared Rosa Bravo, Business Development Director at Accenture, who started her career as an aerospace engineer.

“One of the things I wish I had known earlier is that it’s okay to ask for help. There are so many choices you have to make along the way, and you just can’t do it alone,” reflected Bravo. “I’ve been culturally conditioned to be a strong woman, to want to be able to do everything on my own. It took a few years to feel comfortable to raise my hand and ask for help when I needed it, but it made things much easier when I did.”

Update: Senior Technology Executive Rosa Bravo has been with Accenture for over 27 years.

10. Don’t Delegate Your Career Path

It’s important to design your own career rather than delegating that to your boss, asserted Valeria Strappa, as Head of Efficiency and Cost Management for Citi Latin America.

“What I think is important is to first be the designer of your own destiny and second, to learn that you might not necessarily get what you think you deserve, you will get what you are able to ask for and to sell for your results,” said Strappa. “A lot of times women think people will recognize their work. And they do, but that doesn’t mean you get what you were expecting for it. You have to be able to solve a big problem for a big leader and of course be able to stand up and show your results.”

Update: After a decade with Citi, Valeria Strappa has been with JPMorgan Chase & Co for nearly five years, and was appointed Managing Director – Head of M&A Integrations and Client Relationship Management in January 2020.

11. Embrace Change As a Catalyst

Change can be disruptive, but Elizabeth Diep, back when she was Senior Manager in PwC’s Asset Management Practice, challenged women to leverage it to advance their careers.

“Be open minded. There is such a changing landscape in this profession. We are seeing growth in Latin America, while in Europe, there are challenges now but absolutely something different is going to come out of it. It’s about being open to opportunities and not hesitating to take on new roles,” advised as Senior Manager, Asset Management Practice at PwC. “Every experience, whether good or bad, is going to help you grow. Don’t resist change. Change will help you become a seasoned professional a lot faster and a lot better.”

Update: Elizabeth Diep made Partner in 2013, and has been with PwC for over 21 years.

12. Leverage The Cultural Asset of Connectivity

Nellie Borrero, Managing Director, Senior Strategic Adviser of Global Inclusion and Diversity at Accenture, expressed that Hispanic women have an advantage in relationship building.

“We understand the advantage of relationships – it’s so embedded in our culture. That savviness and understanding of the importance of relationship building and maintaining relationships comes naturally to the Hispanic community,” asserted Borrero, who emphasized to network strategically: “And I would like to see young women do more of this: be able to reach out to the women at the top, and absorb that coaching and experience they can share. Become a sponge and absorb as much as you can. If they’re up there, they’ve found a way to make it work.”

Update: With Accenture for nearly 28 years, Nellie Borerro remains in her position.

13. Empower Yourself To Ask for What You Want

Twenty five years into her career, Marilyn Foglia, Managing Director and Head of Latin America at UBS Global Asset Management, realized it didn’t pay to be timid.

“I wasn’t always so persistent about getting my ideas on the table – but now I am!” Foglia declared. “If you’re too polite and wait for an opening to speak you may never get a voice. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. We women tend to think that if we work hard, we will be rewarded. But we have to ask for it.”

She encouraged women not to think of themselves as having less opportunities: “If you do that, you become afraid to voice your own opinion. Be sure to express your beliefs broadly. People will eventually hear you – that’s how you get recognized and move up the ladder.”

Update: With UBS for over 28 years, Marilyn Foglia remains in her position.

14. Find a Culture You Can Thrive In

Put the right environment at the top of your criteria when it comes to career-related decisions, advised Noelle Ramirez, Project Manager, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at PGIM.

“Culture first. Seek out advice from people that are already there. What has their experience been? Do they feel comfortable? Do they feel like they can bring who they are to the table? If the answer is yes, that’s a good place to start. It takes away a lot of productivity and energy to not be who you are,” said Ramirez. “Go somewhere where you can be yourself. I’m very passionate in my delivery and it’s part of my culture. Making sure I’m in an environment where that doesn’t have to be shut off is important. Look for environments that are ready to receive you, because that’s where you’ll be your most productive, innovative, creative and strategic.”

Update: Interviewed earlier this year, Noelle Ramirez remains in this position, with PGIM for nearly 2.5 years.

We hope you enjoyed this two-part retrospective!

By: Aimee Hansen

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Monica Marquez: Co-Founder, Beyond Barriers

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Monica Marquez“It’s transfer of knowledge, it’s paying it forward, it’s saying ‘here are the unwritten rules that you need to know that not everybody is going to tell you’,” says Monica Marquez. “Why don’t you learn from my mistakes, and then maybe you can get here in half the amount of time that I did?”

As an Equity & Inclusion expert, Monica has previously worked in the cultures of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Ernst & Young and Google, with a focus on pioneering efforts to support women to advance through the most tricky parts of the career path.

Advancing the “Frozen Middle”

“I’ve had a natural affinity towards pursuing a career that focuses on diversity, equity and inclusion,” says Marquez. “The whole theme of creating opportunities and a sense of belonging, and helping people to accelerate their success, has always been core to what I loved to do and help organizations do at scale.”

Beyond Barriers takes a campus to C-suite approach: “What happens throughout a woman’s career trajectory that causes so much attrition from the entry level to the top? For more than a decade, over 50% women have been graduating from US universities and colleges, outpacing their male peers. How is it then, that only 8% of women hold C-suite roles in Fortune 500 companies?”

Marquez’s passion has been to understand the systemic barriers at play and how to navigate them to accelerate success: “Companies do a really good job of recruiting women in the early stages, but they don’t do a good job of supporting them and helping them grow and stay, often losing them as they are rising up.”

Despite so much front-end investment in talent, Marquez feels organizations often fail to support women through the “frozen middle” when the challenge of integration of work with new motherhood becomes a huge adjustment for many, and when attrition peaks.

She notes that many women are passionate about coming back until they return to experience being sidelined—so they are both pulled by their new responsibilities and pushed out by the organization. After the second child, the percentile of women opting out or taking a break goes way up.

Marquez has found that often a dance of projected assumptions goes on between both sides of the coin. Women often don’t feel their managers/organizations will be supportive of their boundaries or needs. Organizations often assume what women will want for themselves, or be available for.

“It’s partly the assumptions, stigmas, stereotypes, unconscious biases that managers and leaders have at play, rather than just open communication,” she says. “The conversation needs either the woman being confident and having clarity of what she wants and being able to ask for what she wants, or the leader asking the woman that question and giving her the opportunity to answer for herself.”

Marquez has seen that when the tough conversations actually happen, things like flex schedules and promotion plans can be arranged. It’s after all more efficient to support a woman to stay and keep progressing than to bring in somebody entirely new from scratch.

“Don’t be afraid to say this is this is what I want and don’t be ashamed of your ambition. You shouldn’t be told you either choose your ambition or you choose the family. It doesn’t have to be that way,” advises Marquez, who also points out: “Companies do invest a lot in development with women, but they sometimes have to be strategic and target the high performers. If you were to get to these women a lot earlier, you would have more mid-career women make it through to the top.”

Pioneering the Returnship® Program

Perhaps Marquez’s proudest accomplishment is the Returnship® Program she began back at Goldman Sachs over a decade ago, to help companies retain experienced women and to help women gently reintegrate back into work after maternity leave.

“Back then, there was a significant stigma if you left the workforce and tried to come back in. The gap was a huge mark on your resume, and usually employers would overlook you,” she notes. “There’s a hidden talent pool of women that companies are losing out on because you have this traditional bias against the resume gap. And we started thinking: how do companies hire in the first place?”

Marquez and her team adapted the internship experience and introduced the Returnship® program in financial services at Goldman Sachs. Across a 10-12 week stint, women came back into an office, usually taking on one focused, substantial project in a team who held an open position. Women were able to reacclimatize through a first dip back into work mode and teams received experienced help on standing projects. If the practical trial showed a mutual fit, full-time placement would result and regardless, both parties benefitted.

“In our first few pilots, we had a placement rate in the 90th percentile, and the majority of the 10% who didn’t get placed were women who chose to stay out, after realizing that they weren’t ready for full-time work,” says Marquez. “It’s the fulfillment of helping people gain opportunity when the doors are all closing that’s been my guiding passion.”

Being Latina in Corporate America

Marquez notes that Latina women face stereotypes based upon gender and culture: such as the loud Latina, the overly emotional Latina or the family-first domestic Latina mother.

She’s experienced herself that being a “first generation corporate” can be very isolating, allowing space for imposter syndrome and self-doubt, often because Latina women are the “only” Latina around in the context and because they often do have different influences and voices at home, sometimes intergenerational, due to the cultural loyalty to family.

Some cultural influences can be resourceful to help Latina women thrive and others can be limiting.

While women of color were less prevalent in the Returnship® program, the team found ironically (vs. stereotypes) that Latina women were less likely to have opted out of the workplace for home responsibilities than their white peers, precisely because they had a strong Latino family structure and childcare support within their extended family.

“The cultural norm of the tight-knit Latino family unit, where they maintain a sense of a village to raise a family, helped some women stay employed opposed to having to opt out,” notes Marquez.

On the other hand: “We come from various Latino cultures where work ethic is a really big deal: put your head down, work really hard,” says Marquez. “However, you learn quickly that in the corporate world, you’re going to get overlooked if you just keep your head down and work hard. You have to learn self-promotion and have the flexibility to go against the grain of what you’ve always been taught.”

And so, Marquez has created employee resource groups to help with opportunity/cultural gaps such as coaching soft-skills and self-promotion among first generation college or corporate individuals.

Acculturate, not Assimilate

Having always been fascinated with cultural differences and their influences on decision-making, Marquez impresses upon Latina women that “there’s a fine line between assimilation and acculturation”.

“You have to be very careful when you go into an organization that is predominantly white male cisgender-led that you don’t assimilate too much, to where you’re contorting yourself into a pretzel in order to belong. You want to keep some authenticity,” says Marquez. “I usually tell people that you have to acculturate and embrace every organization you belong to. They each have their unique culture and define success in a different way. You have to look at every organization like its own country that you visit every day.”

She suggests getting underneath what characteristics are driving success in your organization and then emulating those characteristics by adopting strategies that are right for you within the organizational “cultural” context, without compromising your own truthfulness.

For example, colleagues may go to the local pub to network, but it’s narrow-minded to think you have to stay two hours after work as the requirement to be successful. The value is developing relationships, and you can figure out a way to develop more depth to informal connections through breakfast and lunch invitations during work hours.

“It’s figuring out where you can set your own boundaries. You acculturate opposed to assimilate, and you challenge them on the ways it happens,” she advises. “The important thing is the relationship building. It’s not the happy hour.”

“Don’t assimilate and lose who you are. Instead, acculturate and hold onto those core values of your culture, because that also enriches the organization,” she notes. “The representation of diverse cultures brings about an organic diversity of thought that is needed to create bigger and better solutions for organizations.”

Less Certainty, More In-The-Moment Agility

“Women have a tendency to be very certainty driven, and they end up not taking as many risks and opportunities. It’s like that quote ‘doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will’,” says Marquez. “Women need to be much more open to taking the opportunity and embracing just-in-time learning, so they don’t rob themselves before they try.”

Marquez feels women disadvantage themselves by feeling they will be safe only if they already know everything. Whereas men’s willingness to put their name in the hat, dive in and then figure it out means they advance more quickly.

She recommends women weigh the risk and reward, and if they can live with the downside, just go for it: “Women will second guess and short-change themselves, but we are remarkable and extremely resourceful. You have to look at these opportunities and tell yourself, ‘I only check two boxes out of ten, but I’m going to put my name in the hat because this is my North Star. This is where I want to go’d.”

Noting that the average shelf life for a new skillset is now eighteen months, Marquez feels women should tap more into their natural agility to change and juggle, and embrace more just-in-time learning.

For her, a key component of accelerating gender equity is simply facilitating the transfer of knowledge: “If I knew then what I know now, I would have gotten here so much quicker and probably in half the time that it took me to become a senior leader,” reflects Marquez, who is doing all she can to bring others up behind her.

To learn more about how Monica and her company (Beyond Barriers helps organizations retain and develop female leaders), visit www.iambeyondbarriers.com.

By: Aimee Hansen

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Six Forms of Cultural Wealth You Can Leverage As a Leader

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cultural wealthIn her model of community cultural wealth, Dr. Tara J. Yosso identified six forms of cultural wealth (aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial and resistant capital) possessed and earned by socially marginalized groups, and countered the lens of cultural deficit.

Cultural wealth is defined as: “an array of knowledge, skills, strengths and experiences that are learned and shared by people of color and marginalized groups; the values and behaviors that are nurtured through culture work together to create a way of knowing and being.”

Affirming the cultural capital you’ve acquired as part of your road-tested skillset can be a compelling collective and personal narrative-flipper: factors that may have inhibited opportunities become empowering qualifications of your leadership ability. To walk into the room with a sense of cultural wealth integrated into your personal narrative could arguably reduce and reframe a sense of imposter syndrome.

In fact, Yosso’s model was initially designed to “capture the talents, strengths and experiences that students of color bring with them to their college environment”— but professional context, and even executive context, are even more compelling given you are further on the journey.

Here are the six forms of cultural capital and why they make you valuable as a leader.

Aspirational Capital

Aspirational capital is the ability to sustain hopes and dreams for the future amidst both real and perceived barriers.

As states the University of Portland UP Career Center, “It is the ability to envision a future beyond your current circumstances and work towards pursuing your dreams and aspirations.”

As Sheri Crosby Wheeler, VP of D&I at Fossil Group, told theglasshammer earlier this year when speaking to her own economically disadvantaged background: “I feel like it has given me the grit, the resilience, the fight, the get-up-and-go that I have to this day. I won’t see myself as ever being down and out, and I won’t stay in a ‘woe is me’ place, not for very long.”

The impact and success of Black and Latina female entrepreneurs, despite opportunity gaps, bias and barriers in the hallways of corporate America, bears testament to a mentality of sticking to a vision of realizing the dream beyond obstacles.

The ability to conceive of and hold to a vision beyond the current reality is not only essential to becoming a leader, but also what enables leaders to inspire entirely new visions and influence new realities.

Navigational Capital

Navigational capital is the ability to maneuver through systems and institutions that historically were not designed for you. Yosso notes that this capital empowers individuals to move within environments that can feel both unsupportive or hostile.

“I think you can approach a situation like that and feel like you’re the only one,” Gia Morón told us, on inviting herself into the NYC networking circle for the emerging legal cannabis industry, “or you can say, ‘I can invite other people and not be the only one.’”

As pointed out in Harvard Business Review by Marlette Jackson, PhD and Paria Rajai, the dedication many “first generation corporates” have to paying-it-forward and bringing others up through sharing the unspoken rules of navigating an organization is one way navigational capital comes into power. And for those who trail-blazed themselves, they bring that earned strategic and maverick gumption to what they offer.

“The most rewarding piece of my work is to create an opportunity and open a door, where traditionally that door may not have existed,” said Noelle Ramirez, Project Manager, DE&I at PGIM, about alternative recruiting channels, “to be able to put that spotlight on someone who might not have been seen and say, ‘I see you and there’s space for you here.’”

Social Capital

Social capital is leveraging existing community resources and connections in building a network in support of your goals.

The roles of social and cultural capital have been found to be key components in supporting academic achievement among Latinas. In one qualitative study of Latina women, the pursuit of higher education was truly conceived as a “family goal” in which sacrifices were made to realize the goal, and in turn the Latina women “considered their own educational advancements as advancements for the whole family.”

Recently, Monica Marquez, Co-Founder of Beyond Barriers, shared with us that years ago when pioneering a Returnship® program at Goldman Sachs that facilitated mothers back to work after their maternity leave, her team found Latina women were less likely to have opted out of work for home responsibilities than their white peers, because they had the strong family structure and childcare support within the family.

“The cultural nuance or norm of the tight-knit family, where it takes a village to raise a family, helped some women stay employed opposed to having to opt out,” said Marquez.

Linguistic Capital

Linguistic capital is the sum intellectual, social and communication skills attained through a particular language, history and experiences.

Linguistic research indicates that those who are bilingual or multilingual generally have more connectivity and integration in their neural networks, a sharper working memory, more cognitive reserve, better task-switching, more divergent thinking and are more adept at solving mathematical problems than monolinguals, for starters. Analyzing in a second language also reduces decision bias.

“I have the benefit of growing up in a different country and being exposed to different cultures, so that helps me to understand and work with cross-cultural teams,” Anna Thomas, VP at BBH, told us. “For example, in Asian culture, unless you actually reach out and ask, someone will often think it’s disrespectful to provide their view of things. I grew up in that culture, so I know and I can actually coax and ask someone to speak up. I can come from that angle.”

Yosso emphasized that cultures where oral storytelling is part of the daily cultural fabric bring “skills [that] may include memorization, attention to detail, dramatic pauses, comedic timing, facial affect, vocal tone, volume, rhythm and rhyme”, such as to narrative crafting and public speaking.

Familial Capital

Familial capital is the cultural knowledge and nuance obtained from family and community experiences, for example how the communal-orientation of many Latin cultures may predispose networking skills.

While crediting her parents for raising her in faith from a long line of ministers and pastors, Marie Carr, a Global Growth Strategist at PwC US, said: “I have confidence in and the ability to appeal to a force higher than myself. That’s helped me to be more patient, to put myself in other’s shoes, to not be so hard on myself. You have to be able to center yourself, because you’re often going to find yourself in an environment that’s not going to affirm you. So, the ability to affirm yourself is really useful.”

Familial legacy of challenge and strife can also compel compassionate leadership.

Megan Hogan, Chief Diversity Officer of Goldman Sachs, recently shared that her family’s journey from the Dominican Republic to find opportunity influenced her own pro bono passion of working with immigrants seeking asylum: “It’s always been important to me to advocate for people seeking refuge from persecution as a way to pay it forward and allow others to find those same opportunities.”

Resistant Capital

Resistant capital is the inherited foundation and historical legacy of communities of colors and marginalized groups in resisting inequality and pursuing equal rights. This includes embracing a resistance to stereotypes that are not authentic to your sense of self.

Overcoming barriers and challenging the status quo enables a leader-oriented lens of questioning conventional models and methods that aren’t working or may be problematic for long-term growth, according to the findings of HBR authors Jackson and Rajai.

“The narrative is often ‘I come from a low-income neighborhood, I was raised by a single parent, my father is in jail, my brother was killed, I didn’t go to an Ivy League school. I’ve got no credentials to lead…Who am I to run?” said May Nazareno, NE Director of Gifts at Ignite, to us, speaking of encouraging the inherent young female leaders from highly marginalized neighborhoods. “And we flip the script and say: who are you not to? We’re here to convince each young woman that her whole life is what makes her qualified to lead.”

By: Aimee Hansen

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OP-Ed: Six Hallmarks Of Rebuilding Strong Relationships at Work

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relationships at workAs we come out of the pandemic, rebuilding strong relationships at work will require special attention. Strong relationships are crucial for success and satisfaction – they determine the extent to which our managers, direct reports and even colleagues outside our area provide us the information, resources, and support we need as well as their openness to influence and willingness to work out difficulties.

Those relationships have suffered during the last 18 months. Tasks have been more foregrounded and personal connection backgrounded, as Zoom exhaustion, phone and email replaced the informal in-person contact that often builds connection.

Returning to working in person creates opportunities to build and rebuild strong, functional relationships. And there are challenges. We can’t just “flip a switch” and return to how it was before. Jobs have changed, and so have our needs. Some colleagues left and new ones were hired who we haven’t met in person. Some are happy to be back, others aren’t. Old habits and approaches might no longer work. We feel pressured to make up for lost time, leaving us without the luxury of letting new relationships develop over time. What to do?

We have studied what it takes to proactively build strong relationships quickly at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business for decades and know that relationships exist on a continuum from contact with no connection/casual to closer/more personal and ultimately to what we call exceptional. There are six hallmarks to moving along that continuum.

Six Hallmarks of Relationship Building

The first is I can be more fully myself and so can you. With someone new we tend to be cautious. As the relationship develops, we disclose more, which decreases misunderstandings and increases ways to connect. It also encourages the other to share, since disclosure tends to be reciprocal.

This relates to the second hallmark: both of you are willing to be vulnerable. What can I do to encourage you to disclose besides initiating? I can learn how to ask questions that convey I really want to know you and what matters to you. Reciprocal sharing and vulnerability build trust and understanding.

Disclosure feels risky. The third hallmark is therefore trust that what I share will not be used against me. That trust is built over time as you each take incrementally larger risks in becoming known to each other.

Fourth is, a willingness to be honest with each other. Do I know that you mean what you say so I don’t have to read between the lines or worry about what you are withholding and vice versa?

As we share more of ourselves, deepen our relationship, and work together, disagreements are inevitable, and conflicts might emerge. The fifth hallmark is dealing with disagreements and conflict productively in ways that further build the relationship.

The final hallmark is both of us are committed to each other’s growth. This may require raising difficult issues and giving challenging feedback, in service of each other’s learning and development.

Applying the Hallmarks In the Office

As we emerge from the pandemic, here is how these come into play. You have just returned to working in person and someone new has joined the team who you’ve never met or worked with. There are also team members with whom you are at the “mere contact” end of the continuum and others with whom you are a bit farther along. With some you are close. Maybe you have mixed feelings about some of these people. A couple of incidents during Zoom meetings annoyed you, which you didn’t raise. Time and performance pressures necessitate you move these relationships along the continuum to functional and robust quickly.

There are multiple ways to develop relationships and what is effective with one person might not be with another. With the new hire, you might start with sharing more of yourself as well as finding out how they like to get work done. For those where the relationship is not strong, talking about how each of you want to relate might help. In those cases where you’ve had negative interactions, it might be important to have an honest conversation about how to move past that and explore what there is to be learned.

People also differ in how they like to get work done. Some like to plan first, others like to take action to gather early data. Some are comfortable with risk, others more cautious, and so forth. Each of us has a strong preference for our style and yet organizations need them all.

In strong relationships we each leverage our style and work together productively. What do we do with conflict that arises when our styles differ? We learned firsthand when working together. David is a divergent thinker, always coming up with new ideas. Carole is more convergent and wants to “cut to the chase.” In discussing this openly, we realized we needed each other. If David was dominant, we might never have finished our book – if Carole’s was, our final product might not have been as good.

Returning to the office will require we double down on efforts to establish new relationships and reestablish previous ones. We can’t afford to “just let things develop.” We will have to make more intentional, conscious efforts. Doubling down requires paying even closer attention to how others get their work done and talking openly about preferences. We may need to be explicit and proactive. “I’m glad to respond to your requests, but it works better for me when I have advanced warning” could be all it takes.

Doubling down also means becoming aware of and willing to discuss entirely new issues, such as people’s preferences for in-person, hybrid or working at home for health reasons. We may need to be clearer about how tasks are to be divided up and handed off. Learning to empathize with someone whose pandemic experience (and post pandemic reality) is very different from ours will also matter.

We’ll need to respond differently to small annoyances, which are more likely when starting or reestablishing relationships. Your way of working bothers me a bit. But rather than just shoving my frustration under the rug and blaming you, this could be a sign we have something to work on and an opportunity for mutual learning and a better relationship.

To do this we will have to acknowledge the legitimacy of different approaches and further develop our problem-solving skills. It is less useful to try to convince the other and more useful to jointly explore what will work for both of us. That process, rather than distancing us, can further reestablish healthy work relationships and build even stronger ones.

Everything is unlikely to work out from the beginning, even with proactive outreach. Building and rebuilding relationships is a process that requires learning from what doesn’t work as much as from what does. It demands persistence, intention, and patience. But quickly building and rebuilding stronger relationships is well worth the effort.

David Bradford, Ph.D. is the Eugene O’Kelly II Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Leadership at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he helped develop Interpersonal Dynamics (aka “Touchy Feely”) as well as much of the school’s leadership curriculum. He is the author of numerous books, including Managing for Excellence, Influence Without Authority, and Power Up. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife of more than fifty years.



Carole Robin, Ph.D. was the Dorothy J. King Lecturer in Leadership and Director of the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows Program at Stanford Graduate School of Business before co-founding Leaders in Tech, which brings the principles and process of “Touchy Feely” to executives in Silicon Valley. Prior to coming to Stanford, she had careers in sales and marketing management and was a partner in two consulting firms. She lives in San Francisco, California, with her husband of 36 years.

A fuller description of these six hallmarks and how to use them to build relationships can be found in CONNECT: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues by co-authors David Bradford and Carole Robin. Crown Random House, New York. 2021. Their book also contains the lessons of “Touchy Feely” that thousands of students have consistently described for decades as life changing. Available in hardcover, audible and Kindle versions HERE.

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Interdependent Leadership: We Need More than Independent Leaders

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Interdependence“Human life is interdependent!” says Dr. Stephen Covey. “Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.”

As citizens of the Western patriarchal world that idealizes individualism, we are conditioned to strive for independence as the bastion of strength.

But as Covey touched on in the Maturity Continuum back in the classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, independence is not the ultimate arrival point.

Evolving from independence to interdependence is a pre-requisite of stepping into being a true leader and creating human fulfillment in all of our relationships.

Personal Development Journey to Interdependence

First of all, interdependence is neither dependence nor codependence. Only independent people can evolve to be and choose to be interdependent.

Our culture idealizes independence as the ultimate success, when it’s not. Consider the self-made man or do-it-yourself or the exalted lone hero’s journey.    

      Dependence (You)

When we become caught at the dependence state of maturation, we rely on others or the situation to meet our needs for safety and pleasure, to take care of us, and to take charge or create changes we want.

We abdicate responsibility for our lives to others to develop a victim mentality. It can be insidious, too.

As Dr. Michele Brennan writes, “Evidence of this is seen in individuals who cannot make decisions for themselves, they are afraid to speak their minds, or to advocate for themselves because they need someone to lead them.”

      Independence (I)

When we individuate towards independence, we take responsibility for the thoughts and actions required to meet our needs and wants as we’ve identified them. We are self-sufficient and self-reliant.

While we must arrive here to break our dependence, remaining as an island in an interconnected world is not the highest expression of success, consciousness or fulfillment.

Independence focuses only on your needs and desires, can quickly fall into scarcity mindset, and does not place supporting others and being supported as core.

At the independence mindset, we’re also prepared for others to lose so we can win. We’re more likely to feel others are in competition or detractive to our goals.

A recent meme emphasis has been “Ultra-independence is a trauma response”—and that could be seen as an individual, national and cultural wound.

      Interdependence (We)

Interdependence “comes with the self actualization that we are strong to stand on our own but we are wise enough to understand there is even greater strength in developing a community,” writes Brennan.

At the level of interdependence, we realize that our personal growth and fulfillment is not distinct from, or at odds with, lifting others up, but rather in accord with it.

As Michael Timms writes, “Interdependence is the understanding that your welfare and ultimate success is inextricably connected to the welfare and success of those around you.”

Beyond accountability for yourself, you take accountability for our inherent interdependence and your personal impact on the greater whole.

This is the “we” phase – as written in PM Today – “where the independent adult chooses to increase their circle of concern beyond themselves, to include ever widening groups of people.”

Individuals and organizations that come from this place view themselves as one part of a system of many interconnected parts, all impacting on each other.

How We See Ourselves and the World

Research shows that people with a self-construal as an independent entity will view internal attributes as core to who they are—their “traits, abilities, values and attitudes.”

Whereas people with an interdependent self-construal will view “close relationships, social roles and group members“ as central to their sense of self—personal meaning is contingent upon belonging to the interrelated whole.

Independence mindsets are overall associated with Western European and North American cultures and interdependence mindsets with East Asian and Latin American cultures.

When it comes to perceptual tendencies, people with independent mindsets pay more attention to the focal element of a scene (a bridge in a forest). People with interdependent mindsets pay attention to the context of the whole scene (forest with bridge).

In research, this means that a Westerner will notice small changes to the focal element (bridge) faster. Those from East Asian cultures will notice changes to the context faster (forest). The changes we don’t notice are called our change blindness.

Breaking from strict cultural divides, researchers found that it’s possible to nudge our perception to view the world more interdependently. Even by attuning to the interdependent pronouns “we” and “our” and “us” rather than “you” or “I” or “me” in articles, Westerners became more sensitive to detect the changes in the bigger picture.

The frames through which we think and think of ourselves impact how we perceive the world. The more we focus on our interconnection, the more attention we pay to context and the bigger picture.

Leading From Interdependence

Independent level leadership may refuse to take responsibility for problems or try to shoulder it all alone, may focus on being the solo hero, may raise executive salaries to exorbitant levels, may focus on the organizational win without considering the true ripple effect of the means.

“At best, independent people who choose not to progress to the next level of maturity will be valuable individual contributors,” according to The Ghannad Group, “and at worst, they will contribute to the counterproductive creation and maintenance of silos that prevent effective collaboration.”

“The moment you step from independence into interdependence in any capacity, you step into a leadership role,” wrote Covey.

Ghannad Group writes that “achieving interdependence requires intentionality and insight, courage and humility”—and embodying an interdependent, transformative leader mindset requires “abundance mentality”, “empathy and understanding”, and a “servant’s heart.”

At the interdependent leader level, you grow to adopt some of Covey’s approaches: Your philosophy of human interaction is win/win, seeing life as “cooperative not competitive”— seeking solutions and agreements that offer mutual benefit for all stakeholders concerned, because it’s always the most effective approach.

You seek to understand a situation before seeking to be understood and demonstrate real emotional intelligence. You foster synergistic group collaboration, which allows the collective whole to be greater than the sum of the independent parts and gives birth to new creativity and paradigms.

You seek solution-space for problems which are not your direct responsibility such as crisis, because they are impacting upon the whole.

Interdependent leaders come from a place of acceptance, curiosity and abundance mindset rather than judgement, fear and scarcity thinking.

You have confidence in “being enough” so that you can humbly call on the unique gifts and talents from everyone without judgment, raising everyone up as you rise in your leadership acumen to create the most synergistic, creative and expansive solutions.

You’re dependable, but it’s not about you. Being interdependent as a leader means the strength of knowing your own talents and embracing the vulnerability that nobody can be or do it all themselves.

We need each other and embracing the accountability of that interdependence is the most effective, fulfilling and mature path for humanity—and leadership.

By Aimee Hansen

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Great Listening Is Still A Two-Way Conversation

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With more of our interactions than ever happening in a virtual meeting room, are you truly listening? And if you are, at what level are you listening, as a leader?

Empathetic listening is an essential component of influential leadership—it fosters better connections, supportive relationships and increased commitment.

Not only does listening require a willingness to listen, but also understanding of both the spoken and unspoken messages, as well as active engagement with the speaker’s opinions and ideas.

If you’ve made a practice of simply not speaking while listening, or parroting back the speaker’s points, it’s time to redefine what good listening looks like.

Listening in a Zoom Office World

Previously, our multi-tasking technology was one of the distractions that made listening more difficult in the workplace. Now, technology has become the workplace itself.

As we conduct most of our group conversations online, we are more inclined than ever to zone out, whilst active listening is even more important to meeting cohesion.

According to Sarah Gershman in Harvard Business Review, President of Green Room Speakers, within a virtual meeting, we are especially subject to the “Ringelmann effect” – the bigger the group for a task, the less responsibility each person feels in making the effort a success and the less personal effort each exerts.

While this effect occurs in an in-person meeting too, the online office amplifies the tendencies to tune out and talk over each other. Whether leading the meeting, one of many participants or engaged in a one-on-one, your quality of listening still matters.

Strategies for doing your part in creating meeting cohesion include:

  • Before signing in, consider what value your participation holds for you and the group.
  • Reiterate previous points before introducing a new topic so others know they were heard.
  • Listen for and see themes raised by multiple speakers, asking reflective questions.
  • Note down peripheral thoughts that pop into your head, bring your attention back.
  • If you get distracted, acknowledge you lost the thread with a clarifying question.
Good Listening = A Conversation That Elevates

In Harvard Business Review, co-researchers Jack Zenger (CEO) and Joseph Folkman (President) of Zenger/Folkman, assert that good listening is not what most people think: simply not talking over others, making affirming facial expressions and sounds, and repeating back what was heard.

While it’s also not a ping-pong of contrasting viewpoints or oneupmanship stories, zipping your lips is not the golden standard of listening.

Rather, the researchers found that great listening experiences feel like an elevating conversation. The best listeners are more like “trampolines” than “sponges.”

“They are someone you can bounce ideas off of — and rather than absorbing your ideas and energy, they amplify, energize, and clarify your thinking,” writes Zenger and Folkman. “They make you feel better not merely passively absorbing, but by actively supporting. This lets you gain energy and height, just like someone jumping on a trampoline.”

Qualities of a Good Listening Experience

The researchers found these core components of good listening experiences.

Good Listening:

  • Becomes a dialogue: Exceptional listeners comprehend the speaker so well they can ask occasional constructive questions that carefully challenge assumptions that expand the conversation. So rather than being a one-way interaction, the listener enables the speaker to explore and share more.
  • Is supportive, permissive and builds self-esteem: Neither passive nor critical listening is enough. When a listener creates an environment that is safe for open discussion, regardless of the issue or differences, the speaker gains confidence and feels supported and positive about the experience of being heard.
  • Is cooperative, not competitive: In the best conversations, neither speaker nor listener becomes defensive as the conversation flows, even when assumptions are challenged. But if the listener highjacks the conversation to focus on making their own points or winning an argument rather than supporting exploration of the speaker’s viewpoints, the connection unravels.
  • Opens up the conversation with suggestions: While people often feel they aren’t listened to when the listener jumps to fix their problem through suggestions, the researchers also found that exceptional listeners do make suggestions—skillfully—- that “opened up alternative paths to consider.”
Leveling Up as a Listener

A good listener doesn’t have an agenda—instead, park your own needs, wants and self-concept. Mistake one can be to self-identify as a good listener. Instead, take ‘yourself’ out of the way.

You can skill up by asking yourself these questions, related to levels of listening, which may also lay the trust foundation for making suggestions:

  • Are you creating a safe environment to bring up complex and emotional discussions?
  • Are you clearing away distractions to help bring your focused attention to the conversation?
  • Are you seeking to understand the substance of what is shared, and clarifying with the speaker to confirm that you do?
  • Are you listening to the 80% of communication that comes from nonverbal cues such as posture, facial expressions, eyes, gestures, breathing, energy, tone? (even more challenging over a screen)
  • Are you grasping the emotions and feelings at play from the speaker’s perspective, and are you acknowledging without judging and validating them with empathy?
  • If doing all of the above, are you able to ask the questions that clarify assumptions and help the speaker to consider the topic in a way that is expansive?
Extra Tips From Listening Leaders

According to Enterprisers Project on being a better listener, CEO Chris Kachris of InAccel suggests to take a page from reflective parenting: “Don’t try to reject or beautify their concerns, their stress, and their worries. Don’t try to convince about your opinion without first understanding their worries.”

Dr. Bahiyyah Moon, president and chief data officer of Polis Institute, advises, “The most important rule of listening is the 3-1 ratio. Listen three times longer than you talk. The next rule is to ask more than you respond. Typically people have a comment after another person speaks. Great leaders follow up with questions.”

Ed Jaffe, founder of Demo Solutions, shares, “It is not just listening, it is trying to see the problem from the side of someone else, and understand why they are saying it. You do not have to validate the idea, but you must validate the person.”

“Listening is the key to asking the right questions” says Nicki Gilmour, the head coach of Evolved People Coaching and Founder of theglasshammer.com. “Tuning in to people requires hearing not just the content of what they are saying, but listening for the meta messages of what is really going on to help people identify what really matters.”

Ultimately, leveling up your listening can only create better connections, and enable you to become a more empathetic and expansive leader.

By Aimee Hansen 

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Melanie Priddy: Chief Talent Officer, Katten

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Melanie Priddy

Photo provided by Gittings Photography

“At the end of day, relationships are the key to everything, regardless of what industry you’re in, or what your profession is,” says Melanie Priddy.

Katten’s Chief Talent Officer speaks about the value of connections, the need to merge professional development with diversity and the importance of self-advocacy.

Becoming a Business Professional in Law

“I wish I could tell you this was the plan all along, but sometimes the careers we find are ones we fall into,” says Priddy, about being a people-oriented business professional within the legal industry.

Upon graduating from the University of Virginia School of Law, she started her legal career as a practicing lawyer at an Am Law 50 firm.

After a few years as a transactional attorney, Priddy gravitated toward recruiting attorneys for law firms and counseling law students on their career options. She went to work for a staffing firm and then a university and found that she loved advising others on making choices to navigate their career in line with their ambitions.

Priddy joined Katten in 2008 as an attorney recruiting and development manager in the firm’s Los Angeles office, where she managed professional development programs for associates for a few years. She worked at a couple other law firms before she returned to Katten in 2018 as Chief Talent Officer based in the Washington, DC office where she oversees administrative areas including human resources, attorney recruitment, professional development, and diversity and inclusion with an eye on hiring, career growth opportunities, diversity and inclusion efforts, and retention of both attorneys and business professionals.

Diversity and Development Are Inseparable

“To me, diversity and professional development are closely tied,” says Priddy.

At a previous firm, she led recruiting strategies and managed training programs. She took the initiative to expand her role by launching a diverse lawyer mentoring program. She became the Development & Diversity Manager and implemented programs to advance diversity and inclusion within the firm. At a subsequent firm, Priddy was able to incorporate her work in professional development programming with her interest in making workplaces more diverse and inclusive.

“I honestly pressed for it, rather than sitting back and waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder,” says Priddy. “I had to say, ‘I think I would be really good at this combination of roles, and let me explain how and why they should be combined for me to be successful, and what I could do.’ That set the stage for me to be in the role I have now at Katten.”

She’s committed to offering diversity and development support at every level, and integrating it into the decision-making process at law firms.

“My approach has been that diversity is part of every discussion—when you are talking about recruitment, about development, about choices people are making with regards to business or client development or opportunities around training,” states Priddy.

From the top down in law firm hierarchy, diversity should be top of mind.

“One of the things we always talk about is that everyone is responsible for improving diversity in the legal field,” she says. “The diversity professional brings the opportunities and the resources to others in the law firm or legal industry, but everyone is responsible for ensuring a diverse workforce. When you look at it that way, then you’re really going to make progress.”

Priddy emphasizes Katten’s successful participation in the Mansfield Rule, which sets benchmarks for women, attorneys of color, LGBTQ+ attorneys, and attorneys with disabilities to account for at least 30 percent of the candidate pool considered for leadership and governance roles, equity partner promotions, formal client pitch opportunities, and senior lateral positions. This initiative, coupled with the firm’s newly launched Kattalyst Sponsorship program aimed at retaining and advancing diverse associates and income partners, works toward the goal of increasing representation of historically underrepresented attorneys in law firm leadership.

Invest in Relationships and Self-Advocacy

Priddy stresses how important it is to nurture relationships and curate a support network for career guidance.

“When I started in my career, as many people do, I thought if you just keep your head down and work hard, everything will be okay. You’ll advance and be rewarded,” she reflects. “What I’ve come to realize over time is the importance of developing relationships—obviously with the people you’re working with and for, but also outside of your immediate circle and within the industry itself.”

She advises others to network within various organizations that align with their interests at all stages of their careers. For example, she has been involved with the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), previously serving on the board of directors and most recently as chair of the nominating committee, which solicits nominations for elected positions, slates members for officer and director positions and administers the election process.

She also stresses the importance of advocating for yourself to achieve your goals.

“As women, often there’s a tendency to downplay your success, your role or leadership skills, whether with a boss or with a group,” she says. “But someone else can’t speak up for you on your behalf, if you don’t do it for yourself first.”

Bring Your Whole Self

“A lot of times as women of color, we bring just a part of ourselves to work and we leave a broader sense of who we are back at home,” she says.

Priddy feels that this year’s remote work environment is helping to break down some barriers with her colleagues.

“Our personal and professional lives are so blended because we’re at home, and you hear my dog barking and you see my kids going through the background—and I’m getting my job done,” says Priddy. “I would say in some respects, because of tearing down these walls, I’m more connected to people now than I was in person.”

She adds, “I see how important it is to bring some vulnerability into the workplace so people feel like they can connect and share and get to know you.”

Supporting Personal and Professional Integration

Priddy has been instrumental in Katten’s efforts to destigmatize mental health issues and to draw attention to substance use disorders within the legal profession by joining the American Bar Association’s well-being pledge and launching a firm-wide wellness program, Katten Well-Being 360: Live Well, Work Well, Be Well to support attorneys and employees with information, training, and helpful resources.

She’s proud of being a mother of two sons, ages 10 and 13, modeling for them a world where they grow up with a mother who has a seat at the table where high-level decisions are made.

Under Priddy’s leadership, Katten created a Parents Affinity Group as a resource and support network for working parents at the firm to connect and discuss approaches to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. She also worked with firm leaders to get the  parental leave policy expanded to a 12-week, gender-neutral paid leave, with an extension of 8 more weeks for a total of up to 20 weeks for birth mothers and those who have exceptional circumstances, such as adoptive and surrogate parents.

In this virtual environment, her team is also tasked with seamlessly bringing on new attorneys and employees without daily in-person interactions with co-workers and supervisors. “How do you onboard and integrate new people, or create relationships when you’re never in the same room physically together?” Priddy said. Her answer: offer productive programs that build relationships.

For example, she helped roll out a more elaborate mentoring program involving mentoring circles to foster a sense of connection at the firm, as well as a coaching program covering career development topics, goal setting and development of an action plan for summer associates and first-year associates who joined Katten during the pandemic.

These creative solutions appear to be cultivating connections—whether virtual water cooler moments or shared creative nights from home. With less travel, she finds her colleagues are more available than ever to get on the phone.

Outside of work, she’s enjoying more time at home with her family, cycling on her Peloton bike, and perfecting her green thumb, checking on her tomatoes in the garden. A proponent of integration where it serves better results, Priddy is embracing the experience of blending her home and professional life.

By Aimee Hansen

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