SLOW and Unsteady Progress

Catalyst released its 2010 Census and it's receiving a bit of coverage (Today online, Seek4Media, MyStateline, Reuters, LifeInc). Conventional wisdom over the summer was that business had been experiencing a "mancession" and that we were experiencing "The End of Men."  I didn't believe a word of it, but because the facts are in opposition to the new conventional wisdom, this release by Catalyst is getting more than its usual coverage. Catalyst is reporting that

136 of Fortune 500 companies had no women executives, among them Exxon Mobil, Berkshire Hathaway, Citigroup, Costco Wholesale and Sears Holding. Women held 14.4 per cent of executive officer positions in 2010, up from 13.5 per cent in 2009, and female executive officers held 7.6 per cent of the top earning positions, up from 6.3 per cent last year, the 2010 Catalyst Census showed.

"This is our fifth report where the annual change in female leadership remained flat. If this trend line represented a patient's pulse, she'd be dead," said Ms Ilene Lang, president and chief executive of Catalyst, a non-profit organisation that advocates greater opportunities for women.

The best five companies in terms of women in the executive suite were Gap, H&R Block, Limited Brands, TIAA-CREF and Western Union.

More than 10 per cent of companies lacked any women on their boards last year and this year."

What bothers me about the coverage is that Ilene Lang's rationale for getting women into leadership is not one that's likely to convince boards and C-suite men to take action. She is quoted as saying, "To be successful, they have to have more points of view - people from all kinds of backgrounds - and have diversity in the senior leadership." A different winning argument would be that companies that have gender-neutral advancement practices (more outcome-oriented versus subjective) get more women to the top which is likely to account for the correlation between women at the top and financial performance. So, uncover and remedy bias in your systems if the top of diverse organizations is mostly male.

The Catalyst census also points to the importance of having sponsors (as opposed to mentors.) Don't get me started on this subject! Women have been told to get mentors (which actually meant sponsors back when the advice started in the 70s) for nearly 4 decades. Formalizing these mentoring programs eliminated the "sponsorship" element and revisiting this to establish formal "sponsorship" programs will do the same and we'll be looking for a new word in 40 years to describe the commitment of more senior people to help more junior advance.

Jenna Goudreau picks up the Catalyst information and writes about the discrepancies in impact between women and men who have mentors. Her bottom line advice is:

"Professional women should seek out mentors at the highest levels of leadership. Those that do are promoted at the same rate as men with mentors at the top. Less clear is why women’s compensation lags behind men’s even with a mentor at the top."

But advice to get a senior mentor (or sponsor) misses the point if you don't know what to seek from the relationship.

Special Tip for You!

At Leading Women we offer unconventional advice about how women can make the most of mentoring relationships. Hint: ask for a piece of P.I.E. Want to know more about what this means and how it can fuel your career success? Email me.

A few random links:  

• After the Glass Ceiling comes a Glass  Cliff
• Women Leave Management More than Men

These two studies relate in one way: "Almost 3% of women were dismissed from their jobs, the study found, while less than 1% of their male counterparts suffered the same fate."

•  Women Targeted as Whistleblowers
• Glass Ceiling Strong in CA
• More on Importance of "Sponsors"
• More on Unsteady Progress

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls.  Follow her on Twitter.

Who's Failing Whom?

 In a Forbes.com article, titled " Why Business Schools are Failing Women," Selena Rezvani and Sandie Taylor explain that most business schools do a poor job recruiting and addressing the needs of women. With this I wholeheartedly agree.

But within the article that I came across very disturbing information. They write, here are common questions that women ask:

"--Can I be liked and respected?

--How do I project a firm, credible presence so that I'm taken seriously?

--Can I have the job of my dreams and a family?

--How feminine can I be in this largely male environment?

--What's the best way to maneuver through a male-female power struggle?

--How can I be sure this is a gender issue for that matter?"

While these are important questions, at least if we believe what we read in women-oriented media, they do not get to the heart of women's career success. So, I'd like to offer quick (and slightly irreverent) answers and then get on to more meaty questions.

"--Can I be liked and respected? Yes

--How do I project a firm, credible presence so that I'm taken seriously? See below.

--Can I have the job of my dreams and a family? Yes, reference most of the F500 women CEOs.

--How feminine can I be in this largely male environment? Well, you can't show too much cleavage.

--What's the best way to maneuver through a male-female power struggle? Strategically.

--How can I be sure this is a gender issue for that matter?" Do you see the same thing happening to men?

4 Questions for Career Success

Answering these questions might quell concerns, but they will not help women advance. Instead, here are 4 questions that any woman could ask in order to create a career that soars™:

1. How can I develop and demonstrate the business, strategic and financial acumen that will advance my career?
2. How do I build and nurture the right strategic networks of people inside and outside the organization?
3. What are the worldviews of successful leaders and how can I cultivate mine?
4. How do the answers to these questions change as I move up?

These are certainly not the only questions that will help advance careers, but these questions will serve women at every career stage from grad school to the C-suite and onto corporate boards. You'll find more questions along with answers and tips in No Ceiling, No Walls.

More from Forbes

In the past, I've covered this in our Lead ON! newsletter, but thought it worth posting here as well. From Carol Hymowitz' blog.

"Just 28% of some 800 companies that McKinsey surveyed for its 2009 Women Matter study cited “achieving leadership diversity” among their top 10 priorities and 40% of the companies surveyed said “it wasn’t a priority at all,” Barsh said.

The study also found that women and men have very different views about what’s needed to achieve gender parity in leadership ranks. Some 70% of the female leaders who were surveyed said they thought women needed to hold at least 30% of senior posts in business, government and elsewhere to be taken seriously and to influence decision making. But a majority of male leaders surveyed didn’t think having a critical mass of women in senior roles mattered. (Barsh agreed with the women’s perspective.)

Moreover, many companies “mistakenly think if they offer women flexible work schedules (so they can more easily balance childrearing and jobs) they’ve done enough,” said Barsh. But companies also need to analyze and improve how they developing, paying and retaining women."

And Davia Temin covered the Harvard Kennedy School's Women and Public Policy program, and co-sponsored by the Council of Women World Leaders and the World Economic Forum (Davos). She lists these findings:

• "The more complex the issue, the more diversity improves the correct outcomes of decision-making.
• Quotas do work! In India, where there are gender quotas for female chief councilors in the villages, strong evidence shows that "villagers who have never been required to have a female leader prefer male leaders and perceive female leaders as less effective than their male counterparts," even when performance is identical, according to MIT professor Esther Duflo. But "exposure to a female leader ... weakens stereotypes about gender roles ... and eliminates the negative bias in how female leaders' effectiveness is perceived among male villagers. ...

• There is a strong correlation around the world between gender inequity and poverty: The greater the gender inequity, the greater the poverty.

The overwhelming conclusion of the conference was that the time is uniquely right--the time is now--to make significant impact through a combination of hard data and measurement, case studies and advocacy. Closing the gender gap is, as Bohnet stated, not only a human rights issue, it is a verifiable business imperative for our society's well-being."

To find out what's happening at the Kennedy School go here.

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls.  Follow her on Twitter.

Personal Brand > Professional Brand > Leadership Brand

This morning I commented on the ForbesWoman LinkedIn group to a discussion on personal branding. The question was, "are businesswomen avoiding the spotlight, not as focused on Personal Branding as men?" Here's my response:

"My research confirms that women are less likely to seek the spotlight and develop a professional brand by displaying expertise in many arenas. For example, in several gender-neutral LinkedIn groups on leadership, the comments are overwhelmingly offered by men. Another, a review a few years ago of HBR articles showed that nearly all were written by men.

That being said, I wouldn't say that women are not as focused on our Personal brands. We are mis-focused. Here's why: most messages we receive about personal branding are over-focused on personal style: attire, fitness, accessories. This mis-focus on style is coupled with women's humility and distaste for or discomfort with self-promotion. As a result we often don't look for or take advantage of opportunities to establish professional competence and leadership credibility."

This was a timely question. Yesterday I presented to the WISE group at New York Life. One of the most important pieces of advice I offered was that there is a difference between your personal, professional and leadership brands. This is a distinction rarely made, but absolutely essential for women who are working to create careers that soar or businesses that succeed.

If you'd like to learn more about the distinction and how to make it work for you, please email info@LeadingWomen.biz.

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls.  Follow her on Twitter.

A Compendium of News

Going, g o i n g, g o n e
WSJ reports that women are leaving financial institutions at a rate far greater than their male counterparts (see above).

"In the past 10 years, 141,000 women, or 2.6% of female workers in finance, left the industry. The ranks of men grew by 389,000 in that period, or 9.6%, according to a review of data provided by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The shift runs counter to changes in the overall work force. The number of women in the U.S. labor market has grown by 4.1% in the past decade, outpacing a 0.5% increase in male workers.
The difference is pronounced at brokerage firms, investment banks and asset-management companies."

Thanks to Francesca for the heads up on this story.

Thumbs Up... Thumbs Down
As part of the Clinton Global Initiative, Coca Cola has committed to have women represent 50% of their micro-distribution centers (basically individual entrepreneurs who distribute product to retailers). While this is great news on one level, my trip to Guatemala in June was evidence of two dangers from American beverage companies: an overabundance of waste in developing countries without the infrastructure to handle it and the very sad feeding of cola products to infants.

Let's Hear it for the Swiss!
For the first time, Switzerland has more women in its cabinet than men. This a mere 40 years after women gaining the right to vote. Now, why is U.S. so far behind after nearly 100 years?

"The four-three majority makes Switzerland only the fourth country in the world to have more women than men in its cabinet, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The others are Cape Verde, Finland, and Norway."

Vision 2020
Speaking of 100 years of women's suffrage...Next month is the first meeting of Vision 2020, a decade-long initiative to advance women's equality in advance of the 100th anniversary of women's sufferage. I am honored to be one of the delegates from RI and look forward to the first meeting next month. Please reach out to your state's delegates and ask what you can do to make change.

And speaking of what's left to be done. Here's what Jenna Goudreau of ForbesWoman has to say.

"In 2010, women are legally able to achieve equal footing. But have they? They are now half of the workforce, but earn only 78% as much as men. They earn the majority of bachelors and masters degrees, but are still more likely to serve as primary parent and housekeeper for the family. We came close to a female president but haven’t had one. Meanwhile Ireland, India, Costa Rica and Liberia have elected a female leader. Women are 51% of management and professional workers, yet in the largest companies in the U.S. only 3% have female CEOs and only 16% of board members are women. For the first time in history, we have three female Supreme Court justices. Time to celebrate? Only 17% of Congress members are women, and only six of the nation’s 50 governors are women."

More on the "Glass Cliff"
In 2004, the term "glass cliff" was coined to describe women who are placed in leadership positions in organizations in precarious financial situations. Summarized in the British Psychological Society's Research Blog, the study by Susanne Bruckmüller and Nyla Branscombe finds:

"...the phenomenon occurs firstly, because a crisis shifts people's stereotyped view of what makes for an ideal leader, and secondly, because men generally don't fit that stereotype. '...[I]t may not be so important for the glass cliff that women are stereotypically seen as possessing more of the attributes that matter in times of crisis,' the researchers wrote, 'but rather that men are seen as lacking these attributes ...'."

That's Dr. Ms....
For the first time ever women earned the majority (50.4%) of doctoral degrees awarded in 2008-09. Most in public administration, health sciences and education.

Women continue to lag behind in mathematics, computer sciences, physical sciences (all <30%), style="font-weight: bold;">Going, going, g o n e?
Women in financial institutions are disappearing, well relatively speaking. (See graph above)

"In the past 10 years, 141,000 women, or 2.6% of female workers in finance, left the industry. The ranks of men grew by 389,000 in that period, or 9.6%, according to a review of data provided by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The shift runs counter to changes in the overall work force. The number of women in the U.S. labor market has grown by 4.1% in the past decade, outpacing a 0.5% increase in male workers.
The difference is pronounced at brokerage firms, investment banks and asset-management companies."

Goldman Sachs in the Crosshairs
Once again a financial institution has been sued for gender discrimination. If it goes the way of Morgan Stanley, it could come at a substantial cost. Morgan Stanley paid out a $54million award.

"Wall Street doesn't get it," said Kelly Dermody, a partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP representing the plaintiffs.

"Even as some (women) do crack the glass ceiling, Wall Street continues to pay them less, relegate them to jobs that have less upside potential, and exclude them from important clients and business opportunities," she added."

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls. She blogs on networking for PINK Magazine. Follow her on Twitter.

How to Use a Mentor

Caroline Howard, deputy online editor of ForbesWoman asks an infrequently asked question: Do you know how to use a mentor? Here's my reply.

What great questions, Caroline. Especially the "how to use a mentor" question. It's a question not frequently asked.

Based on my research the vast majority of advice about mentoring over-focuses on WHY to get a mentor, the advice TO GET a mentor and advice on the PROTOCOL of a mentoring relationship (such as follow-through, have an agenda, etc.). There is very little written about how to use a mentor. That's why Leading Women's mentoring programs, my presentations and writing focus on how to use a mentor.

We focus on using mentors to fill in The Missing 33%™ and getting a slice of P.I.E. mentoring not just a piece of C.A.K.E. mentoring.

Using a mentor to fill in the missing 33% of the success equation means asking for help and experiences that enable you acquire or enhance your business, strategic and financial acumen. Women get far too little advice about the importance of this in building careers (our research indicates only about 2% of women get advice about the importance of understanding the business of your business.)

Asking a mentor to serve up a slice of pie P.I.E. means asking to learn about the fundamentals of business Performance, ways of enhancing your executive Image and gaining Exposure to the right kinds of opportunities, people and how decisions are made. When a mentor serves up a piece of C.A.K.E., she is helping you build Confidence, giving feedback about your strengths/Aptitude or advice to help with situations that are testing your positive Attitude, he is providing "K"onnections to Resources and Encouraging you to reach for an opportunity you might never have imagined. Read more here: CAKE and PIE

Most women receive, give and talk about C.A.K.E. mentoring. And we all know that C.A.K.E is a real treat. But, most successful men and women (including many of the F500 women CEOs) have received P.I.E. mentoring! The more women who know how to use mentors for P.I.E. mentoring and filling in the Missing 33%, the greater the numbers of women who will advance in their careers. This is one of my messages and the ways women can build thriving careers with no ceiling and no walls.

At Leading Women, we want more women to understand how to use a mentor, not just why. That's why our mentoring program is free for GOLD Members and is structured to help with The Missing 33% and P.I.E. mentoring.

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls. She blogs on networking for PINK Magazine. Follow her on Twitter.

Work/Life Police?

Those who know me know I don't like the metaphor of work/life balance, but I DO like this ForbesWoman article by Sylvia Ann Hewlett about the actions of Joan Amble, an EVP, Corporate Comptroller at American Express.

Joan literally gave her staff their lives back:

1. No email after 8:00pm
2. Everyone leaving the office by 6:30
3. No email on weekends
4. Support for more efficient meetings
5. and more

Good for her!

And, if you're interested ForbesWoman's Top 10 Unwritten Rules for Working Women take a look here. It's actually more of a list of subtle barriers that we encounter (related to the prior posting on the impact of attitudes towards women), but the article is illuminating nevertheless. For example:

"Men are bred for self-confidence. From Little League to fraternities to the golf course, men's lives emphasize competition. By the time they get to the workplace, they are seasoned competitors, with all of the self-confidence that comes from having successfully weathered both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Consider the consequences: One internal corporate study showed that women will apply for an open job only if they meet 100% of the criteria listed, while men will apply if they meet just 60%. In order to assume that same level of self-possession (and entitlement), you have to design your own path to self-confidence.

Women are rendered invisible until they demonstrate otherwise. If you want to be noticed, you've got to offer your ideas, approach a mentor, ask for the assignments, build a network, convey your aspirations and communicate your achievements. I've heard Sharon Allen, chairman of Deloitte LLP, tell this cautionary tale from her early career, when she was passed over for a promotion that she had earned. Allen asked why she had been passed over, since she had done X, Y and Z to earn it. "Oh," her boss replied, "I didn't realize that you'd done X, Y and Z ." It's one thing to lose the game because you were outperformed, but it's another thing altogether to lose because you were never in play."

Francesca Donner continues to do important work at ForbesWoman. Take a look and sign up for RSS feeds or news by email.

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls (Dec 2009). She blogs on networking for PINK Magazine. Follow her on Twitter.

A Smorgasbord of News

Finishing my new book No Ceiling, No Walls has kept me too busy to blog (hey, that's an interesting title for something), so there's a ton of news to report.

Having a woman heading PR for Cadillac has turned women into social media promoters of the car. Looks like Cadillac has figured out that women are an untapped market. Read more here.

One of the aspects of leadership is using your personal greatness...and one of the components of personal greatness is the alignment of what you say your values are and how you behave. I love what Sallie Krawchek told a conference room of women MBAs about this. When faced with a difficult situation she asks herself:

"not what I think I should do, but what the person I want to be should do - what she would do."

Sallie is the former chair and chief executive of Smith Barney and later chief financial officer at Citi and chief executive of Citi's global wealth management.

Recently a woman told me she thought she'd like to move into academia - she thought it was a more benevolent culture for women. Heidi Brown of Forbes puts that idea to rest in this article about women college presidents. 23% of college presidents are women (happily up from 10% in 1986). 64% of men have tenure - another significant disparity. This reminds me of research done on women in academic medicine that found that women really do have to work twice as hard as men to advance on the academic ladder - more publications, more funding brought in, more years on each step.

We all know that Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin both faced sexism during last year's presidential campaign. In Massachusetts, the subtlety of sexism is playing out in the battle for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. As reported by Joan Vennochi in Boston.com:

Therese Murray... looks for sexism under every political rock and finds it in every criticism of a female candidate.

“You have all these little code words; now it’s cautious,’’ said Murray, complaining about a word used by Representative Michael Capuano, one of Coakley’s challengers.

Sure, there are code words used to undercut women in business and politics, and often they are contradictory. A woman is too soft or too tough, too provocative or too frumpy, too young or too old, too single or too married.

How can Coakley be too “cautious’’ if she is also too “ambitious,’’ as suggested by Stephen E. Smith, one of Ted Kennedy’s nephews?

“It made me want to throw my BlackBerry,’’ said Ellen R. Malcolm, president and founder of EMILY’s List.

As Malcolm points out, “There are four candidates, and every single one is ambitious. . . . It is a code word in the sense that it is considered a bad thing for a woman.’’

Forbes' look at CEO compensation differences between women and men reminds us that although some of the women CEOs make significant income, the wage gap exists even at the top of companies. For example Lynn Elsenhans...

"was paid $2.2 million last year by $37 billion refiner Sunoco ( SUN - news - people ). Bruce Smith, head of refining concern Tesoro ( TSO - news - people ), which had sales of $20 billion in 2008, took home $18.6 million."

On the other hand, Carol Meyrowitz, CEO of TJX (think Marshalls and TJMaxx) makes nearly as much as Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE..

Fawn Germer wrote an excellent piece on Huff Post about the wallop women MBAs have taken during the great recession - they've been fired at more than 3 times the rate of male MBAs.

"Corporate leaders, who are mostly male, are turning back toward the tried-and-true. It’s not that they are saying, “Let’s freeze out the women and the blacks and the gays so us white boys can handle things.” They’re saying, “Who can help with this?” And they look around and see who’s around them, and well, it’s mostly white men.

“They are thinking, ‘Who do I work with? Who do I golf with? Who do I have a relationship with?’ While women have done a good job of cracking into it, they haven’t fully done it yet,” said McGurl, now president of Sutton Place HR Consulting Group. “I don’t think anyone is out there thinking, ‘I’m going to whack all these women."

But women are getting whacked."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fawn-germer/women-senior-execs-take-a_b_295229.html

25 Most Influential Women in Banking courtesy of the WSJ.

If you've been reading the Leading Women blog for a while you know that having women at the top makes a significant positive impact on the advancement of women in the company. Now, having a First Lady willing to speak out through the gender lens might benefit women in the country. As reported in MS Magazine.

" Obama referenced studies showing that women are more likely than men to hold part-time or small business jobs that do not provide health insurance and that women who do have health insurance are often charged more than men. "A recent study showed that 25-year-old women are charged up to 45 percent more for insurance than 25-year-old men for the exact same coverage. And as the age goes up, you get to 40, that disparity increases to 48 percent," Obama stated, according to the White House transcript. She noted that this disparity is especially troublesome considering that women still earn less than men on average."

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls (Dec 2009). She blogs on networking for PINK Magazine. Follow her on Twitter.

ForbesWoman

When the WSJ launched JournalWomen, I cyber-met its editor, Francesca Donner. We corresponded, I enjoyed and supported the place she created to celebrate women in business.

On Wednesday, I received an email from Twitter saying that I was being followed by @ForbesWoman. Lo and behold I discovered that behind @ForbesWoman is none other than Francesca. No wonder I touted the launch in my April 21 post.


Today ForbesWoman is reporting on Thursday's announcement of Anne Mulcahy's step-down from the CEO position at Xerox and Ursula Burns ascendancy into the position. The transition, planned for July 1, is the first woman-to-woman hand-off of a Fortune 500 CEO position and Ursula is the first African-American woman CEO. Congratulations Ursula and thank you Anne for the role model you've been. (Check out Anne's answer about "10 Minutes that Matter" in her life here.)

When you visit ForbesWoman you'll find that it features articles in a number of categories including:

• Leadership
• Power Women
• Net Worth
• Family
  

Offering "tools to succeed for professional and executive women" Francesca is creating one of the few places on the internet where business women are taken seriously - and are given resources for leading in what I call a "whole life" context. I hope you'll visit, sign up for updates and visit often: ForbesWoman

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women. She blogs on networking for PINK Magazine. Follow her on Twitter.

ForbesWoman Online Mag

Today I had a few minutes to revisit JournalWomen and was disappointed to see that it is a mere shadow of its former self.

That's why I was pleased to have an alternative. Forbes has rebranded an earlier venture to create its new ForbesWoman site. It has a pretty good blend of the usual content that sells advertising space (e.g. dress for success) and content that helps women succeed. (UPDATE: You can subscribe to alerts from Forbes Woman at the bottom of this page.)

For example, a recent article on Indra Nooyi. I am a real fan of Indra's and have written quite a bit about her in my upcoming book. Her generous spirit is reflected in the article.

Or this slide show on Sharpening Your Leadership Skills.

Thank you, Forbes Woman. May you get the blend right, attract a large following and help women...

...Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women. She blogs on networking for PINK Magazine. Follow her on Twitter.