Women and Self-Promotion

Women and Self-Promotion

 

The statistics are down right depressing: Women now earn 60% of all four year degrees that colleges and universities award, and they now make up 50% of the U.S. workforce. Yet, according to a 2011 study by Catalyst, a NY-based nonprofit that works to promote opportunities for women in business, only 2.2% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, and women make up less that 15% of corporate officers.

 

Here’s one more equally depressing fact: A 2011 report from the White House Council on Women and Girls noted: At all levels of education, women earned about 75 percent of what their male counterparts earned in 2009.

 

Whatever happened to, “You’ve come a long way, baby?”

 

It turns out all sorts of factors may contribute to these statistics. However, here’s the bottom line: Too often, women fail to bring their accomplishments to the attention of organizational leaders. And women too often fail to ask those same leaders to serve as their “sponsors.”

 

Let’s address the importance of the latter first.

 

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, says a rich source of female talent rests just below top management levels. In order to break through to the very top, Hewlett maintains, women require “sponsors” at the highest reaches who will openly advocate for them.

 

Sponsors differ from mentors. The latter provide friendly advice about professional and personal challenges. The former puts his or her career on the line when promoting a protégé, requiring an extremely high level of trust. Think Oprah’s promotion of Dr. Oz or Steve Job’s promotion of Pixar’s John Lasseter.

 

“Women tend to be overmentored and undersponsored,” says Hewlett, a conclusion that seems to be supported by one study recently published in the Harvard Business Review. It found men were 46% more likely to have a sponsor than women. (S. Hewlett, K. Peraino, L Sherbin, and K. Sumberg, “The Sponsor Effect: Breaking Through the Last Glass Ceiling,” HBR, 01/12/11.)

 

Hewlett adds that sexual dynamics may keep some men from taking on women protégés. If employees constantly see a male CEO in the company of a mid-level female manager, that CEO may fear the possibility of rumor and innuendo.

 

Hewlett says that companies can best address this by directly making sponsorship an integral part of the organization’s culture. No matter what genders are involved, sponsorship should be viewed as so commonplace and so important that it—and only it—is assumed to be taking place, whenever a CEO or other top executive spends significant amounts of time with an up-and-coming employee.

 

Women must also drop the assumption that, if they just do good work, someone will sponsor them. Instead, women must be be prepared to ask to get ahead. It turns out that asking is something too many women fail to do, and boy, does it cost us. 

 

In Women Don’t Ask, co-authors Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever note one study of starting salaries of men and women coming out of graduate schools programs.  Babcock found that male students earned about $4000, or 7.6%, more than the average woman graduate. When she sought an explanation, Babcock found that only 7% of female students negotiated a salary, whereas 57% of men negotiated theirs.

 

The authors concluded that women often don’t ask for what they want or feel they deserve. Why? In most cases, it’s because women fear that, if they push, they won’t be liked. In general, men perceive asking as part of the game.

 

In addition to asking, if women want to get ahead, they must make efforts to self-promote. Last year, Catalyst reported that women who “do all the right things” to get ahead—actively seek high profile assignments, ask for help, develop rapport with influential leaders—still advance less than their male counterparts and wait longer to receive a pay raise. However, Catalyst also found that women benefit the most from making their achievements known. 

 

“When women were most proactive in making their achievements visible, they advanced further . . . were more satisfied with their careers, and had greater compensation growth than women who were less focused on calling attention to their successes,” according to the Catalyst analysis.

 

For those of you who are climbers, know that the ceiling is not impenetrable. But if you want to get ahead, be prepared to talk about yourself and your accomplishments and actively seek a sponsor.

 

 

Mary’s Ten Tips for Self Promotion

 

1.     Volunteer rather than wait to be asked – Seek out important assignments

2.     Own your accomplishments – Sharing credit is great, but make your accomplishments yours!

3.     Determine who should know what about you

4.     Personalize your self-promotion messages

5.     Recognize the difference between confidence and arrogance

6.     Request a pay increase rather than assume one - If you don’t ask, usually, you won’t get

7.     Keep your eyes on the prize - Focus on your successes rather than your failures

8.     Network like crazy

9.     Dress for the job you want, not the job you have

10. Seek a sponsor

 

   

 

Professionalism at Work

 

Earlier this month, the Center for Professional Excellence (College of York, PA) issued their third annual survey of the state of professionalism at work. Key findings include:

 

* 33.1% of HR professionals and 36.5% of managers believe that the presence of professionalism in new employees has decreased

 

* 50.5% of HR professionals said younger employees feel a sense of entitlement—The good news: That’s down from 60.9% in 2009

 

* 97.1% of HR professionals said IT misuse has stayed the same or gotten worse in the past year

 

* 26.9% of managers reported electronic devices and social media contributed to employees being less focused at work

 

* 32.6% of managers cited “not understanding the urgency required for completing assignments” as the worst mistake new employees make

 

At least two of my law school clients have developed extensive programs to promote professionalism among their graduates. Earlier this year, I spoke with one senior lawyer with a Houston-based law firm that helped underwrite the cost of the University of Texas Law School’s professionalism program. “Anything you can do to help teach emotional intelligence is critical,” he told me.

 

 

 

Email Free Fridays!

Could You? Would You?

 

In mid-January, I worked with the in-coming class of new associates at one of my NYC law firm clients. When I learned that I would meet with the new lawyers the morning after they received their BlackBerrys, I was concerned. In previous years, I found that, once new associates received a BlackBerry, keeping and holding their attention was difficult, if not impossible.

 

Times have changed. To my own surprise, brand new lawyers now view their BlackBerrys, not as fun electronic gadgets, but as tools that tether them to the office 24/7, a perception that seems accurate.

 

In “The Networked Worker,” a 2008 Pew Internet & American Life Project study, respondents reported that constant connectivity has some downsides, including:

 

*  59% of “Wired and Ready” workers who hold professional and managerial positions say communications technologies have increased demands that they work more hours, as do 56% of those who already work more than 40 hours per week; and

 

*  63% of those who own BlackBerrys and PDAs feel those gadgets and connectivity increase demands that they work more hours, and 30% feel these demands have increased “a lot.”

 

Those same electronic devices that keep us tied to work may also make us less effective. No less than tech giant Intel is experimenting with “no-email Fridays,” encouraging engineers to solve problems by phone or face-to-face conversations rather than tapping away on their smart phones and keyboards.

 

According to Monica Seely, author of Brilliant Email, organizations currently lose up to 20 days per person per year, dealing with email poorly. She writes that 25% of people expect answers to their emails within one hour, while 33% expect a response within two hours. For many professionals, these demands are nearly impossible to meet.

 

Perhaps the workplace of tomorrow will offer more opportunity for reflection and encourage employees to communicate differently and better. As author Malcolm Gladwell has been quoted as saying, “I’m quite prepared for the possibility that the next revolution is not going to come from a machine . . . . it’s going to come from creating a more thoughtful work force and giving people the opportunity to be thoughtful.”

 

 

 

That’s it for now. I’ll be back in touch come the second quarter.