Wingtips for Women: Success Without Compromise

With my new found interest in the alpha male syndrome, I find myself reading it into too many situations. In last week’s Fortune, Linda Hudson, CEO of $18B BAE Systems, gave her tips for climbing the corporate ladder. I am trying to align this counsel with my meager and new-found knowledge of what it means to be an alpha female. Here are Hudson’s tips.

1. Stand up for yourself. Don’t take demeaning comments about your abilities as a woman without letting people know exactly where you stand and what you can do. This one I get…sounds alpha to me!
2. Project your voice. Hudson actually took voice lessons to help her project and speak with a lower (more male?) voice. Alpha? Maybe…
3. Don’t fight the system. As the first woman in almost any position she ever held, Hudson recommends being a solution rather than fighting the problem. Case in point, she helped write a maternity-leave policy when she found herself working for a company that had none when she was ready to have a child. Well, maybe this one does sound more like the lead, but not rule characteristic we looked at yesterday.

Hudson says she was as surprised as anyone to be selected for the job, knowing how hard it had been for women to progress in her early days at the company. She offers this last bit of wisdom: “The fact that there is opportunity, the fact that people who are different—not just women—can in fact do anything, is something I wish I had really understood then…” So ladies, don’t let anyone give you a hard time, but whatever you do, do it with grace. That didn’t sound very alpha, did it!

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As the authors of Harvard Business Review September 2010 article entitled “Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women” admit, sponsoring and mentoring programs are no magic bullet for closing the gap between men and women advancing in their corporate roles. There are some things that cannot be mandated or program-ized.

I was reflecting on this very thing this morning in a slightly different vein. A CEO friend of mine has totally transformed the culture of his company in the two years he has been in the job. Mind you, this is also the first time he has been a CEO. What he has instilled in his company is a culture of service – to each other, to customers, to vendors and to their community, in fact, to all of their stakeholders. I was thinking through how he has managed to do this and wondering if there are any lessons that could be applied to growing a culture where mentoring and sponsoring is the norm, and not a special program. Here are a few observations, none of which are earth-shattering except that one has to actually DO them and not just talk about them!

1. Culture starts at the top. This CEO has a servant heart. He doesn’t even think about helping someone in need. He just does the right thing. People see this and know he isn’t looking to be seen or honored for his actions. It is just a part of who he is.
2. People follow the leader. Follow-the-leader is not just a kids’ game. It is human nature. We follow success. We follow what works. We follow what is rewarded. So without a word, the CEO is modeling desired behavior. In this company, there are dozens of service groups that have sprung up from within the ranks. None have been led by the CEO. But he rewards the behavior by giving employees funding and time off (one week each year with pay) to serve people.
3. Initiative and creativity follow success. In this company, it is not just the number of service opportunities that astounds me, but the creativity and initiative taken by employees at all levels. The variety of ways these people serve their various stakeholders and the impact they have had through out the community boggles the mind. All without a mandated, or even suggested, program!
4. People are more generous with their time, talent and treasure when it is their own idea. And when it is a part of the fabric of who they are and who their company is. If this CEO had said, “You must participate in the company’s quarterly day of service and you must take a week to go serve someone in need,” people would have groused and done just enough to get the tick mark. But instead, they just can’t stop themselves from finding new ways to serve.
5. Culture change takes time. This attitude of serving did not happen overnight. But as people watched the success of their for-profit and non-for-profit work, the momentum grew. It continues to grow—totally on its own. But our program mentality often causes us to abandon ship long before the port is in sight.

By now, you are wondering if this company actually gets its job done! The answer is that this is one of the fastest growing and most profitable companies I have worked with in a long time, and yes, I am writing this about events that have taken place during one of the worst economies most of us have experienced.

My net-net? Culture, not programs, creates change. Culture can’t be mandated. Culture takes time to build. But, I believe creating a culture that invests in others is a likely place to find success in closing the gap between the advancement of men and women, and a lot of other great initiatives!

Try it and let me know in a couple of years how it goes. I did say, didn’t I, that culture changes don’t happen overnight? Patience and persistence are the keys.

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While I am encouraged by the findings of the Harvard Business Review September 2010 article entitled “Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women,” there are still a few areas to consider by the authors’ own admission.

The main shortfall is one I have experienced myself and in later years have been able to help others avoid. That is what I call the “morning after.”

The mentee gets the big promotion. Her supporters congratulate her. They roll up their sleeves to help her get started, right? No! They were measured on getting the mentee her promotion. Mission accomplished. Full stop. They go back to their “day jobs,” or move onto the next mentee. The new executive is left to her own in a job she has never ever done before. No transition. Boom. Old job stopped. New job started. An invitation for failure. So what is the solution for avoiding a likely disaster after all the hard work that has gone into helping someone gain the desired promotion?

One of the first consulting assignments I took on 20 years ago was an attempt to avoid such a dangerous position. In this case, the new CEO was a big gun hired away from the competition. So he wasn’t a total newbie to the job, but he was a newbie to this company and its culture which was much more people-centric than his burn-and-pillage former employer. The new CEO (and yes, he was a he, not a she, but the story still applies!), knew he was in new and, to him, uncharted, waters. He wanted to make a good and fast impression. So he asked me to build a 45-day fast-start plan. I was not necessarily this man’s mentor, but I did have extensive experience with the company and culture he was entering. I had known the founders and the public company to which they had sold the company and whose executives were now the new CEO’s bosses, and had recently been mine.

I did just that—built a 45-day transition plan based on what I knew the corporate executives would most value. I guess that means I was this man’s sponsor since I still had the ear of the big company’s CEO and C-suite. They were my former bosses. I had been measured by them and promoted by them, so I knew how they would most likely evaluate the CEO’s progress. I knew that a fast-start was critical to gain the trust of all the stakeholders. Long story short, this man got off to a great start and we are solid friends to this day. He has long since moved on after the company was sold again, but his gratitude for the ‘inside’ help has remained a life-long gratitude.

The moral of this story is that gaining the promotion is just the first step in helping your mentee be successful. Sticking around to help her DO well the job you have helped someone gain is a must for both the mentor and the mentee. Both look bad if the mentee fails. The mentor’s judgment will be questioned and his or her future recommendations may be seen with a jaundiced eye. Both lose credibility that can take years to rebuild.

Let’s don’t get so short-sighted as to think promotion is the only thing that counts. Investing in people is not a project with a start and stop boundary, it is a life-long journey that should become a corporate habit, not a project or program.

What do you think? Ever been a project?” What were the results?

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I was at a CEO conference a few weeks ago and met some folks who coach “Alpha Males.” I jokingly asked if women were allowed in their session. They responded, “Of course. Not all alpha males are men!” Then what is an alpha male? The term as defined by Kate Ludeman and Eddie Erlandson refers to essentially powerful, authoritarian types.  Ludeman and Erlandson estimate that about 75% of top executives are alpha males. In their study of alpha males and their characteristics, they found that about 80% of the men were alpha males. However, only 20% of the senior women had the alpha male characteristics. The other 80% were good managers, but not great leaders. (See Ludeman and Erlandson’s book Alpha Male Syndrome or visit their site at www.alphamalesyndrone.com).

So what is an alpha female? Ludeman and Erlandson state that alpha females display their traits differently from alpha males. One of the key differences is that “alpha women want to lead, but they don’t necessarily need to rule.” That statement packed in a lot of what we experience in the workplace every day. The women in our book certainly demonstrate this. They are all focused on mentoring and coaching their people and are “winning” as a result. They are doing this to prepare these young people to win. But they are training people to win while working well with colleagues whereas alpha males may be more focused on winning.

Certainly this was demonstrated by the woman who told us about leading three turn-arounds whose success she attributed to building teams that were aimed at a common goal. Her male counterparts made fun of her spending time on “soft” things like mission, vision, values and team work. Yet, when her results were phenomenal, they became all ears. She didn’t have to rule her organization, she just had to lead them. Leadership and rulership are clearly different, though not mutually exclusive. If we look at healthy monarchies throughout history, we do see benevolent monarchs who were also great leaders, or rulers, as they are often called.

So if it takes being a leader to be in the key rooms of the world, and the number of women leaders is that much less than the number of men leaders, well, no wonder there are so many more men in these rooms than women! It seems that women are often better administrators than leaders. Administrators have to be organized. I wonder if that trait goes along with the multiple roles that women play in life. If we weren’t super organized, how in the world could we be moms, wives, household managers, logistics planners, and have a job to boot?! Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised at the number of good women managers.

I don’t know about you, but that 20% alpha females compared to 80% alpha males at the executive level was new insight for me. Maybe the next question is why there are so few women with the alpha male traits.

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I was cleaning out my files the other day. Actually, I was looking for an article and I have found that search can often lead to my reading everything in that file and tossing half of it. Do you ever wonder why you felt the urge to clip most of the articles you have in your files? But I digress.

The article I found was an editorial about the glass ceiling for women. The author, a self-proclaimed middle-aged male, seemed to believe the glass ceiling was a thing of the past. Yet, when he asked three executive female friends what they thought, he was shocked to discover how quickly they cited examples from their own lives that demonstrated that the ceiling is still in place.

Why are we surprised? It seems like a simple exercise to look around any given meeting of senior level people or any board room and determine that there are more men by far than women. We talk of “equality,” but the numbers just don’t bear it out.

There are plenty of reasons why women might not be in those rooms. One significant reason is a simple matter of choice. Women who choose to take time out for child rearing may find the “mommy ceiling” alive and well. The on-ramp or return to the workforce may be just that…a return to a job, but many times not to the same level or opportunities she may have had before. By the time she catches back up, she may be competing with younger high potential candidates and be passed over for the younger faster climbers. Despite the fact that both mothers and fathers often have benefits that provide time off to be with new babies, if one parent stays home for the child’s early years, it is still more often the mother. Still, it is a choice many women happily make.

Other women decide to leave the corporate life to start their own businesses. In fact, about 30% of all small businesses are women owned. Women start and grow solid companies and run the show. Most of them will not become the CEO of a large corporation, but then, there are fewer large companies than small companies. And, small companies are the source of over half of all jobs in our country. According to the NSBA, small businesses comprise 99.7% of all employers and 50.4% of all jobs. That means one in two Americans works for a small company. More and more of those companies are started and run by women. Women owned businesses account for 55% of new startups. Especially in difficult economic times, my hat is off to these courageous women who go it alone. They could have taken the “easy” route and climbed the corporate ladder!

But there are reasons other than choice for the fewer number of women in “the room.” Next time, we will look at one I am just learning about as a result of an assessment I took recently.

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As promised, here are my thoughts on the Harvard Business Review September 2010 article entitled “Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women.”

The authors cite another HBR article (“The Best-Performing CEOs in the World,” January-February 2010) that found that while women CEOs are twice as likely as men to have been hired from outside the company, their appointments are still perceived to be too risky by their own company’s often male-dominated committees. What a waste to invest in great women and then send them off to the competition! How sad for the companies and the women. How costly for both parties.

The good news is that the authors (Ibarra, Carter, Silva) “Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women,” give us some very specific tactics for implementing sponsorship programs that yield results. Let’s take a look at their recommendations.

1. Be clear as to the purpose and objectives of the program. As we saw last time, mentoring and sponsoring are two different things. It is hard to be both a good mentor and a strong sponsor. Therefore, if the purpose of the program is to get the high-potential woman promoted, say so—to both parties. That objective sets an entirely different agenda for the mentor and the mentee.
2. Select the mentor who can get the mentee promoted. That means matching a mentor who has influence and position power in the area the mentee seeks to be promoted—someone who has experience where the mentee has gaps and who is at the table when the promotions are decided.
3. Don’t leave out the mentee’s direct supervisors. Sponsorship is critical, but it is only one component of being promotable. Performance evaluations, training and development and succession planning are key components the authors include.
4. Train the sponsors on the complexities of helping women (vs. men). We have all seen the fine line between an aggressive and an assertive woman. Men who sponsor women must understand that fine line, be able to recognize what might work for them may not work for a woman and be able to give counsel as to the right balance. That one recommendation might take a lifetime to master! Few women have found the balance and to expect men to grasp it and teach it may be a tall order.
5. Measure the results! Hold the sponsors accountable for results. If the objective is to get the woman promoted within a year, then measure whether or not she got the promotion. Seems reasonable. What I found highly encouraging was that in the company the authors studied, failure to be promoted was counted as a failure of the sponsor, not the mentee. That is accountability.

Once I grasped the huge difference between mentoring and sponsorship, these five action steps seemed logical and very implementable. I know of no programs designed with the specific purpose of sponsorship. Is your company one who has such a program? I would love to hear about it.

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Despite the fact that many leading companies have implemented strong mentoring programs, a recent study concluded that these programs may not be enough to help high-potential women achieve the promotions they seek. According to a 2008 Catalyst survey cited in the Harvard Business Review September 2010 article entitled “Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women,” women are still paid less, hold lower level management positions and have less overall career satisfaction than their male counterparts with the same education, industry, prior work experience, aspirations and children status. And this when the study also showed that the women had more mentors than the men!

So what is going wrong? Companies are investing a lot of money and talent to mentor women. Almost half of the companies who have mentoring programs also have specific programs for women according to the article. Are they wasting time and valuable management talent—the mentors and the mentees?

What the authors discovered is the vast difference between mentoring and sponsorship. In fact, they state that women are over-mentored and under-sponsored relative to their male peers. And without the critical sponsorship of executives at the very top where promotion decisions are made, women are less likely to be appointed to the top spots and the women themselves are more reluctant to even seek the top spots.

The difference seems to lie in the two concepts. A mentor works on the skills, character and style of the high-potential woman while the sponsor uses his or her influence to advocate for the mentee. Two very different concepts, approaches and people. Once I thought about this, it made sense. The men I have worked with don’t dwell on style and behavior unless it has been raised as an issue that must be overcome in order to be promoted. They set their sights on the next position and then work back to what it takes to get that job. They may not even think about networking with the right people because networking of this sort has been ingrained from early in their careers. They are part of, or have easy access to, the “good ole boys’ club” as the power network has been known for generations. It strikes me that the “good ole boys’ club” is one aspect of a kind of sponsorship that has been taken for granted for men, but that women are still working to understand and become a legitimate part of.

Mentors may not have position power and sponsors may not be the most polished people on the org chart. Mentees may have good chemistry with a mentor, while chemistry may have nothing to do with helping someone chart a path to promotion. The study discovered that men had both mentors and sponsors, while the women seemed to have more mentors and very few sponsors. In fact, the men spoke of sponsors, while the women spoke of mentors.

So what does it take to have a good sponsor? Is it time to overhaul mentoring programs? Next time, I will give you my summary of the Harvard Business Review September 2010 article entitled “Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women” along with some of my own observations. In the meantime, go to the HBR archives and read the article and suggested related articles. You will find them eye-opening! We still have work to do to prepare high potential women for the executive suite.

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The ultimate purpose of the book was to find an answer either qualitatively or quantitatively to the question of why there are so few women in the sales executive suite. Though not scientific by any means, here is a synopsis of what we found.

1. Choice—their choice. Some women prefer the money, flexibility and overall lifestyle of the salesperson. More money, more control over your schedule, more flexibility in hours and places, no people to manage (other than your boss and clients, of course.) If those are your priorities, what’s not to love about being in sales?
2. Assumptions—the hiring manager makes. Hiring managers, most of whom are still men, still make some assumptions, intentional or unintentional, about the choices a woman will make in the course of her career. Perhaps the most prevalent one we heard was, “What if I promote this woman and she decides to take off time to have a family?” That may sound old fashioned to you, but both men and women managers ask that question out loud or silently more than you would like to think. Even Harvard’s Rosabeth Moss Kanter recently posed the question (HBR December 2010, page 38), “When providing opportunities [for advancement], do decision makers place bets on who will stay and who will rise?” She also warns, “Be aware of self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Yet, the women in Wingtips for Women often showed us having a family is not only surmountable for both employee and employer, but can have some very positive results for the way the corporation treats all its employees. (See PR Newswire, for example.)

1. CEO—as the next step. Some of the women we did not include in our book would have been great interviews except for the fact that they had already gone on to be CEOS of their own or other companies. One of our interviewees, Mary Delaney of CareerBuilder.com was made president of another division in the company just as the book went to print. We know that the sales ranks are often a source of great CEO candidates…all the more reason for their to be more there to choose from!
2. Habit and Familiarity. Since most of the hiring managers are still men and since men and women often start looking where they already have contacts and familiarity with the candidates, we each tend to hire “in our own image” or at least, in our own network. Sort of an out of sight, out of mind scenario. Rebecca Bernson, an SVP at ADP sees part of her job to help her reports become more visible, men or women. Certainly, the women are far too often more invisible.
3. Risky business—to hire someone untried and proven in the role. It is often said that the best predictor of how someone will do in a job is how she performed the job in the last place. So if women aren’t already in the job, they won’t be as readily considered for the first time out. After all, as managers, our success is dependent upon those we hire. It is somewhat akin to the experience of getting that all-important first job out of school. You can’t show experience if you aren’t given a shot at doing a job.
4. Confidence—or lack thereof. Women can be our own worst enemies. Some women won’t even try for the next level job because they are afraid of failure. As a matter of fact, it is pretty widely known that a great sales person doesn’t even always make a good sales manager. So if, or maybe even because, you are an average sales rep, you may be selling yourself short. You might be missing out on a job you are even better suited for by not even giving it a shot. Mentors, what an opportunity for you to encourage these women!
5. Role Models and Mentors. Speaking of opportunities! There are so few women in these roles that the women who want to know how to go to the next level are hard pressed to find a woman who can show the way. I think that is why so much of our follow up discussion has centered around this all-too-critical role of mentor, coach or role model. Our kids learn to be grownups by watching us. It follows that our next generation of women sales executives need some grownup women to show them the way.

Opportunity galore for you experienced sales executives to be mentors and coaches. Intentionally or not, you are already role models for the men and women you manage and lead. Yes, there is responsibility to show the way to others on the way up. Enjoy the role and watch for the next round of success stories from those who listen, watch and learn from you.

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In a recent interview, I was asked how we selected the women we interviewed for Wingtips for Women. As I thought about it, I realized it was a pretty straightforward sales process. We had to do some research to identify our prospects, qualify them, present the premise and the features-benefits-results case, then close the “deal.” Appropriate for a book about women who made it to the top of the sales career ladder!

Identification: From earlier blog entries, you know the power of networking in identifying the women. If your grandmother told you, “It isn’t what you know, it is who you know,” she was speaking an ageless truth. We started off identifying women we already knew and then asked them who they knew and so it continued.

Boldness also played a key role. This was after all a book about sales executives, so it seemed appropriate to do a little cold calling/emailing. Cold calling is one of those universally dreaded activities of the salesperson. To this day, my goal is always to make cold calling unnecessary. In the age of Linked-In, Zoom Info, and Plaxo and a host of other networking tools, it hardly seems appropriate to cold call. If someone calls me, I am no longer surprised at what they know about me. Indeed, if someone knows nothing about me, I am likely to abort the conversation since the person obviously didn’t even take the time to Google me. So, warm calling played a huge role in our discovery process. People are a lot more likely to open up if you are calling as a friend of a friend. Put yourself in the situation.

Qualification. Kindred spirits is the way I would describe the next step in our selection process. Once the purpose of our book was clearly stated, the person at the end of the email or phone call would either “light up” immediately or we would be transferred to a secretary or communications person. I am happy to say this later option rarely happened to us even in the largest corporations. The book’s premise of finding out why these women are so rare and what to do about it along with the warm intro almost never failed to gain instant conversation momentum. (Note: how can that translate to the sales role you may be in today?)

Kindred spirits were sparked because we were also calling women who were validated superstars. We read the news, read their bios in the company websites and in general already knew they were among the elite we desired to hear from. They had to be women who were in the top sales leadership (not just sales) role in their company. The company had to be of some size, the larger, the better, to give credibility to their stories. Bigger is not always better, but when you are only speaking to a few leaders, it does count.

FBRs (Feature-Benefit-Result): The case was not hard to make. Feature—you have a story we want to tell. Benefit—the book can help you get out the story you want to tell. Result—the next generation will be better prepared in a shorter time to fill your shoes. These women got it and ran with it after little or no discussion.

Close: Once the spirit was well lit, the close was assumptive—by both parties, I believe. There was not only an agreement to participate, but a sense of urgency to get the story told. Indeed, while the editing process dragged on, many of these women contacted us to be sure we were indeed finishing the project. That in itself was increased motivation for us to finish what we had started. (Believe you me, during the editing process of a book, there are indeed moments when you question what in the world you were thinking to write a book!) These women were not out for an ego trip. Our first time author book was no big web-worthy addition to their bios. They were, and remain, eager and even passionate about sharing what they have learned “the hard way” with as many younger people, men or women as they can. These women have children, remember, whom they want to prepare for the world of business, sales or otherwise. I believe that as women, that weighed on their minds during this project than it might have on businessmen. I make that assumption based on the number of comments women made about how their stories applied in some way to their own children and families.

So as I thought about it, we really did do what we call “the sales process.” Sometimes, by a different name, it is a lot more fun! Try that, too!

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As another new year begins, I have been thinking about how to make this year really count. The obvious first question is what does “count” mean? Count for me personally? For me professionally? And as a businesswoman of faith?

The older I get, the more I realize that my long list of to-dos will never actually decrease in length. Realistically, it will continue to grow. So why is that? Do I discover more things I can/want to do or do I begin to feel a sense of greater responsibility to leave my “mark?” Full circle to the first question about what it takes to count. I don’t think it is about the list of to-dos.

As we interviewed the women for Wingtips for Women, and in subsequent conversations with them about how they are using the book, it became readily apparent that women in senior positions really do care about sharing what they have learned on the road to the executive chair. My sense has been throughout all these discussions that this is more about helping the next person up the ladder or along the career path than it is a focus on leaving a legacy.

I do believe the two concepts are radically different—the gift of helping someone else without a tit-for-tat expectation vs. an equalitarian bartering system. Some say it is naïve, but I was always taught, as were many of these women on my generation (Boomers), that if we helped those around us, the favor, so to speak, would be returned somewhere along the road of life. Good for good and the Golden Rule were the mottos.

I still believe these mottos are true and that these women are proving it. Without expectation for their own careers, which by now are fairly well established and even maybe winding down, these women are investing heavily in the next generations. They actually enjoy sharing and do it without an expectation of specific payback or glory. I believe that is the mark they will leave.

The people I have learned the most from are not, for the most part, those who taught me formally. Yes, there are those memorable teachers, trainers, coaches, parents, but even those have unknowingly taught me more in the quiet, off-stage moments than in the formal situations.

So as you plan for 2011, try thinking of the people in your life whom you could serve in a quiet, unassuming way and see where that leads. I am guessing it won’t be a longer list of to-dos. It might even shorten the list significantly. Let me know.

Happy New Year!

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