Staff Is No. — Line Is Yes.
 
 
Is 40 Years Too Long To Wait?
 
There sure aren’t many women in the corner offices, or in the next level down either.  Recent research by Catalyst shows that 84% of these offices in major U.S. companies are occupied by men. At the rate women are moving up, it will take 40 years before we see equality. That’s too long for me. Is that too long for you?
 
What Can We Do About It?
 
We were told in the past that there were not enough women in the pipeline. I, along with most other people, believed that. Turns out THAT wasn’t the reason. Now that women are almost half our workforce, that pipeline is full and not much has changed. Does it have to stay full for 40 years before we see results?
 
Women Can Turn This Around
 
When Catalyst asked CEOs why this situation persists, they said women are rarely taking line positions. These are positions directly responsible for the profit and loss of the company—sales, manufacturing, finance, etc. Most women are found in staff positions—HR, marketing, advertising, etc. The second reason CEOs gave for the lack of high-level women is the lack of experience in more than one area of the company.
 
The numbers back the CEOs up. Women are huddling in HR and other staff departments and not in areas that make profits for the company. Women are only taking 10 percent of the line positions. Turns out that can be a reasonable complaint about women
 
It’s true that not enough women are strategically jumping from one department to another to learn all about the company or industry. Turns out that can be a second reasonable complaint about women
 
By following conventional wisdom—in the past—we women logically thought if our first job landed us in human resources or the advertising department, then we should make the most of it and learn all the twists and turns of that department. Conventional wisdom was wrong again. If we want to make it into the top two tiers of a major company, we need the expertise of how to earn money for the company. It’s as simple as that. Look at how often the V.P. of Sales, or a financial officer is promoted to CEO. And how often do we see the V.P. of Human Resources promoted to CEO? I can’t think of an example. Can you? You get the picture.
 
But as I’ve said before, we’re smart. We can learn. We can turn complaints about us into the next opportunities awaiting us.
 
If you want to be in that rare club, the female CEO club, you would do yourself a favor by planning a route to the corner office that jumps from department to department. I’ll give you a tip below. And, here’s the important thing:  You must get line experience.
 
Tip #1:  Jump into a line position, perhaps into sales, but do it with the mindset that you’re sales management material. You’ll probably have to start as a sales person. That’s OK. Show that you have management knowledge and want to use it. Most sales people cannot be successfully promoted to sales managers. It takes a different set of talents. Make a big deal of showing you’re comfortable with numbers. Stage a presentation where you’ve memorized the numbers. Toss out a few numbers for everyone to plug into equations. And then, wham-o, you come up with the answer first. Sound like fun? Do it! This is necessary to overcome the unfortunate stereotype that women are not good with numbers.
 
Tip #2:  You can arrange to transfer to different departments, or you can form a team to solve a problem at your company. Do all your planning before you announce that a solution is needed. When you point out the problem, don’t give that confident, ambitious man a chance to jump in and take care of putting out the fire. You have to hand it to him; he can spot an opportunity to shine a mile away. That’s OK—that’s what we need to learn to do. Identify the problem this way:  “I have a solution to the problem of dwindling sales among 18 to 35 year olds. I’ve identified team members from various departments who would work together with me for a brief time period until the fire has been extinguished.” Now this benefits you by being the team creator and leader. And it allows you to jump into different departments’ domains and build your expertise in the company. 
 
Further Reading:
 
Website, WomensMedia, What Keeps Women from Reaching the Top?
 
Website, Catalyst, 2005 Catalyst Census of Women Corporate Officers and Top Earners of the Fortune 500
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Tags: business, female, executives, CEO, working, women,

Studies Show Areas Where Women Excel
 
 
Comprehensive management studies are showing women outscoring men in many categories. Of course, my first questions are: Which categories? And why hasn’t this translated into the top two tiers of management?
 
Business Week reports, “Twenty-five years after women first started pouring into the labor force–and trying to be more like men in every way, from wearing power suits to picking up golf clubs–new research is showing that men ought to be the ones doing more of the imitating.”  The studies show that women executives, when rated by their peers, their employees, and their bosses, score higher than their male counterparts on a wide variety of measures—from producing high-quality work to goal-setting to mentoring employees.
 
Contrary to stereotypes, women outperformed men in intellectual areas, such as recognizing trends, generating new ideas and getting results.
 
The Hagberg Consulting Group conducts in-depth performance evaluations of senior managers for its diverse clients, including technology, health care, financial-service, and consumer-goods companies. Of the 425 high-level executives evaluated, each by about 25 people, women execs outperformed men. In fact, women managers consistently rated higher than their male counterparts on 37 of 47 critical management qualities such as leadership, social skills, problem-solving and decision-making.
 
Several other studies showed similar patterns. Personnel Decisions International, a consulting firm in Minneapolis, looked at a large sample—58,000 managers—and found that women outranked men in 20 of 23 areas.
 
In a five-year study, Lawrence Pfaff, a Michigan management consultant, examined evaluations from 2,482 executives from a variety of companies and found that women outperformed men on 17 of 20 measures. You may not be surprised that women excelled in coaching, teamwork, empowering employees, but they excelled in decisiveness and planning as well. So, “Women Can’t Make Decisions” has been proven untrue. Which adage is next?
 
Adds Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, ‘’Women get high ratings on exactly those skills needed to succeed in the global Information Age, where teamwork and partnering are so important.'’
 
Head of IBM’s Global Services Div., Douglas Elix, says that instead of being motivated by self-interest, women are more driven by what they can do for the company.
 
Now for the Big Question: Why don’t we see more women in the top two tiers? One of the reasons is that more women need to venture out of the human resources and the publicity departments, which rarely provide top-level chair fillers—men or women.
 
Another reason is the result of backward-thinking stereotypes that make you want to bang your head on the desk, as evidenced by the following research. Robert Kabacoff of Management Research Group has just finished a study showing how CEOs and corporate boards view upper management, and he found a clear double standard. Male CEOs and senior vice-presidents got high marks from their bosses when they were forceful and assertive and lower scores if they were cooperative and empathic. The opposite was true for women: Female CEOs got downgraded for being assertive and got better scores when they were cooperative. Kabacoff’s conclusion? ‘’At the highest levels, bosses are still evaluating people in the most stereotypical ways.'’  Banging your head on the desk is not going to help. What we need is more men like IBM’s Douglas Elix who are hiring and promoting women—and talking about it!
 
 
Tip:  Don’t try to be so perfect! The Hagberg study indicates that women, in a quest to be thorough, want all the data before making big decisions. This style may have helped women reach middle management, but may discourage them from taking career-advancing, high-risk assignments. Take a tip from the men:  Speed can often be more important than perfection. It’s a hard idea to swallow, isn’t it? But you know it’s true.
 
Further Reading:
 
Website, Business Week, As Leaders, Women Rule, 
 
Website, WomensMedia, Debra Meyerson, Gender in Business: Speak Up About Double Standards
 
Website, Wall Street Journal, Valerie Patterson, Breaking the Glass Ceiling:
What’s Holding Women Back?
 
Book, Joyce Fletcher, Disappearing Acts: Gender, Power, and Relational Practice at Work.
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Tags: business, women

Honest, There Are Lots Of Men Who Want To Help Us!
 
 
 
Many men would be sympathetic to the working woman’s plight, if only they knew 2 things:

1. How bad is the situation?
2. What in the world can I do to help?

 
 
How bad is the situation?

Give ‘em the numbers—guys like numbers! Today, women make up almost half our workforce in the U.S., 46.5% to be exact—and we should be exact. Women are doing as well as men in mid-level management—that’s fair. But when you get above mid-management, things deteriorate rapidly. In the top 2 tiers of the Fortune 500, women fill only 16% of the positions. Now some conventional wisdom is still lurking around saying that women don’t want to be CEO’s. Well, research by Catalyst showed that one out of four women at the second-tier level did not want to be the CEO. Guess what? One out of four men at that level felt the same way.
 
The other bit of conventional wisdom that comes up is that women drop out of the race to the top because they want to raise families. Many women do take breaks in their careers to start families—that’s true. This usually occurs early in their careers, and slows up progress a bit, but doesn’t dampen aspirations for upper management. We have a man to thank for researching and discovering this fact:  Mike Cook. When Mike was the CEO of Deloitte & Touche, he couldn’t understand why women were leaving in great numbers before reaching senior management. He asked the men and they said the women were leaving for “personal reasons,” which sounded like “family reasons.” Fortunately, Mike wanted to be thorough in his research. Although women were saying “personal reasons” when they left, when he contacted them later, most of them told him they had already started families before that time, so that wasn’t the problem. The problem was they were not being promoted as quickly as the men, and they didn’t see enough women above them to be encouraged that this would change. Conventional wisdom was proven wrong. Mike Cook got involved. He required all of his managers to take gender awareness training so they would recognize when they were holding back promotions for gender-related reasons. Are you saying: What?? Good, that’s where the next part comes in.
 
What in the world can I do to help?
 
I have to give you my disclaimer first: Not all women are alike and not all men are alike. But this is what generally happens when you ask a man if he can do a new job that’s one step up: “You bet I can do it!”  Now, he’s worried as much as a woman at this level would be, but he’s careful to not show it. The woman will most likely tell you her worries about the 5% of the job that’s new. Then she’ll say she can figure out how to find the answers and that she can do the job. Mike Cook found that the die was cast by this point. His managers were deciding, one at a time, that the woman was “not quite ready to be promoted.”  When you add this to the subtle expectation that men are doing better in the company—when you look at the upper ranks—you have the formula for a losing battle for women.
 
So, a man can help us when he’s conducting a promotion review by looking at the woman’s production record before talking with her. Then, if she seems less confident than a man, remember that women often verbalize their worries. I’m doing my part by continually telling women to keep minor worries unverbalized—if you know you can find the answers.
 
That problem had to do with talking. The next problem has to do with not talking! When women are in meetings with men, some of them keep their suggestions, contradictions, and challenges to themselves. Amazing, isn’t it? If you’re running a meeting you can help our plight by asking a silent woman, “What are your thoughts on this?” You’ll be getting more out of women, and women will be happy about it. And don’t you think a company is better off if it looks at a full range of possibilities before making decisions? Yup, it’s good for business!
 
Men, you can help us! We want you to!
 
 
Here’s the tip of the week.
 
Tip:
 
Think of all the men you know who might be sympathetic to the working woman’s plight, if only they knew the answers to these questions:

1. How bad is the situation?
2. What in the world can I do to help?

 
Then plan a coffee break with the men—one at a time. Tell each man what he needs to know. Tell him you’ll appreciate his help. Now, get out there and talk to the guys!
 
 
Further Reading:
 
Podcast (always less than 10 minutes), Working in Heels, by Nancy Clark, Gender Communication: Nature Or Nurture?  —Why Do We Have Mars-Venus Communication, And Why Is Mars More Powerful?
 
Website, Harvard Business School, Winning the Talent War for Women, by Douglas McCracken (about Mike Cook and Deloitte & Touche)
 
Blog, Women’s Lunch Talk, by Nancy Clark, Gender Communication: Nature Or Nurture? —Why Do We Have Mars-Venus Communication? And Why Is Mars More Powerful?
 
Website, WomensMedia, by Bonita Banducci,  Equality and Equity— Equal and Different

 
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Tags: gender, differences, business, women