by Guest Author | May 21, 2013 | Coaching Advice, Leadership
There’s nothing like a great metaphor to make a point. I often look for metaphors that illustrate my mission to help women “Find the Work that Fits Your Life”, and I love one I just saw on the Levo League web site that equates building a career with climbing trees.
In the Levo League article, “6 Career Lessons Learned from Climbing Trees“, Melissa Stanger interviews Christina Vuleta, who says that your career path is more like climbing a tree. She gave Melissa the six most important lessons she has learned from “climbing trees”:
1. It’s wise to explore different branches.
2. It’s okay to move to a lower branch.
3. Look for where there’s growth.
4. Take a step back. See if you missed any interesting branches.
5. Know that you can always go back to a previous branch.
6. Do some trimming and fertilizing.
From this brief list, it’s easy to see the lessons both Christina and Melissa are trying to pass along, but I encourage you to read the full article that provides good career anecdotes and explanatory detail.
The biggest lesson from the article is that a “career ladder” is an antiquated notion. Few women start climbing a career ladder at age 22 and leave that ladder from a higher point at age 65. There are many new metaphors to adopt—like the idea of a twisting and turning career “labyrinth” that leads you in many different directions, a career “lattice” that allows for lateral, upward or downward moves, and an “arc” (told to me by Anne-Marie Slaughter) that extends into the future and allows for a career pinnacle long after children are grown.
Whatever metaphor you choose, know that you can chart your own career path, in and out of the workforce at every age and stage. And all the while, be sure to get lots of life+work exercise, reaching beyond your own resources – “Up, Down, Sideways and Out” – for collaboration and inspiration as you take each new and important step. –KAS
Post originally on: 9 Lives For Women
by Téa Blake | May 10, 2013 | Diversity, Gender Research, InPower Women Blog
Study: Lessons From the Leading Edge of Gender Diversity (McKinsey: Barsh, Nudelman, Yee, April, 2013)
Finding: By integrating the findings of several years of research, McKinsey has distilled four qualities of the organizations with the greatest gender diversity.
Note about The Woman Effect Research Index: This study was performed by researchers not affiliated with InPower Women. Our Research Index includes all relevant research to the subject of women, business and power. We do not influence how the research was conducted or reported by the researchers. In our abstracts, we focus on pulling out the most actionable advice for individual women. To suggest additional research we should index, or discuss our choice of abstract focus, please contact us.
InPower Insight: Organizations that want to buck the gender diversity status quo can do so with the involvement and commitment of the top team and a systemic approach to talent development.
Summary:
After reviewing interviews with the top leaders at 22 large organizations, they found definite trends in the companies who excelled at gender diversity at both the board and top management levels. Specifically,
- Diversity is personal: In highly gender diverse companies, the senior leadership – including and especially the CEO – believes personally that gender diversity is important and walks and talks consistently with this belief. They do more than believe, they act and speak about their commitment consistently, and they see that action is taken.
- Culture and Values are at the core: Gender diversity results from factors that go deeper than awareness programs. If gender diversity is consisten with the core values and corporate culture of the organization, it can thrive and everyone can bring more of themselves to the office.
- Improvements are systemic: Gender diversity at the top results from a multiyear transformation that includes considered efforts on the part of HR. Efforts that produce results include: talent development, succession planning (including looking for the “unusual suspects” and helping them obtain sposors) and measuring results to reinforce progress.
- Boards spark movement: Boards are involved in the most gender diverse companies. They know and often sponsor high-potential women and frequently ask “Where are the women?” which keeps the issue of gender diversity a high priority for management.
Career Coaching Tip: If you’re in a position to help your company achieve board diversity, do an audit of your company against these criteria and take it to the top. Find allies in leadership who personally believe women belong at the top. If you’re evaluating companies to work for, audit your prospective employers against these criteria also to determine if you are likely to have allies at the top.
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by Guest Author | May 7, 2013 | Coaching Advice, Commentary, Leadership
This weekend I took my daughter and her friend to see the new movie “Oz The Great and Powerful” based on the classic book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. The occupational hazard of having a mom who is a leadership coach is that you don’t get to actually just eat the popcorn and enjoy the movie. You actually have to analyze it and capture the leadership lessons afterwards.
I asked the girls what they each got out of the movie. My daughter’s friend said the moral was “Lying to others is bad and helping others is good”. My daughter’s conclusion was “You can’t judge a book by its cover”. My conclusion was “We each have what we need within us. We just have to seek and find it”. We all saw the same movie. We each took away different insights from it – each very valid. How could that be? Could this be a metaphor for life? Or the next work meeting you’ll be going to?
What is Leadership?
When I was a brand manager at P&G we had a three-step definition of leadership (everything at P&G in those days was in three’s – three rationale points to a recommendation etc.). The three steps were: 1) Formulate a vision, 2) Align people to the vision, 3) Make it happen. Broadly speaking, it is a fine definition of leadership – except that it ignores the state of mind and heart of the leader. It is externally focused. In my opinion, leadership starts from the inside and radiates outward.
Leadership Starts from The Inside
We each process or interpret any external event from our own “consciousness filter” – the unique set of beliefs and mindsets we each have that are as distinct as our finger print. As a leader then, how we see things and what we actually see and interpret is different from how others might see it. It is completely dependent on our own “consciousness filter”. Are we in a state of fear or stress or are we in a state of optimism? Do we generally look for what connects us with others or what separates us from them? Do we believe in scarcity of opportunity or abundance? What do we believe about ourselves?
Self-Awareness is Key
Our “consciousness filter” is mostly impacted by our life experiences. A lot of this filter is even unconscious. Often we are not even aware of many of the assumptions we’ve made about the “rules of life” that impact how we see ourselves, others, and events. Our unwritten rules of life influence our leadership behaviors. Our single greatest leadership task then is to continuously practice expanding our self-awareness. Feedback is a great way to do this. So are assessment tools. I have found mindfulness practice particularly compelling for myself and recommend it to my executive coaching clients.
As we become more self-aware our “consciousness filter” changes. As we raise our consciousness levels as leaders, working with leadership practices that are right for us, we start to see new behaviors emerge – because our consciousness levels don’t tolerate the old behaviors. We also start to influence those around us to be more conscious in their leadership. As Oz discovers, he had the magic powers all along. He just had to see it in himself. T.S. Eliot said “We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time”. This is because we see it with new eyes – our consciousness has changed.
So, you see, leadership really is an inside job! How will you now see your next meeting differently?
This post was originally posted on transformleaders.tv
by Téa Blake | May 3, 2013 | Gender Research
Study: Engaging Men in Gender Initiatives: What Change Agents Need to Know (Catalyst, 2009, Prime, Racusin)
Finding: Before men will support gender equality in their organization, they must undertand that it exists.
InPower Insight: Want to achieve greater gender equality in your organization? Find male allies.
Summary:
When gender equality is a “woman’s problem,” very little changes. By contrast, when men begin to champion gender equality, things can change much more quickly. But what is it that makes a man predisposed to champion gender equality?
In this research Catalyst found three factors that determine how aware men were of gender bias within the workplace, a willingness to reject masculine norms; having female mentors and a sense of fair play.
It was also found that efforts for erasing gender bias in the workplace, as assisted by men, can be hindered by three key qualities: apathy, fear, and ignorance. To avoid apathy, men must realize that they can gain so much more from gender equality. In order to alleviate fear, men must be invited into gender inclusion programs and initiatives – including male-only gender discussions – and be privy to male mentors who push for gender equality. Men should be encouraged to think more critically about male norms and the costs of following them, including distance from family, pressure to conform and provide and compromises to their psychological and physical health. Men and women should also be included in problem-solving.
Resource: Discussion Guide for dialog with men (see “source link” below)
Career Coaching Tip: Men are not the enemy. Even if some you work with really don’t “get it”, it’s likely that others do. Look for the men who don’t buy into male norms and seek their give them the opportunity to discussion how male norms inhibit them. Encourage them to talk openly about these challenges – especially the way following traditionally male norms can alienate them from their family. Bring these men together with women in common cause around the changes you’d like to see in the workplace. Be a leader in the effort to bring men into the dialog on work-life and gender norms. When you can, mentor men in addition to women.
Keywords: men, gender equality, work-life balance, gender development
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by Téa Blake | Apr 26, 2013 | Gender Research, InPower Women Blog
By: besthealthcaremba.com
The number of women earning MBA degrees and how they use their degrees to aid upward mobility.
Image source: www.besthealthcaremba.com
by Dana Theus | Apr 24, 2013 | Career Development, Coaching Advice, Gender Equality, InPower Women Blog
Ladies, I write a lot for women, but I talk to many men who want to help us too. I recently wrote this for Smartblogs on Leadership (where lots of men hang out) and thought you might like to pass it on to the men you know that have women (especially younger women) reporting to them. Enjoy!
If you’re a man leading people in your company, chances are that you feel somewhat stymied in how to address one of the biggest talent management problems all companies face: how to keep bright, talented women from leaving the company before they make it into the leadership ranks. McKinsey data shows that in the pipeline, from entry level to vice president, the average company watches about 25% of their best female talent walk right out the door. They’re not all leaving the workforce, but they are leaving corporate America. This women’s leadership gap, says Joanna Barsh of McKinsey, is a “canary in the coal mine” for losses of male leadership talent in other socio-ethnic categories as well.
Most male leaders now understand that women are good for business and that retaining women in the workforce is more complicated than offering flextime, and nursing stations in the bathroom. The male leaders I talk to who want to help address this problem don’t quite know what to do. They don’t feel personally sexist and many are living with working wives and/or encouraging their daughters to take the world by storm. The recommendations coming out of McKinsey and other research organizations are complicated and systemic so leadership looks to HR to come up with solutions. Often with HR’s blessing and support, women get together under the banner of “women empowerment.” I give these workshops and have personally witnessed many transformative discussions happen in these safe spaces, but these women-only conversations don’t by themselves close the leadership gap.
While I’m not recommending that men join the women’s empowerment seminars, there is a lot male leaders can do in their day-to-day work to address the talent drain problem and try to keep their best and brightest female talent. You don’t have to “understand women” to help them, either. As a matter of fact, it’s probably just as well if you don’t. Some of the biggest changes happen when you understand yourself. Here are 3 opportunities sitting right in front of you.
1. Tell her why you believe in her.
It’s a simple fact, most women don’t have the same kind of confidence in themselves the guys do – for reasons that date back to the playground. Don’t worry about all the psychology; it’s not your responsibility to give her confidence. However, you can give her reasons to be confident she’s probably never thought of before.
What you can do: Just be honest and tell her why you value her and believe in her. Help her see what she’s doing that’s effective and ask her to do more of it. You can give constructive criticism too, of course, but lead with the good stuff so it’s clear that she sees it. (By the way, this is a good way to help guide male employees too.)
2. Don’t let her get away with powerless language.
Most women have been acculturated into powerless language patterns. You know it when you hear it and it often sounds like “I’ll try…” or “I know I’m not the expert, but…” Most women struggle with this. Even senior women in boardrooms use these kind of language patterns – four times more often than senior men.
What you can do: There’s usually plenty of self-doubt beneath the powerless language, but you don’t have to go there. Just help her “hear” it when she says it. You have a unique opportunity – possibly more than anyone else in her life – to help her learn to “hear” how it broadcasts her lack of confidence in ways that make her less effective at her job than she could be without it. All you have to do is point it out to her dispassionately, as you would help her understand how to see patterns on a spreadsheet, and keep helping her see it until she begins to self-correct on her own.. Tell her she doesn’t need to apologize or qualify herself. If you mean it, she’ll begin to believe it too.
3. Confront your own biases, and help her confront hers too.
Everyone has biases. It’s how our brains are wired. Being biased is not the same as being sexist. Being biased just means you’re human and that there are certain beliefs and assumptions you have about – everything – including women and men in the workplace. Even efforts to be helpful reveal bias, like believing that working moms “deserve a break,” which might lead you to be ok with a mom running out the door at 5pm for daycare pickup and dumping an unfinished project on her female and male colleagues who don’t have children. Of course, moms (and dads) do need a break in our 9am-8pm work culture when daycare charges $10 for every minute she’s late after 6pm, but your “helpful” bias may be breeding resentment among your non-parent employees that will cause you other headaches down the road. You can’t get rid of your biases, but you can understand and own them in ways that can help you be biased in more useful ways.
What you can do: Take the judgment away and be honest – at least with yourself at first – about your beliefs and biases. Challenge them and look for evidence that can help you evolve them into things you choose to believe instead of things that unconsciously drive your behavior. When you have chosen what to believe, go public with them and challenge others to own up to their biases and beliefs – including the women themselves! Have a workshop with women and men that helps them own their biases – and make sure to participate personally so everyone sees that this stuff matters!
Good leaders are self-aware. These strategies will help you address a demographic talent management problem you have, and they will also help you lead women and men of all demographics more consciously and more effectively.
Do you know a high-potential female employee who can take her game up a notch by communicating with more confidence? Recommend that she participate in this complimentary webinar to learn some simple tricks with deep impact.
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.
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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.
by Guest Author | Apr 23, 2013 | Coaching Advice, Leadership
By: Mary Schaefer
Do you simply manage the people who work for you – or do you truly lead?
Consider utilizing what naturally engages human beings at work, like appreciation and a sense of being a meaningful part of something bigger than themselves. The result is an increase in your company’s bottom line – while you tap into that deep well of human potential and create a competitive advantage for your group and your business. Here are five tips for taking your leadership further.
1. Make decisions as if people matter
Business doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Your computers or lab equipment don’t care if you hit quarterly goals. Leverage the resources who do care (i.e. employees) by meeting basic human needs at work. Remember what it’s like to be an employee. Even if you are a manager, you ARE STILL an employee, too. Show them you considered their needs and concerns in your thought process.
2. Be impeccable with your word
If you say you are going to do something, large or small, do it. Your employees are watching. They WANT to trust you. Give them a reason. It helps to tell them when you are following up on something you promised, like “I’m doing this thing as a result of our talk last week.”
3. Talk to people like YOU are a human being
People can see through stalling and spin. If you can’t discuss a matter, say so. Anticipate questions from your employees’ point of view, and practice. You may have to work with your response to ensure it’s authentic, sincere and respectful of their intelligence. Don’t shortchange this.
4. Make sure they understand what you’re saying
The meaning of the communication is the response it elicits. Why do we think we’ve communicated when we just drop people an email? And asking “Do you understand?” is fruitless. Who wants to look like a nincompoop by saying no? To test understanding, ask them what they heard you say, or what they are going to do based on what you said.
5. Get over yourself. Be open to what works
Leading is changing your behaviors so the other person follows. We wouldn’t put water in our car when it needs oil and expect it to perform. Why do we ignore what our employees need? Examples are appreciation, belonging, contribution and meaning. Using this knowledge doesn’t require that you be something you’re not. Make the adjustments that will work for you and your people – so they will WANT to work with you!
Originally posted on:Reimagine Work
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by Guest Author | Apr 22, 2013 | Coaching Advice, Personal Mastery
As I was taking a walk down memory lane the other day and remembering my teen years, I realized that many of us are acting like teenagers. Remember how we thought we were invincible back then? We did stupid things like drive too fast, drink too much and play with fire. We’re lucky to be alive with our cavalier attitude about mortality.
At some point, usually our late 20s to early 30s, we woke up and realized we weren’t invincible. People we knew died. We stopped doing the blatantly stupid stuff and start doing the “adult” stuff.
But the “adult” stuff turns out is just as dangerous as driving too fast. We work 60+ hours a week as if there are no consequences. We run around creating the perfect household. We try to be the perfect wife, perfect mom and perfect female role model. We get stretched thin with obligations, deadlines, soccer practice and trying to prove our worth.
With these efforts we are still blindly acting as if we’re invincible. The truth of the matter is stress is responsible for 70-95% of all doctor’s office visits. Stress contributes to heart disease, diabetes, obesity and autoimmune disease. We are not invincible. We burnout. We get sick.
Passion Burns Bright
As you can tell, I’m pretty passionate about this subject. That’s because I’ve been there, done that and gotten the t-shirt. I’ve worked too hard, stressed too much, burned out and got one of those nasty health conditions.
I’ve also recovered, re-energized, and learned how to fuel my life with passion and meaning, not deadlines, stress and obligations. And no, I didn’t quit my job to buy a winery or live in the Costa Rican rainforest. Instead I discovered a secret formula to de-stress, re-energize and live with meaning. I call it the Burnt Out To Balanced SystemTM. In honor of Stress Awareness Month, I want to share this formula with you.
Fuel Your Body
We have been taught that diet, exercise and sleep help us lose weight. But what we eat, whether we move or are sedentary and how much sleep we get is the foundation for living a stress “free”, energized life. Food, especially processed food, can leave us feeling anxious or even contribute to ADD. Regular exercise releases feel good, stress-relieving endorphins. Get 8-hours sleep and you can solve problems with a clearer mind, as well as boost your intelligence.
Fuel Your Body Stress-Relieving Tip: Nature has given a magic stress neutralizer that calms us, relieves muscle tension and allows us to sleep better. It’s called magnesium. Now before you run out to the drug store, check your crisper drawer. Green leafy and cruciferous vegetables – kale, broccoli, collard greens, spinach and swiss chard – are high in magnesium. Include these in your diet a few times a day and watch your stress levels drop.
Fuel Your Mind
When I ask audiences “what is stress”, I find the answers include deadlines, traffic, over commitment, not enough time, and even having to deal with “stupid” people. We believe stress is something that happens to us. In fact, stress is our response to all those things.
The stress response is a function of our autonomic nervous system’s flight-or-fight response. Specifically, it is triggered by a thought or belief that we are in danger and our body then goes into overdrive producing cortisol and adrenaline to get us out of danger. The danger of stress is the fact that in modern life we spend far more time engaging this stress response than we do in our relaxation response. This accelerates the aging process, suppresses our immune system and leaves us fatigued.
The key take away here is that stress begins in our mind with a thought or a belief. The key to neutralizing stress is to fuel our mind with more positive, happy, gratitude-filled thoughts and you will trigger your stress response less often.
Fuel Your Mind Stress-Relieving Tip: Meditation has been used for centuries to reduce stress. It works by triggering our relaxation response simply by getting us to stop and breath. But it also allows us to train our mind to let thoughts pass instead of obsessing over them and creating stress internally. Start a daily meditation practice. Sit quietly, focusing on your breath for 20 minutes a day. Please don’t get hung up on being perfect about this. You can start by meditating 5 times a day for 4 minutes.
Fuel Your Purpose
Just as important as fueling our body and mind, is fueling our purpose – our creativity, relationships, spirituality, and soulfulness. Fueling our purpose is the keystone for less stress and more happiness.
What is purpose and what does it have to do with stress? Purpose is your calling in the world, but it’s really broader than that. It’s everything from meaningful work to your relationships to your hobbies that brings you joy and meaning. Purpose is the expression of your spirit.
When we starve our purpose either by not engaging with our work, suppressing our creativity, or ignoring our relationships (including the one with ourselves), we trigger our stress response. When we are all work and obligations, we begin to get bitter, resentful, depressed and even angry. Fueling all facets of our life is the antidote and gives us even more for which we can be grateful.
Fuel Your Purpose Stress-relieving Tip: Remember how much fun you had as a kid doing crafts. You might have stopped because your last creation wasn’t perfect. Or you didn’t have the time. Carve out some time to be creative and tap into your inner kid. Creativity can be cooking dinner, handwriting a card to a friend or creating a vision board. Get out the scissor and glue stick and just play.
We are not invincible. We cannot eliminate or escape stress. Yet we can neutralize stress by fueling our lives with better actions, thoughts and beliefs. We all deserve to live a happy, contented life. How will you neutralize stress this week?
Laurie Erdman, JD, MS, CHHC is a sought after Get More Energy Expert, coach, speaker and writer who inspires, trains and mentors companies and individuals to extinguish burnout and unleash their energized potential and profitability. Creator of the Burnt Out To Balanced SystemTM, Laurie’s mission is helping high performing individuals recover from or avoid burnout so they can accelerate their careers and create their best life. Laurie brings her experience in the legal, business, coaching and health fields, as well as her personal experience with burn out, to help companies create sustainable growth through engaged employees. Visit www.LaurieErdman.com to download her new book: Burnout. Identify It. Extinguish It. Ignite Your Life.
by Téa Blake | Apr 19, 2013 | Gender Research, InPower Women Blog, Work-Life Blend
Study: What Moms Think: Career vs. Paycheck. (Working Mother Media, 2012)
Finding: Attitudes determine outcomes in this research on women and work, but experience matters too. Women who are career minded are more positive about their careers. Male managers who have experience with working moms are also more likely to promote them.
InPower Insight: Experience can overcome attitude, so be careful to believe all the stories apply to you – even the ones validated by research!
Summary:
This broad-ranging research into attitudes of women and men about working mothers turns up some interesting and almost contradictory findings. Highlights include:
- Women who self-identify as having a career (as opposed to just working for the money) are more satisfied with their work, their decision to work and their life outside of work.
- In general, working fathers have more positive attitudes about working mothers than men with no children. Men and women with no children have poorer perceptions of working mothers.
- The exception is male managers, whether they have children or not. Male managers have a higher regard for working mothers than any other group, including working mothers themselves in some cases.
- Flexible working opportunities work for women and men, but appear to have even better outcomes for men.
- Women and men both are more comfortable with the idea that the man in a relationship earns more than the woman.
- Women and men have different perceptions of whether the men in a relationship are pulling their weight at home.
Career Coaching Tip: If you feel that life as a working mother is harder, it is. Whether you have children or not, try to look more objectively at your attitudes about what working moms are capable of, and their challenges, and note that those who may have the most experience, and thus best insight, into their actual capabilities – male managers – think so highly of them they’re willing to give them responsibilities even other working mothers are. No matter what your situation, recognize that attitudes matter and that when you adjust yours you can have a significant impact on your own work satisfaction and your fairness towards others around you.
Keywords: male managers, working mother, attitudes, flexible work arrangements, flexibility
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by Dana Theus | Apr 15, 2013 | InPower Women Blog, People Skills
I want you to meet an InPower woman. Dallice Joyner has risen above the most abject circumstances of poverty and prejudice to be an effective and motivating leader of an organization doing much needed work in our society. Dallice is the Executive Director of the Northern Virginia AHEC, an organization providing cultural competence and language translation services in 75+ languages to health services agencies that need to communicate with an ever-diversifying population.
Here is our 16 minute interview.
Dallice Joyner Interview
What impressed me most about Dallice was the way she positively accepts the fear associated with being a good leader. We get so afraid of fear, and yet as Dallice demonstrates, it can become our best friend. It can tell us when to lean in and break away from things we use to let limit us.
Enjoy these few minutes with Dallice as I did. And if you are interested in contributing to her work (maybe to practice your own language skills?), consider volunteering at a Virginia AHEC .
Know someone we should interview for InPower Women? Tell us about them! (Feel free to propose yourself too!)
Complimentary Webinar: You’re invited to an upcoming, InPower webinar for women – Communicating With Confidence to Build Credibility. It’s free! Register here.
