Editorial Archive

Governance and women is a topic on which we try to keep current. It is very close to our heart and there are many reasons for that. One is that, at Professionelle, we want to celebrate professional women and their contributions. Also, there is now ample research that women make a significant and measurable positive contribution to the financial performance of Boards. Last but not least, there’s the fact that Boards, especially listed company Boards, remain the last bastion of the ‘boys club’ and a key area where New Zealand is sadly lacking in women’s participation.

These reasons explain why you will find many articles on Professionelle which address the women and governance topic. Check out:

What governance is
Research on women in governance,
"A Woman’s Place is in the Boardroom" - book review and;
A great interview with John Palmer from Air New Zealand, who gives some excellent tips to women thinking about a career in governance.

Opening doors

Many Professionelle members and professional women in general express an interest in finding out more about what directorships are and how one gains access to becoming a director - not things you learn about in your traditional career evening! Without exception all are exasperated by how Boards are so heavily dominated by middle aged men. From the outside, it seems as impossible to infiltrate as a medieval castle.

As it turns out, the ‘old boys’ club nature of New Zealand directorship is as hard for younger men who don’t have the traditional background for directorships to infiltrate as it is for women. Or so Vicky Taylor and Simon Telfer found out when they got talking on a flight after they accidentally switched seats! Recognising each other from their University years, they started the old ‘what have you been up to’ conversation

It turned out that Vicky, who with her husband owns and manages ‘Smart Foods’ as well as being a director of MOTAT, and Simon, who is an independent Director and business adviser, discovered that they were both passionate about governance and both felt frustrated at the lack of young directors in existing governance networks. Like good entrepreneurs they thought to themselves, ‘what can we do about it’? Their answer: to start a low-key, Linked In-based network for young directors called Springboard.

A new Board generation

SpringBoard’s key focus is unashamedly about increasing age diversity around the Board table. It particularly targets directors for small and medium sized businesses. A key attraction for members is to meet people who are faced with similar challenges so they can share strategies and stories between them.

The idea of getting liked minded people together to share strategies is exactly what Professionelle is about for professional working women. Therefore, we felt Professionelle members should find out about this not-for-profit organisation. We also intend to keep you updated about various initiatives aimed at demystifying directorships, what they are, what makes a good Director and how one goes about it as a career path. We hope that our efforts will make becoming a Director much more accessible to talent across the board.

A Governance group for the next generation

SpringBoard was established earlier this year to encourage the next generation of New Zealand directors and trustees and to promote age diversity around the board table. Members are 45 years and under and typically have previous governance experience. This includes positions as directors, trustees, company secretaries or administrators.

It is important to emphasise that to become a SpringBoard member you need to have governance experience, but this includes school Board experience, community centre experience, Plunket committee as well as running your own company. SpringBoard’s aim is to ensure members have had some experience in governance to provide for some common ground among members.

Since April ‘09 they have grown to 200 members and this number continues to rise. SpringBoard’s target is achieve 1000 members by the end of 2010. Around 26% are women. Many members are directors of their own SMEs while others have positions in not for profit/social enterprise organisations. SpringBoard actively encourages participation from Maori and welcomes involvement from as broad a cross section of our community as possible.

SpringBoard’s main goal is to accelerate the development of the new generation of Board directors so that no Board can use the excuse of "a lack of talent" for not having age diversity around their table. Part of SpringBoard’s plan includes the development of a cost effective and relevant director education programme for directors of SME’s.

SpringBoard uses Linked In as its communication platform, thus saving on costs and focusing on what is important – actual networking! At Professionelle, we strongly encourage the use of Linked In as a professional networking site. Professionelle also has a Linked In group which you are all welcome to join.

SpringBoard events

Central to SpringBoard are its bi-monthly events which allow members to build on their governance knowledge and to network with other younger directors and trustees. They find that they have a high conversion rate between members and attendance at events. 70 out of the 220 members showed up to their last event with Kevin McCaffrey from Effective Governance. Kevin spoke about the 8 steps for being an effective director, which was extremely well received.

On 15 September David Irving will speak on ‘Governance in an SME environment’. He is the co-founder of the Icehouse and former CEO of Watties. In November, SpringBoard are partnering with the Deloitte Fast 50 for a panel discussion on governance in a high growth environment.

Why Join Springboard?

If you are a younger director or trustee this is a great way to:

Grow your governance skills and knowledge
Share ideas and experiences
Promote yourself for appointment to other governance positions.

To become a member of SpringBoard, you should:

have experience as a director, trustee or board appointee of a company, trust or not for profit and
be 45 years of age or under.

SpringBoard meet every second month in central Auckland and they use LinkedIn to communicate with their members. More information on SpringBoard can be found at their website.

To Friendships!

By Galia BarHava-Monteith

August 1 2009

About a year ago I wrote an article about toxic friendships – and judging by the many comments we received, that article resonated with many of you. As you’d expect, there was some backlash too, and some people who really didn’t like it. To them it felt too close to the bone and as a consequence it generated some heated discussions and exchanges, which made me realise that I was certainly on to something.

After much reflection, the whole experience led me to realise just how important friendships are and how they really affect our wellbeing and touch our lives in very profound ways. It also made me realise how important it is to be mindful about our friendships, and pay as much attention to them as we do to other aspects of our lives. The quality of our friendships has a direct impact on our happiness, wellbeing and perhaps even physical and mental health.

I recently completed an online Positive Psychology course through a wonderful US based website called Mentor Coach. The course was taken by one of the leaders in the field, Professor Chris Peterson, who is the chair of the Values In Action (VIA) Institute. When asked during the course for the single best piece of advice the field has for us, Professor Peterson replied ‘having great relationships in your life’. He went on to say that although the field is focused on building on our strengths, if an individual has problems building meaningful relationships with others, then as responsible coaching practitioners we have a duty to work on that area of development, because meaningful relationships and the ability to build them is a necessary condition to wellbeing.

Relationship Matter

We are social animals. This is how we survived the harsh savannas of our ancestors. We grouped together, allocated roles and we hunted and we gathered and we looked after our young, together. On our own we could have never made it and survived to pass our genes on. In every story, movie andplay on people who ended up in isolation, the common theme is always how the lack of human contact was the most difficult aspect. Think of Tom Hanks in Castaway, talking to his “friend”, Wilson, who was in fact a basketball. We miss people, and it is our relationships with others that we remember the most and that define us the most.

There is a wonderful Hebrew saying, ‘show me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are’. This saying is echoed in many other languages; in essence, I think we all acknowledge that we can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Elsewhere I wrote about values, and our friendship choices certainly reflect the values we hold. In this article I decided to examine friendships and their influence? on our lives through different lenses and of course give some practical suggestions along the way. I hope you’ll find my musings thought provoking and I hope you’ll reflect on yourself as a friend and your friendship choices and find ways to enhance this extremely important aspect of your lives.

Cross Cultural Friendships

Having been a migrant to this country, I still remember vividly how hard it was to leave my Israeli girlfriends behind and how sorely I missed them on a daily basis. I was married and have a great relationship with my husband, but there was something substantially different about that female camaraderie and being with people who understood my cultural background. I am still friends with my childhood girlfriends. We write, talk on the phone and Skype and when we go back for a visit, it’s like we’ve never parted even if four years go by and we’ve had children inbetween!

Moving to a new country with such different social expectations was far harder than I anticipated and it took me a long while to find true friendships. For someone used to having close female friends that experience was really hard. And I am sure many of you who may have moved here from another country or even from another part of New Zealand would agree.

Nowadays I can honestly now say that I have the most amazing girlfriends here in New Zealand for which I am really grateful. But my initial experiences led me to think about how so many of the norms of friendship can be culturally different and are so subtle that we are completely unaware of them more often than not. I think of other migrants and how hard it must be for them, too, because so much of friendship is subtle and often unconscious, and misunderstandings can happen so easily.

For example, I now know that in New Zealand it is normal for friendships to take a long while to form, and even longer to become truly close. Not only are Kiwis naturally reserved, they also have a slower sense of time. As an Israeli visitor once told me, in New Zealand there is no news, “just current affairs”. What she meant was that in Israel, the news stories are forever updating, whereas here we take our time, processing a story for an entire day and sometimes weeks.

Once I began to understand just how different friendships are here and to adapt, I made wonderful friendships that feel so natural and so balanced. So much so, that when we visit Israel my Israeli friends tell me how Kiwi I have become, being reserved and stand offish, taking my time with friendships!

On women and friendships

Women’s friendships are very different to men’s and you don’t need a PhD to figure that out. I watch my daughter and my son and see how stereotypically different their friendships are. The girls use so many more words – they build complex hierarchies of best friends, former best friends and future best friends, whereas for the boys it’s really about who’s got the coolest toys.

Women’s friendships can have a devastating affect on our wellbeing because they are so emotionally meaningful to us. From an evolutionary psychology point of view, I read somewhere that because women were left behind to care for the young while gathering and preparing meals etc, they learnt how to build complex social networks – more so than men because of the natures of the tasks they did. What I really liked was how our great great great grandmothers in those savannas had to have long memories to know who can be trusted to look after the young and who couldn’t. Something many of us (myself included) have perfected since!

I think a big part of why I received so much feedback on the Toxic Friendship article was because many of you recognised the devastating affect unhealthy friendships can have on us. I think more often than not we don’t consciously and mindfully reflect on our friendships and only realise things in hindsight. Perhaps that is why it struck such a chord.

Through my personal experience, and that of those around me, as well as my professional experience with many women whom I coach, I realise how central good women friends are to our wellbeing. In Professionelle, we often hear of professional women who either immigrated here or moved from another part of New Zealand and who really feel isolated because they haven’t yet been able to find like minded women to make friends with. Often they tell this to us with slight embarrassment – which they absolutely shouldn’t feel, as women friends ARE that important.

Being the best friend you can be

There are many books about being the best mum, the best dressed executive, the best lover and what not, but I have yet to see a book dedicated to being the best friend you can be. And I think someone should write it! How often do we think about how to be a good friend? How often do you reflect on what makes you a good friend? And on what others do to you that makes you appreciate them?

Now, back to Positive Psychology and its monumental contribution in the form of Signature Strengths. If you haven’t yet, make sure you take the Signature Strengths 40 minutes online survey which is available for free here. I use Signature Strengths extensively in all my work and especially when I coach and facilitate, but one of the biggest messages that comes from the field of Positive Psychology is that, first and foremost, you have to practise what you preach to be any good. Because I truly believe that, I try to bring Signature Strengths into my own life – and into my friendships. My friends will probably not be surprised to find out that my top signature strengths include Wisdom, Judgment, Curiosity and Social Intelligence.

There are so many ways you can apply your signature strengths to enhance your friendships and be the best friend you can be. For example, if one of your strengths is Curiosity, you could make a point to find out something you didn’t know about your friend next time you see them. (This one is one of my favourites and I have to try and not be ‘the Spanish Inquisitor’ with my questions ;)). If one of your strengths is the Capacity to Love and be Loved, you could always think of new and different ways to exercise your strength, be it through offering to do a shop for a girlfriend whose child is sick or through organising a 40th surprise party. The thing about using your signature strengths is that everyone wins. You win because it is so rewarding using your signature strength and your friends win because through using them, you ARE a better friend. And the important bit is to have friends who love and value you for the strengths you have.

When you are mindful about your friendships, all of a sudden they become much more than a nice thing to have. It took me many years but I am now so conscious of how important my friendships are to my ability to do all I can do, that I treat my friendships and spending time with the girls with exactly the same level of respect as I do my paid work. Gone are the days where I viewed being with a friend as a luxury to be afforded only after my ‘real’ work was done. I now view it as one of the most important fuels that keep me going!

I hope I have got you thinking about your friendships, what they mean to you and how you can practically be the best friend that you can be. I especially hope you’ll go out to dinner with your best girls and make a toast to friendships!

Your Feedback

I love this article. It’s so true that our friendships speak volumes about who we are. Maintaining friendships doesn’t have to a be a huge ask either. I love it when I get messages from friends just to say "hi, thinking of you" or "hope your week’s going well". It’s a small effort but I really appreciate it when they do it. Your article has reminded me that, knowing how much I enjoy hearing from friends, I could also be more proactive in making sure they know I’m thinking of them too!

What a great article. I have been recovering from the fall out of a toxic friendship that resulted in my whole social network disappearing overnight. I was a complete wreck for years and then buried myself in the task of child rearing. As a result, I am only now (8 years later) starting to try and form new friendships and rebuild my confidence. And its not easy, even for us kiwi girls. Female friendships seem to be harder to form than romantic relationships. I just hope that in time I can rebuild my friend network with new people and try and ditch the toxic friends early in the relationship.

Very interesting article and Friendship sure is something we take for granted at times.Just last week a friend from school got in touch after 25 years and it just lit up my day. It’s the support that you get from friends during tough times , which you sense even when words are not spoken that help you get by. Having a lot of friends is great and a lot of fun, but even if you have one good friend who is sincere, caring and thoughtful, it’s wonderful.

On Honesty and Integrity

By Galia BarHava-Monteith

25 June 2009

I have been meaning to write this feature for about a year now… yes I know, how lax of me to have taken so long. But there you have it, I am no super woman, life does take its toll and sometime I don’t manage to do all the things I plan to. But now that we have two facilitated networking events on the topic of Living Your Values, I thought it was high time I put my thoughts to (virtual) paper!

Values, what they are, and how I can live my life by them, are an extremely important topic for me. I first became really aware of the impact of values on our personal and professional lives when I started work as Fonterra’s Ethics and Community Relations manager in 2002 (a role that was disestablished a couple of years later – and me redundant with it). In that role I had the great fortune to work closely with Dr Simon Longstaff who is the executive director of the St James Ethics Centre. Working with Simon and facilitating numerous workshops on Ethics and Values led me to reflect deeply on the philosophical, as well as practical, application of values. I have being doing so regularly ever since, and I endeavour to bring values into all that I do, across my paid work, voluntary work, coaching, friendships, mothering and even my marriage!

Universal Values

I’m sure that if you asked ten people at random what their values are, you would find them to be similar. In fact over the years, I have come to realise that values are pretty much universal. Wherever I facilitated a workshop on Values and Ethics, from Eketahuna in New Zealand’s North Island, right through to the Middle East and North America, whenever I asked for an example of a value inevitably one of the attendees would offer ‘Honesty and integrity’.

However, when I asked those same people for an example of a principle that underlies that value, more often than not there was a deathly silence in the room.

Values and Principles

Let me define these two, related concepts.

Values are the things that are GOOD to HAVE. They are the essence of what we stand for, and should underpin our behaviours, decisions and actions.

Principles flow from Values, these are the RIGHT things to DO. They direct people in how to make the values a part of everyday being.

You see, principles are how your values are translated into your actions; it is where your ‘ethical’ rubber hits the road.

Culture Matters

Yes, most people around the world will say they value honesty and integrity - I pretty much guarantee it. But how do they live their values of honesty and integrity? How do they express these values in their decisions and actions?

That’s where cultural awareness becomes absolutely crucial. This is not political correctness! I’m an immigrant to New Zealand from Israel, and after many years of working with people from very different cultures, and with my background, I have come to realise how important these differences can be, especially in the context of discussions about values.

Let me contrast the average Israeli and New Zealand attitude to putting the value of honesty into action. In Israel, when you think that an idea someone proposes is stupid, your guiding principle of how to be ‘honest’ will lead you to say what you think. Basically, you tell them: I think your idea is stupid! I never worked in a corporate in Israel but my friends who do tell me that such exchanges are not uncommon.

In New Zealand, on the other hand, after attending many meetings, I have come to realise that when someone offers an unlikely idea, the reaction is ‘that’s different’. These words are usually code for: I think your idea is stupid! but they avoid confrontation, which is a strong cultural preference here.

Take another example: the famous ‘does my bottom look fat in this?’ question. In Israel, the answer would most likely be a resounding ‘Yes’! In New Zealand, on the other hand, I think you would hear a more polite response....

However, from an Israeli perspective, the polite Kiwi approach is seen as being 'not honest’ (and of course I am generalising here for the purpose of this article) – if you think something is stupid, say it’s stupid, and if you think someone looks fat wearing a dress, tell them: you look fat!

Same value, different principles.

Remember Stakeholders

And this is where the third ingredient of living by your values comes into play, and in my eyes it is the most important one. It is this: think about the impact of your words and actions on the people with whom you interact and who might be affected by you – your stakeholders.

You might recognise this situation. Your colleague, boss, partner, friend or family member climbs on their high horse and says, “I know you value honesty and I am an honest person, so let me tell you that I really think...” This is often followed by an insult cloaked as ‘honesty’.

To me, this is not acting with honesty and integrity. It’s the integrity bit that’s missing. I believe that living my life with integrity is about thinking through the consequences of my actions on people around me. It’s not about always getting it right, or never offending anyone, and it’s certainly not about being righteous – it’s about thinking my actions through and considering how they will affect my stakeholders before I express my opinion.

So, if someone really annoys me – should I ALWAYS tell them? No matter what? Many years ago that might have been my approach, but it certainly is not now. These days, I’ll think things through by asking myself questions such as, did they mean to upset me? What else is going on in their lives? What will my telling them this truth achieve? Does it actually matter? What will happen if I simply ‘suck it up’?

I do get things wrong all the time. Living my values to me doesn’t mean being whiter than white, or claiming the moral high ground Instead, it means being aware, being present and being mindful.

Socrates put it much better than me thousands of years ago:

The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living

This quotation, by the way, is Dr Longstaff’s e-mail signature!

A Coaching Journey

By Galia BarHava-Monteith

March 22nd 2009

Some of you may know that I am an executive coach. I try to coach no more than 8-10 clients at any given time. There are many reasons for this but the main one is that I want to ensure I keep a sustainable mix of activities so I can always deliver all my clients a well-rounded approach.

I recently completed a five part coaching relationship with a very inspiring client. I’ll call her Emma. Her journey proved to be a moving experience for us both, which led me to think that I’d like to share it with all of you, our members. I asked Emma and she agreed, and further, agreed to provide her perspective in the box below.

Emma approached Professionelle to see if we would work with her privately, after her boss suggested she do so. Emma is a senior administrator in a very large corporate. She is tertiary qualified, and leads a team of other administrators. But Emma wasn’t happy. She didn’t feel engaged in her job and was restless. In many ways, she had simply fallen into administration as a result of her great organisational skills and social ability which made her very effective at her job - but, as the ad says, she still felt ‘she needed something else’.

We had an introductory meeting and felt we could work well together. My approach is very flexible; I don’t have a predetermined notion of how to go about the coaching process, but I do have a ‘bag of tricks’. I use them as and where the clients and I find them useful. In Emma’s case we started by identifying her values.

The importance of Values at work

I work with my clients to identify what their deeply held values are. Experience and training have consistently shown me that it is absolutely crucial to find out what your values are. Most of us have a faint understanding of them, but, often, figuring them out in detail helps shed light on the many occasions when things seem off kilter for us in how we feel about our work. By contrast, when there is an alignment between our personal values and those of our workplace, we become engaged, and indeed passionate, about what we do and where we do it.

Emma was brilliant at this.

To help distil her core values – the ones she held most deeply - I asked her to think about times she remembered being really angered or outraged. I know this may sound at odds with my positive psychology approach, but I have to say asking people ito remember such occasions has resulted in the most in-depth and accurate description of values by clients and workshop attendees.

In fact I did ask Professor Chris Peterson, one of the founding fathers of the field, with whom I am currently doing an online course through MentroCoach, if there is a more positive way of exploring this. He suggested asking people whom they admire and why, what their favourite books and movies are and why, and about the best advice they ever received. I might try that, and see which works better!

Back to Emma, who had three core values:

• Meaning and purpose
• Personal challenge
• Diligence and hard work

The reason I think understanding one’s personally held values is so critical is that unless there is an alignment between your values and what you do and where you do it the chances are that things will not feel quite right.

In Emma’s case, there definitely was an alignment between her work and the second and third values, and to a lesser extent with the first one. However, Emma derived most of her meaning and purpose from her engagement with her faith.

Once we’d worked all that out, Emma was better able to monitor how she felt about her values being met at work – which began her self-discovery journey.

But values are just part of the picture. The core element of my Positive Psychology approach is understanding my client’s signature strengths and how the client uses them in his or her personal and professional lives.

Before I asked Emma to do the Signature Strengths test, I asked what she thought her strengths were so that we had a baseline understanding. In many ways, Emma came up with what I would term ‘competencies’. These included project management, organisational skills and the like.

Signature Strengths

Emma’s top strength was diligence, and from now on I am considering making it a pre-requisite to have diligence as one of the top five strengths for all my clients! I am just kidding, of course, but it really made a huge difference. Everything we agreed she’d do, she did. I didn’t have to follow up with her much, and she really got stuck in, which of course resulted in her getting the most out of the experience.

I asked Emma to keep a diary. It involved her going through her daily activities and ascertaining what strengths she was using and how good or otherwise she felt her day was. This helped her uncover that she tended to over-rely on her perseverance strength. And that on the days she did so, she didn’t really enjoy things.

Emma’s other strengths included love of learning, curiosity, social intelligence and bravery. To help her re-engage with her role, we crafted ways for her to use more of these other strengths in the course of her daily tasks. This led her to undertake some projects that were not directly related to her role, but that gave her a very strong sense of meaning and engagement. It also gave her an excuse to take an hour for lunch and read something new, which let her exercise her love of learning and feel energised for the rest of her busy afternoon.

Because I’m Worth It

Emma, like so many other capable professional women, doubted her own worth. Yes, she received lots of really positive feedback, and plenty of suggestions about what she excelledd at… but really, she didn’t quite believe them! At this point, we turned to the Reflected Best Self Exercise. which is a vital tool for appreciating how others see you.

The Reflected Best Self exercise (RBS) was devised by the Ross School of Business in the University of Michigan. It draws on the principles of Positive Organisational Scholarship and is devised to help people gain an understanding of what makes them truly unique – what is the singular impact that they can have on the world. I used this exercise myself years ago, and in part it helped me come up with the concept of Professionelle.

The essence of the exercise is asking colleagues, friends, family, and clients to tell you what is the unique contribution they believe you have to make and to give you examples of when they saw you at your best.

Simple as this sounds, it is a really hard exercise to do. Most of us have worked for organisations whose focus has traditionally been on our weaknesses and how to fix them. As a consequence, the thought of only asking for positive feedback seems daunting.

Emma spent time thinking through who she should send the requests to, and how best to word the request. She had an overwhelming response from the people she chose and received the most insightful and thoughtful comments!

But that is not what the exercise is all about.

The key to the exercise is actually distilling the key themes so that you can write your own reflected best self-portrait. We worked on this for quite a while. Emma needed some time to digest it all. She saw certain things in the feedback, but I saw others. Together we had a meeting of minds and the blending of quite different perspectives. Doing this helped her gain an in-depth appreciation of what others saw her doing when she was at her very best.

Where to next? What was she to do with all this fabulous information? What should she be doing?

Some people have ventured to suggest that she might want to go into general management or Human Resources. Others have pointed to her leadership skills. What did she want from all of that?

Next came the hardest exercises of all – actually writing down Emma’s best-self portrait, her personal vision statement, and a future “interview” with Next Magazine given from a time in the future when she has reached her destination, whatever that might be.

Some light work for her to complete over the Christmas break!

So where did Emma get to?

Emma sent me all her completed exercises before we met for the last time about a month ago. I was incredibly moved by how far she had come. I had no preconceived notion of where she would end up. The vision she developed for herself just seemed perfect and to me made complete sense. So instead of using my words, I will use hers:

Emma’s Personal Vision Statement

In five years’ time, in addition to having a young family, I will have begun to study part time towards a degree in social work. Where possible I will have gained practical experience in helping individuals and families in the rural community where I will be living. This will be in the form of volunteering for playgroup run at the local Church and running the leadership of that group, looking to expand both its community influence and the services available to local families. I will have started to develop a strong network contacts amongst both Government and NGO social agencies, discovering what help is available to meet the needs of the people in the community I interact with.

My long-term vision would be to complete a social work degree, and to continue to gain practical experience in the local Community, with a view to starting to move into Management and Policy/Strategy of Child, Youth & Family to influence and facilitate change at a higher (perhaps even national) level

Final words

In our final meeting we worked through how Emma might approach this. Meanwhile, she’s also managed to find a man and get engaged in the time we were working together so her hands are quite full…

I will keep in touch with Emma to see how she is going. And I truly hope she will get to where she wants: I believe she can make a significant contribution.

Your Feedback

We received the following feedback from an anonymous member on the day we posted this article:

Galia, are you in an ethical quandary when coaching reveals that what is best for your client is different from what is best for her organisation when the organisation is paying your fee?

I felt this was a really good question, and one that I have given much thought to as a coach over the years. Firstly, I would caution against making assumptions. Yes, in some cases organisations pay for the coaching, but in other cases, people I work with pay for their coaching themselves.But actually this is not relevant.

In my view, the duty of care is owed to the person that I am coaching. As a professional, I am first and foremost accountable to work with my coachees on what is best for them. And indeed, if an organisation asked me to coach employees for a specific purpose, or for a specific agenda – say to increase someone’s productivity, regardless of the person’s needs and requirements, I would refuse that assignment. While I think you can train people to increase productivity or other skills, I also believe the coaching relationship is one based on mutual trust and respect and that entails not having an ‘agenda’.

So, the key to me is being up front about my approach whenever clients (whether corporate or private) engage me.

But, I thought I should, in light of this question, pressure test my assumptions. I asked Professor Peterson for his view and his reply was indeed that who pays is not *the* decision maker or rule breaker. What is best for the individual you are seeing face-to-face should be.

I also raised it with one of my corporate clients for whom I coach senior people as part of the firm's leadership programme. He agreed that a coach should never have an agenda and should work with the employees on what is best for them. For this particular client, the trust element is vital. A key reason he hires coaches is to raise engagement among their senior staff members. He feels that the success of the programme depends on coachees having the trust and the knowledge that the coaching is all about them. He also added that he does expect coaches to be aware of organisational realities and that this awareness should be reflected in the advice provided.

So there is my reply ...but now I am very curious what other coaches think about this topic!

Professionelle Two Point O

By Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes

22 February 2009

The picture to the left by Leonardo da Vinci, is a detailed drawing of the inner mechanism of one of his many inventions. His cogs and pinions are a long way from the communication protocols of the internet, but still they spoke to me as I looked for an image to accompany this article.

I looked at the drawing and saw the intense rational thought that went into conceiving and assembling the pieces to deliver the intent of the whole. Sympathised with the effort to bring forth a working model. And imagined the empirical discovery of what worked and what didn’t, and the hypotheses for why.

It reminded me a lot of the process of building Professionelle.

So - it’s high time we began to share with you, our members, our plans for developing Professionelle further. Galia and I talk of it between ourselves as Two Point O – referring both to it being the second incarnation of Professionelle (appropriate enough as we are almost two years old) but also to our desire to bring it closer to the best of Web 2.0 in terms of social interconnectedness and content creation and delivery. Along with describing the what and why of the planned changes, I’ll reflect on the how, ie the thinking processes that have led us to this point.

Key Changes

For those who like an executive summary up the front, here are the key points of what we are planning to move to:

Stage 1: Display our rich content to you, our users, (and to Google!) in a much clearer and easy-to-use way. We aim to allow you all to comment directly on articles, print each article separately and also e-mail colleagues any article from our archives - which contain well over 100 items! You’ll also be able to manage your user name and password through the site as it will be automated. We have started on this project already.
Stage 2: Build an interactive community based around online learning that is relevant to the needs of professional working women. Think telephone discussions with like-minded peers and various experts, downloadable later as podcasts, and of videos of offline discussions. Think of online profiles for personal brand building. Think, too, communities of like-minded Professionelle members sharing experiences and tips online and offline. This will be an online professional development community and will run on a pay-to-use basis.

Offline events and learning will continue to be part of our offer because the online and offline complement each other; there is an intensity of learning and interaction that takes place when you are in the same physical space. Plus, we all like to put names to faces!

Prototype

For those who prefer to follow the whole story to the so-what, let’s go back a bit!

The Professionelle site was built as a prototype. Working on limited funds, we needed to test Galia’s intuition about professional women and their needs before we invested more heavily. As our wonderful developers at Lee ter Wal said, “Wait until the pain of handling things like registrations gets too much, then you’ll know it’s time to upgrade.”

With 1500 or so highly-educated members, we have certainly been successful in attracting the kind of women we intended. We also know from focus groups we held late last year that the prime attraction of the site is the quality of the content and that a key benefit Professionelle promises is getting together with like-minded peers.

Three main issues have emerged with the site though:

People (and Google) struggle to find that great content on the site. I have coded in temporary patches like the search function, but with 120 articles the site is simply creaking at the seams
The site lacks easy interactivity, which reduces the sense of immediacy and community. The message board’s extra sign-in is a pain to get past and members have to send comments on articles through email or on-site forms, which we then post. We know some members don’t enjoy technology and things just aren’t simple and intuitive enough yet
The site is the core part of Professionelle. We love it, but it takes a heck of a lot of our time to run. We need to find a way for the site to take less time and/ or to generate more income.

A Trojan Horse

Another crucial piece of our thinking was triggered around Easter 2008. We were flattered to be approached by a publishing company that focused on women. Given the title of this section, I’ll call it Troy & Co. Troy wanted us to join a group of other content-rich sites so that together we could offer a compelling online proposition for:

Readers – lots of relevant content bundled together in one masthead publication with clickthroughs to the separate sites
Advertisers – lots of relevant eyeballs bundled together through one place, instead of fragmented across the internet.

Troy would sell the advertising space on the bundled sites and take a cut on the revenue.

In principle, it sounded great. We’d go on doing what we do best – conceiving and delivering relevant content - and our website would earn its way. We had concerns over bundling our unique concepts with others but we were promised editorial control. From a business logic point of view, we both liked it. We wanted to be part of it.

Galia went overseas at this point and while there she spoke to a wise head who advised Professionelle not to leap at the first offer unless we were really sure about it. Did it fit our direction? What opportunities might we be closing as a result?

And then the contract arrived, and our inhouse lawyer had seven hairy fits.

Galia, close to these reactions, very quickly formed a view that this was not a good option for us, regardless of the contract. She thought that becoming dependent on advertising would ultimately compromise the Professionelle concept because it would mean capturing high traffic and that would mean lower standards than we had set for Professionelle.

Far from these reactions, I was still keen on the business logic of the proposition, provided the contract improved. It made for a pretty intense discussion when Galia returned! A lot of it necessarily turned on judgement and inference rather than hard data. After 20 years of data-driven strategy consulting I found that challenging. I also have a strong natural inclination to look to the past to inform decisions about the future. Galia, on the other hand, is more comfortable with partial data and with a lot of ‘gut-instinct’ decision-making. She taps into the ‘zeitgeist’ and tries to forecast future trends for which data typically does not yet exist.

We had a side debate about the level of analysis and proof that was appropriate and even possible in young businesses and emergent industries (see a resulting book review which suggests women entrepreneurs gather as much data as they can …and then engage their instincts).

The upshot was that Troy launched without us a few months later. Within six weeks, that company hit the headlines with a PR stunt that revolved around dating and free sex toys. So very, very not Professionelle. Good call, Galia!

Plans B & C

The Troy saga was a good thing in the end. It helped confirm our commitment to the website as a key differentiator. It also clarified that we didn’t want to end up as a largely offline coaching/ professional development/ consulting outfit. Lots of people do, with success, but we wanted to build the online experience as a way to take Professionelle forward.

If advertising held dangers, what other models were there to develop income from the site? One idea, triggered by repeated interest in us from corporate and professional service firms, was to develop and charge for a solution for them to help them attract, develop and retain their female talent. I foresaw this as using parts of the site as a kind of plug and play intranet that the company women could access to meet other women inside (and outside) their firm, read relevant resources and discuss issues.

Another idea was to ramp up the community aspects of the site to generate online the kind of benefits we had observed in our offline gatherings. Allied to this was the idea of providing extensive and in-depth online professional development, for a fee, to any professional woman who felt like she wanted to continually develop herself

When in Doubt, Ask

We decided that given we have such wise and talented members, we should really ask groups of them what they thought, given the site is all for members’ benefit!

The focus groups confirmed much of what we surmised our users think about Professionelle. They come to us because of the content, they feel safe and respected and, more than anything, when they meet other Professionelle members we do deliver on the promise of bringing them together with like-minded women.

But one hypothesis we got quite wrong. Imagine our surprise when the group comprising professional women from bigger companies came up with reason after reason why their firms would be uninterested, even suspicious, of our corporate offer. I was busy taking notes and it fell to Galia, who was listening, to discern and test with the group the actual issue: they didn’t want their companies to have access to Professionelle.

In a nutshell, to our members, Professionelle is a safe space, and one, moreover, that they have sought out for themselves. They wanted to be able to access it and discuss things without fear of being “overheard”. They didn’t want all and sundry to be there through a blanket corporate deal, either. They only wanted those who, like them, had made the effort to join.

A member of the contractor/owner-operator group contributed the very valuable idea of “communities of learning” which developed resonance in both focus groups. Members want intelligent communication and access to learning materials on worthwhile topics because anything less will not make it worthwhile to invest time from their busy lives. We found this one very exciting, partly because it echoes what we have observed in our offline events, but also because we are convinced the Professionelle community holds enormous wisdom and experience that can be tapped for everyone’s benefit. If we can combine these learning groups with a vibrant community of professional women online then we believe we will have something compelling and unique.

Next Steps

We’ve been talking to developers about Stage One of the rebuild. In essence, Stage One will deliver an improved user experience of the features that are core to the offer now. We want to bed in the new back end system, which will make the site much easier to use and to post comments on, before we progress to Stage Two. To be clear, we intend to provide the Professionelle offer as it stands at the completion of Stage One free of charge.

Stage Two will develop the features that support the learning and professional development communities and the personal branding opportunity. This will be the place we launch our new products and materials based on the latest research. It will also incorporate features to support deeper interaction among like-minded peers.

Participants will have the power to develop their own topics of interest, not just to follow those we set up. We anticipate this will be a powerful, yet practical, way to define and extend your personal brand – and to learn from the experiences of others who opt in to your blog or group.

Access to the output of Stage Two we plan to charge for, via subscription or other mechanisms. The focus groups told us that we already deliver more value than some pay-to-join professional membership groups, but we aren’t complacent. We know the value delivered from Stage Two has to be self evident if this is going to succeed.

Your Thoughts?

As always, we would love to hear your thoughts. In fact, perhaps more now than ever before! If you have thoughts on things you feel are essential for us to have on Professionelle, let us know. Also, we value your views on things we absolutely shouldn’t do...

Your Feedback

I fully support your plans for development and believe you’re on the right track with your identified next steps. From a member’s perspective, I absolutely agree that Professionelle shouldn’t be sucked too far into the corporate world - the reason I joined is that it provides information that is just not available in the Alpha male corporate envionment. It brings issues to the fore that are close to my heart, but would be smirked at by some of my peers (and managers)in the office. We should definitely keep it a closely guarded secret amongst like minded women, with obvious consideration to your need to expand/ develop make a living! PS: What a lucky escape from Troy! Though I don’t think luck had much to do with it - well done on your intuition, business sense and listening to advice!

How Redundancy Can Become the Greatest Opportunity

By Galia BarHava-Monteith

February 8 2009

I think it is safe to say that the economic down-turn is really starting to hit home. In New Zealand things don’t seem to be as bad as they are in other parts of the world, but my contacts are telling me that redundancies are being made and things will probably get much worse before they get better.

As many of our readers will know, at Professionelle we very much advocate looking at life from a Positive Psychology perspective, looking at what can be done and what is working. Notwithstanding all that, we absolutely realise that at the moment things might feel very tough to many of you.

In thinking about how we could write something which would be relevant and helpful, it occurred to me that perhaps now is the time for me to share my story of being made redundant with you and the lessons that I learned from the process which eventually led to the creation of Professionelle.

So this is my first instalment on the lead up to developing the Professionelle concept.

As those of you who’ve looked at the “about us” section on the site will know, I was made redundant when my position as Fonterra’s Ethics Manager was disestablished in 2004. I was pregnant with my second child at the time, and the role was one I felt very passionately about.

If you’ve ever been through the process of redundancy with the consultation period and all that entails, you’ll know that this can be extremely stressful. To that, add the fact I was the Ethics Manager, the person people sought out to discuss ethical dilemmas in a confidential manner. I had to make sure I was able to give them my full attention and really listen to what they were saying even though all I could think about was how things were for me.

So things were tough, and I felt very down, un-appreciated and very lonely. One of the major issues around being made redundant was that my sense of self was severely undermined. I felt very much like I had no power or control over the situation and that things were being done to me, not with me.

Of course now, nearly five years later, things are very different for me. Establishing Professionelle has been an amazing experience. I am involved in non-for-profits, and I also do governance work. Granted, things can still get tough at times but that feeling of helplessness and worthlessness is never there and very unlikely to be there ever again.

So what helped? What were the key lessons I took from my redundancy experience? And most importantly, how did I move forward?

The things that helped me the most through redundancy

With the benefit of time, I can really look back and see what things really helped me get through what was a very tough time indeed. My husband was very supportive at the time, and so were some of my friends who understood what it was like going through this process. But what made the most difference was the support and sage advice of a very close colleague, namely Alison Andrew. ( If you haven’t yet, read the interview I did with her early on in Professionelle’s life). Alison was at the time the most senior woman manager at Fonterra. Alison and I met at the time of the merger and we were became both friends and professional companions. She worked in a different part of the business and in a separate physical location, so we really had to make an effort to see one another.

Throughout the process, Alison would regularly call me to see how I was doing, and she gave me the best advice that stayed with me ever since. One when I told her how terrible I was feeling, Alison said something like:

Girl, the reason why you’re feeling so lousy is because you’re not in control. You and I are used to being in control and having that taken away from us makes things really tough. So what you need to do is to find a way to take control of the situation!

And that's exactly what I did.

Specifically, I got some great legal advice from Jennifer Mills, a great employment lawyer who has since become a wonderful supporter of Professionelle, about how to take control of the consultation process. I scheduled the meetings and provided the information in a manner I was proud of. The outcome at the end was that I declined the reduced fixed term role they offered me. But most importantly, I felt at the end of the process like I had handled myself and others in a respectful manner. , I left with my professional and personal respect and integrity intact.

My key lessons

If you were to ask me now what are the key things to help you get through redundancy, my advice would be:

Find a key confidante at work you trust. This person might not work with you directly and might not be able to help you put your case forward. But to me, the most important things about confidantes is that they understand the reality of your workplace. You need someone you can be absolutely honest with about how you feel – and someone you can absolutely trust.
Get legal advice! I think it is crucial to that feeling of control that you know what your rights are and how to best conduct yourself in the process. I used Jennifer Mills as a sounding board, and she gave me great counsel. I felt that I knew what my rights were and how to best handle myself.
Treat the process seriously and with integrity. We all know how cynical you can get when going through the compulsory consultation process of redundancy. I was very tempted and became quite cynical myself. The problem is that being cynical in fact makes you feel worse! Once I took control of the process, I did everything to the best of my abilities and treated it all very seriously. Sometimes, my professionalism seemed to exceed that of the people who were running the process … at the end I felt I could hold my head high because I behaved in a way that I could be proud of.

Now what?

After the redundancy process was completed, I had my baby, took a year off and started getting back into things after my daughter turned one. Like many other women in my position I started to contract. I undertook a few really good ethics related consulting assignments, which were really interesting. I did a bit of executive coaching. But after about 18 months of doing that I felt like I needed something else…

So I soul searched and realised that I needed to build something that I could get my teeth stuck into. I guess you could call it a need to leave a legacy behind. I also realised that I had really let my professional contacts disappear. Shortly after I left Fonterra to have my baby, the company moved premises and so overnight, all my contacts disappeared, as I no longer had their correct numbers etc. One of the first things I did was to painstakingly trace back my contacts and re-connect - mainly through Linked-in.

To find out what I truly wanted to do, I outsourced perspective; I talked to lots of people, from all parts of my life. I also did a lot of reading of professional publications. In one of those publications, the Harvard Business Review, I came across an article about playing to your strengths, which described a fabulous exercise called ‘The Reflected Best Self’ (RBS).

In short, the Reflected Best Self requires you to ask colleagues, friends and family to tell you in writing (usually via e-mail) when they have seen you at your best, and to provide actual examples of these instances. By analysing the feedback and completing your Best Self portrait you get some amazing insights about the unique contributions you have to offer!

The other crucial thing I did was re-read ‘Good to Great’ by Jim Collins. That’s where I was reminded how companies who make the move from Good to Great find something they are absolutely passionate about, excellent at, and uncover ways to make money out of it. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend this business book.

One of my key insights from reading this book was that sometimes, to move on and find the right direction for you, you might need to let go of what you perceive as your expertise. It dawned on me that I don’t have to restrict my thinking to the field of business ethics, where my skill base was.

That’s when I had an intense phone call with a formidable business woman who is a great friend . She basically kicked me up the bum with the advice to fully apply myself to the what-next question and to find a solution that would work for me.

I spent a sleepless night thinking, thinking thinking. I wanted it to be web-based because it afforded me flexibility I wanted and I have always been fascinated with the Internet. In fact Sarah and I started a wedding celebrations website back in 1999! It didn’t go very far as we were both working very hard for BCG at the time, but the curiosity remained. Also, I have been thinking for a little while before that sleepless night, that many professional women share the same challenges – just not with one another! – and how could I do something about it? So as I lay there awake, thinking this is it, I have to find something to make things work for me, I was also trying to marry those two concepts and the seeds for Professionelle were sown.

All the work I did, the soul searching, the RBS, the reading all began to make sense and came together in the end. And from there, the work on Professionelle started – and that was a whole new beginning.

In the next instalment, I intend to share with you my thoughts on the process of building Professionelle and our lessons on what has and hasn’t worked.

Your thoughts:

I am really interested in your thoughts and views on this article; I’d particularly love to hear from those of you who’ve been through similar experiences. How have you come through it? The power of Professionelle is in the stories we all share with one another so please send them in! Remember we delete all identifying details from personal exchanges.

Using Professionelle’s Collective Wisdom to help a member in strife

Just as I finished this article, the following question came in to Professionelle. I thought it would be best answered by you, our members. I have contacted the woman who sent it in and she thought this would be a great idea. So read on and please send in your thoughts about her situation and we will post them on the site for her to see.

“I have been working as the accountant for this company for +2 years. My CFO was replaced in November 2008 with a Finance Manager - to save on costs. With my previous manager, I was given autonomy to work at my pace and given a huge responsibility in overseeing the completion of all financial statutory requirements. I was very upset with the replacement of the new finance manager, not that I liked my previous boss, but rather I thought that I had the capabilities to do the job, have actually been doing the job, but was overlooked for this role. The reasons given was my age - I am in my thirties - too young;(ha!) and not enough experience. I feel the reason was partly due to me being a female and a mother of young ones, and the senior management would not see me as possible potential to mingle with them at board meetings, overseas annual business meetings etc.

This group are all male, white, middle class and old. My new manger is in his sixties, has no idea on the systems we use, does not understand the environment in which we work - we are a tech company - and does not do any financial work besides sign papers, attend the board meetings presenting the work I have prepared etc. Needless to say, this has left me on an extremely sour note. I have insisted on a raise, which was successful. But now I have this manager literally hanging over my shoulders as I work, pressing for work when deadlines are still a while off. Insisting on me double checking everything I do etc. Needless to say, our end of quarter ASX filing ended after a week of so many errors in everything I did. Tension in my body is out of this world, I am miserable as hell! I cannot work like this. I have started applying for positions at other companies.

But I still don't know whether this is the right thing to do. With the economic climate, my manager seems to have heath issues, so he might not stay long, but then again, having been overlooked once I can expect it to happen again. Right?? This experience over the past few months has left me doubting myself and my abilities and the "giveup" feelings pop up all the time. What do I do, any suggestions?”

Advice Sent in to "Member in Strife" by our Members

I was reading about your member who is capable but passed over for a promotion and is now questioning her own abilities. I have had the same thing happen to me a number of times along with going for interviews for roles I think are perfect for me and then not getting it, and honestly, I am so glad for it.

When I look back, I find that those promotions and roles would have made sense in growing in the organisation or in my career but would had done nothing for me personally. The personal growth that comes from moving on and adapting and extending your skills would just not have happened if I had moved into a role that was just doing a lot more of the same things I was already doing.

I am currently in a similar situation and I could let it get me absolutely down in the dumps or make a different choice. I have made a choice that I will keep doing what I do because it is something I still enjoy and am skilled at but will open myself to other opportunities that I can add value to and that will challenge me to extend myself professionally and personally. I know times are hard but that just adds to the challenge and brings its own unique opportunities.

A rejection is not an indication of your abilities, just a difference of opinion or differing viewpoints and a difference in priorities, goals and values. My recommendation would be to do what you are doing to the best of your abilities with a smile on your face and with a light heart and not take what your line manager does or says personally. From my perspective, it appears that it is a lack of ability/trust and understanding on his part rather than anything to do with you.

You also say that the manager is unwell and much older so there may be another chance for you. Do you really want it? Is there an alignment of the organisational values and priorities with your values and priorities as things currently are? There are three questions I like to ask myself on a regular basis

Am I adding value to what I am doing?
Is it adding value to me?
Do I like myself and/or who I have become/am becoming.(particularly when I have to make decisions or choices in how I react)

If the answer is no for any of them, the decision becomes very easy.

Keep yourself grounded through the process through people and things that are you, and ask for support, a shoulder to cry on and someone to hold your hand when you need it. All the best.

It would seem to me that you need to look at whether you are able to work constructively with the new Finance Manager as the very first step. The resentments you feel seem to stem from your perception of the way the organisation has treated you during a selection process. You’ll have to let go of the resentment and develop a really positive reason for still being there, something that motivates you and inspires you. Ultimately you need to create a constructive working relationship with your new boss if you are to be fulfilled in your present role. It’s also possible that you have overlooked many of the skills required to work effectively at senior levels – building relationships and being comfortable with higher management, strategic thinking, direction-setting and so on are critical to performance at this level. Effective completion of the day to day operational work is not what they’ll be looking for. If you really want to work at this level, I would suggest you get a great mentor and look for some challenging development opportunities that extend you and allow you to develop these skills. Build your personal brand, look for opportunities to position yourself as having the potential to advance to increasingly senior roles. Come from a position of strength and positivity – resentment and lack of control can’t possibly be good for your professional or personal well-being. Good luck in your choices!

Successful Networking Events

(or what we have learned about networking from Professionelle’s offline events)

By Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes

25 January 2009

In Galia’s article “Professionelle’s Passion for Networking”, she shared what we have both learned about networking from a personal and career perspective. At the end of her piece, she promised that I would next recap on what we have learned from another perspective: that of designing and organising events over Professionelle’s not-quite-two years of operation. It’s been a steep learning curve, and with a couple of real surprises along the way. We’ve not seen many of these insights written about elsewhere, so we think they’re well worth sharing.

Not all our offline events have been strictly networking ones. Certainly, some were traditional networking meetings, held at the explicit request of our members, for them to meet other professional women, or to reconnect with those they had met through us in other ways. Beyond those, though, our workshops, focus groups and facilitated discussions have all offered us new opportunities to observe how women respond to the chance to meet others, how they interact with each other once there, and what seems to make get-togethers really hum. The following 3 minute video will give you a good sense for what these events offer, and the calibre of women who attend!

Given that many of you attend networking events from time to time, and some of you also organise them, we thought you would be interested in what we have uncovered. We are now incorporating these lessons into the way we structure our events and calendar for this year. In fact, we’ve been learning from the very first event, and you can read about some of the early “aha!” moments in our “Networking and First Impressions” piece from the archives.

Do let us know how our experiences and thoughts compare with yours…

Networking works

It seems important to start with this not-so-original point! We have seen a number of valuable new connections spring from women meeting at our events. Often, we get a sense of these new relationships developing from the LinkedIn updates that land in our email boxes. These show our contacts linking to more, and more, of our contacts.

Later we hear that A has been able to offer valuable advice to a younger B, that C has spoken to D for the “inside scoop” on working at D’s employer, that E, a contractor, is pursuing a work lead through F…

These new connections among our members have even come full circle and led to valuable introductions and opportunities for us. For example, B and S met at our First Birthday event. They met up for coffee to talk further and later S put B in touch with a great friend of hers, who is also in IT. When Galia and I were recently looking for developers to talk to about website development, we talked to B …who was now able to recommend we talk to S’s friend’s company!

Social capital for careers

It’s a truism that women are very often the ones who sustain social ties. Women write the Christmas and birthday cards, and women make the phone calls. However, when you look closely, a lot of this time-consuming maintenance activity is directed squarely at the family unit’s connections. Women work to support the family’s social capital (who you know) rather than their professional social capital.

By contrast, on average, these women’s husbands and partners are likely to be actively building professional relationships through casual attendance at Friday night drinks and the odd late afternoon or weekend golf game. Drinks and golf, we are often told by our members, are not environments they feel especially comfortable in, at any career or life stage. Chances are that the average professional woman on a Friday evening is planning and buying the groceries, dashing to relieve the nanny or get to childcare…

Not a priority

Published research shows that women do not invest heavily in building their social capital and this can hinder their careers. Our own research into networking revealed the surprising fact that this disinclination to network can be just as prevalent with very senior women, like CEOs of listed companies, or partners in major law firms, as it is with their more junior counterparts. One senior woman told us:

The blokes network all the time and we don’t. Not because of anything intentional but because most senior women are really stretched for time. For me time is the biggest barrier, I achieve all I need to professionally and the rest is for my kids.

If you build it, will they come?

What have we seen in our events that speaks to women’s struggle to prioritise building their professional connections in a social setting? Plenty! Women tell us they know how important networking is. They want us to organize events to help them do that offline - to complement the online opportunities we offer. They very often pay the modest fee ahead of time, too. And then…

…they don’t come. Being responsible professional women, they almost all call or email to say they won’t be attending. In the last 24 hours before a general networking event, I now expect to field calls from a good third of attendees who need to bow out due to ill health (theirs or their child’s), unexpected work, forgotten commitments, etc.

“Something really worthwhile”

You may say that everyone gets ill, everyone gets busy. The crucial difference is how the numbers track when there is a concrete reason to attend, something over and above the prospect of social chat. As the senior woman quoted above added,

It has to be something really worthwhile to get involved in.

We had that kind of reason with our first networking event, I believe – a relevant talker allied to the powerful novelty of Professionelle’s first offline event. Our second event, for our first birthday, however, was chiefly designed for women to come together and talk, and that wasn’t enough to cut through all the other demands on their time. Another, more recent, event has reinforced this lesson, too. In both those cases, the women who attended clearly made valuable connections and enjoyed themselves. The issue we grappled with was how to make our events appeal so strongly that more women would come along and benefit in a similar fashion.

We began to see the answer as we undertook other events. In particular, we learned a lot from our breakfast focus groups that sought input on the Professionelle ‘experience’ and our venture’s future direction. These were meetings at which members’ attendance was in truth a favour to us – and we had a near 100% turnout of those who agreed to come. We had sent a list of discussion topics ahead of time, making it clear we had some significant issues to discuss. The different response was striking!

Talk talk talk

If you can achieve ‘cut through’ by designing an event with a meaty topic to address, you won’t need to worry about awkward silences. Whenever professional women get together in a room there is never, ever, a lull in conversation or a shortage of good ideas being expressed! Early on, I had my doubts, but I’ve learned to relax and to trust that meaningful exchanges will happen. Indeed, the ready willingness to talk has held across all the different events we have organised. Moreover, the exchanges are always respectful, supportive and helpful. Galia and I learn a lot by listening, rather than talking.

Where possible, we always start our events with people briefly introducing themselves around the table/s. Between that information and the comments made in the course of the meeting, women can easily identify who they would like to get to know a little better at a subsequent meeting. It takes very little prompting to get the discussions going, but it can certainly take a while at the end for those “Could we meet again? I’d love to explore xyz with you…” conversations to wrap up!

Follow up

In Professionelle’s workshops and learning journeys, women have extended opportunities to connect with each other. Some workshops last a full morning, others are broken into two or three parts to allow for ‘digestion’, practice, and exploration in between sessions. These longer, and repeated, contacts of course offer chances to build a stronger relationship base than can happen in the space of networking drinks or breakfast meetings. In the latter two, the first meeting does no more than open the door between people. To reach what lies beyond, you have to follow up, as Galia recently described in her article on Professionelle's Passion for Networking.

What has been interesting is that women who have established some understanding of each other through workshops are keen to have online opportunities to keep up contact. This can be done by email – for group privacy – or through Professionelle’s forum. By contrast, women who have become aware of each other online are keen to meet offline to follow up “in the flesh”. Online and offline contacts appear to be very complementary.

A USA-based contact also recently sent us an excellent article on how academics can leverage networking in their careers. It addresses this “courtship” and relationship building process and explicitly considers the role and appropriateness of offline and electronic contacts. The article is by Phil Agre at the University of California in San Diego. See the takeaway box for his summary of key angles for building new relationships.

'Networking on the Network' by Phil Agre

It takes time -- you have to be patient and let it happen;
It focuses on particular individuals and particular relationships;
It produces bonds of reciprocal obligation through the exchange of favors;
It calls for a significant but manageable up-front investment;
It requires you to cultivate a realistic awareness of power;
It involves a variety of communication media; and
It forces you to develop communication skills in each of these media

So what?

In consulting, this is the perennial question! You do the analysis, you work out what’s happening – or not happening. Then you have to come to a conclusion about what to do differently…

We have three ‘so what’s’ from our observations across all of our events so far:

Design the event around a meaty topic to cut through women’s competing priorities and ensure it is compelling enough for them to attend
At the event, give women a chance to talk to each other, not just listen, in order to create meaningful exchanges and opportunities to learn from each other
Back up the offline meetings with online contact options and vice versa. (Achieving this simply and effectively will require an upgrade to our site, a major project we have embarked on).

Facilitated networking breakfasts

As a practical expression of the first two ‘so what’ points, we have designed two facilitated networking breakfasts for later this year in Auckland. If they work out well, we’ll look at extending them to other cities.

We’ll present a brief introduction for half an hour or less, and each table will then discuss key questions relating to the topic and, later, briefly present them back to the group. We’ll ask you to ensure you are sitting next to women you’ve never met before to ensure you really get to network as you work through the material.

We’ve selected the first two topics based on what we’ve found to be highly relevant for most Professionelle members and these are: Mentoring and Work-Life Balance. Topics for future events will be chosen by attendees. We hope to see you there!

Professionelle's Passion for Networking

By Galia BarHava-Monteith

January 7 2009

Some of you may know that in March this year, Professionelle.co.nz will be turning two. In our planning for 2009 Sarah and I were very aware of the need to ensure that we deliver on the original promise of Professionelle which is:

Allowing professional women to network meaningfully with one another online and off.

We have some very exciting plans to continue and develop www.professionelle.co.nz to allow for more meaningful networking online, but more on this later on. We also feel that we now know a lot about what works and what doesn’t work in terms of networking in person, so this year we have set out to offer professional women unique and innovative opportunities to meaningfully network with like minded women in person.

Why are we so passionate about networking for women in Professionelle?

Well, the real truth of it is that we learned the hard way! I never used to network; I didn’t see the point of it really. I had my friends and people I liked, I saw networking as phoney and artificial and I felt that it was inconsistent with my personal values. Of course, I also didn’t have the time, I had a young baby and a full-on job and my perception of networking was that it was a forced situation, usually involving drinks and superficial conversations. I also felt that I was already in touch with all the people I would ever want to be in touch with and that I could be introduced to any further people through my existing contacts.

Then I had another baby, my position was made redundant and my former employer moved offices! Just like that, I dropped off the radar and lost contact with numerous colleagues and associates. The timeframe in which you start to feel like you are totally forgotten and completely irrelevant professionally is shockingly fast!

Over the next few years I worked hard to re-establish my professional contacts. I decided that my approach had been far too narrow-minded and that I needed to try and keep my mind open to new networking opportunities and give them a go. Sarah and I also started Professionelle and we began to seriously study the things that are really important and beneficial for professional working women’s careers and personal wellbeing.

Iit turns out that seasoned professionals and academics both view networking as a powerful tool for career progression and building personal and professional resilience for both women and men. And unsurprisingly, it is also widely acknowledged that women under-invest in their social capital through networking, largely due to multiple demands on their time.

In the near-two years since we’ve established Professionelle, we’ve conducted online surveys; interviewed women in all stages of their career; coached, conducted workshops and had many informal discussions on this very topic and our findings have been remarkably consistent - professional women, throughout their careers and across occupations, don’t spend much time networking. Some don’t see the value in it at all but many others have the same reservations I had and often feel under-equipped to network effectively.

Why is networking such a powerful tool?

There are so many reasons to why networking is such a powerful tool that I really find it difficult to know where to begin. Going back to my own journey, networking is a wonderful way to get perspective. As I began feeling more and more professionally irrelevant and isolated, havingt my husband and friends tell me that it wasn’t the case, in truth, didn’t really help. I guess, I thought ‘they’re telling me to be nice’. But when I caught up with a professional colleague who was genuinely interested in what I was doing and in my plans for the future, it was like a big physical boost to my professional self-esteem.

Talking to a wide range of people from different companies brings you a diversity of thought, and really does give you a wonderful perspective and opens your eyes to possibilities and avenues you might not have realised were available or even possible for you. In truth, the seeds for Professionelle were planted in my mind during a networking coffee with a former colleague who set up her own business as a contractor, one who has since become one of our staunchest supporters.

Networking can be powerful in building personal and professional resilience, as was the case for me, as an effective way to find out about professional opportunities inside and outside your company and also to build relationships with individuals who could, over time act as informal mentors.

People in all occupations and employment configurations (full time, part time, self employed etc) benefit from networking, be it through the informal conversations that allow you to find out about a new and exciting project in your company’s pipeline, or through an introduction that might lead to a new customer if you’re self-employed.

But my definition of networking isn’t confined to an ‘event’. To me, networking is any and all opportunities to talk to someone new. In fact, my preference is towards the more intimate side of the networking scale, I value having lunch, or a coffee. These give me an opportunity to really get to know someone and learn about them and what they do. However, more often than not, I have met these exciting people in a formal event (and increasingly, through Professionelle), yet again illustrating powerfully and personally that it is through ‘being out there’ that you really get to meet people you wouldn’t normally be able to!

So, how do you go about it?

My discussions and work with professional women made me realise that most instinctively see the value in networking. But the key barriers are the same as mine used to be; many women see networking events as ‘phoney’ and ‘disingenuous’. They believe that the people who attend them are only there to see how others can help them or are there only to generate business. In short, they don’t think people attend networking events in order to ‘just’ meet one another and to build genuine relationships.

The truth is that some people do treat networking in this very superficial way. But what matters is how you approach networking. If you go about it in a genuine way, wanting to get to know people and see how you can help others, then your networking will be authentic and will be seen as such by others. You’re also more likely to really enjoy the experience. Positive Psychology researchers are consistently finding that people who gear themselves in a way which is focused on others’ needs, rather than on their own, end up happier, and more personally and professionally fulfilled, and more resilient.

My Tips

My first tip is to approach networking as a legitimate way of being nosey! Here’s a perfectly socially respectable way to ask lots of questions and find out what people do, what they’re professionally (and sometime personally) up to. I find that most people who come to networking events are very comfortable with my ‘interrogations’! They like to share what they do - and I love to find out!

You might want to decide before going in that you will make a point of talking to at least four people you haven’t met before. After all, there isn’t much point going to these events if you spend the whole time talking to your colleagues… but I am always surprised to see how many people do exactly that. Sarah and I have a rule: we try not to sit next to each other in networking events. It might pay to have the same rule for yourself and your colleagues the next time you attend one.

As I said earlier, I like to get to know people personally over coffee or lunch. I always make a point of following up with people I connected with after a formal event. Mostly, it doesn’t progress further than that one follow up, but on occasion these catch-ups develop into a wonderful professional or personal relationship. So the moral is: you never know what will happen. As Sarah says, networking is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get!

When we set up Professionelle, we approached networking very seriously. We attended as many networking events as we could as we saw them (wisely I might add!) as a way of building our profile and finding out about what is happening in this space. We also realised that this was a fantastic way to meet other professional women and find out what really matters to them and if what we’re doing is actually relevant to them.

After a while, I took stock and discovered that I find some networking events unpleasant whereas others I really enjoyed. I systematically looked to see what were the common themes in the events I liked – was it the speaker? The mix of people? By doing that, I was able to determine that I’d rather attend some but not others. I highly recommend you do the same. Networking should be enjoyable and fun, not a chore. We have enough of those already!

Where to in 2009?

About a year ago I met with Dyan Ryall from Xplore in Australia, a company that works with women in Australia. Xplore offers highly interactive networking events throughout Australia and she inspired me to think about why such an approach might work so well - and about what might work for us.

As we've built Professionelle, Sarah and I have observed several interesting - and unexpected - things about women and networking, ones we haven’t read about or heard about elsewhere. Sarah will write about these in more depth in our next update and will explain how we are planning to leverage these hard earned lessons into our networking plans for 2009.

What we can tell you is this: in this year's Professionelle networking events, you will get to talk about a meaty topic with other women who are like you.We’ll present a brief introduction for half an hour or less, and you’ll get to discuss key questions relating to the topic and briefly present them back to the group. We’ll ask you to ensure you are sitting next to two women you’ve never met before to ensure you really get to network.

We’ve selected the first two topics based on what we’ve found to be highly relevant for most Professionelle members and these are: Mentoring and Work-Life Balance. But the topics for future events will be chosen by attendees.

First Foundation: Cheers and Tears

By Galia BarHava-Monteith

It’s not often you cry at a corporate event.

The opening line to this article popped into my head as we were leaving the 10 Year Anniversary and Scholarship Awards of the First Foundation in November 2008. But to explain the tears, I need to go back a bit first.

I have been involved with the First Foundation in one way or another for almost seven years. It dates back to my appointment as the Ethics and Community Relations for Fonterra in early 2003. At that time a colleague, Alison Andrew, asked me to meet with them as she felt that the Foundation was a great strategic match with what we were trying to achieve just after the merger.

What the Foundation Does

Within a minute of meeting them, I was sold. The concept was so simple and so powerful. The Foundation was set up to enable successful, resilient and ‘go getter’ students from low decile schools to go to university through partnering them with a company who pays most of their fees. In return, the students work weekends and holidays as required for the company, thus paying towards the scholarship. But wait, there’s more! The First Foundation also sets them with a mentor from another organisation to help them with the possibly difficult transition from high school and into the first two years at University. If there was ever an embodiment of ‘a hand up, not a hand out’, this is it.

Founding the Foundation

Many years ago, when I first arrived in New Zealand, I watched ‘Once Were Warriors’ when it was first released. It was a culture shock and I remember thinking, what can be done to help bright young people who don’t have access to role models or financial support in New Zealand? It seems that the founder of the First Foundation, Steven Carden, thought the same. At the age of 24, he recognised that others don’t have the support and resources he had in achieving his degrees in law and arts. So he set out to make a difference and, with tenacity and guts, created a scholarship-based programme that would help remove the barriers that many talented but financially disadvantaged students face.

Back in 2003 I was sold on this concept. After reviewing many impressive CVs of bright young things and interviewing a couple, we awarded the first Fonterra Scholarship. At the same time, I became a mentor to another young woman immigrant who has since achieved great things.

The Power of Education

Education to me is paramount. It is culturally very significant, too as the written word and obtaining education is paramount in the Jewish culture. I was brought up in a house were education was all-important; my parents instilled in me that the best way to achieve in life is through obtaining tertiary qualifications. And I am the same now with my own children. Also, as a woman and an immigrant to this country, I would have never been able to achieve what I have had it not been for my hard work and success in my tertiary education.

It was also very telling that the prime-minister elect, John Key, chose to fly especially from Wellington to attend the ceremony on the fourth day after the election. This was his first official function after being elected! His mother was a Jewish refugee from Europe who became a single mother; John shared with us her single-minded focus on the importance of education for her family to get ahead.

As I listened to the inspiring speeches, I reflected on how significant access to education has been for women’s progress. It is through our access to education that we have been able to achieve all that we have in the past 40 years or so. Stats NZ show that in 1971 women made up 30% of NZ tertiary education admissions. In 2001 it was 57%.

On reflection, I don’t think we have talked enough about education on Professionelle and its significance, probably because we, as most of us now, tend to take it for granted that our daughters will be able to study whatever they choose. Yet this is something that not that long ago was just unimaginable for many women. I suspect many of our own mothers have no more than school certificate, although many had the talent for much more.

Education is one of the things that is unique about the Professionelle community. Of our 1300 members, 80% have tertiary qualifications. And a third of all our members have post grad qualifications. For New Zealand women overall those statistics are just 20% and 6%... we are a highly educated group, indeed!

Changing Lives

And so to the tears. All of this was running through my head as I listened to the amazing stories of young men and women who have overcome obstacles of economic disadvantage, social isolation and, for some, very tough family backgrounds, and who have been able to access high qualifications through the First Foundation.

Now, it’s one thing to know that 164 students have participated in the First Foundation’s programme and that there are 99 current schools involving 59 businesses in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. But what left me with tears in my eyes - and glancing around, there weren’t many dry eyes in the room - were the personal stories.

There was the story of a young woman who lost her mother and lost her way, but when she decided to give education a go and did well, her school introduced her to the First Foundation. She won the scholarship and is now literally able to live her dreams. There was also the young man who was abandoned by a parent and ended up being raised by a friend’s family. He won a scholarship that enabled him to pursue his dream of becoming a graphic designer. He describes his job now in the most delightful way -

it’s like having a hobby with a deadline!

These real lives and individual stories brought the impact of the Foundation on all these 164 students to life. It is what gives it meaning, it is what made us all shed a tear. It’s through these personal connections that we are able to process what the big picture means.

Hakas in Honour

Not all the scholars at the 10th Anniversary evening were from ‘Once Were Warriors’ backgrounds. Many of them have loving and supportive families who turned out in droves. It was also evident that their peers admire and respect them, judging by the spontaneous hakas that took place.

And when the Foundation’s Chairwoman announced that the current First Foundation GM, Nicki McDonald, was to step down from her post in early 2009, a final, and lengthy, haka rang out. It built and built in spine-tingling intensity as ever more students joined in to show their appreciation of the life-changing opportunities she has helped to create. The whole experience really left both Sarah and me deeply affected.

What You Can Do

If any of you are in a position where you can talk to the First Foundation about your organisation awarding a scholarship, or if think you can become a mentor yourself, I suggest you give them a call. Having a First Foundation scholar in your organisation will most likely be a wonderful experience for all involved. And of course, as we all know, as a mentor you are likely to benefit more than your mentee!

Check out their website here.

Working Mothers at the Top

(share their advice and experiences)

By Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes, based on interviews with Women Partners from accounting firm BDO Spicers with by Alice Taylor

16th October 2008

The old working mother conundrums: family and then career, or vice versa? Or both together? How to make part time work career-enhancing rather than a dead end? The list goes on.

At Professionelle, we have the wonderful resource of our community’s collective wisdom to draw on as we wrestle with these big issues. We were delighted, therefore, when Diana Simpson, one of our members who works for Chartered Accounting firm BDO Spicers, approached us with transcripts of interviews with all their female Partners, most of whom are also mothers.

Professional service firms can be demanding workplaces. However, as you’ll see, at BDO Spicers the women have all achieved Partnership without becoming ‘one of the boys’ or giving away dreams of having children.

Brief Background

BDO Spicers is a New Zealand owned and operated network of twelve Independent Member Chartered Accounting and Advisory Firms with sixty seven Partners and over 650 staff in total.

At present, BDO Spicers has eight women Partners, six of whom are mothers. Women thus make up 12% of the Partnership, just a shade under the norms of around 15% that we typically see in New Zealand’s senior management teams and professional service firms.

The working mother Partners have children of all ages. Judith Stanway, in Rotorua, who is Chair of BDO Spicers overall, is now a grandmother of seven aswell as mother to four daughters. At the other end of the “mum” scale are Partners whose children are toddlers. Despite these differences, common themes emerged around support, timing and commitment.

Superwoman Doesn’t Work Here

All the mothers were asked whether they received, or sought out, support. The answer was clear: help was a vital part of the equation. This strongly echoes Galia’s observations in her recent article on the traits that successful working mothers share.

A senior Partner summed up the theme that drawing on help is critical for working mums and something they should feel comfortable doing.

I learnt very early on that you can’t be Superwoman and so got someone in to help with the housework. And with your family you’re not Superwoman, so don’t sweat the small stuff! Take care of yourself.

After all, it’s a marathon effort that’s called for, not a sprint for glory!

Help at Home

The attitudes of the “Other Halfs” were crucial. These men all respect their wives’ and life partners’ career ambitions in principle…
I’m very privileged in having a supportive husband. There has never been any question between us about me working. We were a team and my aspirations were as important as his. It was probably quite unusual for the time.

... and also in practice:
With our first child my husband who has a plumbing business took 4 months off full time, then worked three days and took two off. He has always been happy with it. It makes sense for me to work full time financially. I’m very appreciative that not all guys would do this.

Not everyone has a husband who can take on a significant share of childcare, though. One Partner’s husband works six days a week. The key is that his support of her ambition translates through to investing in extra help at home:
He has always wanted me to get ahead in my career. So we have help at home and I know he would be there if I needed him.

On this topic, at Professionelle we think that all professional women, not just the mums, should at least consider hiring some help at home. It can be hard to spend precious leisure time in chores rather than in activities that refresh you. Of course, the choice is the individual’s – we know one or two people who love ironing!

Support at Work

The attitudes a working mother confronts in the office are another significant element in her being able to “make it work”. Having to hide the realities of one’s home life is draining. One senior Partner acknowledged that this is an area in which she has seen real improvements during her career:
“I made an extra effort to ensure family circumstances didn’t interfere with work. Things are quite different now. I had to be a lot stronger then…”

Other Partners with children report that they have always received real co-operation from colleagues. This affirms their choices to become mothers alongside their other roles:
I had three months off after having children and the others picked up the extra workload. They all have families so they are very family-oriented. In particular, our Managing Partner is passionate that you can have both a Partnership role and a family!

Supportive attitudes at work typically translate into practical actions. Whether that’s rallying in support when a mother is home with sick children, or formalising flexible work arrangements, these responses are where firms that mean it truly show it.
While the children were young, they supported me by allowing me to work what hours I could. Working these flexible hours was the key. When my first son was born I chose to stay at home for two years and at that stage I had a female boss who let me work from home.

Note that the women Partners without children also appreciate flexible hours to help them “fit everything in”. Very likely the men at BDO Spicers appreciate it, too! We often hear that a universal offer of flexible arrangements is vital to uptake.

Clients… This is the other key constituency that must be satisfied if a professional working woman is to succeed and rise to the most senior levels. The mothers in the Partnership reported no difficulties here, though some found it “nerve-wracking” announcing their family plans to clients. The modern reality is that flexible work arrangements combined with new technology can increase a firm’s availability to a client.

Career Development and Families

When to have your first baby? These things can’t always be planned, but it’s a perennial question for all professional working women. Should you strive for Partnership or similar seniority first, to reach a “safe level” in the game? Or do you juggle the rising career path and young family all at once? The answer at BDO Spicers is weighted towards the first, perhaps inspired by a senior Partner’s views: “Don’t worry about it. Just become a Partner and then sort out the family.”

Four of the six Partners did indeed make deliberate plans around promotion and babies but life has a way of intervening! One found biology almost swamping her careful plans:
I was always very career-focused and I chose to be a Partner first as that was a key ambition. So I was offered the Partnership and then I fell pregnant! I was petrified about raising it. I really did think this is the Partnership gone! But they were completely supportive and so were my clients.

Another discovered, as so many women do, that babies change things, not least their mothers, in unanticipated ways:
I always knew I wanted to have both [career and family]: I thought I would just get a nanny and all would be sorted! But then when I actually had children I found I wanted to spend more time with them. It became obvious to me that this is why we have children. (This Partner currently works 3 days per week).

A third really wrestled with the implications of putting career first:
Two and a half years after becoming Partner I had my first child. The decision to become a Partner first was difficult. I knew if I had a child I’d have to keep working full time. It was a hard decision but that’s what I’m doing.

The last two working mums did things another, and arguably harder, way. Children came along after they had started working yet before they had finished studying. Surely, if these women were looking for an alternative career they could find it as top notch jugglers – or, better, liontamers, reflecting the courage and determination needed to handle three major endeavours at once!
I had my first two children when I was still studying for my Master in Economics and BBS, then had another two before I qualified. So I was studying, working and raising a family all at once. I was doing all three for at least twelve years…my life did revolve entirely around work and family.

Guilt: Part of the Package.

I bet the mums reading this are nodding a little ruefully. We’ve all felt it, and these Partners are no different. One feels she missed out on being with her girls when they were very little because she returned to work when they were 6 weeks old. “But now I do take time off to do special things with my daughters such as going skiing.” Another, who acknowledges she sometimes puts work ahead of family, adds, “If the dishes aren’t done straight after dinner, just walk past them. You have to. Reading books to your children is much more important.”

The pattern seems to be that while they do prioritise their careers, these women also try to focus their non-work time squarely on their children.

Career Focus

One element that comes through is that all the women Partners, both mothers and non-mothers, place a high value on their careers. It guides the tradeoffs they make, and the way they direct their energies. The certainty for the mothers that they have made the right trade-off for them comes, it seems, from their self knowledge. For example, the partner who struggled with the decision to go for Partnership first, said, “I knew I’d go stark raving mad if I gave up my career for motherhood and had to stay home all day!”

Research, you may be relieved to know, backs up the wisdom of choosing to work if it’s what makes you happy. Studies show that one of the key determinants of a child’s happiness is its mother’s happiness.

What it comes to is this: to persevere right to the top of the career track you have to be comfortable with your choices. That means dealing with the guilt and knowing that prioritising work is what is right for you. You will never stop others passing judgement, of course. Instead, reflect on the wise words of two of the BDO Spicers’ Partners:

Be yourself; be your own person. Don’t feel guilty about doing what you need to do.

Become confident and comfortable with your own decision and don’t listen to the critics! And get a great support network: I couldn’t do this on my own.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Professionelle is very grateful to the women Partners at BDO Spicers for sharing their interviews with us and allowing us to comment on them.

Your Feedback and Comments

The other part of the puzzle I struggle with is "me" time! I get so tired and know that going to the gym would help but feel I need to put the children’s needs and my husband first - that helps keep the guilt at bay but doesn’t help me! I know that I can make it happen because I make everything else happen to a schedule but I really do struggle! I am really lucky that I too work in a supportive workplace and my family are also very accommodating. The best thing to realise early is you are not superwoman and neither do you have to try to be! I’ve been doing it for 10 years now and know that I couldn’t do it without my "team" - the cleaning lady, the after-school nanny, the boys’ teachers, and my lovely husband! I’m not superwoman, I just have great support all around me!

The Secrets of Successful Working Mums

By Galia Barhava-Monteith

30 November 2008

I have been meaning to write this article about successful working mums - SWOMs - for ages. I’ve discussed it with Sarah on many occasions, and with many women I talk to, interview, and meet. I have to admit, I’ve been guilty of procrastination here… So I decided that rather than getting all my ducks in a row first, I’d be like that memorable sportswear ad and ‘just do it’! This article will be the first of my reflections on what all the successful professional working mums I have come across have in common. And I think that even if you’re not a working mum, these lessons might still be really useful for you!

Who are successful professional working mums and what makes them successful?

Over the last four or so years, I’ve spent many hours talking to my friends who are working mums, researching the topic and conducting interviews for Professionelle and associated research. I want to acknowledge up front that these observations are highly personal and reflect what I view as success. I’d also like to dedicate this piece to all my wonderful SWOMs. I hope you all know who you are!

To me successful working mums are those who manage to have:

A close and loving relationship with their children
A close and loving relationship with their partners (if they have one) and
A career they love and are good at.

They seem unflappable; they appear in control, calm and just get on with things! They are also great to be around, they have wonderful energy and generally seem happy and content with their lives.

It’s not like they don’t face challenges, in fact some have faced incredible personal and professional challenges and have at times dealt with great stress. But they are able to contain that stress, and deal with it in a proactive and in-control manner. You are unlikely to hear these women complain incessantly. In fact one of them, who is also a close friend of mine, has a motto: ‘don’t complain and don’t explain’.

I thought that given I have had the privilege of talking to so many women who are successful and who manage to combine the roles so well, I should apply both my true ‘researcher’ bent and Professionelle’s positive psychology approach to find the themes that the SWOMS share so that we can all learn. Of course, I would love to hear from you all about your perspectives; it is undoubtedly the combined wisdom of Professionelle members that makes this website such a special place.

Priorities

All the SWOMs I know are extremely clear about their priorities and are really disciplined at enforcing them. And they all prioritise themselves first. They un-ashamedly make sure they take the time to look after themselves: they exercise regularly, they get regular massages/facials/ nails done. If you don’t look after yourself, you’ll be no good for anyone else

To some of you this might seem like common sense. If only that were true! So many working mums I know feel incredibly guilty about caring for themselves, they feel they should be putting everyone ahead of themselves. Unfortunately, some of them also make (intentionally or unintentionally) other working mums feel guilty for looking after themselves. I remember one telling me ‘it must be so nice to have the time to go to yoga twice a week…’ and me feeling slightly guilty for about a second and than reminding myself that it is the yoga that I do that keeps me going.

One of my own role models, and a definite SWOM, is Alison Andrew. She is now the Managing Director of Lexicon Systems and about a year ago Alison kindly agreed to be interviewed for Professionelle. Alison is very clear about looking after herself. If you haven’t yet, make sure you read the interview with her; she has some real pearls of wisdom and shared her insights about how she makes it all work.

The other thing all the SWOMs I know do is to prioritise time with their family and their partner. They build their own personal and psychological resources that way. They take the time and the effort to invest in these incredibly important relationships. Some, like Alison, have regular dates with their partners, others diarise family holidays at the start of every year, leaving nothing to chance.

Successful working mums also know they can’t be super-women. And they know how important it is to outsource aspects of their lives to others, be it child care, cleaning, cooking, washing or ironing. They know they can’t do it all, and they don’t feel guilty about it!

There are consequences of course. Most SWOMs are very selective about their social lives. They don’t attend many events and there has to be a real purpose and meaning to the events they choose to attend. They also choose their close friends and associates very carefully, and tend to surround themselves with supportive and positive people. This leads me to the next theme I’ve observed:

Positivity

SWOMs strike me as very positive women. That is not to say that they are raging optimists, not at all, but they do look at life as a series of opportunities. They are not ones to linger on the wrongs of the past or their own faults. They have a ‘get up and do it’ attitude.

They are very careful about who they associate with. It strikes me that most SWOMs have friends who are supportive and like-minded. They don’t tolerate toxic friendships for long.

At times it is this positive attitude that some people find difficult to deal with. As successful working mums tend to get on with things and are extremely resilient, you won’t be hearing them whinge or complain a lot even when they are faced with huge challenges. They don’t indulge in self-pity or self-disclose their difficulties much. It is this ‘getting on with it’ behaviour and attitude that I have heard people say makes them look ‘unattainable’ or even more strongly ‘scary’.

To me, it’s because successful working mums are very aware of how precious their time and energy is that they would much rather invest it in doing things that are productive and engaging. They are ‘builders’ and they are engaged in building and contributing. And that leads me to probably what is most important about their ‘recipe’ for success –

An Engaged Life

One of the cornerstones of Positive Psychology is the notion of the three “lives”. In his book ‘Authentic Happiness’, Professor Martin Seligman outlines the three types of lives, namely the ‘Pleasant Life’, the ‘Engaged Life’ and the ‘Meaningful Life’.

The Pleasant Life is all about satisfying our desires. It’s about lovely holidays, good food and wine,and great company. Yes, at the time it feels good and having pleasantness as part of our lives is important, but the thing about the pleasant life is that it habituates. Seligman provides the analogy of eating great French Vanilla ice cream. The first mouthful tastes divine but by the end of a huge bowl it tastes like cardboard.

The Engaged Life is the life in which people are able to use their signature strengths frequently at home or work. And the Meaningful Life is when people get to use their signature strengths doing something they believe in and view as bigger and more important than themselves.

All of the SWOMS I know lead the latter types of life, and most lead a meaningful life. They do work they believe in, and they use their signature strengths doing it. Are they busy? Absolutely, they are VERY busy, they get a lot done and achieved. The more they do, the more their resources are built, and the more content and happy they become. They still make sure they experience the pleasant life as well, but their energies are directed at doing work that is meaningful to them, which also allows them to use their signature strengths.

Finally, all the successful working mums I know have definitely one common denominator, and this is my final observation for now. So, all SWOMS are -

Organised!

There’s no getting around it. It seems that to be a successful working mum, you really do need to be organised. These women get so much done and achieved in their days and they do it in a calm and controlled manner. They only way they are able to be so productive is by being organised. Even though some of them are incredibly high powered and outsource some of the more mundane aspects of the household, they are still well on top of their own and their children’s lives. They are the ones that RSVP for the birthday parties, organise their own children’s parties, sign up the kids to that piano lesson etc. The way they keep on top of everything is by being organised with a capital O!

It was in a yoga workshop recently that I heard a line that best describes SWOMs to me.

They make the effortful look effortless.

What do you think?

Do you have observations of your own about what makes successful working mums successful? I’d love to hear from you and I know you love reading each others’ perceptions.

Your Feedback

I really enjoyed the article about SWOMS that Galia wrote the other day. As a working mum I find it quite frustrating how large organisations cannot still, even with the supposed work life balance promoting, see that this doesn't actually happen. I have two daughters going to school soon and I find myself torn. I cannot do my job part time I have to be full time. There is no option. I either work full time or don't!! I amazes me how organisations that need good, loyal workers that are hard to find don't do more to accommodate working mums. If you do know of any please do let us know!!! Not to say at my company that they don't look after us as they do but feel that working mums should have more leeway to be able to provide companies with their knowledge and skills but have the opportunity to fulfil the motherly duties as well! Don't know if you have had this feedback a lot or not? It would be interesting to hear what is actually happening out there in regards to this.

This is a great article Galia. I’m not a Mum (yet?) but you’re right, this article is still interesting and relevant for me because of its underlying philosophy. Cheers.

Greetings Galia! Thank you for the interesting article. I feel I am a Super SWOM, as I did all the things you talk about, except have time to look after myself well, because I did not have that loving relationship with a partner, which sounds so good to have. Only then can you spend some of your (never spare) time at the gym etc. but with a guilty conscience, as the partner is not there taking his turn looking after/being with the children. I feel the criteria set out above sound wonderful, but when you are a single parent SWOM, you never stop knowing and feeling you are stealing time from your children to be successful/survive in the hard world out there. Where ex’s blackmail single mums, by not paying their fair share of the real costs to rear children and the time necessary is never shared equally, if at all, by the fathers of these children, even if they live around the corner. So often you are responsible for your children 365x24 p.a. Even that dreamy statement about having a loving relationship with your partner, is often out of reach of single mums, because if you have a daughter, you have to be extremely cautious who you have as a partner. Also the person you might be attracted to might not fit in the family and then cannot stay. In the end you capitulate and have no relationship, which hardens life even more. It would seem there are so many things to juggle as a single parent that partnerships can manage without struggle, if both are willing. So I compare with envy, what I went through bringing up my daughter in Portugal on my own, having 2 businesses, juggling private German school fees, sending her to all interesting events and activities she could manage to attend, making time for her despite on average 12-14 hour days, 6 days a week. When I read your article of all these well organised, clearly prioritised ladies, I can only say after 8 years of this, I was burnt out on the pyre. If my daughter had not been helping by cooking, cleaning, doing her homework on her own, we would never have survived this time. We rowed the boat together as a team. She clearly knew why I was not at home. One day I promised her that tomorrow evening I would definitely be home at 6 and we would do something special for sure that evening.... I came home 9, even later than normal. I crawled in the door and began crying because I had been unable to keep my promise. My 14 year old daughter said to me, “Mum don’t cry, I know why you are doing all of this, you are doing this for me, so that I have all that you can give.” Talking as a SSWOM, we have to take our children into our confidence and these children have to grow up faster and take on responsibility, before the time parents these days feel they should. They learn to cook simple meals aged 8 and by the age of 12 they run the household and still have good school results. They learn to manage the household and cook on a budget, even when mum hasn’t been out to buy any food for days. They know how to sort the laundry so the red socks and the white blouse do not have a colour merge. Hundreds of lessons are learned by having to do. So dear Galia, if there are any SSWOMs out there reading this and they make up the majority of ladies who are in the work force because they have to work to keep their children alive, I greet them from the depths of my heart. These women are the real heroes, whether they are completely successful in the criteria set out above or in the way I feel success as a child bearing women should be counted, i.e. having a really loving relationship with your children, while they are at home and after they leave home. Also that you have taken the time while they were at home, to teach them all the skills needed to survive in the world and if you haven’t, that the relationship with the children is so good that they come to you when they don’t know the answers or are willing to listen to your opinion/advice on life. That’s success for me as a single mum SSWOM! My secret to success, no matter what is going on today in my life? If you don’t have a planned goal for your life, your get up and go will get up and went! Hugs, especially to all the SSWOMs. Bridget Marsh-Freese, Body Mind Therapies Bowen Emotional Freedom Therapist, Tauranga

Galia – the SWOM article came at exactly the right time for me. I am a SWOM that tries to do too much to compensate for such and have been nearing breaking point for a couple of weeks now. I work long hours in a high pressure environment, and still make certain at home I do everything (including baking bikkies for our children’s lunch because that’s what Mums do). I feel like I’ve just had the ok to get help! Sensational article! I’ve not posted on your site before (usually too busy!), and was so very excited that I simply had to send straight away rather than take the time to ascertain the right channel for such. I hope someone finds my comments spurs them to have the same change of thought as I have.

Well done Galia on just nike-ing it: great article and a very interesting read!A definite "email on" and print-out for future reference article.

"You look at the food provided in lunch meetings. What woman would choose sausage rolls and custard squares?” she asks - Alison’s comments resonate with me. We have regular team meetings and I cannot eat the food that is put out. Yet, inside I feel that because it’s only me that doesn’t eat it, I should just remain silent and eat my own lunch after the meeting.

Tribal Workers

by Thomas Barlow, in the Financial Times, July 24th 1999

Today's generation of high-earning professionals maintain that their personal fulfillment comes from their jobs and the hours they work. They should grow up, says Thomas Barlow.

A friend of mine recently met a young American woman who was studying on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford. She already had two degrees from top US universities, had worked as a lawyer and as a social worker in the US, and somewhere along the way had acquired a black belt in kung fu. Now, however, her course at Oxford was coming to an end and she was thoroughly angst-ridden about what to do next.

The Curse of Choice

Her problem was no ordinary one. She couldn't decide whether she should make a lot of money as a corporate lawyer/management consultant, devote herself to charity work helping battered wives in disadvantaged communities, or go to Hollywood to work as a stunt double in kung fu films.

What most struck my friend was not the disparity of this woman's choices, but the earnestness and bad grace with which she ruminated on them. It was almost as though she begrudged her own talents, opportunities and freedom - as though the world had treated her unkindly by forcing her to make such a hard choice.

Her case is symptomatic of our times. In recent years, there has grown up a culture of discontent among the highly educated young, something that seems to flare up, especially, when people reach their late 20s and early 30s.

It arises not from frustration caused by lack of opportunity, as may have been true in the past, but from an excess of possibilities. Most theories of adult developmental psychology have a special category for those in their late 20s and early 30s.

Whereas the early to mid-20s are seen as a time to establish one's mode of living, the late 20s to early 30s are often considered a period of reappraisal. In a society where people marry and have children young, where financial burdens accumulate early, and where job markets are inflexible, such reappraisals may not last long. But when people manage to remain free of financial or family burdens, and where the perceived opportunities for alternative careers are many, the reappraisal is likely to be angst-ridden and long lasting.

Among no social group is this more true than the modern, international, professional elite: that tribe of young bankers, lawyers, consultants and managers for whom financial, familial, personal, corporate and (increasingly) national ties have become irrelevant.

Often they grew up in one country, were educated in another, and are now working in a third. They are independent, well paid, and enriched by experiences that many of their parents could only dream of. Yet, by their late 20s, many carry a sense of disappointment: that for all their opportunities, freedoms and achievements, life has not delivered quite what they had hoped.

New Expectations of Work

At the heart of this disillusionment lies a new attitude towards work. The idea has grown up, in recent years, that work should not be just a means to an end a way to make money, support a family, or gain social prestige - but should provide a rich and fulfilling experience in and of itself. Jobs are no longer just jobs; they are lifestyle options. Recruiters at financial companies, consultancies and law firms have promoted this conception of work. Job advertisements promise challenge, wide experiences, opportunities for travel and relentless personal development.

Michael is a 33- year-old management consultant who has bought into this vision of late-20th century work. Intelligent and well-educated - with three degrees, including a doctorate - he works in Munich, and has a "stable, long-distance relationship" with a woman living in California . He takes 140 flights a year and works an average of 80 hours a week. Some weeks he works more than 100 hours. When asked if he likes his job, he will say: "I enjoy what I'm doing in terms of the intellectual challenges."

Although he earns a lot, he doesn't spend much. He rents a small apartment, though he is rarely there, and has accumulated very few possessions. He justifies the long hours not in terms of wealth-acquisition, but solely as part of a "learning experience”. This attitude to work has several interesting implications, mostly to do with the shifting balance between work and non-work, employment and leisure. Because fulfilling and engrossing work - the sort that is thought to provide the most intense learning experience - often requires long hours or captivates the imagination for long periods of time, it is easy to slip into the idea that the converse is also true: that just by working long hours, one is also engaging in fulfilling and engrossing work.

This leads to the popular fallacy that you can measure the value of your job and, therefore, the amount you are learning from it by the amount of time you spend on it. And, incidentally, when a premium is placed on learning rather than earning, people are particularly susceptible to this form of self-deceit.

Long Hours = Validation and Fulfilment

Thus, whereas in the past, when people in their 20s or 30s spoke disparagingly about nine-to-five jobs it was invariably because they were seen as too routine, too unimaginative, or too bourgeois. Now, it is simply because they don't contain enough hours. Young professionals have not suddenly developed a distaste for leisure, but they have solidly bought into the belief that a 45-hour week necessarily signifies an unfulfilling job.

Jane, a 29-year-old corporate lawyer who works in the City of London, tells a story about working on a deal with another lawyer, a young man in his early 30s. At about 3am, he leant over the boardroom desk and said: Isn't this great? This is when I really love my job." What most struck her about the remark was that the work was irrelevant (she says it was actually rather boring); her colleague simply liked the idea of working late. "It's as though he was validated, or making his life important by this,” she says.

Unfortunately, when people can convince themselves that all they need do in order to lead fulfilled and happy lives is to work long hours, they can quickly start to lose reasons for their existence. As they start to think of their employment as a lifestyle, fulfilling and rewarding of itself - and in which the reward is proportional to hours worked - people rapidly begin to substitute work for other aspects of their lives.

Michael, the management consultant, is a good example of this phenomenon. He is prepared to trade (his word) not just goods and time for the experience afforded by his work, but also a substantial measure of commitment in his personal relationships. In a few months, he is being transferred to San Francisco, where he will move in with his girlfriend.

Married to the Job

But he's not sure that living in the same house is actually going to change the amount of time he spends on his relationship. "Once I move over, my time involvement on my relationship will not change significantly. My job takes up most of my time and pretty much dominates what I do, when, where and how I do it," he says. Moreover, the reluctance to commit time to a relationship because they are learning so much, and having such an intense and fulfilling time at work is compounded, for some young professionals, by a reluctance to have a long-term relationship at all.

Today, by the time someone reaches 30, they could easily have had three or four jobs in as many different cities - which is not, as it is often portrayed, a function of an insecure global job- market, but of choice. Robert is 30 years old. He has three degrees and has worked on three continents. He is currently working for the United Nations in Geneva. For him, the most significant deterrent when deciding whether to enter into a relationship is the likely transient nature of the rest of his life. "What is the point in investing all this emotional energy and exposing myself in a relationship, if I am leaving in two months, or if I do not know what I am doing next year?" he says.

Such is the character of the modern, international professional, at least throughout his or her 20s. Spare time, goods and relationships, these are all willingly traded for the exigencies of work. Nothing is valued so highly as accumulated experience. Nothing is neglected so much as commitment. With this work ethic - or perhaps one should call it a professional development ethic" - becoming so powerful, the globally mobile generation now in its late 20s and early 30s has garnered considerable professional success.

The Liberty Trap

At what point, though, does the experience-seeking end? Kathryn is a successful American academic, 29, who bucked the trend of her generation: she recently turned her life round for someone else. She moved to the UK, specifically, to be with a man, a decision that she says few of her contemporaries understood. "We're not meant to say: 'I made this decision for this person. Today, you're meant to do things for yourself. If you're willing to make sacrifices for others - especially if you're a woman - that's seen as a kind of weakness. I wonder, though, is doing things for yourself really empowerment, or is liberty a kind of trap?" she says.

For many, it is a trap that is difficult to break out of, not least because they are so caught up in a culture of professional development. And spoilt for choice, some like the American Rhodes Scholar no doubt become paralyzed by their opportunities, unable to do much else in their lives, because they are so determined not to let a single one of their chances slip. If that means minimal personal commitments well into their 30s, so be it. "Loneliness is better than boredom" is Jane's philosophy. And, although she knows "a lot of professional single women who would give it all up if they met a "rich man to marry", she remains far more concerned herself about finding fulfillment at work. "I am constantly questioning whether I am doing the right thing here," she says. "There's an eternal search for a more challenging and satisfying option, a better lifestyle. You always feel you're not doing the right thing, always feel as if you should be striving for another goal," she says. Jane, Michael, Robert and Kathryn grew up as part of a generation with fewer social constraints determining their futures than has been true for probably any other generation in history. They were taught at school that when they grew up they could "do anything", "be anything". It was an idea that was reinforced by popular culture, in films, books and television.

The notion that one can do anything is clearly liberating. But life without constraints has also proved a recipe for endless searching, endless questioning of aspirations. It has made this generation obsessed with self-development and determined, for as long as possible, to minimize personal commitments in order to maximise the options open to them. One might see this as a sign of extended adolescence. Eventually, they will be forced to realize that living is as much about closing possibilities as it is about creating them.

Are Women Harder To Market To Than Men?

By Gretchen Hanley

After attending Professionelle’s recent Personal Brand seminar, I was compelled - along with some encouragement from Galia! - to write an article on my experiences of marketing to women. I am an Investment Advisor for ABN AMRO Craigs and have worked in Financial Markets, predominantly as a Stockbroker, for the last twelve years.

When I first graduated I couldn’t find work in New Zealand but I watched my fellow male post-graduate colleagues obtaining jobs easily. It was evident that the ‘boys club’ was alive and well and that I was best to try a different market. I headed to Sydney where I succeeded in securing an initial role as a Dealer’s Assistant in the dealing room that I so wanted to work in.

Women: A New Target Market

I transitioned from Assistant to Global Markets Dealer to Private Client Advisor over the space of fours years and during this time a number of things occurred. We saw the rise and fall of the technology sector which led to an increased level of coverage of financial markets in the mainstream press and on television. During this period, studies on investors were being carried out and they discovered a new group of investors: females!

The rise of marketing to women for investing began in earnest. We saw the advent of the terminology of ‘Women & Investing’ and numerous studies showed that ‘nine out of ten women will be solely responsible for their finances at some point in their lives’. Women were now working longer in higher earning careers, returning to the work place post-baby, becoming the dominant bread-winner and thinking about their retirement.

Banks wanted a slice of that pie and saw me as a good way to access it. Suddenly, doors opened and I became a ‘hot commodity’! But these prospective employers failed to ask the all-important question of whether I actually had any female clients. If they had, my answer would have been, “Yes, some, but not enough to make a living purely in that space”.

Women Win Women, Right?

After seven years in Sydney, I was head-hunted to work in Hong Kong. The CEO of my new employer told me that it was my “potential to capture market share in the professional women savings market” that was one of my most compelling attributes. During my time in Hong Kong, however, it wasn’t professional women’s savings that earned me money or delivered results for my firm.

The key means for attracting new clients was via cold calling, I trawled the White Pages and the web looking for western names and spent every evening from 6pm-9pm calling these prospective clients. Invariably those who responded best to my dulcet tones were male and I secured meetings with them. Women seemed reticent and unsure of why I would call them, whilst men didn’t seem so shy and also used the call to try and drive free advice out of me.

Whilst cold calling can be a somewhat soul destroying exercise it gave me the skill of being able to talk about anything to anybody and not to fear rejection. Perhaps this form of marketing was too in-the-face for women. I continued down the more traditional routes to secure females as clients, I networked and became Vice-President of the New Zealand Society of Hong Kong, played netball and did all those things you do as an ex-pat to ensure you meet people. I employed somebody else to make cold calls for me during the day (a male) but still the professional women savers eluded me.

Waiting for Prince Charming

What were they doing with their money?

I asked my girlfriends and female social contacts and it seemed they didn’t have much left over when it came to saving. Hong Kong does have great shops, but seriously? They were reluctant to take risks and didn’t think they had the knowledge to do so. One of my high-earning pals gave me the best quote

I believe that the man I end up with will have more money than me, so I don’t see why I’d sacrifice my current lifestyle to save.

To be fair a number of them did own investment property but didn’t consider that investing outside this or with their bank was a smart choice.

Choices

I returned to New Zealand to look after my mother before she died and in those months we discussed how the world had changed for women in her lifetime. She reflected on the choices that hadn't been available to her, and what - whilst she had had a successful career in the later stages of her life - she would do if she were younger. She wished she’d had the opportunity to have financial freedom outside the ‘joint account’, some investments that she could have called her own and that she made all the decisions on.

We discussed what opportunities there were now available to me in New Zealand, how different it was to when I first graduated. The phone was ringing with job offers from the very firms who had rejected me nine years earlier. I accepted a role with ABN AMRO Craigs.

Slow Progress

I was still determined to unlock the female investor from where she was hidden but this time it wasn’t the key reason I was employed. Over the three years I have now been back working in New Zealand, I have attended numerous networking functions. At these, I often hear women say that they want to gain more female clientele, market their products to females, and grow a more female-oriented business.

So do I, but I still don’t have more female than male clients. Research and analysis shows that women’s knowledge of investing and financial markets has increased exponentially in recent years, but I haven’t seen a commensurate increase in the number of women among my clients, or even my prospective clients.

Over the last year, my colleague Claire Dower and I have been running educational breakfasts for women on a bi-monthly basis with an average attendance of thirty females and we are seeing some benefits from this. Women like the educational aspect, the feedback is positive and some business has flowed from this, predominantly in Kiwisaver schemes.

But I still find that I can speak to five men and four will be on board and opening accounts within a week, sometimes even the same day! I could do the same presentation to women and I will get just one on board, and she will take about three or four months to make the move. Predominantly, my female clients still come from the result of a divorce or becoming a widow and therefore inheriting investments. The dynamics haven’t changed in my client base in the last 9 years. It seems to me that women are predominantly only taking on investing in financial markets when it is forced on them. They don’t necessarily seek out a female advisor in this event more than a male, they look for security and quality of an organization and preferably a referral to an advisor to entrust these savings with.

This leads me to wonder: are women harder to market to than men?

Perhaps my field is simply more interesting to men…Perhaps women don’t like to take risks to the same level as they aren’t as ‘cocky’ as men…perhaps that risk means investing in shares doesn’t appeal to women the way we’ve been assuming it would.

Ideas and Advice?

I’m interested in other members’ perspectives on this subject, especially if they have noticed that it is harder to win women as clients, and that they work harder and longer to achieve the same number of female clients as male. Does anyone have any tips to share on effective marketing to women, by women?

I’m intrigued. After all, I am a woman. I would have thought I understood my target market better by now!

Acknowledgement

Gretchen Hanley, NZX Advisor

As an Investment Advisor with ABN AMRO Craigs, Gretchen Hanley advises clients in all aspects of equity investments, specialising in portfolio management for private clients, family trusts and Kiwisaver. Gretchen joined ABN AMRO Craigs as an Investment Advisor in April 2005, after two years in Hong Kong as a financial planner and seven years in Sydney as a Global Markets Dealer and a Private Client Adviser, specialising in superannuation. Gretchen regularly presents share market updates for TV1 Business Breakfast, and the 12pm and 4.30pm news bulletins.

Gretchen holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance), a Post Graduate Diploma (Finance), and the NZX Diploma.

DDI: +64 9 919 7431

Email: gretchen.hanley@abnamrocraigs.com

Members' Feedback and Thoughts

Been thinking about this for a couple of days have lots to say, but I don’t have time to write much and you don’t have time to read much, so it’s very short!

Gretchen would be totally unable to market to me because I am just not in her market. I do have investments, but I take full responsibility for myself at all times, as I simply don’t believe that anyone (apart from a doctor) can truly have my intersets at heart as much as I do. I’m afraid my approach is that Gretchen will be paid to sell me something that’s ultimately more important to her than my situation. If she tried cold calling me, she would not finish the first sentence before I hung up. Sorry, it’s very harsh I know. Nothing personal, as I know nothing about her except what she writes above, but this is how all such callers are treated.
I don’t know why it might be hard to market to women because I do no marketing as such. I’m a one-person business (market research projects) and I’m fully occupied by personal referrals. I treat every project, and every client contact, as a marketing exercise (very subtly, though!) simply by doing a great job, being enthusiatic helpful, reliable knowledgeable, able to fix their issues with minimum fuss! And I see absolutely no difference between male female clients - both can be terrific and both can drive me to despair.

Best wishes to Gretchen though, after all that, sorry I don’t have the silver bullet for her.

Being passionate about women in business I assumed that I would also attract more women clients than men but it doesn’t happen. Even with Diva Business Solutions as our brand many assume that we target and predominantly have women clients. After 8 years we probably have a higher percentage of women clients than most accounting firms but we still have more men clients than women. More often than not our new clients are referred by our existing clients. We have a policy of referring work to other women professionals where possible. It does seem to be the referral rather than the gender that brings the client.

I’m not a woman, but this might give me an "outside" perspective on the issue. I have often worked on projects where everyone else on the team is female (this happens all the time in NFP projects, for instance). Now, I’m hardly an alpha male, but I’ve often been forced by the group to take on a leadership role. My observation is that women are sometimes uncomfortable asserting their seniority over other women. There’s a "sisterhood" dynamic that can be disrupted - often at genuine cost to project outcomes. I wonder if a similar issue comes up in marketing. On both sides of that equation, the woman in question may feel uncomfortable asserting her superior expertise/experience/rank...

Hi Gretchen, I just had a great laugh at your very well written document in the Professionelle website. I too have been intrigued by the nature of "Women dealing with Women" in business.

When I was younger and "Employed", I was always told by my seniors that it was jealousy, and women find it intimidating being sold anything by another women.. especially a younger women... Hmmmm... I wasn’t sure I bought this, as I was sometimes seeing very high powered women in positions I could only dream of... why would they be intimidated by me??

13 years after that first sales job, I now have my own business (also, like you, after being overseas with huge learning curve career moves). I bought my current business 4 1/2 years ago with my Mother. We are very much a close knit team, and all females here. We now have 5 staff, and not for any other reason than just co-incidence that it’s all females too.

We actually promote girl power, and give credit to women in business. Funnily enough, after years of having dodgy male clients - and like yourself I could sell a group of men any concept (in fact concepts that sometimes didn't even make sense) - I now have very few male clients... The ones I do have love us to bits, but we by far have more female clients.

After reading your article, I thought for a while about this... Women love shopping and have control of up and coming and ongoing events in their lives, their companies and their families. Women like to hold and see product and also visualize... So with my company and products, women love it when I can be innovative, save them time and money and give them something pretty sharp to walk away with that they made the final decision on. When I sold advertising it was always the women that would take around a year to make a decision... They couldn’t see the long term investment or benefits.

Anyway, I thought your article was great. I belong to an excellent women’s networking breakfast, and we all are very much giving leads and a very supportive group...

As far as thinking you’re going wrong somewhere.. Females, I think, at the end of the day want something for there "Buck" as they say!! ha ha! It’s harder for them to let go to any money that is not tangible.. But hey, to be totally honest with you (I’m one of those terrible women) the one that says, Yes I have the information here and will look over it... And I would say 9 out of 10 times I do look into the information, but it gets too hard and it gets put back in the look-at-later pile!! Eeeek!

Good luck with growing your female clientele.

I am a chartered accountant, and have only recently experienced an increase in female clientele who have specifically sought me out because I am a female, or who have been referred to me by female clients for the same reason. I have not seen the need to seek out just “the girls", or just people from my home country, as that would reduce my income stream by half or so. However. it is indeed very nice to work with, and assist, women in their line of work.

My profession has many females, but most of them are in either management or support roles, not owners or sole traders like me. The way I advertise is designed to make it clear that a woman is at the helm. I have a great variety of female clients in business, and would like to see them prosper as much as the next "guy".

As a woman myself, I haven’t always felt "taken seriously" by older, and old-school, men, as perhaps I was the same age as their daughters at the time. Now that I have passed the 40 mark (eeek), I do find the respect arriving more. Plus I have been in business on my own for several years, so I suppose that helps too. The results speak for themselves, although I dare not boast. As for being approached by another professional woman - on the odd occasion, I fear I too have been guilty of not taking them seriously, of checking them out a bit more than I would a male counterpart…And there’s no "flirty" dynamic that you get between male and female for a more interesting business deal experience either. But now that I have "grown up" perhaps that is also something I now need less…!

Dare I say also that there are quite a few women out there who promote themselves a little too harshly, too dominant to another woman, and thus overbearing – a bit like "we’ll show you....".which doesn’t sit well with me personally. We should not see men as a threat (although they certainly have stolen the odd job from me due to their sex and not their merit, so yes a threat they can be), but I would rather show the general business world that we as women can run things smoother, more "whole" sometimes.

And then there is the odd hormonally challenged female client or two who just drives me absolutely barmy, but that is an entirely different topic! I doubt that anyone can deal with them, sorry girls!!

I am sure that forums such as this and women’s meeting groups are a way to meet more like minded women, and also share little bits of advice that the men would do during exchanges over 18 holes of golf. That’s something mothers and hardworking women often don’t get to do as much. Women helping women gets my vote!

Interesting article, Gretchen. I’d think that one of the issues that you are coming up against is the inherently risky nature of your business. Generally speaking (and I am generalizing, here), men are hardwired to take greater risks in the pursuit of higher returns. Women are more risk-averse, and more likely to adopt a lower risk strategy in return for more assured level of return. [It would be interesting to hear from a psychologist or human biologist on this point] Note: I am not commenting negatively on either strategy, both have benefits. "Investments" have a perception of high risk (especially to those of us who remember the 80s stock market crash the current market isn"t doing the reputation of shares much good, either).

I’d say that you might want to identify rock solid conservative investment options and package these in a way that is attractive to the more risk-averse investor. [I believe that that is exactly what the finance companies did (not particularly honestly) and that’s why they had such a high level of grass-roots conservative mom pop investors. It was an "easy" and "safe" decision] I recognise that this is propably counter-intuitive to anyone who is in the financial advice business -- and who is, virtually by definition, a risk-taker! And very difficult to make these recommendations when you "know" that a higher risk strategy will garner greater returns. On a personal note, I have sat through meetings with several investment advisors in the last 6 months from a range of companies, and all, without fail recommended high risk investments, ignoring my current situation which might require extracting money from investments at relatively short notice, in favour of my long-term potential for high earnings. Leaving me to wonder whether any of them (male or female) actually listened to me, instead of just giving me the standard sales pitch. Needless to say, none of them got my business!

Developing your Personal Brand - a Professionelle workshop

Friday 19th September, 9am-1pm, Auckland city.

Attendance: $225 incl GST per person until midnight August 18th. After that, the price will go up. Click here to go to our Members' area to book

An essential investment if you want to :

Learn the value of a personal brand and the key steps to developing it
Identify what makes YOU unique and what is core to your personal brand
Identify your target audience and your required marketing activities
Leave with a set of tools to keep on developing your personal brand

Recent participants said:

"Once again, a totally positive experience but most of all thought provoking. I now have a “toolbox” I understand to help my development."

"Many thanks to Galia and Sarah – a powerful and insightful course that gave people the tools to take control of their dreams/desires and move forward proactively."

"Your courses and presentations have contributed to me personally and professionally and long may I continue to attend!"

How to Flourish at Work

By Galia BarHava-Monteith

4 July 2008

We spend a huge chunk of our lives working. What happens at work influences how we feel outside work hours, and can change who we are. Even academics now acknowledge that work is a major contributor to our psychological health and wellbeing - something the rest of us have known for a very long time! One of the feminist revolution’s major contributions to women’s lives was to foster a deep understanding that access to gainful paid work represented one of the key means for women’s empowerment.

This feedback, sent to me a while back from one of our readers, illustrates the importance of work to women’s wellbeing beautifully:

I thought of you the other day when I was at a lunch with our recruitment consultants. I spoke to a lovely older woman at my table who told me how frustrated and disappointed she had been 33 years ago to be forced to give up work when she had her baby daughter even though she was good at her job and earned more than her husband. She says she would so love to have had the choices women do today and I came away feeling very grateful that society has evolved and changed so much. I think I sometimes focus too much on what still needs to change so it was good to have the reminder of the progress made.

Now we take it for granted that we could, if we wanted, be gainfully employed and have a career (or multiple careers) that span our lifetime. And so we should. Growing up, the expectation in my family was that I would go to University, become a professional and work for my entire adult life. I must say I have similar expectations for my own daughter. But it is more important to me that she find happiness and wellbeing in her work than just focus on professional success and a high income. That is quite different to the aspirations my parents had for me.

There are many reasons for this. We live longer, and so we work longer. We now know that the kind of work we do and the companies we work for have a significant impact on our physical, psychological and, yes, spiritual wellbeing. Ignoring that can lead to disastrous consequences, like relationship breakdowns and health issues. Most now accept that we can no longer compartmentalise the various aspects of our lives.

Throughout my own working life, and specifically as an ethics manager, an executive coach and an interviewer for Professionelle.co.nz, I have always been very interested in what those who seemed to me to be truly happy in their working lives all had in common. I have spent many hours talking to people, reading research and listening to leaders in the field of psychology and ethics. I’d like to share my observations and conclusions with you and see whether you agree or not!

Living our Values

I only really began consciously thinking about values when I was appointed Fonterra’s Ethics Manager, under the wonderful guidance of Doctor Simon Longstaff of the St James Ethics Centre in Sydney In developing the programme with Dr Longstaff and the Ethics Committee, I had to spend a lot of time reading, listening and thinking about ethics, values and work. I was truly heartened when I conducted workshops with employees throughout the organisation and saw people’s eyes light up when we explored what values are and what role they play in our working lives. Since then I’ve come to realise that most of us want to work for companies we are proud of, companies whose values align with our own.

So what are values? The definition that I use is, “Values are the things that are GOOD to have. They are the essence of what we stand for, and should underpin our behaviours, decisions and actions”. Ultimately, personal values are implicitly related to choice; we use our values to guide our decisions.

Increasingly, employees are becoming more aware of their values and seek to find companies whose values align with their own. Indeed, my first observation about people who are truly happy in their professional lives is that they ALL work for companies where they feel this alignment exists. And sadly, the reverse is also true. I have come across individuals who have fabulous-sounding roles in big companies, but who are very unhappy. In all of these cases, after in-depth conversations with them, it became apparent that they feel there is a misalignment between their own personal values and those of the company they work for.

However, it is not always the case that if you work for a company where there is a perfect values alignment you’ll be happy. And that’s where Positive Psychology lends a helping hand.

Using your signature strengths

Positive Psychology focuses on what works and on enhancing our functioning and wellbeing. You can read a more in-depth review of Positive Psychology in Professionelle’s feature archive. Core to this work is an authoritative classification and measurement system of human strengths. The leaders of this field have developed twenty-four signature strengths.

In his seminal book, Authentic Happiness, Professor Martin Seligman’s key recommendation to finding happiness and wellbeing at work is being able to use your signature strengths at work every day. You can measure your own signature strengths on Seligman’s site and do a quick assessment on whether you get to use your five core signature strengths at work every day!

Indeed, it is my observation that ALL the people I’ve met who are happy in their work share this in common. They get to do things they love doing and which they are really good at. I do believe that when you are working for a company where your values align and you get to use your signature strengths, chances are you are better adjusted and experience higher levels of wellbeing than most!

Helen Mackay is the General Counsel of New Zealand Oil and Gas. She’s also the immediate past president of Corporate Lawyers Association of New Zealand (CLANZ), and a mother of two young boys with another one on the way. She’s also one of the most content women I’ve ever met. When we discussed what makes her happy and content at work, she reported that using her signature strengths was very much a key to it.

“For me, [happiness and contentment at work] probably came when my signature strengths were employed and values alignment was present.”

To some of us, this may be all that is required. However, for those of us extroverts as well as those of us who are insecure over-achievers, there is a final ingredient to make it all really work.

Being Appreciated

In my first professional role, I worked for a brilliant company whose values I really shared and was proud to be part of. I was also able to use my signature strengths every day. Trouble was, my signature strengths weren’t that highly valued! What made things even worse was that the focus at that time was very much on addressing ‘gaps’ in development. So the focus was on the things I wasn’t good at, and there was very little attention given by most managers around me to the things I was good at. I wasn’t happy there, despite getting to do some great work and learning exciting things.

I didn’t stay that long. To me being appreciated is very important. And, again, it is my observation that that’s important to many others.

So, here they are, the three core ingredients to happiness and wellbeing at work:

I have interviewed Caroline Quay, General Counsel of Fisher and Paykel Healthcare, and a working mother herself, on a number of occasions. Caroline is someone who is absolutely engaged and loves what she does. In one of these conversations she summed up the formula for flourishing perfectly for me:

“ I AM really happy at my work. I get to work for a company that manufactures something I believe in, doing something I am passionate about. They (the company) allow me to employ my strengths in areas where I can add value and they appreciate my contribution.”

I hope this article has got you thinking about how much you are able to flourish at your work. Professionelle would love to hear from you about your perspective and whether you agree or not. One thing’s for sure, all of us should aim to be happy at our work and maximise our wellbeing and full potential.

Governance and the Girls

Compiled by Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes

8 April 2008

Our Professionelle community is becoming a marvellous clippings service! We have received a number of articles in recent weeks, chiefly around women’s under-representation on Boards and the reasons for it.

Do women offer weaker business qualifications and have less business experience?

Is it the old boy’s club or, to put it more charitably, that we all gravitate to people who look like us and so as a consequence, we instinctively trust more?

Are women less visible, or are they just less interested in applying for directorships?

Below, we’ve précised three recent press reports and articles that each shed some light on the matter.

Newly Appointed Directors: How Do Men and Women Differ?

The notion that women don’t have the right stuff to serve on boards no longer holds true, the evidence shows. This is one finding of a recent study, “Newly Appointed Directors in the Boardroom: How Do Men and Women Differ?” The researchers were Dr. Siri Terjesen of the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University, and Dr. Val Singh and Dr. Susan Vinnicombe, both of Cranfield University in the United Kingdom.

“It has long been assumed that women possess less business experience than men, and that’s the number-one myth we debunked,” says Dr. Terjesen, herself a corporate board member. “Women have plenty of experience, although they often have different types of experience than men,” she says.

Several striking differences were revealed between newly appointed male and female corporate directors in terms of their career paths and skill sets. Female directors:

were much more likely to have MBA degrees and were twice as likely to have earned their degrees from elite institutions.
had much more experience than men—-by 62.5 percent to 38.9 percent--on other types of boards.
had a higher likelihood of having a portfolio of career experiences than did the men by 41.7% to 27.8% The men typically had been more singularly focused.

Women say yes more often to different things, "Dr Terjesen explained. "This provides a diverse set of career skills they can bring to their boards.”

Such diversity is becoming increasingly valued, in part due to new regulatory and competitive pressures that are driving corporations to seek directors from outside their own usually homogeneous talent pools.

“Earlier research shows that companies with more women on their boards tend to perform better,” Dr. Terjesen says.

Boards Without Broads

Director Magazine (June 2008) carries an article presenting the figures on the dearth of diversity in New Zealand boardrooms, investigating the drivers and exploring ways to redress the balance. It includes a synopsis of recent research and a variety of interviews. Those who spoke to the magazine include Nicki Crauford of Institute of Directors, Jens Mueller of Waikato School of Management and a director of www.finddirectors.com, and Carmel Fisher of Fisher Funds.

The following short excerpt - under ten per cent of the article, we don’t want to infringe copyright! – is taken from another interview, this time with Anne Urlwin, a director with Meridian Energy. Meridian is a very rare beast: it is a large company with gender parity in the boardroom. Anne has sat on boards for the last twenty years and currently holds seven directorships.

“I think women on boards is about the contribution they bring to the diversity of skills, experience and perspective that all boards need. They won’t get that if the shareholders who appoint those directors don’t tap into the widest possible director candidate pool and I think that pool increasingly includes some very capable women.”

But for a variety of reasons those women are not very visible in more formal networks. She’s not sure how she would have become a professional director if her first appointment (to the initial commercial board of Trust Bank Canterbury) had not given her the opportunity to prove herself and to participate in forums that increased her visibility.

“It can be hard for anyone to get that initial foot in the door.”

As to whether the blokey nature of boards tends to be self-perpetuating, she suggests “it’s human nature for all of us to choose someone like ourselves.” They are the people you see most of so they tend to look like the biggest candidate pool and also offer an element of safety.

“Boards do need to work as a team so while you need that creative tension - there needs to be challenge and debate – it must be done constructively with all members what they are there for and respecting each others’ views.”

The risk of having someone who is disruptive, time-consuming or a “boardroom bully” is an incentive to stick with who you know.

She believes the greater focus on work-life flexibility in conjunction with “the enormous talent wars” that are going on to attract and retain top people is easing the path for women who are aiming for more senior roles.

“It just takes some of the stress out of the practical day-to-day issues of juggling work and family life for both men and women – and I think that will help.”

Women are better managers in most areas

This last article, sent by a member in May 2008, reports on the relative strengths of men and women at senior management and CEO level. (The source was Stuff.co.nz, quoting Reuters, from 6 May 2008). These strengths will manifest in the boardroom as much as Exec team meetings, and it’s interesting to reflect on how the women’s strengths of imagination, and chance-taking seem well aligned with the typical benefit claimed for women on boards: injecting a diversity of ideas.

Women make better business leaders than men in all but two areas of management but men have the upper hand when it comes to focusing on the bottom line, according to an new Australian survey. Data collected from 1800 Australian female and male chief executive officers and managers found women exhibit more strategic drive, risk taking, people skills and innovation and equaled men in the area of emotional stability.
But men came out on top when it came to command and control of management operations and focusing on financial returns.
The survey, conducted for the Steps Leadership Program by employment consultancy firm Peter Berry Consultancy, found women were more likely to take a chance with their ideas and challenge the status quo.

"Women are ambitious, bold, mischievous, colorful and imaginative. They are more confident, competitive, visionary and have a stronger presence,"

Gillian O'Mara, general manager of the Steps Leadership Program, said in a statement.
But the survey found that men were more task focused and concentrated on getting the job done rather than dealing with relationships. Said O'Mara:

"(Men believe that) that bottom line dollars are the only game in town. Their key motives and preferences in life appear to be around revenue, budgets and profit. At work and at home, they are driven by financial opportunities, theyare task focused and concentrate on getting the job done without bothering too much with relationships. They are more comfortable with hierarchies, title silos and processes.

The results of the survey, which was based on an international research-based personality test called the Hogan Assessment System used by organizations to select employees, will be presented at a female leadership seminar in Sydney on May 14.

Professionelle Hits 1000 Registered Members!

By Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes

1 August 2008

Just after our last update, in mid July, we hit our 1000th member. Some of you might have seen my announcement of this milestone on our blog page, complete with a couple of balloons!

This magic number had been our stake in the ground for membership at the end of our first year. Galia and I are both chuffed at this achievement. It means we have added members at the rate of almost exactly two a day and have signed up about eight percent of the target market we had identified as professional and corporate women in NZ when we set Professionelle up.

It also means I have an excuse to play around with pivot tables again to look at the profile of our members...

The last time I wrote up an analysis on our membership was around Christmas, when we had been going for nine months. Back then, I looked at our 700th member and compared her to the norms in our membership. This time I thought I’d see if our member profile has changed as we have gone from 500 to 1000 members. In the text below, the numbers in brackets relate to the member profile at 500 members.

The 'average' Professionelle member: who is she?

You won’t be surprised to hear that our members remain almost entirely female at 98% (97%). Since the 500 mark we have become even more New Zealand-centric with 94% (91%) of members living down here. Greater Auckland is still home to 60% (61%) of members but a noticeable difference which we are really proud of is that we have picked up members in many more locations outside the main centres: Kaitaia, Dargaville, Pirongia, Putaruru,Taupo, Te Puke, Waipukurau, Wanganui, Stratford, Levin, Bulls, Masterton and Rangiora. Galia's appearance on the TV One Special Report in April had a lot to do with that. Given we are an online community, this is exactly what we envisaged building: a safe environment for professional women throughout New Zealand to share their experiences.

Agewise, the largest group in Professionelle are those in their thirties who make up 43% (43%), followed by another 26% (26%) in their forties.

You are all extremly well qualified, with nearly three quarters holding a tertiary qualification. Exactly a third of you (33%) hold post graduate degrees and another 39% (40%) Bachelor equivalents. Of course, this means we have to make sure we keep up our act as yoursquo;re sure to let us know if we don't!

Full time employment remains the most common work arrangement at 60% (62%). Taken together with part time work, 70% (70%) are in what could be termed "conventional or traditional" work arrangements. A further quarter (26%) are self employed, contractors and in their own businesses, leaving 5% (4%) reporting as other, retired or unemployed.

Unsurprisingly, and consistent with our assumptions when we set Professionelle up, the mix of these employment types changes markedly as women reach the age of having children. This is ever later in New Zealand, with the median age now around 28. The exhibit below shows how the conventional employement of full and part time work drops sharply through the thirties age group. This pattern was much the same when we had 500 members.

Employment Type by Age Group Cohort for Professionelle Members

A consistent mix!

By now, an obvious pattern has emerged: the profile is remarkably constant despite doubling the number of members! This is not because we represent the NZ average. Far from it. Taking education as just one example,

Only 4.5% of the female population in this country have post grad degrees, while 11% hold Bachelor's, compared to our 33% and 39%. Professionelle seems to appeal to a very consistent subset of working women in New Zealand. These are women who are highly educated Kiwi urbanites, and well-advanced in their careers.

What do Professionelle members do?

The most diverse aspect of our membership lies in the jobs held. The 1000 members span about 200 (100) different job descriptions. We are really excited by this as it implies we appeal to women with a wide range of professional interests. Nevertheless, there are several sizeable occupation groups within our membership:

sales, marketing and advertising roles account for 14% (16%)
finance and accounting 11% (10%)
the legal profession 10% (10%)
HR excluding recruitment 9% (8%)
General Managers and CEOs 7% (6%).

Outside these groups we have several flavours of consultants and of coaches. Less common roles include a veterinary pathologist, a technical manager in meat processing, a criminology researcher and a ceramic artist. If I ever need to research a particular job for a novel or short story, I’m sure I could find it among our members..!

How did our members find us?

When we set Professionelle up we decided that because of who we were targeting (you!) we wanted to 'earn' your membership through providing intelligent, thoughtful and relevant content on our site and to the media. Readers may be unaware that we have never advertised. We have instead written articles for the business press, spoken at networking meetings, gained mention in others’ newsletters, intranets and websites, and regularly updated this site, which has done wonders for our Google indexing. And of course, we kicked it all off by telling friends and family about Professionelle, and they passed it on. So have many of our members, most of them women we have never met.

Referrals remain the most largest source for Professionelle in gaining new members.

Reflecting the power of word of mouth recommendations, the sources that brought members to us break down as follows::

referrals 49% (54%)
media mentions 26% (25%)
internet searches 14% (9%)
others’ networks 12% (12%)

Professionelle is a self-selecting community and we do not turn any bona fide members away. (We do ignore the applications from dubious Russian websites that we strongly suspect want to sell us little blue pills). This makes the consistency in the profile of our members all the more noteworthy. We believe it has a lot to do with staying true to our promise of delivering in-depth and values-based content and services. This is what you tell us you appreciate and what you tell others about. And we’d like to thank all of you who’ve taken the time to refer us to others!

Will we look the same when we hit 2000? We’ll let you know!

Employers - Hire The Working Mum!

Galia writes:

Some of you might know that I am originally from Israel. I’ve lived in New Zealand my entire adult life, but my first language still remains Hebrew. A few weeks back this e-mail came through (I've removed all the identifying features):

“Hi Galia,
I enjoy reading your Professionelle newsletter and linked articles.

I am new to the business of being a working mother. My son was born 6 months ago, and I resumed work last month.

Before having a child, I’d never had a problem with being a woman in my industry. I often sat in men-only meetings, and the more high-level the discussion, the more likely I was to be the only woman. I had really never felt that this was a problem for me. I had always been appreciated for my talents and efforts and never felt held back in any way.

Things have changed since I came back from maternity leave. I found that people make assumptions about working mums that are based on prejudice rather than reality.For example, “She is more preoccupied with her child now than with work”, “Work is only second priority to her”, “She does a great job, but she will prefer to stay home with a sick child than put in the hours to meet a deadline”, and the best one: “This is a company, not a dairy farm. If she wants to breastfeed her baby, she should stay at home, not come here and pump!”

And the greatest hurdle is my own guilt… maybe they are right…it’s a workplace in the modern world, if I decide to go back to work I should take the consequences (e.g. stop breastfeeding). I should have known that having a baby would affect my career…

Well, I recently encountered this excellent article in the Israeli Ynet, and I wished I could forward it to my colleagues / managers / other working mums to read. I feel that this article could be beneficial to other Professionelle members. Do you think it’s possible to translate and publish it?”

I read the article and agreed with our member. I also thought it would be great for readers of Professionelle to see that similar issues are faced by working mothers the world over, and to read the views of a psychologist, a man, from a completely different culture on the subject of working mums.

So, I contacted Gil Ventura who is an Israeli Psychologist, University lecturer, career adviser – and also a father of two. I asked his permission to translate his piece. He was delighted at the prospect and has since reviewed my translation to his satisfaction.

So here goes:

Employers – Hire the Working Mum!

By Gil Ventura, translated by Galia Barhava-Monteith

“But who’s going to take me on?”

The counselling session with Olga felt like it was going somewhere, but we were divided on the main point: we each had a very different concept of who Olga was.

Olga thought of herself as powerless, as shy and unassertive. And as a mother, she believed she was a complete failure because her daughter suffered from severe developmental delays. Olga’s low self-esteem was constantly reinforced by the unrelenting criticism from those around her.

I, on the other hand, thought she was a hero.

She was a young mother, and the only one in her extended family who actually coped with the pressures of dealing with and raising a child with special needs. Her husband buried himself in his business, and Olga was the only one who was there for her little girl. While doing that she also mastered the strength and the willpower to attend university and gain a degree with excellent grades. But it was only when we met for the second time that she confessed to me her true professional ambition, namely to return to her first true professional passion - computer programming.

But her self esteem was at an all time low. She believed that no employer would be interested in her or would give her the time of day. She simply couldn’t see how she could overcome this feeling in a job interview.

By contrast, I thought she’d be wonderful. She and all the other wonderful mums out there that tentatively approach the job market after raising children in those crucial first years.

If I could speak for her, I’d tell Olga’s potential employers, and every other potential employer out there, to grab working mothers with both hands, nurture them and never let them leave.

At first glance, my recommendation may seem stupid at best and irresponsible at worst. Working mums? Are you mad, Gil? You want us to employ a parasite whose sole interest is not her job but her herd of nappy-wearing, snotty-nosed preschoolers? We want young bachelorettes, hard working, committed to their career and full of energy. Not some exhausted, absent-minded young mum who tends to regularly miss days at work because of the resident virus. And who may, unbelievably, be planning another baby while working for me!

So, let me, Gil Ventura, suggest something for you to think about, dear employers. Let me aggressively market to you the wonderful advantages that working mothers have to offer.

Motivation – Abundant!

When I interview potential employees, the most important question that comes to my mind is why? Why does this person want this job? What motivates them? Mums have the ultimate motivation, wanting to financially support their children. Therefore, dear employers, her children are etched in her mind as she’s sitting there, caught in traffic on the way to work. And whenever she’s in need of support, whatever the reason may be (un-realistic expectations, terrible boss), all she needs to do is pick up the phone and have a chat with her children to remind her of what’s important. There’s nothing quite like this little morale boost to keep her going for the rest of the day!

Multi-tasking, improvising and coping with constant change

From the moment you give birth to your gorgeous, unique baby, you begin to think in relative terms. You lose the ‘always’ and the ‘for sures’, and replace them with their older, more mature, sisters, ‘sometimes’ and ‘maybe’. Every time you change a nappy you realise that every plan can change dramatically and at the last minute, regardless of how tired you are, of how you feel and of what you’ve had planned. You become more flexible, more tolerant of change.

Use this learning to market yourself in your job interviews as it is an asset. Your employers expect you to cope with the unexpected, which is part and parcel of modern working life. Mums have to learn to cope with the unexpected, and mums are the world champions at multi-tasking.

In a world exploding with information, where competing messages block our senses, mothers have a real edge. As part of their lives, they have to sooteh the screaming baby as they make dinner, all the while using their calmest voice with the three year old who’s just decided to exhibit all the symptoms of classic sibling rivalry and may, if not stopped, cause some serious bodily harm to someone... Not to mention, preventing the cupboard door from opening and stopping the cat from eating the baby’s dinner! There you have it, a fully-fledged flight controller!

Seriously now, this ability to constantly live with ambiguity, become accustomed to it and to realise that plans are made to be broken, turns mothers into employees who are mature and are able to cope with just about anything.

As one old and wise manager once told me, “If you want something done, give it to a busy person”.

Work as a source of satisfaction

Mothers may be patient, determined and committed but they usually don’t have one important thing – and that is spare time. In a world that is so pre-occupied with self-actualisation and personal satisfaction, mothers more often than not use work to achieve it. It’s at work when they get to talk to other adults without constant interruptions. It’s at work that they get to be themselves by themselves.

I remember myself, an hysterical young father, grabbing my working colleagues, savouring and cherishing them. Most of our time as a couple was spent discussing my baby’s bowel motions, whether or not she was eating enough, sleeping enough, too cold, too hot. I could feel my IQ shrinking.

Many professional working mothers, after their maternity leave, crave adult company, long for the ability to use their brains and are ecstatic at the concept of applying their hard won professional skills. Employers, you’d be mad not to let them bring this passion to your company!

Your Feedback

"I used to have my husband’s 2 children (during the age range 16 – 24) living with us, while we had a child and both worked. The older children just added more chaos to the flavour of the household. At this age young people know it all and are little prepared to help, but rather to hinder! So I had at least a 16 hour day. I got up at 5 and was on the go from then until when I had finished cleaning up the kitchen, doing the washing and planning the household at about 9 pm. I began working again after my daughter was 2 weeks old, at first, just between breast feedings. So I went to an insignificant job at 5.30am and rushed home at 11am for the next feed. For the first year, we had her with a neighbour, who got up late and kept an eye on her. The only way we could manage this load, was if I left the house early and my husband got our daughter dressed and took her firstly to the neighbour and later to kindergarten. It was a constant juggle. I would come home earlier than my husband and look after my daughter’s needs, cook, shop, clean etc.

One incident I remember so clearly: my daughter was 4 and she was running a temperature around the 40’s for days. She lay next to me every night for 5 days, with little sleep for me. I still went to work each day. She was finally put in hospital and my husband and I took it in turns to be next to her each night in the hospital, ‘lying’ in a sun chair with all the normal hospital activities going on around us. I still continued to go to work each day. I had a lady boss, one of the yuppie types, who had no intention of having children and she had no idea of what I was going through to get through each day for weeks. About one year later her ‘partner’ had a back problem and was on morphine for about 3 weeks. I could see she had big circles under her eyes and looked haggard, because she was losing about 3 hours beauty sleep at night during this time. So we chatted about it and I commented, ‘Oh, so now you have an idea of what I went through last year when I didn’t get any sleep for about 3 weeks and still came to work.’ There was some kind of understanding between us finally.I’m sorry to have to say, that ladies who are single and have not tried what mothers go through each day of their working lives, cannot put themselves into the situation of mothers from the moment a child is born.

Thank heavens God gives us working mothers an extra portion of courage, energy and talents to keep about 20 balls CONSTANTLY in the air for years, while our children are growing up. Yes, we are always motivated and can move mountains because of our children. We are concentrated because we know we have to get through the work for the day. In a precise time schedule, too, otherwise the kindergarten will close before we can get there, so we move heaven and earth each day to get all our work done at the Office, without taking shortcuts or talking too much. Every minute is planned in the day. We do this because we want the best for our children. We also believe that our children will not be harmed by us working, but become more independent citizens.

The thing that is odd about us mothers is that we are doing all this usually with a guilty conscience. This is something we should all get rid of! We working mothers need to be admired by the rest of the working force and recognised for what an energy and effort is required, but we just go straight on thinking we are not doing enough! It’s odd, isn’t it?"

"I have always preferred to employ working mums - perhaps being one myself. Reality is they work because they either have to or want to. No matter which, I have found them to be more focused and motivated than other employees. Provide the opportunity to work in school hours and you will find they get 8 hours work done in 5 hours. Flexible working hours and work life balance has worked for us for over ten year - everyone should try it."

Girls Can Do Anything!

By Justine Munro

Justine Munro, a management consultant with experience in the corporate, non-profit, indigenous and education sectors in New Zealand and Australia, recently gave a speech at the 125th Jubilee Dinner of her school, Wellington Girls’ College. She shared the speech with us and we asked for permission to reprint it. Justine’s reflections on the old career advice of "Girls Can Do Anything" make for fascinating reading.

I’ve been given the honour, at this 125th Jubilee Dinner, of speaking tonight about my journey – as a Wellington Girls College student who was lucky enough to obtain a Rhodes Scholarship and carve out a fairly interesting career since then. I’ll do that, but I also want to place it in a context, of a woman born in the 1970’s and coming of age in a time where “girls could do anything”. Here tonight, we’re lucky to have women from many generations, and I hope that these reflections can be of interest, and possibly relevance, to many of you, despite the very different courses that our lives may have taken.

Pride

But before I start, I just want to say how proud I’ve always been to have gone to Wellington Girls’. Wherever I’ve gone in the world, I’ve always loved people asking me where I went to school. I reply with great pride – “Wellington Girls’ College”.

I believe in public education; I believe in big, busy, multi-cultural schools; and I believe in all-girls’ education as an option.

Wellington Girls’ gave me a wonderful launching pad, I had a blast here, and it makes me very proud to be linked in to the community again.

Girls can do anything

I’m going to start my reflections by showing you a poster which to me was the backdrop for my whole time at Wellington Girls’. Here it is:

Some of you might remember this: it was produced apparently by the Vocational Guidance Council of the Department of Labour which did a terrific job at getting it into every classroom, every corridor, every office in the country. We said that phrase all the time, ‘Just remember: “Girls can do anything!”’ - and I even remember it as a debating topic – poor you if you had to argue the negative!

Anyway, here it is, with little cartoon figures of smiling girls dressed up like Bob the Builder, doing all the things that, in the olden days, people used to think only men could do – being builders, plumbers, surveyors, scaling the ladder to success. How crazy we thought they’d been back then, and how great it was to be a girl growing up now!

Early years

So – girls can do anything - that was our mantra, and off we went. The world was our oyster, as my darling grandfather used to say, and it really never crossed my mind that anything could stop me. I think at that point I was going to be NZ’s first women prime minister – damn!, that one got away – but you get the gist.

So from school I went on with a wonderful cohort of Wellington Girls’ students to do a law degree at Victoria, and from there was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. That scholarship was best known at the time for having been given to David Kirk. It rewards not only academic achievement but also sporting and cultural achievement and community service. I’d been hugely encouraged and supported in all of those areas – as a debater, a fencer and Head Girl - in my time at Wellington Girls’ and that had given me a wonderful start.

Getting the Rhodes and going to Oxford was a defining point in my life. It was a tremendous honour, it let me build some wonderful friendships and networks, it opened doors, and it reinforced a very strong sense of duty, to give back and to repay amply the investment and trust that had been made in me.

From Oxford, I was wooed by an international strategic management consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, and went to Sydney where I got together with my husband, Matt Crockett, a West Australian Rhodes Scholar who was also new at McKinsey. From there, I went back to the law as a specialist indigenous lawyer, flying in small planes around remotest Australia and sitting out at night under a big wide starry desert sky. It was awesome.

Children & recognition

And then, we decided to have children. Whilst I knew that there would be some changes involved – and I did have some visions of myself floating around making biscuits and having morning teas – I never expected that it would fundamentally change the trajectory I’d been on.

And I found myself, about two years into it, with an eighteen month year old and a new baby, totally exhausted, yet bored to tears, asking in frustration, “Why did you all tell us that “girls can do anything” when we so patently can’t? How am I going to be the mother I want to be to these children, and achieve my potential in my career, let alone be a balanced and giving wife, friend and daughter? How can I change the world when I’m about to drop dead with tiredness and the baby needs a nappy change?”

And in the thick of it, I actually remember telling my good friend, Tanya Thomson, who’d also been at school with me, that I was seriously contemplating heading right on back down to Wellington Girls’ to confront those teachers, tell them that they were raising false expectations, and demand to set the girls straight!

Well I didn’t quite get that far and I’ve calmed down quite a bit over the intervening five years. I’ve had a chance to reflect on that message as I’d taken it on, and what I think now is a more useful way of approaching life.

I recognised that I’d interpreted “girls can do anything” as meaning, first of all, “girls can do anything that a man does”. You see those little women running up and down those ladders: they’re not redefining the game, they’re just dressing up in the same clothes the men wear, they’re playing the same game the men are playing.

And the other interpretation of “girls can do anything” actually meant “girls can do everything”. Not only would I now do all the things I’d seen my mother doing, I’d do all the things I’d seen my father doing too. And because you’ve always got to do everything better than your parents, I’d do it all even better.

And the other part – “girls can do anything” actually meant “girls should do everything”. We owed it to ourselves, our mothers, our daughters, to our peers and everyone who’d ever believed and invested in us to do it all. Sure we all joked about superwoman, but really, that’s who we had to be.

Well, it’s pretty obvious that this was heading for a road-smash. And I definitely did go through a few phases here: embracing full-time motherhood, which, it is good to know, is really not for me; taking on part-time work that bored to me to tears; and being really angry at the generation before – where are my role models? Why aren’t the women who’ve gone before and smashed these glass ceilings reaching back to help us? What has really changed?

Ultimately, what I have discovered, however, is that there is a whole group of women who are, often quite quietly, modelling a new way. Their focus is not so much on the “doing”, or even on the ability to do. What matters is the outcome. The line then is not “girls can do anything”, or, as I took it, “girls should do everything”, but that “girls and women – and men – can create a life they want to live”.

Hard won insight

Some of the aspects of this were:

If you can’t win at the game as it’s currently defined, create your own one. Sure, try very hard to make your workplace flexible and appreciative of difference, but be prepared also to create your own business, your own non-profit, your own networks, and make them work for you and for people like you. You’ll be responding to challenges and opportunities the old games cannot, and pretty soon, they’ll be coming to you.
Get rid of this idea of the divide between “work” and “home” – the person I have to be and the person I want to be; the things I have to do and the things I want to do. You can work in a way that reflects your values and your priorities. The whole thing is your life and it has to feel good.
We need each other – we can’t dream big and do big by ourselves; we can’t step on others as we clamber our way to the top; we need to partner, to collaborate, to support; to reach out - forward to those who have gone before and back to young people coming through.
And on a really personal level, we all need time out, time for ourselves, time to turn our minds off. You can’t be a good mother or a good friend or an inspiring leader if you’re an exhausted wreck.

And the responsibility for creating this life – well, it’s up to us. There is no sense in which my generation are victims, and the opportunities are here for us to take. Those mothers of ours and their mothers and their mothers who fought for the right to vote, to equal pay, to reproductive freedom – they helped create them. And it is up to our generation to be bold, to be brave, to be resilient, and to be true to all the parts of ourselves, to take those opportunities and craft them into a life we want to live.

Role models

So what does this life look like? Here are just a few women I know who inspire me:

First, my friend Maria Clarke, a lawyer who recently set up NZ’s first sports law firm – Maria Clarke Lawyers - and has just been appointed to the legal commission of the International Association of Athletics Federations. Her national body clients include the Academy of Sport, Bike NZ, tennis and surf lifesaving and she represents elite athletes including the Evers-Swindell twins and Valerie Vili. She’s wowed them all with a creative and responsive approach to legal services they’d never find at the big law firms. But part of the reason for striking out on her own is that Maria also has two gorgeous boys and a wonderful husband that she wants to spend time with, and so she does it all on three days a week. And Andy, her husband, he works four days a week as a teacher so that he gets his share of time with the family.

Another friend – Jacky Toepfer. Jacky’s background was in travel, but when she was at home with her kids she started taking regular sanity breaks at the local pool. She started to really get into her swimming, met a whole group of new people and ended up representing NZ at the World Triathlon championships, coming 14th in her age group. And what Jacky had learnt around health and fitness, she started to teach others - myself included - developing fitness and nutrition regimes for busy mothers and school students, as well as elite athletes. She’s put that all together in her just-launched business, Dynamic Health.

And myself, well, I’ve started my own consulting practice in the social services/ non-profit space, and I’m working on a number of projects with some great people and organisations including the New Zealand Institute; a new community investment firm, Investing for Good; and the Springboard Trust, an education non-profit on which I’m a director. I work three days a week, but the thing I still look forward to the most is my Wednesday morning mother help at Devonport Primary!

I could go on, but you get the picture - that here are women whose focus is not on doing anything and everything, keeping up with the boys and more. Here are women whose focus is on building, step by step and together with their families, a life they want to live.

And of course, rising to this big challenge requires skills and capabilities and support. Here, I want to bring the thread right back to Wellington Girls’, because I feel that this school gave me so many of the skills and experiences I draw on today as I craft a life I want to live.

Conclusion

In closing, I feel very privileged to be a Wellington Girls’ old girl, and I feel privileged to be part of the generation I am. We’ve got a lot to contribute and – watch this space.

Thank you.

Justine Munro, Director, MAIA Consulting

Justine Munro is a management consultant with experience in the corporate, non-profit, indigenous and education sectors in New Zealand and Australia. Justine has led a number of projects in these sectors with clients including the New Zealand Institute, the University of Auckland, and a McKinsey & Company/ Knowledge Wave Trust initiative. She worked previously as a consultant with McKinsey & Company and a lawyer specializing in indigenous issues. A New Zealand Rhodes Scholar, Justine has an M Litt degree in Law from Oxford University and a LLB (Hons) degree from Victoria University of Wellington. She is a trustee of the Springboard Trust.

MAIA Consulting Limited
24 Albert Rd | Devonport | North Shore City 0624
P +64 9 446 0044 | F +64 9 446 6003 | M +64 27 686 1700
justine.munro@maiaconsulting.co.nz

Feeling Like an Impostor?

by Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes and Galia BarHava-Monteith

21 January 2008

This article appeared in the NZ Herald's Career '08 Portfolio. Based on Galia's original piece on the Impostor Syndrome, it incorporates interviews Sarah conducted with senior professionals in NZ's executive recruitment firms.

Meet Jane. She’s just survived Day One of her new job. She’s embarked on jobs before, and each time it’s tough. She never sleeps the night before because she’s so apprehensive.

Jane’s fears started a few weeks back. No sooner had she landed the new advertising job than she began hearing reports about her employer-to-be. “They work really hard,” reported one person. “High staff turnover,” said another. Jane had only talked to the recruiter and one manager at the firm; this new view of the culture was daunting.

Her friends rallied round, reminding her of other times she’d felt low changing jobs. Highlighting how well she’d ended up performing, how much she’d achieved. Jane acknowledged:

You can get caught in the detail of the twenty per cent you don’t know instead of looking at the big picture. A huge amount of any job is common sense.

Still, Day One has proved once more to be “overwhelming, a real struggle.” Induction has been patchy. Colleagues have seemed unfriendly. She couldn’t find the coffee; she doesn’t know what time people normally go home.

Jane knows it will get better, but for now, “It’s just the unknown, the fear of failure hanging over you.”

These feelings of inadequacy seem to be common. Jonny Wyles, Director at Haines, a recruitment advertising agency, thinks that though a few people might be cocky, most who move into a new job “would go through a range of emotions from jubilation to feeling butterflies about the first day and worrying if they’re up for it.”

He also points out that it’s a two way street.

It’s a process of assessment on both sides. For a new starter, the first three months are really critical to seeing if the company and the job are all you’ve hoped they’ll be. Will the support be there? The development opportunities you’re looking for?

Ian Taylor, Director at Sheffield Ltd, a human resources consulting firm, encourages people starting new jobs to remember that they’ve been chosen for a reason and that they’ve made it through a challenging hiring process. “After all the tests, there should be a nice feeling that they want you. You should start Day One with a strong sense of confidence.”

For some people, however, such good advice may not be enough. Their fear of failure persists. They may be suffering from Impostor Syndrome, in which individuals are convinced they do not deserve their new opportunities. Despite external evidence of their competence, sufferers dismiss their successes as due to luck or mistakes. Thus they struggle to escape the worry that they’ll be ‘found out’.

Impostor Syndrome is not an officially recognised psychological disorder, but has been the subject of study by psychologists and educationalists. It was first studied in the 1970s with high achieving women, who reported high levels of self-doubt and felt unable to internalise their success. More recent research suggests it is as common in men as women and also among gifted people. Interestingly, those who are less capable and intelligent do not seem to suffer from this problem!

The good news is that if you feel like a fraud, the chances are you’re not. Nevertheless, you need to deal firmly with the niggling voices in your head before they grow so loud they debilitate you.

A good place to start is by managing your environment. If you know you’re prone to self doubts, take pains to research the culture of your potential future employer. Some workplaces are so aggressively competitive they can make even the most talented individuals feel inadequate.

John Nevill is Principal at Numero, specialists in accounting, finance and supply chain appointments. He strongly advises candidates to do their due diligence robustly during the interview process. They should ask to meet their future team members and use the opportunity as a “culture fit test, to get a sense of the lie of the land.” He says employers should be willing to make this happen because it is in their interest to achieve a good fit, too.

New hires need to be proactive in managing their environment once they’ve arrived, too. As the old Hebrew saying goes, ‘The shy will never learn’. The first hundred days in your new job is the time to ask all the questions you need to allow you to feel on top of the local culture and the job’s requirements. People expect questions and often respect and appreciate them.

Ian Taylor of Sheffield Ltd advises new hires to start establishing relationships quickly to help get warmed up in the new environment.

Touch base with your new colleagues, even before your job actually starts. Go in and meet them. And make sure your induction pack contains an office seating plan so you can be proactive, introduce yourself and call people by their names.

He points to the value of a good induction process, and says companies need to be aware that people’s fears will grow the longer they lack the tools, information and support they need to do their jobs. “Good induction processes are about building confidence as much as skills”.

Some people may feel they need to make a big noise very soon after arriving and this can be another source of stress. Ian’s advice is to “take a few months to understand the way the place works, who really has influence. It doesn’t mean you’re laying low. You’ve been selected to add value and you need time to figure out the best way to do that.”

You can manage your environment outside work, too. Do you have friends who, however sincerely, tend to point out the potential for you to fail? If so, try reducing contact with them during this period of change. Instead, spend time with those friends who are always supportive and back you up no matter what.

As well as managing your environment, you need to manage what goes on in your head. A good tip is to be deliberate about documenting past successes and achievements. Research shows one negative comment carries as much weight in our minds as five positive ones. Sit down with your CV, add any new achievements, and then systematically discount all possible external explanations: “No, I didn’t come top because everyone else was stupid that year…”

If you need to, repeat the exercise with a trusted friend or partner. It is always good to get someone else’s perspective on your successes. You may have forgotten or discounted some and your partner or friend will be sure to remind you.

Of course, it’s possible that the little voice is partly right: maybe you do have gaps in your skills or attributes when viewed against the specifications for your new job.

John Nevill of Numero concludes,

In this candidate-short market, employers don’t always expect to tick every box. If you discuss the gaps, then a plan can be put in place to address them. You may well find the employer values your leadership potential over a particular technical skill that they believe they can train you in. It comes down to prioritisation.

The recruiting process is likely to discover your “gaps”, so be candid about them; then you won’t be found out!

Your Feedback:

Wow. I thought that I was the only one who spent the first year waiting to be found out!!!! I did feel like a fraud, but have since proven to myself that I was more than capable and have surprised myself with how well it has gone.I have since found out that everyone else had more faith in me than I did in myself - they supported and gave positive feed back - that was a great help and was nice to know.

A colleague forwarded the link to this article. It was in response to my sharing with my governing board that at times I felt on top of everything and at other times it was overwhelming. The article articulated exactly how I was feeling. I wonder if men feel like this, or is it particularly felt by mostly women?

Building the Civilised Workplace

By Robert Sutton. This article appeared in the McKinsey Quarterly Journal of May 2007. It is adapted from Sutton's book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, New York: Warner Business Books, 2007. Robert Sutton is Professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University and is cofounder of its Hasso Plattner Institute of Design.

Lars Dalgaard is CEO and cofounder of SuccessFactors, one of the world’s fastest-growing software companies—and the fastest with revenues over $30 million. Dalgaard recently listed some milestones that his California-based company passed in its first seven years:

the use of its software by more than two million employees at over 1,200 companies around the world
the use of its software by employees speaking 18 languages in 156 countries
growth three times that of the company’s nearest competitor
enthusiastic recommendations of the product by nearly all customers
dramatically low employee turnover
employing no jerks

That’s right—no jerks—although the word SuccessFactors really uses (except on its Web site) is a mild obscenity that starts with the letter A and sort of rhymes with “castle.” All the employees SuccessFactors hires agree in writing to 14 “rules of engagement.” Rule 14 starts out, “I will be a good person to work with—not territorial, not be a jerk.” One of Dalgaard’s founding principles is that “our organization will consist only of people who absolutely love what we do, with a white-hot passion. We will have utmost respect for the individual in a collaborative, egalitarian, and meritocratic environment—no blind copying, no politics, no parochialism, no silos, no games—just being good!”

Dalgaard is emphatic about applying this rule at SuccessFactors because part of its mission is to help companies focus more on performance and less on politics. Employees aren’t expected to be perfect, but when they lose their cool or belittle colleagues, inadvertently or not, they are expected to repent. Dalgaard himself is not above the rule—he explained to me that, given the pressures of running a rapidly growing business, he too occasionally “blows it” at meetings. At times, he has apologized to all 400-plus people in his company, not just to the people at the meeting in question, because “word about my behavior would get out.”

As Dalgaard suggests, there is a business case against tolerating nasty and demeaning people. Companies that put up with jerks not only can have more difficulty recruiting and retaining the best and brightest talent but are also prone to higher client churn, damaged reputations, and diminished investor confidence. Innovation and creativity may suffer, and cooperation could be impaired, both within and outside the organization—no small matter in an increasingly networked world.

The problem is more widespread than you might think. Research in the United Kingdom and the United States suggests that jerk-infested workplaces are common: a 2000 study by Loraleigh Keashly and Karen Jagatic1 found that 27 percent of the workers in a representative sample of 700 Michigan residents experienced mistreatment by someone in the workplace. Some occupations, such as medical ones, are especially bad. A 2003 study2 of 461 nurses found that in the month before it was conducted, 91 percent had experienced verbal abuse, defined as mistreatment that left them feeling attacked, devalued, or humiliated. Physicians were the most frequent abusers.

There is good news and bad news about workplace jerks. The bad news is that abuse is widespread and the human and financial toll is high. The good news is that leaders can take steps to build workplaces where demeaning behavior isn’t tolerated and nasty people are shown the door.

How workplace jerks do their dirty work

Researchers who write about psychological abuse in the workplace define it as “the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behavior, excluding physical contact.” At least for me, that definition doesn’t quite capture the emotional wallop these creeps pack. The workplace jerk definition I use is this: do people feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled after talking to an alleged jerk? In particular, do they feel worse about themselves?

Workplace jerks do their dirty work in all sorts of ways; I’ve listed 12 common ones—the dirty dozen—to illustrate the range of these subtle and not-so-subtle moves, which can include physical contact (Exhibit 1). Researchers who study workplace abuse and bullying have identified scores of others. I suspect you can add many more that you’ve seen, personally experienced—or committed.

Lists like these are useful but leave a sterilized view of how workplace jerks act and the damage they inflict. Stories, often painful ones, are necessary to understand how workplace bullies demean and de-energize people. Consider the story of this victim of multiple humiliations:

“Billy,” he said, standing in the doorway so that everyone in the central area could see and hear us clearly. “Billy, this is not adequate, really not at all.” As he spoke he crumpled the papers that he held. My work. One by one he crumpled the papers, holding them out as if they were something dirty and dropping them inside my office as everyone watched. Then he said loudly, “Garbage in, garbage out.” I started to speak, but he cut me off. “You give me the garbage, now you clean it up.” I did. Through the doorway I could see people looking away because they were embarrassed for me. They didn’t want to see what was in front of them: a 36-year-old man in a three-piece suit stooping before his boss to pick up crumpled pieces of paper.3

The damage done

The human damage done by that kind of encounter is well documented—especially the harm that superiors do to their subordinates. Bennett Tepper studied abusive supervision in a representative study of 712 employees in a midwestern city.4 He asked them if their bosses had engaged in abusive behavior, including ridicule, put-downs, and the silent treatment—demeaning acts that drive people out of organizations and sap the effectiveness of those who remain. A six-month follow-up found that employees with abusive supervisors quit their jobs at accelerated rates. Those still trapped felt less committed to their employers and experienced less satisfaction from work and life, as well as heightened anxiety, depression, and burnout. Dozens of other studies have uncovered similar findings; the victims report reduced levels of job satisfaction, productivity, concentration, and mental and physical health.

Nasty interactions have a far bigger impact on the mood of people who experience them than positive interactions do. Recent research shows just how much. Theresa Glomb, Charles Hulin, and Andrew Miner did a clever study5 in which 41 employees of a manufacturing plant in the Midwest carried palm-size computers for two to three weeks. At four random intervals throughout the workday, each employee had to report any recent interaction with a supervisor or a coworker and whether it was positive or negative, as well as their current mood. The researchers found that negative interactions affected the moods of these employees five times more strongly than positive ones.

All these factors suggest an effect on costs. One reader of a short article I wrote on workplace jerks6 felt that more companies would be convinced if they estimated “the total cost of jerks,” or TCJ (Exhibit 2). If you want to develop a rough estimate of your company’s TCJ, take a look at my list of possible costs and attach your best monetary estimate to each, as well as to any other factors you regard as relevant. This exercise can help you face up to the damage that jerks do to your organization. When I told a Silicon Valley executive about the TCJ method, he replied that it was more than a concept at his company. Management had calculated the extra costs generated by a star salesperson—the assistants he burned through, the overtime costs, the legal costs, his anger-management training, and so on —and found that the extra cost of this one jerk for one year was $160,000.

Exhibit Two: What is Your Total Cost of Jerks? [excerpts]

Damage to victims and witnesses: distraction from tasks; loss of motivation and energy at work; absenteeism and tunover in response to abusive superiorsa dn peers.

Woes of certified jerks: retaliation from victims and witnesses; job loss

Wicked consequences for management: time spent reorganising departments and teams so that jerks do less damage; time spent interviewing, recruiting and training after jerks and their victims depart

Legal and HR management costs: settlement fees and successful litigation by victims and by alleged jerks eg wrongful dismissal claims

When jerks reign - negative effects on organisations: reduced creativity and ingenuity; reduced discretionary effort; impaired ability to attract the best and brightest.

Finally, if word leaks out that your organization is led by mean-spirited jerks, the damage to its reputation can drive away potential employees and shake investor confidence. Neal Patterson, the CEO of Cerner, learned this lesson in 2001 when he sent an e-mail intended for just the top 400 people in this health care software company. Patterson complained that few employees were working full 40-hour weeks and that “as managers—you either do not know what your employees are doing; or you do not care.” Patterson said that he wanted to see the employee parking lot “substantially full” from 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM weekdays and “half full” on Saturdays. If that didn’t happen, he would take harsh measures. “You have two weeks,” he warned. “Tick, tock.”7 Patterson’s e-mail was leaked on the Internet, provoking harsh criticism from management experts, including my Stanford colleague Jeffrey Pfeffer, who described it as “the corporate equivalent of whips and ropes and chains.” Pfeffer went a bit overboard for my taste. But investors weren’t pleased either: the company’s stock value plummeted by 22 percent in three days. Patterson handled the aftermath well: he sent an apology to his employees and admitted that he wished he had never sent the e-mail. The share price did bounce back. Patterson learned the hard way that when CEOs come across as bullies, they can scare their investors as well as their underlings.

Enforcing the no-jerks rule

Executives who are committed to building a civilized workplace don’t just take haphazard action against one jerk at a time; they use a set of integrated work practices to battle the problem.

At the workplaces that enforce the no-jerks rule most vehemently and effectively, an employee’s performance and treatment of others aren’t seen as separate things. Phrases like “talented jerk,” “brilliant bastard,” or “a bully and a superstar” are oxymorons. Jerks are dealt with immediately: they quickly realize (or are told) that they have blown it, apologize, reflect on their nastiness, ask for forgiveness, and work to change their ways. Repeat offenders aren’t ignored or forgiven again and again—they change or depart.

Five intertwined practices are useful for enforcing the no-jerks rule.

Make the rule public by what you say and, especially, do

Plante & Moran, a company on Fortune’s “100 Best Places to Work” list for nine years in a row, proclaims its rule openly: “The goal is a 'jerk-free’ workforce at this accounting firm,” and “the staff is encouraged to live by the Golden Rule.” At Barclays Capital, COO Rich Ricci says that “we have a no-jerk rule around here,” especially in selecting senior executives. BusinessWeek explains what this means for the employees of Barclays Capital: “Hotshots who alienate colleagues are told to change or leave.”8

Talking about the rules is just the first step; the real test happens when someone acts like a jerk. If people don’t feel comfortable blowing the whistle on the offender, your company will both be seen as hypocritical and fill up with jerks, so don’t adopt the rule unless you mean it. SuccessFactors shows how to back talk with action. Consider this post on the company’s public blog site by company employee Max Goldman:

My own personal experience with [the no-jerks rule] is very simple. Once, my boss was being a jerk. I told him so. Instead of getting mad, he accepted the comment and we moved on. Later, he thanked me for telling him. My boss thanked me for calling him a jerk. Let me repeat that. My boss thanked me for calling him a jerk. Calling the behavior what it was helped everyone work better together and get more done. Can you do that at your company?

Weave the rule into hiring and firing policies

Consider how the Seattle law firm Perkins Coie, which earned a spot on Fortune’s “100 Best Places to Work” list in 2007 for the fourth year in a row, applies the rule during job interviews. Partners Bob Giles and Mike Reynvaan were once tempted to hire a rainmaker from another firm but realized that doing so would violate the rule. As they put it, “We looked at each other and said, 'What a jerk.’ Only we didn’t use that word.”9

Similarly, Southwest Airlines has always emphasized that people are “hired and fired for attitude.” Herb Kelleher, the company’s cofounder and former CEO, shows how this works: “One of our pilot applicants was very nasty to one of our receptionists, and we immediately rejected him. You can’t treat people that way and be the kind of leader we want.”10 As Ann Rhoades, a former Southwest vice president, told me, “We don’t do it to our people; they don’t deserve it. People who work for us don’t have to take the abuse.”

Teach people how to fight

The no-jerks rule doesn’t mean turning your organization into a paradise for conflict-averse wimps. People in the best groups and organizations know how to fight. Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor maker, gives all full-time employees training in the “constructive confrontation” that is a hallmark of the company’s culture. Leaders and corporate trainers emphasize that bad things happen when the bullies win using personal attacks, disrespect, and intimidation. When that happens, only the loudest and strongest voices get heard; there is no diversity of views; communication is poor, tension high, and productivity low; and people first resign themselves to living with the nastiness—and then resign from the company.

To paraphrase a primary theme in Karl Weick’s classic book, The Social Psychology of Organizing,11 this approach means learning to “argue as if you are right and to listen as if you are wrong.” That is what Intel tries to teach through lectures, role-playing, and, most essentially, through observing the way managers and leaders fight—and when. The company’s motto is “disagree and then commit,” because second-guessing, complaining, and arguing after a decision is made sap effort and attention and thus make it unclear whether the decision went wrong because it was a bad idea or because it was a good idea implemented with insufficient energy and commitment.

Apply the rule to customers and clients too

Organizations that are serious about enforcing the no-jerks rule apply it not just to employees but also to customers, clients, students, and everyone else who might be encountered at work. They do so because their people don’t deserve the abuse, customers (or taxpayers) don’t pay to endure or witness demeaning jerks, and persistent nastiness that is left unchecked can create a culture of contempt infecting everyone it touches.

The late Joe Gold—the founder of Gold’s Gym, which now has more than 550 locations in 43 countries—applied a variation of the no-jerks rule to customers. He didn’t mince words: “To keep it simple you run your gym like you run your house. Keep it clean and in good running order. No jerks allowed, members pay on time, and if they give you any crap, throw them out.” Gold applied the rule to customers from the time he opened his first gym, a block from Muscle Beach, in Venice, California, where early customers included Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Manage the little moments

Putting the right practices and policies in place is useless if they don’t set the stage for civilized conversations and interactions. People must treat the person in front of them, right now, in the right way, and they must feel safe to point out when their peers and superiors blow it. The power of efforts to work on “the little moments” can be seen in an organizational change at the US Department of Veterans Affairs. To reduce the bullying of employees, psychological abuse, and aggression at 11 sites with more than 7,000 people, each site appointed an action team of managers and union members that developed a customized intervention process. But there were key similarities among all of the sites: employees learned about the damage that aggression causes, used role-playing exercises to get into the shoes of bullies and victims, and learned to reflect before and after they interacted with other people. Action team members and site leaders also made a public commitment to model civilized behavior themselves. At one site, for example, managers and employees worked to eliminate seemingly small slights such as glaring, interruptions, and treating people as if they were invisible—small things that had escalated into big problems.

The results included less overtime (saving taxpayers’ money) and sick leave, fewer complaints from employees, and shorter waiting times for the veterans who were the patients at the 11 sites. A comparison of surveys undertaken before and after these interventions, which started in mid-2001, found a substantial decrease, across the 11 sites, in 32 of 60 kinds of bullying—things like glaring, swearing, the silent treatment, obscene gestures, yelling and shouting, physical threats and assaults, vicious gossip, and sexist and racist remarks.

Being a jerk is contagious

The most important single principle for building a workplace free of jerks, or to avoid acting like one yourself, is to view being a jerk as a kind of contagious disease. Once disdain, anger, and contempt are ignited, they spread like wildfire. Researcher Elaine Hatfield calls this tendency “emotional contagion”:12 if you display contempt, others (even spectators) will respond in much the same way, creating a vicious circle that can turn everyone in the vicinity into a mean-spirited monster just like you. Experiments by Leigh Thompson and Cameron Anderson, as they told the New York Times,13 show that when even compassionate people join a group with a leader who is “high energy, aggressive, mean, the classic bully type,” they are “temporarily transformed into carbon copies of the alpha dogs.” Being around people who look angry makes you feel angry too. Hatfield and her colleagues sum up this emotional-contagion research with an Arabic proverb: “A wise man associating with the vicious becomes an idiot.”

A swarm of jerks creates a civility vacuum, sucking the warmth and kindness out of everyone who enters and replacing them with coldness and contempt. As we have seen, organizations can screen out and reform these contagious jerks and, if those efforts fail, expel them before the infection spreads. But treating nastiness as a contagious disease also suggests some useful self-management techniques.

Consider some wise advice that I heard from the late Bill Lazier, a successful executive who spent the last 20 years of his career teaching business and entrepreneurship at Stanford. Bill gave this advice to our students: when you get a job offer or an invitation to join a team, take a close look at the people you will work with, successful or not. If your potential colleagues are self-centered, nasty, narrow minded, or unethical, he warned, you have little chance of turning them into better human beings or of transforming the workplace into a healthy one, even in a tiny company. In fact, the odds are that you will turn into a jerk as well.

Notes

1 Loraleigh Keashly and Karen Jagatic, “The nature, extent, and impact of emotional abuse in the workplace: Results of a statewide survey,” Academy of Management conference, Toronto, August 8, 2000.

2 Laura Sofield and Susan W. Salmond, “Workplace violence: A focus on verbal abuse and intent to leave the organization,” Orthopaedic Nursing, July-August 2003, Volume 22, Number 4, pp. 274–83.

3 From an interview with Harvey Hornstein, author of Brutal Bosses and Their Prey, New York: Riverhead Press, 1996.

4 Bennett J. Tepper, “Consequences of abusive supervision,” Academy of Management Journal, June 2000, Volume 43, Number 2, pp. 178–90.

5 Andrew G. Miner, Theresa M. Glomb, and Charles Hulin, “Experience sampling mood and its correlates at work: Diary studies in work psychology,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, June 2005, Volume 78, Number 2, pp. 171–93.

6 Robert I. Sutton, “Not worth the trouble,” in “Breakthrough ideas for 2004: The HBR list,” Harvard Business Review, February 2004, Volume 82, Number 2, pp. 19–20.

7 Edward Wong, “A stinging office memo boomerangs; chief executive is criticized after upbraiding workers by e-mail,” New York Times, April 5, 2001.

8 “Barclays: Anything but stodgy,” BusinessWeek, April 10, 2006.

9 Shirleen Holt, “Giving the goodies: Many employers see advantages in maintaining workplace perks,” Seattle Times, March 23, 2003.

10 Allan Cohen, James Watkinson, and Jenny Boone, “Southwest Airlines CEO grounded in real world,” SearchCIO.com, March 28, 2005.

11 Karl Weick, The Social Psychology of Organizing, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.

12 Elaine Hatfield, John T. Cacioppo, and Richard L. Rapson, Emotional Contagion, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

13 Benedict Carey, “Fear in the workplace: The bullying boss,” New York Times, June 22, 2004.

Why Positive Psychology is for everyone

By Galia BarHava-Monteith

2 April 2008

I am a woman obsessed. Ever since I found out about positive psychology, I simply can’t stop reading about it, thinking about it and talking about it to everyone who’ll listen (and those who won’t)! Yes, you might think I am a geek, and you’re probably right. You might, however, not know that I studied psychology for five years and seriously considered becoming a clinical psychologist. One of the key reasons I decided against it was that I thought that dealing with problems, pathologies and dysfunction all day long would spill over into the rest of my life. And those of you who’ve had much to do with psychologists and psychiatrists will probably agree that - with some notable exceptions - this is very much the case.

I love psychology and I find human behaviour fascinating, but I found the focus on maladaptive and dysfunctional behaviours and the emphasis on ‘fixing’ problematic. In the nineties, when I was doing my Masters, I was frustrated by how very little focus was given to what makes adults and children resilient in the face of adversity. I nearly did a PhD on that very topic. So imagine my delight to find out about a new branch of psychology that focuses on the positive!

What is positive psychology?

Positive psychology is the scientific study of the good and fulfilled life. Positive psychologists scientifically study positive emotions, positive personality traits and positive institutions. Basically, they study what makes life worth living. Articles and books in this field cover topics such as happiness, optimism, wisdom, courage, humanity and humour to name but a few.

What makes that so special, I hear you ask? Until relatively recently, these positive aspects of life were all but overlooked by traditional psychology which largely focused on how people survive and endure adversity, mental illness and bad childhoods. There has been relatively little research on how people can flourish to their full potential.

It’s true that bookshop shelves are covered with ‘self-help’ books promising that you’ll be able to lose weight, win friends, influence people, make huge amounts of money, and find the love of your life simply by wishing it. However, the great majority of those books don’t have robust, scientific studies to back up their claims. Positive Psychology does.

A brief history

To really understand the origins of Positive Psychology, I went investigating. One of the most useful sources I found was the millennial issue of the American Psychologist devoted to positive psychology. In the introduction, Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi outlined some of the history and background of modern psychology, explaining how its focus on pathology evolved.

Before the Second World War, the emerging science of psychology had three distinct missions, namely to:

Cure mental illness
Make people’s lives more productive and fulfilling
Identify and nurture high talent

Things changed after the war, and, from what I’ve read, the explanation is quite simple: as you’d expect, the emphasis shifted to where the money was. The post-war establishment of the Veteran’s Administration and its funding of mental illness treatment saw psychologists exclusively focus on the first mission of curing mental illness to the exclusion of the other two.

This focus was further aided by the founding of the National Institute of Mental Health in 1947. The Institute was based on the disease model of pathology – in other words, looking at what was wrong with people and how to fix it. As a consequence, according to Seligman, academics found that they could get grants if their research was about pathology.

So if you ever thought that psychology was overly preoccupied with what ails people, with pathology weakness and with damage, you were right!

What is Revolutionary about Positive Psychology?

That people want to make their lives better and that they want to be happier isn’t new. Yet it is a well-documented phenomenon that as countries and individuals in the West have grown wealthier, they have also become unhappier. In the US, there is talk of a ‘depression epidemic’. In New Zealand, according to a recent global study, one in six have thought of suicide, and depression is identified as the strongest risk factor.

The reality that in the West we’ve become unhappieras we have grwon wealthier in absolute terms, has no doubt fuelled the growth of the self-help industry and its self-proclaimed happiness gurus. What is revolutionary about Positive Psychology is that it is a science. This field applies the same long-term quantitative and qualitative research methodologies used in medicine and psychiatry to the new study of what makes life better and how we as individuals can make ourselves happier and more fulfilled. Positive Psychologists study and compare various approaches to identify what really works and what doesn’t!

Perhaps it is telling that the website Quackwatch, a nonprofit corporation whose purpose is to combat health-related frauds, myths, fads, fallacies, and misconduct, lists nothing for ‘positive psychology’ or Martin Seligman.

Signature Strengths

There’s a lot I could write about positive psychology. But I decided that the most important and relevant thing for Professionelle readers would be Seligman’s work on signature strengths.

Classification of mental disorders in a way that is respected and upheld all over the world is the backbone of psychology and psychiatry. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association, is the handbook for mental health professionals. It lists different categories of mental disorders and the criteria for diagnosing them. The DSM is used worldwide by clinicians and researchers as well as insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and policy makers. It’s the bible on ‘What’s Wrong with People’.

Martin Seligman, who is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers and the leading spokesman of Positive Psychology, figured out that without a similar, agreed way to classify the ‘sanities’, Positive Psychology would run the huge risk of using subjective, culturally specific and unreliable measures. So, Seligman and Co enlisted Christopher Peterson, the director of the clinical psychology programme at the University of Michigan to oversee the creation of an authoritative classification and measurement system of human strengths.

Strengths are different from talents. Talents are highly heritable and are quite fixed in the sense that you are either talented in something – like music - or you’re not. Even with the best teachers, if you have no or little musical talent, you’d be at best average. You can, however, choose to nurture your talent: if you have musical talent, and have the best teachers, and if you work very hard, the chances are your talent will be greatly enhanced. But you can’t choose to possess musical talent!

Strengths are different. Possessing strengths involves choices; you choose whether you want to develop them and keep building and using them. Strengths, as Seligman, Peterson et al define them, are things that we can keep building and proactively enhancing throughout our lives. And much of our happiness and fulfillment depends on our doing so, but more on this later.

To undertake this mammoth task of classifying and measuring strengths, Peterson’s group began by searching for virtues that are ubiquitous across the most globally representative cultures. Drawing on the writings of Aristotle, Plato, the Old Testament, the Talmud, Buddha and Confucius to name but a few, they found that almost every single one of these traditions endorses six core virtues:

Wisdom and knowledge
Courage
Love and humanity
Justice
Temperance
Spirituality and transcendence

Being psychologists, however, this was not enough! Their task developed into translating these six virtues into something that could be clearly defined, measured, evaluated and studied.

Enter: signature strengths.

Seligman, Peterson et al developed twenty-four signature strengths that can be measured. These strengths underlie the six character virtues. The way to acquire each virtue is through developing the signature strengths behind it.

To find out what your signature strengths are, visit the Authentic Happiness website to register and take the VIA test.

Much has been written about Positive Psychology, but what’s stuck with me and what I’ve been practising since I started delving into this field is finding ways to use my signature strengths every day and in everything I do. As an insecure over-achiever working for high pressure organisations, I spent half a life time focusing on my areas for development. The positive psychology approach of identifying and focusing on my strengths, further developing them and finding ways to use them more in my life, my whole life, has all but revolutionized how I operate and yes, how I feel.

Many professional women I know are consumed with what they are not good at and how they should work on their ‘weaknesses’ or, in management speak, their ‘areas for development’. Give yourself a break for a week, go on the website to find out your signature strengths and for a week try consciously to use one of your strengths in an area you wouldn’t normally use it. Long term studies have found this simple little intervention sustainably increases happiness and decreases depressive symptoms.

The work-fulfilment nexus - Signature Strengths, being appreciated and values alignment

Being able to use your signature strengths at work is quite obviously a must have for personal fulfilment and job satisfaction. If you don’t get to use your signature strengths at work, chances are you will feel like you aren’t able to perform at your best. Thus, reflecting on whether your job allows you to use your signature strengths will provide you with great insight into your career and personal well-being.

However, I don’t think it’s enough. Looking back on my own career, those of my family and friends as well as people I have coached and mentored, it dawned on me that using one’s signature strengths at work isn’t enough. We also need to feel valued and respected for possessing and using these strengths.

Imagine the following scenario. Three of your top five signature strengths are social intelligence, integrity and humor. You’re in a professional services industry, you work with clients which lets you use your strengths every day in your interaction with them. However, the firm you work with doesn’t value those strengths. Your clients might, but your bosses don’t. How satisfied do you think you’ll be?

To be valued by your employers, you need to pick the organisation with the right culture for you. That right culture will be a workplace whose values align with your own values. If your core values are meaningful relationships based on integrity and honesty and you work for an organisation that values ‘making a quick buck’, the chances are that they are not going to appreciate your signature strengths of integrity and social intelligence.

I firmly believe that our values are closely tied to our signature strengths. We are likely to value the things we choose to develop and enhance in ourselves. People who are satisfied and who prosper at work and in their private lives are likely to have these three things in full alignment:

They work in organisations with similar values to those they personally hold (and I mean the REAL values, not those on nice posters on the reception wall)
They get to use their signature strengths at work frequently and are
Valued by their workplace for those strengths.

Words of Caution

Positive Psychology is a science, not some ‘self-help’ guru-driven field. The claims it makes are based on scientific research and large scale studies rather than on emotionally compelling, individual anecdotes. Being a science also means that there is some valid criticism of the field as well.

The first and most obvious criticism is that none of this is actually new. And a lot of it is just ‘common sense’. Indeed, this may be the case at first glance. However, happiness hasn’t been properly researched over the last century. If focusing on one’s strengths is simply ‘common sense’, then why is it that most performance discussions are focused on ‘areas for further development’? As is often the case, it turns out the ‘common sense’ isn’t so common after all.

Indeed, a study at a Brazilian workplace conducted by Barbara Fredrickson from the University of North Carolina and Marcial Losada, showed that the most effective teams were the ones who had the most positive meetings. Effectiveness was measured using customer satisfaction, profitability and internal reviews. What they found was that the minimum ratio for successful functioning was three positive comments to one negative one in meetings!

One major criticism of the field is that positive psychology has a prescriptive nature. Some have gone as far as to call it a ‘religion’. Another criticism is that many of the claims made are made without long-term evidence about its usefulness and lack of causing harm. Finally, it is also acknowledged by some Positive Psychologists that increasing happiness levels will potentially diminish creative outputs.

I believe it is important to be aware of these criticisms and make one’s own judgment. Personally, I have learned a huge amount over the last few months while researching this field, and some of those learnings have literally transformed my life.

So, how happy should we be?

I believe the answer depends on what’s important for you. If you value success and achievement, chances are some unhappiness is quite a powerful driver.

In the World Values Survey, carried out with nearly 120,000 people from 96 countries by Dr Ed Diener from the University of Illinois, it was found that those who were moderately happy (rating their life satisfaction as a eight or nine out of ten) made more money than those who scored ten. But those who scored nine and ten were more likely to have stable, intimate relationships.

Dr Weiner did hypothesize that perhaps extremely happy people might be more satisfied with their lives and thus less likely to strive for higher rewards. Everyone agrees that being happy is vastly preferable to being unhappy. The question remains of how happy is good enough.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief overview. I tried to give you a taste of Positive Psychology, and I promise to do more in future. I’d also love your thoughts and feedback so please send them in!

An Introduction to Emotional Intelligence

By Galia BarHava-Monteith

7 February 2008

Recently I wrote about Courageous Conversations and the way they leverage off the emotional intelligence of groups. In that piece I promised to return to the topic of emotional intelligence and to provide more background to it.

Emotional intelligence is a hot topic in today’s work environment where traditional command and control type leadership is all but obsolete. To be effective, managers and leaders need to be able to influence others through gaining their respect and enlisting their passions. This was recently highlighted in my interview with John Palmer, Chairman of Air New Zealand. All of this suggests that emotional intelligence is something we should be aware of. But what is Emotional Intelligence?

A Definition

According to J D Mayer, widely considered as the ‘father of Emotional Intelligence’:

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to:

Recognise the meanings of emotions and their relationships
Reason and problem-solve on the basis of emotion

Emotional intelligence is part of our capacity to perceive emotions, assimilate emotion-related feelings, understand the information of those emotions, and manage them.

The original work on emotional intelligence was done in the 1980’s by a group of scientists led by Mayer, and the co-author of ‘The Emotionally Intelligent Manager,’ Peter Salovey. But what made this concept a household name is the 1995 book, ‘Emotional Intelligence and Why it Matters more than IQ’ by science reporter and psychologist Daniel Goleman. Since then, it has come to mean many different things. There has been some excellent scientific work in this field as well as a few wild claims and even pure fabrications.

Why Should You Care About Emotional Intelligence?

In my experience, emotional intelligence is the secret spice of many outstanding leaders. Indeed, according to John H Zenger and Joseph Folkman’s 2004 ‘Handbook for Leaders (24 Lessons for Extraordinary Leadership )’, cultivating interpersonal skills is one of the two most important competencies of the extraordinary leader. The other is ‘Character’. According to these authors,

Of all the competencies studied, interpersonal skills seem to make the most difference in whether leaders are considered extraordinary.

They also add that interpersonal skills have become more important over time in organisations for the same reasons I outlined above, and I’m sure that anyone who has had to deal with Gen Y’s will agree whole heartedly.

Furthermore, I believe that women in particular should care about emotional intelligence. As a broad generalisation, women are better at accessing and reading emotions, and with some deliberate and careful honing of those skills, we can gain an invaluable edge both in our professional and personal lives.

Know Yourself

One of the more interesting things I have found out about emotional intelligence is that a key to developing it is good self-insight. This is not surprising really; in order for us to be able to read other people, we must first be able to read ourselves accurately.

It sounds simple, but is it? We’ve all met a colleague or a manager who looks like they’re stressed beyond belief and when asked, ‘You look stressed, is everything OK?’, they angrily respond with, ‘I’m fine, everything’s under control!!!’. And the thing is, these people truly believe they are fine. They really don’t recognise they’re actually stressed. If you don’t know when you are stressed, how will you ever be able to recognise when others are?

Emotion versus Fact

Unfortunately, emotions have received bad press in modern times. In the modern workplace, more commonly than not, we are discouraged from using our emotions. Facts rule supreme, which is fine, except that they often rule to the exclusion of emotions from any decision making process. Furthermore, being labelled as ‘overly emotional’ can be the kiss of death in the hard-cut-throat environments of many corporates and professional services firms.

The key thing to understand about Emotional Intelligence is that people who have high levels of it are very self-aware and integrate emotional information (how they feel about something) into their decision-making processes. Put simply, if they hear a suggestion that makes them feel ‘uncomfortable’, rather than ignoring that feeling because it is ‘just’ a feeling, they tune in to find out what is it that is bothering them, and then use that information in their final decision-making.

Emotional intelligence is not about letting yourself being ruled by your emotions. Quite to the contrary, it is about using emotions smartly. It has been my observation over the years, and this is supported by research evidence, that people who seem to fly off the handle, and have very little control over their own emotions, also have very little emotional intelligence.

The most emotionally intelligence people I know are excellent at regulating their own emotions. They are precise and deliberate, they don’t ‘lose the plot’ and they handle interactions in an authentic way.

Emotional Intelligence and Groups

EI works well at the individual level, but how about in groups? I’ll reprise here some of what I found while researching the use of courageous conversations in a work setting.

A very useful source was a book called ‘The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace’ by Cary Cherniss and Daniel Goleman (Editors). This 2001 book is a collection of articles written mainly by serious academics on the topic of Emotional Intelligence at work. It is pretty hard going and written in a very ‘academic’ style of writing so tackle it when you have some time and are in the right frame of mind!

The Role of Emotions in Groups

Difficult interpersonal situations, such as dealing with a bully boss are among the hardest things to achieve when working in groups. Any of us who’ve spent five minutes inside organisations knows that emotions play a huge role in the dynamics of groups. When difficult emotions are badly managed, groups can become hostile, unproductive, and at worst, dysfunctional.

You can think of this process as a simple ‘cause and effect’ scenario. When conflict happens in a group, it triggers strong negative emotions. Any response by the group as a whole, or by individuals within it, will have an effect on the relationship of the group. When handled well, i.e. with respect and with care, these responses can create a positive spiral of emotions among group members. However, where things are said without thought given to the consequences, and people are treated without care and respect, these responses will instead create a negative spiral.

Group Norms

Over time, these interactions will create a culture of collective beliefs among the group about how much they can trust one another, how safe they are, how much people are treated with honesty and integrity and how well the group operates as a cohesive unit.

When the leader of a group is emotionally intelligent, he or she can influence the response to the difficult situation and create a positive cycle, which enhances the functioning of the group. But, as we all know, a leader is not always available to manage this situation. Emotionally intelligent groups have a culture where there are agreed norms on how to behave in such situations. These norms result in the group as a whole being able to deal with difficult emotions in a way that creates positive outcomes and committed team members.

How Groups Show Emotional Intelligence

An emotionally intelligent group can be defined as one that has shared expectations and norms when it comes to managing emotional situations. An emotionally intelligent group manages these situations in a way that builds trust, group identity and enhances group effectiveness.

Key to Emotional Intelligence in groups is the ability of the members to:

Take multiple perspectives.
Have interpersonal understanding.
Confront mavericks in a caring way

Take Multiple Perspectives

This is about the willingness of group members to take on others’ point of view when considering a situation, including the speaker’s role, understanding of a situation, agenda and knowledge base. Group members who routinely do this in interactions are more likely to truly listen to one another and so create trust and willingness to work together. Remember, when you truly listen to another person, it is important to focus as much on the person as on the content of the message. As we know too well, it’s easy to be highly content-oriented, and to disregard where and why the message is coming out.

Have Interpersonal Understanding

Interpersonal understanding in a group context is the ability of members to understand the spoken and unspoken feelings, interests, strengths, weaknesses, values and principles of their fellows. When group members understand these aspects about each other, they are better able to deal with others’ behaviour. Research in this area has found that members of high performing, self-managing work teams demonstrated significantly higher levels of interpersonal understanding than did members of low performing teams.

Confront Mavericks in a Caring Way

Research demonstrates that the more group members are allowed to ‘be themselves’ they are, paradoxically, more willing to put their individualism aside to fit in with the group’s needs. But here’s the thing, individuals in those high performing groups have been found to be more likely than individuals in low performing teams to confront group mavericks who break norms. Thus, when someone behaves in an unacceptable way, other group members, and not just the leader, speak out.

However, in these emotionally intelligent groups, they do it in what researchers call a ‘caring orientation’. This means that members communicate in a positive way, appreciate one another and, most importantly, are respectful. As a result, the group can re-negotiate its values, if necessary, and incorporate the perspective of the maverick (or new) member.

Part Two

I hope this introduction to both the individual and group aspects of emotional intelligence has been helpful. My next article on this subject will be a book review of “The Emotionally Intelligent Manager” by Caruso and Salovey. In it the authors explore their views on the six key principles of emotional intelligence and then explore the essential emotional skills needed for ‘extraordinary leadership’.

Mentor Survey

By Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes

12 December 2007

Our last survey for 2007 was all about mentoring. Was it important for women's careers? Do our members have mentors? How did they find them? What, if anything, should (or could!) Professionelle so to support mentoring of professional women?

As always, we prepared a report to let our members know what the survey had revealed on this important topic. The report appeared in the members' only area in our last update and is now available for public view.

First, the numbers!

A staggering 100% of respondents believed that mentors play, or can play, an important role in woman’s careers. Clearly, the kind of work arrangement our members were in made no difference to theirview of the importance of mentors.
83% said mentors now played, or could play, an important role in their own careers.
Exactly two thirds currently have a mentor. Those who did not were as likely to be in full time "traditional" employment as in alternative arrangements.
Lastly, an overwhelming 93% of respondents believed that Professionelle should play a role in facilitating mentoring across our members. The two respondents who didn’t say “yes, you should” instead said “yes, you could”.

Value of Mentors

Two quotations will suffice to support the exceptionally strong positive response on this question:

From a member with her own businesses:

If not for a mentor to sound ideas with, I would not be in the position I am today with currently owning three companies and in the process of setting up another two. I cannot recommend enough finding someone you feel comfortable with who can also inspire you to reach great heights.

From another member in full time employment:

I am currently in a senior position and had not used a mentor before. However, after attending a resilience workshop facilitated by my organisation I realised what I had been missing out on. I chose someone in the organisation, pretty high up, that I respected and who was also outside the specific area I work in, to get a different perspective. My mentor’s input is already changing my life!

Finding Mentors

Relatively few respondents seem to have found your mentors through the active facilitation of their companies. There were exceptions, of course, like the member who found hers through a company-promoted relationship with the NZ Institute of Management. However, the general theme was that women found their mentors by themselves.

Owner operators reported that they rely on referrals from friends, or contacts made before they branched out into being their own bosses.

Repeatedly, the theme was that mentoring works when people “click”, when values align and when the mentor for some reason takes a personal interest in the mentee’s success.

Mentors came through professional qualification bodies and academic institutions as well as in the form of supervisors, ex-bosses and colleagues. One member reported her mentor offered her services after hearing the member speak on the local government election trail!

Mentor Services

In addition, useful existing sources for people seeking mentors came to us through this survey:

www.mentorcentre.co.nz According to its website, “The New Zealand Mentoring Centre provides the highest quality individual, peer, team and organisational mentoring & coaching services.”
www.rwr.co.nz/mentoring.php Retailworld Resourcing is a local recruitment agency that specialises in the retail sector and offers a retail-specific mentoring match-up service
www.businessmentor.org.nz/about/index.php “Business Mentors New Zealand is a fully funded service of Business In The Community. This organisation, operating with over 1,400 volunteer mentors… provides a national mentor network to help any New Zealand company which has been in business for at least 12 months and has less than 25 employees.”
www.mentornet.net Based in the USA. “MentorNet is the award-winning nonprofit e-mentoring network that positively affects the retention and success of those in engineering, science and mathematics, particularly but not exclusively women and others underrepresented in these fields.”

Ideas for Professionelle’s Role

There were three main themes to the suggestions on this question.

1. Provide an online or offline place for women to meet informally and make the necessary first connections

This appealed to women who were looking for opportunities to make an informal, yet personal, connection and then drive any resulting relationship forward between themselves.
Offline ideas: an “expo” or networking event; also some industry-specific gatherings.
Online ideas: a forum or email loop for women to connect.

2. Provide an online listing of both women willing to act as mentors and those seeking mentors (with some level of confidentiality)

This appealed to women who struggle to ask another to be their mentor. “Having a base with people who have already agreed is a great step”.
Running this via Professionelle’s message board or similar would give individuals control over the information and contact details they provid

3. Offer an active matching service in which Professionelle gathers information on mentees and mentors to make a preliminary match and facilitate a first meeting

Several respondents noted the risk that developing and running an mentor system could create a heavy admin workload.

A secondary theme from several of you was to provide “ground rules” in order to set expectations about respective roles, and to clarify the difference between mentors and coaches.

Where To from Here?

Informal meetings: We are planning two more offline networking events in 2008 which will provide informal opportunities for our members to get together. (Not a member yet? Registering is quick, easy and free!)

We are also currently exploring a more specific inter-generational meeting to link promising young women at university with potential mentors who have experience and connections in the public and private sectors.

Online listing: We recently opened a forum on the messageboard for people to post their networking meetings around the country. We will soon open one for mentees and mentors to post information on their needs and their experiences. The board allows for private messages to be sent, protecting confidentiality in the first instance. This forum will also only be visible to Professionelle members and will be free of charge.

Several of our members mentioned an interest in offering their services as mentors. We hope you will find time to register that willingness on the board. The first post on the board will be, as respondents suggested, all about ground rules and expectations!

Thanks again to everyone who responded. We look forward to seeing how well these activities support mentoring for professional working women.

Personal Brands: Key for Careers

Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes and Galia BarHava-Monteith

This piece first appeared in January 2008 in the NZ Herald's Career '08 Portfolio

Of all the things you do well, which are you most known for? What companies or managers are you bracketed with in other people’s minds? Which of your values are others most aware of?

The idea of marketing yourself much as a product may seem strange, but there are many benefits to thinking strategically about the profile you’re creating inside and outside your company. By being deliberate and consistent about the messages you send out, you can leverage your existing reputation into a clear and coherent personal brand.

Personal branding can add value to your career in several ways. It differentiates you from those around you and can lift your credibility and profile as an expert. The effort it takes you to work out exactly what your unique value proposition is will stand you in good stead for assessing new opportunities as they arise. It will also help you identify personal development priorities.

There are several elements to a personal brand. Without exception, everyone interviewed for this article stated that strong performance is a prerequisite for a credible personal brand. “You can’t build a personal brand on nothing,” says Ian Taylor, Director at Sheffield Ltd, a human resources consulting firm. “Ask yourself if you can really deliver the expertise you claim to have.”

In the early stages of a career, this strong performance and expertise is likely to come from a technical skill. Taylor recalls a CEO who began his career as a young lawyer, and developed a speciality in an unusual area of the law. This expertise helped him rapidly build networks inside his firm and gave him early exposure to the senior partners. It also allowed him to build a profile outside the firm. Taylor said:

Specialisation is one way of getting noticed. You start with a technical speciality but as time goes on you accrete other skills. You need to be proactive and articulate your ambitions to get support to build those other skills. If you want to be CEO or if you want to be the best in the land at X, those different goals will affect what you need to do.

Credibility also comes from individuals acting in accordance with the way they talk about themselves, and with the strengths they claim to have, says Marie Wilson, Professor of Management at The University of Auckland Business School. She continues:

Much of what we do at work is invisible to others.The parts that we highlight to others should be the aspects we want to be known for. Those aspects are likely to be our strengths. For me, this is the most valuable part of creating a profile: reflecting on your strengths, consciously thinking about what you’re good at, what you want to be known for.

“All the literature on performance improvement management is about building on the strengths you have in the organisation or team.” She adds that this can apply at the individual level, too.

Professor Wilson recommends the Reflected Best Self Exercise, which is available online for a small fee from the Centre for Positive Organizational Scholarship at the University of Michigan. The Exercise enables individuals to identify their unique strengths and talents by asking for positive feedback from a range of people in their lives. When used correctly, the tool can show both when you are at your best and what you are best at.

These strengths go beyond specific skills or technical knowledge to encompass the best aspects of how you behave with other people, how you view the world, and what your values are.

A reputation can be built around values. Patricia is a management consultant in Auckland who says she is “always careful in any interface with how I’m perceived. It’s about integrity: do they understand what I mean and what I stand for?”

She always thinks about conveying her values in a consistent way. This takes precedence over her industry competence in the messages she sends. Patricia stands for transparency and honesty, an egalitarian approach and a willingness to share and test ideas. “I know that in any interface with an audience they’ll make inferences about brand credibility. I try to be open and accessible so that people will know they can always call me to clarify things, so there’s less conjecture.”

To help build a personal brand, those looking to move jobs should seek out companies with brands complementary to their own, recommends George Brooks, CEO of OCG, recruiting specialists.

You want to leverage off the best in the employer’s brand. If you can link your skills, attributes and values to a company’s then you can get noticed very fast in this small market place.

One measure of your personal brand strength is the extent to which you become a magnet for good people, he adds. A high performing individual in a high performing organisation will often attract new talent.

Individuals at very senior levels of management can “rightfully use PR to support their brand”, says Brooks. When there’s a good fit with the employer’s brand this effort is mutually beneficial.

He suggests another way to enhance a personal brand is to be altruistic. Sharing time and experiences with others is a powerful way to build an external profile. Many industry groups, he notes, are facilitated by mid-level managers who have built up valuable experience over several years of work. Speakers at conferences and seminars are often drawn from these ranks, too, even though these individuals’ workloads are very high.

Patricia, the management consultant, agrees. When she is very busy, it is hard to find the time to make speeches or attend networking events. “And yet, in retrospect, the effort has always brought some real benefit, in terms of professional and career opportunities. The trouble is you can’t see the benefits in advance, you just have to believe they’ll come!”

She adds that her reputation as someone who is “savvy and in touch” and thus able to make interesting comments on her industry brings her the invitations to speak or write. “It’s on the basis of my past accomplishments. I’m seen as credible.”

Personal brands may be particularly potent in small, close-knit markets like New Zealand. Professor Wilson observes that in the USA and Europe, strong corporate or professional service brands communicate what attributes an employee is likely to have. Here in New Zealand, by contrast, managers are “much more likely to ride on their own reputation”. She ascribes this partly to the fact that there are fewer degrees of separation here, and partly to the fact that New Zealand has fewer large corporate brands.

The New Year offers us a fresh start. This is the time to find out how you’re truly perceived and to manage those perceptions actively. Ask for feedback about what others think you do best. Look at peers you admire and ask what it is they say - and do - that gives you such a positive impression. Align your values, actions and goals with your strengths. Refresh your personal brand regularly to reflect new experiences and skills that you acquire.

Whatever your work arrangements or career stage you should find tangible career and personal development benefits from actively developing your brand.

Nine Months On

By Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes

12 December 2007

Milestones

As I write this, on December 12th 2007, Professionelle has been going for exactly nine months. That’s a length of time that is - dare I say it - pregnant with possibilities, at least in women’s minds! Perhaps it’s appropriate, then, that it coincides with a new milestone in our journey to build a community to support professional working women everywhere.

Just yesterday, I registered our 700th member.

As I entered her details, I wondered to what extent she approximated our average member. This new member – let’s call her Inez – is:

Based in New Zealand, in Auckland
Aged in her early thirties
Educated to Bachelor equivalent level
A barrister / solicitor
Working part time

The last point to note is that Inez found us through referral from a fellow lawyer.

If you’ve been around Professionelle for any time you’ll know that Galia and I love to wallow in data; analysing our ever-growing member population from time to time is a task we particularly enjoy. I drew the long straw and set to with my pivot tables while Galia consoled herself by cooking up a storm to celebrate the last day of Hanukkah.

So, taking it one step at a time, who are our members, and how close to the norm is Inez?

Gender

Inez is a woman. So are 97% of our members.

We value our few brave male souls though! A number of them are close friends, family and business associates. Their support for Professionelle was evident when we sent out the Alpe d’Huez coupons as a thank you to members who’d sent us two or more referrals. Men may only be 3% of our members but they represented ten per cent of those top referring members. The most prolific referrer overall, with a fabulous tally of ten, was a man.

Global Geography

Our members are overwhelmingly from New Zealand, 92% in fact. Inez fits that profile. Unsurprisingly, the next largest source of members, at 6%, is Australia. A handful of other members come from as far and wide as Canada and Samoa.

This pattern must in part reflect that our personal networks are strongest here, and that we have worked hard to build a profile with the media in New Zealand. Our feature articles occasionally relate to purely NZ issues, such as the recent Kiwisaver advice, too. Lastly, we know our dot-co-dot-nz site address sometimes makes offshore readers wonder if they are “allowed” to join our community. Heck, yes!

Inside NZ

Exactly two thirds of our local members are based in Auckland, as measured generously from Pukekohe to Helensville. Again, Inez fits the picture on this third dimension.

Wellington, including Lower Hutt and Paraparaumu, accounts for 11%. Regional North Island towns – especially Hamilton, Tauranga and Palmerston North – add up to a strong 17%. The two main South Island centres take care of another 5%.

The balance comes from smaller South Island towns. The percentage of members in this area may be small but the coverage is remarkable. If we ever take a roadtrip from Bluff to the Picton ferry, we can stop to share a coffee with members in Invercargill, Balclutha, back inland to Gore, up to Queenstown, on to Alexandra and out to Dunedin. Then up the coast to Oamaru, Timaru, Ashburton, Rangiora, Christchurch, over Arthur’s Pass to Greymouth, and then a long haul up to Nelson and finally Blenheim. Phew!

Age

Inez is aged between 31 and 35. By a short nose, that is our largest 5 year age group, followed closely by the later thirties. Our third and fourth largest groups are women in their forties as can be seen in the graph below:

age

The average age of the Professionelle member is 39 years old and the median age falls in the 36-40 age bracket.

Education

Well over 80% of Professionelle members hold a tertiary qualification, ranging from advanced vocational through to post graduate. Post graduates account for a full third of all members.

Those with Bachelor or equivalent degrees account for the single largest group among the tertiary qualified members. Once again, Inez follows the norm!

Industry/Role

The way in which we collect data from members at registration can be answered by industry or by role in an organisation. It is up to members to choose how they describe themselves.

The major job groups that cover a little over half of our members are:

13% Marketing and sales

11% Barristers and solicitors (hello, Inez!)

10% Consulting (excl recruitment consulting)

8% Human resources

6% Finance and financial advisers

6% Line and general management, private sector

Beyond this point there is a long tail, moving from academia/teaching through accounting, IT, publishing/ media/ journalism to project managers, not for profits and psychologists!

It is hard for us to discern the mix of public and private sector with confidence. From the subset of members for whom we do know it, however, the mix appears to run at about 3:1 in favour of the private sector.

Work Arrangements

Here for the first time, Inez departs from the norm for our members. As a part timer, she’s in a small minority.

The most common work arrangement is full time, which covers 60% of our members. The next most common arrangement, used by 28%, is self-employed/ own business / contractor. These three strands go together because contractors may be sole traders who could be classified as self employed, while those in their own businesses are also self employed.

Part timers constitute just 8% of our membership. “No employment” (such as retired people, students etc) and “not stated” form the last 5%.

It is surely noteworthy that the proportion of the more alternative arrangements runs as high as 36%. Anecdotally, we see that this reflects women’s efforts to forge flexible working arrangements as their lives change. The highest proportion of flexible arrangements – just under 50% - appears among members in their late thirties and early forties.

How our members found us

Almost two thirds found us through referral from friends, colleagues and trusted newsletters. Galia and I of course got the ball rolling when we launched, but it didn’t take long for registrations from people we’d never heard of, referred by others we didn’t know either, to start appearing in our system. Inez, who heard about us from a legal colleague is, on this dimension, once again in with the majority.

The next largest group of members, 22%, came to us via mentions in NZ print media, whether from articles we had written or quotations we had supplied on issues affecting professional women.

10% of members found us through internet searches. All our effort to produce word-rich content, and regularly update it, is worth its weight in gold when it comes to climbing Google rankings for free!

The remaining few percent were from registrations that did not provide information on this item.

Conclusion

It seems that our 700th member matches the norm or average of our members in almost all respects.

Some readers may wonder why we collect any data on our members and what we do with it. The answer is simple: we want to be sure that we are attracting, and continuing to attract, the sort of women we had in mind when we developed the site. It’s the acid test of how our material and brand values are being received and interpreted.

By the way, we absolutely will not share or sell our member information to third parties.

The data reviewed in this report is unequivocal: the vast majority of our members are professional working women in the kind of careers we have often seen in our combined thirty odd years of work experience in professional services and corporates. The feedback we’ve had from our members so far (feedback that is typically infrequent, but in-depth when it comes!) confirms that Professionelle is addressing a number of the issues that matter and that it is positioned to make a difference.

It’s great to know that our read of the issues in professional working women’s lives is broadly right. It’s even better to see our community beginning to share successes and the seeds of new solutions.

What Stops NZ Women Rising to the Top?

By Galia Barhava-Monteith

17 June 2007

Introduction

As I sat down to analyse our survey on barriers to women rising to the top, it occurred to me that the timing couldn’t be better. It has been nearly nine months since Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes and I launched Professionelle. Working through the responses to this, our latest survey, I was able to ask myself if we’ve been addressing the issues that REALLY matter for professional women in New Zealand? Judging by the responses to the survey, it seems we have been quite on the mark. But read on to make your own judgement!

Nearly forty years on from the feminist revolution, we know that women aren’t making it to the top in New Zealand’s businesses.

The numbers:

The figures say it all. When looking at the proportion of women in board positions in our top companies, New Zealand fares the worst of the English speaking countries, even behind Australia!

Women Board Directors ASX200 International Comparison

Source: 2006 EOWA Australian census of women in leadership cited in the Australian Financial Review.

The two of us at Professionelle are baffled. When we set up our website we based it on our own experience and observations. We knew that being a professional woman could be a lonely experience. We didn’t think - or at least not consciously - that sexist attitudes were that prevalent any more. Perhaps we were swayed by media coverage of the very few, but very prominent, senior women in the private sector. But as we started researching the topic of the position of professional women in the third millenium, using New Zealand data as opposed to international data, the picture that emerged was a lot worse than we expected.

Having taken a good look at the relevant New Zealand numbers, we felt it was time to ask our members for their opinions on the key barriers preventing New Zealand women from reaching the top of companies and organisations.

Professionelle’s research:

We asked our members to list what they believed were the three most important barriers to women’s progression to the top. They were able to choose from responses provided by us, which were based on international research on the topic, or to write their own. Respondents were also able to provide us with their thoughts and comments.

Over forty of our members took the time to answer the survey, and many also provided us with indepth and insightful comments.

On reflection, I found the results surprising. I didn’t expect to find such widely held experiences of male-dominated cultures across the board. What I did find heartening though, was that although one important barrier lay outside our immediate control, the other major one was in fact a reflection of women having more choices and choosing to exercise them!

Our analysis:

We analysed the results on the barriers in three ways:
1. By importance (those listed as first and second most important barriers),
2. By frequency of mention across all the barriers listed,
3. By the comments provided.

The most important barriers:

Two of the three most significant barriers concerned women’s experiences of male dominated workplaces. These three top barriers were:

“Inhospitable corporate culture - masculine leadership styles, vocabulary and norms”
“Women opting out rather than put up with the "corporate cr*p"”
“Women's exclusion from informal networks”

Given that the Professionelle members who responded to our survey came from a wide range of occupations and employment types around the country, we believe these results are all the more powerful because of how consistent women’s views were.

On the face of it, these results might seem depressing as forty years on it appears we still have to deal with similar corporate cultures to those described in early feminist writing. The sexism is probably less overt than in the seventies but its effects are still felt: masculine leadership styles, masculine style of speech and masculine norms apparently still prevail. And it’s deeply frustrating to read that women in 2007 still feel excluded from informal networks and the “boys’ club”.

That said, the second important barrier is much more heartening. The fact that women themselves are choosing to opt out is very positive. It shows that women in New Zealand have choices, and that we are able to exercise them. Some of us choose to stay in full time work and others choose to pursue other paths. Granted, for some, leaving traditional employment may not be economically viable, but increasingly, other forms of work are becoming more economically sustainable, judging by anecdotal evidence and our membership profile.

In our latest analysis of our 670 registered members, nearly a third are in non-traditional employment arrangements, such as contractors, running their own businesses and self-employment..

The most commonly cited barriers:

We classified all of the responses (excluding the comments) into set categories. The three most commonly mentioned barriers matched, as expected, to the three most important ones. However, the top five prevailing barriers provided more depth to the picture:

Lack of mentoring emerged as the fourth common barrier to women’s progression to top positions. Our current survey aims to explore this barrier further and to see how Professionelle might help address mentoring needs.

Another area where we at Professionelle aim to help is with the fifth most common barrier: the burdens we women load on ourselves. Members made a number of revealing comments on this topic:

Women’s perfectionist tendencies.
Women’s lack of self-belief and confidence.
Women mistakenly assuming that you make it through hard work alone and not through networking and the social side of the corporate ladder.
Women moving into staff roles and not gaining line experience.

Also commonly cited were barriers concerning the lack of career opportunities given to women, companies not wanting the risk of giving women high visibility roles, and women not being in the pipeline long enough.

Looking at both the important and the commonly mentioned factors, a consistent picture emerges. Yes, definitely there are things organisations and companies can do to help women move through the ranks. In particular, they can work on their culture and ensure women are not excluded. They can monitor the insidious sexism that our survey shows is still very much present in many work environments. And, indeed, companies are beginning to realise these are strategic issues for them and are coming to Professionelle for advice on how to overcome these issues.

However, there are also things that women as individuals can do. These are the things we focus on at Professionelle.co.nz. Our ‘Feeling like a Fraud’ feature was written specifically for those of us who suffer from perfectionism and lack of self belief!

As we plan ahead for next year, we will definitely ensure that the content we provide to our members will continue to align closely with these findings.

What were respondents most passionate about?

But what did our respondents feel most strongly about? What propelled them to write their very thoughtful comments? Analysing this part of the survey proved to be the most interesting.

My hypothesis was that respondents would be most likely to comment on the work-life-family responsibilities challenges. I wasn’t far off. However, what they felt most strongly about, again, was the persistent and insidious bias against women, which, according to our respondents, is still very much alive and well in New Zealand companies.

Bias against women is alive and well:

Reading the comments, I was most struck by women describing their personal experiences and direct observations of sexism in inhospitable, male-dominated cultures. Their comments fly in the face of the prevailing view that women in New Zealand don’t face such serious barriers.

I think the concept is out there that women don't have barriers any more to rise to the top, but I personally think in Auckland firms are still long way from accepting women at the top.
It will be interesting to see how many corporates actually have a grooming process where women are groomed to reach the top. I have seen this happen in UK and good to see an interest was shown by the top level in the staff below regardless of the gender. Also I think because sometimes it takes a lot for women to reach the top, the also become barriers to other women reaching the top as the instinct to protect your own territory kicks in.
This would be a non issue if there wasn't an unspoken culture around the high level positions.”
The "boys club" is alive and well - and they don't welcome outsiders!
The 'Boys club' thing is so underestimated. In my experience, in this type of Boys club environment, it's obvious that most men don't even know how to react when women are at the same 'table'. The tone usually lifts a bit - until the first joke...then your presence almost becomes invisible!
;As I move through my 30s and in a senior management role I'd say the barriers are increasing rather than decreasing. An older woman commented to me that women have a tougher time as they move through the higher ranks than they do at more junior levels and I'm finding that to be true.

Making the situation worse is the perception that men in senior positions are not prepared to take the chance to promote a woman alongside them, because women in high positions are highly visible and exposed in New Zealand.

CEOs and Chair of Boards are not willing to "take the risk" of going against the norm and putting in a woman. Media focus on women in high profile or CEO roles is not balanced. My experience - some CEOs and GMs actively dislike having strong women on the senior mgmt team as it changes the club rules.

Family responsibilities:

The second topic most frequently commented on was family responsibilities. Looking at the responses, it isn’t the family responsibilities per se that prevent women from pursuing their career. Instead, it is the lack of assistance both at home and from a work structure perspective that results in women ending up having two full time jobs!

I found the following comments most poignant on this particular issue.

The ownership of family matters we assume (rather than expecting our partners to equally share the load)means that a) we are more likely to get burned out and b) we don't have enough role models of both women and men who have high-powered careers and who are strongly involved in the care of their families. Only when both genders demanded this flexibility will workplace norms change.
Unfortunately I think it still comes down to the career vs family dilemma. While there are opportunities for women to work part time the attitude (at least where I work) is that once you have made that choice you are pretty much going to stay where you are. Part timers don't make partnership. "Role reversing” as a couple is pretty difficult too as even if you are lucky enough to find a partner who is happy to be a stay at home dad they are frowned upon and people seem to assume they did it because they have the second rate career or couldn't get a good enough job to support their partner so she could do it
I'm not sure about the reasons listed, but I do see - often - that women who are also mothers have less upward mobility because of the other full-time job alongside their paid work. The greatest obstacle seems to me to be lack of support in child-rearing and housekeeping. It may be changing slowly, but during these school holidays, how many working mothers are thinking about the children and taking responsibility for their care, compared to how many men? I know many men do support with particular tasks, but who does the thinking and working out?

Lack of flexible work arrangements was also seen to contribute to the burden:

Along this barrier (lack of flexible work arrangements) is lack of child-friendly workplaces. It doesn't affect me, but it certainly would help working mothers.

Women needing to learn how to ‘self-promote’:

The third most commented on issue was women’s reluctance to place themselves in the high visibility positions required in order to ‘make it’ in the traditional work place.

Many policy makers and decision makers are men. People have a tendency to include a 'recruit to type' component when selecting people for opportunities. Women need to place themselves in a position where they are VISIBLE to the decision makers, even while in 'lesser' roles. You can only be chosen when you stand out from the well qualified crowd. We need to be able to confidently talk about our experience in a 'can-do' way if we haven't done EXACTLY THAT THING before...show that we are a safe pair of hands and that we have something more to offer.
Further comment, a number of women I have worked with WAIT for opportunities to happen, rather than activity seeking them. Note also that the barriers I have selected all indicate little 'active' bias against women, but a more implicit or subconscious bias that is really hard to define.

Some of our respondents felt that women build the highest barriers for themselves, and believed that women who work on those barriers were in a much better position to advance.

Of course there are barriers to women that are external - but I believe that in today's world we are our own most significant barriers.

Lastly, one respondent thought that women might not actually want those high ‘profile’ roles.

I'd have to say that I haven’t experienced significant barriers that couldn't be worked around or pushed through and I work in an extremely male oriented work place. Yes, at times they may have been a little more barriers than what my male colleagues experienced but I now find myself in a position equal to or higher than my male colleagues. The question I wonder about is if women actually want these roles on boards or CEO/GM? I have interviewed 5 women for a high calibre role at my firm in recent weeks and all 5 were ill prepared and dispassionate about the industry and the role and they are the only applications I have received after casting the net far and wide over an extended period. In discussions with other friends in my industry I'm hearing the same thing from them which leads me back to the question is there a skills shortage in general or perhaps that women don't want the roles we think they do?

This last comment fits well with our last major finding that perhaps women don’t necessarily want to advance in traditional workplaces in the same way that their male counterparts do.

Women have different drivers

Although ‘women opting out of their own choices’ was one of the top three important and commonly cited barriers in our survey, there were relatively few comments about it. When our respondents did comment, however, it became evident to me that some of our members believe women simply have different drivers to men, and that these are reflected in the choices they make.

“Is this just a numbers game? Are fewer women are at the top because many talented women lose the desire to work to the top because of the sacrifices required in other facets of their lives? We were brought up with the 'girls can do anything' message - true! but it turns out that girls can't do everything. With family, friendships, partners, homes, work, and hopefully some outside interests to maintain usually something has to give. It's been my observation that women are happy to leave behind corporate crap and take on rewarding work that fits with lifestyle and this usually does not align itself with corporate advancement. It would be interesting to do a profiling exercise of women who have reached the top of the private and public sectors. For example, how many have families?”

Generally speaking, women don't seem to be as tolerant as men at putting up with stressful situations and relationships, so we opt out more easily. Do we need to toughen up or can we keep our high expectations?

Conclusion

Working through the data proved to be a lot to take in!

I believe the findings are alarming. As we near the end of 2007, women are still finding it difficult to advance in New Zealand because of the underlying male-dominant culture. Yes, it could be the case that our survey contained a self-selecting bias; perhaps the women who responded to us feel passionately about it because they’ve experienced it. However, these results, the numbers and our anecdotal observations based on our users' comments and our work, all suggest that New Zealand business has a way to go to both acknowlegde and to seriously address this issue.

However, what heartened me was that many of our respondents felt that women who exercise their choice and opt out are doing it voluntarily, not because they have been forced to. Coming from a different country where these options aren’t open to the same extent for economic reasons, I fully appreciate how New Zealand women have real options available to them. We can work full time or part time or not at all, taking career breaks. We can start our own business or we can contract our skills.

All these choices are socially acceptable and often economically viable. What these results say to me is that if corporates and organisations want to hold on to their talented women, they need to act fast, as the options we have make other choices appealing!

What do you think? We’d love your thoughts and reflections on this extremely important topic. Please e-mail me or post your thoughts directly on the message board.

If you’d like to read other articles on the status of New Zealand professional women on our website, you can read about our analysis of the 2001 census data:

Behind the Numbers
Behind the Numbers - Part 2
Behind the Numbers - Part 3

We also investigated the myth of a "Golden Age" for Women CEOs in New Zealand and discovered the unpleasant reality of a widening gender pay gap

Slip-Slidin' Away

Lastly, if you want to find out how you can overcome feeling a fraud, read one of our earlier Ask the Experts:

Feeling Like a Fraud - the Impostor Syndrome

Alpe d'Huez sports gear

Christmas 2007

Alpe d’Huez is run by Steve Guy and his team in Auckland and their range includes gym leggings, bike shorts and much more. Below, you can read Steve’s message about how Professionelle and Alpe d’Huez got together and an unexpected opportunity that has flowed from it already, proving yet again the power of networking.

We’re also pleased to include a review of Alpe d’Huez’s clothing by Rachel Ockelford, a Professionelle member based in Wellington. As you’ll see, she’s hugely committed to sport and in a month she put the clothing through hours of endurance testing.

A Message from Steve Guy of Alpe d’Huez

As a producer of exercise apparel, we at Alpe d’Huez were keen to find a partner with great contacts with professional men and women. While reading the national newspaper, I came across an article written by Galia from professionelle.co.nz, a brilliant new networking website for professional women. While initially not exactly sure how we could combine our business ideas, I contacted Galia and we met over a coffee to discuss the origins of our businesses and our hopes for their future.

Out of this contact we have agreed upon a sponsorship arrangement that will see us providing our products to the professionelle.co.nz network, in a branding exercise to unite the networks of both businesses.

As an interesting side note to the story is that my fiancée is the HR Manager for a large NZ finance Company. She had already heard of professionelle.co.nz and was interested in involving her female staff with the professionelle.co.nz network. She and Galia have since met and discussed future opportunities together.

This is a true real life example of how networking can produce outcomes that you don't even know are there!

Product review of Alpe d’Huez gear by Rachel Ockelford

Alpe d’Huez is an Auckland-based company focusing on reasonably priced, high quality sportsgear. When they approached Professionelle, looking at potential joint marketing opportunities, Galia first wanted to ensure that the gear was as good as it claimed to be. She figured that I’d be a good person to test the gear... probably correctly…

I’m happy to admit I’m pretty nutty about sport. Apart from mid week training, a sample recent month consisted of four weekends of racing:

Day/ Night Thriller, a 12 hour team-based mountain bike race
Wellington 24 hour race, teams of 2 or 4 kayaking, mountain biking and tramping for about a day (it took us 22.5 hours)
Spring Challenge, a Women’s only team race consisting of rafting, mountain biking and tramping for between 12 and 24 hours (took us 15 hours)
Control 90, 3 x 4hour rogaines (team based orienteering) kayaking, mountain biking and running

So, I can vouch that I’ve been giving the gear that Alpe d’Huez supplied a good thrashing, and that I’m pleasantly impressed with the quality, comfort and performance. They supplied me with gym leggings, cycle shorts and arm warmers.

Gym Leggings

I was a little sceptical about these at first as they are knee length but elasticised around the bottom, an unusual combination. I own at least 3 other pairs of knee length leggings, none of which are elasticised. I’ve now used the Alpe d’Huez ones for pilates, at the gym, running, cycling and out tramping in the bush for several hours and can say that it isn’t an issue, though I’m still not convinced it’s an advantage, either. However, they are comfy and have useful pockets. One is a zip one on your butt for cards etc and there’s also an internal one for keys.

Most importantly, they look good! Tellingly, the first time I wore them my pilates instructor wanted to know what brand they were and where he could get similar ones to print up with his studio’s name and logo…

Cycle Shorts

I was sent a couple of pairs of cycle shorts – one plain black, and the second with pink stitching and ‘Liberty Girl’ written on them. I love the black ones…those who know me will understand that I’ve never really been a pink girl (I’m more in favour of ‘blue is for girls’ – demonstrated by my new kayak which is a gorgeous pale blue and white colour... but I digress).

What really counts is the comfort and fit, as those of you who spend reasonable amounts of time on a bike seat will I’m sure agree. These shorts meet those requirements. I’ve found them very comfortable. I haven’t quite worked out why the shorts have hanger loops on the inside as I can’t imagine I’ll ever be hanging them in my wardrobe but performance-wise they work!

Arm warmers

I also got sent a pair of medium arm warmers, which I’m presuming must be sized for boys as even with my kayaking arms they are almost too big! Steve has assured me he’ll be bringing out some smaller ones though. Again, I can’t really say anything more than to assure you they are comfortable and warm, which is pretty important in a Wellington winter!

In summary

Their gear is priced reasonably and in my opinion good quality and comfortable.

A Perspective on Women and Mentoring

By Galia BarHava-Monteith

28 October 2007

There is no question that women are under-represented in senior positions in New Zealand.

In recent analysis we conducted at Professionelle.co.nz, we were able to demonstrate that the pay gap and the rate of women’s participation in senior positions in the private sector have both worsened in the new millennium. But why?

Many perspectives have been put forward as to why women, three decades on from the feminist revolution, are still not making it to the top in greater numbers. International research and our recent online survey into “what’s stopping women rising to the top?” demonstrate that one of the consistent explanations put forward is the lack of mentoring of women in organisations.

Why mentoring is a powerful tool

Mentoring is an incredibly powerful tool. A good mentor can act as a guide, a sounding board, a powerful advocate and a thought partner. A good mentor should challenge your thinking and stretch your expectations of yourself and what you think you can possibly achieve. A great mentor will grow with you and will stay with you throughout your career, introducing you to her/his network and will take a keen ongoing interest in your development.

Whose responsibility is it to ensure that talented and promising women and men have access to good mentors? I believe organisations definitely have a role to play in encouraging the development of successful mentoring relationships.

For example, organisations that are serious about developing their talented men and women can formally facilitate mentoring relationships. They can engineer cross-functional interactions and put in place incentives for senior managers/professionals to become mentors.

The importance of mentoring is widely acknowledged in the US. Most Fortune 500 companies see mentoring as an important employee development tool, with 71% of them having mentoring programs (according to T. A. Scandura, a management professor and dean of the graduate school at the University of Miami).

Various academic studies since the 1980s have demonstrated the many benefits of mentoring. According to Scandura, employees who have mentors earn more money, are better socialized into the organization and are more productive. Research also demonstrates that mentees experience less stress and get promoted more rapidly.

Mentoring for Women

Organisations that believe they need to specially target their talented women, whether it’s because they are leaving, or that there aren’t many of them at the top or simply because it’s the ‘right’ thing to do, can shoulder tap rising female stars and ensure they have great mentors in place. Of all the strategies put forward to help combat the ongoing state of affairs where women don’t make it to the top, mentoring is probably the lowest hanging fruit.

In fact, a recent article from Wharton University’s online knowledge system points to research that shows how much easier it is for young men to get mentored by senior men than it is for young women to do the same. Since men continue to hold most of the senior positions in organisations, the implications for women are obvious.

The role of the mentee in the mentoring process

But here’s the thing, the research and literature indicate that mentoring cannot be overly prescriptive as this will detract from the trust and the ‘flow’ of the relationship, thus making it less effective.

Indeed, according to Wharton management professor Katherine Klein, Informal mentoring relationships are often more typical and more beneficial to both mentor and mentees. According to Klein, it is particularly important for mentees to be proactive in trying to establish a relationship with a senior person and to be energetic in keeping the relationship going. She uses the phrase "irresistible protégé" to describe these employees.

"Research shows that protégés influence the amount of mentoring they receive," according to Klein. "You're more likely to get mentored if you're talented, have an outgoing personality and are career- and goal-oriented. Once a mentor sees that you're eager, the more likely it is the mentor will want to spend the time and social capital on you, introduce you to the right people, and so on."

It has certainly been my observation over many years that a good mentoring relationship is a two way process. Mentees who put themselves out there as they seek good mentors tend to find them. Mentees who take an active role in engaging and maintaining the ongoing relationship with their mentors throughout their careers are more likely to be introduced to their mentors’ extensive networks and gain access to more opportunities. Mentors benefit not only from watching their protégés’ growth but also from access to their mentees’ growing networks and influence.

Perhaps one of the reasons both international research and women themselves cite lack of mentoring as one of the key barriers to ‘getting to the top’ is because women are reluctant to take such an active role in the mentoring relationship. Members of our online community tell us that they can feel excluded from the informal networks where the ‘organic’ mentoring relationships have historically developed. Women may also find it too ‘in your face’ or ‘self promoting’ to be so openly proactive. They may, in addition, shy away from taking other people’s time and feel that they are imposing. And perhaps, with a lack of role models who’ve had great mentors to learn from, they may simply not see it as a viable or valuable approach.

Two Way Street

Mentoring is a two-way relationship; as in any relationship, both partners need to take an active approach. Women and men who wish to have a great mentor should seek that person out, initiate the relationship and continually work to maintain it. Organisations can help by removing obstacles, enabling cross-functional interactions and actively promoting the concept in their organisations.

Ultimately, however, it is up to us.

Feedback on this article

Galia, Awesome article on mentoring. I totally agree with your analysis based on my personal mentoring experiences. As usual, I never thought about mentoring enough to be able to articulate it but now that you have done so... it has become really clear.

The info about mentoring is most welcome I find the different "takes" on the issue interesting and thought-provoking. Thank you.

If you'd like to add your comments or thoughts, please add them to our messageboard thread called "Mentors: A Must-Have Career Accessory?"

On First Impressions and Networking

By Galia BarHava-Monteith, and Penny Harrison, Director of Communicate Consultants

31 October 2009

first impression

On October 16th 2007, Professionelle held its first ever offline networking event in Auckland.

It was a huge success. We booked a venue that could hold no more than fifty women and we had exactly fifty women! The buzz in the room was positively electrifying. There we were, professional women from both the private and public sectors, some employed full time, others with their own businesses, some starting out on their career, while others are at their peak, all talking enthusiastically to one another.

The first thing we observed was that the women arrived pretty much all on time! All came eager to meet and network with other women. Within minutes the venue was humming with animated and engaged conversations.

The feedback we received was extraordinarily positive, which we found highly encouraging. The comments below illustrate the vibe of the evening beautifully:

Thank you for putting on such a great event! I would be really interested in having more events like that, bi-annual or with greater frequency. Everyone I spoke with was having fun and seemed to be making some good connections. I personally had a wonderful time and do plan on meeting up with some of the wonderful women I met.

I really enjoyed last night and came home on a high. A good atmosphere combined with open, warm and welcoming women - who were interesting, interested and intelligent!

It was good to meet women in other professions, not just lawyers, and of various age groups. I found it interesting that women in say, engineering firms, have had the same experiences as I have in a generally male-dominated area. Also, it's always helpful to hear people talk about their working-OE experiences.

A big thank you to you and Sarah for organising a really enjoyable evening. I was not sure what to expect in the types of ages orprofessions that would attend and was gladdened by the range of ages and careers. It's always good to meet women of different ages to yourself and also that work in different careers. Everyone there was open and friendly which was great. I look forward to the next one in March, though I'm sure we'll see you before then...

Professionelle was not set up to provide offline-networking events. We believe that there are already many networking events for women on offer, especially in Auckland, and we needed some convincing. However, after a number of comments from our members, we decided to try it out and as you can see, it was a great success!

As usual, I had to reflect on why was it such as a success. And I believe it came down to two factors:

The attitude of the women who attended
Our choice of speaker - Penny Harrison from Communicate Consultants and her topic “First Impressions”

Attitudes towards networking

All of the comments we received during the evening and since referred in one way or another to the attitude of the women who were there, and that it was this attitude that made the evening a success. How do you achieve the right attitude among attendees of a networking event? We believe that you must be very clear about the purpose of the event from the outset so that people can select in or out depending on what they’re wanting to achieve from the time they invest. Some networking events are focused on generating business opportunities, while others are orientated more towards building professional alliances. As an organiser, you need to be clear about your purpose for your event.

We were very clear that we wanted to replicate the ‘feel’ of our online community in a face-to-face gathering. We wanted it be warm, and we wanted women to be able to talk about the things that really matter to them. We also wanted to make sure that we chose the right speaker, a professional herself, who would have something of real worth to say that our members could benefit from.

In our communications leading up to the event we were very clear that the purpose of Professionelle’s networking event was for professional women to meet and talk to women like themselves. So, the women who selected in were in a mind frame to take advantage of this opportunity!

But, for the event to be successful, the women themselves had to have the right attitude; it was their attitude and their approach to other women, which made the evening. So, how do you take full advantage of networking opportunities as a participant? How do you have a great time, meet interesting people and find the whole thing worthwhile?

Below are some of our tips for you to make full use of networking opportunities:

Be clear about your expectations - Work out what it is that you want to accomplish and if the event will help you do that. Basically, if you’re wanting to generate business leads, make sure the events you go to are designed for that. If in doubt, ask the organisers. They should be happy to guide you.
Keep an open mind and leave your prejudices behind - We all have prejudices; older women might think younger women will find them boring, younger women might think that older women find them silly! It is safe to assume that people who CHOOSE to attend a networking event are usually open-minded and interested.
Be open, warm and inclusive - Smiling to someone who approaches you, holding your hand out to introduce yourself, and inviting them to join in your conversation, ALWAYS works a treat. But more on that later.
Follow up - To make the most of any networking event, make sure you follow up with at least one person. Unless, of course, you didn’t find anyone you want to follow up with! Following up is as simple as sending an e-mail and organising to have a coffee together. The beauty of extending your network through meeting people from other walks of life is that you just never know where it will lead!

Our Choice of a Speaker: Penny Harrison From Communicate Consultants

It was very important to us that our speaker, especially for this first trial event, was the right one. Choosing the right speaker is crucial so that your attendees feel they’ve really gained something from the event. Even more importantly, the women who attended our event have extremely busy lives and we wanted to make sure they felt respected by our choice of speaker. As you can see from the following comments, they certainly did appreciate our speaker Penny Harrison, who is a veteran of corporate and professional services lives and an expert on communication strategies:

Great night. The speaker was a great choice, not too formal but I think we all would have taken something from what she had to say.

I particularly enjoyed the size (no. of women) of the event, which seemed perfect for the time and agenda. And I loved Penny and the way she ran her slot. There was a fantastic variety of women there and I look forward to meeting more at future events.

Thanks for organising last night - it was interesting to meet new people and an informative talk from Penny. I know I have to lift my game in the appearances stakes!

Penny was also very generous in offering two free communication coaching sessions for the winner of the business card draw!

Making the most of first impressions

Given Penny’s talk on first impressions was so well received, we thought we’d share with you her key points.

The very first impressions are outside of our control!

Penny focused on how people make their first judgments. Like it or not, the first things people notice are outside our control. They are ethnicity, gender and age!

Ethnicity: What ethnic group did they expect?

Gender: Male or female? How do they feel about that? Was it unexpected?! What cultural attitudes surround us?

Age: Do they think you look too young to be knowledgeable, or too old to be any use?!

What can we control about first impressions?

Where we can make a difference is by ensuring we have the appropriate appearance for our role/status and for what we are trying to achieve. Yes, people do judge a book by its cover, especially at the first meeting. Appearance is partly to do with clothes and grooming and partly to do with how you conduct yourself.

Appearance: Do you give an appearance of fitting in your role? If you are under-dressed others may feel that you don’t respect them or the situation. If you are very over-dressed, they will think you are too formal and distant. Be appropriate to the situation, but when in doubt, in formal professional environments, always dress a little more formally than the group you are dealing with – you can always remove that jacket to reduce the formality if necessary.

Professionally, appearing taller helps! Wear dark, reasonably formal clothes.

Grooming: We also notice grooming in that first impression. Regardless of the level of formality, sloppy grooming generally creates a poor impression. Sloppy grooming includes dirty shoes, unkempt, greasy hair and dirty, smelly clothes!

Facial expression: People notice whether you have a friendly face, and look relaxed and open. Try to avoid letting nervousness and tension show in that first impression. As a professional, you need to look confident and relaxed.

Eye contact: People notice the appropriateness of your eye contact especially in formal occasions. In most European environments, eye contact needs to be direct but not invasive. In many Maori environments, however, you may often need to use more indirect eye contact.

Movement: People notice whether you wave your arms around a lot, or whether you are very tight and still. Lots of arm waving can appear nervous, ‘over the top’, or disorganised. Tightness can appear uptight. To get effective impact you need to sit and stand firmly, and use gestures in an open and appropriate way.

Amount of room you occupy: This is closely tied up with movement. Use your space confidently but non-aggressively and you will help communication. If you shrink a bit or appear aggressive, people will react to that rather than to what you are saying.

Touch: If you suit the touch you use to the environment you will help long and short term communication. A firm handshake is important. Penny encouraged the attendees to practise their handshake with a friend and the discussion that followed illustrated how important it is for women to have a firm handshake in business. One woman recalled that as a new arrival in New Zealand she had won a job against stiff competition, and comments by her new boss suggested the firm European style of her handshake had a lot to do with her success!

Using your voice to generate a great first impressions

Penny emphasised that being aware of what you sound like as well as what you look like, is extremely important in generating a positive first impression, especially in a business orprofessional context.

Speed: Are you talking too slowly? You need speed variation. People think that slow speakers are of low status. Fluent speakers get listened to.

Volume: Is your voice too soft or too loud? If it is very soft, people will think you lack confidence. If it is very loud, they will assume aggression. Make sure the volume is confidently audible.

Pitch: Is your voice singsong or monotonous? Both of these will cause people to think you are boring! A deeper pitch is easier to hear and thus has more impact. Overall, think of varying the pitch a little as you speak, to provide colour and interest for the listener.

Quality: The timbre or your voice. Is it too nasal, breathy, thin, strident, harsh or hoarse? People are more prepared to listen to a pleasant sounding voice. But what can you do about it? If the stakes are high or you are cursed with a particularly grating timbre, you can take action. Actually Maggie Thatcher had voice training. Before the training she sounded shrill, after it, she spoke low, mellifluously in a way that said “authority and gravitas”

Articulation: How distinct are the sounds of your words? The more clearly you speak the more you will be listened to.

Unfortunately, the content of what you say forms only 7% of the impression you create. This may come as a great disappointment and even shock to those of us who are professional services providers!

But, luckily Penny did have guidance for us to be aware of the important components of peoples’ instant judgements when it comes to listening to what is said. For example, if you use a lot of fillers such as ‘um’ and ‘ah’ or qualifiers like ‘perhaps’ and ‘sort of’ you will give an impression of lack of confidence even if you are an expert in the field. She also warns us to watch out for exclusive languages e.g. jargon as those who don’t know the jargon will turn off.
Qualifiers:Penny shared with us that a lot of her male clients comment that women often qualify what they have to say with phrases like ‘I think’, or “I could be wrong, but…”. Men by contrast say ‘it is this way’. These qualifiers take away from the persuasiveness of women’s arguments and make them appear less decisive. She also encouraged us to take our turn in conversations, rather than wait for it. By doing so, especially when surrounded by men, we are less likely to be interrupted.

Leaving Thought

Finally, Penny left us with the following powerful message:

Research shows that the person who influences the meeting the most speaks the earliest, the most often, the most fluently and the most forcefully….!

First Impressions

By Penny Harrison, Director, Communicate Consultants

11 November 2007

Creating a positive first impression…

In today’s diverse workplace, your actions and motives are constantly under scrutiny. It is therefore important to manage your professional image before others do it for you. Ask yourself the question: what first impression do I want to create? What do I want my key audiences (prospective colleagues or clients etc) to say about me when I have left the room?

Having a clearer sense of your desired professional image will help you make the right choices towards creating a positive first impression. This article seeks to answer some common questions about first impressions – Why does it matter? How can you maximise your first impressions – what are the lowest hanging fruit? How to look good on a budget?

Why do first impressions matter?

If you make a positive first impression and something later goes wrong, it may not matter and you could still be given a second chance. However, if you make a negative first impression and something goes wrong – you may just confirm their worst fears about you.

There are a number of things that contribute to a first impression – and whether we believe it is happening or not, people do judge us when meeting us for the first time. Often this is happening at a sub conscious level. It only becomes conscious thought for the other person when something about you is not what they expected. For example, in a meeting with your bank manager, you would not expect them to greet you wearing beach shorts, t-shirt and jandals. Research tells us that before people even hear what we have to say, they have started judging our message by our appearance, body language and tone of voice.

A few key tips to maximise that first impression:

What you wear – be appropriate! This will depend on the situation. You will need to balance your individual style with the need to fit in with what others might expect from your role. Dress for the role you seek next so others already see you fitting in. Wear clothes that fit you well and work for you in terms of style and colours etc (be honest with yourself). If you have trouble with this it might be worth investing in an image consultant to help you get it right. This can also save you money. Remember - too much flesh is not okay!

Grooming – You don’t need expensive designer clothes to look good. Often these can be lost if all people see is a poor haircut, dirty shoes or a suit long overdue for a clean and press.
Accessories – This can be a great way to add a touch of your style and make a few items of clothing go further.
How formal do I need to be? – A rule of thumb, if you don’t need to change when you get home, you have been too informal in your dress for work.
Body Language – People notice good posture and whether you are confident and at ease with others. Stand tall and don’t slouch. Your eye contact needs to be direct but not invasive. A firm handshake is important for both woman and men. Test yours with a friend.
Introductions – Be proactive and introduce yourself - don’t always wait for others to do it for you.
Tone and Language – Use confident language. Avoid sentence fillers because they clutter up your language and make you appear hesitant. Remove self-deprecating words, such as perhaps, maybe, a wee bit. Use direct and active speech: “We completed the project on time”. Don’t talk too casually – better to start out more formal and then change if it seems appropriate.
Looking good on a budget – A common mistake, particularly among women, is that we think we need a lot of things in our wardrobe to maintain an image of looking good. The reality is that having a few items that mix and match with each other works just as well, if not better. It you need to travel with your work, it also makes packing easier!

If your budget is tight, spend your money on the items that you wear everyday rather than on a party dress you might wear once a year. For example, I have a suit that is now 6 years old. When I bought it I paid as much as I could afford at the time; it was moderately expensive, but not over the top. It still looks new and I get heaps of wear out of it. It is a good fabric, classic fit, travels and wears well – and for a busy mum this is really important. I can mix inexpensive tops and accessories with that suit to make it look different – and make it work for a new season.

Dressing well on a budget is about making smart choices for you, combined with good grooming.

If you would like the help of an image consultant I can recommend D&N image consultants in Auckland. Phone Nikki on 021 680646.

Take control

So be aware of how others who are meeting you for the first time may be interpreting the numerous little signals you’re sending off. Try to control the ones you can do something about. Dress appropriately, speak clearly and shop wisely. Good luck!

What are your thoughts on first impressions? We’d love to hear your questions and/or feedback on Penny’s article. Please either fill in the feedback form below or start a new thread on our bulletin board!

DON'T miss out on hearing Penny Harrison speak at Professionelle’s first ever off-line networking event!

Our First Impressions event will take place in Auckland on Tuesday October the 16th from 7.30 – 9.30 at Ima’s Cuisine on Shortland Street. We’ve designed this event to be small and intimate to give you a real opportunity to meet women like yourself who are dealing with similar issues. Places are booking fast so don’t miss your chance! Details are on the members’ only section of the site.

Penny has over 18 years’ experience working with groups in the corporate environments and in small and medium size businesses. Penny’s background is in corporate and line management roles in the Bank of New Zealand. She was also the General Manager of an executive recruitment consultancy and of a brand and design company.

Penny Harrison is the Auckland director of Communicate. Established 21 years ago, Communicate provides training, coaching and facilitation to a wide range of public sector, professional and private sector clients throughout New Zealand.

On Networking and Diversity

By Galia Barhava-Monteith

6 September 2007

feature Philippa Reed, the Chief Executive of the Equal Employment Opportunities Trust (EEO), kindly invited Sarah and me to attend their inaugural Diversity Day at the end of August. And what a day that was. Wonderful, thought-provoking speakers challenged us to really think through the importance of accepting and celebrating diversity in modern workplaces. Even the hard nosed, non-pc participants couldn’t argue with the business case of taking diversity seriously by the end of the day – but more on that later.

As I was sitting there, listening to these amazing speakers and enjoying the opportunity to take part in this event, I was also thinking of you, our members, and how I could share my experiences of the day with you. And then the right angle struck me! It was: networking as a vehicle to bring greater diversity into our individual lives.

On Networking

My close colleagues and friends are probably bored to tears by my going on (and on and on) about the importance of networking. I am new to networking, you see. In my first few roles I was never encouraged to take part in networking events; in fact I think it was almost frowned upon. When I had my big corporate role, I was also a mum and then it was a matter of not wanting to take time away from my family to take part in these events.

I have given some thought to why professionals like lawyers, consultants and accountants are somewhat reluctant to network. I believe it is to do with the charging-by-the-hour model we are socialised into. Basically, it ain’t work unless it’s chargeable!

Now, that Sarah and I are building a new business, which is all about networking (albeit online), we have been doing a considerable amount of it. And, it works, it really does. The more we put ourselves out there, the more we build relationships and new and exciting opportunities turn up (like our recent partnership with Quiet Agent). What we’re also seeing is that those people who take the time to network, are the ones who find out or are approached about opportunities, simply because they become a known quantity and build their personal brand in the process.

On Diversity

I have to admit I hadn’t given diversity as such a great deal of thought before this EEO Trust event. But as I listened to the speakers the business case for diversity became abundantly clear to me. What really struck me was how bringing diversity into our own individual lives is extremely relevant and can increase our resilience and our prospects as individuals.

Diversity and Innovation

The first speaker of the day was Frans Johansson, the author of the Medici Effect. In a nutshell, Frans’s book and his speaking illustrate powerfully how diversity breeds innovation. His messages were clear and engagingly simple:
1. All new ideas are really combinations of existing ones – but to become a new idea the combination has to be unique.
2. The single strongest correlation to innovation success is the number of new ideas generated and pursued.
3. Cultural diversity is the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to driving innovation.

Frans’s examples illustrated his case beautifully. The one that stuck with me is that of L’Oreal’s acquisition of SoftSheen, a small haircare manufacturer in the US which focused on the African American market. L’Oreal is a French company that according to Johansson makes a point of employing a wide range of ethnicities and is deliberate about encouraging cultural diversity. As a case in point, at the time of the Softsheen acquisition, L’Oreal was run by a British man!!

Armed with a new research lab to investigate the properties of African-American hair and the insight that a billion people outside the US had this hairtype, L’Oreal quickly became the leader in this ethnic haircare category.

Collaborative workplaces

To get ideas flowing people actually need to talk to each other. According to Alan Bertenshaw from Matisse, the futuristic workplace environment is all about encouraging people to talk to each other and collaborate as part of their working lives. Gone will be the days you’ll have to book a meeting room three days in advance so that you can have a conversation with your boss.

His thesis was that the modern workplace is designed to “encourage accidental bumping and fortuitus encounters.” It is these encounters that will increase productivity, cross functional communication and yes you guessed it, diversity of thoughts ideas and experiences.

By this stage, I was convinced, and I realised that for me as an individual, it was through networking that I have brought diversity into my life. In less than a year I have quadrupled my personal network. I did this through being open to people’s ideas and suggestions, seeking new people out and welcoming new approaches. In the process, I have discovered how energising and supportive some people are which has made me re-evaluate who I spend my time with and why.

Yes, there are times when I feel I should be doing chargeable work rather than meeting people or corresponding via e-mail. But when I look back, it is through that persistence on valuing networking that we’ve had the biggest and most personally gratifying breaks.

Finally, the case for networking as a vehicle for bringing diversify to our personal life was sealed for me during the presentation on resilience given by Dr Sven Hansen from PricewaterhouseCoopers

Diversity and Resilience

I am not going to attempt to re-cap Sven’s presentation on engaging resilience to build vitality. But what really stuck with me was that resilience is 100% learnt. Resilient people bounce back from set-backs; have a bias for action and wide and diverse networks. His acid test was how many people are there on our cell phones who we could call tonight if we needed support. What he also emphasised, was to be honest about how many of them are not our immediate colleagues.

There was, of course, much more to the day. But as I listened to it all, I became more and more excited about the concept that we as individuals don’t need to wait for our workplace to do encourage diversity for us. We can do it ourselves in a very deliberate way.

Now, I don’t think that all networking opportunities are created equal. However, as Sarah has been heard to comment, you can’t predict which approach will lead to the big payoff – but they all have the potential to bring something, sometime. We’d add here that we see giving as an important part of networking; we always try to look for what we can bring to the other person. What goes around will eventually come around.

What we can and should always do, is be open to the prospect of meeting and engaging with new people who we might not normally seek out. In the end, it is through these encounters that we might come up with the next big idea/career move, find ways to implement it and meet our new best friend in the process!

Mums Returning To Work

By Galia BarHava-Monteith

2 September 2007

When you have your first baby, you’re launched into the unknown. People ask you questions you really have no way of answering with certainty. How late into your pregnancy will you work? Will you come back to work, and if so when? How will you handle breast feeding? What kind of childcare are you thinking of? Or will you be a stay-at-home mum?

All this when your baby is no more than a small, blurry blob on the ultrasound!

You’ll only know the answers for sure once you’ve reached each stage and made whatever decisions feel right for you in your circumstances.

Nevertheless, most of the first time mums we know intend to return to work within a year or so of having their baby. If you’re one of them, or know someone at this stage of life, then read on for our tips on how to tilt the odds in favour of a successful and relatively stress-free return to work.

commuter

We believe there are three key things that new mothers can do to make the transition back to work after several months' break as smooth as possible:

1. Sort out your child care arrangements well in advance

The most difficult thing about going back to work is leaving your child behind with strangers. Getting back into the swing of work is that much harder if you don’t have total peace of mind about the well-being of your child.

You need to ask yourself some key questions:

How much can I afford to pay?
How flexible will the care need to be given the nature of my work (and my partner’s work): travel out of town? Sudden client deadlines?
What back up or fill in arrangements can I devise that I can rely on? Will my partner/relatives/ friends help out when I’m stuck at work or when the child is sick?
Taking all these answers together, what seems the best arrangement for me? Day care, in-home care with other children, nanny?

We suggest you start exploring options while pregnant if you’re expecting to return to work within your child’s first six months. The excellent child care centres have huge waiting lists and the best nannies can be very hard to find.

Getting the childcare arrangement right is the most important factor in ensuring a smooth return to work!

2. Ensure you maintain contact with colleagues and mentors at work

Some mothers who go on maternity leave neglect to keep in touch with their work colleagues and allies. If this is you, then for your work colleagues, it can be as if you’ve disappeared into a black hole of motherhood! As a new mum, you can feel reluctant to get in touch with workmates for a number of reasons. It could be you’re still figuring out how you feel about your new status as a mother, or because it’s a struggle to make the time with a new baby. You might also worry you'll be imposing on colleagues and risk wasting their time.

However, going back to the office ‘cold’, especially after your first baby, can be a daunting experience. Actively keeping in touch will ensure you have people to talk to as you work through your first weeks back. You want allies on your side who will keep you up to date with developments and gossip!

To keep in touch, it's as simple as calling up colleagues to check on what’s happening and to try to have a coffee. E-mail is also a great courtesy tool that helps you keep in touch in your five minutes of peace when the baby is sleeping, and that lets others respond when they have a break in their workflow. One or two strong allies can give invaluable support when you return to work.

In the month before you return, we advise going in for at least one visit. In most work environments, colleagues will love to see the new baby, and it can also serve as a reminder that that the new mum will soon be a working mum!

3. Be very clear about your priorities in life

What distinguishes the working mothers who make the transition successfully and enjoyably, with sanity and soul intact, is that they are very clear about their priorities in life. Remember the puzzle about how to fill a jar with big rocks, smaller pebbles and sand? You have to put the big rocks in first. It's not worth sweating the small stuff. And yes, one or two of the big rocks probably won't fit into your new jar of life - make compromises and make them without regrets.

But it does take time, and it’s well worth figuring out sooner than later that you can’t be Superwoman. We don’t know any working mothers who have it all together from the word go!

Our practical tips include:

Thinking about meals for the week ahead, unless you’re happy having take-outs every night or you’re lucky enough to have a nanny that cooks. Galia still cooks huge portions of soups, casseroles, macaroni cheese etc and freezes the balance. She has also located the best home-cooked type meals in her area and buys from them at least weekly! Another tip with food is learning how to cook fast yet really tasty and healthy meals like steak with salad in pita bread with hummus.
If one of your "big rocks" is having the house really clean and tidy, then you really should hire someone to help with the housework. We’re still astounded to hear how many NZ working mums don’t have a cleaner. Investing in a few hours of someone else’s time can make a significant difference to a family's - and especially the working mother’s - wellbeing. You should get your cleaner sorted out at least a month before returning to work so you can experiment with what works best in terms of day of the week, preparation, ironing or cleaning.
If exercise is really important to you, then as a new mother you should try to plan it in to your working week. If you start work thinking you’ll be able to fit it in afterwards, the chances are that rock will never squeeze in! Consider making a weekly gym session during work hours into an on-going apportionment in your diary so no-one books meetings for that time. If you opt for a class after hours instead, your partner/nanny/ family members will know that this is the time you’ll always be away on your own. Building it in from day one helps ensure it gets into your calendar and stays there!

Ensure you are well supported

It’s easy as a first time mum returning to work to forget about YOU. Sometimes it can seem like the time at work, away from your child, should be enough for your me-time, and that you should rush home as fast as possible. But we strongly recommend you make time to do things that are just about YOU because it's really important for your wellbeing. Sarah had a weekly massage booked from when her first was a year old. Galia carved out time for yoga classes.

Like any other routine, if you don’t do it from the beginning, the chances are it won’t happen. Before you start work again, we recommend you book that facial for six weeks after the return date! Scheduling a regular date with your partner is another tip, with the babysitter booked in advance. Whatever it is you value, plan ahead for it!

What about the rest of you out there? What advice would you offer? We would love to hear your thoughts. Please e-mail us on: feedback@professionelle.co.nz

Behind the Numbers Part 3

by Galia BarHava-Monteith

15 July 2007

Introduction

Here at Professionelle we believe in shedding light in murky corners. That means looking deeper than the well known facts that are dished out regularly. In the case of New Zealand’s gender pay gap it means it’s not good enough to know that men are better paid than women and leave it at that. We need to dig into how much better paid they are, in which occupations, and, of course, why.

This is the third and final article in our ‘Behind The Numbers’ series and is based on 2001 census data. As soon as the Stats Department releases comprehensive numbers for the 2006 census, I’ll refresh this analysis.

pay inequity

In these articles I examine in detail seven professional occupation groups I believe are relevant to you, our users. These groups are:

CEO or managing directors not in the public sector
Information Technology managers
Advertising and public relations managers
Human resources managers
Accountants
Management consultants
Barristers and solicitors

In the first two articles I looked at how much women and men were getting paid in these occupations according to the 2001 New Zealand census data. And what I found was staggering.

Key facts so far

Professional women were better educated than the men in our target occupational groups.
Men, as predicted, were getting paid more, and in some cases substantially more, than professional women across all the occupations.
The biggest pay gap was for barristers and solicitors where the median income for male solicitors was $42,137 higher than that of female barristers and solicitors.
The proportion of men earning over $100k was generally double or more than the proportion of women. The ratio was lowest for HR managers and highest for accountants.

Too depressing

I should tell you that my usual approach to doing such analysis is to crunch all the numbers first, figure out what’s going on, and then to write all the articles in one go. But I found this exercise so depressing that I ended up doing one round of analysis, writing the article and needing a break. Every time I worked on a piece, I was truly surprised at what the numbers showed.

This article is my last attempt to peel off the onion layer that will reveal a good explanation for why men are so much better paid than women. The obvious hypothesis is that it’s all to do with women being much more likely to work part time.

Do professional women get paid less because they work part time more?

In the table below I outline the pay gap for the seven occupation groups and the % of men and women who reported working over 40 hours a week for each group. As you can see, the proportion of men who worked over 40 hours a week is consistently greater than the proportion of women. But, does this fully explain the pay gap? These professions are paid salaries after all, not hourly wages.

Occupation	Gap between men and women	% of men who worked over 40 hours a week	% of women who worked over 40 hours a week
Information Technology Manager	$14,118	91%	80%
Human Resources Manager	$7,877	95%	85%
Advertising and Public Relations Manager	$21,000	93%	80%
Barristers and Solicitors	$42,137	89%	77%
Management Consultant	$18,658	74%	60%
Chief Executive and Managing Director	$27,419	90%	64%
Accountant	$18,857	78%	54%

In a further attempt to clarify things, I created two indices:

I divided the median salary of women in each occupation by the salary of the men in that group to get an index.
I divided the proportion of men working over 40 hours a week by the same proportion for women to get a second index

My logic was that if indeed the reason men were getting paid more was because they were more likely to work full time, then the ratio in the first index should roughly equate to the ratio in the second index. In other words, I hypothesised it’s all a question of hours of work, not pay rates per hour. If, however, the income index turned out to be below the hour index it would mean that women are paid less than men per hour, even allowing for women's greater propensity to take in part time work.

Take a look at the next table that compares these two indexes for the seven occupation groups:

Occupation	Pay gap	INDEX of median women's income/ median men's income	INDEX of women working >40 hrs/ men working >40 hrs
Information Technology Manager	$14,118	81%	88%
Human Resources Manager	$7,877	87%	89%
Advertising and Public Relations Manager	$21,000	71%	86%
Barristers and Solicitors	$42,137	54%	87%
Management Consultant	$18,658	72%	81%
Chief Executive and Managing Director	$27,419	63%	71%
Accountant	$18,857	69%	69%

Well, there you go. That makes for extremely interesting reading!

What’s the Root Cause?

The pay gap for HR managers and accountants can be largely explained by the % of women working part time. For the rest, we have to conclude that the fundamental pay rate per hour is tilted against these professional women. And in the case of barristers and solicitors it's tilted as steeply as the south face of Mt Cook!

I've controlled for full time versus part time and for comparability of work by using specific occupations. We know from an earlier article that women are more highly educated than men in these occupations. We're running out of the usual excuses. One of the last possible reasons could include men being, on average, older in these occupations, so their income reflects longer careers. Unfortunately, I couldn't find Census data that showed detailed occupations by age, sex and income.

The age argument aside, we're only left with a behavioural explanation: women don't ask for pay rises as aggressively as men. In case that's true, we'll post advice on how we think women can systematically and successfully approach salary negotiations and pay rise reviews - but that will have to wait for another day!

Your Views

What are your thoughts about these numbers and the drivers behind them? Were you surprised? Do you think 2006 numbers will reflect a similar reality? We'd love to hear from you so please e-mail us on comments@professionelle.co.nz

Do you want to go digging for yourself? Check out:

http://www.stats.govt.nz/census/2001-census-data/2001-incomes/default.htm

The Bellewether Factor

(or: Why Women At The Top Are Good for Everyone )

By Galia BarHava-Monteith

25th June 2007

You’ve heard it all before and perhaps you’re getting somewhat sick of it: the ‘war for talent’ There are experts who warn us of the increasing doom and gloom for companies trying to find talented employees, especially in knowledge based industries. Then there’s the media, running stories on the ‘brain drain’ of skilled New Zealanders who have set their sights on working on faraway shores where they can use their excellent New Zealand education to earn lots more money. And let’s not forget the employers who try to understand what motivates ‘Gen Y’ so that they can entice them to become employees and to stay for longer than five minutes.

What’s this all about? Intellectuals and researchers, mainly in the US, note that the one-dimensional view of a career as a process of joining a company and climbing up its ranks is no longer what employees seek. Increasingly, middle, and even senior, managers are reluctant to take the next step up in their careers. The corporate ladder is simply not as appealing as it used to be and the price it demands is seen as being too high. People are now setting their own career paths based on what they value and how they themselves define success.

Changing expectations among the highest achievers

The Families and Work Institute (FWI), a New York based non-profit research organisation, recently conducted a study with the world’s top 10 multinational companies such as Citicorp and IBM. They described what they found as “troubling” for corporate America. Fully a third of the top 100 women and a quarter of the top 100 men interviewed in these multinationals have reduced their career aspirations. The most common reason given by these respondents was not a fear they couldn’t perform in a more senior role, but that they expected the sacrifices they would have to make in their personal lives would be too great.

Here at Professionelle, we believe these trends have significant implications for employers. This research and our own, together with anecdotal observations, suggest to us that, from the employee’s perspective, securing a ‘good’ job with a commercially successful company is no longer the goal for many highly educated and talented job seekers. In an economic environment where the lack of talent is having an adverse impact on growth, this is surely something employers who are serious about their growth and future success must take heed of.

The most desirable employees are increasingly seeking to work for companies who have more to offer to society and the individual. They want to work for firms whose values they relate to, values that align with their own. And equally as relevant, they want to feel respected and valued for who they are, and what they contribute.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Being respected at your workplace is integral to a healthy working life.

Wharton University Management Professor Sigal Barsade, found in a recent study of workers in long term healthcare facilities that employees experience the highest levels of burnout when they don’t feel respected or valued by the organisation they work for. Barsade concluded that it is often not the demands of job per se, nor even the individual’s personality, that burns employees out, but the organisation and its culture.

The researchers also found that the impact of organisational respect on burnout is felt most strongly when job autonomy is low. People are most likely to burn out when working in high pressure environments, with little control over how they structure their work. The effect is exacerbated when the company they work for doesn’t respect them as individuals. Sound familiar? And so, highly talented employees are voting with their feet.

They can do this because they’ve gained the experience and developed their own personal brands – which is what most corporates and professional services firms expect them to do.

Are employers responding?

Employers are beginning to recognise and acknowledge that if they want to attract the best talent, they need to offer something ‘more’. Increasingly, they’re presenting job candidates with beautifully-bound corporate values statements. They point to their ‘employee support’ policies, that might involve an assigned internal mentor to guide new hires through the complexities of the organisation. Perhaps they note their ‘family friendly’ policies, which may include the possibility of working ‘flexi-time’.

Unfortunately, there is a big gap in most organisations between the formal aspects of the culture (the policy book, the values statement etc) and the real culture. A company’s culture can be described as the unwritten norms and values which determine how employees are treated as individuals. And the best indicator of a culture is to see what behaviours are reinforced in the workplace.

So, short of knowing someone who works for a potential employer, and who is willing to ‘spill the beans’, how can you, the prospective employee, know that what is being sold to you is for real?

Bellewethers

To find out where the herd was headed, shepherds used to hang a bell around a wether’s neck. Where this male sheep led, bell clanging, the flock would be sure to follow. He was a guide to the location of the flock, and a predictor of where it would head next.

Why this diversion into animal husbandry? Because, at Professionelle, we believe that an excellent indicator of the real culture of an organisation is the number of senior women at the executive level of the organisation. If you can see a group of these bellewethers - not just one token female who is rolled out at any occasion where the organisation feels it needs to show its ‘feminine side’ - but 30% plus of senior executives who are women, then we predict you are onto a promising organisation.

What leads us to make this claim?

Three reasons actually –

Women have more socially acceptable choices than men.
Men will put up with a lot more than women will.
Women are more likely to shy away from a highly competitive environment even if they can win. And they are more likely to prosper in environments that encourage and endorse feminine leadership styles.

We believe that taken together, these points suggest that if an organisation has the bellewether factor of a significant portion of senior women, then this is a sign that it has to be offering something different to your average company.

1. Women’s choices

We argue that in today’s world, women have more socially acceptable choices than men. This is to us one of the most important legacies of the feminist revolution. Women can choose to have children and stay home, they can choose to have children and work full or part time, or they can choose not to have children at all. They can start their own businesses or become contractors. And every one of those choices, at least in New Zealand, is seen as valid and acceptable by society.

Faced with all those options, some highly talented and capable women choose to stay in companies and advance to senior positions. And in today’s tight labour market they can also decide where they’ll do it. They are more likely to choose companies that align best with their own personal values and that can help them meet the demands their life choices place on them.

2. Putting up with rubbish

Lets face it, men, for hundreds, if not thousands, of years have been socialised to take on roles and jobs that can be lethal. From soldiers, to coal miners, to deep sea oil exploration to name but a few.

Women, on the other hand, have been socialised to care for the new generation and thus actively discouraged from taking on roles that may jeopardize that nurturing role.

Of course, there are exceptions that show how some women do thrive at taking risks that may even involve placing their lives in jeopardy. But the point is that until very recently this was not an option open to women in most societies.

We believe that one consequence of these societal patterns is that men in the modern corporate workplace are more willing (and perhaps able) to tolerate the rubbish that goes on. We’re talking about the long working hours, the highly competitive environment, the political game playing and subtle put-downs that readers who have spent some time in corporates and/or big professional services firms will recognise.

Take law, for example. We’ve chosen it because of the long hours required to ‘make it’ and the heavy proportion of men in senior positions in most large private practice firms.

The results of a recent study conducted with 2400 New Zealand lawyers by professional services consultancy Team Factors in association with the Corporate Lawyers Association, publisher Thomson-Brookers and recruitment firm Law Staff, demonstrate this point beautifully. Of the lawyers who worked in private practice, approaching one in three of the women surveyed rated the effectiveness of their organisation’s practices in looking after staff as ‘very poor’ or ‘poor’. This compared with agreement from just under one in five of their male counterparts.

These women are also far more likely to be exercising their choices. Just over half of the women lawyers surveyed in private practice were either open to the possibility of a new job or actively seeking one! This compared to only over a third of their male colleagues.

3. Competition and feminine leadership styles

Many corporate environments and large professional services firms are highly competitive. Arguably, it is that competitive drive that has successfully delivered good bottom line results.

Unfortunately, most women, including the most talented ones, don’t flourish in these environments.

Muriel Niederie, a Stanford University economist, found in her research on gender attitudes towards competition, that even when women perform as well as men on a task, they are more likely to underrate their performance compared with poorly-achieving men. These high-performing women are also less likely to select a competitive setting next time than the poor performing men.

To us, this means that men favour a competitive setting even if their ability is low, while women avoid a competitive setting even if their ability is high!

Muriel and her colleagues concluded that, “Women may shy away from competition simply because they dislike being in an environment where they have to compete. That is, even though they may be very good at something, they might still not want to compete on it.”

Women are also more likely to have a “feminine” leadership style which is described as more relationship-oriented and “democratic”. By comparison, the traditional “masculine” leadership style tends towards assertive and task-based behaviours.

Anne Cummings, a professor of business administration at the University of Minnesota, found that the culture of an organisation or even that of a division, can determine the degree to which a woman’s own leadership style fits. She argues that,

If your leadership style is more feminine and you are in a masculine culture, you have more role incongruity - the expectation that a person will act a certain way based on his or her gender. When someone does not meet that expectation, perception of leadership ability can wane, regardless of the leader’s actual effectiveness. You may not be that effective because the people around you will perceive you as not fitting.

The catch is that even if a woman has a more “masculine” leadership style and is working in a masculine environment, she’s still likely to be rated as less effective than men, because she’s acting in away that is incongruent with her gender role! Damned if you are, in other words, and damned if you’re not.

Taking this research together with our own experience suggests that women are much more likely to flourish in environments that are not aggressively competitive, where their leadership styles are valued and where they can behave in ways that are true to who they are. And in today’s economy, the highly educated, talented and successful women are in a position to choose these environments.

Why women at the top are good for everyone

At a time when there are more jobs for highly experienced people than ever before and where women have real choices, it is noteworthy that they choose to stay and progress in some organisation rather than others.

Job seekers could ask themselves what is it about those organisations that makes them different from others in the same industry or profession that have few women at the top. They may or may not find those differences attractive, but this highly visible outward sign of an organisation’s culture is worth serious consideration by the savvy job/career seeker.

Companies should also examine this highly visibly sign of their culture and ask themselves what this says about them and their prospects to attract and retain the best talent in the long run. A lack of bellewethers could well prove be a leading indicator of future difficulties to hire and retain the best and brightest.

On Balance

By Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes

Yes, that title is the name of a North American blog we recommend on our Resources page as a good read, but that’s not what this article’s about.

I’ve been noticing recently what it takes for me to actively appreciate things in my life, and I thought I’d share it with you.

Heartfelt Appreciation

Let me start by posing a question: how much do you appreciate modern plumbing? If your key reference point is Granddad telling you about outdoor school lavatories in the 1940s then your sense of appreciation will probably be largely abstract. If, instead, you remember a holiday you once took in the Greek islands, where the toilet waste pipe was too narrow to cope with both effluvia and loo paper, so that an open waste paper basket was provided to hold the latter, once used, then your appreciation may be more lively and personal.

But to truly value hot flowing water and full flushes, shoot off right now for a few nights under canvas on the most remote banks of Lake Waikaremoana. After a week of plumbing entirely au naturel, perhaps enlivened by a DoC officer arriving unexpectedly by launch to give your DIY-short-drop marks out of ten, you will return to the comparative civilisation of the campsite by the main road and close the cubicle door in the draughty wash block. And then – bliss beyond bliss – you will sit…

Frumps And Frocks

Of course, there are parallels with work. For weeks, you’re head down in the office, all the time wearing suits or other formal clothes. You’re sure that if you could get a day in jeans and a sweater you’d be at least 10% more productive, just by feeling more comfortable and relaxed – and you’re almost certainly right. The pleasure of doing something different, almost a treat, would put you in a better frame of mind.

When you get to wear jeans every day, though, the effect does wear off. With launching Professionelle, I’ve had a chunk of time out of the office. Not only have I found jeans no guarantee of productivity, I now actively look forward to a reason to dress up nicely and go into the city! The Liontamer ladies we recently interviewed were the same – enjoying the change from slightly frumpy to smart frocks on the days they had face-to-face meetings.

Light And Shade

What I’m realising is probably pretty obvious. Without contrast, it’s hard to value a better state of existence. Cicero put his finger on it: hunger is the best seasoning. In the same vein, the best part of a day-long tramp (for me) is the hot bath afterwards. And the worst day at work, when everyone’s losing it, is a breeze compared to a wet Wednesday at home with two cranky children under three. To grasp that, of course, I had to endure the rain and the crankiness!

Logically, where this leads is that you can have too much of a good thing. Imagine your life included non-stop holidays, excellent health, regular Lotto wins and a lifetime’s free supply of top-notch chocolate. How long till the apparent dream-come-true became merely mundane? No wonder the rich and famous seem to be forever doing stupid things, their psyches must be desperate for contrast.

You Can Never Have Too Much...

There’s only one good thing I reckon I could never have too much of and that’s… balance. It doesn’t have to be a balance between the good and the bad, or happy and sad, either. In fact I’d rather it wasn’t! The sort I want is between different spheres of my life, and different parts of who I am. I want work-life balance, family-own time balance, frump-frocks balance, long days-short days balance.

And when I can’t achieve those kinds of balance, I settle for their poor relation: lack of routine. It's one of the very best things about the consultant’s lifestyle. Diamonds one day, diapers the next. But, on balance, I’d rather have balance!

Slip-Slidin’ Away

(The Position of NZ’s Professional Women in the Third Millenium)

By Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes and Galia BarHava-Monteith

26 July 2007

sliding

In May and June 2007 , we had articles and comment about the position of professional women in New Zealand published in the New Zealand Herald’s The Business. One piece covered our findings about trends in the pay gap for professional women this century. Other commentary reflected our investigation into whether, with the departure of Gattung and others, NZ was seeing the end of a “Golden Age” of women CEOs. In this feature piece, we blend this published material together.

New data

These recent pieces draw on newer data than was available when Galia wrote her three-part analysis of the pay gap. One key source we used was the annual NZ Income Survey which runs up to 2006. The second was a special request we made to Stats NZ for information from the only partially-released 2006 census. This gave us numbers and pay by gender of the specific job categories for public and private sector CEOs.

Professional women definition

First of all, who do we mean when we say ‘professional women’? We mean exactly the sort of women who are members of the Professionelle community, i.e. academics, accountants, barristers, CEOs, consultants, corporate managers, etc etc. Working with the constraints of our data sources, however, we have to use a somewhat broader definition. The Income Survey covers professional women in two main occupation groups:

‘Professionals’, which includes accountants, lawyers and scientists and also public sector employees like nurses and teachers.
‘Legislators, Administrators & Managers’ which includes MPs, corporate managers and public and private sector chief executives, among others.

Growing numbers

There are about 180,000 women in ‘Professionals’ and another 75,000 in ‘Legislators’. Combined, these two groups comprise almost 30% of NZ’s working women and their numbers are growing at over 3% each year, faster than for any other occupation group for women. (Professional men are growing at the same rate, but are eclipsed by male technicians and by trades workers).

There are far more women CEOs around now than a decade ago, too. The fastest growing group of women CEOs is in the private sector. Here the number of women employed has seen a huge 31% compound annual growth rate over the decade to 2006. Female CEOs in local government and central government have grown at around 11% and 5% compounding, respectively.

These rates, well above the numbers for professional women in general, sound encouraging. However, the numbers for male CEOs have been growing too, and the net result is that women have only increased their proportion strongly among Chief Executives - Local Government. This is the one CEO group where women have breached the 50% mark (see the graph below). In the private sector, the proportion of women CEOs has actually shrunk from 22% in 1996 to 19% in 2006, at a time of very rapid growth in this occupation group.

No Golden Age

A final, depressing observation on women CEOs is that, taken overall, their numbers have grown considerably slower than men over the last ten years – 19.6% compounding versus more than 25%. Consequently, men chief executives finished the decade even further ahead on numbers than they started at in 1996. If we look at the ratio of male chief executives to their female counterparts, the ratio worsened as follows:

1996: 2.2 men for every woman
2006: 3.4 men for every woman

So much for the Golden Age of women CEOs!

Higher education, higher pay among women

Professional women – those in the broad Professional and Legislator occupation groups - have invested substantially in themselves through education. Almost 45% of them have tertiary qualifications, compared to only 10% of women in all the other occupation groups. These are the women who have increasingly filled the ranks of graduates from law and commerce degrees – a key hiring pool for the management track in both private and public sectors.

This educational attainment probably explains why they earn more than women in other job groups. Professional women earn the most at $22/hour (median), while the legislators earn the next highest rate at $19.50. By contrast, all other women’s median hourly pay is only $13.50/hour. So where’s the problem?

Pay inequity alive and well

The problem, of course, is they’re still paid less than their male peers. Thirty five years after the feminist revolution of the seventies, pay inequity is still with us for high achieving, well-educated women. It’s a hard fact to swallow.

How much are they behind men in these two occupational groups? In 2006, median weekly earnings across all age groups for professional and legislator women were about 70% of their male peers’. Of course, part time work is one of the causes of the gap, even though far fewer of these women work part-time than women overall do – only about 20% of them work part-time versus 35% of all women; nevertheless, part time work means fewer hours and that does contribute to the weekly pay gap.

We corrected for that, however, by only looking at median hourly earnings. This shrinks the pay gap to about 80%. On 2006 pay rates, however, that still equates to about $10,000 a year!

Women CEOs paid less, too

And the story for CEOs is no better. As the graph below shows, public sector women CEOs received two thirds of the pay of their male counterparts in 1996 and this situation remained utterly unchanged in 2006. The situation improved for private sector women CEOs – but only because men’s pay fell. Two wrongs don’t make a right; we don’t want to see men’s pay reined in either!

paygap

One issue may be the part time versus full time argument – but we don’t know of any part time CEOs or Managing Directors (of either gender)!

You’ll remember from the analysis above that the penetration of women among Local Government CEOs has grown strongly. Can you guess which CEO group received the lowest salary in 1996 and 2006? Of course you can, even before looking at the next graph. It’s local Government CEOs. The median salary for women in this group was $35,500 in 2006. This is well down in real terms on the $37,500 they received in 1996. Private sector male CEOs, by contrast earned a median salary in 2006 of over $82,000.

salary

The public sector pay gap data presented seem somewhat ironic, considering the gender of our Prime Minister and several of her cabinet colleagues, and in light of a 2003 taskforce launched by the Labour Government into this issue!

Pay gap drivers

The reasons why women in general face a pay gap have been widely covered, most recently in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs 2002 Next Steps in Women’s Pay Equity. To recap briefly, the main drivers noted were lower educational attainment, fewer years of work experience (typically due to reducing work hours to care for dependants) and the higher proportion of women in lower paid occupations. Other commentators have also pointed to women’s apparent lack of assertiveness when it comes to negotiating entry pay and raises.

There’s an aspect of this pay gap for professional and legislator women that’s astonishing, however. Since 2000, their median hourly pay gap has worsened. This century, it has trended down almost one percentage point a year. For 15-24 year olds, the trend since 2003 has been even more sharply negative. In those three years, young professional women have seen the gap widen by over a point a year and for professionals the rate has been twice that – see graph below.

15-24

Better performance on drivers

None of this deterioration makes sense when we look at how women have progressed on the drivers of pay inequity listed earlier.

The educational attainment of women in these two occupations has increased rapidly. For example, the proportion of professional women with tertiary education since 2000 has grown eight times faster than men, to now almost match them, according to the New Zealand Income Survey.

It’s no news that women are having their babies ever later, too. Two thirds of New Zealand’s babies in 2004 were born to mums over the age of thirty, and the 40-44 year old cohort of mothers is the fastest growing. That means women are staying longer in their careers and amassing more work experience than ever before.

We can’t assess shifts in the relative mix of occupations until more data becomes freely available from the 2006 census. As to the suggestion that women don’t push for pay, it’s hard to see why that should have deteriorated in the last few years.

Impact of childcare costs

Whatever is fuelling the widening pay gap for professional and legislator women, employers should be concerned. Women’s pay has a direct impact on their ability to keep working full time. We've said it before on this site: if women don’t earn enough to afford really good quality childcare it’s harder for them to decide to stay on at work. High quality care means a very low ratio baby-adult arrangement, like a nanny or in-home care. That can easily cost $60,000 in pre-tax income. It’s not hard to see that the $10,000 mentioned above would make a material difference to the professional working mother’s trade-offs.

One way traffic

Once these women step out into less traditional work arrangements, the chances increase that they won’t return to full time work. Anecdotal evidence from our female Professionelle members is that participation in conventional (i.e. full-time and part-time work) falls from a high of almost 90% for 26-30 year olds to a low of just over 50% for 41-45 year olds. That’s a lot of talent being lost to employers, to say nothing of sunk recruiting and professional development costs. The men who stay on and rise into more senior, high-paying positions cannot logically all be the very best candidates, but instead represent the best available after female contenders have left.

Expensive Loss

New Zealand’s population pyramid is currently tightest for those aged 25-35 – precisely the age group that at its younger end is absorbing companies’ development time and expense and at its upper end is eroding as professional women finally begin families. Employers who want to win in this tight talent market surely need to check their own pay gaps, and figure out if they can afford to ignore them.

Slip-Slidin’ Away

It’s clear that among employed women, the occupation groups that comprise professional women have been doing well this millenium in terms of their numbers and their absolute levels of pay. Female CEOs are also rapidly increasing in number. However, the relative position to professional men and male CEOs currently appears to be headed in the wrong direction, despite professional women steadily improving their performance in terms of education and length of career. As Paul Simon sang, "The nearer your destination, the more you're slip-slidin' away."

We don’t know when or if the slide will reverse, but we’ll keep watching the trends and reporting on them. In particular, we’re keen to find data that is as recent and as directly comparable between the genders as possible. That way we hope to avoid the recent angry exchanges you can read about in Business Week’s blog, that were triggered by an article reporting on persisting pay gaps.

What do you think?

Can you contribute to this issue? What have you seen and experienced? Please let us know at feedback@professionelle.co.nz

Data Sources

New Zealand Income Survey June Qtrs 2000-2006
1996 and 2006 Census data sourced from Statistics NZ on three occupation groups relating to chief executives and the top layer of management:
- 11211 Chief Executive – Central Government
- 11212 Chief Executive – Local Government
- 11311 Chief Executive and/or Managing Director
Demographic Trends 2005 (for maternity data and population pyramid)
Labour Market Statistics 2000, and 2006 (for education data by occupation group)
Census of Population and Dwellings 2001 (for full time versus part time participation by gender and occupation)
Ministry of Women’s Affairs “Next Steps in Women’s Pay Equity”, 2002
Professionelle’s registered member database

Behind the Numbers Part 2

by Galia BarHava-Monteith

15 June 2007

The gender pay gap

Have you been lying awake at night wondering if men are still better paid than women for the same jobs? Well, probably not, but we are all too aware that the pay gap is still with us. However, the figures that are usually quoted are very broad, such as median income for all men ages 25-45.

I was interested in specifically comparing the income of the same professional groups I looked at in Part 1 of this series. I was also interested to see if the highest paid men were part of these occupational groups.

Background

There were almost 237,000 men in New Zealand in 2001 who were classified as full time ‘Professionals’ or ‘Legislators, Administrators and Managers’ compared with 219,000 women in the same categories. These men represented just over a quarter of all men and women surveyed in the census

Who’s better educated?

Women are! Just under half of the men in these groups (47%) held an advanced vocational qualification, a bachelor degree or higher qualification. This compares to over half (57%) of the women.

Who earns more than $100K?

The proportion of full time working adults who earned over $100K in 2001 was 4%. The proportion of ‘Professionals’ and ‘Legislators, Administrators and Managers’ (both men and women) who earned over $100k in 2001 was 10%.

The interesting picture emerged when I looked at women and men in these two groups separately. Fourteen percent (14%) of men who were ‘Professionals’ and ‘Legislators, Administrators and Managers’ earned over $100K in 2001.

Only 3%, yes, THREE PERCENT of the women in the same two categories who were working full time earned over $100K!!

So who are the men that earn the most and how do they compare to the women who earned the most?

To re-cap, the highest paid women in 2001 were Information Technology Managers with a median income of $61,158. Who do you think were the highest paid men from our selection of occupations in 2001?

You probably guessed it, barristers and solicitors. Male barristers and solicitors had a median income of $90,704 in 2001. This median income is almost twice as much as women barristers and solicitors whose median income was $48,567 in 2001.

And here is how the median incomes for our select occupations compares for men and women and the income gap between them:

Occupation	Median income for women	Median income for men	Pay Gap
Information Technology Managers	$61,158	$75,276	$14,118
Human Resources manager	$54,765	$62,642	$7,877
Advertising and Public Relations Manager	$51,608	$72,608	$21,000
Barristers and Solicitors	$48,567	$90,704	$42,137
Management Consultant	$47,748	$66,406	$18,658
Chief Executive and Managing Director	$47,517	$74,936	$27,419
Accountant	$41,062	$59,919	$18,857

NOTE – these detailed median income figures are for ‘the employed’ which implies all employed not just full time. More on this later.

It's just too depressing. Women had a significantly lower median income for each of the occupations examined. It even applied in HR (although this was the smallest gap), but the discrepancy for barristers is by far the largest.

I must be a masochist because I kept going. I looked at the proportion of men and women in these occupations who earned over $100K in 2001.

So here we go:

Occupation	% Women earning over $100K	% Men earning over $100K
Information Technology Managers	13%	25%
Human Resources Manager	10%	18%
Advertising and Public Relations Manager	9%	27%
Barristers and Solicitors	13%	44%
Management Consultant	16%	30%
Chief Executive and Managing Director	19%	38%
Accountant	3%	20%

Men in 2001 were much better paid than women and were basically at least twice (with the exception of HR) as likely as women to earn over $100K.

However, these detailed median income figures are for all employed adults, not just for the full time employed. Maybe these figures reflect the fact that women in these occupations are more likely to work part time?

In my next and final article on the 2001 figures I’ll try and answer this question.

What are your thoughts about these numbers? Were you surprised? Do you think 2006 Census numbers will reflect a similar reality? We would love to hear from you, so please e-mail us on feedback@professionelle.co.nz

Pregnancy Care Options in New Zealand

by Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes

15 June 2007

When you’re a professional working woman, you don’t always have the time to think and plan for your first baby, as our Ask the Expert question First baby due, what do I do? showed. This article on pregnancy care options is intended as an introduction to the topic for you expectant, but busy, women out there.

Satisfied Customers

As I began my research, a letter to the Herald editor caught my eye. Written by a man who’d just become a new father, it finished with the words, “…I cannot think of anywhere I would rather have a child than in New Zealand.” He and his wife had evidently felt very well supported throughout pregnancy, during the birth, and on to post-natal care.

I had similar positive experiences, but the letter made me wonder what the process and options were nowadays for arranging maternity care. The “system” changed in July 1996, shortly after my daughter was born, and I didn’t notice many differences when my son came along in 1998, perhaps because I used the same combination of health professionals.

The Current System - Overview

The objective of the changes seems to have been to improve the continuity of care for a woman. Instead of being passed from GP care during pregnancy to often-unknown hospital midwives (who changed as their shifts changed) for labour and then to ward staff for post-natal care, women now choose a Lead Maternity Carer (LMC).

The system is also designed to provide “integrated” care, in that LMCs can access any necessary additional services such as obstetric or paediatric services for their clients.

Lead Maternity Carers (LMC)

The Ministry of Health defines the LMC as a professional who “takes responsibility for the care provided to the woman throughout her pregnancy and postpartum period, including the management of labour and birth.”

The LMC can be a midwife, a GP with obstetric qualifications, or an obstetric specialist. In the case of ‘shared care’, combinations of these professionals provide care. Note that depending on where you live, not all these options may be available.

Section 88 Maternity Services Notice details the minimum service specifications to which LMCs must work. For example, an LMC (or their backup) must be available to you 24/7. All LMCs are paid the same to provide the same level of service.

According to the most recently available Report on Maternity from NZHIS, at first registration in 2003, 78% women chose a midwife. About 7% never registered with one and the rest were split between GPs and obstetricians. These proportions partly reflect availability (see ‘How Easy Is It To Find an LMC?’ below).

The Basics

The good news is that there is plenty of information out there. A booklet from the Ministry of Health explains about care options and the role of the LMC as well as providing general pregnancy information. Other good sites to read about care options (and much more) include:

New Zealand College of Midwives
Maternity Services Consumer Council
Consumer Magazine which has a free highlight of an excellent article on the state of NZ’s maternity services
Parents Centre
Kiwifamilies

In essence, the steps you take are these:

Establish if you’re pregnant. Once you think you’re pregnant, visit your GP or a midwife. This person is responsible for confirming pregnancy and for explaining the system and your options re your LMC. They should also explain the different kinds of places you can give birth, where you can attend antenatal classes and so on.
Choose an LMC. Your LMC does not have to be the person you went to for your first visit. Even if you went to a midwife for your initial consultation, you can still choose a different LMC for the duration of your pregnancy.
Develop your care plan with your LMC. The care plan covers such issues as your preferences for birth location and attendees, your attitudes to medical interventions, the backups to LMC and so on
Plan your move to free Wellchild care. Four to six weeks after birth, your LMC care ends. You are then entitled to move to free Wellchild care which can be provided by Plunket, your GP’s team or others.

Choosing an LMC

The Ministry of Health booklet on page 22 suggests a list of questions to help you choose your LMC. Some of the other websites mentioned above offer similar lists.

These are a help, but if this is your first pregnancy, and if you haven’t shared the experience of a pregnancy via a close girlfriend you may actually find it hard to know what the right answers for you are! For example, how many years of experience will you expect your midwife to have? How many is a ‘good’ number?

In the absence of prior experience and the time to undertake lots of research, we would suggest four ways to find a successful match:

get word of mouth referrals if you can. It’s a method that works for other professions like doctors and accountants, so why not here?
see how aligned you and your potential LMC are on any issues that really do matter to you e.g. attitudes to pain relief, to home births, to breastfeeding and to medical intervention
talk to more than one potential LMC. Comparison is a great way to get perspective and a sense of who you feel most comfortable with
consider how likely you may be to have medical complications during your pregnancy and delivery. Do you have pre-existing conditions? Do you have a history of complications?

How easy is it to find an LMC?

In the National Council of Women of New Zealand’s second Maternity Services Survey (2001), based on a sample of over a thousand women, almost 85% reported no trouble securing their first choice of LMC. However, 50% of the remainder had to approach three potential LMCs. And that was over five years ago…

Consumer Magazine’s 2005 report painted a grimmer picture, pointing to the decline in delivering GPs from 600 in 1997 to a mere 20 in 2005. In addition, I found that the number of midwives applying for an Annual Practising Certificate (APC) has halved this century from nearly 5000 in 2000/01, partly in response to the rising cost of the APC and to increased professional competency requirements.

During this same period, NZ’s birth rate – as a proxy for demand - has been fairly steady around 58,000. If the supply/demand balance is tightening, then choice must be falling too.

About 60% of the current midwives work in hospitals and are not available as LMCs. This leaves about 1000 midwives to care for the 80% or so of those 58,000 mums who choose midwives; that means a caseload of 45-50 cases per midwife. Compared to the recommended maximum load of 50-70, this looks fine at first glance. However, even small regional imbalances can lead to a woman’s LMC search being frustrated.

The Cost of Maternity Care

If you’re a New Zealand resident or citizen your maternity care is free. Things you have to pay for, if you choose them, are:

Private birthing hospital fees. Depending on the facility and standard of room, charges can be around $300 per night for a room and meals
Obstetricians are permitted to charge on top of the LMC fee they receive from the government. I paid $1200 ten years ago. The going rate in Auckland for care from conception through to post natal period is apparently now around $4000.
Ultrasound scans that are not necessary from a medical perspective. These cost about $120 each.

What Can I Expect At Birth?

No-one knows how things will go on the day but statistics from the Report on Maternity make interesting reading.

In terms of deliveries:

Almost a fifth of deliveries were induced
Almost a quarter of deliveries had epidurals. These were more common in women aged 30-34 and in Asians
About two thirds of deliveries were ‘normal’ which included 0.6% breech
Of the ‘non-normal’ deliveries:
- 23% deliveries were by Caesarean (up from 11.7% 15 years earlier) and of these, nearly two in five were elective
- 9% needed interventions like forceps or ventouse
- Almost all (>98%) deliveries were made in hospital, or mum and babe were taken there shortly after delivery

And your baby?

The average New Zealand baby weighs 3.41kg.

51.4% of live births were male
Under 1.5% were twins or other multiple birth – but, of course, some families are prone to them!
7% were born ‘preterm’ ie before 37 weeks

After birth, you may feel the effects of the maternity funding regime! Hospitals are funded for two days hospital stay for a ‘normal’ birth and up to five days for a caesarean. However, there is no legal requirement for you to leave before you feel ready, particularly if you are having issues, such as problems establishing breastfeeding or the onset of post natal depression.

Women’s Experiences and Advice

Encouragingly, the National Council of Women’s Maternity Services Survey 2001reported that over 90% of women were ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with their care before the baby was born, with the treatment their baby received after delivery, and with post-natal care. The level of satisfaction was stated to be mainly due to the good care provided by the LMC.

The women were invited to offer advice to other women having a baby. The three most common themes were:

To become well-informed about maternity services and be assertive. This included exploring the LMC options available in your area. They also recommended finding out about antenatal classes, where delivery would take place and what postnatal care would be available.
The great importance of choosing the best LMC, one you can trust to support you during your pregnancy and after the birth. Respondents recommended that women should look around early for the right individual within their preferred type of LMC. The LMC should be professional, caring, and open to your suggestions. The choice should also be based on recommendations from others.
To use an independent midwife. This was the recommendation of a fifth of respondents.

Whether a new survey would reveal greater frustrations with finding an independent midwife is open to question!

Your Experience and Advice

This article has only scraped the surface of what is a very large topic. Do you have anything to contribute - perhaps your own path to choosing your LMC, or the advice you always share with girlfriends who become pregnant? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us at: feedback@professionelle.co.nz or post your comments on our newly-installed messageboard.

Behind the Numbers Part 1

by Galia BarHava-Monteith

16th May 2007

I have a confession to make: I like statistics. I like numbers that tell a story about people. So, I have long wondered who the most highly paid women in business and professional services are, and if being highly qualified actually means earning more. I’ve also wondered if the highest paying occupations are the same for women as for men. And of course, I really wanted to know what’s behind the often quoted statistic that women earn less than men for the same work.

So, I went digging. Imagine my surprise to find, buried among the multitude of reports from Stats New Zealand’s 2001 census data, incredibly detailed tables outlining gender and income by detailed occupations.

And what I found was not what I expected!

Women in the occupations of interest to Professionelle were the most highly qualified group. They were also more highly-qualified than men in the same occupational groups.
The highest median income for women was not found among Barristers and Solicitors or CEOs.
The highest median income for women did not correspond with the percentage of women who were paid over $100K.

This is the first of a series of three articles aimed at shedding some light on the status of professional and corporate women’s pay and working hours in New Zealand, based on the 2001 census data. I also plan to refresh this series when detailed analysis from the 2006 Census becomes publicly available.

Background

The two groups of interest to me were ‘Professionals’, which includes health and educational professionals and ‘Legislators, Administrators and Managers’ which includes both public and private sector corporate workers.

There were 219,000 women in New Zealand in 2001 who were classified as ‘Professional’ or ‘Legislators, Administrators and Managers’. They represented about quarter (27%) of all the women in the census.

Not surprisingly, over half (57%) of these women held an advanced vocational qualification, a bachelor degree or higher qualification. Surprisingly, (at least for me) less than half of the men (47%) in the same occupational groups had this high level of education.

To give you an idea of how this compares to the wider adult population, only a quarter or (23%) of New Zealanders had this level of education.

So who earns the most?

Let’s cut to the chase...Who are the most highly paid women out there?

By way of answer, here’s a quick quiz. How would you rank the following occupations if you were asked to say which had the highest median income for women in 2001?

Chief Executive or Managing Director (not in the public sector)
Advertising or public relations Manger
Information technology manager
Human resources manager
Accountant
Management consultant
Barrister and solicitor

I don’t know what you reckoned, but I was sure that among women the highest median income would be for barristers and solicitors and for management consultants. Certainly, I was sure they would be higher than that of HR managers. Well, how wrong was I!

The highest median income of all the groups I looked was:

Information Technology Managers with a median income of $61,158 in 2001.

Here is the detailed ranking:

1. Information Technology Manager	$61,158
2. Human Resources Manager	$54,765
3. Advertising and Public Relations Manager	$51,608
4. Barristers and Solicitors	$48,567
5. Management Consultant	$47,748
6. Chief Executive and Managing Director	$47,517
7. Accountant	$41,062

Surprised? I definitely was. Next, I looked at the percentage of women in each occupation group who earned over $100k in 2001.

The group with the highest proportion of women earning over $100k in 2001 was Chief Executives and Managing Directors (not in the public sector) with 19%.

The percentages for the other occupations were as follows:

1. Management Consultant	16%
2. Information Technology Manager	13%
3. Barristers and Solicitors	13%
4. Human Resources Manager	10%
5. Advertising and Public Relations Manager	9%
6. Accountant	3%

So you want to be your Own Boss?

(Welcome to the world of contracting)

By Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes

30 April 2007

Let’s face it, contracting is probably not the kind of work arrangement you had planned for yourself when you left university. Of course, as a newly minted graduate or post-grad, you didn’t know much about anyone or anything - so hardly anyone would have hired you on contract for your skills and knowledge. In any case, your focus back then was almost certainly on getting a job to pay off your debts, and to begin your climb up the career ladder. And that meant full time employment.

The Big Push

Now, however, a few years down the track, something has happened to bring contracting into your decision set. Chances are it’s a life changing event; it takes something that big to get most of us out of the fifty plus hour work-week and pay-check routine. The usual drivers are:

you’ve been made redundant
you’ve had a major change of circumstances in your life that requires you to have more control and flexibility - a new baby, or a sick relative
you’ve decided to make a radical change in life style, like selling up and moving to a life style block, but you still need income.

The Key Ingredients

Apart from the push itself, I believe the key ingredients to making this a viable option include the following:

Having skills or relationships of value to at least one large client. In my case, I knew more than most in my ex-employer’s office about consumer goods and retail, and had strong links into a major client. Similarly, Galia had an in- depth understanding of Fonterra and an expertise in ethics.
Being flexible. Depending on the kind of contract you obtain (see below for types), the workflow could well be intermittent. If you’re a mum with a working husband or partner, you’ll need to have childcare that can cope with the peaks and troughs. And the shift to irregular income can require considerable emotional adjustment.
Being a confident networker. I’m not, but I wish I were. A 2003 UK study by Independent Direction Directors Advisory Service (IDDAS) of corporate managers who became self employed at the end of their careers or at the onset of retirement found that the key thing they would change if they could do things over was to network or self market more effectively. Personal networking with close contacts was overwhelmingly identified as the most effective way of finding new self-employed roles.

Different Kinds of Contract

Based on our own experience and observations, there are several types:

The fixed term contract. Galia had one with Fonterra. A common reason for employers to offer fixed term contracts is having a specific project that needs outside skills. Uncertain funding is another, often the situation when state schools hire teacher aides from term to term. Note that in NZ employment law, it’s illegal for employers to place someone on this kind of contract as a means of “try before you buy”.
The minimum hours or base income contract. I began my contracting life with one of these. The Boston Consulting Group, my ex-employer, guaranteed me a base income for the first twelve months. There was so much work that year that I’d invoiced them the base figure well before the contract period was up.
The zero hour contract. This is my current arrangement with my key client. It works project-by-project with nothing written down. When they think they may have work that needs my skills, they ring. If I can make myself available, I do. I wouldn’t recommend this as your initial set-up if you can avoid it because it is loose and unpredictable. It works for me because I know the client very well and there is huge trust on both sides.
The single, one-off project. This is where you write the client a letter of proposal outlining objectives, deliverables, timeframe and financial arrangements. This becomes the contract you work under for the duration of the project. Galia has used this model too, and it works well as long as both sides are absolutely clear on what’s involved. As in any consulting arrangement, make sure you don’t underestimate the hours involved when quoting a project. It’s a really good idea to constantly touch base with your client to avoid nasty surprises at the end.
Work obtained via an agency. Galia and I have never done things this way but if you have readily defined and marketable skills, e.g. as an accountant or SAP consultant, you can find work this way. Presumably there is a contract or letter of agreement between you and the agency, specifying payment rates and frequency, time tracking mechanisms etc.

Your Legal Set-Up

I have to preface this by saying you must check with your professional business advisors as to what will suit your circumstances best. In principle, however, there are two main ways to set up as a contractor:

Sole Traders control, manage and own the business directly themselves. Normally, there are no formal or legal processes required to establish yourself this way. Sole traders are personally entitled to the profits and are personally liable for their business taxes and debts. They use their personal IRD number for the business.
A Limited Company of which you will probably be both a shareholder and director. The company receives all the contracting income, pays the permitted tax-deductible expenses, owns the assets and liabilities and is thus responsible for its debts. As a shareholder employee you receive a salary from the company and your liabilities are limited to your share of equity. You’ll need to set up the company with the NZ Companies Office - this can be done online for a mere $50.

Lastly, remember that if you expect to earn over $40,000 (regardless of legal set-up), you’ll need to register for GST. This means you’ll need to account for GST, keep tax invoices, and complete GST returns. If you’re like me, you’ll think that paying an accountant to help with the last of these is money well spent!

What Should You Charge?

Here’s my advice: take your current monthly salary and the average hours you work in a month to figure out a rough rate per hour. Then double it. At least. Why?

Because you’re going to be offering your client/s a fabulous deal: you’ll bring skills and resources they need, wrapped up in lovely variable cost packaging. They don’t have to pay you when there’s no work. They don’t have to think about training you. For that bundle of benefits, you should charge a premium.
Because, from your perspective, you no longer get sick pay, holiday pay, maternity pay or end of year bonuses. You have new expenses, too. They might be tax deductible but they cost real money. Broadband to your home. A new laptop, and software. Stationery. Accountant’s fees. Income insurance.

For anyone who wants a benchmark, this is ours: we wouldn’t stir for under $NZ100/hour.

Is it For You?

I’ve now been a contractor for longer than I was an employee and I wouldn’t willingly go back. It’s not all sunshine and roses, but there are some great moments. Executives interviewed for the IDDAS study mentioned earlier were quoted in words that sum up the personal requirements, tradeoffs, risks and rewards pretty well:

“Be patient, retain self-belief and develop a thick skin.”

“I don’t miss the bureaucracy of full time work but I do miss the camaraderie.”

“If I had not planned my exit and finances I would be in a pretty dangerous place.”

“At [age] 50, the switch from multinational to self-managed business has been extremely rewarding.”

Your Views

So, can you see yourself as a contractor? Perhaps you’ve already taken the plunge? If so, let us know your experiences. Contracting can be a lonely existence, and we’d love Professionelle to be a place for women in non-standard work arrangements, i.e. other than full time, to share ideas and support. Send us further questions on contracting, too, and we’ll do our best to help.

Takeaway box:

The four best and worst things about contracting

The Best

Those midweek mornings when the sun’s shining and you’re able to... [insert your own escapist fantasy].
paid more to work fewer hours, thus having time for children, hobbies, social service and more.
Being far more removed from office politics.
That magic word: flexibility.

The Worst

Being at a client’s when they hand out the end of year bonus cheques.
The illusion that being a contractor means being in full control. You can say “no” (once in a while) but you’ll probably still do crazy hours occasionally and have to work away from home.
Missing out on office friendships and the intellectual support of smart colleagues.
Those confidence crises when there’s no firm project or assignment on the horizon.

The Forgotten Art of Listening

by Galia BarHava-Monteith

12 March 2007

Listening is something I’m really passionate about. Throughout my working career I’ve constantly found myself re–discovering the importance of listening. I’ve also noticed how very few people do it well.

A Rare Skill

As the Ethics Manager at Fonterra, I was basically paid to listen. I always knew it was important, but that’s not to say it came easily to me. What I found out was that being listened to meant a lot to people. As time went by, I found that my colleagues were coming to me to talk about things which were not to do with ethics and ethical behaviour. They really wanted to talk about issues ranging from their careers to handling difficult situations at work. I realised how often in the workplace we are not listened to.

Self–Discovered Solutions

Instead, whenever we need to talk something through, our colleagues or managers feel inclined to solve the problem for us rather than listening and guiding us to solve our problem for ourselves. I’ve been guilty of the same thing. An area I worked hard on was figuring out what were the best questions to ask. I had to learn to give people space.

Improve Relationships

Not only is it good to be able to listen well – listening can also be great for one’s career. Check out the takeaway box below: ‘Benefits of being a good listener’.

Indepth Article

Click through to find out more about how to listen and do it well. This article is based on one I wrote with Ron Pol and Clinical Psychologist Pauline Griffiths which was published in ‘Law Talk’ in 2005;

The article is written for the professional work context but it can easily be applied to other situations.

Tell us your views

Do you have any suggestions about how to improve listening skills? Good books on listening we should read? When I was researching the topic I was surprised to find there weren’t many good ones on the topic. Any reflections about the journeys in listening you have taken? We would love to hear all about them. E-mail us at: feedback@professionelle.co.nz

Hearing versus listening

Problems in communication are the most frequently cited specific complaint by couples seeking therapy, with up to 90% of distressed couples citing these difficulties as a major issue in the relationship (source: Brief Therapy for Couples, W Kim Halford (Guilford Press, 2001)). Key to successful relationships, both at home and in the workplace, is the art of listening, sometimes confused with ‘hearing‚ what people say.

‘Hearing‚ describes the physiological sensory processes by which auditory sensations are received by the ears and transmitted to the brain. ‘Listening‚, on the other hand, refers to a more complex psychological procedure involving interpreting and understanding the significance of the sensory experience.

Hearing is the beginning of the listening process. It is non–selective and involuntary; whereas choosing to listen is a purposeful activity.

This means that you can hear what another person is saying, and even repeat it word for word without really listening to them. Listening is the ability to interpret the meaning the other person is trying to convey, sometimes regardless of (and occasionally even contrary to) the words used. Listening involves more than just interpreting the meaning of words; it involves interpreting the tone, the body language and, often, interpreting what is not being said.

What makes a good workplace listener?

My definition of a good workplace listener is someone with whom you can have a rigorous exchange of ideas. A good workplace listener is aware of your organisational reality. What distinguishes a great workplace listener from the rest of us is that they have the ability to encourage us to think through complex work related issues and thus help us come up with workable solutions.

The art of attending

To be a good workplace listener, you actually need to be someone who people want to talk to. We all know people who think they are great listeners, but in reality are very poor at it. One of the most basic things you can do is work on your ability to attend to what is being said. This way you can make people feel they can truly talk to you and you will listen.

More than half of most communication is non verbal, through our gestures, facial expressions, eyes and posture. Non verbal communication may emphasize, repeat, substitute for, regulate or contradict accompanying verbal communication.

In one experiment on the importance of non-verbal communications, it was found that students who were listened to by an impassive listener rated him as cold and aloof. However, when the same ‘listener‚ moved and made some non-verbal gestures in response to the speaker, the same listener was described as warm, casual, friendly and natural.

Some of the basics of attentive listening:

Make sure you are in the right psychological space to listen. There is nothing wrong with telling your colleagues who may want to talk to you that you are not in the right space at that particular moment. People respect honesty. However, if you want them to come back and talk with you, then schedule a time when you can have a good conversation.
When you are in the psychological space to listen, make sure you communicate this physically. Work on a posture of involvement. Lean forward; be relaxed and alert.
Respond to the speaker, not to distractions. Looking at your computer, taking phone calls, or looking at the person walking past your office is not only rude, it also interferes with listening.
Keep environmental distractions to a minimum. The attentive listener will remove physical barriers to foster better communications and observe body language. This is an important part of listening, which can’t be done well when there’s a big desk in the way.
Maintaining eye contact, even when people show emotion, is one of the most effective listening skills in many societies. Maintaining appropriate and culturally sensitive eye contact and being aware of emotionally charged environments shows that you are interested and helps you notice what is not said.
Use ‘minimal encouragers’ (such as ok, yes, uh-ha, right, really) to let the speaker know that you are interested (or at least still awake), and maintain the flow of what they have to say
Summarizing what was said. If you find using ‘minimal encouragers‘ a bit contrived, this one is a great way to show you are listening and interested. It is also a great way to check that you understand the issues at hand. Often, just by summarizing what was said, people often quickly recognize the issue at hand and find the solution for themselves!

The art of questioning

This is really the core skill of a good workplace listener. I have met a few of them, and tried my best to become one. These people know exactly what the right question is, the question that will get to the heart of any problem. When asked the right questions, many of us find that the answers to our issues are painfully obvious.

So how do you go about asking the right questions?

A great way to find good questions is by thinking of yourself as an interviewer who is about to write a story. This way, you really need to focus on the questions that will help you get the ‘juicy bits’:

Use as many open questions as you can think of to find out the facts – Where? When? Why? And How? One thing I learnt the hard way is that no matter how good I thought I was in getting the facts, I often neglected to ask at least one important question.
Find out who is involved or affected by the issue – remember to look beyond the obvious stakeholders such as managers and staff to see others, like shareholders and customers. This can bring out a very different picture.
What have they already thought of in terms of resolving the issue? Can you help them think of other ways? What are the consequences of these alternatives and how might they affect the various stakeholders?
Tolerate silence in the conversation; give yourself time to reflect on what you’ve heard (ie listen) – “the beginning of wisdom is silence – the second stage is listening”.
Paraphrase (concisely; not parrot) – to ensure you understand
Don’t offer solutions too quickly – this is the BIG challenge of listening; help people solve their own problems for themselves. This way, they are most likely to own the solutions.

How good a listener are you?

A little self reflection can go a long way. A very quick exercise you can do for yourself is to think of a great listener you know and then to write down what it is about him or her that makes them great at it. Then, think of a poor listener and write down what makes them so ineffective.

You’ve probably guessed it by now. With your quick list of what distinguishes great listeners from poor ones, you can rate yourself and see which qualities you already have, and which you still lack.

If you choose to do something about it, you can always focus on improving the key area that needs improving (for example, avoiding giving solutions...). Come up with one or two strategies to try and improve that aspect of your listening. After a while, ask a close colleague to give you feedback. Simple, but it works!

Benefits of being a good workplace listener

You build relationships. Everyone likes to be listened to. It’s a powerful way to show respect. When people feel you respect them, they are more likely to see you as an ally.
You will learn about your company/business. If you ask the right questions & listen, you’ll be surprised what you learn
You will become known as constructive problem solver. When being listened to, and asked the right questions, people often find the answer for themselves. This way, your colleagues will be more likely to ‘own’ their solution and be more likely to act on it.
You will set an example. This never hurts!

All of these things will result in you being seen as trustworthy and will increase your ‘sphere of informal influence’ – the influence you have which is not related to your actual position.

The ‘F’ Word: Flexibility

by Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes

12 March 2007

Flexibility: it’s what working women want, but what many struggle to achieve at all stages of their careers. These trends seem as true in New Zealand as elsewhere. A 2006 report by the Department of Labour into our local Work-Life Balance found that the occupational group giving their lives the second worst balance rating was "business managers and executives", a hairsbreadth better than trained service workers like policemen. This poor showing will come as no surprise to the corporate and professional women reading these words!

The Holy Grail

Almost all the local women managers we interviewed while developing this website wanted a better work-life balance. Some wished for it for right now. Their wish was often quite modest – to come in after the morning rush, or to work away from the office occasionally, and to be "not so dictated to by timetables".

Other women, mostly younger, knew they’d need bigger licks of flexibility in the future, to allow for family care and broader interests, like continuing education. A couple of the younger women we interviewed were so certain their current employers wouldn’t be able to provide adequate flexibility that they expected they’d have to leave, or dramatically curtail their career ambitions.

Wanted: Traditional Ideal Worker

Those two women are probably right. Even today, NZ firms still seek the traditional manager. Despite the challenge of finding high calibre candidates for key positions, companies continue to hunt the person who’ll work sixty hours a week, travel often and at the drop of a hat, and with no plans to change those habits should children ever arrive.

A head-hunter recently rang me about a full time strategic role assisting a senior manager. Her client was after candidates with such a specific set of skills and work experience I doubt there’d have been more than a handful of us in New Zealand.

I told the recruiter I was looking for more, not less, flexibility in my work. Her reply?

"Oh, don’t say you’ve got small children, too." She made no offer to explore a non-standard approach or discover what type of flexible arrangement would attract me.

How serious was this client about finding the right person, I wondered? And how realistic were the recruiters being?

Flexible definitions

Flexibility is a flexible term that covers a broad range of work models as well as the necessary technologies to support them. Below are four key categories of flexible work models (source: www.flexibility.co.uk):

flexible contracts – a few of our interviewees had moved to contracting, or were actively considering it. This area includes outsourcing, use of agency workers and casual labour. A more controversial option is zero hours in which workers are effectively "on call" pending the need for their skill set. This is my own model.
flexible hours – the trend for those in full time work to put in ever longer hours at the office becomes more tolerable with flexitime schemes for altered start and finish times around a core set of hours. Popular models among working mums are part time work, annualised hours (also called term time hours), and compressed working weeks. In some industries, jobsharing can work, too. Lastly, leave options fit here: m/paternity leave, sabbaticals and career breaks
flexible locations – also known as location-independent working and teleworking. People perform tasks at home, on the move, and from satellite offices.
flexible tasks – this area offers greater diversity of work. Within a full time role, it can be achieved through multi-skilling and removal of job demarcations. Outside, the rise of portfolio working brings the same benefits: typically older executives put together different tasks such as consultancy and contract work and non-Executive directorships to maintain income and intellectual interest.

Not a One-Off

What our interviews really brought home was that professional working women’s needs for flexibility change as they move through successive life and career stages. This, we believe, poses a series of challenges to employers who wish to retain them. One size will not fit all. In the women’s own words:

[under 30, no children] "if I could make work a bit more flexible as to how and when I get the work done, work from home more, be able to get out of the office more..."
[mid 30s, young children]: "roadblock is the constant compromise between giving the most for my family and having my own career. The greatest barrier in corporate is the lack of acceptance that family is really important. If I take a full time role the acceptance will have to be there from the start to allow some flexibility."
[looking ahead to being 50] "I’ll be on a life style block working for a boutique professional services firm... a general manager for a non-profit organisation. And possibly doing something on the side like a B&B."

It’s striking that none of the women we spoke to expected by the age of 50 to be with the same employer, or on the same career path! And though none of our interviewees raised it, we’d expect the demands of caring for ageing relatives to become an ever more important driver of flexibility needed by women later in their careers.

Barriers

Some employers have become convinced by the benefits of flexible working to the benefit of all concerned (see the case study on British Telecom in the takeaway box below). Nevertheless, if our interviewees are any guide, many employees remain dissatisfied with what’s on offer. There appear to be three main barriers to the spread of flexible working arrangements

Trust is a major hurdle.

Recent research for BT in the UK reported that those least trusting of colleagues’ and direct reports’ flexible arrangements are managers aged under 30, and men. We’d add that we’ve spoken to high achieving women who’ve moved to part time work and who report that their younger colleagues treat them with less respect because their lower hours get equated with lower commitment. Modern work practice is built on the industrial model of measurable output for time and effort expended. It’s hard to gauge the effective output of many middle managers. That’s why the proxy of hours spent at the office desk is such a popular, if unofficial, measure.
Employees need to believe their requests for flexibility will be treated fairly and will not adversely impact their careers. In the Department of Labour’s survey quoted above, almost a third of employees found it hard to discuss at least some workplace issues with their supervisor.

Fear of the unknown. This is particularly an issue for employers. How will they supervise an employee who’s out of sight? If everyone asks for flexibility, will the business be overwhelmed? Can the process be made fair to all employees even if business needs vary across the organisation? Small businesses in New Zealand are also concerned about compliance costs. Government initiatives here and overseas are underway to help share best practice and offer tools and templates.
Mismatched expectations. Many local employers report that they offer flexible arrangements. Closer inspection reveals that common, minor gestures such as permission to "occasionally vary start times to deal with non-work problems" and "use personal sick leave to care for an ill person" are included. By contrast, permission to work from home regularly is only offered to all employees in 25% of firms. Perhaps the reason many local employees say options are not available to them is that they are looking for more far-reaching options than they see so far.

No Free Lunch

Even when women executives do manage to organise more flexible work for themselves, they face significant compromises. After a career break for family, even one as short as a year, it can be hard to re-engage with work at the same level and pay.

Part time work and non-travel work in professional service firms can mean less challenging "inside" or staff jobs, away from direct client contact and with reduced career progression opportunities. And contracting, while offering a greater sense of control, comes with the strings of unpredictability and loneliness.

Of course, these issues need to be offset against the benefits – lower stress levels, less travel, being with the family more during never-to-be-repeated years, and often richer interactions with the local community.

Are we dreaming?

Maybe we should take a long, hard look at ourselves and realise that if we’re serious about our careers we should just get on with it. Maybe we read too many of those ‘women can do anything’ books when we were young. Maybe, flexibility is an F word and we should choose either to be in work for the long haul (which will mean outsourcing care of our children) or to do the full motherhood thing.

Obviously, we don’t think flexibility is too much to ask, but we do think it’s worth a serious debate.

What are your thoughts? Are we dreaming? We would love to hear what you have to say.

"Anytime, Anywhere – breaking the presenteeism culture."

Out of British Telecom’s 100,000 strong workforce, 75% are working flexibly, whether as homeworkers, nomadic workers, or on annualised hours. Thanks to a move to output and outcome-based performance management, employees can have much more control over the hours and place they work.

Tangible benefits for BT include a recruitment saving of £5m by retaining 99% of female employees who take maternity leave, another £5-6m in productive time saved through homeworking and a 25% drop in stress-related absence in Customer Service Centres.

Source: "Managing Change" from the UK Department of Trade and Industry, quoted in www.eoc.org.uk

What’s happening in New Zealand?

In 2005, the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee of Parliament heard evidence on the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill.

The Committee agreed there was a need for flexible working hours in New Zealand but could not agree the best mechanism for delivering these. In particular, it noted that though some employers had already introduced flexible work practices, many employees said that these were not sufficiently available to them.

The Committee set the Bill aside for a year and asked the Department of Labour (DoL) to find out more about the flexible work mechanisms in NZ workplaces. The DoL’s invitation to workplaces and workers to provide feedback closed on 15 December 2006.

Presumably, during 2007, the DoL will present its findings to the Committee who will then return to the Bill once more. If passed in its proposed form, the Bill would allow employees who care for children under 5 and/or children with a disability under 18 the right to request flexible arrangements. It would also limit the grounds on which employers could refuse.