The Next Challenge: Toppling the Invisible Barriers That Hold Women Back
If you have an interest in advancing women’s leadership in the corporate sector or perhaps advancing your own career, you should read McKinsey’s latest report, Changing Companies Minds about Business.
This important report speaks to the fact that there has been little progress of women to senior leadership and board positions in corporate America despite what appear to be significant initiatives to do so.
What are we missing? Why despite a solid business case tying women’s leadership to improved bottom line performance are we still stuck? Is anyone listening?
There is still much to do to change the invisible barriers that still exist and according to the McKinsey report, it’s not an easy task to change the mind set of managers that block the way for women’s advancement. Much of this bias towards women still remains under the covers.
Some companies have been successful in changing their corporate culture. Companies such as Pitney Bowes, Time Warner and Shell have taken what McKinsey calls a “hard edged” approach with specific metrics and targets. These initiatives started and supported from the top are changing the work environment with clearly defined goals and accountability. The efforts of these companies demonstrate that to affect real change a consistent targeted approach is necessary.
What can we do? The McKinsey report recommends “making it personal”.
Make no mistake. As a senior executive, you are already influencing your company’s approach. If you’re not paying attention to the issue of women’s advancement, you’re ensuring that things won’t change.
Women need to support and sponsor other women to the top.
The report also cites the importance of building a business case about the positive impact women are having in your organization, “whether hard business results or indirect results, such as building better teams”.
Build a business case for yourself.
You can take responsibility for your own credibility and success by understanding what value you bring to the organization, your contribution to business results, and learning how to communicate this to key people within your organization.
Take the McKinsey example. Do you build better teams? What that means to the organization is these teams are more productive and directly affect net income by completing more projects each quarter. Or maybe, these teams are also loyal as well as productive and therefore, are less likely to resign. This means the company spends less on employee acquisition and training.
We all need to do our part to help advance women in the workplace if we want to affect change. We also need to take responsibility for our own advancement.
This fall, I am starting two new projects to help women advance their careers and successfully navigate the corporate environment. GPS Your Career Day and GPS Your Career Group are both designed to help you uncover and understand the value you bring to your organization as well as effectively communicate your value to key people.
GPS Your Career Day is an intense full day program and GPS Your Career Group is a 6 week group coaching program. Both are limited to 10 participants.
If you are interested in learning about one or both of these programs, please email me. I am in the process now of finalizing the plans for the launch.
How to Talk to Little Girls
This is a guest post by Lisa Bloom, author of The New York Times best-seller, Think: Straight Talk For Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World
I went to a dinner party at a friend’s home last weekend, and met her five-year-old daughter for the first time.
Little Maya was all curly brown hair, doe-like dark eyes, and adorable in her shiny pink nightgown. I wanted to squeal, “Maya, you’re so cute! Look at you! Turn around and model that pretty ruffled gown, you gorgeous thing!”
But I didn’t. I squelched myself. As I always bite my tongue when I meet little girls, restraining myself from my first impulse, which is to tell them how darn cute/ pretty/ beautiful/ well-dressed/ well-manicured/ well-coiffed they are.
What’s wrong with that? It’s our culture’s standard talking-to-little-girls icebreaker, isn’t it? And why not give them a sincere complement to boost their self-esteem? Because they are so darling I just want to burst when I meet them, honestly.
Hold that thought for just a moment.
This week ABC news reported that nearly half of all three- to six-year-old girls worry about being fat. In my book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, I reveal that fifteen to eighteen percent of girls under twelve now wear mascara, eyeliner and lipstick regularly; eating disorders are up and self-esteem is down; and twenty-five percent of young American women would rather win America’s next top model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Even bright, successful college women say they’d rather be hot than smart. A Miami mom just died from cosmetic surgery, leaving behind two teenagers. This keeps happening, and it breaks my heart.
Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything. It sets them up for dieting at age 5 and foundation at age 11 and boob jobs at 17 and Botox at 23. As our cultural imperative for girls to be hot 24/7 has become the new normal, American women have become increasingly unhappy. What’s missing? A life of meaning, a life of ideas and reading books and being valued for our thoughts and accomplishments.
That’s why I force myself to talk to little girls as follows.
“Maya,” I said, crouching down at her level, looking into her eyes, “very nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too,” she said, in that trained, polite, talking-to-adults good girl voice.
“Hey, what are you reading?” I asked, a twinkle in my eyes. I love books. I’m nuts for them. I let that show.
Her eyes got bigger, and the practiced, polite facial expression gave way to genuine excitement over this topic. She paused, though, a little shy of me, a stranger.
“I LOVE books,” I said. “Do you?”
Most kids do.
“YES,” she said. “And I can read them all by myself now!”
“Wow, amazing!” I said. And it is, for a five year old. You go on with your bad self, Maya.
“What’s your favorite book?” I asked.
“I’ll go get it! Can I read it to you?”
Purplicious was Maya’s pick and a new one to me, as Maya snuggled next to me on the sofa and proudly read aloud every word, about our heroine who loves pink but is tormented by a group of girls at school who only wear black. Alas, it was about girls and what they wore, and how their wardrobe choices defined their identities. But after Maya closed the final page, I steered the conversation to the deeper issues in the book: mean girls and peer pressure and not going along with the group. I told her my favorite color in the world is green, because I love nature, and she was down with that.
Not once did we discuss clothes or hair or bodies or who was pretty. It’s surprising how hard it is to stay away from those topics with little girls, but I’m stubborn.
I told her that I’d just written a book, and that I hoped she’d write one too one day. She was fairly psyched about that idea. We were both sad when Maya had to go to bed, but I told her next time to choose another book and we’d read it and talk about it. Oops. That got her too amped up to sleep, and she came down from her bedroom a few times, all jazzed up.
So, one tiny bit of opposition to a culture that sends all the wrong messages to our girls. One tiny nudge towards valuing female brains. One brief moment of intentional role modeling. Will my few minutes with Maya change our multibillion dollar beauty industry, reality shows that demean women, our celebrity-manic culture? No. But I did change Maya’s perspective for at least that evening.
Try this the next time you meet a little girl. She may be surprised and unsure at first, because few ask her about her mind, but be patient and stick with it. Ask her what she’s reading. What does she like and dislike, and why? There are no wrong answers. You’re just generating an intelligent conversation that respects her brain. For older girls, ask her about current events issues: pollution, wars, school budgets slashed. What bothers her out there in the world? How would she fix it if she had a magic wand? You may get some intriguing answers. Tell her about your ideas and accomplishments and your favorite books. Model for her what a thinking woman says and does.
And let me know the response you get at www.Twitter.com/lisabloom.
Here’s to changing the world, one little girl at a time.
© 2011 Lisa Bloom, author of Think: Straight Talk For Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World
Author Bio
Lisa Bloom, author of Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed Down World, is an award-winning journalist, legal analyst, trial attorney, and the daughter of renowned women’s rights attorney, Gloria Allred.
A daily fixture on American television for the last decade, Bloom is currently the CBS News legal analyst, appearing frequently on The Early Show and CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, as well as the legal analyst for The Dr. Phil Show. Bloom appears regularly on CNN and HLN prime time shows such as Issues With Jane Velez-Mitchell, The Joy Behar Show, Anderson Cooper 360, and The Situation Room. She has been featured on Oprah, Nightline, Today, Good Morning America, Rachael Ray, and many more, and she was a nightly panelist on The Insider throughout 2010. From 2001-2009, Bloom hosted her own daily, live, national show on Court TV, and she has guest-hosted Larry King Live, The Early Show, and Showbiz Tonight.
Bloom has written numerous popular and scholarly articles for the Los Angeles Times, Family Circle, the National Law Journal, CNN.com, the Daily Beast, and many more. She has also been profiled, featured, and quoted in hundreds of publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Elle, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Variety.
For more information please visit http://think.tv/ and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter
Owning Our Success
Women are well positioned today to change workplace dynamics and use their strength and talent to assume more leadership positions. Thirty four percent (34%) of American women between the ages of 25 and 34 have bachelor degrees compared to 27% of men, and women have higher GPA’s and are more likely to receive higher graduate degrees.
We have what it takes to make significant changes, but we need to own our success to move forward. The reality is that currently women only hold 18% of top leadership positions. Yes, there is still gender bias as well as challenges balancing work and family for women who want to advance their careers. I believe it’s time, however, to change the focus from the obstacles to the opportunities. It’s time to take responsibility for our own advancement.
In 2010, McKinsey and Company published a report called “Women Matter 2010. Women at the Top of Corporations: Making it Happen.” As part of their research they asked 1500 executives across different industries what are the biggest barriers to increasing gender diversity within the top management of the company? Thirty eight percent (38%) of the women executives interviewed said they see the biggest factor as their hesitancy to promote themselves. In other words, the biggest factor was within their control to change!
It’s time to focus on what we can control; what we can do personally to own our own success and promote ourselves.
What does it take to own your success?
- Belief in yourself and an understanding of your value proposition.
- Taking credit and acknowledging your accomplishments.
- Speaking up and letting others know your opinion and thoughts.
- Advocating for yourself. Requesting sponsorship.
- Negotiating what’s fair and appropriate in salary and benefits.
- Letting go of language that minimizes and sabotages your credibility.
- Communicating your value to others.
- Being visible within your organization and community to showcase your skills and talent.
- Building and leveraging relationships that will assist you to reach your goal.
- Having a strategic and intentional focus to advance your career.
We need to own our success to be successful.
Embrace it.
Believe it.
Nurture it.
Communicate it.
Celebrate it.
Take advantage of my FREE 7 Day Boot Camp on Promoting Yourself for Career Success. Sign up on my home page. or on the right sidebar!
Do You Want a Seat at the Table?
This past week I had the opportunity to not only attend the MA Conference for Women, but also to participate in a leadership panel about women and corporate board positions. My role on the panel was to speak about how women can promote themselves and increase their credibility and visibility so they can get a board appointment. It was a wonderful experience and I was pleasantly surprised how many women attended the panel discussion and had a keen interest in serving on either a non-profit or corporate board.
I sure that most of us are aware of the current studies that prove that having a diverse board (at least 30% women representation) contributes directly to a company’s performance. In fact, companies with more female representation, outperform companies don’t have women. This is critically important for companies to understand and implement, especially companies that wish to improve their bottom line (and who wouldn’t be interested in that?).
So what’s in it for women to serve on boards, non-profit or corporate?
There are many advantages. Board experience can offer you:
1. The opportunity to learn and apply new skills that you can add to your portfolio and resume.
2. The opportunity to network and leverage relationships with other board members who can potentially help you advance your career and broaden your influence.
3. The opportunity to give back to your community.
4. The opportunity to further develop and use your expertise.
5. The opportunity to create visibility and credibility around your personal brand.
6. The opportunity to build relationships that will bring you business.
7. The opportunity to be a part of a team that works together toward a common goal.
8. The opportunity to contribute your time and energy to a cause that you are passionate about.
In summary, a seat at the table can help you in your own career efforts. Board positions often help widen your web of influence and acquaint others with your expertise and talent. Other board members can be great connectors or influencers for new job opportunities.
If sitting on a board is one of your goals, it is important to learn how to communicate your value and to network strategically so others know what you can bring to the table. First of all, let people know you want to sit on a board. Once you verbalize your intent, people will connect you to others who can possibly help you achieve this goal. As opportunities surface, evaluate them carefully based on their expectations of your time, financial contribution, and if your skill set is a good match for their needs. Most importantly, evaluate the opportunity based on whether or not this particular board can help you reach your overall career goals. Who are the other board members? Are they potentially good connectors and influencers? Look at the opportunity strategically and focus not only what you can contribute, but what this commitment can do for you.
For women who are interested in advancing their careers, please check out the 90-Day Coaching Intensive for Managers starting in January. Learn how to communicate your value, develop your web of influence and successfully navigate the corporate environment.
I am offering early bird discounts and special bonus gifts for the first 3 women who sign up.
The program is limited to 10 women, so if you’re interested please register soon!
Betty Dukes It Out With Walmart
This week a San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals certified the largest class-action employment lawsuit in U.S. history. The dispute was first filed in 2001 by Betty Dukes, a store greeter from California, along with five co-workers. The plaintiffs argue that women are paid less and given fewer promotions than their male co-workers, and the lawsuit states that the company’s “strong, centralized structure fosters or facilitates gender stereotyping and discrimination”.
The issue decided at the Circuit Court this week was whether more than a million current and former Walmart employees can band together in their claim of discrimination. The Court, though divided, ruled that they can.
The implications of this case is huge, not only for Walmart, but for all companies that uphold discriminatory practices against women. If, in fact, Walmart loses the lawsuit and must pay back wages to over a million women, they will certainly suffer financially. This case could cost Walmart billions of dollars. Walmart will more than likely also suffer additional penalties at the check- out counter, since most of the consumers are women. At a time when they are working on polishing their public image, this is not good news for Walmart.
We don’t know the outcome of this case and it will probably take years to reach some kind of conclusion. The important message for all of us is that one woman, Betty Dukes, spoke up! One woman decided enough was enough and blew the whistle. Betty Dukes decided to take on the giant megastore chain, and in doing so, will potentially make a difference for all working women who still make 79 cents for every dollar a man makes.
As women, we do not realize the power that we have, not only as employees, but consumers. We accept the status quo. In this case, one brave woman was willing to stand up and take action and bring together a group of like minded colleagues to join the fight. When women band together and work together for a common goal, it is such a powerful force that it can change history. We’ve seen it before in history and now a new story is about to emerge.
Go Betty!
Advancing Women’s Leadership
For those of you who follow my radio show, Head Over Heels: Women’s Business Radio (formerly Women Mean Business), you know that I am passionate about women advancing their careers and assuming more leadership positions. The weekly show, which is broadcast every Tuesday, 2-3pm EST on VoiceAmerica Business channel, features interviews with thought leaders and subject matter experts that provide valuable information for professional women to meet and overcome their challenges in the current business environment.
It is from this fabulous content that I have created my first ebook, Advancing Women’s Leadership. The book features my interviews with Marie Wilson, President and Founder of The White House Project, Alice Eagly, co-author of Through The Labyrinth: The Truth About How Women Become Leaders, and Alison Maitland, co-author of Why Women Mean Business.
This ebook is available to you FREE!
Here is an excerpt from the introduction of the book:
“The subject of women’s leadership in America and around the globe has been the focus on many new conversations, news articles, and books. What is becoming very clear from recent research is that having more women in leadership positions is no longer a gender issue. It is now a business issue. Diversity on corporate boards and in executive suites contributes to profitability. Although there may still be some debate as to why this is so, the fact remains: research shows that when leadership positions are inclusive of both men and women, businesses thrive.
Women are certainly up to the task. Women are now the more educated sex and now have the credentials to assume leadership positions. Although the glass ceiling metaphor has become outdated, some barriers to women assuming leadership positions, some subtle and some perhaps not so subtle, still exist in American businesses today.”
Click here to get your free ebook and send along your ideas for topics and guests for the ongoing show.
Womenomics
Recent research studies indicate a very strong correlation exists between corporate performance and gender balanced leadership; the more diverse the leadership team, the better financial performance of the organization.
Focus on the diversity of corporate boards has been viewed as an important step to a more gender balanced leadership. The intent of initiatives to increase female representation on boards followed the assumption that this would lead to the promotion of more female leaders within a company.
Now there is a new study – Womenomics 101, that focuses on the representation of women on the executive committee. This survey, done by 20-first, is designed to take a serious look at which companies are truly embracing gender balance.
The United States came up on top with 89% of companies having at least one women on their executive committee. However, when the study investigated further, they found that the women who are promoted to the executive committee are often in a support role like legal, HR, communications. Often these roles, do not have profit and loss responsibility.
According to Avivah Wittenberg-Cox of 20-first and co-author of Why Women Mean Business, “Companies that only manage to promote women into leadership through staff roles demonstrate that they have not yet worked out how to gender balance their leadership development systems and their talent pipelines”.
Wittenberg-Cox suggests that companies still don’t get it. They don’t get “womenomics”. It is mostly women who are purchasing their products and having more women in leadership positions is the key to understanding and tapping into this growing market.
Listen to my interview this Tuesday, December 15th 2-3pm EDT, with Why Women Mean Business co-author Alison Maitland as we discuss the next economic revolution: womenomics.
Listen live or download mp3.
http://www.modavox.com/voiceamerica/vepisode.aspx?aid=43110
Are Professional Women’s Networks Passe?
What do you accomplish when you put a group of professional women together in a room? a valid question and now a controversial topic of discussion.
Professional women’s networks have recently come under fire for perpetuating the ideology that women need to be “fixed” in order to be successful in the workplace. These professional groups were for the most part originally formed for women to network and listen to senior women for mentorship and role modelling.
Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, co-author of Why Women Mean Business”, was recently quoted as saying, “We have to stop bringing groups of women together to talk about what we know is going wrong.” “We have to convince our companies to stop fixing women.”
Separating women for personal development does not seem to fit with the current line of thinking that “women’s” issues are now business issues and that advancing women’s leadership is of great benefit to an organization. If that is so, what is the best approach for supporting women’s leadership initiatives?
Many women believe that the support from a women’s network is vital to their success, but maybe the overall purpose of these groups is more about sharing and strategizing to change the overall company culture than it is to “fix” women.
Professional women’s groups offer wonderful opportunities for collaboration and support from other women. This remains important. However, in order to shift company cultures, perhaps these networks should also collaborate with mixed gender groups both internally and externaly.
Women’s groups can take the lead on shifting the attitudes and beliefs of companies by shifting their own agenda from how difficult it is to be a woman to creating better opportunities for talent management.
What are your thoughts?
If You’re Happy and You Know it….
Clap your hands! Stomp your feet! Well, apparently not too many women are clapping and stomping these days. Recently, there have been many articles and reports on how women’s happiness has declined in the last few decades. Quite honestly, it’s depressing just to read these articles.
Many theories have been tossed around; some related to the failure of feminism. These theories suggest that the more a woman’s sphere of existence expands and diversifies, the more she has to be unhappy about. In other words, increased opportunities for women raise the level of expectations and these expectations are not fulfilled causing unhappiness. I don’t see how feminism has failed. What I do see is how society has fallen short of supporting women.
What has become apparent with the release of Maria Shriver’s report, “A Women’s Nation Changes Everything”, is that women have not made significant progress in many key areas. For instance, women still earn 73 cents to every man’s dollar. Women pay more for health insurance. Old gender stereotypes do still exist to some degree and this forces women into lower paying professions. And most importantly, no matter how many hours women work, we still do most of the care-taking and housekeeping at home.
Is this all changing? Yes. In fact, many more men are now sharing the load at home. But until there is more progress toward gender equality, I don’t think you will see many women jumping up and down with joy.
Please send me your comments. I would love to hear from you about this issue.
Movin’ on Up
In 1986, an article in The Wall Street Journal by Carol Hymowitz and Timothy Schellhardt first introduced the term Glass Ceiling. The illustration that accompanied the article showed a woman in a business suit pushing up against a glass barrier. After that article, the term Glass Ceiling caught on quickly as the metaphor for an impenetrable blockade that women face when seeking leadership positions that have previously been occupied by men.
Since then, there has been considerable progress in the number of women in managerial roles, but little progress in executive leadership. Catalysts’ research in 2005 found that women occupy 16 percent of executive positions in Fortune 500 companies, up from 9 percent ten years earlier.
The reasons for the lack of more significant progress are varied and this remains a complicated issue that has been and continues to be the subject of much discussion. The term Glass Ceiling is no longer an accurate descriptor as many women have successfully risen to the top; have shattered the barrier and attained executive and board level positions in organizations.
I believe there is much to learn from the women who have achieved executive status. Their stories need to be evaluated not only on their unique skill sets, but also the cultural environment of their company at the time of their promotion or appointment. Every success story has a special lesson.
Now and again, there is a prominent success story that grabs our attention and this week it was the appointment of Diane Sawyer as the second woman solo-anchor of a network evening news broadcast. There will now be two women solo-anchors (Katie Couric being the first) on the networks’ flagship programs.
Connie Chung is quoted as saying:
This signifies that the age of dinosaur behavior in the news industry is over. The network-news flagship program has been the last vestige of the dark ages. The anchor has always been traditionally a male – a white male.
So yes. There is progress. Women are reaching top positions. When we see the progress, we need to not only celebrate each success, but we should also seek to learn what we can about each woman’s journey to help us in our own quest to climb the ladder.
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