Tag Archive for: sponsors

Jack Ginter, President, Abbot Downing, a boutique wealth business of Wells Fargo Wealth and Investment Management

Jack Ginter“Nobody does it alone. Strong relationships are critical. The biggest thing men can do, is engage in the topic, be a mentor and a mentor who becomes a sponsor is even better,” says Jack Ginter, President of Abbot Downing.

Ginter recognizes that mentors and sponsors including “two very strong women” were the people willing to speak up for him on his behalf throughout his career. He has been in wealth management for more than 25 years and risen through the ranks having client facing, portfolio experience as well as significant management experience. Ginter was part of the team that founded Abbot Downing in 2012 merging three businesses previously known as Calibre, Lowry Hill and Wells Fargo Family Wealth and now manages employees and serves clients across all 50 states.

Ginter is inspired to lead from the front on creating an inclusive workforce that runs on meritocratic principles. Personally, he is passionate to build opportunities for talented women, and is motivated to use his voice, power and position to drive change.

Ginter wants to ensure that everyone gets the chance to understand that diversity is a topic for everyone and encourages everyone to do the work that is needed to clear the deck for honest conversations.

“We have spent time here at Abbot Downing on unconscious bias and what microaggressions are. Men have to engage as allies and really dig deep into the topic to move the needle.”

He urges women to seek out men who get it.  Engaging with others who want to embrace the talent within the organization is essential to personal and professional growth.

“I have a daughter who is 19 and I have nieces that I want to have opportunities different than a decade ago. We have incredibly talented women on my current team who I want to see succeed and get to the next level. These women have had a significant impact on our business and the wealth industry.  I believe the success of our business depends on contributions from individuals who have different perspectives and innovative ideas.”

Jack participates in supporting women and creating change as an adviser to the Wells Fargo Women’s Team Member Network, a program that is committed to building a diverse and inclusive culture at Wells Fargo for women through personal and professional development, mentoring, leadership engagement, networking and community outreach opportunities.

He is a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Council which spans all Wealth and Investment Management. He recounts how years ago, a female mentor of his team told him something that stuck with him.

“She told me that if I had a voice that has power, I have to use it. I have never forgotten that. Sometimes it is not easy to have uncomfortable conversations but men need to be engaged in the conversation. It is hard to own the fact you might have had privilege, but the overarching message here is that you have to engage and be direct in calling out behavior that needs to be called out.”

Holding People Accountable

Ginter is convinced that leaders can commit and engage in inclusive behaviors that attracts others who also believe to ensure a strong future with a complete understanding of what progress looks like. He believes in always having diverse slate of candidates when recruiting talent, a diverse hiring panel and understanding what a good culture looks like for real retention.

“We need a strong, healthy and diverse team. That is the future of our business.”

Ginter believes reverse mentoring, where a senior leader is mentored by a member of the broader team, has been a successful way for him and other leaders to really learn and listen. In this role, Ginter says he had to trust, be transparent and open with his mentor. Through difficult discussions he was able to work through communication and style issues and discuss common interests and goals.

When Ginter reflects on what advice would he give his younger self, regarding diversity and the narratives and needs of other people’s lives, he offers,

“I think looking back, I would tell myself to be more curious, listen more to other people and most importantly to never take away the other person’s decision making power.”

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Women, Get Promoted in 2020

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Get PromotedIf your goal is to get promoted in 2020, then you might consider doing an inventory of your relationships. Figuring out who your advocates or sponsors are is a good start. Then think about how you deploy them as true sponsors, so that you can secure and be rewarded for some high profile assignments. This, if you can get a great sponsor and are willing to make them look good is still a very effective career strategy.

My favorite academic Hermina Ibarra discusses the spectrum of mentor to sponsor or advocate in HBR in a way that really demonstrates that it is ok to have a mentor but to not be surprised when they are just an advice giver as opposed to an opportunity giver or “cash their chips on your behalf” person for you.

Sponsorship, almost ten years old as a named concept

We first started writing about sponsorship when the term was coined by Sylvia Ann Hewlett in 2011 when she wrote with Amex about the benefits of the relationship for female executives looking to succeed at work. We continued to write about through the early teens of this past decade as people struggled with the differentiation of mentors versus sponsors. The conclusion that Ibarra makes and I agree with as an organizational coach, is that most formal sponsorship programs haven’t delivered and in some cases have been scrapped altogether. As she states in her article,

“Typically, they abandon sponsorship because experience has shown them that while you can ask senior executives to provide advice and support to high-potential women, you cannot mandate that they spend their personal capital advocating for people they don’t know well or may not be bullish about.”

So, what can you do? Figure out who is who in your network using Ibarra’s sliding scale of mentor, strategizer, connector, opportunity giver and advocate. Once you know where you stand, you can start to know what your ask is!

Know the talent processes

Secondly, I am often surprised when as a coach, someone tells me they want to be promoted but yet have not investigated the formal talent processes at their firm. It is important to know what you have to do to be in the running as sometimes there is formal nomination and that can form the very basis for the plan that will take you to the next level. You can tell HR or your boss that you are interested in a long-term future there at your firm and therefore would like to know what you need to do to be considered for promotion. You can even request a specific timeline as the worst that can happen is that you tell you nothing, which is information in itself. Observe what behaviors and who gets rewarded at work as these are cultural norms that play a part in subjective talent processes in firms that are looser on their formal processes.

You can then focus your networking, and your work projects. When you are doing stretch assignments that matter, find ways to make sure others know as that is better than working yourself to the bone and expecting the reward on sheer volume of work alone.  Start having the right conversations with the right people, and if this sounds political then know that is how life implicitly works as men have meetings outside meetings all the time in the bathroom, bar, ballgame and the hallway. I sit in cafes a lot with my laptop and I hear men gossip about work even more than women do and they never say that other men are not competent, yet I hear women colleagues being undermined over coffee by women and men, sadly most days. The double bind of how you are darned if you do and darned if you don’t!

Other things to do in 2020 to get promoted

Thirdly in 2020, read the book by long-time collaborator and friend of theglasshammer Sara Canaday called “You, according to Them” that will help you understand that how you are perceived is just as important as who you actually are.

Lastly, to get promoted one of the best strategies is to get a coach. The FT just reported it’s the biggest thing so far in 2020 for career success and empirical evidence suggests randomized control tests showed that 85 per cent of coachees were better off than those in the control group,  not just in their own view, but also in the opinion of their line managers.

Hermina Ibarra’s latest work espouses coaching style for managers as the future. I believe her.

We walk the talk so call us for a complimentary chat about whether a coach can help you get what you want in 2020. Email nicki@theglasshammer.com as we have real life success stories for the past seven years of coaching VP, SVP, Managing Director and C-level women in the financial, professional and technology industries. Put coaching in the email subject line.

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Being the Mentee You Were Meant to Be

mentorsWhether already working with mentors or thinking about doing so in the future, mentees should keep a few things in mind to maximize the benefits and to minimize the stress.

Failing to put enough thought into career objectives, expecting mentors to do most of the heavy lifting and neglecting to show appreciation for the time commitment made by mentors could put a strain on the mentor-mentee relationship.

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Mentor me: The Value of Male and Female Mentors

Business meeting.By Nneka Orji (London)

Mentoring, mentoring, mentoring. We are all constantly told about the positive impact a mentor can have on one’s career; from formal support and guidance, to very active yet informal promotion of a mentee’s achievements in the presence of senior colleagues. I, too, wrote about this very topic in a previous article, highlighting the benefits of mentoring in rebuilding the image of women at the workplace.

Based on the findings of numerous reports and studies, it is safe to say that mentors are invaluable, and we could all benefit from having someone in our corner. Yet according to a recent LinkedIn survey, 19 percent of professional women in the US stated they have never had a mentor. If the advantages of having a mentor are so clear, why are so many women missing out on the numerous opportunities that mentoring relationships offer?

Finding the Right Mentor

Over half of the LinkedIn survey respondents claim to have never found an appropriate mentor. This begs two questions:

1. Are the available mentors more “appropriate” for male mentees only?
2. Should women be more proactive or strategic in the way they seek mentors?

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Mentoring the Millennial Generation: Advice for Senior Female Executives

girlpowerBy Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

What is the best way to find out what makes NextGen employees tick? Ask them. This is exactly what PwC, along with the University of Southern California and The London Business School did in their groundbreaking study, PwC’s NextGen: a global generational study [PDF]. With over 40,000 responses collected and 18 global territories represented, this study identifies the attitudes, perceptions, mentality and overall work preferences of the next generation of the world’s workforce – Millennials.

Although Millennials and non-Millennials hold many similar viewpoints about flexible schedules, the ability to work occasionally from home, and the importance of healthy work/life balance, it seems as though PwC’s NextGen study reveals one important difference between Millennials and the generations before them. Millennials are not as inclined to make big sacrifices in their personal lives in order to climb the corporate rungs at work.

In fact, according to the study, 15% of all male employees and 21% of all female employees would accept less pay and extend the pace of their personal career advancement to work fewer hours. The study also suggests, however, that Millennials value different contributing factors to their personal advancement. What is the impact of these findings?

“Millennials are not afraid of working hard,” says Terri McClements, US Human Capital Leader for PwC, “it’s that the experience is equally important to them as putting in the hours it takes to achieve a certain title or role.”

While the results of the NextGen study have the potential to significantly affect workplace culture as corporate leaders adapt to accommodate the needs of this emerging workforce majority in an effort to improve employee retention and create effective talent development programs, the real impact just might be felt in the mentor/mentee relationships between non-Millennial senior level executives and Millennials.

This is especially true in the case of senior level female executives who choose to act as mentors to Gen Y rising stars within their company. With Millennial attitudes differing from non-Millennials in some key areas, how can these two generations of female workers connect in a way that is meaningful and beneficial for everyone involved, including the company?

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Why Role Models are Critical for Developing Women Leaders in Tech

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iStock_000009318986XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Recently, The Glass Hammer revealed our new research on women in technology – we wanted to find out what companies can do to better retain women at the junior and mid-career levels. Many companies are making a robust effort to recruit a high percentage of women at the entry-level, but few are building the organizational structure that will ultimately keep them there.

In our study, we identified a few motivators that stoke the career ambition of junior and mid-level women in technology – things like “walking the talk” (see our earlier article on the topic) and participating in a leadership development course.

Another key indicator of C-suite ambition was having a role model. In fact, the vast majority of our respondents (79.9 percent) said they had a role model. Meanwhile, respondents who didn’t have a role model were significantly more likely to say they had no C-suite aspirations than those who did have one.

That’s why, we believe, it’s important for companies to recognize the importance of nurturing connections between junior and mid-level technologists and the people at the top who support them through sponsorship initiatives, women’s networking groups, and mentoring programs.

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