Executives and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are looking for ways to capitalise on the bottom line benefits that greater diversity in the boardroom can bring to firms and the economy as a whole. As the “he-cession” unfolds, they are having to take note of the increasing amounts of research from McKinsey & Co, Ernst & Young and Pepperdine University among others — all of which conclude that having women in the most senior roles pays dividends to the financial stability and success of an organisation.
Issues of the long-hours culture, departmental segregation and resistance to part-time and flexible working schedules are certainly vital when it comes to looking at why there are not more women at the top. However, there are other factors that keep women from reaching the top echelons — such as a reluctance to draw attention to their achievements and build the right relationships, more in the manner of their male colleagues that keep the brass ring out of grasp for too many women.
My new book, Beyond the Boys’ Club, focuses on the strategies senior women who work primarily with men, from organisations ranging from Barclays Wealth, Microsoft, PwC and University of Cambridge among others, have taken to get ahead in a way that gains them the respect they deserve while maintaining their integrity. Lis Astall, who is European managing director in Accenture, explained in the book that in the early years of her career, she expected to be rewarded by grateful onlookers for her Herculean efforts but quickly realised that approach was misguided. “I worked longer hours than anyone else before I realised it was not accomplishing anything I wanted — just more work,” she told me. “Instead I became better skilled at realising which projects were worth the hard work — and which were not.”
A wide variety of strategies are used by senior women to get them to the next level in their careers, such as securing buy-in for your ideas before you head into the boardroom, accessing the right mentors even if they are not the ones ‘assigned’ to you, adapting your vocal pitch and pace when making an important point to male colleagues, ensuring your image is telling others you are ‘promotion-ready’, trusting your gut to determine which risks are worth taking and which you can’t afford to turn down, negotiating the labyrinth of office politics and essentially being the professional woman you want to be without feeling that you have to be ‘one of the boys’.
“Keeping your head down and doing a good job won’t get you noticed on its own,” says Rebecca George, a partner at Deloitte. “Women in these fields need to realise that men spend at least ten per cent of their time promoting their work. That’s half a day a week — much more than most women are putting into it. They don’t want to brown-nose, but they have to understand that this is the modus operandi, and that if it is the norm for the men you are competing against, you need to get comfortable with it. The men will not credit you for diligently working at your desk, but rather interpret your reticence to self-promote as a sign you’re not ambitious.”
George’s previous career at IBM took off when she consciously began to take on external commitments, such as speaking and attending conferences that would raise her profile. “In the years before, I had been concentrating on doing my job 110 per cent — but when I realised I wanted to keep my options open, I began to think of investing in myself as well,” she recalls. “So, whereas I would have spent 60 hours a week working solely on IBM projects, I reduced that down to 45 hours a week and spent the other 15 working on things more closely aligned to my personal agenda and my future.”
The truth is, simply hoping you will be noticed is a risk you cannot afford to take when you work primarily with men. Women must learn how to proactively communicate their wins, form the right alliances and build up their profiles in order to move beyond the boys’ club.
Suzanne Doyle-Morris is an executive coach specialising in developing female leaders and author of Beyond The Boys Club — Strategies for Achieving Career Success as a Woman Working in a Male Dominated Field (Wit & Wisdom Press, £13.99). Visit beyondtheboysclub.com
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