Tag: mentors

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Creating Good Witnesses

Our Bloch Executive Education Center is offering a course on “Creating Witnesses.”  I must admit, on first glance I thought it was training on giving a good deposition. (After all, leaders can never be too prepared.) The blurb on the session told otherwise and reminded me of two important pieces of advice for effective career self-management.

ADVICE #1:  Make sure others see and understand your contributions and achievements (i.e.,  make them a witness). Good, hard work makes things move along seamlessly and progress as if inevitable – and that means others can easily overlook the breadth and depth of your contributions to making that so. Colleagues and not-so-helpful bosses may be waiting in the wings to take credit for more than their fair share – the organizational world is a political place – and you may never know if they are building their careers on your skill, effort, and reputation. Women, people of color, and others with token status can remain invisible to those predisposed not to see or appreciate them.

Bottom-line: you may think others recognize your skills, talents, and achievements. They may not. And it’s naïve to believe that your hard work alone will speak for itself. (Trust me on that one!)  Be proactive in helping credible others understand what you do so that they can speak for you to powerful others. Well-informed colleagues and good bosses can be your witness. You need that. As the adage goes, a person is never a prophet in his or her own land.     

ADVICE #2:  Maintain a relationship with your witnesses over time. You’ll change jobs. Bosses and co-workers will too – or they’ll retire, move away, and disappear from your life. That’s where a proactive stance toward maintaining your important networks comes in. Stay connected to your witnesses. Help them see how you’ve grown and developed. Email, LinkedIn, and social media sites now make that simple to do. You can’t predict when in the future you may need to call for a testimonial. 

So if you’re in Kansas City next month, come and take the Witness course. If you can’t, I’ve pasted a description below to give you a bit of the skinny.

Either way, begin right now developing a plan to cultivate those who can add credibility and an objective assessment of quality and accomplishment to your career story – and keep them as part of your professional life. (That won’t happen without careful attention and effort from you.) As your network grows, so will your confidence in the living reminders of your hard work well done. Onward to a brighter future!

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Charmaine McClarie, President of the McClarie Group, will be leading Strategic Preparedness: Positioning Yourself for the C-Suite seminar on March 16th. Click here to find out more information

What are witnesses?
Workplace witnesses are strategic individuals who see and hear your contribution to the organization and communicate the value you bring to the workplace to others.

Why create witnesses?
Simply put, creating witnesses is essential to your success. If you do good work, but no one knows about it, both you and the organization lose. You lose, obviously, because you get little credit (and in many cases no credit) for your contributions. The organization loses because it has no awareness of a resource which you’ve cleverly hidden away — namely, you. This makes you a well-kept secret.

What gets in the way of us creating witnesses?
Usually, our own selves. Most of us were taught to do just the opposite of the kind of self-promotion needed to succeed in our careers. We were told "your work will speak for itself", and "don’t toot your own horn." But being smart and working hard is no longer enough. Most of your colleagues are smart and hardworking, so you have to learn to distinguish yourself from the crowd by creating witnesses for your contributions at work.

So how do I create witnesses?
Witnesses don’t just happen; you have to make them happen. Here is a three-step process
that will allow you to create witnesses to your great work, so that it can move you and your
ideas forward and up the organization.

1. Ask yourself, how do influential people make themselves seen and heard in this organization? What does it take to be respected?

2. Next, identify who you want as your witnesses. In other words, who has the power, influence and relationships to help you accomplish your goals and reinforce your value in the workplace?

3. Finally, plan how you’ll turn these individuals into witnesses for your work. Craft effective messages that will resonate with each of your witnesses and allow them to communicate your value to others in the organization.

The cardinal rule: you must not be a well-kept secret. If you are, you lose because your organization doesn’t know if you are strategic or if you get results. You organization loses because it isn’t able to appropriately leverage the value you bring.

Leaders don’t leave their careers to chance. Begin creating witnesses for your work today!

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Women need to see themselves in a role before they can succeed

An article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education confirms what those who have studied gender and leadership know from research — and what many women know from personal experience: women need to be able to see themselves in a role before they can succeed in it.

I assert the same is true for people of color and for first generation college graduates.  

If people can’t believe at their core that folks like them can do whatever they are setting out to do, that tiny kernel of insecurity can gnaw at their self-confidence. And guess what? They may not be able to do what they fear they can’t. It’s a tacit, self-fulfilling prophecy.

The message to educators in all this is clear: teaching skills and knowledge is not enough. Quality education is identify work and personal development, and we short change our students – undergraduates, graduate students, and executive audiences – when we design programs assuming facts, figures, and models are enough. We do students no service either when we think we know why they don’t succeed or persist.

Look at what the researchers found.

Research from Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research in the October issue of the American Sociological Review found that women who begin college intending to become engineers are more likely than men to change their major and choose another career. The interesting gender twist: they do it for lack of confidence, not competence.

Women lack what the researchers call "professional role confidence" — a term that loosely describes the outcome of a complex self-assessment on whether a person feels s/he has the right stuff for success: the core intellectual skills, the right expertise for a given profession, and a fit in interests and values with the expectations of the field’s career path.

Women’s family plans and concerns about their math skills have been traditional explanations for their low representation in engineering. The researchers, however, found otherwise.

Women’s family plans had little bearing on their career planning once they entered engineering training. Surprisingly, men were more likely to leave engineering if they had plans to start a family.

Women’s views of their math abilities were not significant predictors of persistence toward an engineering degree or entrance into the field. "Once students matriculate into this math-intensive field, more complex, profession-specific self-assessments appear to replace math self-assessment as the driving social-psychological reasons for attrition," the researchers concluded.

The authors suggest their findings about professional-role confidence may be relevant in other fields. I know they are. That’s why mentors, role models, and caring sponsors are so important.

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10 Tips for Finding a Sponsor, Part 2: Managing the Sponsorship Relationship

Doing your homework is an important first step in securing the sponsor you need. To recap the last post, you’ll want to:

1. Clarify your preferred career path.

2. Decide what you want from a sponsor.

3. Define your personal style and communications preferences.

4. Determine your assets and demonstrate your contributions.

5. Identify possible sponsor candidates.

Once you know who you are, who and what you want, and why, you’ll need strategies for building and sustaining a sponsorship relationship. The final five tips, provided below, should help.

6. Think small, go slow, and test the waters. You may be ready to dive into the surf, but your potential sponsor may not be considering a swim or be a very good swimmer. How can you find ways to test whether the fit is right? One strategy is to ask for advice on a specific topic or project. The response will give you helpful data about the quality of the counsel and the way it was delivered. Did the interaction energize you? Empower you? Fit your need? Did it make you want to continue the conversation?

7. Be clear and direct. This should be easy if you’ve done your homework (see above). Be prepared to make a compelling and brief request. Think elevator speech!  Busy people appreciate your respect for their time. Be specific about what you want and why you want the person you are approaching. Flattery – sincere and tastefully done, with specifics, and in small doses, as in “I asked for this meeting because I so admire your ability to do X, Y, Z …” – works. Bring a resume or written materials to leave. Be sure to say thank you, whether the sponsor signs on or not.

8. Don’t be a drag. You may want weekly meetings, long emails, regular lunches, or monthly phone calls. The key is to find out what works for your sponsor. Ask – and always remember, this is a favor!

9. Reciprocate and show your appreciation. For this to work, it’s got to be a two-way street. That requires you to listen and to be savvy about how you can support your sponsor and demonstrate your gratitude. Keep your sponsor updated with a quick email when good things happen. Send an occasional small gift – maybe flowers, a book, or a bottle of wine (if appropriate) to mark a special occasion or accomplishment. When you can, find ways to promote your sponsor to important others.

10. NEVER LET YOUR SPONSOR DOWN. This may go without saying, but it’s important enough to say loud and clear. Deliver as promised. Better yet: deliver more than promised – and behave in ways that reflect positively on someone who has faith in you.

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10 Tips for Finding a Sponsor, Part 1: Doing Your Homework

Previous posts explored the importance of a good sponsor for accelerating your career. How do you find one?

To over-simplify, there are four steps: (1) figure out what you need and want from a sponsor, (2) find someone who matches your needs, (3) find ways to demonstrate your competencies, and (4) ask persuasively for his or her support.

A sponsor is different from a mentor. Mentors offer informal advice and coaching, while sponsors are high-power, high-credibility people in positions to open doors for you. Both can be important for career success, but you’re asking a sponsor to lay his or her reputation on the line for you.

For that reason, sponsors are harder to come by. Don’t let that discourage you. With preparation, time, and effort you can find one – or more – and the process of proactively cultivating a sponsor itself can be helpful and growth-filled. Research [see preceding posts] indicates it’s worth the investment.

I’ve got ten tips for facilitating the process. Five outline the homework you’ll need to do to get things started. Those are discussed below.

Five others help build and sustain a mutually satisfying sponsorship relationship. Those will be discussed in my next post.

Let’s get started. You have everything to gain – and little to lose – if you approach the process thoughtfully and professionally.

Part 1: Doing Your Homework

1. Get clarity about your preferred career path. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? What jobs and organizations best fit your needs? It’ll be easier to identify significant others and talk with them persuasively when you have clarity about where you’re heading.

2. Decide what you want from a sponsor. Are you looking toward a job in someone’s department? Do you want a broader perspective on your industry? Do you seek a recommendation from a power player? Do you want access or an introduction to some movers and shakers? It’ll be easier to ask when you know what you are asking for.

3. Define your personal style and communications strategy. The more you know about how you relate to others and how others see you, the better your chance of finding a sponsor with whom you easily click. Mentors and sponsors can take pleasure in helping someone whom they see as like them.

4. Define your assets and demonstrate your contributions. Where are your skills? What career experiences best demonstrate your capacities? Where are your competitive advantages? You’ll need to develop a compelling narrative about yourself before approaching a sponsor, and you’ll only be able to do that after you’ve taken an honest inventory of what you’ve done, what you enjoy doing, and what you bring to the table. It’ll help if your sponsor has already seen you in action at work or in the volunteer community or if someone your intended sponsor trusts has already sung your praise. How can you make that happen?

And remember, all relationships are reciprocal: what are the professional benefits for a sponsor in supporting you? That’s something you’ll want to share.

5. Develop a broad list of possible sponsor candidates. Who do you know that you admire? Who has the clout or contacts you seek? Who could serve as a role model? Who exhibits the values you respect? Think broadly and beyond a boss or people you already know well. Finding a sponsor is a good way to network with powerful people – and that in itself is valuable.

Be prepared to approach multiple people. Not everyone may be ready or willing to help. You might even want multiple sponsors in different parts of your life – a workplace sponsor, for example, and one to provide connections to important civic boards and key volunteer activities. Expect refusals – and don’t take them personally! Good sponsors are busy people – and can be terrific sources of referrals.

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Sponsors, Salaries, and Gender: Hitting the Glass Ceiling Hurts?

Evidence mounts on the importance of a good sponsor. MBAs entering the work force with the recommendation of a strong advocate benefitted when negotiating compensation for starting salaries, a recent Catalyst study found.

Sadly, the research also demonstrates that the glass ceiling hurts – and is increasingly costly for women over the course of their career.

Catalyst, a nonprofit focused on equity and fairness for women in the business world, surveyed more than 4,000 MBA who graduated between 1996 and 2007 from different programs around the world. Women MBAs, on average, earned $4,600 less initially than their male counterparts. The data holds across industries.

Women start with lower salaries and have fewer opportunities to increase their earnings. Statistics for 2008, for example, saw promotions resulting in an extra 21 percent in compensation for men. Promotions for women during the same period netted them an additional 2 percent. Calculations conclude that over the course of a 40-year career, women lose more than $400,000 in salary.

That’s huge for the women and for their families.

"A lot of people just suggest that if we just give it time, the gender gap will go away, but we see if you give it time the gap gets wider," says Christine Silva, a research director at Catalyst.[1] 

The Catalyst study also found that having a sponsor widens the gender pay gap: strong sponsors who advocated during the job search benefitted male students more. The men’s mentors were collectively higher up the corporate ladder. As a result, their sponsors had more clout and impact on decisions like hiring and compensation. Men with strong mentors earned on average $9,260 more in starting salary than women with the same.

So what can you do?   

Be tough. Be informed. Approach any salary negotiation with compensation information about the organization you’re talking with and about similar positions at other firms, advises Susan McTiernan, associate dean for graduate programs at Quinnipiac University School of Business.

Be realistic. Be savvy. Understand salary expectations before you begin negotiating so you’ll know when you’re being low-balled, advises Diana Bilimoria, Professor at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management.

Believe that you’re worth it. This is particularly important for women.  Research by Deborah Kolb, Professor Emerita at Simmons College School of Management and author of Her Place at the Table: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiating the Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success, finds women less willing than men to negotiate for their own success. If you don’t ask for what you want, I guarantee you reduce the odds dramatically of getting it.  

Try on new behaviors. Work with a coach to develop new skills if salary negotiations are new or hard for you. Enhance your capacities to present yourself with confidence and strong executive presence. Learn to present arguments persuasively – and role play with a trusted other to prepare for a range of responses from the individual you’ll face across the table. Develop skills in asking clearly and directly for what you need. Recognize a win-win is possible for all parties involved. 

You’ll help yourself and your career by improving your skills in negotiation. You’ll also demonstrate the kind of leadership skills in doing so that warrant the salary you request.

[1] Brian Burnsed (2011). Business Schools Hope to Shatter Sturdy Glass Ceiling. U.S. News & World Report Online. June 15, 10:06 am ET.