On not leaning in

June 4, 2014

I’ll say it straight up: I enjoyed Lean In. Before it came out I’d read New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor’s rather excoriating piece on Sheryl Sandberg’s women-and-work book, and, like a lot of other people who saw that article, I began to wonder what I was in for. Would this be some snobbish tome from a privileged billionaire who had no idea what it was like for women further down the ranks? In short, would Sandberg annoy me? Me, who’d been steadfastly putting out a show on women and the workplace for a year (to a then tiny audience) before this famous and well-connected Harvard MBA was published?

But on the whole, Sandberg failed to aggravate. OK, there were parts of the book that rankled a bit. Crying at work? It may be OK for Sheryl Sandberg to break down in front of her boss, but for people who are nowhere near the C-suite, it’s less so. We know, or at least fear, we’ll be judged: eyes will roll, and our reputations will suffer. I had a few other quibbles, but basically I thought her message was a good one to get out to millions of women who find themselves at a disadvantage in a made-for-men workplace.

But Avivah Wittenberg-Cox wants to know why, in the 21^st century, women should have to lean in. “It worries me,” she says in my latest show, “Because it’s often interpreted as women should behave and become more like men. Whereas what I hear from leaders is they don’t want that.”

Avivah says it’s time companies leaned in instead – especially given that women are now 60% of university graduates all over the world. Rather than women altering their behavior to fit into corporate life, corporations should adapt themselves to the way women do things. 

Here are a few takeaways from our interview, which you can hear in full here:

• Most male leaders she works with have no idea they’re not already doing everything they can for women at their office. The way they see it, if women aren’t exceling, they’re the problem. Avivah’s company alerts these guys to the differences between men and women – differences that mean women are less likely to thrive in a corporate environment designed by and for men.
  
  
• She says the US is the worst culprit when it comes to framing the issue of women in the workplace, “as a women’s issue, run by women, for women, all about women.” This, she says, is a big mistake. There will be no sizeable jump in women in top roles unless men are allowed to be less ambitious. She is adamant that this issue is about ‘balance’, not about women.  Men must be able to care less about work if women are going to care more.
  
  
• She wishes Sandberg had written the same book and called it ‘Companies Lean In’. “She would have had a hundred thousand times the men reading that book…she’d have had the same level of impact but on the right audience, and that would have been extraordinarily helpful at this time in history.”

Networking woman to woman

May 24, 2014

“My view on women’s networking is that I’m amazed people get away with it inside companies.” – Financial Times columnist Mrs. Moneypenny 

As I mentioned at the end of my most recent show on the horrors of networking, one of the things I didn’t get to was the topic of women’s-only networking groups, and how useful, or not, they actually are.

When I first interviewed FT columnist and author Heather McGregor (pen name Mrs. Moneypenny) two years ago, she gave me the above quote. What on earth would people say, she said, if there were a men’s-only networking group within a company? Still, a lot of women would argue that, in reality, that’s exactly what their company was for decades – a big old boys’ network that didn’t include women in all those under-the-radar networking opportunities, from lunches to golf games to trips to strip clubs. (In the late '90s I worked for an executive who regularly took clients to strip clubs – I’m guessing none of the clients in attendance were female). Thus the springing up of women’s-only groups within many large companies. The women thought, "If we can't join 'em, let's at least play at their own game among ourselves," and the companies thought, "Great, the women are happy off in their own corner dealing with all this women stuff. Let’s let them get on with it.” But the result is that virtually nothing changed. Networking among their own sex did little to elevate women’s status within the workplace, because the most powerful workplace group, men, weren't there.

This is the exact frustration my next Broad Experience guest, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, expressed to me recently. She says in the beginning the internal women’s groups were a valuable confidence-building resource for women, but they’ve long outlived their usefulness.

“What we need inside companies is for the dominant majority to learn more about gender differences,” she says. “When you separate people into women’s networks and they talk among themselves the men are excluded from the conversation…And that does not build anyone’s management skills, neither the men’s or the women’s, about leading across genders.”

You’ll hear more from Avivah in my next show, out on June 2^nd.

As for external women’s only groups, neither Avivah nor Heather McGregor had an issue with those. In fact Heather holds regular ladies-only get-togethers in the City of London. And this is where women are just like men. Men have known for centuries that there is something relaxing about being among your own sex (for hundreds of years women were not allowed in pubs, and even today are still excluded from some clubs. Men were excluded from childbirth).  I’m a member of a couple of women’s-only groups: one is JAWS – Journalism and Women’s Symposium – the other is 85 Broads, for women in business.

Of course neither men nor women should network solely with their own sex. If you do that you’re excluding the potential help of a lot of people. But there is something comforting about getting together from time to time with a bunch of other working women. We may gripe a bit. But we make useful connections too.

Addendum: since I published this post last week, I've had a tweet from a woman who said she's landed two jobs directly through an external women's networking group.

Does online networking count?

May 21, 2014

"LinkedIn doesn't count as networking."

So said self-described 'insane networker' Mary Kopczynski when I first heard her talk about networking on an 85 Broads call last year. I interviewed Mary recently for my latest podcast, The Hell of Networking, but during the show itself we didn't get onto the topic of online networking or women's-only neworks (we did, however, cover plenty of other stuff, so I hope you'll tune in). I'm covering online networking in this blog post and will talk about women's-only networks in another post later this week.

When I asked Mary to explain her earlier statement, she took a step back. It turns out she actually bought stock in LinkedIn, so clearly she knew the platform had potential. But she did reiterate that for her, true networking is about meeting people in person, then connecting with them again later, possibly by phone or email. She said meeting someone at a conference, and then finding that person's LinkedIn request in her inbox the next day, was 'totally forgettable'. She would rather the person did not connect with her until they actually had something they wanted to ask her. As long as they reminded her of how and when they met, and were polite in getting in touch, she said she is only too happy to respond and help them out if she can.

But she does use LinkedIn to good purpose. She told me about a time a friend had got in touch with her and told Mary she was thinking of applying for a job at a certain company. Mary said, 'Do nothing - dont apply yet!', sprang onto LinkedIn, realized she was connected to the company's CEO, and immediately wrote him a message asking him to meet with her 'amazing' friend for coffee just to see if she might be a good fit for the company. I forgot to ask whether her friend got the job. 

I've found Twitter a good networking resource in that I've been introduced to people over Twitter who I've subsequently met in real life, people with whom I have a lot in common. I've also 'met' people on there who I've never met in real life but who I've had some other kind of meaningful connection with, such as finding they're a fellow podcaster and ending up being interviewed for their show. I love the serendipity of Twitter. To me, LinkedIn has a different, more formal feel, perhaps because it's so obviously about work and career advancement.

My beef with online networking - OK, LinkedIn -  is this: far too many people I don't know send me LinkedIn requests, with absolutely no explanation as to why I should say 'yes'. To my mind, this is the worst aspect of this kind of networking. 

I am always amazed that people I have never met would send a generic request with no explanation as to why I should connect with them. The whole point of LinkedIn, I realize, is to get connected to people who are connected to other people who you may eventually wish to connect with, but what motivation does someone who doesn’t know you have for introducing you to someone else? They can’t advocate for you in any way as they have never met or even spoken to you, so what’s the point? I wish people would realize that if you are going to send a complete stranger a LinkedIn request, you must tell them why it's worth your while to connect with them, what you have in common, etc. I have said ‘yes’ to strangers who have messaged me making clear why we should connect. But (feeling slightly bad about it of course – after all I am female) I generally ignore the others. It’s such a tiny thing to write a line or two explaining why you’re worth connecting with. Why on earth don’t more people do it?

But I’d be glad to hear from anyone who feels differently. I don’t believe in expanding my LinkedIn network simply to have a massive network. If you accept requests from those you don’t know, why do you do it?

I agree with Mary Kopczynski that online networking can be useful, but you have to use it judiciously. If you haven't spoken to someone for a while or you only met them once at a conference - someone you're connected to on LinkedIn - make sure to remind them, if you message them, of when and where you met. You have to deploy some manners and a bit of charm, I think, to get people to respond. 

Again, your thoughts are welcome. What have I forgotten here?

Closing the confidence gap

March 30, 2014

"When we aren't confident, we don't succeed as we should." - Katty Kay and Claire Shipman in The Confidence Code

Barbara Lynch is that rare thing: a woman running a professional kitchen. Actually she's running not one but several, all in Boston, and she also owns a hospitality group that brings in $20 million a year. Lynch, now 50, initially learned the ropes under the hard-knocks tutelage of irascible restaurateur Todd English. According to the New York Times Magazine piece about Lynch and her push to promote more female chefs, she's won three James Beard awards (Beard was a famous US chef and food writer). She's nominated for Outstanding Restaurateur, and if she won she'd be just the second woman to do so. And yet a telling detail about Lynch appears further down in the piece, as she discusses her recent appearance on TV: "I"m still not that confident in myself."

Confidence, or the lack of it, is one of the greatest impediments to women's success. It's why I started The Broad Experience, and it's something I've touched on in various shows. The reasons women aren't a larger presence in public life - or in more top roles at work - don't simply come down to childcare. One vast, towering reason is this: we lack the self-belief that comes naturally to men.

I've been wanting to do a show on confidence for ages, and I hope to finally bring that off within the next couple of months. Two nights ago I stayed up reading The Confidence Code: The Art and Science of Self-Assurance--What Women Should Know. It's the new book by journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, who co-wrote Womenomics several years ago. I was so hyped up after the introduction and first chapter I had trouble getting to sleep. Hyped up because everything they write about - and back up with research - rings bells for me. They deftly encapsulate this nagging issue that runs beneath many women's lives. Lack of confidence has been a key problem for me over the years. I want to remedy the situation, but decades of self-doubt don't evaporate easily.

I've seen men I work with exude confidence, and I've seen the effect it's had on their lives. People who appear confident, as Kay and Shipman write in the book, are "awarded high social status" by those around them. They get promoted. And those people don't even have to be competent. It's all about their aura of self-assurance.

I was fascinated to read about the work habits of Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, and German chancellor Angela Merkel. Apparently both women over-prepare on work matters in order to be absolutely sure they're dotting every 'i' and crossing every 't' - they want to be certain no one else can trip them up. Lagarde told Kay and Shipman that she and Merkel somehow assume "that we don't have the level of expertise to grasp the whole thing." How familiar that sounds. But it's coming not from me or one of my friends but from one of the most prominent professional women in the world. (For a great audio interview with Lagarde, listen to this recent NPR piece.)

I'm eagerly anticipating the rest of the book, and I'm keen to interview Kay and Shipman for The Broad Experience.

I received a press copy of the book, which is published on April 15th. You can attend a May webinar hosted by Kay and Shipman if you pre-order a copy from The Confidence Code website.