Changing the world

I just watched Madeleine Albright talking on TED about being a woman and a diplomat. She was a delight to watch and her humor, humility, and power were inspiring. Madeleine Albright speaks about being a woman and a diplomat

Definitely worth a watch.

I loved her 7 year old granddaughter asking what the big deal was since "only girls are secretaries of state"... so telling and yet what a goal really.

The stories of what she accomplished and how she did it were amazing. An education for those of us who don't stay in touch with politics. She was able to change the world.

Her call to have more women represented in politics and in business was pragmatic and hopeful - because we are better able to but ourselves in the other persons shoes, because we will attempt a deeper understanding, and because we can change the tone and goals of the conversation.

We need to have more women at the table. We need to build momentum. And most importantly we need to support each other.

Respect - how to get it

Today I'm thinking about women leading change. What is working and what is not. I keep coming back to leadership and establishing ourselves as strong and effective guides.

What gets in our way?

I think we are focused too much on whether we are LIKED and not enough on whether we are RESPECTED. What does respect look like? What does disrespect look like? How do you clearly articulate what you expect from your team?

Story #1
Sue was leading a meeting. Her boss, Steve, kept jumping in and rambling on and disrupting the group. After the meeting he came in to her office to talk. He said it appeared that she was frustrated with him in the meeting. She told him she was. They talked. She agreed to be more respectful in the meetings and he agreed to let her run the meeting without rambling on. Sue told me that this would never have happened if her boss was a woman. She said that there would be lots of griping to her peers about the situation, the lack of support, and how the boss doesn't support her.

Story #2
Melinda, a finance executive, met with her direct report, Karen, to explain her new role. She thought the meeting went well. Then she started hearing from other people that Karen is bad-mouthing the project, rolling her eyes in meetings, and is disrupting the transition. Melinda doesn't know what to do to fix this behavior. She tried to encourage Karen indirectly and continued to monitor the situation. What would a man do? I think he would immediately call Karen in and tell her - hey this is what I've been hearing, what is going on? I don't want to hear this again.

Story #3
Darla, a new leader recently promoted to manage over 100 people, has been working with her teams to get them engaged and motivated. She is incredibly insecure about one of the teams because they don't like her. She has heard that they perceive her to be a "bitch." Now she is nervous and is doing all she can to make them see how wonderful she is. I think a man might say "so what? as long as they respect me we are fine".


I'm worried that we aren't good at having direct conversations about how we work together - and calling people out when they aren't behaving appropriately. We should expect people to treat us with respect - even if they don't respect us. We should know what this looks like and be able to identify disrespect quickly and deal with it immediately. This is what we need to do if we want to be seen as leaders.

women managers need sponsors not mentors

To get to the top levels in an organization, we need a sponsor in the executive ranks. 


This means someone to advocate for us, to position us in high visibility roles, to introduce us to leaders and help us forge relationships with these people, to help us navigate the politics... someone who will use some of their own political capital to pull us along.


The Center for Work-Life Policy (CWLP) is releasing a study next month in the Harvard Business Review showing that women are not making it to the top ranks of leadership because they don't have the powerful backing required to push them there.


I've been calling these advocates "mentors". My coach and marketing guru has argued consistently that we can't have good mentors inside our own organization. I finally get it (thanks Mike). What we need are not mentors, what we need are SPONSORS. Mentors give advise and perspective. Sponsors aggressively pull you into the leadership ranks. Definitely need both... but mentors alone will not get you to the highest levels.


The CWLP says that having a sponsor boosts your prospect of advancement by 19% for women (and 23% for men).


So what is keeping women from getting these sponsors to help us along? 


Theory #1 - this relationship looks sketchy


I forwarded this article to my colleague and said I saw her having a very solid sponsor behind her in her last job. Then she reminded me of another situation...

She had a great sponsor... an influential leader, well networked, and able to pull her along to the highest visibility projects. He spent a huge amount of time with her, coaching her, introducing her formally and informally to the "right" people, supporting her through rough situations, providing air cover as she learned, and continuing to be her advocate at the leadership levels. This required a lot of time. Unfortunately one of his peers assumed they must be having an affair and reported it to HR. I can't imagine the embarrassment on both sides as they defended themselves publicly and privately. 

So the typical sponsor relationship can look a lot like an affair. A lot of wonderful opportunities are missed because men and women on both sides are reluctant to be perceived in this way.


But if the risk of people making incorrect assumptions is keeping us from forming these powerful relationships, how else do we get ahead? Can we make it less risky?


Theory #2 - we aren't comfortable creating these type of relationships


Having this sort of sponsor relationship will make us stand out as something special. We will get attention from our peers and our bosses. For women who have been trained not to brag and not to stand out from their peers, this can be really uncomfortable. It just takes a "who does she think she is" to make us wonder if it is worth it. 


I've seen women try to balance this by being totally self effacing about the relationship to the point that it is embarrassing. They won't take any credit for being worth this effort or even wanting to have this sort of attention. 


I wish we could be thrilled for ourselves and for our colleagues when one of us manages to get this level of support. This is good for all of us.

Why are female managers earning less than their male counterparts?

Female managers earned 81 cents for every $1 earned by male managers in 2007, up 2 cents from 79 cents in 2000, according to theGovernment Accountability Office report released last Tuesday.

http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/09/GAO-reports-gender-pay-gap-persists.html

Last week I was talking with a group of women about pricing our services and the difficulties we have when having these conversations. It seems that, as women, we don't have enough confidence asking for what we want financially. All the women agreed that talking about numbers is really hard.

• Pricing our services or ourselves
• Negotiating the price and standing our ground
• Knowing how to navigate the process 
• Making appropriate compromises so everyone wins
• Staying in the game and not giving up too easily

Anyone want to go car shopping? Bring a man.

What was even more discouraging to me was that women with children had lower salaries than those without: Mothers earned 79 cents for every buck a man took home in 2007, but childfree women earned 83 cents for every dollar a man earned.

I can think of some personal reasons that could account for this difference. 

• I leave work every day to pick my girls up at day care. I see the looks when I head out the door - no one cares if I come in early or work from home at night to get my work done. I've heard the comments about my "priorities."
• When the girls are sick, I usually stay home with them. My schedule is more flexible so somehow this has become the default. I usually tell people that I am working from home, I have off-site meetings/training, or that I am sick rather than say it is my kids.
• I am not excited about having company activities on the weekend. I'm also not excited about team dinners at night. It is true - I would rather spend time with my family. Somehow this means I'm not committed enough.

I think that the assumptions people make about working moms impacts our compensation. And year after year that adds up. A lot.