Marriage: Hazardous to your Career?

If you do even a little research on what top women executives have in common, you’ll hear an earful about their educations, work experiences, and styles of leadership.  You’ll also learn about the strategic career moves they’ve made on their way to the top.  Rarely though, will you get some insight into the more personal of realms: the state of their home lives and marriages.  This despite the fact that opting in or out of marriage can have a clear bearing on a woman’s career, and has probably helped or hurt your own path of employment, if even in a small way.

Case in point, as I was flying in to speak to a women’s MBA club last month, I was picked up from the airport by one of the club members I’d be later addressing.  Rachel turned out to be impressive; she was graduating at the top of her class, served as the co-president of the women MBAs group, and had ambitious goals for herself in the area of Marketing.  The problem?  Her fiancé had recently gotten a specialized job in Alaska.  Her post-graduation hopes for a big-city career marketing consumer products were dashed.  As I was listening to this woman–whose top grades I knew would earn her many a coveted job–I couldn’t help but think that she was making a mistake.

As women, many of us prepare ourselves for the give and take of marriage.  We might drop our names and agree to slap on someone else’s.   We may capitulate to the geographic move that deep down we’re not happy about, something it turns out, women are far more likely to do than men.  In the end, perhaps we ready ourselves to compromise too much, a trend which drives some women to opt out of the “dream” of marriage completely.

Recent Census Bureau statistics show that the population of adult, unmarried women will soon surpass the number of married women.  What’s more, unmarried women as a group are growing in number at a faster rate than the married.  Combine this with even more recent data from Pew Research Center, which shows that marriage has declined across all age ranges, but has dropped most among those ages 18 to 29.  Pew’s study found that 31% of married adults agree that marriage is becoming obsolete, compared with 46% of all unmarried adults, 58% of never-married single parents and 62% of cohabiting (unmarried) parents.

I spoke about this shift recently with Brenna Smith, founder of SheNOW, a new online community that encourages young women to live their own lives first–and to pursue marriage and family second.   Said Smith, “As women, our paths are no longer restricted to birth, adolescence, college, then jumping the broomstick and having children.  Our goal should be to accomplish our dreams, seeing the world, having adventures and figuring out our own wants, motivations and needs.”  Smith went on to declare, “Marriage and children are no longer the predestined next step to womanhood.  In fact, they’re not a requirement at all.”  It seems a sensible mandate for young women to focus on and build upon themselves in their twenties, with the hope they’ll approach the decision to marry from a more powerful, informed, and less pressure-laden place.  But even if we outlawed marriage in the twenty-something years, age alone is not what makes women sacrifice.

To be sure, there are cases where marriage may help a career.  Whether in the form of domestic give-and-take that frees up a woman to take an executive level job–or even financial support to become an entrepreneur–sometimes a partner can grease the wheels of our success.  But when I look at many women, I tend to see marriage giving them less choice in their careers, not more of it.

Women of generations X and Y heard the “you can have it all” proclamation loud and clear–that marriage, children, and an unfettered career could co-exist if you want it all badly enough.  But what was meant as a freeing, empowering statement turned out to be a bit of a lie.  Young women observe their family-centric sisters living guilt-ridden, overburdened lives, where they often don’t make it on to their own list of pressing priorities.  When deciding between being stretched to the maximum versus managing a life created completely on your own terms, no wonder many women don’t see unending promise in getting married.

One thing is certain, as women our definitions of satisfaction will be forever changing and mutating.  What will “having it all” mean ten years from now?  What does having it all mean to you?

So You Wanna Go To Business School…

*This piece was co-written with Sandie Taylor.*

Whether you’re in the middle of the MBA admissions process or you haven’t even decided if B-school is for you, you’re no doubt considering the potential profits and losses of this important decision.  Perhaps you’ve compared the curriculum specialties at various schools, researched different universities’ scholarships, and looked into what type of extracurricular opportunities will be available to you.  But a question remains: Have you thought about how being female will impact your B-school experience?

To be sure, every woman’s experience in b-school is not the same.  But if you do enroll, most likely, you’ll find yourself in a class that’s about 30 percent women—the national average.  Despite research performed by London Business School, which shows that teams achieve the best innovation when they have an equal split between men and women, you’ll be lucky to have one other woman member on the dreaded team project, but even that’s not guaranteed.

While the B-school environment has long been criticized as a fraternity, something we’ve written about before, more schools are trying to become inclusive.  Richard Lyons, dean of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, recently posited that to create a different kind of B-school graduate, the key first step is creating a different kind of B-school culture.

While every woman and man do not fit a rigid stereotype, the reality is that people typically want to put others into a box.  And nowhere is this more true than B-school. With this in mind, and as two graduates of MBA programs, we want to help you take ownership of your brand from the first day of class, rather than letting it be decided for you. With relatively few resources out there specifically available for women MBAs, we’ve laid out five things we learned about quickly building credibility as MBAs:

#1 : Be Conscious of Your Role on the Team

It’s interesting how often women will find themselves somehow serving as the secretary on team projects. It’s a comfortable role for many of us to fill, but regardless of whether you’ve got the best cursive handwriting or filing system, just don’t do it. Being the organizer/scribe takes away from your own participation and ability to generate the ideas.  Plus, you’ll never be seen as the visionary on your team if you keep volunteering for busywork when nobody else does. Make sure your team takes turns writing and coordinating details, and keep circulating this role after B-school (until you can hire your own Admin). Remember, as you learn about how successful companies strategically position their brands, you’ll need to do the same for yourself. Think through how you want to be remembered (i.e. as “bottom-line oriented” or “an idea fountain” versus “nice” or “helpful”) and execute on that every day.

#2: Have a sense of humor

Several years ago, the MIT Sloan School of Management studied its MBA applications looking for commonalities among its most successful female students and alumni. A good sense of humor was one of the top three characteristics attributed to these star women in their recommendation letters. Similar to the working world, many of your male peers will look to size you up, getting a hold of strong suits and weaknesses.  Regardless of where you have shortcomings, don’t let one of them be thin skin.  MBAs, as a majority, appreciate a woman who can roll with the punches, demonstrate off-the-cuff wit, or laugh at herself and others without taking it all personally. Men have historically thrived on roasting and one-upping each other—it’s part of their culture—so don’t be afraid to sneak a zinger into the conversation or do an impersonation.  While you have to find your own “funny,” starting the program with an easygoing attitude and the confidence to show off your personality will endear you to your classmates.
#3: Be prepared to bring a strong voice in the classroom

We’re not going to lie to you. A class of 50 to 100 of some of your sharpest peers can be very intimidating. It takes a lot of courage to speak your mind in this kind of environment without getting nervous ticks. To prevail in the classroom, it’s essential that you’re direct and without letting anything distract from your message. Speaking too softly or qualifying your ideas with “This might sound silly…” can take your class’ focus off what you’re saying and cause them to judge you for what you’re doing. Participating in class often and offering thoughtful, fact-based points-of-view will help you be seen in the right light. Don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo, think big-picture, project into the future.  Keep practicing saying points confidently, like you mean them, and even better if you can watch this on video.  Force yourself to speak even when you’re uncomfortable and you’ll find you build a brand as a thought leader.

#4: Don’t Shy Away From Financial/Quantitative Skills

Often in B-school, your statistics, accounting, and finance classes are revered as the serious material, while your communications, human resources, and marketing courses are considered “fluff.” While having soft skills is essential in life, time after time you will see women avoiding taking on the financial aspect of a project.  Many scholars have documented that women are just as strong at math as men, and yet we might carry around a phobia of numbers.  Before starting classes, consider getting prepared by taking an online course like MBA Math.  Read a preparatory math book or enroll in a school’s pre-MBA bootcamp.  Get in the habit of reading and being conversant in publications like Forbes, The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal.

#5: Form lasting relationships with male and female classmates

Sometimes women MBAs get tagged as the “feminine girls’ girl” or on the other extreme, one of the guys.  Living in either extreme represents a lasting mistake.  You need to be as willing to join an intramural sports or poker night with the guys as you are to organize a night out with the ladies.  Avoid the urge to sync with one group only by creating cohesion between men and women in your class.  After all, you are surrounded in B-school by rising stars.  Make no mistake about the extent to which you will need this high powered network one day.

We can’t claim that we did all of these five things well during our MBA experiences, but we’ve observed what has worked well for us and other women. Each school will offer a different experience from the next, so be a student of what works well and what doesn’t within your specific school’s culture.  Many of the same strategies that will help you navigate a male-dominated classroom, will give you confidence and leadership opportunities on the job.

Selena Rezvani is the author of The Next Generation of Women Leaders: What You Need to Lead But Won’t Learn in Business School and has an MBA from Johns Hopkins University. Connect with her on Twitter @nextgenwomen. Sandie Taylor has an MBA from Wake Forest University Schools of Business where she founded the school’s Women’s Leadership Program. Connect with her on Twitter @sandietaylor. Rezvani and Taylor have also written “Why Business Schools are Failing Women” for ForbesWoman. 

4 Ways to Quell Your Presentation Anxiety

Last week, I found myself presenting a workshop to over 1,300 women around the globe—none of whom I could see or hear!  I was leading a webinar on leadership for a high-powered, top-notch group of women as a guest of Professional BusinessWomen of California (PBWC).  As the registration numbers climbed prior to the event, so did my anxiety.  I fussed and fretted–and it wasn’t until I found a list I’d jotted down last year that I got my focus back; that list contained four strategies that I’d focused on and upheld during my best presentations. 

I ended up benefitting from this list greatly last week and hope that you too will get value from the pointers that follow.  In the spirit of sharing best practices and continuing to learn, I hope you’ll share your own hard-won presentation lessons as well!:

1. Don’t Be Self-Centered!:  Whenever you’re tempted to focus on yourself (for example, how I’ll perform, how I’ll be perceived) get in the habit of actively shifting your focus to your audience.  Worrying about your own performance does very little to improve your talk or presentation, in fact it can often hurt your confidence and subsequently your style and delivery.  By dwelling on how you can best serve your audience on the other hand, you can dramatically enhance your presentation.  My favorite questions to drive this shift are:
• What does this audience need to hear most today?
• How can the setup/format help them best receive today’s information?
• How can they be surprised or have a norm challenged?
• What would make this talk a smash success in their eyes?
2. Find Your Right Rehearsal Level: The other day I watched Jennifer Aniston on Inside the Actor’s Studio share her process for acting.  Reflecting for a minute, she said she requires a major focus on grasping the material―really nailing her lines perfectly―which in turn allows her to then riff and improv well on set.  The same is true for you.  If you know your material cold, it not only lessens anxiety, but allows you to flex in the moment, both of which make your presentation better.  My favorite method (and one I’ve learned by doing the wrong and right things), is to prepare, perhaps even over-prepare, in the days leading up to a presentation but to leave “game day” wide open.  I’ve found that rehearsing too much on the day of (or waiting and cramming at the last minute) hurts rather than helps, muddling my thoughts too much in the presentation.
3. Get Right To It:  I’ll admit that I hate going to presentations where the introductions go on forever.  Whether it’s the speaker or someone introducing the speaker who’s trying to frame what’s to follow, this prattle is often perfunctory and needless.   After all, the audience is at their most rapt in the beginning of a talk, so why squander their attention on logistics?   The best way to kick off a presentation is to welcome the audience and jump right in.  You can say something like, “Welcome everyone – I’m thrilled to be here today to talk about XYZ.  Let’s start by…”  Realize too that by the principle of the Recency Effect, people remember best what they heard last.  With that in mind, be sure your most vital messages are delivered in introducing and concluding your meeting. 
4. Think Connection, Not Perfection: I’ve certainly been accused of being a perfectionist more than once, and I have a feeling I’m not the only one!  What I’ve learned, despite this tendency, is that there is no “perfect” when it comes to presenting.  If there were ever something we should be aiming for however—that is a real mark of performance–it’s our connection and rapport with the audience.   Certainly knowing your material will serve you, but so will your ability to read the room and shape your message to whatever feedback the audience is giving you.  For example, if lots of questions from the audience cluster around one topic, then go ahead and “meet them where they are,” rather than focusing on your original plan or order of events.  The opportunities to connect and bend to your specific audience are everywhere, so make sure you look for these openings.

No, we won’t always have the perfect conditions for presenting.  Nor will we always have enough time and insight into our audience.  But what we can control is preparing ourselves thoughtfully, learning from and leveraging ours’ and others’ presentation mishaps and triumphs.

Why Women Need to Network Online

LinkedIn, the professional networking site that’s 100 million members strong, recently released a study showing that men are savvier online professional networkers than women. LinkedIn defined savviness in terms of the number of connections men have and the ratio of male members on LinkedIn to female members. Even female dominated fields like the cosmetics industry for example, show that men are savvier networkers than women. There are more female professionals in the cosmetics industry than men and yet males have the largest networks and send more invitations than the women in that industry.

Why are females, who make up a larger part of the workforce than men, engaging less in professional networking online? Women in particular might see strategic networking as schmoozing or being opportunistic. Sending blind invitations or mapping out new contacts can feel overly calculated, and therefore bogus or insincere to many of us.

But the truth is that online networking can be the equivalent of career insurance, opening up your options and keeping you resilient in the face of job changes. For women in particular, who make up a minimum of the world’s leaders, we need to use every tool at our disposal to change leadership ratios.
Whether you’re temporarily out of the workforce or just landed a new job, you can maintain your online image keeping the following in mind:

1. Create your own positive Google content: a LinkedIn profile detailing your work history and education should be one of the first things that prospective employers see when they search for you online. You can and should make your professional profile even more competitive by requesting endorsements from employers and coworkers, which have considerable sway with recruiters. If landing jobs today is indeed all about distinguishing yourself from other candidates, there’s no excuse not to invest time in creating a profile and making sure it shines. Understand that having an online presence has become the standard across industries; visibility matters.

2. Keep the flame lit with former coworkers and bosses: Professional networking sites allow you to stay linked to past employers and colleagues. This is important for two reasons: this group is the most likely to go to bat for you in the future, referring you to jobs and vouching for you, as they’ve witnessed both your character and your competence. Secondly, it’s all too easy to lose track of where former coworkers have gone. Networking sites allow you to see where they’ve gone, helping you to continue to benefit from these relationships, not to mention your connections’ connections.

3. Realize that currency matters: Regardless of our age or level, we’ll make ourselves more competitive job candidates if we keep up with our industry’s marketplace. A mom who’s off-ramped from the workplace for a period can learn about news, resources and advances in her field without ever leaving her house. Networking sites facilitate you interacting with others regarding news, allowing you to demonstrate your own expertise through industry questions and answers, all without a big time commitment. Our fields are constantly changing, with new forces pressing against and shaping them. Show that you’re connected and know what’s going on.

If you’re naturally more introverted or just feel intimidated by networking in person, online networking can fill the void. Start experimenting by researching people before a meeting, joining an online group, recommending top performers at your past companies, or sharing relevant articles. Take ownership over your online brand and see it in a long-range kind of way. Ask yourself, “What key message do I want to convey?” Realize that we drastically increase our options from a job perspective when we have a strong, viable network. Ladies, leverage this tool to your greatest personal benefit!

Virtual Event: Women in Cable Telecommunications Webinar – 6/22

I hope you’ll join me this Wednesady, June 22 at 1 pm ET for a FREE webinar on building influence, regardless of level.  The fabulous women of WICT — Women in Cable Telecommunications — are hosting the virtual, live event and we’ve even built in some interactive components to keep it lively.  Join the conversation and feel free to bring along others! 

You can register here: http://www.wict.org/programs/webinars/Pages/default.aspx 

Hope to see you there!

Selena

How to Bounce Back from Failure

Is there a risk that you’ve been talking yourself out of?  That’s a question I often ask in my leadership workshops and one that creates quite a buzz in the room.  Participants will call to mind those deep down goals they’ve been sidestepping and chatter follows about the baby steps they could take to make their goal happen.  While the excitement is clear, there are inevitably lots of questions about what happens if a risk flops. 

If I’m going to ask you to put yourself out there on the job, then I need to offer up some tips on failing too.  To help with this, I reached out to communications guru Jodi Glickman, author of the brand new book, Great On The Job: What to Say, How to Say It. The Secrets of Getting Ahead (St. Martin’s Press, 2011).  We walked through the most common scenarios that I’m asked about and Jodi shared her great advice for each:

A Risky Project Bombs…

It’s hard to be seen as leadership material if you never have the opportunity to head up projects or internal initiatives.  Assuming you get your big break, how can you recover if your pet project goes under?  Said Jodi, “If you’ve promoted a project without ‘caveating’ the inherent risks and the initiative does indeed fail, then you’ve got to do two things.  One, acknowledge after the fact that you did realize the strategy was risky, so people don’t think you’re totally out to lunch.  Two, share an alternative solution.  Keep the focus on moving forward and coming up with a Plan B, as opposed to dwelling on the failed attempt.” 

You can try saying, “Obviously the reward of that strategy didn’t outweigh the risk, so let’s look at another approach that has more limited downsides the next time around.”

By Taking Initiative, You’ve Ruffled Some Feathers…

If you go against the established hierarchy of your company, you may not be seen as proactive, but instead out of line.  Perhaps your first job out of school encouraged junior workers to have contact with clients.  The next job you go to has the opposite culture, where only senior people have client contact.  You approach a client anyway and end up in the doghouse.  Jodi advises a three-step approach: 1) Apologize to the person you’ve offended immediately; 2) Highlight your good intentions; and 3) Promise to act differently next time around.  “If you’ve overstepped your boundaries or stepped on someone else’s toes,” Jodi says, “concede your own learning in the process and let the other person know that you won’t make the same mistake again.”  Also be sure to ask questions so that you understand why you’re approach wasn’t in fact the right one. Regardless of the level of your mishap, you can always commit to changing your behavior. 

One way to frame this conversation might be, “Jane, I’m sorry I didn’t check in first.  The client was pleased with the outcome but I’d like to figure out how we can do it differently next time to be sure you’re kept in the loop.”

An initiative gets sidelined, dismissed or ignored

One of the toughest corporate scenarios is getting stuck leading an initiative that’s low priority to your most important stakeholders.  If your plan gets derailed or put on the back burner, Jodi recommends that you start by gathering feedback.  As you do that, share with your colleagues that you’re disappointed, but that you’re not defeated.  You can integrate any learning from feedback sessions and apply it to the current initiative you’re running or future ones.  As you work to keep your team informed, let people know what you discovered about the process that you didn’t know before.  Did you gain key insight into a client or department that will help the initiative long-term?  Said Jodi, “As you champion new programs, cite the lessons learned from previous mishaps and show how you’re taking those losses and turning them into future wins.  Frame a negative reaction to your plan as a teaching opportunity that you can pass along to someone more junior than you.  It’s a great way to show a human side of yourself.”

You could kick off this dialogue with, “Team, I know last month’s product rollout fell short of expectations, but we learned some important lessons.  Here’s what we’re doing differently this time around….”

The question isn’t if you’ll fail along the way, it’s when.  Be that as it may, you will get further making mistakes than you will playing it eternally safe.  Consider how you plan to fail, in your actions and behaviors, and you’ll find that even the scariest risk can be transformed into something manageable.

 

Five Low-Cost Resources for Becoming a Smarter Negotiator

While negotiating for better pay is a perennial subject in women’s publications, there’s truly no better time than now to better equip yourself.  Given that today is the 16th annual Equal Pay Day, women have more bargaining chips than ever to make “the ask.”  Yes, some of the disheartening statistics still persist: women make only 77 cents to the dollar for equal work, the pay gap is widest and most atrocious for women of color, and the damage stacks up incredibly over the length of our lifetimes.  If your blood’s not boiling yet, consider that women tend to live longer than men and are left “holding the bag” monetarily, a point that  financial expert Manisha Thakor is apt to make. 

What you might not know though is that women have every reason to get what they need in today’s workplace, given our willingness to negotiate for some new terms.  Women today have a small thing called leverage: we gross the majority of degrees – making us the most bankable talent pipeline.  We’ve been informed by study after study that women have the ideal fusion of management skills suited for leading the modern business.  And in surveys, we don’t lack drive, as was previously suspected for the upper most jobs, in fact we’re hungry for them. 

If the world is indeed our oyster, we’ll need to ask for it now, rather than waiting our turn.  And luckily, there are ample low cost (or no-cost) ways to boost our bargaining skills.  In honor of Equal Pay Day, I’ve listed some of my favorite resources here:

• Follow The Daily Asker blog: It’s not every day that I bump into a blog and inhale nearly every post because I’m so dazzled.  But that’s exactly how you’ll feel reading the work of Roxana Popescu.  Inspired to ask for something on a daily basis, Popescu shows us all the everyday ways we can strengthen our asking muscles.  It’s hard to read her reflections and not want to nudge your own progress as a negotiator forward.
• Buy the book, “Ask For It” by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever.  For around $10, you can reference the best existing negotiation how-to manual written just for women.  Broken into a 4-stage model, you’ll determine what you want, what you’re worth, and get clear on when and how to ask.  The book’s best contribution is in its provocative and interactive exercises. 
• Use GetRaised.com: Rarely can a twenty dollar investment yield a hundred-fold or greater return.  And yet GetRaised, an affordable new tool meant to show you commensurate job salaries, delivers just that.  I recently test drove this service, and found it quick and easy to pinpoint exact salary ranges.  Impressively, 75% percent of women using GetRaised actually get “bumps up” and if you don’t get a raise within six months of using the service, the company will refund your money.
• Set up your own Negotiation Braintrust: Also known as a master mind group, this small advisory group works toward a single goal of the group’s choosing.  Negotiation can be the ideal focus; members meet monthly, creating simulations based on everyday asking situations.  Roleplays can be followed by constructive critiques by other members, giving members hands-on practice and instant feedback.  These groups require minimal time commitment and no costs, but deliver huge learning. 
• Attend a SheNegotiates class: For $427, you can learn with a small cohort of other women exactly how to strategize for a negotiation.  And while emotions are often glossed over in negotiating how-to, this course skillfully bundles practical guidance with a focus on self reflection. 

Do you have other low or no-cost strategies for finding your own negotiating voice?  If so, please post them here.  Happy bargaining!

A Woman’s Perspective of Wall Street

While I’ve never had a clear picture of what it’s really like to work on Wall Street, I recently devoured three well written books that convinced me otherwise.  Consecutively, I read No Backing Down by Tameron Keyes, Susan G. Bell’s When the Getting Was Good, and Nina Godiwalla’s Suits.  Living vicariously through these books, I felt like an observer peering into a rapid-fire culture of high antes, big deals, and even bigger egos. 

That said, the stories and the women portrayed in them couldn’t be more different.  No Backing Down is an affecting memoir written by Tameron Keyes, which describes in detail the gritty realities of Keyes’ fourteen year career as a stock broker.  Her book―which reads part-diary, part-HR log that you shouldn’t be allowed to read―paints a downright appalling picture of the sexism and discrimination in investment firms.  Keyes’ story is hard to read at times; a fact which makes you wonder what it was like to actually live with unrelenting prejudice described.  A case in point, as Keyes is walking down the hallway one day, a male colleague calls out aggressively in front of a number of other workers, “Hey Tameron, I could f*** you so hard you’d have to hold your guts in with a 2 by 4.”  Just another day at the office, right?  Wrong.  Amazingly, Keyes explains how she went on to sue Smith Barney, an investment mega-giant, culminating in Keyes winning one of the most significant financial awards to date.  Did I mention that she prepared for and won her case, all while continuing to work at the firm?

Susan G. Bell’s When the Getting Was Good, gives us a different taste of financial services.  Considered nonfiction, Bell writes poetically about Kate Munro, an authentic character made even more so by Bell’s twenty-four years in the financial services and rank as the first woman promoted to managing director at J.P. Morgan Securities.  We watch as Munro establishes herself in the very male world of Wall Street in the 80s–-at the trading desk no less–learning what it takes to build credibility among her male peers.  Munro eventually earns her colleagues’ respect by learning the dominant rule of finance: “Make money and people will look past your gender.”  Despite writing about a character who ends up being scapegoated, underestimated, and used at times, in the end, our protagonist takes things into her own hands.  This well written book is set in the 80s, but the workplace portrayed doesn’t read much different from the one we see today.  As a friend of Bell’s (who still works on Wall Street) noted after reading her book, “Everything has changed, and nothing has changed.”

By the time I opened Nina Godiwalla’s Suits, I expected the breeziest, lightest read of the bunch.  And I was wrong.  Godiwalla’s Suits finds its strength not as much in its depiction of Wall Street through the eyes of a bright-eyed, smart female intern at JP Morgan (and later Morgan Stanley), but in its portrayal of family.  Godiwalla writes knowingly about the challenging―to the wonderful―aspects of growing up with immigrant parents and weaves her family’s well developed characters artfully throughout the book.  Her greatest strength is in expressing the emotions she experiences as someone who’s “different” that most Wall Streeters, and the adept hand she uses at articulating her creeping numbness and depression.  One skillful illustration of this comes in the middle of the book: “I started to understand why my male colleagues spent so much time at strip clubs.  Besides the need to control and humiliate someone else—after so many others had controlled and humiliated you all day—loneliness takes over.” 

You come to see that the women attracted to finance are categorically smart, thick-skinned people, many of whom are used to being academically or professionally successful.  The unfortunate turn is that many of them feel they need to get out the field just when they’ve really proven the level of their talents.  Outside of incredible stamina, each woman in these books takes her life into her hands.  Leaving an unacceptable situation, it seems, ignites our deepest sense of power and self agency.  And that’s something each of us, regardless of the industry we may in, can use reminding about.

Swim in Office Politics Without Getting Stuck (Part 2 of 2)

In my last post, we looked at how you can become aware of the politics that exist at your workplace.  I offered up questions—much like an external consultant would ask—to help you quickly understand your surroundings.  This week, I want to move past awareness to help you build more social and relational capital.  Below you’ll find a mix of strategies employable in just about any industry or function:

 

Employ Internal Customer Service:

Taking an internal customer service approach is one of the best ways to build your personal brand and to fortify yourself to better handle politics in the future.  This means serving those in your organization just as you would your best customer, without regard to title, rank, or hierarchy.  In gaining a reputation for delivering strong results with a great attitude, it’ll be hard for people not to get word of it. You’ll gain friends and allies at work, translating to more people who will support you and your projects.  Remember, many of those whom you serve will have more power or influence than you do. By showing them that you are smart, considerate, and approachable, you’ll make them want to advocate for your success in the future.

Distinguish Good vs. Bad Gossip:

As you make sense of the workplace politics around you, you’ll need to distinguish when you’re gathering critical information versus gossiping.  Gossip, generally speaking, is the trivial workplace talk that spreads sensational or intimate matters around the office. In interviewing Denise Incandela, President at Saks Fifth Avenue for my book, she recommended, “Don’t get involved in negativity or gossip—to me that just embodies professional immaturity.”  Discretion at work matters because leaders have to keep all kinds of data and information confidential throughout the course of their jobs.  What’s more, gossiping is an easy way to cut other women down and lose respect from men.  On the other hand, as you move up, you’ll likely need to seek out information to stay informed.  You might ask a trusted peer or subordinate, “What’s your sense about how people are feeling given the news of the merger?” or “How do you think it’s going for people as they get used to the new sales software?” Expressing genuine interest is reflective of an inclusive approach–where you involve and value a cross section of people’s perceptions and experiences. 

Find “Culture Guides”:

In adapting to a new workplace, there’s no reason to start from scratch, going it alone.  Strategically meet and become known by a broad spectrum of people who are more seasoned, more tenured or more experienced than you.  Be sure that you take the research of McKinsey into account, which tells us that men more often build broad, shallow networks whereas women have narrower, deep networks, mainly composed of friends.  Broader networks are considered more essential for career advancement and provide a wider range of services to call upon.  Create a personal board of directors, composed of those in and out of the organization, that can help you with different specialties.  As Vicki Ho, Director of Strategic Planning for Coca-Cola’s Pacific group urged, “Create a network where you become known by people other than your boss. This group can eventually vouch for you.”

Bring it Back to the Business:

Many of us can get caught in the middle of ego-fueled battles and personal agendas.  Whose side will you take?  The correct answer is neither!  Be the one to ask good questions, bringing it back the business or the overarching objective at hand.  You might propose:

• How is this adding value to the business?
• What are the potential ripple effects of…?
• What is keeping us from coming to an agreement?
• How does this activity fit in with our larger industry?
• Is this project to our collective benefit?
• How can we best move forward?
• What is the cost of us not pursuing this?
• How can we make this work for all of us?

There’s no shortage of good strategies for navigating politics.  The biggest risk we take however is closing our eyes and pretending we don’t need to be aware of the political undercurrents at work. 

Offer up your own best practices here and let me know how these serve you!

Swim in Office Politics Without Getting Stuck (Part 1 of 2)

When the topic of office politics comes up, I’m accustomed to hearing moans and groans from leadership workshop participants. “I want to stay above the politics” many of them remark. Others ask with exasperation, “Why sully my own reputation by promoting everyday pettiness or agendas?”

Disheartening as it may be, you seriously disadvantage yourself professionally by trying to side step office politics altogether. Therein lies the point of this two-part post: to help you first learn what the politics are at your job, and to subsequently maneuver through them successfully.

I’ve come to think of politics―and culture―for that matter, as the personality of an organization. It’s up to each of us to learn our environment, figuring out if it’s conservative or casual, hierarchical or flat, open to new ideas or fairly closed. While interviewing Cynthia Egan, President at T. Rowe Price, she reiterated the idea that every corporate personality differs, and that it’s our job to find out what that personality is and to decide if we want to exist in it. Egan also pointed out, “…People just entering the workforce can be naïve about the extent that politics control decisions.” Beyond basic awareness, we can do ourselves a service by asking questions that get to the heart of how the company functions, including:

• How candidly do people speak? How relaxed or conservative is the environment?
• How do people stay informed about organizational updates? What’s the standard protocol for getting and giving information?
• Can people ask questions freely? Can people disagree publicly with a decision or direction?
• What nonverbal cues do people use to convey information? • How do people dress? How else do people present themselves?
• How is my boss seen by the company? What is my boss’s reputation within the company?
• How is my department seen? Is it well established or new? What is my department’s reputation within the overall company?

Proactively asking and answering these questions can give you an immediate leg up. Rather than just focusing on your individual performance, you’ll have an enterprise wide view of what’s valued. Ever wonder why one person’s ideas are always embraced, while someone else’s continually get shot down? Most likely, the person getting recognition understands the inner-workings of the environment―including what’s rewarded and how people like to be communicated with―and packages his or her messages accordingly.

The modern workplace is full of unwritten rules, often unspoken, that range from the seemingly small and ridiculous (i.e. casual Fridays are offered, but it’s still frowned up to wear jeans) to the more weighty and significant (those who log the most face time tend to get promoted). To navigate every workplace culture with the same exact mindset can end in disaster. Instead, keep your ear to the ground―not so that you can become a mindless sheep or automaton―but so you can tailor your pitch, calibrate your performance, and dial up or down your communication as needed. Keep investigating what you observe around you and be sure to come by next week to find out how you can maneuver through politics with savvy.