Curiosity, Mars and the Final Frontier for Women's Advancement

Curiosity Exploring Mars

In the past 40 years, corporations have tackled the challenge of women's advancement by working diligently on two fronts.

1. They have worked on the women. They help women set career goals and tell them what skills they need to enhance in order to get ahead - leadership, self-promotion, negotiation and more. 
2. They have worked on corporate practices and policies. Instituting open job posting, mentoring programs, flexible work, day care options, maternity leave options and more.

And they've gotten each of these areas about 66% right. As a result, women have made great strides into middle management. But they have not made great strides into senior leadership. One reason is what I call The Missing 33%™.

The Final Frontier

This week's landing on Mars by the ship Curiosity suggests this fitting metaphor for what hasn't happened in organizations since the early years of the feminist movement. Companies have shied away from the final frontier - i.e. helping/requiring managers to understand how the mindsets they hold can negatively influence talent decisions about women. And to take action to stop the negative consequences of their mindsets. 

Most companies have avoided doing this work in spite of repeated studies such as the recent McKinsey report that said,

“Of all the forces that hold women back…none are as powerful as entrenched beliefs. While companies have worked hard to eliminate overt discrimination, women still face the pernicious force of mindsets that limit opportunity…."

In other words, the mindsets that people managers hold have a subtle and gradual negative effect on women’s careers. 

We've been tracking over a dozen mindsets that wreck havoc with women's careers. Many of them (such as the culture of merit versus culture of self-promotion) have been turned into advice for women to change (e.g. get better at self-promotion). But this is only half of the solution - and we've seen after decades of this advice handed out generously that it hasn't solved the problem. The other half of the solution is to ensure that managers understand how their seemingly neutral (and in some cases benevolent) mindsets negatively impact women. Even though barriers to women's advancement are now semi-permeable membranes as opposed to glass ceilings, mindsets act to filter men through much more easily than women. 

Exploring the Final Frontier

Here's an example of what I mean. I worked with an executive team responsible for over 30,000 employees worldwide facilitating a discussion about actions they could take to minimize the adverse impact of mindsets on women's advancement. During the discussion, one of the women made the point that trust was very important to her in selecting candidates. A few minutes later, one of the men made this observation,

"Trust is very important for me, too. Trust is earned when I've known someone over time. What I just realized is that when I was in engineering school, there were no women in my classes. So that means that there are no women that I consider among the pool of trusted colleagues that I look to for candidates."

In his case, this seemingly neutral mindset - trust is important - has a substantially adverse impact on women's advancement. Luckily he realized it and will be able to consciously act to remedy the impact.

Recently Catalyst reported that a more inclusive culture can be achieved when white men are engaged as champions of inclusion. At Leading Women, we've begun to see the concrete impact of the gender dynamics work we're doing with women and men from around the globe. If the feedback from the diverse executive team cited above is any indication, their exploration of mindsets/gender dynamics will make a significant difference.

Is your company curious about or exploring the final frontier of women's advancement? Or, do you have similar initiatives underway? Please let me know.

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls and Make the Most of Mentoring.
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The Role of Mindset in Advancing & Retaining Women

Back in the 1970s, progressive companies addressed the challenge of women's advancement issues with many tools including multi-day workshops that directly surfaced and addressed gender-based stereotypes. Does that surprise you? It probably does because since then, companies avoid this topic like the plague. This in spite of the fact that studies continue to point to barriers created by gender-based expectations and assumptions.

For example, McKinsey the global consulting firm has reported that:

“Of all the forces that hold women back, however, none are as powerful as entrenched beliefs. While companies have worked hard to eliminate overt discrimination, women still face the pernicious force of mindsets that limit opportunity… Managers — male and female — continue to take viable female candidates out of the running, often on the assumption that the woman can’t handle certain jobs and also discharge family obligations.”

In anticipation of the day when companies once again are ready to take action on the fact that mindsets drive talent development decisions and actions, we've been tracking over 15 gender-based mindsets, how they influence the actions of people managers and actions managers can take to counter their "pernicious force". A small number of our clients in the U.S. have created opportunities to explore these dynamics.

When the issue of quotas for board positions was all over the European press, we predicted that the appetite for tackling this dynamic would grow in Europe. Many countries have framed the issue of women's advancement more broadly as an issue of gender equality. What excites me about this is that we've always held that the absence of women at the top is a result of 3 factors:

1. Women's skills, knowledge and attitudes about themselves and men.
2. Men's skills, knowledge and attitudes about themselves and women.
3. Formal and informal policies and practices of organizations. 

For four decades, organizations have resolutely addressed #1 and #3. This has resulted in some progress. But without an exploration of #2, progress will continue to be glacially slow and as uneven as a potholed city street.

What is your organization doing to help men in people management positions examine the impact of their gender-related mindsets? If they're ready to tackle this factor, let us know. We have the tools to support them.

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

Factoring In the Male Factor

Last month was the 47th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act and women are still suing for wage and gender discrimination - e.g. the Novartis award in May(see prior post), and also the class action suit against WalMart that got the go-ahead last month.

So, why 40 years later are women still behind in compensation, too few in the executive suite and experiencing blatant discrimination?

Surely, there are things about us that need addressing. For example, as I discuss in No Ceiling, No Walls, women must effectively speak the language of business to counter the stereotype that we don't have business acumen. As discussed by Shaunti Feldhahn in The Male Factor, there are communication and attire issues to attend to.

But there is one factor that's substantively dropped off the radar screen - direct action by men to confront the impact of their positive and negative stereotypes about women and men. (For example, the positive stereotype that men have more business acumen is as powerful a force against women as the negative stereotype that women are more emotional. This is because people are unlikely to seek contrary evidence to their beliefs.)

In the 1970s, cutting edge corporations tackled attitudes head on until. By virtue of their ages, many of the women who have become F500 CEOs were the beneficiaries of mentoring and promotions by men whose eyes were opened to the impact of gender stereotypes - whether through corporate programs or in the general media. Soon, though the mantra "don't mess with people's attitudes, just focus on behaviors" put an end to these efforts.

A reflection of this has been the nature of diversity training. Today, many diversity training programs tackle general concepts of inclusion for all groups (addressing as one conceptual lump age, gender, race, nationality, sexual orientation) instead of carefully examining group-specific stereotypes and assumptions. I believe that this is why the status of women of color has been particularly slow to change.

There is more robust research now than 40 years ago; research that could be used to address gender-based attitudes. For example, in addition to advising women how to work in male-dominated environments, it would be powerful to use the excellent research of The Male Factor to examine the beliefs that men hold. For example, most men believe that when one is emotional s/he can't also be logical. Brain research suggests that this is true for men, but not for women.

If you play a leadership role in your organization's women's initiative, consider adding work on stereotypes to the good work that you're already doing.

On another note, where have I been the past month? I went to Antigua and Lake Atitlan in Guatemala to make connections with several women's cooperatives. Keep your eyes peeled for an innovative leadership development program coming from Leading Women.

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.

Eyes Opening - a New Look at Women's Advancement

As one of the "shrill, women's lib" generation I often bemoan the glacially slow progress that women are making. To explain it, I speak of the Missing 33%. This has two meanings. When it comes to leadership (as I write in my new book No Ceiling, No Walls) the Missing 33% is 1/3 of the leadership success equation that women don't often hear about and as a result too often max out below the glass ceiling.

But there's another Missing 33% when it comes to women's advancement. Advancement rests on a foundation of:

1. Women having what it takes.
2. Organizations removing institutional barriers - policies, practices, etc. (e.g. one oil company I know had to stop having meetings at country clubs that excluded women and minorities)
3. Examination of stereotypes held by decision-makers

For the past 30 years, companies have done a pretty good job at the first two...and a dismally worsening job at the last.

During the 70s, men's stereotypes about women (and ours about ourselves) were openly examined, but in subsequent decades we've pretended that all the work was done. Meanwhile conservative talk radio (and others) grabbed the ears of our young men and women and filled them with the worst of mysoginistic stereotypes (I used to eavesdrop on my son's radio choices driving him to school). So no only has it been not okay to talk about stereotypes, they've been raising their ugly heads unchallenged.

Today, I read an op-ed piece from the New York Times. In it, Joanne Lipman owns up to her generation's contribution to this problem:

"And then it struck me: Part of the reason we’ve lost our way, part of the reason my generation became complacent, is that many of us have been defining progress for women too narrowly. We’ve focused primarily on numbers at the expense of attitudes.

I’ve spent my adult life in business journalism, where we calculate success using hard facts and figures. Researchers have evaluated women’s progress the same way. But in today’s noisy world, that approach isn’t enough. We’ve got to include popular perceptions in the equation as well. Progress in one area without the other is no progress at all."

As important as are the numbers, the attitudes need tending. Let's all open our eyes and confront the negative stereotypes we hold about ourselves and that men hold about us... and let's leverage the positive.

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.

So Many Stories, So Little Time

Here's a collection of summer stories of interest all wrapped up with a bow.

• Does anyone else see the irony that Manpower is named by PINK Magazine as one of the top companies for women? BTW, PINK won't be printed as an in-hand magazine any more. Sad loss.
  
• How about this: On Women's Equality Day, a story from the Gainesville Sun reported that of the top 150 public companies in Florida 63 had neither a woman executive nor a woman on its board.

In case you missed it. NAFE's Top 50 Companies for Women. Leading Women is proud to be partnering with several of these companies. Read about them here. This page highlights actions that women's initiatives/networks/affinity groups can be taking to help advance women.

Debunking Jack Welch
I knew that his comments to SHRM were inflammatory and inaccurate because of the research I did about the F500 women CEOs, but Janet Bagnall's article in the Montreal Gazette hit the nail on the head going even beyond the F500.

"There's no such thing as work/life balance," Welch is reported as telling the U.S. Society for Human Resource Management's annual conference last month. He is said to have added, "We'd love to have more women moving up faster. But they've got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one."

Subscribers to the Wall Street Journal can get the full benefit of Welch's antiquated analysis.

Welch's thesis is ridiculous, which is something he could have figured out on his own. He didn't have look farther afield than Forbes magazine's 2008 list of 100 Most Powerful Women to find out how wrong he is. The No. 1 place is held by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is married (although she has no children.)

Carrying on, however, the women in the next five places are the heads of hugely important institutions and companies:

Sheila C. Bair, chairperson of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, is married with two children. She describes balancing work and family as her "biggest challenge."

No. 3 on the list is Indra K. Nooyi, president, chief financial officer and director of PepsiCo. She is married and has two children.

Next up is Angela Braly, CEO of WellPoint Inc., the largest health insurer in the U.S. She is married. Her three children are aged 18, 15 and 12.

No. 5 is Cynthia Carroll, chief executive officer of Anglo American PLC, one of the largest mining companies in the world. She and her husband have four children.

In sixth spot is Irene B. Rosenfeld, CEO of Kraft Foods, the second largest food and beverage company in the world after Nestlé SA, as well as its board chairperson. She and her husband have two daughters. (Rosenfeld was the highest paid among this group of female CEOs, with a total compensation in 2008 of $16.9 million. Welch earned $94 million a year by the time he retired in 2001.)

It's not hard to understand why Welch would be reluctant to admit he's from another era. But why does the next generation pay any attention to a 73-year-old, three-times-married former CEO? Work/life balance? He seems to have failed spectacularly at it, unashamedly admitting that he spent his weekends at the office talking sports with his male subordinates while his wife raised their children."

Women CFOs
Kate O'Sullivan wrote extensively about women in finance for CFO Magazine in July. The number of women CFOs at F500 companies is stagnating at 9% over the past 3 years. Why? Well, men don't think it's the glass ceiling any more:

"One quarter of women responding to the survey either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that a glass ceiling for women exists in their companies' finance departments. That's a significant decline from the 40% who held that view when CFO last asked the question, in 2006 (the percentage of men who believe there is a glass ceiling declined as well, from 10% to 4%). But many finance executives said that women continue to bump up against something, if not many things, in their efforts to rise to the top."

Bump up against something - if not a glass ceiling, then what?

One way to increase these numbers is to increase the women on corporate boards.

"Pamela Craig, CFO of global business-services firm Accenture, says more executives need to make that kind of commitment to significantly increase the number of women at the top of the profession. "Lots of men are always going to be qualified. If you want to move the needle, you need people who are committed to making a change," she says. "'Boards need to believe that diversity is important. The fact that we had three women on our board helped me [get the CFO job]. I don't think it was big, but I think it was there.'"

The Role of Stereotypes
Here in the US articles about the impact of stereotypes don't get a lot of play (notice the hesitance about blaming stereotypes for the low number of women CFOs in the above article) So, it isn't exactly a surprise that I didn't see any American papers pull this together as the Canadians did in an article by Donna Nebenzahl for Canada.com. At the top, nearly 3 times more women than men are losing jobs in this economy:

"Unexamined stereotyping can seriously undermine a female leader. Could it be responsible for the number of high-potential women with lost jobs and fewer promotions?"

Also noted in a Canadian MetroNews column. Not to mention the fewer women who are seen as high-potential in the first place. See earlier post here.

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.