Joelle K. Jay

women in business

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My Top 3 Strategies for Gaining Recognition in the Workplace

As Dale Carnegie said, “People work for money but the extra mile for recognition, praise and rewards.” For many leaders, recognition in the workplace is a reward in itself. They want their good performance celebrated, and recognition by management and peers of their contribution to the organization is a source of validation and fulfillment.

You might want that kind of recognition for yourself. Many of us do. But we don’t always get it.

In fact, many of us feel just the opposite. Unappreciated. Undervalued. Overlooked.

 

You can actually influence this yourself, however. Instead of waiting for others to recognize you or hoping they do, you can build recognition with some effort of your own. Try these strategies:

 

Signposting

To reiterate the importance of performance, the quickest way to get noticed is to get something accomplished that no one else has been able to do. But there’s an additional piece to performance that ensures you actually get your good work recognized – you have to point it out.

One strategy you can use to do this is called “signposting.” You tell people exactly what you did so they can recognize it. It might sound something like this: “As you know, I’ve been working on increasing revenue. I’m pleased to announce in the last quarter I raised our revenue by eight percent.” Or: “You’ll see our team has succeeded in bring in several new clients. I’m proud of their efforts. I’ve made it a priority to focus their attention and make sure they had the resources to get there, and they did.”

Signposting doesn’t mean you brag about yourself and take all the credit. In a team effort, you may very well acknowledge that the team gets the credit and that they made the difference. But you can also make it clear as to who enabled that to happen.

 

Capture the Brilliance and the Buzz

Secondly, when taking credit or looking to get noticed, it’s important to make sure you got the message right. You have to take responsibility for expressing what you want, and you need to be qualified when you do so.

Some people do this badly. They may take credit they don’t deserve, or make their results look better than they are. You have to have the substance to back up your claims. Does that mean a little bit of buzz doesn’t matter? Not necessarily. If people don’t know you very well, they may respond to your enthusiasm and the impression you make. The excitement you create around your ideas can draw attention to your ideas. On the other hand, if you have a brilliant mind and game-changing ideas but convey the message awkwardly, people may get distracted and overlook the substance.

In other words, neither is enough. The goal is to have substance, presented well—the brilliance and the buzz. Some people have exceptional performance that goes unnoticed. Some people get all the attention but don’t deliver. You need both.

 

Know Where the Bar Is

Finally, in order to gain recognition from others, you need to know what they’re looking for and what will count as success. For example, it’s not just what matters to you that gets you noticed. It’s what matters to the person you want to do the noticing.

If you want to impress your bosses, are they impressed by numbers, or do they focus more on stories that wow and inspire?

If you want recognition from your team members, do they value autonomy more, or direction?

Being able to discern what others value gives us the opportunity to align to their needs, which they are likely to appreciate and recognize.

So we ask ourselves, how do we find out what matters to these people? Begin with being perceptive—notice what people respond to and what they seem to value. Then, put yourself in their shoes. Understand what their concerns and goals are, along with what drives them. Finally, you can ask the person directly what’s most important to them. You can view this as a high sign of respect.

 

By taking these steps, you’ll make an impression on the people you want to notice you – developing your relationship with them while understanding more about how you can stand out in their minds.

Find more strategies for gaining recognition and creating win-wins for your organization and yourself in Joelle’s book with Howard Morgan, The New Advantage.

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How To Confront Gender Bias In Your Workplace

Women are affected by bias at every level of an organization. They may not always recognize it, address it or respond to it appropriately, and but they can be stopped by it and feel powerless to change it.

 

It’s not just women who are affected. Their companies are hurt, too. Discrimination has been shown to contribute to:

  • poor communication between staff,
  • faulty decision-making,
  • reduced productivity,
  • decreased organizational citizenship behavior,
  • reduced employee commitment,
  • depleted motivation, and
  • increased turnover.

 

Considering all of the above, not to mention the billions of dollars companies invest in leadership programs and initiatives for women, the cost of allowing discrimination to continue is too high a price to pay.

Companies and their leaders can learn to identify and address bias in their leaders, employees, systems, policies, processes, practices and culture. Whether we’re talking about institutionalized bias, paternalistic discrimination, or plain old bad behavior, a little education goes a long way – and so does a culture of intolerance.

 

Here are five points to remember when recognizing and addressing gender bias in your workplace:

 

  • Instances of discrimination run along a continuum, from the subtle to the extreme.

 

  • Women are affected by bias at every level of an organization.

 

  • Companies and their leaders can learn to identify and address bias in their leaders, employees, systems, policies, processes, practices and culture. Companies that address this well develop a reputation internally and/or externally for being a great place for women to work.

 

  • One main reason people don’t address bias is because they’re not conscious of it. The other reason people don’t address bias is that they don’t know how.

 

  • When it comes to fighting discrimination, women can’t do this alone. Men need to champion women, too.

 

When business leaders are able to recognize bias, they can address it or respond to it appropriately, and companies committed to these principles root out bias and stamp it out.

When you’re confronting bias in your company, ask yourself: What norms or patterns do you see in your organization that you think need to change? How can you take actions that are consistent with your values and give you a way to live within – and perhaps improve – the business in which you live? What perspective brings you empowerment and peace of mind? These questions can help you recognize bias, and respond appropriately.

 

For strategies on how women can advance themselves and become better leaders, and work with men to eliminate gender bias, get your free Executive Summary of The New Advantage here!

 

This post was originally published on Inc.com.

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The 3 Essential Ingredients for Advancing Women Leaders

 

Women leaders: There is much you can do to empower yourself to achieve in your career and take leadership in your own life.

We can’t always change others’ ways of thinking, but we can play a part in inspiring change. The culture is quickly changing, becoming more gender-balanced, generationally rich and culturally diverse.

 

If you are a corporate leader seeking to balance your leadership team, here are three top recommendations for advancing women in leadership. If you are a woman who wants to elevate yourself, work with your organization to discover what resources are available, or take leadership to create these opportunities for yourself.

 

Find the right tools.  The new advantage for women in leadership is knowing you can empower yourself to achieve in your career and take leadership in your own life – and a large part of that is finding the right tools to help you continue to learn, grow and succeed.

Whether it’s the right mentor, the right coach, the right reading materials, or the right class or networking capabilities, be open to using the tools at your disposal.

 

Encourage executive coaching. Because the dilemmas are still not always safe topics for conversation, the confidentiality of executive coaching and its deeply personal, entirely individualized nature makes it an ideal environment for working through the challenges that inevitably accompany leadership development and taking advantage of the opportunities ahead.

Of course, as executive coaches we’re biased here. More than enough evidence suggests executive coaching is an invaluable tool to increasing the presence of women at the corporate executive level.

In our own research at the Leadership Research Institute, we have found executive coaching for executive women has resulted directly in promotions. In one study, over 85% of the female senior-level leaders we have coached were promoted with the first six months of beginning their coaching, and almost all of them advanced within the year.

 

Offer leadership development programs for women in leadership. Programs that teach the skills and strategies of leadership provide the opportunity for learning and discussion about the challenges facing women and men in the workplace. The challenges are critical for all aspiring leaders to understand – not just for women.

Leadership development programs can be part of a comprehensive strategy that companies adopt to integrate the development of talented leaders with the goals of their companies to promote their advancement.

 

Corporate Leaders: When you include all three elements mentioned above in your wheelhouse for advancing talent, and when you commit to balancing your leadership teams with both women and men who are the best, strongest, most talented, most committed leaders, you’ll see remarkable results.

Women in Leadership: As you now continue to advance your career, use the above methods to gain knowledge and strategies for supporting women in leadership – starting with yourself.

 

Are you ready to get your new advantage? Get your free Executive Summary of The New Advantage here!

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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How Women Leaders Can Define Their Own Metric For Success

You can make great strides in your career by understanding the advantages of exceptional performance, and how to make that performance count. Performance is the degree to which you do your job well. Your performance is measured by your results, using whatever outcomes matter most in your organization and your role in the organization.

Leaders strive to have meaningful results. They want to know their efforts will make a positive impact on their careers, whether that means building their reputation, getting new opportunities, or being rewarded for their good work. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee. Corporate life is more complex than that.

Many company leaders believe that their performance will count for everything; however, in complicated and changing organizations, it doesn’t. When it comes time for career advancement, you cannot always control what happens to you or believe that your performance will count for everything. But, you can take steps to ensure that good things do happen and allow your performance to be the foundation to that success.

Performance becomes a dilemma for women when it doesn’t seem to count the way it should–you do your best, get great feedback, and nothing happens. Research shows that women, much more than men, must have proven accomplishments before their talent is recognized.

The perfect performance environment would be a true meritocracy–a system in which people chosen to advance were selected on the basis of their ability. Performance is certainly not the metric from which people are evaluated, but it is the most important. Performance is a clear indicator of success and understanding when to deliver peak performance and showcasing it appropriately cornerstones a place for a successful career.

Leaders can lose sight of this when they forget to prioritize and advocate for their own good performance for several reasons. For instance, performance measures may not be clear in your organization, or maybe you’re the one who is not entirely clear on those measures. Clarifying those priorities can make identifying your performance more obvious and directed. You can also become focused on the wrong thing–the next job, office politics, or the fire drill of the moment, instead of your results. In addition, you can neglect to track changes in your performance measures overtime. Your performance measure changes as your jobs change throughout your career. Be sure you are staying current.

A final, and potential disastrous mistake is forgetting to identify, communicate, and improve your results. You don’t have to overdo it, but you do have to own your performance. No one else will do it for you.

You secure your performance by getting clear on the metrics that matter in your role–tracking the changes in those measures as your career progresses–and continuing to track your results.

By doing this, you can reap the benefits of a job well done. Typical benefits of good performance are pretty straightforward: salary, benefits and bonuses. Beyond that, additional and less concrete rewards become available such as confidence, marketability, promotability, career choice, and fulfillment.

If you show yourself to be a talented leader–and a future leader–of your company, you can start gathering the experiences now that you will need to succeed in the future. Then you won’t just be promotable, you will be prepared.

 

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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Three Strategies All Women Need to Master to Network Like a CEO

As critical as networking is, it’s still a challenge for many people. For example, most

of us as are involved with social media platforms like LinkedIn, but are your

LinkedIn contacts the right contacts you need to have to attain that next career goal?

The top 20% of performers at companies excel at developing networks, not just to

find a new job but to connect them to resources inside and outside their firm, help

them master best practices, solve problems, connect to people of more influences to

get more done, and acquire better raises, among other accolades.

I recently met two networking experts who have creative tools to make networking

easy and effective. The first was Tom Gaunt, CEO and co-founder of NQuotient, who

was on several executive boards. The second is Marilyn Nagel, Co-Founder and Chief

Mission Officer at NQuotient, formerly the Chief Diversity Officer at Cisco, which she

left to run a woman’s organization called Watermark. The question they both asked

about growing networking skills was this: How do you sustain learning and make

behavioral change stick?

That answer is unique for everyone, and especially for women. It’s important to

recognize that there are unique elements for women when it comes to networking

that can give them an advantage – like, generally speaking, an innate ability to build

and nurture a relationship, prioritize relationships, and offer support.

As a woman looking to grow her networking skills, try these three strategies that

Nagel and Gaunt recommend:

Check your attitude. Gaunt and Nagel say that your attitude toward networking is

either an inhibitor or an impetus for success. Put simply: If you don’t network well,

it’s an inhibitor for you when it comes to reaching long-term career goals. But if you

do network well, it can lead to success.

Redefine how you network. If the idea of going to a room full of strangers is too

daunting, flip the script. Networking can be a range of activities: Meeting people

one-on- one for planned and meaningful conversations, having a regular conference

call with a trusted mentor, sponsor or peer, attending industry events, or even

connecting online via email, social media or professional chat groups. You can even

start conversations at work, on the train, or in a meeting. See that all the work you

do with people at every level of leadership is an opportunity to build a network.

Make sure your circle is diverse. Networking can be self-limiting if you’re

networking with only women or only men. Embracing differences in genders or

race, instead of using them as a way to rationalize differences, opens us up to a

broader, more diverse thought process that is often more consistent with the

marketplace on both a national and international level.

Ultimately, the goal for an ideal networking strategy first and foremost is to remove

barriers to connect.

In that spirit, let’s return to our LinkedIn example. LinkedIn is an effective tool, but

it can also a noisy environment. For example, if you have a 1,000 connections, but

out of that group there aren’t many you couldn’t call immediately if there was a

problem, then it’s time to evaluate and take on an active role to develop as a

network manager. As a network manager, ask yourself these questions before you

reach out: What are my goals for networking? Who can help me meet these goals?

How does networking fit into my life? Set reminders of what to say to people and

when to reach out.

The message for women leaders is to find your confidence in your networking, and

be sure you are actually committed to connecting with others and building your

reputation.

If you’d like additional support growing and nurturing an effective network, check

out NQuotient. You can take a free self-assessment online and learn more about

where to focus your networking efforts to be more effective. You can find it here.

 

The previous article appeared on Inc.com as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

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Women Leaders: Traveling Next Week? Do These 5 Things First

The following article appeared on Inc.com today as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

 

Women manage a complex life. For many women, business travel means not only making plans for ourselves, but for our children and families.

If you follow my column you know I often write about ways to maximize your time, and this is still true when it comes to business travel. As is true with most things, your business trip will be easier the more you plan ahead.

Many of the following are things we always say we’ll do, but never do, before we travel in order to maximize our time–and sanity–during business travel:

 

Give up packing. I recommend that people have a small suitcase completely packed at all times. Set up a business travel-designated suitcase with duplicated essentials: your makeup and toiletries, an extra set of glasses or contacts (if not cost-prohibitive), a travel-specific set of PJs and a full workout outfit with shoes. This will cut out at least 30 minutes of packing. Have standard travel outfits that are always at the ready–one black dress, a black blazer, a white blouse, and pair of black slacks. You can always mix up your travel wardrobe by throwing in different scarves at the last minute.

 

Think through all modes of your transportation. This includes buses, trains, cars, and hotel reservations. Minimize your stress factor by having this all done before you leave, especially when you’ve never been to your travel destination before. For example, if you have a meeting in Las Vegas it’s good to know that when you get off the plane you may need to wait 45 minutes to get a cab, and that should be factored in on your time. On the other hand, if you’re trying to hail a cab at a busy time, perhaps in New York City, for example, you might not get one at all. Get a sense of your options in advance so you won’t be unpleasantly surprised.

 

Give everything a specific place. This can cut both time and stress. If you have a travel-specific portfolio or folder that you carry with you with all of your travel documents in specific locations you never have to suffer from that “Did I forget…” moment. If you know you keep your passport in the front flap of your portfolio, and you know that you keep your tickets in the back flap of your portfolio, you never have to get frazzled while you’re digging through your bags in the security line.

 

Get WiFi passwords in advance. Most people don’t know that you can get the WiFi passwords of places like hotels and airports ahead of time if you search online–FourSquare is a great place to start. Googling and getting this information beforehand can ensure that you’re not late on those urgent emails and calls that can come through when you’re on the go. Plus, connecting can help save your cellphone battery from extra distress.

 

Plan your downtime. There’s a lot of downtime during travel, and it doesn’t have to be a waste (unless you want it to be)! If you want to be more productive than checking your Twitter feed for the third time, think outside the box. What could you be listening to in the security line? Perhaps that new audiobook you’ve been meaning to start, or that podcast discussing the latest market trends. Unexpected downtime becomes less frustrating when you have a plan, even offline–prepare printed documents ahead of time that contain the notes for a proposal you need to create or phone numbers you need for the calls on your to-do list.

 

Maximizing your time is still possible while sitting in an airport–you can meet your goals by preparing ahead of time, allowing you to arrive at your destination awake and ready to go. The next time you go on a trip, do your best to prepare, but also pay attention to where and when you get frustrated along the way. Pay attention to the points at which you reach boredom or stress, perhaps during delays, and next time use the strategies above to help plan your downtime and solve your frustration.

 

Related: 3 Steps To Finding Your Universal Timeline

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The One Sentence You Need To Tell Your Boss, And Yourself

The following article appeared on Inc.com today as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

 

Often when I work with executives and business owners, they complain that they feel underappreciated for the hard work that they do. They may have received feedback that they’re valued in the past, and they may feel accomplished. But they don’t always feel like others recognize their worth to the company.

If that sounds familiar, you may be tempted to blame the people around you. Why can’t they see how hard you work? Why don’t they appreciate how much you contribute to the organization? Well, the answer may be that you haven’t taken the step to tell them.

If you want to be viewed as a valuable, contributing member of your organization, you need have the words to articulate your value. If you can’t explain your value to others, they may have a hard time identifying the value themselves.

An easy way to do that is with a simple strategy I call your Concrete Measurable Result. Knowing your Concrete Measurable Result helps you quantify what they bring to the table.

Your Concrete Measurable Result is a single-sentence statement of value that illustrates the results of your efforts.

For example, one might say: “This year, as a result of my marketing efforts, I added $50,000 in new sales of products to our bottom line.”

Or: “As a result of my business developments and networking efforts, I added three big new clients to our clientele this year, who are collectively worth $300,000.”

Or: “As a result of my efforts to improve efficiency, I minimized time-wasting activities across my team and department, and we calculated that we saved 20 percent of our time, which we reallocated to strategic activities, including one project that was worth $3 million to a client.”

All of these are examples of Concrete Measurable Results in which individuals have quantified their efforts to show their value.

 

There are three main parts to creating a statement of Concrete Measurable Results:

 

Part One: Describe your effort. Put your finger on what exactly your effort was to create the result. Did you hire a new team and get them on board? Did you put in extra hours to polish a piece of work? Did you come up with a brilliant new idea that’s now paying off? This piece is critical, because it helps you to understand where your efforts are making a difference, and thus helps others to see it, too.

 

Part Two: Describe the result. Say: “As a result of my efforts, I accomplished ‘x.'” Look for something that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. For example, if you hadn’t personally studied the map of the production floor, the company wouldn’t have generated a productive re-design. Or if you hadn’t improved your qualifiying technique for customers, your company would have wasted a lot of time and money on ineffective advertising. This is the part where you list the result, showing the meaning for someone else and the company as a whole.

 

Part Three: Quantifying the result. If you really want to drive home your value–for your company and for yourself–try putting some hard numbers to the results. Here you’re looking for dollar figures, or a percentage increase or decrease. This is where the results become concrete and measurable.

 

Now that you have this information you can use it in the following three ways:

  • You can write the statement ahead of time, identifying the concrete result you hope to achieve at the beginning of the year to set a goal.
  • Another way is to use the statement as a reflection, evaluating at the end of a project whether it was worth it, or where your time is best spent going forward.
  • Last, your Concrete Measurable Result tells you what you need to be communicating to others. Don’t make people guess at your impact; let them know about it. If you feel like you’re working very hard but you’re not sure you’re getting the result, it might be because you’re not making yourself aware of how valuable you really are–being able to identify your worth in just a sentence or two helps you know that and communicate that to others.

 

Now, we should note that Concrete Measurable Results are not about bragging or puffing yourself up. They’re certainly not about taking credit where it’s not due or overshadowing others. Rather, your Concrete Measurable Results are simply a measure you can take to see where you’re having the biggest impact on your company–and to help others see it, too.

 

Related: 6 Signs You Need a Coach

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Executive Women in Fortune 500 Companies Face Issues No One Else Does

No matter how talented you are, and no matter how high your position, it’s still a challenge for women to succeed in today’s business environment.

It’s bewildering. When someone as confident and accomplished as you seems unable to break through to the level of success you know you’ve earned, you start to ask yourself the Big Questions:

• “What should I be doing to excel in my role and show myself to be a leader?”
• “Am I really performing at my best – and is my best even good enough?”
• “Will I ever get ahead in this organization?”
• “Are women really valued in my organization? … And more importantly, am I?”

Reality starts to sink in when you start to wonder whether what you’re putting into your success is really worth what you’re getting out of it. You see other, less talented people getting promoted past you. You hear the glowing praise of your work but it never seems to be followed by the rewards. You rarely make it to the soccer games, the family dinners, or the date nights you used to love, or if you do you find yourself distracted and distant – pulled between the tug to be present and the persistent buzzing of the Blackberry in your bag. You feel heavy, weighed down. On the worst days you find it hard to breathe.

You don’t have to live this way. You can be successful in a way that works for you.

You can be a successful, overachieving, results-oriented business leader at the seniormost levels of your organization, and you can do it in a way that works for you . You can leverage your talents, stay aligned to your values, make the most of your time, and still have some of that time left over for you.

Imagine…

• You feel excited about your work again – committed, engaged, and leveraging your talents to the fullest – because you know you’re valuable and that you get the very best results.

• You finally do get the promotion you deserve.

• Your salary goes up, you earn more respect, and you feel the full power of your authority at work.

• Best of all, you get your life back. You become a mom again, a friend, a sister. You go to lunch with the girlfriends. Spend Saturday mornings with your kids. Your boundaries are clear. The guilt is gone.

• You feel focused. You feel lighter.

• You finally made it.

If it’s so easy (if it’s even possible) … Why haven’t women done this before?

There are multiple forces working against women’s ability to achieve the professional success they want along with the quality of life they deserve.

Few role models. For one thing, there are so few models of success that it’s hard for women to really see what’s possible. They can imagine it and strive for it, but they can’t see the models of truly powerful women who are successful in every way, including their work, their family and personal lives, their happiness, and their sense of peace and prosperity.

Busy lives. For another thing, women are just so busy! With husbands, partners, kids, clients, bosses, teams, homes, groceries, personal finance, fitness, and more, women often don’t have time to step back and breathe, much less to reflect on their lives and align them in a better way.

A secret lack of confidence. Surprisingly, many extraordinarily successful women harbor a secret – potentially even unconscious – lack of confidence. Compared to men, they opt in to the Big Opportunities less often and more slowly than men. They may not be sure of their ability to succeed in a bigger role and want to prove themselves first, or they’re waiting for the invitation or the nod from higher-ups to give them the signal to go for it.

Isolation. Even though women are known for their strong relationships, it’s lonely for women at the top. Even executive women they felt they could overcome the obstacles they face, in that effort they feel very alone.

A lack of information. This may surprise you, but we already know what makes women successful. We know the steps to the top of the ladder. The secrets are out. The problem is that the information is still hidden and struggling to reach real women in organizations. The good news is the solutions are out there; the bad news is no one seems to know it.

But there’s good news. You can reach the highest levels of leadership while achieving your personal goals and preserving your quality of life.
Here’s what women in highly successful leadership roles are learning about how to succeed:

• Get clear on your vision. Not just your vision for your organization or your role, but for yourself.

• Focus on the outcomes. Know what you want to achieve, with clear specificity.

• Capitalize on your strengths. Understand what it is that makes you so valuable, and learn to leverage it for a better result.

• Align to your values. Know what you love and want to protect, and put systems into place to preserve what matters most to you.

• Maximize your time. Learn to make more of every minute.

• Find your network. You will perform at your best and feel most supported when you surround yourself with the people who build you up, guide you, and give you opportunities.

• Learn the secrets. Despite the low numbers, women have made it to the top in some of the best and most admired companies of the world. They have learned how to do it, and their secrets are there to share with you.

 

Now it’s your turn!

 

If we haven’t already, let’s connect on Twitter and Facebook!

Related: Tips To Build Your Dream Team

 

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Joelle Jay and “The Inner Edge” Featured In FastCompany

I’m happy to share some exciting news with you all this Friday: today I appeared on FastCompany! In my article, Why Most Leadership Development Programs For Women Fail and How to Change That, I discuss my experience with leaders of Fortune 500 companies and the challenges that arise with leadership development programs for women. I also share a few tips that, if implemented, would make these programs more successful.

From FastCompany:

 

When it comes to leadership development, a focus on women is all the rage.

As an executive coach working with senior leaders in Fortune 500 companies, I have seen a noticeable uptick in the interest in developing female leaders. Companies are boasting about their efforts to attract and retain women, and we see more and more female-centric lists popping up: the most powerful women, spotlights on up-and-coming women, and companies where women want to work.

Employee networking groups for women have also sprung up like wildflowers, and with them came websites, blogs, and special programs, all of them heralding the efforts being made to bring more women into leadership.

With all this hoopla, surely women are making great strides in the business world. Or are they?

Behind the veneer of enthusiasm, the numbers of women in the top leadership positions at most companies remain largely the same. In America’s top companies, only 4.6% of Fortune 500 CEO positions and 16.9% of corporate board positions are currently held by women–numbers that have barely moved in a decade.

Statistically speaking, men still have the upper hand:

They represent 80% of the executive suite and corporate boards
They hold 87% of line officer positions
They hold almost 70% of management and top management positions
They are twice as likely as women to advance and nearly four times as likely to make the jump to CEO
Meanwhile, women hold about 14% of executive officer positions, 17% of board seats, and only 3% to 4% of CEO positions.”
Mentoring programs and recruitment efforts notwithstanding, the real status of women in corporate America reflects the status quo at best. With such a track record, even the most well-intentioned corporate leaders risk inviting the cynical perspective that what they really want is a way to pretty up their image–to show off their efforts with women without really making a change.

Presumably, some companies really do want to balance their leadership teams with greater diversity. Here’s how they can get started:

1. START AND END WITH THE NUMBERS
This isn’t about quotas; it’s about data.

Companies with a poor track record of advancing women have logically been hesitant to reveal the truth about their (lack of) diversity. Companies that want to take advantage of the significant benefits of a balanced leadership team need to get the facts and track their progress: How many women are actually being advanced as a result of their leadership development and recruitment efforts? How is the face of the company changing year over year?

CEOs who would never stand for stagnant profits need to stop standing for a stagnant population of their leadership roles.

2. GIVE PROGRAMS TRACTION
An online forum for women does not a balanced company make. Leadership development programs that ostensibly prepare women for leadership roles without ever putting them into those roles merely raise the self-image of the companies that offer them–not the women themselves.

In sponsorship programs, the sponsors of women must take action to open doors for women. In employee networking groups, women must have opportunities to network with powerful leaders who can help them advance–not just other women or lower level leaders with good ideas but little influence.

3. INCLUDE MEN IN WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP
Recently at a leadership development program being kicked off by a large international company, the program’s sponsor proudly welcomed the women and engaged the participants in a sincere dialogue about the company’s desire to help women succeed. A woman in the front row raised her hand and asked, “I think it’s great our company is helping women to advance themselves. What are the efforts being made to include the men who hold leadership and management positions, so that they will also help to advance women?” Many companies wouldn’t have an answer.

The effect of programs to advance and retain women that aren’t backed by action amount to little more than the revving of an engine, with the parking break firmly engaged.

Having worked with many executives from wide-ranging companies–on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, from Times Square to the Las Vegas strip–I can say with confidence that many company leaders spearheading efforts to advance and retain women are intentional and sincere.

Results indicate that these steps will be worth the effort. Companies with more women in leadership have been shown to outperform their competition by more than a third. A strong representation of women leads to improved organizational health, global competitive advantage, responsiveness to stakeholders, and a better public image.

Perhaps instead of glorifying the efforts of companies trying to showcase their programs for women–the beauty contest approach to public relations–we should be spotlighting the companies that truly make a change.

Companies that don’t risk becoming dinosaurs in the eyes of their customers, who expect corporate leadership to step into the times. If companies don’t hold themselves accountable, the public will, as talented women choose to work elsewhere and consumers choose to work with companies that reflect a diverse and changing world. A focus on results will ensure companies’ efforts to promote women are not just a trend, but a transformation.

 

 

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