After the disappointing earnings report on April 18, IBM CEO Virginia "Ginni" Rometty released a video to all 434,000 employees in which she admitted that IBM hadn’t “transformed rapidly enough.” She called out the sales staff for missing out on several big deals. “We were too slow,” she said. “The result? It didn’t get done.”
Noel Tichy, the former head of General Electric’s (GE) Leadership Center, who’s writing a book about IBM, says Rometty’s video has already inspired a lot of feedback within the company. “With the video, she can see where her message is landing—who’s watching, who’s responding,” he says. That’s very important for a company as large as IBM, with employees spread across 170 countries.
This lack of fast customer response is not a new issue for IBM.
For example, in August 2008, Netflix’s technology infrastructure melted down. This was when the company was still known for DVDs-by-mail, and for three days it could not send discs because a crucial Oracle (ORCL) database kept malfunctioning. Reporters and customers took notice. Netflix traced the problem to an expensive, third-party storage system that went haywire after a software update. The incident still annoys Hastings. When the subject comes up in the watchtower, Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt, who’s also gathered at the table, suggests they not mention the storage-system vendor by name. CEO Reed Hastings responds, “Let IBM (IBM) have it, baby.” (An IBM spokesman declined to comment.)
In the recent IBM video, Rometty laid out a plan for IBM to respond to customers within 24 hours: “Engage management, engage leadership, and let’s deal with it.” She’s already “reassigned” the head of IBM’s computer hardware department, the source of a large portion of the sales drop. “Ginni’s a very direct, no-BS type of CEO, and she had one message that she delivered to everyone,” Tichy says. “It would be much worse if it went through the internal channels. No one wants to hear that the CEO thinks they dropped the ball through word of mouth.”
Generalizations are always misguided, but a great example of different leadership as the head of a nation is that of Park Geun-hye, from South Korea,the first female leader of South Korea, versus the contrast to Kim Jong-un, the irrational and belligerent male leader of North Korea. Women leaders of state (Margaret Thatcher was an exception) seem to concentrate more on the good of the people, versus picking fights with other nations. Almost all wars have been started by male leaders, and that is one reason for the possibility that more women leadership at the national level will result in women saving us from destroying ourselves.
The role of women saviors: “Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition.”—Timothy Leary
From diet to medicine to work to family, there is a quiet but unrelenting revolution taking place. Women, who have always been more in touch with healing, spirituality and the divine, have begun to take the lead and reject the poisons that crept into our diets in the last decades. Holistic healing through body movement and holistic therapists in conjunction with Western medicine is becoming more the norm than it ever was, and the revolution has been quietly led by women, who want their families to live healthier, safer, longer and happier and more productive lives.
In business too, there is a quiet revolution starting. Change is a given in business, and how well companies and industries adapt to change make the difference between those with a sustainable competitive advantage and those who go out of business. In adjusting to change and taking advantage of female leadership that was ignored in the past, companies will succeed and grow. Those that don’t will be left in the dust.
About the author: Fernando Pargas teaches management at James Madison University in Virginia. His specialties are international management, interpersonal skills and organizational behavior. He served on the US Chamber of Commerce International Policy Committee in Washington D.C. and the World Federation of Direct Selling. He was Vice President of International for Time Warner Inc., and Vice President of Production and Business affairs for Time Life Music. Pargas is also the author of “Ending the Male Leadership Myth” and "Stopping Big Business and Politics from Bleeding America,” Published by Beckham Publications Group.
In Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.” Her point, in a nutshell, is that notwithstanding the many gender biases that still operate all over the workplace, excuses and justifications won’t get women anywhere. Instead, believe in yourself, give it your all, “lean in” and “don’t leave before you leave” — which is to say, don’t doubt your ability to combine work and family and thus edge yourself out of plum assignments before you even have a baby. Leaning in can promote a virtuous circle: you assume you can juggle work and family, you step forward, you succeed professionally, and then you’re in a better position to ask for what you need and to make changes that could benefit others.
No one who reads this book will ever doubt that Sandberg herself has the will to lead, not to mention the requisite commitment, intelligence and ferocious work ethic. Sandberg has been the chief operating officer of Facebook since 2008. At 43, she has already had a storied career: research assistant to Lawrence Summers at the World Bank; management consultant at McKinsey; chief of staff to Summers at the Treasury Department; and six and a half years at Google, where she rose to the post of vice president of global online sales and operations. She has also made it to the top of the notoriously male-dominated world of Silicon Valley.
Sandberg is right to say that it is easier to handle work-family conflicts from as high a position on the career ladder as possible, but if in fact it’s the tipping points that tip women out of the work force, or at least prevent them from rising, then no amount of psychological coaching will make a difference.
That is the real debate here, and it’s an important one. Sandberg puts her finger on it when she writes: “For decades, we have focused on giving women the choice to work inside or outside the home. . . . But we have to ask ourselves if we have become so focused on supporting personal choices that we’re failing to encourage women to aspire to leadership.”
In the March 11, 2013 edition of BusinessWeek magazine, Allsion Pearson, author of "I Don't Know How She Does It," writes:
"Unaccountably, Sandberg claims that young women who know they want to be a mother make the mistake of taking their foot off the work accelerator years in advance. My own findings suggest that, far from leaning back, young women are so focused on reaching senior level before they allow themselves the luxury of getting pregnant that they frequently ignore the clanging bell of the biological clock. Involuntary childlessness was the heartbreaking result--a major trend for professional women, and Sandberg doesn't even mention it.
A banker mom of three who wrote to me said, 'In my office, you'd get more sympathy if you came out as a cocaine addict than if you admit you've got kids. The firm has a program for drug addicts, but unfortunately motherhood is a lifelong and incurable condition.'"
Source: "Yes, You Can" by Anne-Marie Slaughter in The New York Times, March 10, 2013
The film is narrated by three-time Academy Award-winning actress Meryl Streep, and includes movement leaders such as author and feminist activist Gloria Steinem and Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton; opponents like conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly; celebrities including media leader Oprah Winfrey and journalist Katie Couric; political figures like former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and currentSecretary of State Hillary Clinton; business leaders like Sheryl Sandbergand Linda Alvarado; and many “ordinary” women who confronted the dramatic social upheaval in their own lives.
The broadcast of MAKERS: WOMEN WHO MAKE AMERICA comes on the heels of the launch of MAKERS.com earlier in 2012. This landmark multiplatform video experience from PBS and AOL aims to become the largest and most dynamic collection of women’s stories ever assembled. The AOL-developed interactive video platform has become a source of inspiration for millions of people, having received more than 26.7 million video views to date.
Is gender really an issue that we should be discussing in the 21st century? Are men and women really that different? Didn’t the feminist movement that began in the 70’s answer that question?
Men and women are not only markedly different in the hormones that drive them, but they are also different in the way they think. The brains of men and women are actually wired differently. In recent years, scientists have discovered that differences between the sexes are more profound than anyone previously guessed.
Let's face it--there are inherent gender differences that make it more challenging to build cross-gender relationships. And in today's hypersensitive workplace, men are much more cautious in their dealings with women. However, when 50 percent of the workforce is made up of women, it behooves men to build bridges, look for women's strengths, and learn how to leverage them. Coaching women in the leadership pipeline represents a huge opportunity to grow the organization.
Women, if you are clear about what you need and how men can help you, reach out to them. However, if you are vague about your request or don't exhibit a sense of confidence and a "can-do" attitude, you should consider engaging a male executive coach to learn how to become more successful in your career.
“The Feminine Mystique,” written 50 years ago in 1963, became the kind of best seller that defines an author’s life.
In 1966, author Betty Friedan was researching another book in Washington when she wound up at a conference of state commissions on the status of women, where attendees were angry over the fact that the federal government had made it clear it had no intention of enforcing a law against job discrimination on the basis of sex that was included in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (This is a good time to point out that “The Feminine Mystique” did not create the women’s rights movement. Those commissions on the status of women were started by the Kennedy administration before the book was published, and the Civil Rights Act was being debated in Congress while American housewives were still just starting to pass Friedan’s book around.)
It was in Friedan’s hotel room that the angry conference-goers met to discuss what they should do when the Johnson administration showed no interest in pursuing the issue. (Friedan was universally known as a difficult personality, and at one point she locked herself in the bathroom and told everyone to go home, but no one did.)
The next day, it was Friedan’s coterie that angrily passed around notes at lunch, creating, on the spot, the National Organization for Women, which Friedan would head. It would be NOW, under Friedan, that would file suits on behalf of exactly the kind of average, unglamorous, working women that “The Feminine Mystique” is always criticized for ignoring.
And in 1970, it was Friedan who called for the great march to celebrate the 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage, creating a mass turnout in cities around the country that would drive home to the nation exactly how determined women were to transform their lives and their society. In New York, the marchers were denied a parade permit for Fifth Avenue and were told to keep to the sidewalks. Friedan, at the head of the pack, took the lead again. “There was no way we were about to walk down Fifth Avenue in a little thin line,” she wrote later. “I waved my arms over my head and yelled, ‘Take to the streets!’ What a moment that was.”
Source: The New York Times Magazine, January 27, 2013 article excerpted from the introduction to the 50th-anniversary edition of “The Feminine Mystique,” by Betty Friedan, to be published by W.W. Norton & Company.
A Benchmarking Study of Women's Leadership in Canada indicates that organizations must expand their approach to diversity in leadership to recognize the full range of diverse identities that leadership positions must represent.
Deloitte was selected as one of Canada's Best Diversity Employers for 2012. This competition recognizes employers across Canada that have exceptional workplace diversity and inclusiveness programs. In partnership with Deloitte, Carleton University’s Centre for Women in Politics and Public Leadership, has released Progress in inches, miles to go. This comprehensive benchmarking study outlines the uneven progress female leaders have made in Canada and the challenges they face in achieving parity in various sectors.
Here are some realities, expectations, heads-up and wishful thinking contained in this study:
Facts: In 2011, women held only 29% of senior management positions in Canada, although they constituted 47% of the labor force.
Since 1987, the percent of senior management positions held by women increased at an annual rate of 1%. There is a significant variation across industries in the percentage of senior management positions held by women.
Many women still confront societal expectations of senior leaders as male and stereotypes about working motherhood and women's role as caretakers. Such messaging pressures women to continue to assume a greater share of family responsibilities and leaves many women in middle management wary of undertaking leadership posts.
Comment: In our culture, women have been raised to be caring, flexible, intuitive, facilitating, and cooperative. We see what needs doing and we aren’t shy about getting it done. These are terrific characteristics. They are skills that women have been socialized to provide, and they are valuable in business. Having said that, even though we have been told we can be anything we want to be, as we enter the workplace, we soon discover the Catch-22: no matter how stellar our performance, we are still expected to conform to societal norms.
And the workplace doesn’t give a woman credit for balancing work and home. All the while, at home, most women are given little or no credit for their demanding role at work. Working women (and these days all women are working women!) take on too much and wonder why they are so exhausted and under-appreciated. We must remember to run our homes the way successful businesses and organizations are run, with well chosen help.
Consider the factors involved in maintaining a successful career. They really aren’t much different from the factors involved in maintaining a successful home life. What are the possible supports that would make your life infinitely easier and more satisfying?
Recommendation: Management practices, discourses and institutional values together must reflect and support modern gender roles and the shared responsibility of women and men for all aspects of family-related care duties. This includes expectations about hours of work and availability of senior leaders.
Comment: The key to success will be to recognize that some ingrained behaviors can create natural “gender gaps."
We know that the corporate world has vast room for improvement when it comes to incorporating women into top professional positions. Unfortunately, the subtleties of the Old Boys Club continue to flourish. So, what can women do about this?
As you know, the culture at most companies has been shaped over centuries by male executives. You also know that the natural outcome of a male-dominated business is that it has the tendency to be conducted like a team sport. Today more and more women are playing competitive sports, but it is only recently that they have begun to recognize the need to adapt some of these same skills to the workplace. Even then, women can find the rules of the game elusive; they don’t completely understand its approach to power, money, control, and status. Sometimes the elements are more subtle than that.
To bridge gender gaps, successful women key into the rules of the game and actively study the culture of their organization. For starters, women must understand what is considered a win, what behaviors and goals will be rewarded, and what qualities are characteristic of a strong team player.
Sound impossible? It isn’t. Women are relational creatures. We can learn from each other. Finding a seasoned mentor, male or female, who is a well-regarded professional is guaranteed to be a great asset. This mentor doesn’t need to be in the same organization, but it would be invaluable if he or she were in the same industry or profession.
Definition of Good Leadership: Although public and private sector women and men alike agree that definitions of leadership have evolved to embrace "soft skills" (such as the capacity to engage employees), reformulated ideas about leadership and leadership competencies haven't resulted in significant changes in the expectations women leaders face. Women who "make it" to the top regularly face expectations of extended work hours, 24/7 availability and ready mobility for travel. Leadership models that fail to take the realities of many women's lives into account can negatively impact women's experience in senior leadership positions and may affect the ability to retain women leaders.
Comment:Since men, to a large extent, continue to run major organizations, it is common for them to believe that there will be times when women should be prepared to sacrifice family for business, just as men do.
Women will also be expected to keep their travel commitments despite whatever is happening at home. Women will be expected to stay throughout times of intense negotiations and be prepared to participate in dinner meetings that run late into the night.
Unfortunately, frequently women are tested to make certain they can take one for the team. The higher we go up the corporate ladder, the greater the expectations that we will never use gender or family commitments as a reason for not fully participating.
It was Gloria Steinem who said, “I’ve yet to hear a man ask for advice about how to combine marriage and a career.”
Aspiring women deserve a solid “heads-up.”
Women who ascend the corporate ladder are expected to give up, to go up. This is a critical consideration for woman with children. Whoever first noticed that we get what we wish for was right. We need to make sure that our career goals coincide with our personal goals—and if, at present, they don’t appear to, we should think long and hard about how to make them harmonious.
Choosing to take the appropriate measures to advance our careers is a significant decision. Ultimately, the right decision for one woman may be entirely wrong for another. The choice belongs to each of us. As we noted, industry asks and expects a lot. But the demands will only change when women push through changes so no one will be expected to sacrifice family for success in business.
After spending time in the corporate world, many women choose to open their own businesses so they have more control over their time.
The 21st century is a great time to be a woman. Women are taking on more leadership positions, starting more businesses, and earning more college and advanced degrees than ever before.
More than 200 female leaders interviewed shared a wealth of advice for navigating the workplace of the future. A few overarching themes came up time and time again. These themes represent six vital skills and attributes to cultivate when forging your career path and will be listed below.
But first we must answer the question, "Does Gender Still Matter?"
About 20% of the women interviewed said they saw no difference in the way men and women lead; good leadership, they implied, knows no gender. This leadership survey results, however, suggest that people do see distinct differences between the ways men and women lead, and view members of each gender as stronger in certain aspects of leadership than the other.
Is gender really an issue that we should be discussing in the 21st century? Are men and women really that different? Didn’t the feminist movement that began in the 70’s answer that question?
The modern reader will agree that men and women are different anatomically, but we still stumble around when asked if men and women are different in other ways as well.
Professor Steven Goldberg in his book with the provocative title, Why Men Rule – A Theory of Male Dominance, maintains that men and women are different in their genetic and hormonally driven behavior.
We would stress that this does not mean that one sex is superior or inferior to another but rather that each has different strengths and at the same time different weaknesses. He believes that the high level of testosterone in males drives them toward dominant behaviors, while high estrogen levels in women creates a natural, biological push in the direction of less dominance and more nurturing roles.
To say that men and women are the same is to deny the physical reality. Science makes it plain that males and females are different from the moment of conception. These differences are evident in the chromosomes that carry inherited traits from both the father and the mother.
Not only are men and women fundamentally different in the way their brains are wired, they are also vastly different in their physical strength and endurance. Women, on average, will only have 55 to 58 percent of the upper body strength of men and are only 80 percent as strong as a man of identical weight.
When we add to this our unique personalities, our cultural upbringing, and the environment in which we live and work, we come to appreciate why the sexes view the world differently.
It is these differences that create interpersonal problems when we have the irrational belief all men, or all women, respond in a similar manner. The truth is that both men and women routinely approach a broad range of personal and business issues quite differently.
In general, in this survey, women were rated higher than men on transformational and interpersonal skills and attributes, such as communication and empathy, whereas men were rated higher than women on strategic leadership skills and attributes, such as confidence and being strategic or visionary.
Men were rated markedly higher than women on certain attributes and skills. 72% of respondents rated men more comfortable with taking calculated risk, 77% on confidence/assertiveness, 71% on being strategic/visionary and 73% on ability to make decisions quickly. Women respondents ranked women leaders higher than male respondents did on all 10 attributes and all 10 skills.
Six Vital Skills and Attributes Women Leaders Need to Cultivate.
Education and Lifelong Learning: Most employees will have multiple careers over the course of their working lives: Baby Boomers averaged 11 jobs between the ages of 18 and 44. Who knows where the averages will end up for generation X, generation Y, and beyond. To sustain a career that may last 50 or more years, workers will need to periodically reassess and update their skill sets.
Tech Savvy: Mere technology literacy is a baseline requirement for many jobs today. Technology can change entire industries in an eyeblink. Leaders must continuously keep pace with evolving technology.
Connectivity and Networking: In person networking remains a vital skill and a key way women learn, share information and find jobs. Workers who are able to interact well both face-to-face and virtually with others will increase their value and employability.
Business Knowledge and Experience: Business and technical operations are becoming intertwined in many fields today. Business knowledge is especially important for those who want to move into leadership positions.
Confidence, Assertiveness and Risk Taking: To maximize your value, ensure that you communicate vital pieces of information and your ideas are heard and you receive credit for them. Assertiveness is also vital for those who want to be tapped for leadership positions. To be seen as a potential leader, make yourself visible for assignments that will give you a wider reach in your organization.
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