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New Discoveries: Solutions to Women’s Advancement

Women of Influence is thrilled to launch our first white paper on a favourite topic. Here, we’ve outlined a summary of key findings from our study in partnership with Barbara Annis and Thomson Reuters—both well known for making female leadership a top priority. The information we have collected serves as a key tool in the global launch of Women of Influence to new audiences in London and Hong Kong.

You’ve heard of Gender Intelligence. You’re possibly familiar with the work of Barbara Annis (WORK WITH ME: The 8 Blind Spots Between Men and Women in Business). What you may not know is that although women are receiving more advanced degrees than men and hold half of middle management positions – fewer than one in five are advancing into senior roles and even fewer into positions of leadership.

Women of Influence and Thomson Reuters set out to dig deep into this issue by partnering with Barbara Annis & Associates to discover why, given the continuous flow of highly educated and skilled women into every industry, so many are not able to advance in their careers, and most importantly, what the solutions are for women and the corporations who hire them.

In November 2013, we conducted an in-depth survey of 326 senior executive women across North America in the Women of Influence community to discover how they perceive and define their strengths and weaknesses, their level of satisfaction in their careers, and what actions they are taking to break through to the next level. The results of this survey are some of the highest scores we’ve seen for women in their perceptions of self and career success.

Self-esteem and self-confidence are areas where women often find themselves challenged, especially in male-dominated and male-influenced environments, but not among this group. None of the women in our survey view themselves victims of the system. They’re centered on achieving organizational goals and know the value of their style of leadership.

Read the full story: womenofinfluence.ca/advancementwhitepaper

The 5 Themes of Career Success

1. Career advancement. The women in our survey consider career advancement their weakest area. They maintain a clear vision, a career plan, and are passionate about their work, but they find it challenging to navigate the system, find new opportunities, effectively negotiate the chain of command, and create work-life balance.

2. Self-initiation. The same career advancement challenges faced by women in the middle of their careers are present even among women at the top. The challenge is in self-promotion, advocating for themselves and expressing their talents. Women are very powerful when negotiating for their teams and departments, but not so much for themselves for position and salary. It’s both a natural inclination and learned behavior for women to safeguard and develop their relationships, teams and environment.

3. Leadership maturity. Self-confidence, high self-respect, and being self-assured in what they think and feel were strong themes with the women we interviewed. They’re embracing their own authenticity and don’t feel a need to revert to the behaviour we’ve seen in past research where women claim they have to behave more like men in order to succeed. The women in our study consider themselves highly capable in dealing with ambiguity and resolving complex dilemmas.

4. Big picture. This is defined as understanding the objectives of the company and their best contribution to achieving those goals. Women see themselves strongest in making connections and collaborating for the best ideas and treating others with dignity, and influencing without control. Their win-win approach is based on cultivating trusting relationships, being aware of their impact on others, and understanding before concluding.

5. Leadership responsibility. Diversity was the most important factor in their responsibility as a leader, which includes valuing diversity initiatives, hiring diverse people, and promoting on ability. They best define the style and strength of their leadership in how well they lead their teams by encouraging team support, promoting honest dialogue, and building team consensus. Our women also score high on cultivating change by encouraging people to embrace change and by linking change to purpose.

There are no barriers, if you have a positive attitude, a great skill set, and the ability to move ahead. If one finds a stumbling block, you may need to change companies or organizations in order to move ahead.

TRANSFORMATIONAL SHIFT

The women in our study present a transformational shift in the attitudes and actions of women leaders today. They epitomize an attitude and model for success for women at all levels:

  • They have self-confidence and are self-assured in their thoughts and abilities, and they remain focused on achieving the
    goals of their organization.
  • They are very aware that they’re working with a male-oriented business model that will often be at odds with their leadership style and approach to business issues. Yet, they know that barriers are often unintentional and unseen, even by the men they work with.
  • They’re becoming more proactive and self-initiating in building strategic networks, more assertive in promoting themselves and their capabilities, and acting from a position of strength and self-worth

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7 pitfalls for women in business

Despite the fact that many of the women we interviewed have been able to avoid or overcome many of the common patterns of behaviors that stand in the way of career progression, we continue to witness a typical female experience that is endlessly repeated by women seeking advancement. Women of Influence makes it our daily mission to provide solutions to assist women on their journey to the top—part of that is helping to identify what the consistent road blocks are so that women are better prepared to navigate through the typical pitfalls with confidence.

1. Making bold requests. Women tend not to make them. Is it a reflex of the classic self-critical female rumination coined by psychologists? Whatever its origin, it holds women back precisely because the men in the organization respond so differently.

2. Self-promotion. Women cling to an outmoded assumption that their achievements will speak for themselves. They might, but only if those achievements—whether individual or as part of a team—are published widely and loudly.

3. Hard on ourselves. Self-scrutiny is hard-wired into women’s brains—women will often internalize and personalize. They tend to feel overly responsible and believe they can always do better. It’s exhausting, and leads to ambivalence, and many women opt out of situations because of their internal line of reasoning.

4. Hard work gets you noticed. Yes, and two things happen when you get noticed for how hard you work: (1) you become indispensable, and when you’re indispensable, no one will ever want to move you away into a new, bigger opportunity, so (2) you become invisible. We call it the loyalty trap.

5. Grunt work. Women need to negotiate for their piece of the leadership pie in a win-win manner, not to take anything away from anyone, but to take their rightful place at the leader’s podium. Women often focus on the details
rather than strategy.

6. Strategic networking. Women are natural networkers, but they too often forget the strategic part of it. While men network for transactional reasons, women will network for relational reasons. That is, men network to obtain something, while women network for relationships and connections.

7. Staying the course. When the going gets tedious, women tend to get tired or get turned off from the grind. Far too readily and far too often, women will lose passion for the challenge and decide it isn’t
worth it. Women have to realize that it is worth it. Whether the negotiation is for salary, for budget, for the conditions you need to do the job right, it’s essential to stay the course, no matter how long it may drag on.

ROLE MODELS FOR SUCCESS

There is a new and positive mindset in women in business today and in their approach to their careers, steeped in authenticity and self-assuredness. And they are showing that genuineness in their style of leadership and management. Dispel the notion that the only way to succeed is to act like men. Yes, learn from them and frame your conversations so the men you work for and with can better understand and act on your needs, but never relinquish your authenticity. Women are just as purposeful, driven, and strategic as men are, yet bring with them a powerfully different perspective for performance, people development, and business improvement.

9 Steps An Organization Can Take

The good news—companies can immediately begin to infuse Gender Intelligence into their leadership style, into the culture of their teams, and into the functions, processes, and systems within their organizations. Here, we’ve outlined corporate actions towards advancing women.

1. Make Gender Intelligence a strategic imperative. Make a compelling business case that speaks to the economic value of gender diversity to your organization, and make that effort one of your company’s top three strategic imperatives for growth.

2. Show conduct and character exemplary of a gender-intelligent leader. Create cross-gender mentoring and sponsorship opportunities between male leaders and women at entry, mid-management, and senior levels to identify future
high potentials, encourage retention, and target development.

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“Relationships are critical with peers, subordinates, and senior members of teams. All of them need to believe and buy into you. There will be politics, but you have to earn the role and you’ll move forward.”

3. Embed Gender Intelligence in all hiring processes and practices. Include gender-intelligent recruitment language and job postings with specific wording that speaks to the interests and expectations of women. Also, understand the different ways men and women approach the interview process, including their differences in preparation, self-presentation, and responses to questions.

4. Embed Gender Intelligence in all promoting practices / succession planning. Provide training and insights in promotion and job rotation. Don’t assume women will not be interested and exclude them from consideration. Create mentoring, training, and sponsorship opportunities for women considering job rotation as a path to advancement.

5. Declare your intention to be a leading gender-intelligent organization. Portray the success stories of women leaders through intranet videos and internal newsletters. Include reinforcing comments of male supervisors and peers. Create an ongoing communications program, through articles, stories, blogs and keynotes, that positions your company as one that values and attracts the best and brightest women.

6. Generate a strong female leadership pipeline. Develop an internship program for women entering college to pursue degrees pertinent to your industry. This is especially critical in fields where there are few but highly talented and aspiring women. Inspire and empower middle-school girls to pursue college degrees in technology and engineering and create college internship positions.

7. Provide support, guidance, and leadership training for women. Focus on training for women that identifies and removes any potential pitfalls for women, such as how to be more self-initiating in navigating their careers.

8. Generate gender-intelligent understanding and behaviors throughout the organization. Having the leadership team “walk the talk” when it comes to gender diversity is often not enough. Many women, early in their careers, become discouraged by a manager who may not recognize their value and contribution. Promote gender awareness training for managers to deepen culture change.

9. Embed Gender Intelligence in all customer and client-facing efforts. Recognize that your marketplace is becoming gender diverse while your product development, sales, and marketing departments may still be male-oriented. Make the connection between gender diversity and economic value to changing the culture, create gender-intelligent organizations, and build greater opportunities for the advancement of women.

Our intent through this study was to reinforce a positive change in attitude by sharing the perceptions, challenges, and solutions from the women who have made it with women at all levels of management and leadership today—women determined to achieve their goals and find success, harmony, and happiness in their careers and personal lives.

Women of Influence is a trained Affiliate Canadian Partner to Barbara Annis & Associates. Our customized coaching keeps with an organization’s unique qualities and culture. The experience is empowering and provides a lasting personal and organizational impact.