by Téa Blake | Apr 12, 2013 | Gender Research, InPower Women Blog
Title: Employee Satisfaction Is Down, Women Respond Differently
Study: Reinvent Opportunity: Looking Through a New Lens (Accenture 2011)
Finding: Women and men have different strategies for handling job dissatisfaction.
InPower Insight: Women and men have similar desires to make their current jobs work for them, but have different strategies for doing so.
Summary:
Employee satisfaction is low. A meaningful number of employees, both men and women, are dissatisfied with their current work situation (a little over 40% report being unsatisfied). The top reasons for employee dissatisfaction were: being underpaid, lack of opportunity growth, little opportunity for career advancement and feeling trapped. Nonetheless, researchers found that most women and men (nearly 70% of women) planned to stay in their current job situation, many seeking more education than men in the same situation. .
While both women and men will ask for pay raises, fewer women than men will ask for promotions. Most notably, only 14% of the women surveyed plan to reach the C- level suite of their companies.
Women and men are both being mentored, but using a mentor’s assistance for different reasons. Women are more likely to use a mentor as a sounding board where men are more likely to ask for a mentor’s help in career planning. The Glass Hammer summarizes this finding as, “What this boils down to is that more men are discussing the next level with their mentors. And more women are discussing the status quo.”
Sixty- eight percent of women cite working hard and long hours as means for career advancement. Both men and women agree that better compensation, challenging assignments, flexible work situations, and leadership positions as reasons to pursue career advancements. Of all these factors, 65% of women cite better compensation as the top reason to advance.
Personal Coaching Tip: If you’re feeling stuck in your job, you’re not alone. Some will get ahead, however, so it’s good to look at what they’re doing and decide whether you want to do that too. Can you use your mentor to help you strategize your career more proactively? Can you be more assertive in asking for a promotion? The guy in the cube next to you may be doing this, and the stats say he’s got a better chance of rising through the ranks because of it. You don’t have to succeed like a man; you can – and should – develop your own style, but don’t ignore what’s working for the men who succeed.
Keywords: Advancement, Compensation, Dissatisfaction, Job Satisfaction, Employee turnover
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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.
by Jennifer Miller | Apr 10, 2013 | Coaching Advice, Communicating With Confidence, InPower Women Blog, People Skills
I like working with men, I really do. Of my clients and colleagues, the gender mix is evenly distributed. Over the years, I’ve become accustomed to being the only woman in a room full of businessmen and have never felt excluded or diminished.
When I read the vigorous (and occasionally venomous) debates online about women in leadership roles, I’ve not felt called to chime in. Even though women are underrepresented in senior leadership roles and disenfranchisement does exist, I didn’t have a personal story to tell in that regard.
I’ve admittedly taken the easy way out by not contributing much to the conversation online. So, I have cruised along, occasionally taking note of “women in the workplace” articles, but not really giving them much thought.
Until . . . I saw a Facebook post from a female friend congratulating fellow colleagues on being named to yet another online list of “top leadership thinkers in XYZ topic”. Out of curiosity, I clicked the link and sure enough, the list was comprised of mostly men.
I rolled my eyes, per usual and went along with my day. But this time, there was an annoyance that persisted. These lists invariably frame leadership very narrowly; they feature predominantly male authors or people with c-level titles in large organizations. There is more to leadership than a title and there are certainly more women with interesting things to say about leadership than these online lists indicate.
Weary of these constricted inclusion parameters, I decided to speak up. But there was a giant elephant in the room: my worry that people might criticize my observations. As I said, I’ve seen some ugly commentary out there and I wondered: was I up for the potential backlash?
Dana Theus, creator of the InPower Women blog is often encourages us to consider our personal narrative; of how the “stories” we tell ourselves and others influence how we are perceived. I decided to put myself smack dab in the middle of this story – to be my own protagonist in this claiming of leadership – and then inviting others to join me in claiming theirs.
In the end, it boiled down to summoning my courage and frankly, just getting over myself. I decided to claim my right to contribute on the topic of leadership in a public forum and wrote the post 37 Women with Interesting Things to Say About Leadership on my blog The People Equation.
The response to the post was overwhelmingly positive. Far from disenfranchising men, the post was a catalyst for conversation; both women and men joined the conversation on Facebook and Twitter to share the post and offer commentary.
Lesson learned – speaking up pays off. My message in the 37 Women blog post was genuine and heartfelt, with a method that invited conversation and reflection. By refraining from labeling my list as “best” or “top” I was able to broaden the meaning of leadership. In turn, many others helped me broaden my thinking as well through their contributions.
Most importantly, I found out that the biggest thing I feared – nasty discourse on my blog – never materialized. It was a non-issue. Plus, the “speaking up” has had a positive “spill over” effect for my consulting practice. As a result of being more outspoken on my blog, I’ve made inroads in several other aspects of my business, garnering plum writing assignments for several well-known publications.
Sometimes it seems like putting yourself “out there” and communicating with confidence is a huge leap of faith. It is, but the leap is internal. Those around us are more than willing to hear our story, if we are willing to share it.
Why share this personal reflection with you? Because I’ve come to realize there are many more women out there, wanting more for their careers and struggling to find the courage to speak up. For me, a watershed moment came when I stuck my neck out and offered opinions on the sometimes controversial topic of women in leadership. For you, the call to “step out” may be completely different. Perhaps you want a revised work schedule, or a job promotion. No matter what you are seeking, to be taken seriously, you must speak up with confidence.
Are you telling your most powerful, persuasive story? If not, and you’d like to learn how to do so, I invite you to join a free webinar called Communicating with Confidence, led by Dana Theus. I’m a graduate of the InPower Coaching program Self-Promotion Strategies for Women; I can vouch for the quality of content that Dana’s coaching programs offer. The Communicate with Confidence program contains many of the same powerful communication strategies as the Self-Promotion series. You owe it to yourself to check it out.
Don’t fear what might happen when you speak up. Plan for what great things will happen when you master the art of communicating confidently.
Career strategist Jennifer V. Miller is a former HR manager and corporate trainer who helps mid-career professionals chart the course for their next big leap. A self-described “professional opportunity cultivator”, Jennifer provides one-to-one and small group professional development coaching via her company SkillSource. Jennifer is the co-author of The Character-Based Leader and her work has appeared in Forbes, SmartBrief on Leadership, Executive Travel Magazine and The Huffington Post. She offers up tips for leading yourself and others at The People Equation and tweets at @JenniferVMiller.
by Guest Author | Apr 9, 2013 | Across Generations, Emotional Intelligence at Work, Employee Engagement
I recently published my Harvard study in Harvard Business Review: Busting Gen Y & Gender Myths and Why Your Company Should Care unleashing new research on the work-life aspirations of elite Gen Y women and men. Surveying a group of Harvard and MIT MBAs, I found that they hold more traditional attitudes about gender roles in the workplace than the rest of the Gen Y cohort. What is more, the driver for these traditional attitudes about the work-life balance was not personal belief, but the career structure and expectations of the high-level organizations they enter.
As a follow-up to this piece, many corporate leaders have asked me:
What does this mean for companies hiring Elite Gen Yers? And what should my company do about all these Gen Y & Gender myths in the workplace?
As Gen Y rises in the workplace, Gen Y men and women still struggle to balance work and home. Gen Y men still feel the burden of being breadwinners and women feel more responsibility at home.
This is a conversation that few Gen Y men and women are having–in companies. They need safe spaces to hash out these challenges – together. And your company needn’t make it a work-life issue; it can be coached in terms of leadership, performance, and strategy
Here’s what I think your company should do about it:
- Navigate the leadership conversation with language like strategy, and leadership, not work-family issues. This type of language makes it easier for organizations and Gen Y men and women to discuss why family issues play a role in career strategy.
- Understand the link between the bottom line and employee engagement of Gen Y: According to Gallup, engaged employees are “more productive, profitable, safer, create stronger customer relationships, and stay longer with their company than less engaged employees.”
- Know that the diversity of talent among Gen Y leads to better innovation. Dorothy Leonard’s concept of “creative abrasion” shows that innovative products and services derive from well-managed, diverse individuals across generations and genders.
- Retain and engage Gen Y men and women – it leads to more effective innovations. Show your Gen Y workforce why this matters to their future.
For the full report and findings, sign up for my mailing listserve here and receive a free copy of the Busting Gen Y & Gender Myths report. For a deep dive at your company, check out Erica’s talent development young professional program.
Check out the resources in the InPower Coaching EQ at Work and Soft Skills Research Index.
by Dana Theus | Apr 3, 2013 | Career Development, Coaching Advice, People Skills
Networking” is a word I often see accompanied by a slump of the shoulders, a groan or a roll of the eyes – in both women and men. We know it’s critical to our business and career success, but so often when we think “networking” we think stiff smiles, exposing ourselves to rejection from strangers and time wasted when we could be vegging after a hard days’ work. Because like it or not, when you engage in it intentionally – as an investment in your career, your business and your efforts to change the world – it is work.
However, work doesn’t have to be hard.
Remember how early in your career writing an important email could take you an hour? You struggled to get the language and the tone just right? Now you can bang it out in five minutes, but you had to focus on it to get the skill down. Business networking isn’t quite the same, but it is a business skill that can be learned so that it doesn’t have to take so much energy and so that you can weave it into your work life naturally.
There are lots of good advice columns out there for how to think about networking events, including this one from our own Stacey Gordon, so I’m not going to repeat them here. I’m going to give you a new way to think about networking and a new definition of success for your networking efforts.
How Do You Know Networking Is Successful?
Most of us default to a narrow definition of success when it comes to networking. We think we’re successful if we attend an event and meet someone who can help us immediately. Give us a job, introduce us to a vendor we need, meet a new client. Sometimes this happens and it’s great – a clear payoff – but research says that networking’s primary benefit is not at the event itself.
This fascinating study from The Toulouse School of Economics says that a key factor in how men advance into upper management is that they develop through their careers a broad and shallow network of connections. By developing such a broad network, they are exposed to more potential opportunities and thus tend to have more opportunities. By contrast, women tend to develop fewer ties that run deeper. While these can certainly pay off, they do not lead to as much potential exposure.
Thus, a key definition of networking success is to look at how much any single event or activity expands your network of “shallow” connections. Over time you can look at your networking success in terms of how extensive your shallow connection network is and in what ways it benefits you. This takes the pressure off the events and activities themselves and puts it on the quality of your network as a whole.
Is your network working for you? Don’t look at the last event you attended for the answer.
I personally find LinkedIn fabulous for managing this shallow network, which I consider a business asset. Not only does it allow me to follow up with people I meet at events (i.e., sending them a LinkedIn invite) but also brings me periodic opportunities as people seek me out or I find them and connect about a particular project or question. It does take “work” to maintain, but when you take the pressure off yourself to make every connection payoff in a huge way, more frequent, smaller connections become easier. Here are simple ways you can put on your calendar to maintain your LinkedIn network:
- Post or respond to status messages weekly
- Look at your LinkedIn update emails and find one person’s news you can respond to (e.g., congratulations on a new job)
- Create lists of contacts interested in similar subjects and post an update to one a quarter (so no individual gets more than one a year.)
- When you need information or resources, mine your LinkedIn network for people to ask (and help them when they ask you.)
There are plenty of other ways to maintain your shallow network and you should find the way that is most natural to you. The point is that you need to build one and maintain it so that you are present in other’s minds when opportunities come up.
What If It’s Not Paying Off?
For many years I had an extensive network (online and offline). It paid off here and there but not consistently and I used to wonder what I was “doing wrong.” Now it’s working much better for me and in studying career development strategies for my coaching practice I realize why. Your shallow network connections can only help you if they think of you in association with the kinds of opportunities you are looking for. If you were out there saying you wanted small business clients in 2010 and then in 2011 you got a new job targeting larger corporations – but forgot to mention this to your network – they’re looking for the wrong kind of client for you!
This means that in addition to growing your network, you need to refine your “pitch”, which actually isn’t a (sales) pitch at all. It’s just a short description of who you are, what you care about, what kind of opportunities/information/advice you’re looking for and how much you’d be happy to help them. What I’ve learned is that your networking focus is always evolving – just like you are – and that’s as it should be. The key is to get it clear in your mind at any point in time and have a simple way of introducing yourself that people can remember. If you’re onto a big idea, let them know about that too, but if not, don’t sweat it. Just make a personal connection and add the ones that seem interesting to your shallow network and move on. Once they’re in your network you’re likely to run into them again and maybe that’s when your big idea and their network will intersect beautifully.
In my coaching practice I find that many people struggle to focus on how to build and leverage their network in ways that feels powerful and natural. But once we walk through the few simple steps to help them get their focus, they start enjoying networking, and that’s when they start popping open doors they didn’t know were there.
Would you benefit from developing an easy personal networking plan? Check out our straightforward worksheets to start building yours today!
by Téa Blake | Mar 29, 2013 | Gender Research, InPower Women Blog
Title: What If Women Ran Wall Street?
Study: What If Women Ran Wall Street? (Sheelah Kolhatkar, New York Magazine 2010)
Finding: A certain amount of risk-taking is biologically driven by testosterone, and women can use this to their advantage in producing less emotionally-driven results.
InPower Insight: Despite the common story that women can’t control their emotions, studies that look at women and risk and biology show that men sometimes have more trouble with it than women do.
Summary:
Despite what we’ve been led to believe, the market isn’t rational or efficient at all—it’s all about feelings. According to new research, “Wall Street’ volatility is…driven by our body chemistry.” Research shows that because men have more testosterone, their actions are more impulsive and that more female presence on Wall street could “prevent extreme behavior” and “irrational exuberance”. Men produce fifteen times the amount of testosterone as women and in highly competitive environments testosterone levels tend to rise.
Researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School say that there is something “biological [that] explains risk-taking” and its found that testosterone is the most imminent. In a study conducted at Harvard, economist Terry Burnham, higher-testosterone male rejected money offers if “someone else was getting a larger share.” Burnham also purports that having too many men contributing to major business decision might cause them to take more risks.
Women are found to view an offer more holistically and predict all possible outcomes before making a final decision. Women are more likely to put aside their egos and admit that they are mistaken. Researchers in the field of neuroscience suggest that the disaster on Wall Street could have been predicted because the highly competitive environment was dominated by men, more detrimental risks were taken. Among 1, 200 traders at one of the largest propriety firms in the country, 5 out of the twenty women present were very successful. Thus, the success rate for women was 25 percent in contrast to 2 percent for men.
Personal Coaching Tip: Don’t believe the stories you hear about women being unable to control their emotions or take risks. Women have less testosterone, which actually makes them less impulsive when it comes to risk taking. In the case of Wall Street traders, successful women were able to turn this to their advantage. So can you.
Keywords: Competition, Risk, Testosterone
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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.
by Guest Author | Mar 27, 2013 | Career Development, Commentary, Entrepreneurship, InPower Women Blog
by: Laura Calandrella
Ten years ago, social entrepreneurship was a pretty lonely field. There weren’t degree programs or associations; impact investing and microfinance were barely even recognized terms. Even organizations like Ashoka – which has a 25-year history of investing in entrepreneurs with high potential for solving social problems – would have struggled to promote their “Everyone a Changemaker” vision.
All of that has changed. Economic bubbles have burst and sent us searching for meaning first, money second. Social media has transformed global into local. And Generation Y, my generation, has grown up believing that they can do anything – especially change the world. Social enterprise is not only mainstream, it’s superbly cool.
Even though there are still no “how-to” manuals, I see more and more women stepping up to carve out their place in this rapidly changing business environment. They are undaunted by the uncertainty. I believe that women play an essential role in shaping what it means to be a purpose-driven entrepreneur with a for-profit enterprise. But if we are going to get ahead and create the impact we know we are here to make, we have to break the unwritten rules of what it means to be a change agent.
Here are four ways to get ahead as a female social entrepreneur:
- Collaborate with competitors. It may seem counterintuitive to befriend the founders and organizations that are competing for the same market share as you, but in the social change space, your competitors may be your best supporters. We share the goals of eradicating poverty, solving global environmental issues and reinventing the systems that are pushing us towards an unsustainable future. We face increasingly complex and multi-layered challenges that require dynamic solutions. According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, there is one nonprofit for every 200 people in the United States – which doesn’t even begin to account for the number of for-profit social ventures that exist. In that kind of landscape, competition cannot be the only driver of innovation. We are spreading our financial, human, intellectual and political resources thin on issues where we have common aims. We have to get over the “hero complex” – the desire to be the one to make the world right – that plagues social enterprise. Women have a chance to embrace collaboration as a tool to build capacity to solve the world’s most pressing problems.
- Get over the “social entrepreneur” label. You either are an entrepreneur or you aren’t. The fact that your business has a mission that delivers financial and social returns does not change the requirement that it make sense and there is demand in the market for it. By definition, social entrepreneurs upset the status quo and revolutionize industries. It just so happens that they do this while maintaining a strong commitment to create social outcomes. If you are doing this – and doing it well – the fact that you are a social entrepreneur won’t matter to your customers or investors. Get over the label and focus on using social value to provide a competitive advantage.
- Hire more women for leadership positions. A client recently came to me with a concern raised by a member of her board of directors. He had advised her to hire a man and give him the title of co-founder. Specifically, he told her, “You’ll attract more investors and gain more credibility in the [technology] sector.” While it’s true that women are less likely than men to pursue technology and engineering careers, there is also strong evidence that women in leadership positions engender more trust and financially outperform their male counterparts. For a full list of evidence on why you need women leading your organization, consult this bulleted list from Magus Consulting.
- Invest in personal development. As a caveat to the point above, being a woman doesn’t guarantee your success as a leader, a change agent or in life. A compelling mission and a strong business model are only as successful as the strength of the individuals that implement them. Early-stage ventures often fail to focus on personal and team development, choosing instead to focus solely on technical skills and market knowledge. Yet, leaders who learn to face their fears, develop their intuition, and translate their inner vision into powerful action create lasting results and are better able to deal with the complexities of change. From the outset, establish a leadership culture by investing in coaching, developing learning communities, and taking the time to engage meaningful dialogue on the issues that matter most to you and your organization. As Warren Bennis says in his book On Becoming a Leader, “First and foremost, find out what it is you’re about, and be that.”
Laura Calandrella is a social change coach, educator and speaker. She helps social innovators unlock the power of their leadership to create a better world. Through her company she provides one-on-one coaching, team incubation, and live + virtual trainings for individuals and organizations who are ready to influence the world around them.
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.
Originally posted on The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC)
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.
Laura Calandrella is a social change coach, educator and speaker. She helps social innovators unlock the power of their leadership to create a better world. Through her company she provides one-on-one coaching, team incubation, and live + virtual trainings for individuals and organizations who are ready to influence the world around them.
by Guest Author | Mar 21, 2013 | Commentary, InPower Women Blog, Leadership
By: Angela Maiers
I speak often to groups of aspiring young leaders. Typically, the question on their minds when I begin is “what do I need to DO to become a leader?” I quickly aim to change their orientation from what they must DO to what they must BE.
Success in leadership is attributed not only to what you do; it is dependent on who you are. We set young leaders up to fall if we encourage them to envision what they can do before first considering the kind of kind of leader they want to be.
This holds particularly true for aspiring young women. By helping young women understand the kind of leader they must be, we enable and elevate their ability to influence, catalyze and transform the future.
I have detailed the following TO-BE List for their consideration:
- Be a Learner. Being a lifelong learner is what empowers your relevance for the rest of your life. Eric Hoffer captured it best when he said, “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” Don’t be beautifully equipped for irrelevance — keep learning.
- Be a Question Asker. I have been teaching and writing about the importance of asking great questions for a long time. Great questions are the best way to have a meaningful conversation, the best way to rope in a mentor and the best way to look like a star performer. Make it a priority to listen to people asking great questions. Be in charge of the questions you ask and keep a list of the best questions you hear. Use this to create a question toolbox you use and can apply to every conversation and interaction you have.
- Be Courageous. We don’t serve the rest of the world or ourselves by playing small. Humanity’s misfortune is when we don’t realize the very gifts we have, or the impact we have the opportunity to make. It is imperative that you own and honor your genius, and make a contribution that matters. Don’t wait to be recognized; find appropriate ways to trumpet your achievements.
- Be Kind. We lead our lives in the company of others, and that is where we leave our legacy. It’s the quality of our relationships that most determines whether our legacy will be momentary or long-lasting. Don’t ever pass up a chance to let others know they are noticed and that they matter to you.
- Be Patient and Persistent. Most things of lasting value take time and discipline to achieve. Know that things worth doing seldom come easy. There will be good days and bad days. The bad times tell you that you are pushing yourself, that you are not afraid to learn by trial and error.
- Be Passionate. Passion is not only a differentiator; it is a difference maker. Passion makes the impossible possible.That’s what makes a passionate leader effective. She conceives of possibilities and opportunities for progress, whereas dispassionate persons only see roadblocks.
- Be Hopeful. Hope is something that takes on a life of its own. As a leader, your ability to be hopeful and dispense hope is crucial to helping those you lead thrive in face of difficulty. Bring the hope of something great to come.
- Be Humble. One of the world’s most admired leaders is Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. His annual letters to stockholders are widely read. They highlight a litany of successes, but Buffett also readily acknowledges his failures. For example, his 2007 letter included a section titled, “The Good, the Bad and the Gruesome,” with one part referred to as “confession time,” in which Buffett acknowledges mistakes that cost his investors billions of dollars. The section concludes with Buffett’s prediction that he’ll “make more mistakes in the future — you can bet on that.” Don’t be afraid to be humble, when appropriate.
- Be Empathetic. One of my favorite CEOs tells a story of a rare time when he failed to be empathetic. One morning, a female engineer showed up late and groggy for a group meeting. He loudly called her out, sending her crying from the room. Her manager politely explained that on the previous day, the engineer had diagnosed a catastrophic problem that interrupted operations. She worked until 6:30 a.m. to fix it, went home, showered and returned for the meeting, ten minutes late. An empathetic leader would not have been so eager to make an example of someone that she would have missed the signals this engineer was surely giving off.
Would you follow leaders with these traits and qualities? What can we add or do to help nurture those who seek or are called to serve?
Leadership is a choice. The choice is ours to help them make; TO-BE or NOT-TO-BE.
That is the question for all young women who aspire to be leaders.
Originally on: Huffingtonpost.com
Whether she is addressing an auditorium full of educators or sitting on the floor helping first graders find their way into the pages of a great book, Angela Maiers’ message is the same. Literacy changes lives. As a teacher educator, author and consultant, Angela has spent the past twenty-two years working diligently to help learners of all ages succeed by recognizing their power as readers, writers, and global communicators.
Angela earned a Bachelor of Science in Education and a minor in Biology from
the University of Iowa and completed her graduate and post graduate work at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. As owner and lead consultant at Maiers Educational Services, her passion for literacy and technology to discover creative ways to assist schools and organizations in meeting their learning and productivity goals. When she is not at home in Clive, Iowa, spending time with her husband and two teenage children, you will find her on blog Angelamaiers.com.
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.
by Téa Blake | Mar 18, 2013 | Gender Research, InPower Women Blog
Study: Who Is Governing Whom? Senior Managers, Governance and the Structure of Generosity in Large U.S. Firms (Christopher Marquis and Matthew Lee, Harvard Business School, 2011)
Finding: More women on boards and senior management teams correlate with greater giving by their companies.
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: Women in leadership bring different and balancing criteria to governance decisions. While this dynamic can affect philanthropic generosity, it can effect business decisions too.
Summary:
It turns out that many factors lead some corporations to be more generous than others with their philanthropic investments. It also turns out that the presence of women on the board and senior management is one of those factors and that the more women on the board, and in senior leadership, the more likely a company is to give more.
This Harvard Business School study finds that companies with more female board members are prone to donating more money. It is thought that because women are more apt to give more in general, and value external relationships, female board members help to influence the support of more charitable causes. The study also hypothesized another explanation, which is that women board members often come from positions at nonprofit organizations.
According to a study by the Center for Women’s Business Research, businesses owned by women with assets of 1 million donated 10, 000 dollars to charity yearly.
Personal Coaching Tip: Don’t underestimate the way your personal values can impact your organization’s values – especially in the company of other women. As you move into leadership, the things you value and the reasons you value them become more important because you have greater impact on greater resources. The best way to have the greatest impact is to value what you value and use your influence and leadership credibility to help others value it too!
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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.
by Dana Theus | Mar 14, 2013 | Coaching Advice, Emotional Intelligence at Work, Gender Equality, InPower Women Blog, Work-Life Blend
On average, companies are paying women 77% as much as the guys in the cubes next to them, doing the same jobs. Traditionally this has been seen as a women’s issue, an issue of social justice, a reason for women ask for legislated change. However, I believe that this “fairness” argument has been masking something even more important to modern leaders – leaders who want to run innovative, high-performance organizations.
Since women and men can be equally effective (or ineffective) at leading and managing businesses, risk and people – what the pay gap really means to today’s executives is that we’re overpaying some of our ineffective men. A recent Harvard Business School (HBS) study found that if your company is following typical individual hiring procedures (rather than instituting comparative evaluation processes) you may be favoring underperforming men as much as 63% of the time.
As a culture, until we learn how to hire and pay for true talent (there are ways, see below), we’ll keep losing great female talent, who start to bail out of large organizations at the Director level seeking lifestyle success and entrepreneurial challenges. Will equal pay incent them to stay? Probably not, say these studies that point to the importance of workplace flexibility, but you can be sure of this: unequal pay does not incent them to stay.
Of course, our compensation practices don’t always look all that discriminatory at ground level. They look like good business.
When I was running teams in technology giants and startups I was rewarded for bringing in good talent at the lowest wage possible. From a budget management point of view this made good sense. The loaded headcount budget – which was gigantic – made salary negotiations a strategic financial issue. However, from a workforce and talent development point of view, negotiating down salaries as low as they would go made less sense. The prevailing assumption when we were being miserly with our hiring dollars was that if we could pressure good talent into joining us at a lower salary, we got a win-win (talent and savings) and that this was fair because if they didn’t negotiate on their own behalf well enough, it was their problem. Here are some of the prevailing business-culture assumptions buried in this general approach:
- The best talent knows they’re good and will negotiate accordingly for the highest salary they can get.
- Talent who doesn’t know what they’re worth won’t wake up and smell the coffee, realize they’re being underpaid and leave (and if they do, this is normal employee turnover).
- All good talent really cares about is money.
The problem with this “good business” approach is that these assumptions are flawed and absolutely disadvantage women, who the research tells us don’t negotiate their salaries as assertively as men and often care about compensation that doesn’t come in a paycheck. The concern for work-life balance is especially strong in Gen Y women.
However, these assumptions don’t just hurt the female demographic, they weaken your management and leadership culture at the same time. If your company is hiring people like this, you have in place a cultural filter that rejects some of your best talent, who have the potential to be more loyal and innovative than some who you’re promoting.
Here are assumptions I believe would help build strong companies and fill the leadership pipeline with good women and men.
- The best talent is the best talent, regardless of their self-promotional abilities, which can – and should – be taught.
- People who never wake up and smell the coffee are not your best talent; good talent always wakes up, and they are more likely to be loyal to you if you’re the one pouring them a cup and passing the cream and sweetener.
- Many of your employees – men and women – care about quality of life as much or more than money, giving you more to bargain with if you’re paying attention and willing to adjust the culture to the talent in order to achieve productivity.
Changing these assumptions is a corporate culture design challenge on many levels and has to be done consciously. Running a work-life workshop for women once a year isn’t going to make it happen. It has to be an explicit effort to understand what motivates your workforce and respond genuinely to those needs, even if they are hard for you – the leadership – to relate to personally. Making a commitment to “wake up” the employees to their value by honoring it in ways they value is a great place to start. And countering cultural discrimination isn’t always as hard as it seems. In the Harvard study mentioned above, simply moving to panel review of new recruits cut down on the hiring of unqualified male candidates from 63% to 3%.
Leadership talent has to be committed and skilled in assertiveness and harnessing competitive drive to deliver results, and much of this can be taught to promising employees who are still learning the ropes of leadership. However, what this research tells us is that protecting a corporate culture that perpetuates a leadership culture of workaholic, “company first” women and men who are good at self-promotion favors the mediocre employee who’s learned to game the system and impress you with their swagger. Squeezing headcount budget to the lowest levels and taking advantage of women who don’t negotiate their salary doesn’t just look bad demographically, it’s an indicator of a culture where talent is undervalued and underperformance rewarded.
Want to get the best out of the best people? Take on a sincere culture design effort at the highest levels of the business. The HR department knows most of what is in this article and will certainly help you roll it out, but company culture starts at the top, with the leadership. The buck starts or stops with you.
This article originally appeared on Smartblogs on Leadership.
Check out the resources in the InPower Coaching EQ at Work and Soft Skills Research Index.
by Guest Author | Mar 13, 2013 | Coaching Advice, Personal Mastery
by: Tanvi Gautam
Dr. Marcia Reynolds has a passion for discovering and sharing how the brain works, especially the brain of smart, strong women. She is also a world-renowned executive coach and presents leadership programs globally. In addition to Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction, she authored Outsmart Your Brain and has been quoted in many publications including Psychology Today, O Magazine, and The New York Times and she has appeared on ABC World News. She has a doctorate in psychology and is a Master Certified Coach.
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In this podcast, Marcia and I discuss ways in which women are holding themselves back at work, what they need to be more mindful of as they try and create success and meaning for themselves.
I admire her work for the way she focuses on the inward locus of control when it comes to the discussion on women and success.
We also delve into her research on high achieving women that led to the book ‘Wander Women’. This is a unique book that talks about super achieving women, who despite of their achievements are unable to truly enjoy that success. These women are constantly on the move for more challenges, creating new standards of performance but don’t always have the ability to savour their contributions.
Over the course of the podcast Marcia and I discuss:
1. One of the most common career mistakes made by women the world over.
2. Fear of failure vs. Fear of success
3. How power can be defined in a manner that goes beyond ‘power over’
4. What are the Asian Prototypes of women at work and how to work with them/overcome them.
5. Feeling your life’s purpose vs. acting your life’s purpose
Important quote from the podcast: “Know what you want, instead of just what you don’t want”
‘Right here, right now’ ideas from the podcast to make a difference to your career:
* Create the positive conspiracy of change: 3 people in your life that support your vision. Ask for help- enlist champions.
* Choose your battles, but choose !
* Get there ‘before’ you are ready. You are more capable that you think.
* Create and reflect on the evidence of your success
* It’s not about the skills it’s about the attitude
Marcia: Get Out Of Your Own Way
Originally posted on: wowfactor
Dr. Tanvi Gautam, the managing Partner of Global People Tree aims to inspire a new generation of women leaders through her writing and podcasts. She is also an academic, a storyteller and a mother – all on a single day ! Dr. Tanvi is on the board of the Asian Region Training and development organization, and was recognized as women HR leaders to follow by the Business Manager magazine. She also a sought after speaker at national and international conferences. She blogs at www.wowfactor.asia and loves to share ideas on twitter @tanvi_gautam When it comes to women and leadership she asks: If not now, then when. If not you, then who?
