How to Report to a Younger Boss

“I do not feel that my years of experience are valued or respected by my boss or coworkers,” wrote an employee on an employee satisfaction survey that I recently administered for a client. Most of the employees of this organization are very young, with only a few older workers below the executive level. This comment surprised both me and my client, but I recognized it as a symptom of the generational shift change taking place in the United States. Joanne Kaufman, writing for the New York Times, reports on a 2014 Harris Interactive survey conducted on behalf of CareerBuilder, a job recruitment website, which found that 38 percent of American workers now have a younger boss. Many baby boomers are choosing to stay in the workforce longer, and as large cohorts of millennials and gen Xers—highly valued digitial natives—move into leadership positions, Kaufman notes that “the odds are increasing that older workers will be answering to managers young enough to be their children.” Here are some tips for how to deal with what can be a challenging but valuable relationship in the workplace across generations:

  • Older workers need to recognize that younger bosses have valuable experience that is different than theirs because of technology and other experiences.
  • Younger bosses need to value the experience and reliability that older workers bring.
  • Older workers need to check their parental reflexes to offer advice if it has not been asked for.
  • Older workers need to reign in their reflex to talk about the past in a way that can sound patronizing to younger bosses.
  • Younger bosses need to appreciate both the work ethic and the absence of petty drama that most older workers bring to the workplace.
The generational divide is just another diversity issue, and we can all learn to value each other. As with any relationship, it takes two to tango. What has worked for you?   Photo courtesy of WOCinTech Chat. CC by 2.0]]>

Women Competing with Women: How to Make Competition Fun and Energizing

As a consultant and coach for more than thirty years, I have heard too many painful stories from female clients about feeling unsupported and even undermined by other women at work. When I decided to research this dynamic for my book, New Rules for Women: Revolutionizing the Way Women Work Together, I found that these feelings and experiences happen for a reason: organizations actually set up women to feel competitive with one another. This happens when women see very few other women in senior leadership positions. As one of my research participants explained: You’re playing a game with men because there are so few women at the top. Because there are few slots for women, you see the successful women as your competition. You don’t really see the whole pie or all the people out there as your competition. Belinda MJ Brown, writing for Forbes, suggests that the recent Olympic Games offer women in corporations another way to think about competition as a win-win scenario rather than a win-lose, or zero-sum-game, scenario. She reminds us of the recent Olympic gymnasts Aly Raisman and Simone Biles who, while competing with each other for Olympic Gold, were also able to cheer each other on to outperform their own previous performances. This reminds me of my own experience as a lap swimmer. I always swim faster and more effortlessly when someone who is my equal, or even a little stronger, is swimming in the lane next to me—even if it is a stranger. I draw energy from him or her and push myself a little harder in the presence of another athlete—even when no one is trying to win. Brown suggests the same can be true for women at work. If we can find fun and regeneration in competing with one another instead of against one another, we can find energy and enjoyment in encouraging one another to do our best and celebrate one another’s accomplishments. Brown suggests that we can shift our mind-sets about competing with other women to win-win by taking these steps:

  1. Become aware of the structural way organizations set up women in a win-lose mind-set against each other when there are few women in senior leadership positions.
  2. Notice your own thoughts and beliefs about competition with or against yourself or other women.
  3. Connect with and focus on your own strengths, instead of comparing yourself to others. Channel your energy into growing and leveraging your strengths.
  4. Support other women in a caring and genuine way, and openly celebrate their successes.
  5. Talk with other women about the benefits of encouraging one another to do their best. Agree to support and celebrate one another.
Try these win-win mind-sets and let me know in the comments section if you notice any changes in your energy and relationships at work. I believe that even with “so few women at the top,” supporting one another and competing with instead of against one another can result not only in our own individual successes but in changes in the cultures of our organizations, thus resulting in more women at the top. Photo Credit: Business Forward at Flickr.com]]>

A Road Map to Gender Equity: Women in the Workplace 2016 Report

A new study by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey finds little progress in advancement for women in the largest companies. This study of 132 companies employing 4.6 million people includes a review of the pipeline data of the companies, a survey of HR practices, and surveys of 34,000 employees about attitudes on gender, job satisfaction, ambition, and work-life issues.

Key Findings: The Current State

First, let’s take a look at key findings from the study:
  • Women remain underrepresented at every level. For every 100 women promoted to manager, 130 men are promoted. This disparity begins early and grows larger with only 20 percent of SVP roles held by women, which results in very few women in line to become CEO.
  • Women of color face many more challenges with access to opportunity, including sponsorship, than do white women.
  • Women negotiate for promotions and raises as often as men but receive more negative feedback than men when they do.
  • Women ask for feedback as often as men but are less likely to receive it and get less access to senior leaders and sponsorship.

A Road Map to Gender Equity

The LeanIn.Org/McKinsey report offers a practical road map for how leaders can speed the rate of progress in achieving gender equity and inclusion:
  1. Communicate a compelling business case using data and stories about why gender diversity is good for the company. Senior leaders need to talk openly about the value of gender diversity and model their commitment to gender equity. Transparency through disclosure of gender metrics to employees will also demonstrate leadership’s seriousness about the issue.
  2. Ensure that hiring, promotions, and reviews are fair. This is challenging because of unconscious bias. Numerous studies show that women receive harsher and more personal judgments in reviews than men. Practices such as requiring diverse slates of candidates for internal and external hires, conducting blind resume reviews, applying clear and consistent criteria for performance reviews, and carrying out third party reviews of performance feedback to ensure fairness are all actions that can increase gender (and other) diversity.
  3. Invest in management and employee training in awareness of implicit bias for hiring and performance reviews. Managers also need training in recognizing and challenging inappropriate gender-based language and behavior and recognizing and offsetting the double-binds that women often face in the workplace—such as receiving negative feedback when asking for raises or promotions.
  4. Focus on accountability and results. I have often seen companies espouse a commitment to valuing gender diversity but refuse to hold senior leaders accountable for performance against gender metrics. Almost without fail, no change occurs when there is no accountability for senior leaders. It is also important to track salary differences by gender and to set targets so that progress can be measured.
Numerous studies show the benefits of gender diversity, but statistics from studies or one-time training sessions won’t bring about change unless the leaders of organizations invest in changing the cultures—including changes in attitudes, awareness of implicit bias, and changes in policies and procedures—of their organizations. The road map above shows the way forward for leaders. What successes have you seen and what worked? Please share your stories.   Photo Credit: Image courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net  ]]>

New Research on Family-Friendly Policies in the Workplace: Lessons from around the World

recent New York Times article Claire Cain Miller gives examples of some of the laws that have been passed around the world to address family and career balance:

  • Chile passed a law, the most recent version in 2009, requiring employers to provide and pay for child care for women with children under two.
  • Spain passed a law in 1999 giving workers with children younger than seven the right to ask their employers for reduced hours without fear of being laid off.
  • The United States passed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993, which provides workers with twelve weeks of unpaid leave.
  • Many other countries in Europe provide long, paid maternity leaves—some up to one year—and part-time work protections.
Several new studies, summarized by Miller, have produced some disappointing findings about the “unintended consequences” of these laws for women. We need to learn from these experiences. Here are some of these findings:
  • In Chile, the result of the requirement for employers to provide child care has been a decrease in women’s starting salaries of between 9 percent and 20 percent.
  • In Spain, women’s right to work part time has resulted, a decade later, in a decline in full-time stable jobs for all women, with companies 37 percent less likely to promote women and 45 percent more likely to dismiss them.
  • In the United States, as a result of the FMLA, women are 5 percent more likely to remain employed but 8 percent less likely to be promoted than they were before the law was passed.
  • A study of twenty-two countries with family-friendly policies found that women were more likely to be in dead-end jobs and were less likely to be managers.
Clearly, this news is not good. So what are the lessons we can learn about how to get more support for working families without penalizing women?
  • Make sure employers do not bear the costs so that they do not pass them on to their employees as in Chile. Three states in the United States offer paid family leave and finance it through employee payroll taxes, which seems to be working.
  • Keep policies gender neutral and encourage both women and men to use them. In Sweden, family leave policies encourage both parents to take time off for a new baby. In most other countries, including the United States, these policies are considered to be for women, and it is nearly all women who take advantage of them. If men take advantage of family-friendly policies, perhaps they will be seen as policies for everyone, and not just for women.
  • Continue to challenge the myths about women’s careers, described in previous blogs (“Myths about Women’s Careers,” part I and part II), and work toward equal partnership with the men in our lives.
Do you have other ideas about how to overcome the unintended consequences of family-friendly policies for women? Please let us hear them. We need to figure this out together.]]>

Myths about Women’s Careers: New Research – Part II

recent Harvard Business Review study of 25,000 Harvard Business School graduates, spanning three generations (baby boomers, generation Xers, and millennials) sheds light on some myths and gaps in expectations about women’s careers that persist across generations. Because this study focuses on Harvard Business School graduates, who are a highly educated and ambitious group of women and men, I think the findings are particularly eye-opening for the rest of us in that they provide a window into how entrenched attitudes about gender roles are in our society. These entrenched attitudes affect our careers as women, as well as our overall satisfaction with our lives. The big question for many of us is, “Haven’t things changed for millennials?” Some of the following findings from this study can help answer this and other questions about gender gaps in our careers. The researchers found the following about expectations for career priority for men upon graduation from Harvard Business School’s MBA program:

  • More than half of the boomer and generation X men expected that their careers would take priority over their spouse’s or partner’s (this attitude was slightly less prevalent for men of color).
  • 50 percent of millennial men expected their careers to take priority, which is only slightly less than previous generations.
  • 39 percent of white men and 48 percent of men of color anticipated their spouse’s career would be equally important.
The career priority expectations for women upon graduation from Harvard Business School’s MBA program were different:
  • The vast majority of women across racial groups and generations anticipated that their careers would rank equally with their partner’s.
  • 75 percent of millennial women expected their careers would rank equally with their partner’s.
  • 26 percent of millennial women expected their partner’s career would take priority. Notice the big gap in expectations between millennial women (26 percent) and millennial men (50 percent).
  • Only 7 percent of generation X women and 3 percent of boomer women thought their careers would take priority over their partner’s.
The study’s authors also looked at the reality for career priority after a number of years in the workforce and found that 75 percent of generation X and boomer men reported that their careers had, in fact, taken precedence (this was less true for black women and men). This is much higher than either women or men expected upon graduation. Men in the study shared the following expectations for family responsibility upon graduation:
  • 75 percent of generation X and boomer men expected their partners would be the primary child-care provider (somewhat lower for black men).
  • 66 percent of millennial men have this expectation.
  • 33 percent of millennial men expect to do an equal share of childcare, compared to 22 percent of generation X men and 16% of boomer men.
Again, women’s expectations upon graduation for sharing family responsibility differed:
  • 50 percent of generation X and boomer women expected to have primary responsibility for childcare.
  • 42 percent of millennial women expect to do so, which is only slightly less than previous generations.
 

Impact of Findings on Career Satisfaction

This study showed that all women were more likely to have egalitarian expectations for both career priority and for child-care responsibility than were the men, and the generation X and boomer women reported disappointment about how their careers ended up taking lower priority. The authors of the study reported that “traditional partnerships were linked to higher career satisfaction for men, whereas women who ended up in such arrangements were less satisfied, regardless of their original expectations.” While the expectations for equality of millennials show a slight improvement, this group is too early in their careers to know yet if their reality will be different. Remember the story of my client, June, in part I of this series published last week? As long as our deeply entrenched attitudes about gender roles (that women’s careers are less important and that childcare is the primary responsibility of women) remain unchallenged, they will play out in both organizations and families as barriers for women’s careers, and change will continue to be very, very slow. The gap between women’s expectations and their actual experiences will continue to be large. It’s no wonder that there are so few women in senior leadership roles—but let’s not blame women. Entrenched attitudes present both internal and external barriers to women realizing their potential.  Let’s work together, women and men, to challenge existing attitudes and practices both at home and at work. What do you think about the findings from this study? What changes would you like to see in the ways women and men balance career and family responsibilities?]]>

Myths about Women’s Careers: New Research – Part I

research reported in the Harvard Business Review dispels several commonly held myths about the lack of equity in advancement for women and why so few women are in senior management. Here are three of the myths:

Myth #1: Women fail to achieve equality because they take themselves off the career track to have children.

Myth #2: Women value careers less than men.

Myth #3: Having children makes employees less reliable, less driven, and less creative.

In their study of 25,000 MBAs over three generations (baby boomers, generation Xers, and millennials) of graduates from the Harvard Business School, the authors found the following:
  • Only 11 percent of generation X and boomer women with children under eighteen were out of the workforce full time to care for children. The figure is 7 percent for women of color.
  • Both women and men expressed the same amount of ambition upon graduation from the MBA program across the three generations.
  • Both women and men in senior management teams were likely to have made career decisions to accommodate family responsibilities, and they were still able to perform at a level sufficient to achieve senior management positions.
So, why do men achieve more success in their careers? As Lisa Miller of New York Magazine put it, “Most women work full-time through their child-rearing years, and yet they achieve less than men at work because, well, they’re women.” In other words, both workplace cultures and societal attitudes—not the choices women make—are responsible for women achieving less. The following story demonstrates how workplace and societal attitudes may be impacting women’s careers: I have a coaching client, June, who has been driven to be a senior leader since she was a small child. She always earned good grades, completed two advanced professional degrees, and worked hard. Although she worked for two major corporations, she was not able to get the challenging assignments or promotions that she desired and felt ready to accomplish. She was frustrated and unhappy at work. When her son was born, he provided an excuse to step out of the corporate world, which did not seem to value her. She and her husband agreed that she would stay home full time with their son, although that had never been her plan. She explained that she would never have left her full-time position if she felt that challenging opportunities were available to her. She still longed for meaningful work, but the part-time opportunities available to her were neither interesting nor demanding, and she was growing more unhappy by the day. June’s story reflects the impact of the three myths about women and work. While June did value having a career, she may not have been considered for challenging assignments or advancement because she was of childbearing age, and she was assumed to be less committed to a career. None of this was actually true for June, and her company unnecessarily lost a bright and talented worker. What can organizations do to keep talented women and men? Here are five tips:
  1. Discard the myth that women don’t value careers; provide opportunities for their advancement and development, even when they are in their childbearing years.
  2. Provide a way back into full-time work for women and men who use family leave time or flex time when starting a family.
  3. Provide meaningful and challenging part-time work opportunities for both women and men who want to cut back for awhile when they start a family, but who do not intend to step off their career path.
  4. Stop punishing (by judging harshly) women and men for wanting to share family responsibilities and temporarily requesting flex-time and part-time work.
  5. Support couples in being equal partners and sharing family responsibilities.
But wait! There’s more! Read about more interesting findings from this myth-breaking research next week in Part II.]]>

Practice Equality

New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/): The friendship rule of practicing equality can create confusion for women in the workplace in at least three different situations:

  • When we are reluctant to compete with each other for jobs
  • When we are reluctant to support each other because a colleague got promoted or has more education
  • When we are reluctant to do the self-promotion necessary to get ahead in most organizations
Pat Heim and Susan Murphy call this women’s relational expectation the Power Dead-Even Rule. That is, we value (and expect) staying at the same level and not getting ahead of each other. Lois explained why she does not mention that she has a master’s degree: I’m hesitant to say I have a master’s degree because it lowers the other person’s (woman’s) perception of you. She will think, “Who the hell do you think you are?” She will think you’re uppity, and she, and others, will be more reticent and not give you information and help. It’s important not to appear that you are tooting your own horn. My clients often talk about their reluctance to apply for a position in their companies when another woman also wants the position because they’re concerned about damaging an actual or potential relationship. My study also revealed a strong theme about discomfort with advancing ahead of friends or colleagues and fear or actual experiences of the relationships not surviving such advancements. Of course, part of the problem is that our expectations are unconscious and unspoken, making it impossible to put them on the table and negotiate them. But once again, the feminine workplace values of a flat structure and equality crash into the hierarchical workplace to set us up for disappointment or confusion about what to expect from other women at work. We cannot advance if we don’t toot our own horns and compete for promotions, yet this can create problems for our relationships with other women.]]>

Workplace Relationship Dynamics

New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/): One day, during a routine coaching session, a female client who is a sales rep complained bitterly about an experience she had just had with a woman customer. She was deeply hurt and upset and felt personally betrayed. She explained that her customer, someone she had worked with for a long time, had decided to change vendors and was no longer employing her company—or her. And the worst part of it was that my client found out about the change from someone else—not from her customer. When she told me the story and said, “Who does she think she is? I thought she was my friend,” she also said, “I would have expected this from a man but not from a woman!” I thought, “Really? She’s a customer. Doesn’t this happen in business all the time?” I wondered where this expectation of personal loyalty from women, but not from men, came from. Then I realized that this sense of disappointment and personal betrayal in the workplace context was familiar—that I had heard versions of this disappointment from my women clients many times before. I got curious about where these expectations were coming from and how the workplace context might contribute to the experience of disappointment—and the seeds of my research were sown. What my research has found is that women carry their egalitarian friendship rules, or relational expectations (also known as “relational images”), into the workplace, where they clash with the hierarchical norms that dominate most workplace cultures. This clash sets us up to be disappointed by each other in ways that can feel personal and can daman age our relationships. This finding gives us an angle on understanding the source and causes of women’s disappointment with each other. It provides a lens that opens up a new way of seeing women’s relational dynamics at work and sheds light on a new pathway to understanding and change.]]>

Women’s Friendship Rules at Work

New Rules for Women, shows that women often have different relationship expectations of their female colleagues than of their male colleagues. I call these expectations women’s friendship rules. We begin to develop friendship rules at a very young age. My granddaughter, by the time she was 4, was talking about the rules for being a friend. In middle school, girls ages 9 to 13 are thinking, “Who is my friend, who is not my friend, and what do I have to do to get invited to the party?” By the time we are adults, our friendship rules have become embedded as a set of filters, but, for the most part, we are not conscious of them. We don’t just show up in the workplace as a blank slate. We carry with us all the things we have learned, including this set of filters I call friendship rules. Men have friendship rules, too, but because of differences in gender socialization, theirs are not the same as ours. It is through the filters of our friendship expectations that we interpret the behaviors of other women at work and decide whether or not we trust or like them, along with a range of other expectations that can create misunderstandings. My research validates that a core of very common women’s friendship rules exists. Not everyone has the same ones: there will be variations for each of us. The most commonly reported women’s friend rules include

  • Exhibiting unswerving loyalty
  • Showing trustworthiness
  • Keeping confidences
  • Listening well
  • Sharing gossip and airing problems
  • Displaying self-disclosure
  • Practicing equality and acceptance, while seldom disapproving
  • Not discussing the friendship rules
The last one, the taboo on discussing friendship rules, is the one that gets us into the most trouble in our relationships. Cultural differences and other factors make it unlikely that all women share the exact same friendship expectations. However, the taboo against discussion means that mismatched assumptions may not be discovered until damage has been done to a relationship. How conscious are you of your friendship rules? I suggest you talk with some women friends, either at home or at work, and try to identify and name the friendship rules you share and the ones you don’t. Once you are aware of your own and have some practice describing them to someone else, you will be better prepared to talk about friendship rules at work with women colleagues to prevent misunderstandings. Let’s face it—we need all the support we can get at work. Naming and discussing our relational expectations with our women colleagues can go a long way toward strengthening our ability to help each other thrive and prosper at work.    ]]>