Tag Archive for: Nicki Gilmour

Empowering Black Female Professionals: Navigating Career Advancement and Corporate Support

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Empowering black female professionals. Nicki GilmourIn today’s corporate landscape, diversity and inclusion initiatives have gained significant momentum, yet the journey for Black female professionals remains a unique and often challenging one. Everyone is an individual coming to work from different places and backgrounds and it is true that personality traits and opportunities from a young age makes a difference. I speak as someone who lives in a town with many successful Black professionals, and I have a daughter of color myself so I would only want a fair opportunity for her by equipping her for the world and the workplace. Writing this, however, feels somehow repetitive as founder of theglasshammer.com because things only change if we make them change.

People of color are still facing systemic barriers and yet Black female professionals continue to show up to bring invaluable perspectives, skills, and talents to the table. However, to fully harness their potential, it’s crucial to address the obstacles they encounter and recognize the pivotal role that both managers and companies play in their career advancement. It is worth checking out our extensive past coverage on Black women’s advancement and how the Black feminist movement was completely different to the names that we might associate with the topic – bell hooks is less of a household name for example.

Black women in corporate settings often encounter a multitude of challenges that can impede their career progression. These challenges include systemic racism, gender biases, and intersectional discrimination. Tsedale M. Melaku’s book You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racisim highlights how race and gender create barriers to recruitment, professional development, and advancement to partnership for Black women in elite corporate law firms.

Stereotypes and unconscious biases may lead to being overlooked for promotions or opportunities for growth. Additionally, navigating corporate culture that may not fully embrace diversity and inclusion can be isolating and exhausting with a researched psychological toll of being one of the only senior women of color.

Despite these challenges, there are several strategies Black female professionals can employ to advance in their careers:

Building a strong network is crucial. Cultivating a supportive network of mentors, sponsors, and peers can provide valuable guidance, opportunities, and advocacy. Seeking out individuals who can offer mentorship and sponsorship can help navigate challenges and open doors to new opportunities. Goldman Sachs has a Black Analyst and Associate program that enables connection and learning and has proven to retain and help develop Black and African American talent. Investing in continuous learning and skill development is essential for staying competitive in today’s rapidly evolving workplace. Pursuing professional development opportunities, acquiring new skills, and seeking feedback can enhance capabilities and increase visibility within the organization.

Developing strong communication skills, including assertiveness, can be instrumental in advocating for oneself and expressing career goals and aspirations. Assertive communication involves confidently articulating one’s achievements, skills, and ambitions, as well as setting boundaries when necessary. However there has been research that suggests that women of color fall foul of a negative stereotype of the “Angry Black Woman” so there is a difficult and unfair line to tow as that is not applied to others. #SoftBlackGirl offers solid advice regarding celebrating and communicating wins regularly.

Actively seeking visibility within the organization by volunteering for high-impact projects, participating in cross-functional teams, and contributing thought leadership can increase recognition and demonstrate leadership potential. Advocating for oneself is crucial in ensuring that achievements and contributions are recognized and rewarded. Black female professionals should feel empowered to speak up about their accomplishments, express career aspirations, and negotiate for advancement opportunities.

Corporate organizations play a pivotal role in creating an inclusive environment where Black female professionals can thrive.  To support their success, companies should implement the following initiatives:

Diversity and Inclusion Programs: Establishing robust diversity and inclusion programs that prioritize representation, equity, and belonging can foster an environment where Black female professionals feel valued and supported. These programs should include initiatives such as mentorship programs and leadership development opportunities. These programs have to be useful by design and will not be unless they are supported from the top with an integral place in the talent strategy. These programs need to be structural not superficial. Unconscious bias training has become in mode – and the research is mixed on it- some say that awareness of bias reduces bias but studies show perspective taking is more effective and lasting.

Accessibility and Transparency: Companies should ensure that advancement opportunities are accessible to all employees based on merit and potential, regardless of race or gender. Implementing transparent promotion processes and addressing biases in decision-making can help mitigate disparities in career advancement.

Mentorship and Sponsorship Programs: Creating formal mentorship and sponsorship programs that pair Black female professionals with senior leaders who can provide guidance, advocacy, and career support is essential. These programs should focus on fostering meaningful relationships and providing opportunities for skill development and visibility.

Leadership Accountability: Holding leaders and managers accountable for promoting diversity and inclusion within their teams and advocating for the advancement of Black female professionals is crucial. Leadership accountability can be demonstrated through setting diversity goals, measuring progress, and fostering a culture of inclusivity. You would think it would go without saying that companies must actively address bias and discrimination in the workplace by implementing policies and practices that promote fairness and equity. This includes addressing microaggressions, providing diversity training, and creating channels for reporting and addressing discriminatory behavior.

The journey for Black female professionals to advance in their careers is multifaceted and requires both individual resilience and organizational support. By employing strategic career advancement strategies and advocating for systemic change within companies, Black female professionals can overcome barriers and achieve success. It is imperative for corporate organizations to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to create a more inclusive and equitable workplace where all employees, including Black women, can thrive and reach their full potential.

Diversity work requires organizational development, leadership, and commitment from everyone. Gatherings in employee resource groups, big ticket speakers and requested assimilation to the model of work, which was built postwar for white men, just isn’t the answer.

Evolved Employer, the organizational development consulting arm of theglasshammer works with companies to ensure companies understand systemically the work that creates a more level playing ground for all to thrive- true talent meritocracy.

By Nicki Gilmour, founder and CEO of TheGlasshammer.com

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Five Actions to Take to Manage Your Career Better in 2023

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Nicki GilmourSo far, this decade has been a rollercoaster for professional women. Everyone has been inundated with large amounts of work to get through, while all sorts of moving targets and complex constraints to deal with just keep coming. A potential hit to the economy looms as the usual cyclical market downbeat slides to recession with layoffs already starting. Dovetail this with almost everyone having a really long, hard think about their values over the past couple of years, and the unanimous request from all workers in every survey ever done to have more flexibility, we should be set up for the most interesting years to come on the topic of work, career and what is professionalism.

Normally we write a year-end review piece, which we have written for the past fifteen years, detailing progress for professional women and examining trends that matter, and it was implicitly assumed that progress on parity had to be linear. Now we know the real issue is overwork and outdated ways of working for all. Perhaps this is what changed the game for us here at theglasshammer as we realized that battling an old system, and defining ourselves and our success by the standards of that system, is not the only way to look at it with the latest UN women report stating unsurprisingly that the goal of gender equality is not on track to happen by 2030.

The glass ceiling is still there for all the legacy and structural reasons we know about, but overwhelmingly people have been open about multiple realities and having multidimensional lives. Assimilation, sacrifice and silence is not trending right now and in a study conducted on work identity by Kathryn Boyle at the Glasgow Caledonian University (UK), Gen Y are not feeling like their narrative arc in their career has to be as cohesive as others did in Gen X and Boomer generations. This means the career ladder which we have written about extensively is somewhat less powerful a construct than it has ever been, and the ceiling, or rather the structures and rules that held the game together, are being replaced with people choosing to leave to play other games or ignoring the rules entirely. The lattice is where most of us find ourselves.

What Do Future Leaders Want?

What Gen Z want from their managers most of all is a positive attitude and a clear delineation of goals while millennials want open communication and feedback, followed by goal clarity according to a recent study at Berkeley Haas School of Business, University of California. Jarringly, the same study suggests Gen X managers are not really prepared to play ball in this way with only 33% ready and willing to give feedback with a positive attitude. There is a disconnect that should be addressed by savvy managers who want to liberate and empower so people can innovate. And this disconnect will only be accentuated by companies not setting managers up for success operationally in the hybrid environment.

Regardless of ambition levels, ability and willingness to work long hours, professional women and men want work to work for them – they want flexibility and a lattice approach to work, or even for work to not be all-consuming as professional careers in banking, law and executive life has previously been known for. The physical and psychological boundaries we once knew such as going to the office on a train five days per week is less desirable than ever as seen in the endless studies citing hybrid as the preferred format for the future. It doesn’t mean productivity is down or that people aren’t passionate about their work or career, it just means that we have arrived at a time where smart bosses know that trust is the social currency and that removing organizational grind and tasks that don’t belong to the team is the key to a happy and high functioning workforce.

Here are Five Things for You to Do for the Best Career Results in 2023
  1. Leave the anxiety and worry at the door. While there are serious swirls inside companies and in the external marketplace, it is ok to just control what you can. Start by understanding what exactly your responsibilities are in your role and then try to align your ability to execute on them as closely as you can – resources, authority, budgets, for example. Avoid perfectionism and over-responsibility tendencies where you think you are responsible for all outcomes or other people’s happiness or success. Thirdly, examine your relationship with uncertainty and figure out how to get comfortable with ambiguity as this year coming promises plenty of that.
  2. Get an executive coach. Advice on its own means nothing as its abstract and subjective. A good coach will help you understand yourself and your behaviors in context of what is going on around you. Think growth, think development. Coaching is one of those industries where there is a low bar to entry so pick your coach wisely as you should be able to have a chemistry meeting with your coach to make sure you can vet them for the value that they will add to your present goals and challenges. There are career coaches and there are executive coaches. Mentors, sponsors and consultants are different from a coach as a mentor will share their advice from their perspective and a sponsor will advocate for you. A coach will evoke your highest thinking and help you build muscle around goal achievement, strategic insight and co create behaviorial toolkits to deploy live time in meetings and work situations. It helps if your coach has a background in organizational development or industrial psychology as context does matter. A coach that gives you advice only is a bad coach.
  3. Read these three books in 2023 that will help you in your career- no matter where you are at. Herminia Ibarra’s Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader which will help you refresh you do your job with new insights, consider what your next job could look like and generally challenge everything you thought you knew about being competent and how that is enough. My second favorite book to recommend is Kegan and Lahey’s Immunity to Change which is academic to read but really is powerful for anyone wrestling with fear, shame or imposter syndrome – it is a user friendly book to clear the debris to really achieve your career goals behaviorally. And finally, I reccommend Kolb and Williams’ Everyday Negotiation as a must-read for anyone who thinks how did that person get the upper hand in that conversation? This book explores how to operate in everyday conversations at work. If you cannot read the whole book, start with the HBR article as it is a great way to understand how to navigate the power dynamics that exist in any work relationship. There has been an updated article discussing negotiating as a women of color to read on HBR this year.
  4. Network and mean it. Find people who can help you and you can help in return. Be sincere in your offer for help. Make it personal. No one likes an endless taker, and no one has time to do the work for you. Know your value in the exchange!
  5. Be authentic, and at the same time, seek advice that inspires you to be the best version of you. Use the sites like this one, and others like landit.com, fairygodboss.com and the muse as well as elevate to garner specific career advice for women in the workplace. Look for other sincere people as there are many false prophets and dead poets in this gender space taking your money for something that you already have.

Here at theglasshammer.com we have spent 15 years deeply covering the topic of advancing, empowering, informing and inspiring professional women and with 8000 articles in our archives, we encourage you to delve in and read any that might be useful to you. We have profiled over 1000 amazing women. We have coached rising stars as well as the best in the business to be even better leaders.

In 2023, we will continue to have our digital campfire for women who are change leaders to tell their story around. We want to profile creators and leaders who understand that the future is a vision that can be reached with the right focus. Our main offering is leadership coaching so if you wish to go from mid-level to senior level, or even are very close to the top and need an extra piece of work to polish and refine your behaviors, then book an exploratory chemistry session here with Nicki Gilmour – our founder, and executive and organizational coach.

By Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com

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On Changes After 15 Years: Nicki Gilmour: CEO And Founder, The Glass Hammer

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Nicki Gilmour The Glass HammerThe Glass Hammer was founded fifteen years ago (July, 2007) with the distinct intent of helping professional women – especially within financial services, law, technology, Fortune 500 – understand how to navigate their careers with the ultimate goal of advancing. The mission was to inform (provide expert career advice), empower (by bringing women together with events and networking), and inspire (by profiling women who have blazed the path and broken through the glass ceiling in some form). We sit down with Nicki Gilmour to discuss where things stand now as we celebrate this milestone of the longest running career advice publication for professional women.

Q: How have things developed since The Glass Hammer launched?

The world has changed significantly across these past fifteen years. But the pandemic has created the most seismic shift in how people work, how people want to work and how people live. Many people, women in particular, found themselves suddenly dropped into a very different reality as of March 2020 that included swapping the commute and the long office days for long days in front the computer and longer days in some cases homeschooling kids and sanitizing everything.

Perhaps one silver lining of the pandemic, if you can call it that when there was such sorrow and stress for so many, was the chance for all of us to understand that the future of work could happen more quickly than we realized was possible. We saw how we could switch to Zoom, Teams, Webex, Google Meet and other platforms to conduct conversations and share documents. And guess what? We still managed to do business – despite the constraints and challenges, both for individuals and organizations. ‘The future is now’ comes to mind as it is no longer a theory to work remotely as it pertains to equal or increased productivity.

Beyond the practical logistics of work, people also started to really look more deeply at their personal values. When your back is against the wall, it’s time to ask: what really matters here?

Q: What has changed for professional women in the past 15 years?

So much and yet nothing has changed for professional women.

I think the greatest thing that has changed is that people want to see their leaders show more empathy than before and that success and professionalism, as definitions, have become wider and more diverse.

Ambition remains a very personal trait that is present, to a lesser or greater degree in all people as they are individuals with personalities, specific belief and value sets and varying needs and experiences. Many ambitious women still envision a linear path to the top. But I believe that having been through the pandemic and the shift in many realities, people also understand more than ever that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I can’t speak for any other human except myself, but I do see, observationally, as an executive coach and Organizational Development consultant, that generally people are tired of accepting the legacy status quo as the only way forward in terms of what dictates how we work and when we work as well as where we work.

With the ‘Great Resignation,’ some people have literally voted with their feet and walked out of very well-paid jobs including Sheryl Sandberg who left Meta recently. Sheryl, as we know, was the author of Lean In. Well, she’s decided to lean out. I think that says a lot. I believe this was an era of ‘celebritizing’ a handful of women and it continues as VC’s are still backing firms that do close to zero for women on a structural change level and continue to implicitly tell women to just network.

Certainly people, and some companies, have also finally decided to stop tolerating the same biases based on gender, but there is still a lack of transparency around pay equality. Just recently, Google has paid out $118 million in settlement to 15,000 women in a class-action lawsuit about gender pay discrimination. I would hope there comes a day when equality is built through solid processes and good human behaviors not litigation – however, as it seems law suits are still the most effective method, that comes at great cost to the women who bring them.

I definitely see a theme where things, that we didn’t contest in the past, are more explicit and more accessible to contest at least. We are asking companies to walk the talk on equality and meritocracy. That starts and ends with transparency. There still isn’t a consistent pathway to get to the mystery of what you’re being paid and why, depending on who you are from a biology or ethnicity perspective, as pay is not really assigned strictly on merit, experience or even qualifications in most companies.

I have spent the past few years contemplating whether breaking the glass ceiling is a redundant concept for younger professionals in the sense that people don’t want to be on the other side of that glass if the traits it takes to be successful there means assimilating to something that just doesn’t resonate at all. When what’s been holding everything up is the structural walls of rules that clearly don’t favor meritocracy, due to flawed cognitive and social constructs around who gets to lead, is the work that is needed to be centered differently? A new way of looking at this? I am not sure the work is as evolutionary in the linear sense that we all once believed it was.

Q: Say more about how you are approaching the big questions, now.

I think futurism is key now in terms of understanding what can be, as well as what has been, or what is. I think that it’s a time of considering a deeper structural review instead of incremental bricks on the old crumbling foundations. Saying that, there are 41 female CEOs in the Fortune 500 right now, or 8.2 percent, which is a record high. I do not want to dismiss the fact that incremental change is happening, but it isn’t enough in terms of impact for anyone to truly celebrate progress with any sincerity, as if this was a product it would be shelved due to slow adoption in the marketplace. The big question is, are we happy with very gradual, incremental change? And how long will it take for equality to happen? Especially when we take huge hits like the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Title IX and other various cultural backslides that hamper women from an equal existence generally, as well as specifically.

Academically, this is going back to Virginia Schein’s (et al) “Think Manager – Think Male,” which began over 40 years ago. Without knowing the human involved, people in aggregate still vote for the straight male manager as the most leader-like with real traits like productivity, competence and assertiveness. Conversely, they continually mark in the traits survey that women are less competent, productive, and assertive even though there is not a specific woman being assessed, just generally as a cognitive concept of a female manager, which is very disheartening and often the respondents are also women. This remains in play in a very real way in a workplace near you! Never underestimate the power of the cultural wallpaper and what it can do in terms of unchecked internalized misogyny.

Q: Systemically, what cracks are we seeing more clearly than ever, especially now?

It goes back to promises not kept – transparency of pay, transparency of promotional track. The entire system has never been truly re-envisioned to integrate women’s lives or value our spherical lives as a whole. There’s also the blunt fact that organizations still ignore life outside the skyscraper. It has been well-documented that women do the second shift at home and do something like 10 extra hours of housework and childcare relative to their male counterparts. And that’s not just something that occurs in heterosexual relationships. It also shows up in LGBTQ+ families, because someone has to pick up the slack. But systemically and culturally, it has always been a majority of women that do that, while expected to be superwoman at work. Kudos to the men who do it as they rarely get recognized and should be, also.

“There’s been various research studies on remote work showing that many working mothers find it quite beneficial to work remotely because, productivity-wise, it’s helpful to not commute a couple of hours a day. We should be moving to results-oriented work, because professionals know what they have to deliver. We no longer need to wear pinstripe suits, ride a train and be in an office 9-5. We have to get away from this model that was designed last century. LinkedIn is redefining what it means to be “professional,” and it’s no longer being a white man going to the office in a three-piece suit with a briefcase.

“The office is now in your head and on your computer, and the cries to get back to the office are not necessarily based in productivity claims. For organizations and leaders to ignore that employees are actually telling you what they want and to ignore the data around productivity is just basing in (disproportionately white and white male) preferences. Many people can’t understand why they’re at the mercy of their manager’s choice. And now people, who would otherwise continue to work remotely, are worrying about falling on the wrong side of proximity bias. Just as paternity leave and full maternity leave are still underutilized because the hidden penalties and state-by-state and company-by-company inconsistencies do not always support people to feel it’s in their best interest. Often women are torn about how much time they can take for maternity leave in the pressure of 24/7 work with many exhausted and typing emails close to the birthing event. I know I was writing emails right up until the delivery room as that was a badge of honor that I just don’t believe Gen Y and beyond buy into on any level.

Q: So what can organizations who want to lean in, and walk the talk, do right now?

Organizations have a place to play in this because within their sphere of influence, inside and outside of their ‘virtual’ four walls, they can create a microcosm of equality – and it’s not that hard to achieve. It comes from:

  • Being clear in your mission and strategy around DEI aspects, and other aspects such as social responsibility, just as you would decide what you’re going to do with your core product. It’s as simple as that.
  • Make your management practices transparent, clear and consistent – so everyone knows what they have to do, what flies and what doesn’t. Make sure there are explicit norms as opposed to implicit norms that are subjective.
  • Surface anything that is a covert process – meaning: in denial, not on the table for discussion, for whatever reason.
  • Make sure everybody knows their role, their responsibilities, what’s expected of them, what are their goals, and ensure their responsibilities are aligned with their ability to execute on them. Make sure their skills and abilities match the job requirements.
  • Remove as much organizational grind as you can: the barriers, hindrances, obstacles to doing the job the way that people see fit, the way each person sees fit as a professional.
  • Understand individual needs and values, beyond grouping people together based on social identities such as gender, nationality, sexual orientation, or otherwise.
  • Help your people understand what success looks like. Let them know what it means to be doing a good job here.
  • Make sure people know which direction the company is going, what the company values and what are overarching goals, and that can include societal topics: because social issues have never been more integrated into corporate life than they have been in the past two years. To leave things unaddressed is a recipe for disaster. Silence is complicit and colluding.
  • Finally, make sure that when you talk the talk, you walk the talk. Ensure that you are creating actions to meet your espoused values, behaviorally. This means coaching leaders of all genders and creeds to understand how to create and implement positive change for all employees to be engaged and performing in a high but healthy way.

It’s not actually impossible or unreachable – and this is the work that has to take place as opposed to telling women to lean in, keep their head down, and keep at it. Because the last fifteen years has shown us that change has been present, but slow.

Thank you all for your continued presence and readership. We wish you a safe, healthy, enjoyable summer season.

Interviewed by Aimee Hansen

*After this week, The Glass Hammer will be taking a publishing break until September. Enjoy your summer as we are walking the talk on our values and focusing on coaching leaders and developing organizations to connect to the human factor better via our sister site evolvedpeople.com. Enjoy our 8,000+ articles and we will be back in the early Fall.

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Year In Review 2021: The Great Reckoning

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Year in Review 2021The great resignation has taken the main stage for big news for professionals and career path navigation in 2021. With the pandemic still raging, there has been a widespread re-evaluation with “what really matters?” being the theme for professional women and men alike. The great reckoning of “does this work, and work for me?” has emerged from a combination of elements that have brought people to a point where they want to look more deeply at their values and how those values align with their workplace and firm culture, beyond the paycheck alone.

Realities such as exhaustion or burnout effect are much higher in 2021 than 2020 due to the ongoing slog of Covid and the effects it has on all aspects of life and work. McKinsey/Lean In’s most recent report on Women in the Workplace 2021 states 42% of women feel burned out regularly in 2021 as opposed to a reported 32% in 2020 and more than men in both years.

Conversely, in the same report, progress is shown at between 6-24% for the pipeline of future female senior managers and leaders, with the most progress being at SVP and C-suite levels but still not surpassing a third of all leaders in these positions. However, as someone who has covered this topic deeply for the best part of fifteen years, I want to underline that 6% may not seem big, but it can be considered as progress finally after many stalled years. This is at least a trend in the right direction of progress and you can see the numbers and insights and analysis on them from theglasshammer.com from 2011 here in all Year in Reviews.

Active Listening- Feeling Heard is Important

Is the world changing for the better? As it pertains to not tolerating overt sexism and racism, yes clearly it is, as everyone is quicker to pour light on things that just don’t fly anymore.

In fact, men are starting to behaviorally show up as allies when they should and interestingly a new Catalyst study suggests this can be dependent on whether they feel they will be heard as humans, on many topics as well as this specific one. Manager openness to hearing inputs and suggestions, from how the job should be done to elements regarding culture such as inclusion, increases the chance of men speaking up against sexism from 35% to 62%.

Feeling heard is a human trait, no one likes to think they are talking to a brick wall or invisible, yet 80% of my leadership development assignment as an executive coach to senior Wall Street women and men involves delivering the bad news that peers and direct reports feel that managers don’t listen to them. Kate Murphy’s book You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters is a compelling journalistic exploration of what happens when people listen to each other, which can apply to any relationship, spouse, friend or child as well as to being a better executive or manager. Surely, now is the time for managers to listen?

Opportunity in Disruption

‘The Great Resignation’ doesn’t have to threaten diversity efforts, but rather isn’t it time to do things better and in some cases, differently?

Some people might want to go back to the office some or even all of the time, while others might want to stay working from home some, most or all of the time- and with most landing on the same preference of being given the choice to make their own decisions. What leaders seem to be missing is that it is about empowering people with choices to control their time, not mandating face time in the building.

In fact, this topic is very much about leadership development and mindset shift. Susan Ashford, Professor in the Management and Organizations group at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, explores the concept of flexing as a growth mindset for leaders. She discusses empowering people to know their needs and to be radical in their own “self management” in her new book about leadership learning called The Power of Flexing. This concept of letting employees get on with it on their terms in this Covid era world is backed up by research by Peter Capelli, Director of the Center for Human Resources at Wharton University, who suggests that in fact, many people are finding that they are thriving in a remote or a hybrid version of work. This study reveals that people are motivated when they are achieving their goals along with two very important things: feeling valued, which is the biggest driver, and being within a supported and inclusive environment. Capelli’s research also shows that getting tasks done to create a sense of purpose alone comes in last as a motivation driver, so endless piles of work in the wrong isolating conditions can lead to disengagement and quitting.

Adam Grant, Professor of Psychology at Wharton, researched back in 2007 how employee performance is increased when there is a feeling of helping an actual human by meeting with them to know about their issue and having the ability to try and help. Putting a face to a name seems to matter, and as face to face human contact has been reduced in the past eighteen months, it will be interesting when we see future research into videoconferencing (as a close second or even as a replacement?). It does seem like some major Fortune 500 companies are taking the leap of faith that remote work is the future with PwC announcing that it will allow all 40,000 of its US client services employees to work virtually and remotely, with the UK office following suit with an additional 22,000 people allowed to work remotely.

Aligning People and Technology

Getting leaders to understand the importance of aligning the human side with the operational and technological side is key to engage and retain talent – it’s futurism and that requires a lot of mental complexity as systems thinking will need to be applied. Are leaders up for the challenge?

To create the workplace of the future, it is key to start with the workforce of the future. Meryl Rosenthal, CEO of Flexpaths, has been pioneering remote and flex work for all since 2005. She sees the trend as here to stay and knows the role of leaders is crucial to success.

She comments, 
“As hybrid work increasingly becomes a reality across organizations, ensuring that alignment at the top doesn’t wane is key. At FlexPaths we are seeing more and more companies ill-prepared for the downstream impacts of poorly implemented hybrid work. With plummeting engagement, uncertain executives and ineffective communication, now is the time to focus on leaders on why it is important to get a plan as the future is now”.

People Want Acts not Ads

Finally, evolved employers must realize that employees want to see real acts, not just lip service and advertising around issues that are value-driven. Whether it is working remotely or responding to social or environmental issues, it is crucial that corporations understand that walking the talk and closing the identity gap between espoused and lived values happens. Data of both quantitative and qualitative nature is required to understand what people expect from their employer. If your company was a person, would you want to hang out with them?

We believe diversity and gender issues can be solved when companies finally understand that organizational development is important and that diversity is not about a Noah’s Ark approach but rather about lived experience. Behaviors matter as they all add up to create culture.

We wish everyone a happy, safe, peaceful and joyful festive season. See you in 2022.

By Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com

Nicki founded theglasshammer in 2007 to inspire, inform and empower professional women in their careers. We have been the leading and longest running career advice online and in person media company in the USA for professional women in financial services.

We also provide executive coaching services and organizational coaching under our sister brand evolvedpeople.com

Thank you to all readers, sponsors, supporters and contributors over the past 15 years. We couldn’t do it without you!

For the women by the women.

If you want to coached by Nicki in 2022, write to her nicki@theglasshammer – to find out more about the process. She works with VP level and above.

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Four Steps to Making Professional and Personal Life Change in 2021

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Nicki GilmourOur lives changed one year ago this week, in ways we could not have predicted. Most professional women lost the office, the commute and socialization with clients, coworkers and friends in New York City, London or wherever we live and work around the country and the world.

Cities emptied as many relocated to the countryside or the suburbs. Mothers took on 15+ more hours a week of domestic work and childcare, and some left work due to the strain. Others experienced a workforce reduction that cut across every sector in one way or another.

In an unprecedented year, many of us have felt shock, pain, loss and grief in different ways for different reasons. As most changes to our world endure, this brings another level of internal processing and feelings.

In a time where the external context has felt both uncertain and unfamiliar, many of us have felt more compelled towards reconnection with our center, our internal compass and our animating purpose—What do I value? What do I want to envision and create? Where do I want to focus my energy and attention?

These questions matters, now as much or more than ever. Here are four steps to support in the process of re-evaluation:

Step 1: Feel the feels.

Let yourself feel everything, but know that you are not your emotions, rather that you experience these emotions.

“Emotional Agility” is important. Being able to recognize and name how you feel and know that you can see it objectively, and not only experience it subjectively, means understanding that you are not the emotion.

Emotions are data that can help you understand what next steps are right for you. The amazing Dr. Susan David at Harvard has worked extensively on helping people understand that if we put our emotions to one side to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to deal with the world as it is, instead of as we wish it to be.

In her TedX talk, she recounts that over the years, when people say they don’t want to try something or they prefer to avoid disappointment or they want fear and shame to just go away, her humorous response is: “I understand, but you have dead people’s goals.”

David offers a free quiz to begin the journey of becoming more astute about your emotions, and her bestselling book is a great way to start getting in touch with your emotions as your guides.

“Normal, natural emotions are now seen as good or bad,” she states. “Being positive has become a new form of moral correctness. It’s unkind and ineffective.”

Ignore the societal call for relentless positivity and keep it real, so you can be honest with yourself about how you feel. You will be happier for it and more guided towards genuine contentment and joy, because you listened to yourself.

Step 2: Take Care of Inner Business.

“Wherever you go, there you are” is the saying.

Who are you? Do you behaviors line up with what you say matters to you? Or, what are you committing to, instead? How do you show up for yourself?

In her excellent book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and in her body of work on transitions, including during Covid (quick read here), Herminia Ibarra suggests that in the messy business of getting to where we want to go, we should consider not only our current selves but our future possible selves also.

“Possible selves are the ideas we all have about who we might want to become. Some are concrete and well-informed by experience; others are vague and fuzzy, nascent and untested,” writes Ibarra. “Some are realistic; others are pure fantasy. And, naturally, some appeal more to us than others.”

List your skills, your values and who you want to be. To self-assess your driving inner forces around recognition, fairness, and autonomy, for example, take the SCARF free quiz to see where you fall on the spectrum of these behavioral motivators.

Harvard’s longest running study on adult development suggests that while we say we want money and success, those who live the healthiest, happiest and longest actually share one essential experience —having deep human connection. That includes with ourselves.

Why not use the shake-up of this liminal time to shine an investigate light in the places where you have been on auto-pilot and check-in if you are still living in alignment with yourself, now?

Step 3: Commit to the Changes You Want to Make.

In this blurry time, I invite you to take stock as professional women to review what is working for you and what needs to simply change—in both your inner story and your outer physical world.

Change is hard and neuroscience and psychology shows us that we tend to stick with what we know through routines, even if the habits aren’t that useful to us anymore. Trying to live like we did before is pretty impossible, but being resilient and adaptable amidst whatever this new decade brings in our world is key.

It is the mental or even professional pivot, not the hanging on, that will empower you. Pivoting is something that we are all doing, whether it is small adjustments to how we work or a big transition into a new career altogether. Ibarra has always argued that we are all in transition at work, but we just don’t know it yet.

Businesses who have pivoted during the pandemic have seen the best results when they protect their core, while innovating slightly to meet needs of a changing customer. Company culture and brand purpose matters the most—who are you and what do you stand for?

If businesses are taking stock of these questions, take the same permission slip: Who are you, now? What do you value, now? Where do you wish to set your vision and put your energy, from now onwards?

Step 4: Elevate Your Development With a Coach.

I know this is going to sound strange, but as an executive and leadership coach, I effectively spend four to eight hours per day inside other people’s heads. Like in the movie Being John Malkovich, I become privy to the inner voices that we all have, and it is fascinating to witness the “truths” that we all tell ourselves.

We all have a bunch of constructs, albeit different ones, that make up our default operating system. Your brain, mostly your unconscious, is running the show and is building data models day and night via associative process. This comprises your worldview or mental model, literally the lens through which you experience your life—unless seen, challenged, disrupted and revisioned.

We’re often blind to what creates our limits and blocks. We all have goals, but we need to surface our subconscious gremlins, who are trying to thwart are best-laid plans for change by creating hidden competing agendas.

A great model for approaching this internal work by yourself is available in the book Immunity to Change, which really is a life-altering read that I have discussed at length here on the site. Imposter syndrome runs rampant with successful overachievers, and I have not met one client yet who doesn’t have some deep fear of failure, wobbly sense of worthiness, or hidden insecurity or shame.

But you don’t have to be beholden to these gremlins anymore, and you don’t have to overcome them alone, either.

You can do so much to clear the debris and make real change uninterrupted by your subconscious fears. Neuroscience research has now caught up with what social psychologists have been hypothesizing on for decades: The brain is high elastic or plastic and even the most entrenched behaviors can be modified.

Ibarra and others suggest that coaches are key to the process of making the changes you most hunger for: Firstly, in talking it all out. Secondly, in helping you make real and actionable plans. Thirdly, in acting as an accountability partner and advocate to be in your corner as you navigate the course to new territory.

Are you ready?

If you would like to work with Nicki Gilmour as your executive coach, she has some (daytime only) spots left or we have a cadre of vetted professional coaches available (some have evenings available). Please click here for an exploratory call.

Packages start at $799 for 2 sessions, 5 sessions for $1999 and ten sessions for $3,899.

by Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder, Evolved People (theglasshammer.com)

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2020: A Look Ahead for Executive Women and Real Change

2020Happy New Year 2020! Theglasshammer.com is in its third decade as I founded this leading career advice site for professional women in 2007.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In December, we rounded up the year and the decade and stated that to see real change, we really need to do things differently as a society, as well as in companies. And, as leaders and managers and even as individual executives, we need to understand our personal role in change, collusion and status quo.

In 2020, we are going to continue our “tell your story around the campfire to the rest of the village” strategy. We want women to inspire other women and men for that matter, by sharing their personal and professional insights and experiences. In a world where we know women get written out of history or are statistically less likely to be credited for their achievement and contributions, we continue to dedicate the site to making sure there is a platform from which to talk your truth. Your truth is yours alone, but there are some universal truths that form a pattern that suggests there is much more systemic work to do on gender equity than most people want to admit.

We are still here and more committed than ever to telling your story. We are still committed to providing you with evidence-based solutions as it pertains to navigating and managing your career and life.

However, diversity is a misnomer of a word as it implies that the acceptable baseline is straight white men and the rest of us are somehow different. We are the norm just as much as they are and we are not in need fixing or blending or assimilating. Also, the thought of over half the population being different and somehow therefore needing a solution alienates men from participating fully and many of them do not actually gain from the outdated structures that keep us from being all valued as unique humans.

Let’s commit to getting past these remedial change conversations around unhelpful blame of men and ineffective burden solely on women to supposedly fix 100,000 years of societal dynamics in a coffee chat network format, which, if you stop and think about it, couldn’t be more ridiculous.

In 2020, let’s commit to stop pretending that awareness is enough, that research and facts alone can change deep structures that involve power of groups and individuals who frankly don’t want to give it up arbitrarily to an unknown faceless concept (who would?). Let’s do the work, one person at a time, regardless of who we are biologically, tone of skin, who we love, how we are, where we are from. Being a woman doesn’t make you unbiased against women. Being a person of color or LGBT doesn’t make you automatically a bias-free individual either. We all hold stereotypes ubiquitously; no one is exempt.

It is a disservice to not encourage individuals from differentiating themselves as there is no such thing as “all men or all women”. However, we do know there are real group-affiliated benefits from lingering historical power structures.

Let’s work harder to not project our ideals unto people and let them tell us who they are. Value positive behavior (even if that behavior is dissent) and not ideas about who we are due to the body we are born into. This is the future of work and society and we will all gain from it. The Howard/Heidi Rozen case study was twenty years ago whereby Heidi Rozen switched gender on her same paper which was presented under Howard with vastly differing reactions to when she presented it under Heidi. Can we for the love of progress, say that the next twenty years might have men and women evolving past their implicit cognitive biases to not be so laughable about how we judge women on likeability despite the same facts or results being there.

Write less and do more in 2020

We have over 4,000 “how to” articles in our archives for you to read for free. We have discussed and dissected research for 13 years but know that research alone has not moved the needle much. The research has been ignored and often conducted by firms that are, ironically, totally male dominated in their culture and managerial roles and numbers. We have to say no to the false prophets and dead poets trotting out the same old advice without deep structural or behavioral change on the company side. We are in a period of history where people myopically choose their facts and reject other versions, with an extreme disassociation in some cases. But we are still in the same place psychologically with the same neurobiology we have had for a while now, meaning we work within cognitive biases that accumulate from familiar and cultural messages. So, why are we are surprised at the slow-as-molasses progress?

The answer is complex

We have been coaching leaders, managers and executives (women and men) for the past eight years to empower them to design and achieve what they want from their career and life. We have been training inside firms on how to be a change leader, and we have been coaching and consulting with firms on how to create a better workplace. It requires change and those firms and individuals willing to do the work are to be commended.

Coaching humans is what changes the world for the better. Coaching leaders to be fair and at the same time coaching organizations to create the right culture and structures for people to go to work and feel the wind behind the backs for high performance and happy successes is the future.

We embrace working with individuals and organizations to understand where you are at. Then we work on what you want and where you want to be using a method designed primarily at Columbia University and evolved to encompass deeper disciplines, drawn from development and organizational psychology with contextual business models and frameworks, to create the change cognitively, emotionally, psychologically and behaviorally. Because we are individual/organizational psychologists, we know that your situation is very specific to you since your beliefs and behaviors are based on your life experiences and actual personality. We know that development work starts with you, whoever you are and whatever has shaped you. Wherever you work (team, firm, even location) will tone up or tone down certain behaviors because as Kurt Lewin, the forefather of organizational psychology, determined, behavior is a function of both your personality and the environment that you are operating in.

Join us, as evolved people. Be the change you want to see in the world.

By Nicki Gilmour, Founder of theglasshammer.com, Organizational Psychologist and Coach

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Year End Review 2019: Diversity and Inclusion in 2020 Must Be Done Differently

2019 year end reviewThe headline for rounding up this decade is simple: doing the same thing over and over again is the very definition of madness.

Neuroscience and behavioral science have the answers to the (lack) of gender equity issue. The questions are, do people want the answer? And are they prepared to what it takes to get there? The term “the glass ceiling” was coined 41 years ago by Marilyn Loden who argued that the “the ‘invisible glass ceiling’ – the barriers to advancement that were cultural not personal – was doing the bulk of the damage to women’s career aspirations and opportunities.”

To that point, 41 years later, companies are still doing one thing wrong when addressing the issue of gender. What is this core truth? It is written concisely in the London School of Economics editorial in Forbes and is as simple as this: we focus too much on the role of the individual in perpetuating or solving these issues. Resulting in blaming men and burdening women.

Why is progress so slow? The decade in review

First of all, progress is slow. The decade started with a flurry of great research from Catalyst and Sylvia Ann Hewlett offering strong answers like sponsorship over mentorship and increased pipeline attention for women in crucial moments. This was good work, helpful and even hopeful but lacked the much needed shift of work from individuals to systemic answers despite knocking on that door. Progress was derailed in my opinion by 2013 by the unwitting false prophecy of “Lean In” with a misleading mantra which distracted leaders and diversity people from the real work as this false single fix was what people wanted to hear. More work for the women, everything else untouched. This is a prevalent theme with employee networks and training courses this entire decade. The most recent episode in the news was the EY training asking women to act nicely around men course leak which someone finally recognized as worth a whistleblow.

Even “Lean In” has the conclusion in 2019 that the sane academics and theglasshammer have been suggesting all the while, which is that you do what you have to do to get the system to lean in as well in order to truly succeed. The book was useful as it sparked the beginning of the discussion around privilege, and Ann Marie Slaughter’s counter piece on the system was a way to introduce what systemic barriers meant for people entering the discussion. Sandberg’s later work with Adam Grant on was excellent as we know she personally did the work but the people who made her the poster child only heard the message of “its on the women to do more”. The brightest spots for me in this era of 2013-2018 were Herminia Ibarra’s Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader with act-first-internalize-later theory but in conjunction with the inside-out approach of challenge – whose beliefs you are running around with? – of Kegan and Lahey’s work Immunity to Change. Finally, there is Cordelia Fine’s book called Testosterone Rex stating that behavioral differences are cultural, not biologically natural, to debunk the faux brain science of the two thousand and mid-teens. I won’t name names, but even if you believe men are from Mars and women are from Venus (which I don’t), we are all conditioned by earthly norms developed from  cultural (societal and inside whichever family you lived) messaging.

Legal Structures Do Matter Also

The World Economic Forum at Davos in 2018 proclaimed in their “Global Gender Gap Report” that at this rate it will take between 106 and 400 years to achieve gender equity. The US is ranked 51 in the global index, which includes economic participation, heath and survival, education and political (legal) empowerment. Iceland is ranked number one, with the Nordics filling the top four spots of getting there and UK sitting at number 15 in this global study. Guess what? Strong social fabric with less machismo, a safety net and laws that protect women seem to matter for gender equity. What we can learn from this report is that legal and policy support is fundamental to a gender equal society. The Equal Rights Amendment was still not ratified in the USA this decade, so women are technically not legally equal to men. Worth watching the documentary Equal means equal.

Does systemic change influence attitudinal change?

Yes, but only to the extent to which people can dissect their feelings around their thoughts. If someone has a strong belief system (say the implicit patriarchy and its schema of how society is constructed and run with normed and formed gender roles in this case of “diversity”) then it is harder for them to have attitudinal switches. However, if people have no feelings or the switch supports their feelings (and arousal such as fear is a common feeling) they are very easy to change their minds. Change in the status quo terrifies most people.

Also, we tend to have fixed ideas on the way it is and the “who is it.” This shows up as stereotypes, positive and negative, as we often forget how we naturally authorize men and deauthorize women all day long – and both sexes do it. We have written about how people hold stereotypes ubiquitously as many women have so much internalized sexism that they enjoy a massive benefit-of-the-doubt exercise on talent and competence as much as the next guy. Just this week Michelle Obama talked about not being so quick to defer and to resist a man’s presumption of power. Interestingly, if you read social media or onlne newsletter’s comment boxes, after a statement like this, someone (it is inevitable) says not all men, defensively of men, or worse, something personally dismissive (subconsciously racist) about Michelle Obama as a person. Observe your feelings and reactions as it is exactly this type of cognitive awareness that enables us to make choices such as language and nomination of the most talented person and get away from the binary of good or bad categorization that prevents you from uncovering biases and preferences. I mean literally Boris Johnson, said and did everything Theresa May had already done, but society and history will never remember that. This happens to women in meetings all day long.

It is not a battle of the sexes as that is a race to the bottom and we lose so much by generalizing all women or all men. Working on where cognitive process meets social conditioning is what the future of diversity needs, not HR compliance work on drinks parties or even panels (we have stopped holding them and ours were pretty groundbreaking). It is not Noah’s Ark with two of everyone and even if it was that, we have failed there too to gain real parity and have created all the wrong conversations.

It is costing everyone money by not changing. Possibly you personally. Practice forgiveness starting with yourself because we are all on a journey to evolve ourselves, our teams and society at large.

Awareness first, then doing the work to understand the very unique ways that each person needs to make the behavioral changes that creates success, sustainability and happiness is what we help leading women ( and men) in financial services and Fortune 1000 companies do with our coaching work. If you want to book a complimentary chemistry call with me to discuss if coaching could help you in 2020, book here.

We wish the readers of theglasshammer a happy and safe festive season. See you in January.

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Design a Quitting Plan: Opportunity Cost is Real in Your Career

Nicki Gilmour
Stop doing things at work that don’t work. Heard this before?

Has anyone told you to quit unproductive habits, or even quit your job? Well, today we are going to talk about not quitting.  At least, when you shouldn’t.

How many of us quit at the wrong time? When the going gets tough? The other side of the coin is that so many more do not quit something when we should ( job, project, partner, habit etc.) to do something better that we do not know exists yet.

Beyond being a coach and keeping my knowledge up to par, I love reading good personal and professional development books. I can be found having a little peace away from the madding crowd on the floor of a Barnes and Noble in summer months when work is less crazy. Air conditioning an added bonus. Recently, I picked up Seth Godin’s “the dip: a little book that teaches you when to quit (and when to stick)” and it resonated deeply for this column and the career advice I offer. Seth has a great blog too and this book is based on this blog “The four curves of want and get.”

Basically, the dip, according to Seth, is the moment we want to quit in the hard bit. This means when we feel exhausted or frustrated in our career, working out, or trying to learn new skills generally. Sometimes, things get hard, setbacks happen. No new news there, but why this book is a good and quick read (but gender bias in his examples at every turn in the book with implicit assumptions around the best being portrayed as a man continually is my only critique of an otherwise fabulous read), is that it compels you to think about why you quit when you do.

What is worth pushing through to the other side?

This little gem of a book talks about what criteria can be created to give yourself the permission to quit for the right reasons and at the right time. Invaluable.

Why is it that some of us don’t quit when we should?  When there is a dead end or a cliff that ultimately creates a downfall or loss for us in some way?

It got me thinking about so many of the people I coach.

It is my opinion that we are all in a state of quitting, we just do not know it. Much like Steven Covey’s identified habit of ‘begin with the end in mind’ in his book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, success often comes with an exit strategy or a desired outcome.

We might be at the start of the curve and full of enthusiasm. But, over time it is inevitable that we are fighting entropy, boredom or irrelevance unless we find new ways to do things. We should know our mission and our end goal but change the product, tactic, approach where necessary, quit those things, but not the stuff that makes us great and makes us happy.

Seth Godin agrees, “The best quitters are those who decide to quit in advance, not because of panic or momentary dip. When you are being asked to settle for less, compromise or drop out, your desire to quit should be at its lowest. If it’s the easiest time to give up that is not the time to give up. “

He continues, “Strategic quitting is a conscious decision you make based on the choices that are available to you. If you realize you are at a dead end compared to what you could be investing in, quitting is not a reasonable choice, it’s a smart one.”

You should quit when you are facing a cliff or a dead end. Forget pride, sunken costs, quit when you know you can do better or be better or have more of what you want.

What is the bigger picture?

So, the message here is don’t quit your job if there is still value to you in the firm or industry, quit the way you do your job or quit the team or manager or even the firm. But, know what you want and need to know what you have to do to get it.

Need help figuring this all out? Work with a career coach – schedule a free exploratory chat to see if coaching is for you with Nicki Gilmour here.

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Happy Labor Day and UK Bank Holiday!

Nicki GilmourHappy end of summer! We are taking a publishing break to recharge our editorial calendar for the rest of the year.

We have over 8000 career advice articles in our archives to read within that, over 3500 profiles of amazing women to inspire you.

We have been in existence for 13 years and have written about advancement strategies, gender equity at work, advice on how to navigate the system and how to think about planning your career path in many ways.

In 2020, we will be unveiling a new look and will be focusing on coaching and leadership development because we truly believe that women (and all people- we coach men, and gender non binary clients too) can walk the talk when individuals can understand themselves and how they operate in the specific cultural environment (country, firm, team, boss dynamics are all norms we live with and influence what we do and how we do it).

Enjoy some time off if you can and enjoy our hard work in all the amazing writing from theglasshammer writers and guest contributors here.

Sincerely,

Nicki Gilmour
CEO

P.S Book an exploratory session (free) with me to see if coaching is for you as we have space for 10 new coaching clients this September.

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The GlassHammer Is For Sale

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Dear Readers,

After 12 years of providing career advice and a platform for amazing women to tell their career stories, glasshammer2.wpengine.com is for sale.

This online career advice site and events business continues to stay loyal to the original mission stated as “inform, inspire and empower professional women.”

Editorially, we have tried to help women to navigate the terrain optimally by dissecting research, calling on experts and creating a platform for people to tell their story. Our past events have been truly interesting, educational and have served to connect women with each other and with allies and champions.

We would like to see someone else take the baton and run with it for 2020 and beyond as this is important work. It continues to be an important time for gender equity and inclusion in the workplace.

Nicki Gilmour, the founder and CEO, is continuing her work as an executive and organizational coach and consultant and comments:

“I am really grateful that this journey of founding and publishing glasshammer2.wpengine.com has taken me to a place where I can do deep work and affect individual and organizational change via coaching and consulting. The time has come to dedicate myself to one, not two, businesses. It will be a pleasure to see the next generation of advocates for equality publish this well-read and much-loved resource for professional women. Fresh energy and commitment from a new person/firm will no doubt take this website to new heights.”

If you interested in acquiring the site and you are a qualified prospect to buy the site, contact Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder of the site, at nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com or call 646-688-2318.

Learn more about our coaching business www.evolvedpeople.com

 

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