Enhancing Your Leadership Brand

A while back, 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 observations  confirm 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. Earlier that week 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 want to learn more about the distinction and how to make it work for you (and the other women in your organization) email info at LeadingWomen.biz

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls.
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Career Lessons from the Mouth of Gabrielle Giffords

People who know me, know that one of my favorite quotes is this:

"No one cares the storms you encounter, they only care did you bring in the ship."

In the context of business, this means that no one cares about the problems you're having as you work to get your job done. In other words, there's no whining in business.

I find a way to work this into most of my programs because I encounter far too many women who, when asked how they are, launch into a complaint about how overwhelmed and busy they are. This is a career derailer for this reason: if you can't handle the job you have, why should you be considered for a bigger job?

That's why this morning's headline in Huffington Post caught my eye, "'Hi, I'm  Good': As Giffords Starts to Speak, Doctors Work to Help Brain Rewire Itself."

Can you imagine! Here's a woman who could choose to complain about many storms, but her choice was not to. Instead, when talking with her brother-in-law Scott Kelly as he orbited the international space station, she said she was "good." No complaint crossed Gabby's lips.

So, take a lesson from Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). At work, when someone asks  you how you're doing, avoid complaints. Fussing about the amount of work you have doesn't make you sound important, it makes you sound incapable. Instead, consider one of these 3 strategies:

1. Graciously self-promote about a recent accomplishment. For example, "I'm doing great. We just wrapped up the xyz project on time and on budget and it's going to make a difference to this quarter's top-line revenue."
2. Report on progress on an important project. "I'm doing great. My team is ahead of goals on the abc project."
   
3. Describe a strategic conversation. "Great, I just met with about opening up the market in Central America."

And, if you're wondering why I chose the photo above instead of one of her more professional photos. For a couple of reasons. One, I know from my own experience as a rider that to be any good you have to become the "lead mare." Second, riding is immensely therapeutic and so I hope that the rehab facility gets Gabby on horseback asap!

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

Compartmentalizing Life

In her excellent book The Male Factor, Shaunti Feldhahn describes the difference between how many women and men view their worlds.

Men view the "work world" and the "personal world" as distinct disconnected spheres of activity. Women tend to view their "work worlds" as circles within the spheres of their "personal worlds". There are benefits to both views. Today, Michelle Obama described a good example of the benefits of the male view (advance to around 7:45 on this clip).



She explains that when he walks from his office in the West Wing to the family quarters, President Obama lets work drain away so he can be present as a father and husband. It is safe to assume that when he walks back to the West Wing in the morning, he lets home drain away.

On Monday, I was working with a group of women from India and we had a discussion about whether women in India face a choice between being mothers and being successful career women. I made two main points in the discussion.

First that most of the Fortune 500 women CEOs are mothers, so the obvious answer is, no. We don't face an either/or choice.

The second was that to get ahead, it is important how a woman manages her home life when at work. It is useful to learn to let our home life drain away so we can be fully present as professionals and leaders. Because, while our identities as women might be deeply tied to our identities as mothers, our identities as leaders are not.

A woman who leads with home issues will be seen as a less valuable resource. Recently, a participant in one of our assessments received many comments about the significant demands of her home life. The unstated message behind these comments is that she has trouble meeting the demands of the current job given her home life, so why would management consider her for a bigger job in the future.

If compartmentalizing is something you'd like to get better at, here are 3 tips:

1. If you have to pick up your children or attend an event, don't explain to anyone. Leave and take care of business. If you have to explain, say something like, "I have an appointment."
2. Don't initiate conversations with discussions about your family. If the men you work with do, feel free to contribute at a personal level that goes no further than theirs.
3. Be sensitive to over-displaying family in your work space. Look at the work areas of people whose jobs you aspire to and take a cue from them.

That being said, there are important benefits to carrying who you are at home into work. Carry your strengths, values, core beliefs and worldview to help you lead with authenticity. Carry your compassion, openness and creativity. Just be wary of carrying in the challenges of parenting.

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

More "Colorful and Beautiful"?

Quotas have been much in the news lately. The drive to bring greater numbers of women to the World Economic Forum raised the issue once again.

The WEF goal is to have the100 corporate "strategic partners" of this year's World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland – a group that includes companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and News Corp.  —  bring at least one woman among their five delegates to the conference.  Did it work? Not really. According to Reuters, women made up only 16% of the 2500 delegates this year. Worse, 20 of the sponsors brought all male teams.

And now, Germany is having a conversation about quotas for women on boards (see my posts on this topic here). As stark evidence of why something has to be done, read what The Local (Germany's news in English) had to say about the Deutsche Bank head:

“I’m pleased that the Chancellor has said that she does not want a legal quota for women,” said Deutsche Bank boss Josef Ackermann, according to Handelsblatt.

Though Deutsche Bank has an all-male executive committee, he told the paper there should be more women in executive positions, adding that they made company boards “more colourful and beautiful.”

Colorful and beautiful? Really!

No wonder quotas are in the news. 40 years into the women's movement, it will require forcing women on boards and to Davos to confront antiquated attitudes like that.

UPDATE: Article 2/13 from the U.K.'s Independent.

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

On Boards, Sponsors and A Different Kind of Muse

Time for another smorgasbord. 10 stories from the past few weeks - many from abroad:

1. Why You Should Want More Women at the Top by Selena Maranjian of the Motley Fool. Selena recounts studies that show the correlation between women at the top of organizations and operational performance. Of course correlation isn't the same as causation. I always explain this correlation this way. Organizations that get women to the top are likely to have the least biased systems for identifying and advancing talent. This was borne out by Fortune one year when they discovered that many of the organizations with significant numbers of women at the top focus very heavily on actual outcomes when evaluating performance, rather than intangibles.
2. Increase in Female Presence on Boards 'Not Needed' is the misleading headline for an article in the Financial Times explaining that  Lord Davies of Abersoch who is examining strategies for increasing the number of women on British boards isn't in favor of quotas. Not because they don't work (Norway is evidence that they do), but because he's talked with many women who are against them. That's like saying, we shouldn't immunize our children because many parents are against shots. Anyway, he IS in favor of "imposing a code of practice on headhunters who recruit board-level staff, establishing a group of executives to play a counseling role for female appointees and the creation of an academy to train successful businesswomen." In a related article in the International Business Times he is quoted as saying:
   "...[we] also debated how to increase the transparency of board appointments made via a nomination committee," he noted...'There needs to be more pressure on companies to open up their recruitment process and to bring women up the ranks from within the business. Companies could be required to provide board internships to give senior staff the experience of what it means to be on a board.'"
3. Pressure Through Publicity. Tackling the women on boards problem from a slightly different perspective, the Confederation of British Industry is recommending that, "Listed companies should be required to report diversity progress on a 'comply or explain' basis to boost the number of women in boardrooms." 
4. Cosmetic Dentistry and Hair Dye. A recent study from Great Britain identifies the steps people will go to to attain the attractiveness they believe is necessary for career success.
5. Focus on Sponsors. Catalyst has brought focus on the importance of having someone in your court who helped you advance. These people used to be called mentors until mentoring programs became required and this high-stakes advocacy leaked out of the mix. Now they are called "sponsors"...whether the same thing will happen with "sponsorship programs" is to be seen. Anyway, the importance of having advocates in your career corner was an important topic at the International Women's Forum in Montreal. 
6. A Different Kind of Muse. If you've read my book, No Ceiling, No Walls, you would predict that I would love this story (another out of Great Britain) about  Karen Gill and Maxine Benson, the founders of Everywoman, who are behind a new project to encourage more young women to become business leaders - by offering up more positive role models. Helping young women look  to professional women of accomplishment as role models instead of (or in addition to) the latest celebrity, is a VERY worthy goal!
7. Cheapening Women? A Daily Mail article on the British women on boards debate...the argument against quotas would "cheapen" women. Excuse me, but I don't think that evidence bears that out...ask the women who now comprise 40+% of board seats in Norway.
8. Breeding Grounds for Entrepreneurs. It might surprise you (or not) that less wealthy countries have a higher rate of women-owned businesses. With 11% women entrepreneurs and 18.5% men, the U.S. comes in 16th in this list of the 20 countries with the highest percentage. #1 is Thailand! Japan has more women-owned businesses than men-owned.
9. Closing the Gender Pay Gap. In this article for the CNN, Nancy Carter of Catalyst describes the gap and offers some actions women can take, but lets the companies off the hook. Without pay-equity audits (conducted by only a small percentage of companies), organizations are likely to continue to take the risk of a wage discrimination lawsuit as a "cost of doing business."
10. Breaking into the G20. 4 women participated in the G20 Summit in November, the largest number ever! Attending were Christina Fernandez de Kirchner, president of Argentina; Dilma Rousseff, president-elect of Brazil; Julia Gillard, prime minister of Australia and Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany. 

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

Winning Women in Technology - and How to Get More

Recently at TED Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook spoke about the importance of women staying at the table and what we can do to continue to make advances to the C-suite. Together with Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo, Sheryl's has been a familiar name when talking about women in technology.

Marissa Mayer, VP of geographic and local services at Google is another familiar name. One of the first employees at Google, she talks in her Newsweek interview about women in technology, women at Google, her career and Google's commitment to diversity. Although the percentage of women at Google hovers at the meagre 15 - 17%, she says this about the commitment:

"It’s something that they’ve had to work at over time. There was one point in the early days when we had hired 16 men in a row into engineering, and Larry said, “You know what? If we get to 20, I’m not going to sign any more offer letters until you start producing an equal ratio of women.” That was the moment when we really started recruiting for technical women, helping to build programs around it, really putting a lot of effort into it. So it’s something that the founders have always been very focused on.

In addition to hiring technical women, we’ve done a lot of things here that are aimed at making it a very good place for women to work. For example, in our hiring practices we make sure there’s a woman engineer on each interview, and I think that makes a big difference in terms of how engineers relate to each other. Because there are a lot of male engineers who can only really relate to other men."

This stands out because it shows the importance of leadership at the top and concrete steps that companies can take.

Recently I spoke with a CEO of a global company about the feasibility of getting other CEOs to sign a commitment to require HR to float diverse slates of candidates for C-suite and feeder positions. She told me the story about a C-level opening at her company. HR had done the usual things - posted the opening on Monster and other sites - and she said, "not one woman applied." That didn't surprise me. Business-as-usual hasn't significantly moved the percentages of women at the top in years.

What it will take is business-not-as-usual. Actions such as Larry Page's announcement at Google that he wouldn't sign new offer letters until the gender ratio changed. The HR exec at the company that got zero applications from women could have actively sources for such an important position - and her CEO might have required a diverse slate (but didn't). What business-not-as-usual is your company taking?

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

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.