Corporate Best Practices Summit

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Making Risk a Winning Strategy – Act like a Weight lifter - Follow-up blog

noreply@blogger.com (Forte Foundation) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:28:00 +0000

Recently, I started lifted weights again as I approach middle age. After being a tennis player with shoulder problems for over 25 years, I thought it is time to get strong! But as I am walking around with arnica rubbed all over my mildly aching muscles, I realize that this is just like learning how to make risk a winning strategy.

The first question after the Forte Webinar on December 5th was “Is risk inborn or can it be learned?” This is the same age old question that has been asked for generations – “Are leaders born or made?” The answer to both questions is the same - learning how to take smart risks can be learned. Yes some people like to take more risk than others but the key is to NOT focus on that aspect rather to focus on how you can get comfortable taking risks from wherever you are right now. It is like weight lifting – you have to start small and gradually increase the degree of challenge over time to avoid injury or being overly sore. Obviously, you can see that I still have something to learn.

My book Collaborative Competition™: A Woman’s Guide to Succeeding by Competing is based on the premise that one of women’s greatest competitive advantages is their ability to build collaborative relationships. Increasing your comfort with smart risk taking is a two step process:
1. Begin where you are – understand yourself regarding risk taking
2. Learn how to expand and use this valuable resource: building collaborative relationships

Steps 1 – What type of risk taker are you? A simple way of looking at risk was taught to me by a ski instructor named Meredith Blakeslee who wrote the book: The Yikes Zone. She described that there are two types of skiers: Robert and Jane. Robert is like the high challenge person that I described in the webinar – jumps right in, needs constant challenges, focuses on potential, and can be very hard on herself. In contrast, Jane is like the low challenge person I described as she will take risks that are within in her core abilities and will gradually extend her skills. Jane wants to present a positive face to the world and doesn’t want to fail or look bad. Depending on where you are on the Jane to Robert spectrum, you need to gauge your risk taking accordingly. The goal is NOT for Jane to become Roberts or vice versa. Rather the goal is to learn how to stretch within your own style. If you are wondering what I am? Yes I am a Jane. If you look at my approach to weight lifting, I have mildly aching muscles whereas Robert would be on Advil and walking with a slight limp.

Step 2 – Find people to encourage you to take smart risks. One woman asked the question, “How do you know when it is ok to ask for help or advice?” I discussed the pacing partner concept which is about expanding your capacity to form emotionally supportive and comfortable relationships. The idea is to take your comfortable female/male relationships to a broader approach, where it is possible to support others and to form strategic alliances around business issues. This enables us to compete, strive, challenge, and have fun, bringing out the best in ourselves and others. When I think about asking someone for help, I ask myself is this someone that I want to learn from? And, if I respect the person’s skills or talents, even if I don’t know them well, I would ask them for help on something specific. This is where women tend to not want to be vulnerable and yet part of being a successful leader is learning how to strategically ask for help and advice from the right people.

For example, I recently heard Ann Mulcahy, the former CEO of XEROX, speak about the XEROX turnaround and she stated that when she took over the company was owned by the banks and she had to convince the banks to refinance the loans and give the company more time to repay. And, she had won over all but two and was desperate to get the others on board. She needed help from someone powerful. She went to Sandy Weill who was then head of Citigroup and explained the situation and within the hour the CFO from XEROX called her and said that the other two banks were on board! The key lesson is she reached out to a crucial person to ask for help and had a smart well organized request.

How to get started…I would encourage all of you to start playing with expanding your risk taking ability.

1. If you are a Jane-type of risk taker, smart small and engage in activities that you feel are safe from the point of view that they won’t hurt your career. Weightlifting is a good example. These activities could range from taking up a hobby you have always wanted to try, joining Toastmasters to get comfortable being a public speaker, or any other activities that seem a little bit uncomfortable and yet might be enjoyable. For example, I ran into one of my former coaching clients who said she was taking up golf and even though she was terrible at it, she was enjoying it and didn’t care if she wasn’t skilled.
2. If you are a Robert, ask a friend who is more like Jane to help you focus on what type of risks might help you get where you want to go. For example, one of my coaching clients decided to let go of pursuing her three outside hobbies and to just focus on getting her MBA as that was challenging and enjoyable to her and would help advance her career.
3. Identify a few key people in your organization/environment from which you would like to learn from and reach out and ask them for an informal meeting such as lunch or coffee. Ask them to teach you something, ask for advice…..then notice what happens to the relationship. View it like weight lifting – you need to gradually up the weight – first watch for a response – if it is positive - continue, if it is not – then you can try again (usually practice the rule of three) but you may want to move on to someone else who is energized by your requests and desire to form a collaborative competitive partnership!

Start the new year out with a bang! Purchase my book Collaborative Competition™: A Woman’s Guide to Succeeding by Competing at Amazon.com and go to chapter two on career risk taking and chapter three on the pacing partners... And try out the exercises, get a friend to join, and enjoy!

Collaborative Competition™: The New Approach for Making Risk a Winning Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Forte Foundation) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:43:00 +0000

By Kathryn Mayer

Given today’s challenging economy, why would anyone want to be taking risks at work? According to Joel Deluca’s book Political Savvy, the top 5% of leaders in large multinational organizations do two things differently than everyone else: they constantly take smart risks and have three times the network. They are not smarter, more outgoing or charismatic. It is what you thought all along – success comes from knowing the right people and being smart about what projects you take on versus actually doing a great job.

The challenge with this view is that many women I have seen in my executive coaching practice believe that they are hired to deliver the best possible results and to accomplish this they tend to enthusiastically and aggressively seek perfection. And, what can happen is that they push their agenda directly onto a high executive with whom they haven’t formed a strong alliance, and this executive tends to be less likely to support their initiative even if it is a good idea. The fact is that those who act boldly or seek perfection before they've built the necessary support structure are likely to tumble. Why? The wider the network, the less likely people will make false negative judgments about you. This is especially true for women who are minorities at the management level and above. In fact, women who are seen as closely identified with traditionally masculine leadership traits (directive, authoritative, and aggressive) and don’t use their traditional feminine leadership traits (collaborative, approachable, emotionally expressive) were found to be the weakest of 45 women executives in a recent study by the Hay Group.

What’s a girl to do?

To succeed, you must come across as competent both task-wise and in building relationships with other team members—able to delegate, willing to engage emotionally, capable of going beyond your comfort zone—and laying firm groundwork for your own success while the rest of your team still feels valued and appreciated.

These two seemingly conflicting needs—to build supportive relationships AND to achieve perfection—have to be balanced. If the balance swings too far either in the direction of accommodating or aggressive, you lower your chances for success.

Becoming a Collaborative Competitor means that you are aiming to stretch yourself and strive for excellence which could look like:

Striving to distinguish yourself in your chosen field

Building a supportive and strategic network

Enjoying the challenge of learning from mistakes

I interviewed about 40 women in highly competitive professions in the USA and Canada for my new book: Collaborative Competition™: A Woman’s Guide to Succeeding by Competing. According to my research, women who rate themselves as happy and successful are skilled in Collaborative Competition.™ They understand that striving for perfection or doing “whatever it takes” might not be the best approach. They focus on figuring out the best way to get the tasks done. And the key is that all these women enjoyed the challenges.

With Collaborative Competition™, women can develop the mindset to thrive in and enjoy a competitive environment, to become self-challengers instead of perfectionists, and to work strategically to help build the relationships we need to succeed.

If you want to learn more about how to create an environment that will allow you to take more smart risks, enjoy yourself, and advance your career - sign up for the webinar on December: “Making Risk a Winning Strategy” and/or go to Kathryn Mayer’s website http://www.kcmayer.com/ to learn more about her and to purchase her new book: Collaborative Competition™: A Woman’s Guide to Succeeding by Competing which is available on Amazon.com.

A Follow-up From Last Year's Summit -- Register Today for This Important Online Webinar!

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:50:00 +0000

Fast Forwarding the Female Advantage:
What Organizations Need to Learn from Women Now
Thursday, April 2 - 12:00 - 1:00 pm eastern

In this webinar, Author, Sally Helgesen and Julie Johnson, Founder of The Reid Group will share topline conclusions from their groundbreaking research on gender differences in satisfaction and motivation in the workplace. They will put what they’ve learned in the context of the global economic crisis we are facing. And they will show how organizations can better address the crisis by learning from what women have to offer.

Click here to register today!

The Satisfaction Factor, Post 2

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Helgesen) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:38:00 +0000

Following the financial meltdown, I’ve had many occasions to reflect on the research Julie Johnson and I have been doing on differences in how men and women perceive, define and pursue satisfaction in their work, how they are motivated and where they find meaning. Both our interviews and our quantitative research suggest that insights gained from our study can help us understand what has happened and help lead us out of the present mess.

I was reminded of this yesterday when, following the uproar over the bonuses paid out at Merrill Lynch in the waning days of 2008, I read a piece in the New York Times written by a former Merrill banker about the culture of the bonus on Wall Street. One of his observations caught my attention: that the people he worked with felt gigantic bonuses were required because they “justified the days on end of working into the wee hours, the months on end without a single day off, the never-ending ‘fire drills’ — when a client wanted something and wanted it now, whether it was 7 p.m. or 7 a.m. — that kept the stress and adrenaline levels high.” The writer also noted that, no matter how outsized the bonus, it was perceived as satisfying only if it was bigger than what was being handed out to everyone else.

This struck me for two reasons. First, our research suggests that the high adrenaline levels he referred to have a different impact on women than on men. Neuroscientists find that women are more likely to experience excessive adrenal stimulation as highly stressful rather than motivating. Men are more difficult to motivate—their motivation point is set lower and they are more prone to distraction—so a flood of cortisol really gets them going. Women are more easily motivated, less in need to adrenal stimulation, and more likely to be pushed by cortisol into overload.

Neuroscientists also find that women’s neural networks receive more positive stimulation from social interaction than from the prospect of monetary rewards. This data is supported by our own study, which indicates that women place a high value on affiliation and connection in the workplace and a lower value on material rewards than men in similar sectors and at similar levels. Women in our study reported that achievement was important to them, but were less likely to see it in the context of competition, whereas men associate status with winning out over others.

What does all this have to do with the meltdown on Wall Street or culture of bonuses? I would suggest quite a lot. The distinguishing aspects of pre-bust Wall Street have been a habitual reliance on adrenal stimulation to motivate people; an assumption that extremely high financial rewards can compensate the most talented individuals for a daily existence based on unremitting stress; and a belief that compensation had to be based on competitive measures. Julie had in fact seen evidence of this last characteristic in her work with financial services executives. One company she observed used to hand out bonuses of, say, $1,000,001—the $1 being the signifier that that confirmed the superior status of whomever received over coworkers who received a mere $1 million.

Our research suggests that the Wall Street culture that led us into the meltdown was in part the result of male values and measures of satisfaction run wild. It’s no wonder that women Julie and I interviewed who had left Wall Street before the debacle said they had done so because “it wasn’t worth it.” They didn’t need the adrenaline and didn’t find the money an adequate compensation for the stress.

The giant bonus culture today lies in ruins, which means that Wall Street is going to have to find new ways of motivating their people. Simply throwing enormous sums of money at employees—an outmoded tactic in the age of bailouts—will no longer work. As a result, companies will be less able to “justify” the kind of inhuman work hours to which the former banker writing in the Times referred. The nature of the people who work there will begin to change as the implicit terms of their employment contract adjust to meet the demands of a different world. The notion of working 80 hour weeks (and what, in the end, did those 80 hour weeks achieve?) will no longer considered acceptable. In reforming the out-of-whack culture that led to wildly exaggerated results, what remains of Wall Street would do well to look to women, and to the values they bring to the world of work.

Cautiously Optimistic

noreply@blogger.com (Anne Weisberg) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:52:00 +0000

I am an eternal optimist, and this attribute has served me well. I have had a career path with many twists and turns, starting with practicing environmental law at a small firm, then doing research at a nonprofit, and finally being in my current role in Talent at Deloitte. Even though the path was not always clear, I have taken advantage of every opportunity to grow and develop. Invariably, this has led to new opportunities.

I know that these are trying times – many of us are experiencing changes in our lives that we have not initiated, and the future seems uncertain. This level of instability can be unsettling. But it can also be inspiring. There is no better role model for this lesson than JK Rowling. This summer, she spoke at my daughter’s college graduation. She described a point in her life when she was recovering from a disastrous marriage, with a young child and no job. She was literally on the brink of poverty and felt a failure. It was only then that she focused on what was truly important to her – her writing. As she said (and I’m paraphrasing): “Out of rock bottom, I built the foundation for the rest of my life.”

I believe we are all capable of this renewal, both as individuals and as a society. And I am cautiously optimistic that out of the current conditions will arise many new opportunities to rethink how we approach many things – including women and leadership, including work/life integration -- and come out the stronger for it. That is my New Year wish for all of us – myself included.

Universum’s 2008 IDEAL Employer Survey - Bringing Students and Employers Together

noreply@blogger.com (Forte Foundation) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:22:00 +0000

Don’t worry! If you missed Forté Foundation’s webinar : Universum’s 2008 IDEAL Employer Survey – Bringing Students and Employers Together – you can still access the session.

Claudia Tattanelli, Universum’s CEO addressed the challenges of bringing students together with employers through insightful findings. Some highlights include:

- What potential female employees are most passionate about
- What company value propositions are most wanted and sought out
- What makes for a good company recruitment event and what works best
- What are the best communication sources to reach students
- What do students like best in recruiting practices

Click here to hear a recorded version of the webinar or click here to see the slide presentation.

The Satisfaction Factor - Sally Helgesen

noreply@blogger.com (Sally Helgesen) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:13:00 +0000

Chatham, NY September 2008

Three years ago, I teamed up with Julie Johnson, one of America’s most successful executive coaches, to create a project aimed at looking at differences and similarities in how men and women perceived, defined and pursued satisfaction in their work.

The project was inspired by the fact that Julie and I kept hearing the same thing from an unsettling number of very successful women who were either leaving high profile jobs or deciding to assume positions as individual contributors in their organizations—jobs that often required great skills and hard work, but did not put them on track for senior management.

What was it we kept hearing?
“It’s not worth it.”
What did this mean?

The women we talked to were in essence telling us that the tradeoffs their companies were asking them to make—in terms of time, stress, lifestyle, whatever—were simply not worth the rewards their organizations offered.

Notice: the women were not saying they were unwilling to sacrifice their time or life with the adrenaline rush we all experience when we’re over-extended (or thrillingly involved).

Podcast Episode Three: Implementing Change

noreply@blogger.com (Forte Foundation) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:52:00 +0000

“The corporate ladder is very rigid. It has two modes, right, you are either on or your off, you are either up or your out and it is very linear. And our world is not that way.” -- Anne Weisberg, Deloitte

In the third episode of our CBPS podcast series, we talk to Anne Weisberg of Deloitte about their ground-breaking work on mass career customization. We also talk to Allyson Moore of Yale University and author Lindsey Pollack about career opportunities for Generation Y and the changing demographics of the workplace. You can click to listen right here, or subscribe to download the podcast via iTunes.

Putting the “I” in Leader

noreply@blogger.com (Anne Weisberg) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:00:00 +0000

At the Forté Corporate Best Practices Summit, Sally Helgesen heralded the “age of women’s leadership” as companies become less hierarchical and more collaborative. The idea is that this emerging business environment will play to women’s strengths, and that (at least progressive) companies will recognize this by giving women more authority and leadership opportunities.
But companies have been operating in this new mode for a while, and the number of women in leadership has stalled – even at some of the most progressive companies. So, how to explain this apparent contradiction?

I think it has a lot to do with how women take credit. Yes, more and more work is done by teams, and women lead teams well. But are these women getting credit when their teams deliver outstanding results? Yes, more and more business is done through partnerships and relationships, and women are good at building partnerships and fostering relationships. But, are women getting credit for doing so? I suspect that many women are not getting the credit, and therefore the leadership roles, they deserve in part because they don’t know how to ask for it. As the authors of The Labyrinth of Leadership painstakingly document, women must navigate between the “unwritten rule” in the workplace that leaders will self-promote (a leader is decisive and assertive), in order to be seen as a leader, and the implicit bias about women that they must not be perceived as too “aggressive” and “ambitious.”

The trick then is to put the “I” in leader – to take credit for your accomplishments without coming across as only interested in getting ahead. One suggestion is to let others do the bragging for you. In the self- assessment I wrote for my performance review this year, I included feedback from clients who raved about me. It was more comfortable than raving about myself, and it had more credibility coming from a third party! This tip, and many others, can be found in Peggy Klaus’ book, Brag: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It.

Do you have any other tips for putting the “I” in leader? Share your story, so that we can all advance the cause of women’s leadership. If you believe Sally, and I do, our organizations’ future depends on it.

Podcast Episode Two: The Satisfaction Factor

noreply@blogger.com (Forte Foundation) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:36:00 +0000

In the second of our three-part Corporate Best Practices series, author Sally Helgesen talks about the changing definition of career satisfaction, and how employee satisfaction impacts the bottom line. She is joined by Heather Lowe of Abbott, who comments on flexibility and career sustainability. You can click to listen right here, or subscribe to download the podcast via iTunes.

Striking Balance

noreply@blogger.com (Anne Weisberg) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:43:00 +0000

Forté does a great job of making their events as interactive as possible, so at the Corporate Best Practices Summit, our table had an assignment: come up with tips on work/life balance. In 20 minutes, while we’re eating lunch. Impossible, you say? Well, actually, we tackled our assignment with great fervor and came up with what I at least felt was brilliant advice: eliminate the term. Strike “work/life balance” from our vocabulary.

For the sake of full disclosure, I should say right off the bat that I have been advocating the elimination of “balance” since co-authoring Mass Career Customization: Aligning the Workplace with Today’s Nontraditional Workforce. In the book, my co-author Cathy Benko and I argue that work/life balance – with its implication that work and life are opposing forces that can somehow be balanced in a perfect, static pose – is a mirage. Work is a part of life, not separate from it, so we need language that reflects this. We propose work/life integration or work/life fit.

In speaking around the country about mass career customization, I have been amazed at the reaction to the call to strike “balance” from our vocabulary. One woman came up to me afterwards almost in tears to say “that was one of the most liberating things I have ever heard. Thank you.” I get that kind of response a lot. I think many women (in particular, although men feel it too) think they are supposed to have this magical thing called “work/life balance” and so feel like failures when they don’t.

There is no need to put this kind of pressure on ourselves. Rather, we should start a campaign to eliminate balance from our vocabulary and our expectations. So that we can all get on with our lives – including how we fit our work into our lives and our lives into our work. What do you think? Will you join the campaign?

Podcast One: Recruiting and Retaining Talent

noreply@blogger.com (Forte Foundation) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:13:00 +0000

In conjunction with our CBPS event in New York, Forté produced a three-part podcast program exploring issues related to recruitment and retention of women business leaders. Hear Sharon Hall, Claudia Tattanelli, Sally Helgesen, Heather Lowe, Anne Weisberg and Allyson Moore discuss what companies are doing to find and keep their most talented women. This is a conversation in three parts - watch for upcoming installments over the next several weeks. You can click to listen right here, or subscribe to download the podcast via iTunes.

What do you do?

noreply@blogger.com (Anne Weisberg) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:55:00 +0000

No matter how long it has been since you graduated from college (or graduate school, or post graduate school), people are going to come up to you and ask “What do you do?” Whenever I get that question, I stumble trying to find the right “box” to fit myself into. I am a lawyer by training, but I don’t practice. I work in Talent, but I am not a human resources practitioner. My kids call me a professional feminist, but that’s more like an inside joke than a job description! See why I struggle?

But actually, the reason I struggle is that I’ve been trying to answer the wrong question. This realization came to me listening to Peter Fiske, who wrote Put Your Science to Work: The Take-Charge Career Guide for Scientists (and also have a monthly on-line entrepreneurship column “Opportunities,” published at http://www.sciencecareers.org/.). Peter was a fellow panelist at the 8th Annual Princeton University Reunions Career Colloquium (which is pretty cool, just by itself). The panel was titled “Career Mapping: Navigating Choices & Circumstances in a Plan for Life” and Peter talked about how he made the transition from academic science to business. He said the first step was to reframe what he did – from “I am a chemist” to “I conduct large scale research to solve complex problems.”

The trick is to stop thinking about what you “do” from the point of view of your function or, your training, and start thinking about it from the vantage point of what value you bring, or what purpose you serve. This reframing needs to happen at both the individual and at the organizational level. One of the things we learned at the Forte 2008 Corporate Best Practices Summit is that people, particularly women, want to work for companies that have a strong sense of purpose. But most companies do a terrible job explaining what their mission is. One exception is Avon. Ask Avon’s CEO, Andrea Jung, “what does Avon do?” and she won’t say “We’re a cosmetics company.” Instead, she will tell you that Avon is the largest microfinance lender to women in the world. Because that is, actually, what Avon does – it extends credit to women so they can buy Avon products and then sell them at a profit.

So, the next time you’re at a networking event, or talking to a recruiter about your company, and wondering how to answer that age-old question, try reframing the question. Try answering “what purpose do you serve?” The answer to that will come more easily. Because it turns out we all want to answer that question. And, please, let us know, “what do you do?”