Can friendships at work work?

How to maintain friendships at work? There are so many land mines waiting to hurt the friendship -

• Did she ask me that to make herself look better?
• Is she using what she knows about me to make me look bad?
• Did she just say that to me in front of everyone?
• Was that a joke or was she serious?
• OMG I didn't want her to share that story

Then we stew... and stew... back away from the friendship and promise ourselves to separate work and and personal relationships. So we are back in the same situation - separating our relationships.

Ultimately I think this comes down to women having a hard time telling someone when they are angry, hurt, or embarrassed. So they keep it inside. And they tell other people about it. And ultimately the relationship sours.

We can take a lesson from watching how men handle it. They confront the issue - "dude that was really uncalled for" - and then they go play golf together.

I've found that focusing on the relationship, taking a deep breath, and having a real conversation does strengthen a relationship. Here are the questions to contemplate:

1. What do you want for her? - really put yourself into her shoes and consider what she wants
2. What do you want for you? - use positive words
3. NOW the most important part - what do you want for the relationship? What would it feel like?
4. Finally, how has the current situation impacted this and how could you see it differently in the future.

It goes like this - a real example...

1. Listen, I want you to get credit for the wonderful job you did designing the training program. I want you to be seen as a leader in this area. I want you to be confident that I am supporting you in this and that I am reinforcing your leadership in this area.
2. I want to count on you to deliver what you promise when you promise. I want to get wonderful feedback about the experience from the trainees. I want to hear the client leadership team talking about us in a positive way.
3. I want for both of us to know that when there are problems we will work together right away to resolve them. I want for you to trust that I'm out to make you look good, and for me to know the same. I want a clean, open relationship without hearing about issues bubbling up outside us.
4. I feel like the last training program was a miss and that you threw me under the bus. It is hard for me to trust you and to support you when I think you are going to damage my credibiity and reputation for your own ends. 

In this situation, I had her nodding at the first and then agreeing as I talked and saying she wanted the same thing. It opened up the conversation and showed what our relationship could be like. It also showed that I really cared both about her and about us. We ended up having a good heart to heart and I think we had a stronger relationship after the conversation.

Was it hard? HECK YEAH. Would it have been easier to bury it, stew about it, and then vent to everyone else? Oh yes. But I learned a really important lesson by forcing myself to take the high road. And I think we should all challenge ourselves to do the same.

Building more well-rounded relationships

personal friends...  work friends... networking contacts... my children's friends' parents... neighbors.

I've been learning that all these relationships can be (and probably should be) part of one big, crowded, network. I've tended to keep my life fairly compartmentalized. But when they are integrated, life is better, easier, and a whole lot more fun. I think this is what guys have known all along - they don't separate their friends like we do.

my friend BB

• My best and oldest friend, BB Webb, has become a powerful business maven in the Athens area. We have seen the best and worst over the years. And we now support each other in our business dealings as well as offering advise about our love lives.
• My old boss, current mentor and friend, introduced me to Stephanie Roppolo who had recently arrived in Atlanta from Denver and wanted to start building a network. We took our kids to the zoo and spent the entire time talking about business. We quickly became friends and we have helped each other with business ideas, expanding network, selling services, hosting fund raising events, and even providing emotional support during the darker days.
• I had this incredibly bright and talented woman on my team at Deloitte. She was funny and such a great problem solver. We ended up becoming business friends, slowly became real friends, and now Paige Riley is my business partner. Having a best friend as a business partner is great.
• Saturday night I hosted our neighborhood dinner club. I was talking with one of the women who is starting to look for a new job. We realized after a year of knowing each other that we do very similar things and that I could introduce her to some key people to help her get out more. Why did it take a year before we knew this?

my oldest support group

I believe we should be building more well-rounded relationships.

We shouldn't be afraid to talk business with neighbors, or to talk kids with business colleagues, or to mix it up and really get to know the whole person. And I don't think it should take years to do so!

We have to speed this up if we are going to take care of ourselves in this crazy environment.

Building external relationships - reducing risk in a downturn

I remember a 2008 HBR article about how star women build portable skills. What was really interesting was that these women used their "barriers" to find ways to be even more successful than their counterparts.

• Less-than-wholehearted acceptance in male-dominated workplace
• Reluctance to build close relationships with men for fear of giving the appearance of impropriety
• Inadequate access to internal mentors
• "Guy-culture" prevents strong bonds with men

To counter these obstacles, they cultivated external relationships so they were less dependent on their current company. Because they had these relationships, when these women changed jobs they still had their support network in place to help them continue to be successful.

I'm wondering if this same ability to not only adapt to our constraints but to find creative ways to be successful in spite of them is related to the current unemployment situation.

Since the start of the recession, the unemployment rate for men has increased much more than for women. In August 2009, the male unemployment rate stood at 10.9% while that of females was 8.2%. This 2.7 percentage point difference is the largest unemployment gender gap in the postwar era. 
http://www.ny.frb.org/research/economists/sahin/GenderGap.pdf

Could it be that by being forced to develop strong external relationships, women have reduced their risk in this downturn? As my mom always said... "don't put all your eggs in one basket". What is true for boyfriends, investments, and money apparently is also true for professional relationships. By having strong relationships across industries and companies, by having a support group at different levels and from different walks of life, we are diversifying and providing a safety net.

Our authentic self

This week I had the chance to have lunch with an extremely successful and powerful business leader. She offered many words of advice, shared her experiences and perspectives, and encouraged me in my learning.

She said something that really stuck with me...

"Women are not strong enough yet to share the playing field"

What did she mean?

• There are not enough of us in leadership roles to really support each other
• We are competitive so we are careful about how we share information and help other women
• We can't separate the business from the personal - we get our feelings hurt and hold a grudge

It is in our wiring. I watch my girls learning not to brag, not to talk too much about themselves, not to boast. I've already heard "she thinks she is all that" as a put down. So we spend all our lives learning to downplay our accomplishments and then come in to work trying to act like a man - tooting our own horn. We aren't good at it, it doesn't feel good, and it usually doesn't work.

And we still look at the women who are at the top and we say "she thinks she is all that."

And when she comes to us for advise, we wonder if she wants it to just make herself look better.

We talked about reaching a certain age and being able to let go of the striving and competing. It seems that once we get here, our authentic self can emerge. Now... we can finally do the right things and stay true to our values.

• It doesn't matter how people perceive us - we finally know who we are
• We can help other women because we know now that the younger ones will be the ones to make the next big changes
• We don't worry so much about the personal stuff at work - it's just business
• And we have built up a network of friends to support us in the different areas of our lives

So maybe sometimes the learning really does take some years under the belt...

Stopping the gossip

Gossip... we love it. We hate it. It is a way to bond with friends and a way to hurt one another. What happens when it hits the workplace? What happens when it is about us? What happens when we are in the middle of it? How should we react and what do we do?

84% of executives cited gossip as a common activity in their offices, according to a recent survey conducted by The Creative Group. And 63% said it has a negative impact on the workplace.

Nice High-School Fashion

And we are seeing it increase with uncertain times. If left unchecked, you can start to feel like you are in high school again. And frankly I don't want to relive those years...

As leaders, we need to take action.

• Get out there and talk to people. Have real conversations and talk about what people are thinking. Keep your door open and try to avoid closed door meetings with managers. Think about how what you are doing will be perceived when people are scared and worried about their jobs.
• Be real. Help people think about ways to respond to gossip and have direct conversations about it. Tell people what you expect - how we work together as adults, how we create an open environment of trust.
• Use gossip to create a more positive, collaborative environment. Stop gossip and turn it into a constructive conversation - what can we do together to help this person (assuming there is a problem).

I think I would be happier if I knew people weren't talking about me behind my back (unless, of course, they were discussing how wonderful, talented, and attractive I am - wouldn't that be great...). Perhaps just having an open conversation about this would pave the way to a nicer place to work.

Tips for women leading change

I'm in the process of writing an article on women leading change. The way we lead change is different - where we focus our energy, pitfalls to avoid, and taking advantage of what we already do well. 

These are the top 10 I have come up with so far. I would love your thoughts on these or others.

Slaying the dragons

1. Build a team you trust and enjoy working with
2. Clarify what you expect – both the roles and the relationship
3. Take credit for your work – and recognize your team’s effort
4. Work with your team to create the change story – use them to engage the organization
5. Create your own infrastructure to keep a pulse of the organization
6. Build your internal and external support/advisory group – ask for help
7. Be authentic – share your story and why this is important to you
8. Ask for other’s stories – find out what is important to them
9. Support others (especially women) and help them grow
10. Stop waiting to become the expert – step into it with confidence

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.