We hear a lot about how, in addition to mentors and mentorship, women need assistance to get into leadership. They need sponsors to help make it into the executive ranks. But how do you learn what a sponsor wants? Dana turns it around and invites you to start sponsoring others now, no matter what level you are at. This, she says, helps you develop a leadership mindset that helps you attract sponsors yourself. Learn other tips for attracting career sponsors on this month’s InPower Coffee Break coaching call May 30th. – InPower Editors
Research into why some people make it into executive leadership, and some people don’t, has illuminated an interesting phenomenon. It turns that that while mentors talk to you – helping you work more effectively in the corporate culture – sponsors talk about you in positive ways– tossing your name in the hat for a plum job behind closed doors or pointing out some great work you did to someone who can help you advance in your career.
Sponsors, it turns out, are a key to talent development in that sponsors help promising leaders get the right experiential opportunity at the right time in their careers. The higher you go the more sponsors are critical to your success – including at the CXO and board levels.
Yet when I talk to CEOs, board members and other senior executives I rarely hear much about their sponsorship activities. I hear more about how much they enjoy mentorship. And who doesn’t? Nurturing talent is one of the best parts of running a business and so we tend to spend more energy on it. Sponsoring others is also usually best done privately to protect against unhelpful gossip, but this doesn’t shine much light on how this important talent development activity really works. As a result it’s challenging for those lower in the ranks to understand how to be a good sponsor, and attract sponsors themselves.
So I’d like to ask mentors to help their mentees become good sponsors and become proactive in attracting sponsors, too. Yes, I want to encourage everyone – even middle and lower level managers – to sponsor others more consciously. Why train mid-level employees to be good sponsors? Because when you sponsor others, you’re:
looking out for the business and helping strategically develop talent; rewarding others’ good work directly; and becoming more conscious of what makes a good leader in your organization so you can continue to develop as a leader yourself.
This last point is pretty important for lower and mid-level employees. When you start sponsoring others, you become better able to see how you can proactively position yourself to those above you.
Becoming an active sponsor puts you in a leadership mindset, regardless of what your actual authority or responsibility is. And that leadership mindset pays off by helping you lead more consciously, develop talent where you see it and take on an “ownership” orientation to the company – no matter what level you’re at now. And all this pays off by making your leadership abilities more apparent to all those who might sponsor you!
Taking on a sponsor mindset is one strategy for becoming attractive to executive career sponsors who can help you achieve your professional goals, but there are more.
Join the InPower Coaching Community to download an eBook on how to attract an executive Sponsor.
Have a mentee who would benefit? Please share the link!
Happy Valentines Day! This year we wanted to give you a new way to love yourself, by sharing a career development perspective designed to help you take the pressure off yourself, take more credit for what you’ve achieved and strategize more productively about where you go next. Welcome to your “fluid career.” – InPower Editors
“Are you happy in your job? Are you fulfilled and feeling purposeful? Does your job give you what you need right now?”
These are questions I ask in coaching sessions. Lately, I’m wondering if they are the wrong questions to diagnose whether a person’s job is a good fit, much less whether it means now is the time for a job change. Seems odd for a coach to say that, right? I mean, aren’t fulfillment and meeting needs the things a job should be about?
Here’s my “aha” moment on this subject. In this modern era, I believe we put too much emphasis on “the job” and not enough emphasis on “the career.” We give employers too much power in our employment relationship, and too often leave on the table proactive opportunities to shape a career that supports our life.
Shifting the Focus From Job To Career
There was a time (many years ago) when you’d be in a job, on average, 10+ years. This was the era my father grew up in. In that length of time, you’d be likely to go through a life stage (or two!) In 10 years, you could get a couple of grad degrees, have several significant relationships, or get married, have two kids and get divorced. So “a job” would be the most unlikely thing to change in your life during those years. As a result, your job needed to be stable and the backbone for your life.
Now, it’s not been the case that you’d be likely to stay in your job for 10 years for a long time, but it’s also not unusual to hear advice like, “recruiters look askance at you if you’ve been in a job less than 8-10 years” (i.e., Even if you hate your job you should stay so you don’t look disloyal to your next employer.) These two facts seem a bit at odds with each other, don’t they?
What I’ve come to believe is that our stories about how to manage your career haven’t caught up to our reality.
In 2017, thanks to changes in technology and the survived-several-downturns economy, the average job tenure in the private sector is 3.7 years. Average. Now the truth is that this isn’t a terribly new phenomenon. These stats have been similar for the last 25 years, but the stories we tell ourselves about how long we “should” be in a job, what kind of loyalty employers expect and how “lucky” we are to be employed hark from earlier eras.
Once we wake up to this fact, that most of us are likely to have a fluid string of 10-12 significant jobs through our working lifetime, instead of 3-4, we realize that our jobs aren’t likely to be those stable factors in our lives anymore. Our jobs are at least as likely to change right along with our life events and relationships. Add to this the lowered cost of going into business for yourself online, and other opportunities to string together a series of “gigs,” and our careers become much more important than any singular job.
When you think about it, this is very freeing. Over the course of 10-12 jobs, you have more flexibility and freedom to select jobs for reasons other than short-term fulfillment. Or conversely, you can choose short-term fulfillment knowing you’ll have a chance to invest in long-term skills development in your next gig. You can more easily find a good attitude in a dreary work environment because you know it’s a short-term gig. You can shift your perspective on how empowered you are in your employer relationship.
Thinking about your career as opposed to your job also opens up a discussion about whether your career is “healthy” or not. In my own case, for example, I went from great job to great job, and yet still found myself over-specialized for something I wasn’t feeling passionate about anymore in my mid-40’s, and had to do a career switch-back (or, as I told myself at the time, an “evolution.”). I think if I’d paid more attention to my career along the way, instead of my individual jobs, I might have started the evolution a bit earlier and had a less bumpy road.
Empowering Yourself in The Employer-Employee Relationship
I think that waking up to your career development reality as a fluid succession of jobs is most helpful because it empowers you as an individual to view your career as a series of employer relationships that will blend differently with your life over time. When you realize that you’re not choosing just a few employers in the course of your career, but many, you can break out of a scarcity mindset. You can realize that there are many fish in the sea and that you can swim with a bunch of them. You can choose the one(s) that support the work-life balance you need right now, and move on to others that support you differently in the future when what you need changes.
A fluid and abundant career development mindset allows you to take more risks, and be more selective at the same time. It can help you break out of the “if I’m not moving up, I’m not succeeding” mindset. It allows you to have intentions for each job that are related to the quality of life you want and the requirements of your life at this moment of time.
What does this short-term, fluid career freedom look like when viewed through the lens of the long-term? Freewheeling with nothing tying you down? Go for the workaholic job that gives you great experience so when you must respond to family obligations, you have experience with which you can negotiate more flexibility. Have those obligations now? Choose the employers who will respect your needs and help you position yourself for success when you have more time to give—or just choose the employers who will respect your need for flexibility now and worry about what comes next when you get there, knowing your availability for a demanding job will change in the future.
Even though you don’t always feel empowered in negotiating your employment relationship with your employer, trust me, you are, especially as the job market tightens. Employees who ask for things – more salary, more experience, more flexibility – are more likely to get it. The thing is, it’s not up to your employer to tell you this, or have your back in the negotiations. It’s up to you.
Still don’t feel empowered? You’re not alone. Most of us don’t. So surround yourself with friends, advisors and resources that will help you. Take responsibility for crafting a career that supports your life, brings you satisfaction and stretches over decades. Don’t ask yourself if you like your job, ask yourself if your career is supporting the life you want to live right now, and whether your current employer is giving you what you need right now. Then take action to move all these parts of your life-work blend into alignment.
** Wonder what the employer’s view of this whole new reality is? Check out Jennifer’s fluid workforce post to get a peek.
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NEW TIME!! LIVE: February 7, 2017:Noon pm ET / 9 am PT
Doesn’t it seem like yesterday when colleagues would work at a company for 25 years and get that silver anniversary pin? Today it happens so rarely, it seems like something out of a history book. And it is. The average tenure of a job for professionals is 3.5 years. About 20 years ago, if a professional changed jobs and companies every 2-3 years he was considered a “job jumper” with little loyalty to any company. It was a severe red strike on a resume. Little did we know, these professionals were onto something.
There are some of us today who are always looking for that new job, a new place to land, that next career move. We keep our network alive and working for us, notifying us of opportunities that we may have never considered. We have embraced the constant change and don’t see it as a mark against us if we only stay in a company for 1.5 years.
But then there are some of us who feel the need to stay at a company for 10+ years, even if that means that we are clinging onto a dead-end job and really should find something new.
Who is right? What’s this trend of job-jumping all about?
We’ll be talking about a new career model called the “fluid career.” It is both freeing, in that it gives people more control to design more work-life balance in their career over time, and anxiety-producing as it can feel less stable to them if they define success as “a job that lasts at least 10 years.” This fluid employment trend takes into account the growth in both entrepreneurship and the Gig Economy, reductions in employee tenure, increases in employee dissatisfaction and increases in employee turnover.
Dana Theus will be sharing her thoughts about why this “fluid career” model is relevant – and popular – today, how you can embrace it, and what it means for you.
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Coaching Tips: How to Avoid the Most Common Career Mistakes
Ouch. For 50 years of the venerable organization’s existence, which began at that pregnant moment when second wave feminism would about nine months later birth Betty Friedan’s 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, Catalyst and its sister organizations—now numbering in the thousands devoted to research on and advocacy for women–have shaped the public conversation about women by using the most dismal data to highlight seemingly intractable problems.
Information has its own power. Quantifying discrimination can motivate companies to change hiring policies or politicians to change laws. Just as important, documenting the absence of females in powerful positions performed a crucial consciousness raising function women needed in those Madmen days. For just as fish can’t see the water they swim in, many women—perhaps most at the time—accepted the way things were as the way they had to be.
I counted myself among them. I wasn’t one of the first feminists, though I was an early adopter, despite living in wild and wooly West Texas where men were men and women were screwed if they wanted to be anything other than housewives and mothers of large broods.
But this is 2013, people. The old narrative no longer works. It’s time to change that negative focus on today’s problems to a vibrant positive story about solutions for tomorrow.
We have to face the fact that women have been stuck at under 20 percent of top leadership positions across all sectors for almost two decades, according to the White House Project Benchmark study, but not let ourselves be defined by it. Shifting the narrative would foster a new wave of breakthroughs that I believe can catapult women to leadership parity by 2025.
After all, women have the purchasing clout of 85 percent of consumer goods sold, constitute half the workplace and 54 percent of the voters, and earn 57 percent of college degrees. So why does the narrative remain numbingly the same, creating so little progress that at the rate women are ascending to Congress it will take 70 years to reach parity and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg predicts that it could take 500 years for women to reach parity at the top of the corporate ladders?
Why? Because power unused is power useless. The problems have been researched and documented ad infinitum. We can continue to rail against them and get the same results. Or we can create a new, positive and solution-focused story about how women can achieve parity, and barrel right on through to make breakthrough progress in the 21st century just as the second wavers did in the 20th.
Power and energy come from going into new spaces, not from standing still or remaining mired in half-century-old tropes. It’s difficult to make the shift for three reasons we must understand if we are to change them.
First, like those proverbial fish, it’s hard to see beyond the constructs and constrictions of one’s own culture. And let’s face it, it’s in the best interest of the existing power structure to diminish the women’s movement, declare it dead, and dismiss its gains. In reality, feminism has become the predominant social value for both younger women and men today whether they claim the name or not. Women in their 20s, 30s and even 40s don’t just see a world different from their mothers’ experience, they live in a different world. Still, it’s a world where they are repeatedly told what’s wrong with them, that the workplace is rigged against them, and the double burden of managing family and work will fall to them, so they should curb their ambitions. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Second, when you fight an adversary for a long time, you can become its mirror, locked into a Kabuki drama. US women have had a very good year politically, thanks in no small part to well-timed misogynist revelations by the likes of Todd Aiken and Foster Freiss who seem to have failed sex education. We reelected a pro-choice president and defeated the guy who saw us only in binders for heaven’s sake. We elected a record twenty women in the Senate (still at that 20 percent level, but up from 18). Yet, I am bombarded with pleas for money from women’s organizations asking me to fight back against the latest attack, rather than fight forward for an agenda of their choice, pun intended.
Even newer, edgier women’s groups such as Hollaback and Ultraviolet (both of which I admire greatly) operate primarily from a position of reacting to gender based discrimination. Slutwalks, heralded as the new women’s movement are anything but — protesting but not creating systemic change.
And third, at some level, we’ve been co-opted into the culture of oppression, become drunk on the nectar of fundraising and support building made easy by sounding the alarm rather than leading to aspirations. I once had a fundraising director who became distraught when we won a political battle. “How will I raise money,” she fussed, “when I have no devil to fight?”
Instead let us ask, “Why do we need the devil to fight when we could be calling upon everyone’s higher angels to accomplish the next big steps for women?”
Almost all Americans now think women should have equal rights. The world is ready for equal rights—are we?
According to negotiation expert Victoria Pynchon, women work 20% longer and 10% faster to get the same reward as men. Women must stop focusing on those studies that decry the 23 percent wage gap and attend to the solutions: ask, expect, demand, intend, insist upon equal pay. And in every sector’s parity gap, the same scenario exists. Nobody will step aside for us once the doors are open. Women have to walk ourselves through. And the story we tell ourselves about ourselves will either propel or limit us.
It’s up to women to change the conversation. We must shift to a new vision of what is possible for the continuing advancement of women to full equality, and how it can be done. To start from a position of believing we deserve it, and create a new narrative based on the possibilities for solutions with which we can shape a future where all women and men can thrive. To embrace wholeheartedly this truth: we’re powerful as hell and we’re going to take our rightful place in politics, work, and personal relationships now and forevermore.
Gloria Feldt is a nationally renowned inspirational keynote speaker, activist, and author on women, power, and leadership. Her latest book is, No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power. Gloria is the co-founder of Take The Lead, an initiative to bring women to leadership parity by 2025. She is also the former president of Planned Parenthood. Tweet @GloriaFeldt and connect on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+.
This post originally appeared on VitaminW.
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Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel in higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.
Efforts to increase diversity in our workplaces has been dismally slow over the last few decades, despite business initiatives, research and even expansions of the very definition of diversity. Like many, I find this frustrating. I find it especially frustrating that in light of #metoo, the public shaming of powerful men, and new courage among investigative journalists, I and many other women I know don’t expect to see much change in the dominant workplace culture. I find it frustrating that after decades of civil rights legislation and public awareness, it’s still more common to see a woman in the CEO chair (about 4% of the time), than a black man. I find it mind-boggling that after hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate diversity program funding over decades, diversity-unfriendly work environments still contribute to higher employee turnover among black and hispanic workers.
And I don’t believe it’s for lack of good intent on the part of men or white people that these frustrations persist.
Most men, I know, want equality. They want harassment to stop. They want the women in their lives and offices to feel safe. Most white people, I know too, also want discrimination and unconscious bias to stop. So why is it so hard to make this happen?
I had a conversation with a nice, grey-haired gentleman recently that shed light for me on this topic. As we left an interesting talk about ethics in the workplace our conversation gave me insight into the interpersonal dynamics that keep such deep cultural changes at bay. He brought up #metoo and how much he wanted things to change so that #metoo wasn’t necessary, how proud he was of his executive wife and how he mentored young men in the workplace to “keep locker room talk in the basement while watching the game with a beer.” I said to him that I appreciated his attitude and guidance to young men like my sons, but I thought better mentorship to his protégés would be to ask them to take a hard look at their locker room talk and what it said about their attitudes towards women more generally, whether they were watching the game or sitting in a meeting.
This comment gave him food for thought, and we extended our discussion on a cold, windy street to explore the idea of bystanderism a bit more deeply. It seemed to be a new concept to him and he thanked me for it. He gave me a lot to think about, too, which I’m going to do my best to explain in this post.
It turns out that the interpersonal dynamics of harassment and discrimination that hold women back are the same things that hold back everyone else. @DanaTheus –Click To Tweet
Is hurt still hurt, even if that wasn’t the intent?
Recently I had a personal realization about how I, just like my gentleman friend mentioned above, had been unintentionally perpetuating the very problems I had sworn to help overcome. It turns out that as I’ve explored the interpersonal dynamics of harassment and discrimination more broadly, I’m learning that the things that hold women back are the same things that hold back everyone else, including some white men. While there are places that still tolerate blatant sexism, racism and bigotry, this is not the norm in most work environments the way it was in the 60’s and earlier. But even though such blatant discrimination is uncommon these days, there are other behaviors and attitudes that dampen everyone’s ability to succeed and which keep most of our workplace cultures from evolving to the point where men and women in every category can envision more diverse faces in the C-Suite.
What holds people back in the workplace are microaggressions and bystanderism, and almost everyone’s blindness to what these things actually look like and why they matter. It turns out that being conscious of the problem and having an intention to change it is step one of two critical actions we must take if we want our corporate cultures to truly welcome everyone.
When it comes to discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace, white men are not the problem. @DanaTheus –Click To Tweet
Learning to see microaggressions
Recently I updated an older post about speaking responsibly and posted it at The Mission. In so doing I accidently stumbled into a deep conversation about the subtle, small and usually unintentional phrases, dubbed microaggressions. This post, Microaggression: Everything You Say Matters created a fascinating discussion in comments. The discussion boiled down to explorations of whether the term “microaggression” had been too politicized to be useful anymore, whether good intent was enough and whether people should just buck up and stop allowing themselves to be victimized. I’m not going to go into all these threads here (if you’re interested, I will blog more on these topics on Medium so you can follow me there.) However, the comment debate did make me delve more deeply into the value of talking about microaggressions and helping people see them more clearly to better combat a culture that tolerates harassment, discrimination and other forms of inequality.
I’ve come to the conclusion that while “microaggression” in its original form has been unfortunately politicized, there really isn’t a better vocabulary snippet to describe those small and often unintentionally hurtful comments and actions, which will wear a person down and make them feel threatened at worst, and unwelcome at least. These feelings of threat and unwelcomeness are not just an inconvenience if you’re trying to build a truly welcoming corporate culture and combat employee turnover. Feeling unwelcome forces people to either leave (making employee retention metrics worse) or stay and cover* themselves in order to fit in. Covering makes us feel inauthentic and there’s a limit to how much inauthenticity people will accept before they jump out into the pool of employee turnover statistics.
There’s a lot more to employee turnover than microaggression, but our inability to see and accept these small slights is definitely part of the problem, and we can’t take action to reduce them until we can see them.
So what does microaggression look like? Well, here’s why it’s such a sticky wicket: microaggressions look different to just about everyone, and this gives fuel to those who say it’s not useful to talk about it. How can you stop something that isn’t a single thing? How can you not offend someone who (it seems to you) is going to be offended no matter what you do? I’m actually going to try to address these very legitimate issues in future posts here and on Medium, however right now I’m just going to note that while each instance of microaggression is subject to personal interpretation, there is a pattern and it’s a pattern worth trying to understand. In the interests of trying to illuminate the pattern, here are a few examples.
A male boss fails to mention a promotion opportunity to a female employee, “Because I know she wants to start a family and that job would have too much travel and be too stressful.” Giving the man the benefit of the doubt, he was trying to be kind, but the woman is hurt because (a) he judges that she can’t negotiate the travel with her partner and/or support network, (b) he tries to protect her instead of giving her the opportunity to learn how to handle stress on her own, (c) she was robbed of the choice!
A group of white men waiting for a meeting to start responds to their black male host’s question about whether they need anything while they wait by saying “how about a rope?” and then laughing uproariously at their not-funny-at-all joke. Looking at the black man’s face to see how he handles it, they feel absolved when the black man smiles too, chilled inside and hoping not to become the target of a not-joking version of this threat. (Yes, this really happened to a friend of mine, and it wasn’t in a southern state.)
An HR manager promises to call the company insurance provider and help secure a transgender employee a doctor who will treat her after her PPO-assigned physician refused. Feeling uncomfortable and morally conflicted, the HR manager fails to make the call. The employee, who is struggling with a urinary tract infection, ends up in the ER a week later to be diagnosed with a severe kidney infection, forcing her out of work for two more weeks. (Yes, this also happened to a friend of mine.)
There are other kinds of microaggressions, such as the way many African- and Asian-Americans feel unwelcome in their own country when they are asked “where are you from,” and are then asked again “no, really, where are you from?” after they answer the original question truthfully by responding, “I’m from Ohio.” For more of these “teeny tiny” and not so small agressions, check out other lists here and here, which you should explore on your own because I’m sure that you, like me, will find things on these lists that you’ve said or thought before.
There’s more to #employeeturnover than #microaggression and #bystanderism, but they are bigger contributors than we like to admit. – @DanaTheus Click To Tweet
The problem in discussing any of these things as “aggressive” is that the microaggressor, which is you and me sometimes without us even realizing it, usually has an idea in their head that there is good intent behind their words–to protect others, to invoke laughter, to resist something they feel genuinely conflicted about or to get to know someone more deeply–but which harms others when they express it. I am still working on a solution to how we can act non-microaggressively when such situations arise, but in this post what I ask you to do is start looking around in your life, workplace and world and learn to SEE microaggressions coming out of your mouth (and the mouths of others.)
Learning to see bystanderism
Bystanders are different than microaggressors in that they know that what others are doing is aggressive or unfair, but they choose to say nothing and do nothing when witnessing inappropriate behavior of those around them. My gray-haired friend at the beginning of this post was a bystander of sorts, and in his anecdote, we can see how—like microaggressors who have no intention to harm— this issue is complicated.
My friend was NOT a bystander to the extent he called out his mentees on their inappropriate remarks about women in the workplace. He took one of many actions a man can take to stop harassment. He spoke up and helped younger men see the harm in their offhand comments. However, he admitted that in private, in the locker room or watching the game with a beer in hand, he had been known to let those things go by (if not participate in them). So my friend was not a bystander in the office but he was a bystander in the man cave. Is that okay? Should our private spaces to be safe from the need to worry about the needs of others who aren’t admitted there?
That’s a harder question than it looks on the surface to those who want to stop all harrassment. If your comfort zone is where you go to unwind and “be yourself,” it can feel like an affront to your authenticity to have bystanders who are also in that zone stop bystanding and ask you to quit “being yourself even in your comfort zone” If bystanders decide to speak up in our safe spaces, it could make even more people feel unwelcome in their own safety zones. Is that okay?
To my mind, it is okay–and even necessary–for bystanders to speak up in private comfort zones. The longer authentic, but harmful, behavior goes unchallenged in the man cave (or the ladies lunch or the executive washroom or the KKK rally or the fill-in-the-blank-tribal-congregation-place), the longer our melting pot cultures fail to evolve. And we need change at a faster pace than we’re seeing it today.
Like microaggression, bystanders feel stuck between a rock and a hard place, too. They are afraid of being ostracized, kicked out of the club, shamed and penalized. This fear is real. Clubs, formal and informal, organize around “who is like us an who is not,” and a bystander who stops bystanding is volunteering his or her differences for everyone else to judge. It is in this way that fear of shame, blame and reprisal is the common dynamic, between groups and within groups, that allows bias and discrimination to go unchallenged in public and private.
For example, a well-meaning white woman can watch a black man passed over for a job and feel afraid to challenge the decision because she doesn’t want attention as a “troublemaker” since, after all, she has her own problems getting noticed for a promotion. A senior man can feel equally uncomfortable championing the cause of a younger Asian woman for fear of ribbing in the men’s room about private interests, or as one man experienced, “We have enough women around here as it is…what are you trying to do? Upset the balance of power?”
Why we’re stuck
When those who would challenge the club’s status quo face anxiety for disrupting it, a culture that rewards bystanders thrives. In a bystander culture, microaggressions can thrive. And now we’re down to the true nut of the problem. These dynamics that are difficult to see in the first place, and uncomfortable to navigate even when they’re seen, self-reinforce each other. It’s hard to unpack one without spilling the other all over the discussion and so, instead, we simply leave it unspoken.
Recently I had the opportunity to participate in a large meeting of middle and senior managers of a U.S. company. It was a pretty diverse group on the surface, however, when you looked at the more subtle structures of power, white men held about 80% of the formal and informal positions of power. During one exchange about how the organization upheld the cultural value of “respect,” it had come out during small group breakout discussions that many did not believe respect was universally guiding the company culture. The discussions I overheard on this topic were sincere and they touched on many instances of microaggression.
In the larger group, when the question “How does disrespect show up in our culture?” was put on the table, several white men bravely, and even eloquently, asked for examples. None were forthcoming in this large setting which had not been set up for safety on this topic. Looking around the room I saw many non-white men and women shaking their heads and making other expressions of “he doesn’t get it,” and yet they did not speak up. They chose to be bystanders. They chose not to try to explain anecdotal microaggressions they felt but struggled to explain to a large and judging audience. They chose not to speak up in order to protect whatever level of power and credibility they already had. I am not sure I would have advised any of them differently, had they been my personal coaching clients. And yet because the issue went unaddressed, the powerful men walked away believing it was just some disgruntled employees making noises and that because they personally felt respected, everyone else did too.
This is not an easy knot to untie. I wish I had better answers to give. I will continue to write on these topics and explore them and I welcome your thoughts, anecdotes and insights. Perhaps simply by learning to see the parts of the problem that we do not already see, the answers will become clearer as well.
* “Covering” is a term that I first saw explored by Deloitte in 2013 and their inclusion research on the subject is fascinating. In essence it puts statistics to what everyone (including 45% of straight white men) feels when they believe they can’t be fully themselves in the workplace for fear of cultural ostracization. Instead of being authentically themselves, people “cover” aspects of who they are. Covering makes people feel inauthentic, suppresses some of their natural talent, increases their stress and reducing their commitment to the organization.
————————- Updated. Originally posted August 2018
FREE PDF Guide to Women in Leadership
Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel in higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.
Delegation is often seen as a low-level management and productivity skill when in fact it’s also a higher managementand leadership skill. How to Delegate is something even senior execs should know in order to help develop the people working for them. – InPower Editors
Delegation: It’s Not About You! via @DanaTheus on #InPower #Women” – Click to Tweet
The common management lingo, “how to delegate” has always bugged me. Why? Because we usually talk about delegation as though it’s something you do TO other people, not FOR them. When reframed correctly, delegation isn’t just a productivity skill you gain personally (which it is), it’s also a development skill you deploy to help others achieve greater value to the organization.
Here’s what I mean. The typical way we encounter the need to delegate comes when someone says, “I’m overwhelmed and can’t do all this.”
So we say, “Stop trying to be the hero and delegate some of this work to other people for goodness sake!”
This is a valid response to help someone be less overwhelmed.
Here’s an alternative approach.
“I’m overwhelmed!”
“Great! This is a great opportunity for you to take some leadership and decide who on the team needs to acquire some new skills, and it will let you focus on the new skills you’re developing, too!”
In the end, delegation is the sharing of workload, but the key distinction above is that the second approach goes for the win-win and development of greater capacity among the humans on the team. When you come at delegation through this frame, you make your choices about who gets what work more strategically.
This reframing doesn’t take away the extra work and brief duplication of effort involved in bringing someone else up to speed, but it does create an opportunity that the people being delegated to will see it as an opportunity to expand their skill set and value. They’ll be more likely to be more motivated to take on the new tasks.
This reframing also doesn’t fix anything if the true problem is that the workload and the resource availability are out of whack. Too much work is too much work. That’s another problem entirely and if people sense you’re trying to get them to do too much work under the guise of “development”, they’ll balk. So if what you need is a “work smarter, not harder” strategy, don’t mask it in a “development through delegation” strategy, or you’ll get a backlash.
Afraid that delegating too much makes you less valuable? When you frame it right it does exactly the opposite!
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
Welcome to our newest blogger, Mary Brodie! Mary’s day job is at HP but she has a lot more going on than that! We love her leadership tips and “insights from the trenches” of leadership and hope you do too! Welcome Mary below. – InPower Editors
I’m often told that I have a unique management style and approach. I believe in leading through influence. Throughout my career, I have learned that you can get more done by influencing others to see things your way rather than using authority and being generally “bossy.”
Mothering isn’t a Management Technique
There are 4 key lessons in the Art of Influence that I learned that got me to significantly change my approach to management.
Lesson 2: Influence and true leadership is communication – or rather, listening and understanding
Lesson 3: Influence others to move blocks out of the way
Lesson 4: Appearance really does mean a lot
I’ll be reviewing the first lesson today – and other lessons in future posts.
Lesson 1: Mothering Isn’t a Management Technique
I was trying hard to make the creative team deliver the projects “entrusted to my care” on-time – 12 hour days, lots of stress, trying to control everything, and I was becoming visibly tired. I saw my project manager job as being like a mother with child. It was exhausting.
One day, the VP I reported to gave me a present – a statue of a line of baby ducks following a mother duck – and some leadership tips. I was puzzled why I got that gift. She told me that it was to remind me that it wasn’t my job to make sure that people did their job – I wasn’t hired to be a mother duck. I needed to give people the opportunity to take responsibility and succeed (which most people want to do anyway) or not and fail the team. I couldn’t protect my “babies” (projects) from failure. I had to change my perspective and help the team understand why a project was important. I needed to motivate them to get the work done on time.
Summary
To be a successful leader, you can’t be a mother or baby sitter. You have to do 3 things:
Stop seeing your projects as your own personal creation
Get your team to understand your goals and motivate them to make it happen
Trust people enough to know they will meet deadlines
What about you? Have you ever gotten your staff confused with your children? Too personally wrapped up in getting things done to help you staff help you? Too jittery trusting your people to give them the space to succeed? I’d love your insights below!
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
When it comes to unconscious bias, the bad news is that the game is rigged–against women, people of color, introverts and others that don’t fit a certain “success” stereotype that is often male, white and extroverted. But the good news is, it’s not really a game so there are no rules you can’t modify and break, if necessary.
Recent research has identified thirty individual biases that work together to disadvantage women in the workplace. Myriad other research shows that managers reliably exhibit biases based on gender, race, education, ability and sexual orientation, to name just a few. And there is also evidence that bias negatively affects men in their careers, as well.
The bottom line for all of us is that no matter who you are and what you look, sound or act like, you encounter unconscious bias that either works for or against you–and sometimes both.
And–not to let any of us off the hook–we all exhibit some combination of unconscious biases when evaluating ourselves and other people we work, live and play with.
So what do we do? How can we work to better understand and deal with the fact that the deck is stacked against us?
Unconscious Bias Strategy #1: Know You’re Not Crazy
If you’re struggling to keep up with all the ways the game is rigged for or against you, you’re not alone. Since unconscious bias (AKA implicit bias) was first ‘discovered’ in 1995 there has been a fair amount of research and raising of public consciousness about the different ways our brains process preferences and judgments about people based on their physical, psychological, behavioral and demographic characteristics.
Our understanding of unconscious bias continues to grow and change as we learn more and–at least as importantly–learn to see such biases operating around us. Here is the short list of the 30 biases that both genders often hold that disadvantage women (taken from the research linked above.)
You may look at this list and find some of these things no surprise, and others a bit shocking (Veteran status? Really?). And I bet you would have had a different reaction to this list in 1995 than you do today.
Part of the reason it’s hard to keep up is because social norms, when it comes to biases, are changing rapidly. If you need a reminder of this, just look at some of the TV and movies you enjoyed as a kid and watch them through a modern lens. Then watch the Barbie movie. It’s not your grandmother’s media landscape anymore because our popular understanding of what are acceptable gender stereotypes is shifting all the time. The only thing that isn’t changing is the fact that there are stereotypes and biases. Those are built into the human brain and our culture.
This makes it possible for us to have a bias that one day is assumed to be normal (i.e., just the way things are), and then shortly thereafter, appears biased and even malicious after we’ve been exposed to seeing a compelling alternative.
To make things even more confusing, social norms that help us see and respond to bias are not changing evenly throughout our society. Different political affiliations, age groups and racial/ethnic groups view gender bias differently. Men and women also tend to see gender issues, including barriers to success, differently as well.
Sometimes this feels like gaslighting when you see a bias, and its costs, very clearly and others tell you you’re making things up, that no bias exists.
I believe that the research is becoming very clear on the fact that you’re not crazy, we all are.
Biases are real. They affect us all. They affect us all differently and that makes it hard to “prove” when others simply don’t see or believe in them. But if you see it, if you believe it, it’s probably true for you.
Unconscious Bias Strategy #2: Be Angry. Then Let it Go.
In the face of bias, against you or anyone you care about, it’s easy to become so angry that you’re an ineffective advocate for change. And we do need change that recognizes that bias creates injustice and that these biases can change, as can our view of what is just. This becomes the basis for change.
Here are a few examples of issues that result from biases against women. I personally once thought of these as ‘normal burdens’, but I’ve changed my thinking on them in recent years now that I understand the role of bias in creating them. Now I believe we need to see change in each of these areas.
Believing women and people of color need to “work twice as hard” to prove themselves in professional settings. I have come to see this as a bias that burns them out mid-career while white men are more often allowed to work less than twice as hard, at home and at work, to get ahead.
Understanding that a bias that tells us that women are “good at office housework” often hurts us in our efforts to advance our careers
Biases that lead women to shoulder most of the care for children and elders cost them significantly in terms of wealth, health and security
Here’s my advice. Let yourself be angry. Find people who understand and will validate your anger. Learn to detrigger your anger and the unhelpful behaviors it creates for you.
Then let it go. You won’t be effective in making change, for yourself or others, if you’re emotionally charged.
Let me clear. Letting it go does not mean not being angry. It means not reacting from anger when you speak and act. Reactionary emotions can be devastating and they can hurt your career and close relationships if you’re not careful, in addition to skyrocketing your stress levels.
It’s ok to be angry and let that fuel your desire for change, just don’t speak and act from anger. Get to a better place before taking action. And yes, sometimes you have to change out your friends and the people who originally validated your feelings if they are not also evolving to help you get to–and stay in–that better place.
It’s complicated and confusing, but definitely worth the journey through the anger and confusion to get to the place where you can take more informed, practical action steps from a place of strength and commitment instead of anger and bitterness.
Unconscious Bias Strategy #3: Get Practical.
Once you have the anger under control, you can be more practical. Biases exist in you and in other people. You’re not going to get away from them. You have to deal with them, which doesn’t mean you have to accept them. It means you have to accept that they are there and moderate your behavior to adapt to this reality in ways that help you achieve your goals. This can require reframing your view and intention behind certain behaviors. For example, instead of using tentative language, and other unassertive behaviors, to cater to other’s biases that women should not be aggressive, I use it selectively to communicate emotional sensitivity, a strategy used by many women successfully to be viewed as cooperative and collaborative.
We can change our biases with intentional effort. But when the biases are in others, you need to be practical and accept that while you can’t change their behavior directly, you can change your own in ways that can influence them. You can:
Call their attention to their bias in ways perhaps they can hear
Make rational and emotionally positive cases for change
Vote with your dollars and your feet, engaging with people and organizations who do not display the biases you want to change
You can choose conflict and confrontation if you believe that is the best route to calling attention to the issues, but be sure you are prepared for the likely backlash
To do this, it’s healthy to interrogate your own biases, and this is true if you’re a woman, person of color or any other kind of human being. Gender issues persist in industries that employ many women, including in leadership. You are human and have biases. Learn to identify your own and speak to new ways to view them so others can learn from your example.
It’s also important to become a role model for what healthier biases look like, because many people can change their biases when they can see a compelling alternative to something they didn’t know was an issue. Here are a few examples of biases and beliefs I’m working to shift for myself and model for others. It’s a work in progress, feedback welcome!
Instead of “working twice as hard” to prove themselves I am biased to view the most capable women as those who “find high road shortcuts to greater impact” that produce results with less stress on themselves, others and the system overall
Instead of discounting a woman’s experience caring for children or older adults as relevant to their work experience, I’m taking a page from Christine LaGarde’s decision to count motherhood as management experience when evaluating their management experience
Instead of seeing women who are “not nice” as incapable of leading others, I’m looking for signs that they are clear, directive, decisive and capable of making hard decisions and managing difficult conversations. If I find evidence of the latter, I see them as capable leaders who choose impact over approval.
To help you figure out how to shift your own unconscious biases, here’s a tip: shift from the negative to the positive. Instead of being biased against something, figure out what you can be biased for that is helpful and positive, to you and others. By doing this you’re shifting your biases from unconscious to conscious.
Unconscious Bias Strategy #4: Be Authentically You.
As you do this work, you will feel uncomfortable. Part of this is because change is uncomfortable by definition. It’s the price of developing personal power, which is valuable all on its own, and especially in the search for external power. Part of it is because you, along with a lot of other people in the soup of changing social norms, are pioneering new ways of thinking, believing and applying traditional values. What was respectful in the past can become disrespectful in the present.
You will have stories in your head that try to talk you out of shifting your perspective. For example, giving up on the “work twice as hard” belief is profoundly uncomfortable for those of us who ingrained it into our professional being. You may feel that if you’re working a normal amount you’re slacking off, or you could feel worthy of being fired for slacking off when you’re actually working a normal workweek, a workweek a white man assumes is normal and worthy of a very high salary.
Do you believe that not being “nice” all the time means you have to be a jerk? It doesn’t. There are ways to be “not nice” that are not confrontational or jerky. You can be clear. Strong. Declarative. Decisive. None of which are “jerky”.
As long as you own the way you choose to be, think and believe as you shift your biases, you will be authentic. And at the end of the day, authenticity tends to win. In part I believe this is because people who do the work to choose what is authentic for them–including their biases and beliefs–gain respect for having chosen who they are at their best. And by making these choices, they are making the choice that they don’t have to be liked to be effective.
The real question for each of us when it comes to looking at unconscious bias, is “Who do I want to be?” “What biases am I willing to own?” “What biases do I want to become an example for?” and “What biases do I want to be conscious of?”
Good luck on this journey.
InPower Women’s Mastermind
We don’t Mastermind your business. We Mastermind YOU!
Women are often told not to play the business game by the same rules as the men. We don’t fare well when we do. But what are we supposed to do? Birute gives us an awesome example of what a female game changer looks and acts like. Go Celeste! (and Jane!) – InPower Editors
Be a game changer: 3 simple lessons
This week I heard two stories of the domination game from executive level women; one made me cringe; one gave me great hope.
“Jane” was director of human services and had worked at the company for six years when the new CEO got on board. On one hand, he was confiding with her about personal issues like his marriage, and on the other hand he overwhelmed her with so much work that she needed to put in long hours and weekends. In retrospect, this was probably his strategy to make her so uncomfortable that she would quit her job. Nevertheless, she met the challenges at a high personal cost of stress.
One morning he asked her into the office and told her he had some bad news. “You’re fired,” he said without even glancing up from a text message he was reading. “Leave now. Don’t even go back to your office. We’ll mail you your belongings.”
“What really boiled me,” Jane told me, “was that he didn’t even have the courtesy to look me in the eyes. I can understand a CEO wanting to bring in his own people in, but you don’t have to be cruel about it.”
“Leave now. Don’t even go back to your office. We’ll mail you your belongings.”
I call the CEO’s behavior emotional violence; sudden and ruthless disconnection.
But Jane didn’t just roll over and play dead. She went to the board and ultimately got compensation for her blunt severance. She wasn’t able to change the domination game but she also didn’t let herself get completely victimized by it either. However, it took her months to get over the emotional devastation, the self-doubt, the disillusionment that came in its aftermath.
It’s no secret that the domination game is pretty much the only game in the corporate world, and your ability to play this game can determine your success. Many successful people became powerful because they used their power over others, often in ruthless ways. However, the “I win/you lose” dichotomy takes its toll–on both men and women. For men, being dominant often means having to pretend you are in more control that you actually feel, and having to present a facade of invulnerability. Women playing the game, on the other hand, have to prove themselves man enough for the job and often alienate themselves from other women in order to protect their hard won position.
The Game In A Larger Context
We’ve seen the destructiveness of this game with the Wall Street debacle, it’s unsustainability with the implosion of the USSR, and the explosion of the Middle East, as well as with the degradation of the environment. In day-to-day office politics, the domination game of seeking power and ego boosting is a great distractor from the real work that needs to be done.
It’s such a devastating and successful game; is there any chance of changing it? It’s a huge challenge. But it is helpful to look at the larger context.
We are in the midst of a monumental struggle, where patriarchy and its use of power struggles to keep its control while a collaborative world is struggling to be born. These struggles are with us every day if we take note. Each of us can help midwife this new era of collaboration by changing the game in our everyday exchanges. But often we just don’t know quite how to handle it.
Unlike Jane, who wasn’t able to change the domination game, “Celeste” has a story that shows how, if you have enough power and self-confidence, you can not only not play the game but you can also change it.
Celeste applied for a job for which her skills and experience were a perfect fit. When she was told that the job was at the director level, she said that was below her level of experience and skills. She added that she would be prepared to discuss a VP position. The hiring committee encouraged her to go through the interview process anyway.
Throughout the interview she made it clear repeatedly that she was only interested in a VP position. “I wanted a VP position as a career step for myself but I also felt it was right for the company because this role needed to be interacting with the executive team,” Celeste told me, “and I made this absolutely clear during the interview.”
The offer letter arrived. It was for a director.
By the end of day, Celeste had the offer letter corrected to a VP of sales position.
Instead of getting upset about the letter, she met with the HR person. “I’ve made it very clear from the very beginning of the interviews with this company that I’m not interested in a director level position,” she told him. “I’m interested in a VP position.” He said, “I can’t make that decision.” Just then her future boss walked into the office and the HR person asked him if it would be ok if she was a VP. The boss’s face turned a little red and he said to go ask the CEO. By the end of day, Celeste had the offer letter corrected to a VP of sales position. They knew Celeste was right for the job; they were afraid to take the plunge because of a previously bad experience with a VP.
Lesson 1: If you are clear as to what you want, be persistent and insistent.
Don’t let others override you and don’t settle for less than what you really want.
She learned another person, David, had just been hired at a director level in marketing. David assumed incorrectly that he would take over the entire sales and marketing area. He immediately saw there was a problem; Celeste, in charge of sales and in a higher management position, threatened his authority.
“He was so obvious; it was a big barbaric run for power.” Celeste told me. “He was befriending the male executives and diminishing the work of the female executives. He would introduce some concepts and act like everyone was just going to go along with what he wanted to do. I didn’t agree with his strategy, and told him so very directly. He looked at me like, ‘How dare you!’ In a couple of meetings, I made it very clear he wasn’t going to dominate me.”
From the start David assumed, because he was a confident and competent man that he could walk into a situation and dominate it. When Celeste refused to play, he changed his tactics and starting looking for insecurities and vulnerabilities that might give him an advantage over Celeste. His fishing around turned up nothing.
Look at the different responses among men and women executives, to Celeste David arriving on the scene, and behaving with confidence. Whereas the men quickly aligned in support of David, the women felt threatened by Celeste, and left her to fend for herself. Celeste wondered how different it might for her had the executive women rallied to her.
Lesson 2: Don’t engage in the domination game.
That is, don’t let others dominate you, but also don’t try to dominate others.
And don’t take these aggressive acts personally, although it’s hard not to. It’s often all people know how to play.
Celeste was able to separate the David’s aggressive behavior from his considerable abilities.
After several weeks it became clear to David that his efforts to elevate his position by attacking Celeste failed, and he was very upset about it. Celeste held her ground against his aggression, but she also praised him for his work. People would ask her what she thought of David and she consistently said she thought he did a great job at what he did, because she genuinely thought that.
Celeste was able to separate the David’s aggressive behavior from his considerable abilities. She focused on his good qualities rather than getting caught up in office politics, posturing, and one-upmanship. She drew a line in the sand, but she was kind to him as well. At one point, the company was reorganizing and David was to report to Celeste. Celeste told her boss David wasn’t going to be happy reporting to her, given their history; it wouldn’t be a good dynamic for either of them. She was fine with him reporting to someone else if that would make him more comfortable and productive, which would also benefit the company.
At the end of the day, David and Celeste have more of a friendship with each other than anyone else in the organization, and a budding collaborative work relationship. Celeste feels good that she could “be friends with someone who was so clearly trying to dominate me. I didn’t allow that domination and at the same time I was able to be supportive of his work; that’s an accomplishment. I saw his aggressive strategy more a reflection of his socialization rather than who he really is. The domination game is all he knew, the only game he knew how to play. I know he has a tremendous amount of respect for me now because he’s seen me say no and he also knows he was supposed to report to me and I diverted it. We are actually learning to collaborate with each other.
“It’s very powerful to walk through the day knowing you are confident in your ability and you don’t have to engage in that destructive behavior. I’ve told people that I am not participating in that toxic behavior. They all admit that it’ toxic and they are exhausted by it; it takes a lot of energy and from getting the work done.”
Lesson 3: Change the game by separating behavior from the person.
Speak to what is best in a person while holding your ground against being bossed. Most of us don’t know much about collaborating. It is the new game in town. Being patient and persistent with ourselves and others on this learning curve already changes the dynamics.
Changing the game has a ripple effect that goes beyond the immediate relationship and has a positive impact on the people who are engaged or have seen this destructive behavior. Celeste had four young women come to her, asking if they could work for her because they saw a different way of working, and they wanted it.
“Younger women really want the more collaborative model ; they are starving to see it. Although I don’t agree with the other executive women trying to dominate and micromanage me, I have no animosity towards them. I know they are very smart women and I know they will be relieved if we can all work together. I just think they’re acting out a model they have seen over and over again.
I’ve always wanted to be revolutionary in my own corner of the world and here I am. Mainly I feel grateful that I had the tools and experience and knew what to do in this situation, instead of getting caught up in the game.”
And most women actually do.
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
There are so many ways to “lead” that sometimes we get confused trying to distinguish them all. At the end of the day, it may not matter as long as leadership happens. But what are you really good at? What kind of leadership can you become more intentional about? What kind of leadership can you become known for?
As the command-and-control model of leadership rapidly gives way to influential leadership styles, let’s look at two leadership models that are available to just about anyone at any level, change leadership and thought leadership. They are not the same, although together they can be powerful. Which can you adapt into your leadership style?
Change Leadership
I believe that every leader should master the dynamics of change, because most of what we lead these days is changing at such a rapid pace. But mastering change means understanding both the technical and social complexities of what makes change desirable and manageable. Most of us are better at the technical stuff because we’re trained, we’re smart and the subject matter has more objective elements that can be measured and analyzed.
The social, subjective, human stuff is more challenging by definition, so it’s where we need to spend more of our developmental energy. The principles of change mastery are relatively simple, understanding human motivation and group dynamics, but mastering them is a personal journey. Mastering change leadership requires us to be intentional about how we are personally motivated, how we interact with others and how we can get our own hang-ups out of the way of the change we’re trying to lead.
Want to be a change leader? Master the human dynamic, starting with yourself.
Thought Leadership
The title “thought leader” is often reserved for those rarified authors, researchers and industry titans who blow our minds with new ideas. Think of Mark Benioff who launched Salesforce.com and in less than two short decades has redefined the software industry with his tireless championing (and brilliant execution of) of what is now known as cloud computing.
In fact, thought leadership is accessible to everyone at every level in an organization and it’s a key strategy in becoming an influential leader. It’s also a key Personal Brand strategy.
We all toss our opinions on the table, but the thought leader does more than that. Thought leaders put ideas and opinions out that have underlying rationales capable of being tested, adapted and evolved. More importantly, the thought leader “leads” by doing the thinking that others won’t, don’t or can’t. Thought leaders stand by their ideas and in doing so, reframe and shift discussions in the direction that allows the solution to present itself. Thought leaders don’t take the debate on their ideas personally; they accept “wins” and “defeats” gracefully and, when combined with delivering results, they get noticed, sponsored and promoted.
Think your ideas have the power to shift the dialog? Then lead with them by doing the work others won’t, don’t or can’t to develop your ideas and stand by them. Learn to advocate effectively and become known as someone who does the extra thinking, the kind that helps everyone reach their goals. Your business needs you to stand by your ideas even more than it needs your opinions.
Ready to get serious about attracting an executive sponsor through thought leadership and other personal branding strategies? Check out this video & eBook coaching program!
You made it! Now what? Multiply your impact and not your stress.
