Cassandra Was a Woman

Adam Cohen writes in today’s New York Times that ours is becoming an age of Cassandras—voices raised to warn of impending disasters that are doomed to be ignored. Clearly there’s a strong element of this in the unfolding financial crisis, but Cohen neglects to note s key fact: that the Cassandra role has traditionally been played by women.

As Julie Johnson and I note in our forthcoming book, “The Female Vision”, Cassandra was known in the Classical world as the “cursed prophetess”. She foresaw the destruction of her home country Troy, but was unable to get anyone (including her father, the King) to pay attention.

In the world of myth, Cassandra set a template for women’s best observations being overlooked and undervalued. We’ve seen that play out over several millennia since. And certainly in the present crisis, women played a particularly impressive role in articulating how a system was about to collapse!

I like that Cohen put the analogy out there into the world, but do also wish he’d mentioned the very important point, that Cassandra was most definitely a woman!

Filed under: Featured, Julie Johnson, Sally Helgesen, Workplace and Business Trends, Adam Cohen, Cassandra, early warning, Female Vision, financial crisis, Julie Johnson, New York Times, Women

Women and the race for global talent

I got very excited this morning when I opened my Harvard Business Review “management tip of the day” about how companies could best compete in the global market. What was the number one thing organizations needed to do, according to HBR? Focus on women! http://tinyurl.com/yemek44

Okay, some of us have been saying this for about twenty years: women have an incredible capacity for loyalty if they love their work. They also, as my co-author Julie Johnson and I demonstrate in our forthcoming book, The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work, bring concrete and identifiable strategic value.

So what does it take to attract, retain and inspire women’s best talents? The HBR tip advises “developing programs that help women see their career paths and better identify, request, and secure fulfilling work assignments.”

What kind of assignments are most fulfilling? Julie and I found something important in our research—something we believe has big implications for efforts to leverage women’s best talents. Women tend to judge satisfaction—another word for fulfillment—based on the quality of their days as opposed to focusing on abstract measures of success (I earn more than anyone in my division) or on where a job might lead in the future.

Financial reward, ranking and strategic position are important to women, of course. But if the daily experience of work is wretched, women don’t perceive their work as satisfying.

Do you agree that this finding has the potential to transform how organizations perceive, define and calibrate reward?

Filed under: Employee Engagement and Retention, Gender Communications, Keynote, Employment, Women

Are Women Bad at Supporting Other Women?

Last year I had a blast addressing 900 members of the Junior League, mostly officers and incoming or outgoing presidents. It was a great group, and I am convinced of the truth of the League’s self-description––that it is indeed a leadership training organization for women.

In addition to giving a keynote, I met with the board one afternoon for one of those pick-your-brain session at which I learn as much as the people I’m there to help. One of the questions that most often kept coming up was one that I’m frequently asked in many contexts: Why aren’t women better at supporting one another?

This led to a lively discussion that allowed me to articulate my views on this subject better than I have been able to in the past. What I have to say goes against the grain for many, but I want to share it with you.

First, I think women are often terrific at supporting one another. Not always, and not all women, but in general this seems to be one of our great strengths. Much (though not all) of the real help I’ve had in my work has come from women, who tend to be very responsible about following through on their promises and generous in sharing their resources. And almost all of the real help I’ve had in my personal life has come from women, who listen, ask questions, think seriously, and are openhearted with their wisdom.

Yes, I’ve been burned a few times, put my trust in a few women who did not earn it. And I’ve certainly heard horror stories from women in the workplace who have been undermined or blindsided by other women. But is it really only women who have undermined them or failed to give them support? Or is it that they notice it more when women don’t come through? Perhaps we expect women to support us in ways that we don’t expect men to do, and then feel betrayed when these hopes are disappointed.

I believe this is what happens in many cases. And I’m starting to think that this whole women-don’t-support-other-women conversation is just another way for women to bash themselves. I’ve seen men who are terrible at supporting other men, who stab supposed friends in the back and gossip cruelly about co-workers, but I have never gone to a conference or other gathering and listened to men agonizing about why men aren’t better at supporting other men! The notion is almost ludicrous.

I don’t think this is because men are better at being supportive, but rather because it’s not an issue for them–– they don’t expect it, and so don’t focus their concern on other men they don’t find supportive. They just think, “he’s a jerk,” and move on. They certainly don’t use it as an occasion to question the goodness of men in general.

But then, men aren’t usually that interested in talking about what is wrong with men, whereas women often have a strong appetite for this kind of negative self evaluation. As I often mention in my keynotes, there’s a big market for books on what is wrong with women–– women who love too much, love the wrong people at the wrong time–– whatever. You can find a whole wall of such books in most bookstores because women provide a market for them. By contrast, you won’t find even a shelf of books about what is wrong with men­­ because men have no interest in the topic.

I’ve spent most of my career trying to help women focus on what they have to contribute rather than how they need to change. I think this is the answer to the conversation now taking place about women and support. Women need to stop accepting the cliché that they are uniquely bad about supporting one another. It might be more helpful if we instead recognized that the underlying problem may be expecting too much from other women, requiring them to be perfect human beings and then feeling disappointed when they don’t prove to be so.

What do you think?

Filed under: Featured, Keynote, Chats and Forums, Junior League, Leadership, New Orleans, Women

Women and the Claim of Visibility

Women and the Claim of Visibility

This fall I spent time in San Francisco with one of my favorite clients, Leadership California.Every year, LCA brings together 50 high potential women in business, government, the non-profit sector and academia for four sessions intensive three day sessions. The goal is to help them build and strengthen their networks, expand their understanding of the opportunities in their glorious state, and fast-forward their leadership skills. It’s a high powered and high energy group, and the sessions are superb.

This year, the group really resonated with my research about the challenge many women face in claiming visibility and getting acknowledgement for their contributions. So I thought I would share some of what we talked about in my blog.

In my years of studying women leaders, I have come to recognize that women with extraordinary skills are sometimes uncomfortable articulating their strengths. I first got a picture of how much this was true when I worked on a study of women partners in professional service firms, such as law, accounting, investment banking and consulting.

When I asked the women partners about the strengths of younger women in their firms, most of them said that the younger women did outstanding work. “Meticulous.” “Totally dependable.” “A-plus quality.” These were the comments that I frequently heard.

When I asked the women partners what the younger women were worst at, their response was almost universal. “They are worst at letting people know about the quality of the work they do.” That was clearly the consensus view.

So I asked the younger women if they thought they were good about letting people know about the quality of the work they did. Almost every one of them said she was not. So I asked why not.

What do you think they said?

They had mostly two responses. The first was some variation on “I don’t want to be an obnoxious blowhard.” This was sometimes expressed more strongly, as in: “If I have to act like that jerk down the hall to get attention, no thanks.”

The second response was, “My work should speak for itself.” That is, they felt that if they did superior work, people should notice without their having to point it out.”

How effective a strategy do you think that is? Any thoughts you’d like to share with me?

In my next posting, I’ll share with you some of the strategies we worked out in San Francisco– ways that women can claim attention in a way that is comfortable for them. What we concluded at our session is that it is not either/ or– that is, you don’t need to make a choice between being obnoxious and simply hoping that people notice your great work!

Filed under: Featured, Business, San Francisco, Women

The Satisfaction Project – Julie Johnson – Sally Helgesen

Almost five 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 live with the adrenaline rush we all experience when we’re over-extended (or thrillingly involved).

They were saying that what their organizations offered in return was not sufficient reward. They did not value it enough for it to be worth it.

Of course, we did not hear this from all the women we talked to– not by a long shot. Some women joyously judged the rewards their organizations offered as well worth the effort, and embraced the opportunities they fought for with zest. Others took a stoic approach.

But we heard the “it’s not worth it” line enough, and in high enough places, that we decided we wanted to explore what these women really meant.

Why were jobs or positions that had been valued without question by generations of men viewed as not necessarily or entirely desirable by women?

As we pondered this, we began to realize was that most workplaces, most organizations, most jobs were designed in the industrial era for men, which meant that they reflected purely male definitions of worth in terms of tradeoff.

Now, there’s been a lot of focus–– research, articles, books, seminars, you name it–– on the fact that the structure of work was designed to reflect male realities (realities that we might note are changing fast). But there has been precisely nothing written about whether the rewards of work also reflect male values. When we realized this, we got excited!

What if—just supposing— women brought a different set of values with them to work? Not all women, of course, but enough to make it an issue. And what if—further drilling down on the “it’s not worth it” issue–– these values shaped women’s perception of satisfaction?

Could this be one of the reasons that organizations were still struggling to attract and above all to retain talented women? Was there some fundamental mismatch between what the market offered in terms of senior positions in the workplace and what women (again, not all women, but some really terrific ones) valued in their work?

The more we explored this idea with women—Julie’s clients, female leaders I met at leadership conferences where I was speaking, friends and colleagues from around the world–– the more we realized we were onto something quite big.

We started informally interviewing women and men on the subject. We ran a couple of focus groups. And we explored academic research from fields ranging from brain science the economics of happiness.

But we soon realized that we needed hard data if we were to really explore how women’s values and perception of what constituted satisfaction in the workplace might differ from that which shaped organizations as we know them. So Julie and I set to work developing a survey ( we call it the Satisfaction Profile Assessment ) that would enable us to identify the primary sources of sources of satisfaction that motivate people at work, so we could compare results for women and men.

We received guidance in designing the survey from Dr. Mark Fischman, Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon University, and from the wonderful people at American Psychological Testing. We secured some corporate support, which enabled us to have Harris Interactive run our survey out among a sample of over 800 men and women at mid and senior levels of management in corporations, associations, and government positions all over the US. And we made sure the survey enabled us to break down the data not just by gender, but also by age, industry, years of employment, and ethnic background.

What’s interesting is how many of the results of that original project’s data still apply at present. It has been extraordinary to see ideas we first batted around in conversation turned into verifiable data points. Analyzing our results has given us many, many insights about how organizations could be more skillful in their efforts to attract, retain, develop and inspire talented women by taking into consideration what women really value in their work.

This finding has big potential implications for organizations of every kind: for leaders, researchers, career development specialists, search firms, educators and trainers– the list is long.

I will be sharing this rich material with you over the next year, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Filed under: Featured, Julie Johnson, Sally Helgesen, Satisfaction Project, Women in the Workplace, Carnegie Mellon University, Corporation, Employment, Harris Interactive, Research, Women