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.
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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 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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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?
by Guest Author | Mar 12, 2013 | InPower Women Blog, Women in Leadership
I hate Women’s History Month. Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s vitally important to keep remembering that – and why – women matter. It’s crucial that we keep examining and updating our perceptions of women, so that we see them in ways that are ever-more complete, current and correct. I just don’t think that Women’s History Month (“WHM”) accomplishes these ends very well. Unfortunately, WHM is often reduced to an annual box-checking exercise that masquerades as a demonstration of commitment to women.
I should know. I used to be a Diversity officer for a large organization. The traditional observance of WHM was this: We went into our storage closets and dusted off a bunch of yellowed lithographs of exceptional women. We put the photos up in the hallways (and removed them promptly on April 1st). We held a lunch and brought in a speaker or two to motivate and educate. Usually, the only people in the audience were women. And then we crossed off the “Women-valued-for-this-year” item on our organizational to-do list. We meant well, but I don’t think we helped anyone. Even though it was totally unsatisfying, I never figured out how to do something more meaningful. The only option I saw was to discontinue the charade.
Today, 25 years later, I believe that we should celebrate Women’s History Month (and every other “History Month”) by agreeing to make ourselves and each other uncomfortable. I would like to see March become an annual invitation to reengage, refresh and reexamine our collective narrative about women. I’d like it to be the month where leaders of both genders come together to assess where women actually stand in their organization, community or country. Where are we with parity, really? What advances can we celebrate, and how do we replicate and increase them? Where are the gaps between what we say we believe and what we actually do? How do we find that out? What subtle and obvious barriers must women negotiate that their male counterparts do not? What are the organizational ‘clubs’ and power centers in which women still have reduced access or sway? What are the beliefs, behaviors and systems that accomplish this exclusion? When we look at our key strategic challenges, what could women’s perspectives and skill bring to the table that we may be missing?
Women’s History Month is also an invitation for us women to enter into our own discomfort. March is as good a time as any to evaluate ourselves as unflinchingly as we wish our organizations would evaluate themselves. Are there ways in which I have held myself back from making my own small history? Are there situations in which I routinely choose comfort over challenge? Are there necessary battles that I’ve backed away from? Or fights I’ve been fighting ineffectively or for too long? Are there places in which I have abandoned my own vision, principles or well-being in order to keep the waters calm? Are there younger women around me who are withering, either from the absence of a mentor or from active sabotage? Are there some paths that I could clear so that other women can make their own history?
Men… you too. Are you relaxing your attention on parity, since the tides of favor and power are starting to shift? Do you levy criticisms against women that you don’t levy against men? Do you hold women in your sphere to higher or lower standards than the men? What one step could you take to check that your impact on women aligns more fully with your best intentions?
Avoid the token nod to Women’s History. Organizations, beware self-satisfaction because you hired a lunchtime speaker. Women, resist viewing March as a a month of sanctioned victimhood. Men, nap not on your laurels. For Women’s History Month, let’s put ourselves on the hook for real dialogue and meaningful change. Let’s be willing to get uncomfortable this month and see what happens.
This post originally posted on Leading With Grit and Grace.
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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 Téa Blake | Mar 8, 2013 | Gender Research, InPower Women Blog
Study: Can Single- Sex Education Make Women Less Risk- Averse? (Sosa, Booth, Nolen, 2012)
Finding: Assumptions that women are more risk-averse than men may be more about social context and less about inherent gender traits
InPower Insight: When it comes to risk-taking, the stories we tell ourselves may just be stories.
Summary:
Those stories about how women are risk averse may be telling us only half the truth.
Researchers gave students at a British university in same-gender and mixed-gender groups a chance to place a bet on the lottery. Previous research has found that women are more risk-averse than men, and the hypothesis went that the women wouldn’t risk as much on the lottery.
At first the students behaved according to the hypothesis and women in both groups were less likely to play the lottery. But then after 8 weeks the numbers changed and the women in the same-sex group were just as likely to take the lotto risk as the men (in both mixed and same gender groups).
This suggests that the risk-taking data found in previous studies reflected social learning rather than “inherent gender traits”. The results of this study suggests that inherent traits can in fact be altered by the environment.
Career Coaching tip: Becoming good at taking risks is an important business skill so if you want to get ahead, learn to take risk and don’t let other people – women or men – tell you that you (or “women”) aren’t good at risk. Your personality and/or social context has a lot more to do with your risk profile than your gender. Be deliberate and thoughtful about what risk you’re comfortable taking this skill will serve you well.
Category: Capability
Keywords: risk taking, risk, gender traits
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 6, 2013 | Career Development, Coaching Advice
It is a well known fact in human psychology. We only see what we believe. I was speaking a few years ago on a panel of C-suite women about how to achieve career success. One woman in the audience asked: “How did each of you shatter the glass ceiling?”. Every single one of us on the panel looked surprised. I was personally surprised at my own response. No one had asked me that question before. I said “I don’t really think I’ve experienced a glass ceiling”. All my career, I had been so focused on the goal, I had no time to think of the barriers. The others on the panel had similar experiences.
Now that I am in the world of helping women advance, I am well familiar with the organizational biases that exist – mostly unconscious mindsets that have unintended consequences. However, I ask the women I work with and talk to, to stop focusing on the glass ceiling and start focusing on the “Sweet Spot”. So what’s the Sweet Spot?
What’s the Sweet Spot?
- It’s when you are inspired and come alive at work
- It’s the place where your personal joy meets an important need in the world
- It’s the place in the organization where you’re inspired to make your biggest contributions
- It’s where you feel most “at home” within your authentic self
- It’s when you stand in purpose and express your unique talents
If we focus on finding the Sweet Spots, the glass ceilings become irrelevant. When we focus on the glass ceiling we are the victim of an external environment. When we focus on the Sweet Spot, we are empowered to make a difference. It’s all about where we focus. Because what we focus on is what we believe. And what we believe is what we achieve.
If this resonated for you, please comment, subscribe and share with others.
Additional Information
Discover the Authentic Brand YOU – to connect with the Sweet Spot within you.
Write your own leadership story – TEDxTalk by Dana Theus
This post was originally published on Transformational Leadership.
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.
by Téa Blake | Mar 1, 2013 | Gender Research, InPower Women Blog
Study: Do Daughters Help Ease Gender Pay Gap? (Columbia Business School, 2011, Ross, Dahl, Deszo)
Finding: The wage gap decreases measurably when a male CEO has daughters.
InPower Insight: Know that people’s personal experiences – including yours – effect their hiring practices.
Summary:
In a new study, researchers found that wage gaps between male and females decrease when male CEOs have daughters. (more…)
by Dana Theus | Feb 27, 2013 | Coaching Advice, Leadership
We all know we’re living in interesting times as technology boils under the sea change in our economy, but it’s rare that we can see it very clearly. As a business person, it’s important to see such future trends clearly and this presentation by Mary Meeker, Wall Street analyst turned Kleiner Perkins Venture Capitalist, gives us an unusually insightful look into our past, present and future.
The Future Is Now
I’m not going to try to summarize her awesome assessment of what technology is doing to our society. This is one of the few 88 slide presentations I really believe is worth viewing from beginning to end (yes, really, and I have the attention span of a gnat so I don’t say this lightly). There are so many awesome trends she spots here, but I will summarize the ones that struck me personally as important and interesting (sing with me: It’s my blog and I can pick what I want to….)
- The mobile web is the future (The slides and graphs say we are literally sitting in the middle of the inflection point where handhelds are overtaking fixed location machines, with vast implications for how we reach and interact with our users and customers.)
- Mobile-enabled business models to undercut and redefine “the way we do things” are becoming more possible every day (really, even getting your car washed has a new model, check out slide 66.)
- Asset-light lifestyles are awesomely possible without compromising quality of life (If you’re not a techno-geek like I am, skim past the charts and graphs to check out the section starting on slide 59 and see if it helps you re-image your life.)
Really, though, take 10 minutes and go through this presentation.
(more…)
by Téa Blake | Feb 22, 2013 | Gender Research, InPower Women Blog
Title: Women And Men Make A Great Team When The Woman Make It To Senior Roles
Study: Behind Every Great Woman (Bloomburg BusinessWeek 2012)
Finding: Many powerful women are receiving significant help – to the point of social role reversal – more and more often to help them achieve work-life balance.
InPower Insight: Work-life balance isn’t just the responsibility of – or the interest of – professional women. Men are part of the solution.
Summary:
As women begin to advance to greater and more powerful management positions in their careers, their husbands are beginning to have to step up more in the household and raise their children. Seven of the 18 women who serve as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies have or have had at one point or another stay-at-home husbands. Other powerful women’s husbands have had to settle in at positions in their companies with less responsibilities. This “role reversal” has grown as women comprise 51.4 percent of managerial and professional positions. Twenty- three percent of wives make more than their husbands and for women thirty and under, they make more than their male counterparts in all but three of the US’s largest cities. As a result of the recession, more men lost their jobs than women- three to one. Men who have been laid- off end up taking care of the children full- time. Thirty- two percent of men regularly care for children under the age of five and one in five serves as the main caregiver. As men take up a greater role in the home, they have faced criticism for being lazy while their powerful wives work hard.
Career Coaching Tip: As you chart your career and think about what’s important to you, factor your partner into the equation. Develop a joint plan for managing your family with a realistic understanding of the kind of work responsibility you both plan on taking on. If your partner is interested in cutting back to take care of the family and you like the idea, encourage them and let them know that they will be part of a growing trend of stay-at-home dads.
Keywords: Role Reversal, Stay-at-home dad, work-life balance, men and women
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