Guest Editorials Archive

This is an intensely personal view about board directorships and about pathways towards them, especially my own. I’m speaking from my thirty years of experience in governance in professional associations, community organisations, trusts, businesses and statutory bodies, the last ten years of which have been largely in the role of independent director or trustee.

I currently sit on a number of Boards, namely:

my own consulting company
Solid Energy, a diversified energy company, with a wide range of coal based and renewable energy businesses. We recently posted our highest annual revenue breaking the $1billion mark, with more than $100 million profit.
Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA), responsible for public transport services in Auckland and regional transport programming and funding.
Maritime New Zealand, a Crown agency delivering a huge range of services for the maritime sector including governance of the New Zealand Rescue Co-ordination Centre
the Auckland City Property Enterprise Board
Manukau Buildings Consultants Limited and
the Cornwall Park Trust.

Diverse and demanding

To give you a flavour for the diversity of my board work over the past months I have co-hosted a cocktail party at the Beehive, approved $75 million for mighty new trucks and excavators, visited and been fully briefed on the operation of a port, reviewed proposals for an underground rail system in Auckland, and approved the purchase of many properties for various civic and public works in the Auckland region!

I’ve also spent about 10 days at board meetings and reviewing board papers - at least two days per month for each board. And every day there are emails and news bulletins to respond to, and sometimes special committees and events to attend, and keep up to date with. It is very demanding, scary at times, stretches the mind, is often a lot of fun, and you meet people and go places you never imagined.

The Beginning

So how did this all happen to me? The answer is very slowly, over years. It did not happen on any timetable set by me and it was did not unfold at all like a career!

I was 37 years old, 15 years into my local government career, with 65 staff, a $6m budget, 60 hour weeks, and hugely ambitious. However, I decided I should have one last go at starting a family and so I needed a less stressful career.

I left local government for the life of a planning consultant and eventually joined up in 1995 with David Hill to establish our company Hill Young Cooper. On day one we discussed our long term aspirations. Besides conquering the consultancy market in New Zealand (well we were young and ambitious!) I decided “I would like a few directorships”. I was about 40, with significant management experience but no real business experience, no CEO experience, and not an accountant or a lawyer. With the benefit of hindsight I did not tick many of the "skills and competencies" and other governance boxes sought by recruitment committees on boards.

Silent phone

In my naivety I set out on my path to directorships rather like the rest of my career to date: I thought it was a matter of trainign and applications. I trained on the Institute of Directors (IOD) 5 day company director course and others, joined the IOD and regularly attended the breakfast meetings, and put in my CV into Crown Companies Monitoring and Advisory Unit (CCMAU) and waited for the phone to go...

…

After a year nothing had happened, so I reviewed my strategy. I did some more training, refreshed my CV and kept on attending IOD breakfasts. Two more years went by and apart from a rather botched interview with CCMAU those "just a few directorships" were not happening. I attended an IoD course about once a year - on governance, strategy, financial essentials for directors and the like. But essentially I gave up on “trying to become a director,” realizing it was not like a professional career. There was nothing and no-one to apply to except on a very random basis; and in any case the process by which people get appointed to boards was even more opaque to me then than it is today.

Breakthrough

Then out of the blue, my first governance role emerged. It was a request to sit on the establishment board of the Waitakere water business with several other people including Bryan Mogridge, Jock Irvine and Margaret Wilson. I came across concepts like cost of capital for the first time. It was bit of an eye opener for a planner and there were some days my head spun with the new concepts and the decision making role in an intensely political environment.

But my appetite for governance roles did not diminish.

Real Business

After a selection process I was appointed to the board of ARTNL, a local government company that was established to own the rail tracks, Britomart, rail stations and ferry wharves. I loved my role on this first trading company. We had real assets, real income and real expenses. I took special governance responsibility for the commissioning of the Britomart Transport Centre. This was the first time I experienced no daylight between governance roles and management roles. Time and funding were tight and the issues were real.

On the board, we had traditional business men and experienced directors. I carefully observed how they behaved. I spent time with the chairman, Ross Keenan, discussing governance and how I could improve my contribution. It was a great learning experience. Some advice: openly seek guidance from more experienced directors when you are new. Chairmen in particular are almost always wise and experienced in the business of the organisation and in the business of governance.

Welcome Call, Close Call

After at least five years languishing somewhere near the bottom of the CCMAU candidate list, a call came asking if I would consider a directorship on the board of Solid Energy a state owned enterprise. A coal miner – not quite the glamorous board directorship I had imagined for myself on NZ Post, or one of those electricity companies!

I was asked to attend an interview with the chairman and a CCMAU representative in a couple of days time? Next came a mad flurry to update myself on coal mining, the Crown Minerals Act and Solid Energy so I could present my credentials at the interview in the best light. A couple of hours before the meeting I checked the CCMAU website on the interview process – to find to my horror it was MY interview to conduct due diligence before accepting the directorship. In short order I had to turn my preparation into a due diligence interview for them! With apparent confidence I kept them answering my questions for two hours. I have kept my due diligence questions to this day.

Some advice: ensure you know what the director appointment process is, who will be present at the interview – and prepare, prepare, prepare. Always ensure you have adequate time and resources to conduct an appropriate due diligence. There are guidelines for due diligence. No matter how much you want a directorship you must be prepared to walk away.

Reflect and Learn

Six years later, I am now the most experienced director on the board of Solid Energy. Iit has been an exhilarating experience to govern a company that I have seen grow from a $6m profit in my first year to over $100m now. The 2007 and 2009 Deloitte Mangement Magazine company chairman of the year, John Palmer, is our chair and he also chairs the Air New Zealand board. John palmer provides an inspirational role model as chairman with his steady hand, incisive questioning, and underlying approach which supports the CEO to drive business success. That does not mean he is always Mr Nice Guy!

Every Solid Energy board meeting is a case study in governance; and that is how I treat all my board meetings. I take notes of board dynamics, I observe behaviour, I reflect on what is making a difference. I reflect on my own contribution and whether it was helpful or hindered board processes and company progress.

After my Solid Energy appointment, I seemed to be “flavour of the month” and in 18 months was asked to join or apply for 4 more boards, 3 of which had competitive processes. I have also worked with CCMAU and interviewed dozens of prospective candidates for State Owned Enterprises and am often asked “how do you get your first appointment”. I will return to this theme with some advice later.

Do You Really Want This?

One question you must first ask yourself is: "Do I really want a directorship?" Being an independent director on a board is not glamorous. It is serious business: you risk your reputation, time in prison, your home and assets.

I have good and respected colleagues who are facing prosecutions for decisions they took as directors which could potentially cost them all of their assets; and which have already had huge reputational impacts on their careers. But it is a huge privilege to be at the peak of an organization, holding it in the cup of your hands, for the owners, stakeholders and shareholders.

Directorship is not just another job – or a career step. You can’t make it happen and directorships are NOT for everyone.

Advice for Aspiring Directors

I now return to my advice on "how to get that first appointment."

Be outstanding in your field. Wide areas of business function are relevant to boards, ranging across legal, finance, human resources, marketing, resource management, science, innovation, intellectual property, general business management. Developing this is not a 2-3 year effort – it may be a twenty year effort. Any profession at depth should develop the ability to analyse information from many sources within a specific context, and make decisions. These are skills always needed at the board table.

Seek and undertake positions of leadership , ones where you need to make the big decisions as the CEO, in your own business or a major division. Become trusted in running a business or organization.After all, as a director you are trusted to exercise all care and judgment in governing a business or entity for others. Demonstrate you understand the risks and have had suffered from the repercussions of things going wrong.

Seek education and training in the specific skills, ethics and competencies of governance – particularly where you may lack them from your business or professional life. Options include IOD, some of the universities, CCMAU, and the not for profit sector all offer opportunities.

Cultivate and develop an inquiring mind over a wide range of subjects outside your own profession. I read a couple of books a week, have subscribed to the Economist for 10 years, the New Yorker for 5 and occasionally read New Scientist, Nature and international newspapers.

Join IOD and attend their events. There is also a new organisation called Springboard for younger aspiring directors.

Seek governance roles in the not for profit sector – particularly if governance disciplines are practiced – the arts sector where funded by Creative NZ for example provides governance training.

Talk to experienced directors about “how they got their first appointment”. Several years ago I identified 10 women directors I admired who over the years I have had the chance to meet, discuss their own pathway to directorships and take on any good advice they might have.

Prepare a governance CV. This is not like a career CV. Women’s Affairs provide good guidance on this. Demonstrate you are savvy about the risks and what you can offer to specific sectors or organisations.

Let the world know you are good, ready and available. CCMAU, Women’s Affairs, ATA, Chamber of Commerce, IOD, Finddirectors, search consultants. Remember any special contacts you have who are Chairs of boards. Network in the business area you are interested in.

And my final piece of advice is stick at it – but get on with the rest of your life. As I have already said, you cannot make directorships happen.

Advice for inside the Boardroom

I now turn to some advice once you have that first appointment as a director. Those early years can see a very bushy tailed director keen to make their mark and make a difference.

You are not the sergeant major – support and empower the CEO and management to succeed - don’t nag, criticize, rehearse their errors, and point out their flawed thinking

You are not the CEO – you are not there every working day- you must stay above the day to day

You are not the in-house counsel – or planner or accountant or property expert – you must have a wide view of the business

Directors do not direct – see above

Dress beautifully – with colour - the world is drab enough with all those dark suits. Yes it is serious - but boards should be happy, full of people who have a common purpose and desire to support and grow the enterprise or entity . They should enjoy each other’s company, have a few laughs, respect each other, build a high performing team that inspires the CEO and staff.

Some of finest New Zealanders serve as independent directors on boards – you meet some wonderful and wonderfully interesting people and you will really get to know them

The staff will be paid a lot more than you - if the organisation is doing well!

When times are tough expect no daylight between you and management - expect all your skills and talents to be called to the fore. Leadership, a steady hand, wisdom and sleepness nights may ensue.

Support the chair and board processes. Playing board politics is a messy and distracting business.

Work very hard – prepare well in advance and take the overview – not what is necessarily in each board paper.

You always need to be learning - reading, talking, listening

And finally - talking because you have an opinion does not necessarily add value to board decision making processes - ask yourself:

Can you improve on the silence?

Relevant New Zealand websites:
http://www.mwa.govt.nz/women-on-boards
http://www.ccmau.govt.nz/
http://www.finddirectors.com/index.aspx?prth_tabid=7
http://www.womendirectors.co.nz/

Your Feedback

Thanks, Adriennne. I have often wondered about the path to Directorship and these were really inspiring words.

Wonderful article, with some thought provoking and insightful comments. Thanks for taking the time to share.

I have known Adrienne for a number of years through our mutual involvement in the IoD. Her advice is very relevant. I am an experienced (male) former CEO and independent director of busineses large and small and what Adrienne has to say applies to ALL aspiring directors, whether women or men. In my experience sex is not a qualification as a CEO or a director. The attributes Adrienne has shown are what counts. Also remember that being a director is not a financially rewarding career in itself, and the risks often outweigh the rewards, even with D&O insurance which is not what it is made out to be, particularly in respect of the risk directors face when things go wrong.

Acknowledgement

Adrienne Young Cooper is an independent director and planning consultant. She is a founding shareholder of Hill Young Cooper Limited, a major planning and resource management consultancy based in Wellington and Auckland.

Networking in Times of Need

by Sarah Lochead-MacMillan, of the SLM Group.

30 September 2009

When the going gets tough, the tough stay connected.

When I teach and educate ladies in the art and skill of “networking” I talk about “developing the connector habit”. I talk (a lot – actually I talk a lot anyway but I digress) about adding value, adding value consistently, often for months before you are able to receive any value.

I talk about networking not being simply about business and sales, but about sharing knowledge and skills, finding the right mentors and advisors, finding friends and finding support. It has been exactly these friends, mentors and supporters that have seen me through some very dark days.

I run my own business now, enjoying the sunshine, master of my own destiny. It wasn’t always like that for me. I was once gainfully employed, happy(ish) in my work and drawing a regular wage, reporting to the boss, constrained by the company policy, stuck in a rut career….. Okay, so maybe happy wasn’t the correct word, but I was content, I had a home and a family to support and I felt secure.

I had always been outgoing, opinionated and successful. I could always navigate the corporate pathways with some skill, until it all went horribly wrong. I'll skip the details - it's still painful to recall - but I felt as though I was falling into a black hole from where I would never return. I thought I was going to lose not only my job, but also my home. My marriage suffered terribly under the stress. The slide into insanity and suicide seemed to loom very close.

It never happened.

I survived and came out the other side much stronger and happier and more successful than ever, no longer employed. So what was the light at the end of my long, dark tunnel?

It was my network. My “inner circle”. My friends and supporters that stood behind me no matter what. That believed in me. That listened to my ranting and ravings and told me I was not going mad. I truly learnt who was a friend in that period. The support was overwhelming and generous. They made sure I kept my sense of humour and slapped me when I was getting beyond morose.

Where did I find these friends? By networking, by connecting, by always striving to add value to others, that in my darkest hour when I asked for help it came to me in droves. I had only been in New Zealand three years yet I had established these incredible friends by developing the connector habit.

One friend and colleague listened and supported me daily, on the train journey into work and on the journey from work. When I was no longer at work, she met me regularly for coffee and assured me I was sane. I leaned very heavily on this friend and she was the mainstay for me. I now am able to support her and offer her a friendly ear and someone to talk things through with as she faces her own life challenges. Remember if you give, you get, but you need to give again!

My mentor (and friend) also supported me greatly. He steered me through some of the more treacherous minefields and was the one who told me to get over it when I wallowed, but supported me when he saw I really needed it. He bolstered my self belief, found me the right legal advisers and even came with me to meet them and ensure I was totally comfortable. Through this development in our relationship we became very close friends, but also as I progressed, the mentor/mentee relationship altered to where it is today. We are equals supporting and advising and mentoring each other. By my opening up and leaning on him, the same thing happened as he realised he could lean on me. Amazing. Where did I find this fabulous mentor? He spoke to a group in the company I worked for and I connected with him and added value to him where I could.

Can you see a theme developing here? Connecting, networking, permeates all your life and if you develop the connector habit you can create sustainability in all areas. By building successful relationships, by adding value to others first, I was able to ask for help and lean on others when I really needed to, and boy did I need to. So to all of you who were there for me, and there were more than I expected, thank you.

Naked Networker Sarah's book on networking is now available! She says: "Women often tell me that entering a networking event for the first time generates the equivalent feelings and stress response as attempting to socialise naked. This workbook gives you the tools and techniques not only to get over these feelings and boost your confidence, it also enables you to form and drive a sustainable network. The story shows the mistakes I made and why the tools work; and it gives you space to practice them for yourself.

No matter why you are reading this book, the book will help enhance your networking for sustainable profits, self development and boost your profile."

You can place orders via Sarah's site by entering your name, “the Naked Networker” in the subject line, your address and the number of copies you require in the message portion. You can pay online by credit card or bank transfer.

Acknowledgement

Sarah Lochead–MacMillan is a former senior relationship manager for New Zealand’s largest Bank. She is the founder of the professional women’s networks The Very Early Lunch Club and WoPaI in Franklin, and also of the largest NZ Bank’s internal women’s network. She now runs her successful company, the $LM Group, teaching others effective networking. The $LM Group also undertakes regular mediation for business clients to build a more effective banking relationship, train their bank, structure their debt to maximise cashflow and get a leaner offer of finance for the business.

Sarah can be contacted via her website, by email, or on 021 134 5568. You can follow her on Twitter, and , of course, you can connect with her on LinkedIn!

To Tend and Befriend

(An alternative to fight or flight)

© Gale Berkowitz

2002

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more.

Oxytocine versus testosterone

Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It’s a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research---most of it on men---upside down. Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible, explains Laura Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study’s authors. It’s an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers.

Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just fight or flight. In fact, says Dr. Klein, it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the fight or flight response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men, says Dr. Klein, because testosterone - which men produce in high levels when they’e under stress - seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen, she adds, seems to enhance it.

Aha! Moment

The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic "aha" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded, says Dr. Klein. When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something.

The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.

Tend & Befriend

It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. There’s no doubt, says Dr. Klein, that friends are helping us live longer.

In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%.

Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses’ Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidants was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight.

Friends for Health

And that’s not all. When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate. Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls’ and Women’s Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). The following paragraph is, in my opinion, very, very true and something all women should be aware of and we should NOT put our female friends on the back burners.

Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women, explains Dr. Josselson. We push them right to the back burner. That’s really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they’re with other women. It’s a very healing experience.

Sources:

Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L., Gurung, R. A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. Behaviorial Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight" Psychol Rev, 107(3):41-429. (Full text of article in PDF format)

Geary DC, Flinn MV. Sex differences in behavioral and hormonal response to social threat: commentary on Taylor et al. Psychol Rev 2002 Oct;109(4):745-50; discussion 751-3

Cousino Klein L, Corwin EJ. Seeing the unexpected: how sex differences in stress responses may provide a new perspective on the manifestation of psychiatric disorders. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2002 Dec;4(6):441-8

Acknowledgement

This article appears in several places on the internet. We would like to credit the author more fully but have been unable to find any recent biographical details that are clearly for this Gale Berkowitz. We will gladly include them here if anyone can supply them.

A changing profession - legal equality by 2015?

Based on two articles by Ron Pol of Team Factors Ltd, published in The Business of Law 2009 by Thomson Reuters

July 10th 2009

(Additional data supplied by Ron Pol and from the NZ Census of Women’s Participation 2008 as well as the NZ Law Society Annual Report 2007).

The legal profession is perhaps a late-comer to change, even as many of its members forge ahead. Although no-one today would object to women lawyers, it seems that the status quo will always have its staunch defenders, even in the face of an inevitable change to reflect the modern practice of law.

For example, although New Zealand was a world leader in women’s suffrage – strongly supported and encouraged by individual (male) lawyers with a clear vision for the future – the established profession remained a bastion of opposition to change within its own ranks even as society evolved around it. On gender equality, notwithstanding the foresight of many lawyers, the legal profession was, and in other respects today remains, marooned in the backwaters of the past.

Status quo

The difficulties of nineteenth century women being recognised by the established profession bear startling similarities to the profession’s twenty first century leaders carefully shepherding through the so called 'reform' of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2008. In many respects, both seemed designed to preserve the status quo and to resist change in the face of inevitable progress.

Throughout the 1880s and 1890s New Zealand refused to allow women to practise law even though the 1881 census showed that women represented a quarter of the people working in professional occupations. By comparison, in that same year, women had been admitted to the Bars of 14 American states. Gill Gatfield’s 1996 book Without Prejudice: Women in the Law records a remarkable path of resistance to change, resulting in 'reform' legislation that, in relation to women, simply preserved the 'tradition' and status quo, in which only men could be admitted as barristers and solicitors in New Zealand.

‘Person’ does not include ‘Woman’

In 1881, backbench MP Sir George Grey, a former colonial governor and declared liberal, introduced the Law Practitioners Bill as a means of ‘throwing open’ the New Zealand legal profession. Grey’s objective was reportedly not that more people would practise law but instead, that by developing a less regulated model and liberalising entry requirements, a pool of talent might be created to help advance New Zealand’s interests in many fields.

For the established profession, in which entry requirements suited to the privileged classes were described as “integral to the status, and hence the wealth, of the profession”, Grey’s Bill signalled disaster. The profession was particularly sensitive to competition, consistently blocking any inroads into lawyers’ conveyancing monopoly.

Although the prospect of women lawyers was seemingly an unintended consequence of Grey’s Bill, this soon became a focus point of discussions within the law societies and Parliament. The Bill provided that ‘every person’ over 21 years of good character who passed the requisite examinations would be entitled to be admitted as barristers and solicitors. A lawyer and the MP for Otago, William Downie Stewart remarked in Parliament that ‘person’ might include ‘women’. This was clearly too much for the profession, prompting urgent meetings of the Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury and Otago District Law Societies, and a deputation to Parliament with an important 'clarification'.

Although strenuously opposed by some parliamentarians, the ensuing parliamentary debate favoured the views of the legal profession and narrowly resulted in the introduction of the word “male” before “person”.

Although the status quo was preserved, Gatfield notes that Frederick Whitaker, also a lawyer and son of the Attorney-General, sounded a warning:

Considering the number of motions and bills they had on the Order Paper to give voting power to women, it was an important question also whether they should not, as in America and other places, admit women to practise at the Bar.

In part due to hard economic times, the spectre of competition suppressed discussion of equality even as the women’s suffrage movement was gaining ground. It was another fifteen years before women were at last legally allowed to practise law in New Zealand, from 1896.

Not the Rule, but the Exception

Even as change occurred at the end of the nineteenth century, the Minister of Education William Walker noted: ‘It was absurd to say that a large number of women must be lawyers... That was not likely to occur. It would not be the rule, but the exception, that women would become lawyers’.

Women were indeed to be the exception, for a very long time. Even in 1936, forty years after women were allowed to practice law, there were only 7 women lawyers, representing less than half of one percent of the 1717 practising certificates issued that year.

In 1977, however, as the proportion of women lawyers approached 5%, the New Zealand Law Society annual reports began to record the number of practicing certificates issued to women. Since 1977, the number of practicing certificates issued to women has rapidly and steadily increased, from 10% in 1982, to 20% in 1989, 30% in 1997 and 40% in 2006, as illustrated in Fig 1.

A Changing Profession

Lawyer numbers, both male and female, have grown rapidly, particularly since the 1970s, yet the overall numbers alone can sometimes obscure the changing shape of the legal profession itself.

Examining growth rates in terms of the proportion of lawyers engaged in each of the different ways in which lawyers practise law helps reveal how the fabric of the legal profession has inexorably changed and continues to evolve.

Three Ways of Practising Law

New Zealand’s 10,523 lawyers, based on the number of practicing certificates issued in 2007, work in three quite distinct ways. Two thirds of lawyers work in private practice, as partners or employees in law firms – ranging from sole practitioners and specialist firms to the mega-firms with hundreds of lawyers. These lawyers are available to the public.

Almost a seventh of the profession practise as barristers, namely lawyers who deliver specialist advisory and advocacy services. Barristers are not generally available directly to the public except through the instruction of other lawyers, whether in private practice or in-house.

The last group of lawyers are in-house counsel, currently nearly a fifth of the legal profession. Employed by or contracted to corporate, government and other agencies, these lawyers typically provide legal advice only to their employer organisation. They also manage the provision of legal services to their organisations by external lawyers, ie law firms and barristers.

Overall, between 1998 and 2007, the number of practising certificates overall has grown by 32%. However, this masks widely different rates for the three different types of law practised, as shown in Fig 2.

Fastest growth in-house

The number of lawyers joining the in-house profession has grown fastest, at 93% growth over 10 years compared with 32% growth in total practicing certificates issued generally), or 9% compounding. To put this in context, as lawyer numbers overall continued to expand, Fig 3 illustrates the growth of this group of lawyers as a proportion of the legal profession. From 13% of the profession in 1998, 10 years later in-house counsel represent over 19% of New Zealand’s legal profession; in-house counsel represents nearly 50% more of the profession than they did only a decade before.

This rise is even more remarkable given that, as a result of systemic under-reporting, the strong growth of the in-house profession likely under-represents the true number of in-house counsel.

This is because, before the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2008 came into force in August 2008, unlike other members of the legal profession, in-house counsel did not always need practicing certificates. As a result, some corporate and government organisations paid for practicing certificates for only some members of their legal departments.

Where the Women Are

Overall, women make up 42% of lawyers in NZ. At only 36% women, however, barristers have the lowest proportion of women of any of the three main branches of the legal profession, dragging down the overall average. Private practice is about 40% women. In-house counsel is the type of law practice estimted to have the highest proportion of women, at around 55%. This may reflect the perception that there is better work flexibility to be achieved in-house, certainly for public sector employers where the proportion of women at senior levels can range between a third and a half of all senior staff. By comparison, scarcely 20% of principals in private practice in NZ are women, and this number is even lower in the largest 25 firms.

Where the Women Will Be

Although the rate of growth in the practising certificates held by women appears to have slowed in recent years, a simple linear extrapolation based on the thirty years to 2007 suggests that women might represent 50% of the profession by about 2013.

Extrapolating instead from 1997, with the more gradual growth of the last few decade, there is a delay in the number of women lawyers reaching equality of a further two years, to 2015, as shown in Fig 4.

Other areas of the law are forecast to take considerably longer to reach equality. Based on present growth rates it might be nearly a further decade – 2023 - before gender equality is matched in the ranks of New Zealand barristers. And similar linear extrapolation of the growth of women principals since 1993 suggests that women’s path to equality of numbers at this senior level may not occur before 2050, another 40 years!

Thus, nearly 120 years after the legal profession’s leadership finally agreed that ‘person’ might include ‘women’ there is clearly still some way to travel.

Slow Progress, then as now

Although today’s leaders may have described as ‘reform’ such changes as have occurred, nineteenth century leaders simply said ‘no’ to change. The result, however, is much the same: resistance to change, and slow progress. As with the eventual acceptance of women lawyers, perhaps only after the inevitable liberalisation of the profession finally occurs (for example, with a less equivocal and express focus on the consumer, and with law firms eventually able to access business capital and ideas, as in every other industry and like their colleagues overseas) will the established profession recognise that change to ‘traditions’ more accurately to reflect modern society and a progressive profession will actually bring more benefits to consumers, and to lawyers themselves, than the usual fears accompanying any change.

Your Feedback

A friend is a senior associate at a top 5 national law firm in NZ. She is working part-time with a new baby. She has been told explicitly by the firm’s leadership that she will not be considered for partnership until she returns to full-time work. There is certainly still some way to go.

The statistics mask the unequal participation of women in senior roles in lawfirms. Whilst 40% of women hold practicising certificates, only about 18% of partners in law firms are women.

Acknowledgement

Ron Pol, Director of professional services firm Team Factors Ltd, helps organisational clients maximise their value of legal services and helps professional services firms transition from client focus to a more powerful client perspective.

With a background in law and economics, Ron is past President of NZ’s representative association for in-house counsel, former General Counsel for public and private sector organisations, and has worked in legal roles in London, New Zealand and Asia. With over 150 articles in legal and business publications globally, Ron is often invited for thought leadership on maximising effectiveness of the legal function, client-lawyer relations, and the future of the legal profession.

Contact:
Tel: +64 4 562 8444
ronald.pol@teamfactors.com
PO Box 41-036
Wellington 5047
New Zealand
www.teamfactors.com

What would Ethel think?

By Grace Holgate, edited for Professionelle by Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes.

May 2009

It has been one hundred and thirteen years since the Female Law Practitioners Act was passed in 1896 and enabled women to join the New Zealand legal profession. The following year, Ethel Benjamin, an Otago University graduate, became the first woman to be admitted to the Bar. Today, male lawyers still outnumber women, constituting 58% of the profession.

Room at the Top

Women are noticeably absent from senior positions at law firms and account for just under 17% of partnerships in the 26 firms with over 10 partners – a figure that has remained static . Many of the largest firms are still dominated by men: Bell Gully has a mere 4 female partners out of 43 (9.3%), Russell McVeagh only has 4 out of 37 (10.8%), Kensington Swan and Buddle Finlay both have 4 out of 35 (11.4%), and Chapman Tripp has 6 out of 51 (11.8%) . A similar pattern is seen in the Judiciary with only1 in 4 females. Some top firms are making progress – in 2004, AWS Legal led the way with 27.3% female partners and more recently Anderson Lloyd had the highest proporiton of female partners, at 40.7%.

A Quiet Exodus

In New Zealand there is a “quiet exodus” of women from the legal profession, as shown in the graph below.

Initially, female lawyers dominate the legal profession; indeed, women account for 62% of Admissions to the Bar. There is a substantial drop in numbers after five years since admission and then numbers decrease steadily. The number of male lawyers, however, remains relatively static and it is not until 35 years after admission that theirnumbers decrease.

A further significant observation is that women earn substantially less than their male counterparts. Male lawyers as a group earn an annual average income of nearly $91,000 whereas women make scarcely $58,000 – a gap of $32,000 . Furthermore, approaching half of male lawyers earn more than $100,000 compared to under 15% of female lawyers in this income bracket . As shown by Figure 1.2, women peak at the $50-70,000 income bracket.

What might explain these curious and unsatisfactory statistics? And what can be done to improve the position of women practising law?

Explanation 1: Human Capital Theory

Human Capital Theory states that women invest less time in their professional lives than men due to family commitments. Therefore, men achieve a more prominent position within the legal system because employers see them as more dedicated and stable. This explanation fits the New Zealand model, as shown by the decreasing number of female lawyers in the graph above. Female graduates initially dominate the top firms, but leave after a few years when they decide to have children. In the 2002 Women’s Consultative Group survey, there was a general consensus that women cannot juggle early motherhood with full time legal work, with one woman commenting, “Clients pay big money for immediate attention and you have to deliver on that.” Thus, women move into more flexible and less stressful, but relatively lower paying areas, such as government, corporate in-house counsel or practise as barristers sole.

Many women in the survey initially tried part time work at their respective firms, but found it was simply “not viable. ” One woman stated,

You work almost as hard as a full-timer, without the social and other benefits … and you feel neither part of the workforce nor able to participate properly in activities with non-working mothers.

However, it was interesting to discover that while many women found their firms were “genuinely making an effort” to help working mothers, the organisation simply had to keep up with the competitive nature of the profession and the expectations of clients.

This has several ramifications for the position of women in the legal profession. Not only do large firms pay more and offer more prestige, they also offer networking opportunities for further promotion into areas of government, business and the judiciary. This may help explain why women are underrepresented on the Bench and also the fact that women make up less than 10% of NZSX Board Directors.

Explanation 2: Social Capital Theory

This theory suggests that women do not participate enough in networking opportunities outside of work and therefore, do not fit in with the rest of the firm. The legal profession is perceived by many as an ‘Old Boys Club’ made up of middle aged white men who smoke cigars and play golf together.As Deborah Hollings, QC, put it,

Part of the problem is the culture of the bar. Any professional group that for 700 years has comprised solely men is bound to have inherited attitudes that may seem unwelcoming to some different entrants.

So, how can women’s position be improved in the legal system?

Measure and monitor

Measures are needed to keep women in the legal profession for longer, to increase their chances of being promoted to senior positions and to higher earning positions.

Deborah Hollings suggested the New Zealand legal system could adopt a similar approach to Australia. There, the Law Council of Australia created a working party of representatives of bars, law firms and corporate in-house counsel. This group produced a national briefing policy in 2004, designed to promote equal opportunity for women barristers. The policy stated that in selecting counsel, all reasonable endeavours should be made to identity female counsel, genuinely consider engaging such counsel, regularly monitor and review the engagement of female counsel, and periodically report on such engagement.

In addition to policy decisions, “both the culture of the profession and the cultural impediments faced by women in our society must be tackled” . The 2006 Census of Women’s Participation recommended that women lawyers investigate how the profession ensures equal opportunities for women. It also suggested that law firms who have increased female partner numbers should issue practice guidelines and promote to other law firms. However, progress has been slow and the 2008 Census of Women’s Participation reported that there are still “significant barriers” to improving the position of female lawyers and the profession needs to “radically rethink traditional financial structures, work environments and cultural norms.” This would require considerable dedication and commitment across the profession...

Most women in the 2002 Women’s Consultative Group survey were reluctant to leave positions in big firms, but they simply had to sacrifice work for their family. In order to retain women with families, and, indeed other employees seeking greater balance, law firms need to ponder how to create practical flexible work options that do not marginalise careers. Part time work should also be ‘part time’ – not full time work in half the hours. Remote working is more easily achievable with today’s technology. Flexible working options will not be necessary forever – women will be able to gradually increase their hours as their children get older – and firms who show patience and understanding will be rewarded by keeping highly skilled staff.

In conclusion

Clear inequalities between the sexes in the New Zealand legal profession remain, 112 years since Ethel Benjamin was admitted to the bar. Men stay in the profession longer and consequently dominate partner positions and thus as a group they earn substantially more than women. The main reason for this pattern is that the legal profession is inhospitable to the working mother. If the legal profession is committed to retaining its best and brightest, then reforms that allow for “one of the most common life experiences of adult females” are unavoidable. This can be achieved by policy decisions, consultation between law firms, and decisions within law firms to enable women to take on part time or remote work while balancing employment and family responsibilities.

Select Bibliography
2001 Census of Population and Dwellings: Sex and Occupation by Total Personal Income For the Employed Census Usually Resident Population Count, Aged 15 Years+.

2006 Equal Opportunity in the Workplace Agency: Australian Census of Women in Leadership

D Hollings QC “Equitable briefing practices - women barristers and the glass ceiling” , updated 2007

A Crittenden “A Conspiracy of Silence”, in The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued (Henry Holt, 2001)

William L.F. Felstiner & Alan Bradshaw “Lawyers’ lives, lawyers’ income” (2007) 14(1) Int’l J Legal Prof 3

Human Rights Commission Census on Women’s Participation in Governance and Professional Life 2008, 2006 and 2004

New Zealand Law Society Annual Report 2007.

New Zealand Law Society Women’s Consultative Group “Brief history of women in the law in New Zealand”, updated 26/10/2001

New Zealand Law Society Women’s Consultative Group “The work-life balance dilemma for women – 10 years on”, updated 4/12/2004

D Ogden “Visibility of women lawyers and judges critical, says Chief Justice”, u pdated 2008

R Stringer “Is New Zealand a Post-Feminist Paradise?” (Pre-publication version) in LivingTogether: Towards sustainable settlements in New Zealand (University of Otago Press, 2006).

Your Feedback

Dr Mervyl McPherson, researcher at the EEO Trust, wrote to point out that the graph in this article reflects not an exodus from the profession but instead the historically lower level of women in law. Dr McPherson supplied a link to a recently published EEO report on age and gender (see pp10-11 for law) . She provided further insights based on intercensal data supplied by James Newell of MERA: "The proportion of women does decline in key childbearing ages, but not massively, and the data suggest they come back in at older ages, although some of this may also be new mature graduate women entering or due to men leaving at older ages. So the pattern is not of women leaving for good. The data suggest women take time out and come back. By contrast, men get to their 40s and start leaving - we don't know why."

Acknowledgement

Grace Holgate is a 4th year law student at Otago University.She contacted us in her search for statistics on women in law as part of an Ethics assignment on the position of female lawyers in New Zealand.

What’s our legacy?

by Supriya Rathod, a Professionelle member based in Wellington.

March 2009

I have been watching with great interest the reactions of people around me, the questions that are being asked and some of the decisions being made. At first I wondered if it was the crisis making people and businesses question the importance and relevance of everything and start to cut out activities that were considered non core expenditure. Then I wondered if it went deeper than that. Is it a lack of understanding? A lack of vision? Or is it that our sense of being part of a bigger whole has shrunk and our focus has become more narrow, individualistic and material?

Wide or narrow focus

The last few years I have had the pleasure of interacting with a number of people from various walks of life who have opened their hearts, minds and souls to help people who have less than them. I have met people who believe that the only way forward is together, that we are a part of one big whole and the actions we take not only impact our own lives but the lives of many. Yet I have come across so many more people who don’t want to know or see anything beyond their own needs and beliefs. As I see more of the latter than the former, a number of questions come to mind.

We buy houses but are we creating homes?

We have cars but are we enjoying the ride?

Do we own possessions or do they own us?

Dreams and Dollars

I was talking to a teacher in one of our primary schools who said she would love to go and volunteer in Cambodia but felt like she couldn’t. She was trapped in a role that had stopped being a passion for her and that did not meet the needs of the life stage she was at, but because she had financial commitments and bills to pay she had to hold on to her job.

It made me wonder what kind of impact she would have on her students. Would she continue to inspire them to learn and explore and open the gates of knowledge for them? Or would she help educate a generation of children who would never be excited by the prospect of learning and growing through experiences because all she did was tick the boxes and deliver the bare minimum she had to? In a world where people are losing their jobs in the thousands, many would consider her to be doing the right thing…

Economic Crisis

Rising unemployment triggers may issues and the largest one is probably a loss of income. How is it that a loss of income equates to a loss of self, a loss of values and a loss of dignity?

I understand that costs need to be managed for business survival but since when did people become costs? And what does the future hold for us as a society if we consider people to be costs and collateral damage rather than an investment and a hope for a better tomorrow?

The economic crisis has us in its grip and many of us are consumed by uncertainty and worry. This has narrowed down our perspective and we are missing the forest for the trees. When you are consumed by the question of survival, you never focus on legacies.

What will be the impact of this narrowed vision? Will we be able to see and dodge the next crisis, and the next and the next? Will we be able to see sufficiently far down the track to head off other issues and crises before they attain critical mass?

Sustainable

If individuals, communities and businesses don’t engage with each other and with people who are beyond their sphere of influence and if people don’t raise their concerns and voices because it is easier to go with the flow and not create ripples that may impact their jobs, lifestyles and the status quo, are we all acting responsibly for our future and our children’s futures?

This made me think about what are the messages we are sending out as businesses, as professionals and as parents. We are all talking about environmental sustainability and social sustainability yet the society we live in is one of consumption with a general sense of entitlement. What happens when it is all consumed? What are the deposits we are making today to invest in our futures? What are the legacies we wish to leave behind?

As professionals we set short term and long term goals and have a huge focus on where we want to be professionally. Can we do any less for our communities and our environment?

Legacies

I’ll leave you with a couple of things to think about.

What do you want your legacy to the world to be? We will live this lifetime only once. We will go down this track only one time. What would you like to leave behind you as you pass? As William Penn once said,

I expect to pass through life but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do for any fellow being, let me do it now... as I shall not pass this way again

WWF (World Wildlife Fund) are campaigning to save the Hector and Maui Dolphins which are on the verge of extinction. Their call to action – We only get this chance once. Once they are extinct they are gone. How apt!

About Supriya

Supriya is passionate about engagement particularly with the community and developing and using programmes strategically to engage and involve internal and external stakeholders to achieve objectives and goals for mutual benefit.

She also loves to write and has written for websites, magazines and newspapers both in New Zealand and India. She believes all of us have something to give and a couple of her favourite words are 'possibilities' and 'potential'. She would love to hear from you and is available on email.

Untitled Document

Women on the Rise

by Julie Fitzgerald, Shell New Zealand Women’s Network

7 April 2009

As a member of the steering committee of the Shell New Zealand Women’s Network I am tuned in to the career development of women in my organization. Early last year my fellow committee members and I began to notice a positive trend across several staff announcements. There had definitely been an increase in the number of women moving into more senior roles. While the steering committee was sure that having a Women’s Network had something to do with this shift, we decided to dig a little deeper to see what was going on. As a result I took six of the women whose names had been on these announcements out to lunch to explore the trend.

These lovely colleagues joined me on a beautiful sunny day on Wellington’s waterfront to share with me the secrets of their success.

Why make a change?

A few of the women said they felt ready for a change and a new challenge so had started to look out for opportunities. About half our group were in roles that were disappearing as the result of a restructure, so they were pushed into more challenging roles.

I have since reflected on how many of us sit in our comfort zone waiting to be pushed before taking on a new more challenging opportunity? Your old job disappearing is only one motivation, and most of the women agreed that they had a cheerleader on the sidelines encouraging them and convincing them that they were ready for the next step. For some, the cheerleader was their mentor, while for others it was their line manager making all the right noises. In a world where increasingly a career is ‘self managed’ we don’t always recognise that a woman we perceive as talented, competent and intelligent may suffer elements of self doubt and sometimes needs a little encouragement.

Lyn’s new role is a management position replacing her line manager. Lyn was nervous about the prospect of taking on this new challenge but her managers’ confidence in Lyn’s abilities gave her the little push that she needed to take that risk. Lyn put a lot of time into preparing for her interview. She looked at the competencies required for the job and talked through them in more detail with her manager and also shared examples from her work and home life that would help illustrate her experience. She found talking them through with someone was great preparation for the interview itself.

Why do you think you were successful?

Jill was one of the women whose role was impacted by internal restructuring. Her new position is a big step up and one she says that she would never have considered herself ready for a few years ago. When asked what had changed, Jill said she has a ”light bulb moment” while attending a Women’s Career Development workshop a couple of years ago:

Women will generally not apply for a job unless they have at least 80% of the skills and competencies required. Men tend to throw their hat in if they have as little as 20%.

Jill thought about all the times she had looked at a position description and not applied because she did not consider that she had experience of everything listed in the description. She also thought about times she had sabotaged herself in job interviews by highlighting all her shortcomings rather than focusing on what value and experiences she could bring to the role.

After the course, Jill approached things differently and purposely started looking for roles that would offer her some stretch and challenge. In preparing for the interview she spent extra time focussing on areas that she felt let her down last time. Following the interview she sent through a follow up email and included examples of her work that were discussed. This made a difference because Jill got the job and loves the new challenge.

The power of networking

Sandra believes her increased focus on networking helped her achieve her latest success. Sandra managed her profile across a broader company network to ensure that those in the position to make decisions were well aware of her achievements and her career aspirations. She remembers discussing this with one of the senior leaders who was surprised when she told him what she wanted to do and highlighted to him some of her achievements to date. Sandra believes this one conversation led directly to him paying more attention to her career and subsequently shoulder-tapping her to take the lead role on a critical project. Sandra says if she had sat back waiting for someone to notice what a good job she was doing it probably never would have happened.

Anna has a strong and diverse network of people to provide her feedback and encouragement on a regular basis, and they also make her aware of opportunities that are out there. She recognises this as a critical factor to her success. The positive feedback boosts her confidence and gives her that little push that she sometimes needs to put herself forward for that new challenge. Her network also helps grow her profile so that colleagues know who she is and what she can do so they think of her when new opportunities arise.

What did I learn from the success of these women?

Prepare, Prepare and Prepare: Review previous interviews, talk to the incumbents and the prospective line manager. Look at the competencies required and prepare examples from your work and home? life that demonstrate your competencies
Build good networks. They are a great way for getting feedback, finding out about opportunities and improving your profile
Get a mentor. Make sure the mentor is the right fit for you
Have a goal and tell the right people about it
Promote your achievements
Take calculated risks. A new role should stretch and challenge you.
Think about your transferable skills. Just because you have not done the job before does not mean that you do not already have the skills to do it

Acknowledgement

Julie Fitzgerald has held a variety of roles with Shell both here and across the Tasman. Most recently she held the position of General Aviation Manager for Shell New Zealand. Julie also plays an active role in people development through her involvement in the Shell New Zealand Women’s Network and her roles as facilitator for Speechcraft and frontline leadership development workshops. In her spare time she is a Toastmaster and is involved in amateur musical theatre. Julie holds an undergraduate degree in psychology from Sydney University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Macquarie University. She is currently on maternity leave eagerly awaiting the arrival of her first baby due in May.

Julie can be contacted on juliefitzgerald@clear.net.nz

Smart Moves

27 April 2009

What follows is a summary of recent blog posts by a professional who, made redundant from a senior management position in Auckland last year, has found new opportunity in franchising. Working from home for the first time has meant grappling with the double edged sword of flexibility, juggling a very different work life mix, and discovering the power and value of networks. All familiar issues to readers of Professionelle but there's a slight twist - this time our writer is a man.

You can follow more recent instalments of Mike Smart’s post-redundancy journey at his blog Smart Moves.

From Redundancy to Business Owner

I’ve just come off an hour’s international conference call (via Skype – cost me less than $2!) with the group of new franchisees I trained with in Carlsbad, California last month. Sharing tips from our network’s first experiences with our new businesses was most useful and I have new ideas I’m keen to try out....

But let me start at the beginning, in September 2008.

That spring day, I was working late when the liquidators came. At a briefing the next morning, we heard the company would keep trading with the goal of selling off the various branches. We still had our jobs, but the writing was on the wall.

I was, to put it mildly, extremely annoyed. I was in a senior position and this was the third time in fourteen years I’d faced redundancy.

The Job Search

In early November, with no buyers, the inevitable happened: my branch closed. What a time for it to happen! End-of-year syndrome was kicking in and the international financial crisis was well upon us. I secured a few leads but it became evident that nothing would happen before Christmas. To compound the issue, my wife was also on the job market! To our great relief, she managed to secure a job just before Christmas, so we entered the holidays with some level of comfort.

It was a great summer in Auckland and I did my best to enjoy it. After all, getting stressed wasn't going to help. By the end of January, my wife was at work, my daughter at school, and most businesses were up and running. The financial crisis was really biting though. I began the long round of phoning my pre-holiday contacts, as well as searching for any new jobs that had been advertised. There were pitifully few.

Plan B

In early February I was talking to a friend, Simon Lord, the editor of Franchise New Zealand magazine and website. Frustrated by my job hunt, I said, "Tell me about franchising." He explained the franchise industry often benefits from economic downturns when people in my situation turn to it as a way of securing an income. Were there any good opportunities available? He assured me there were, but what suited one person wouldn’t necessarily suit another. Soon after, he brought me articles from his magazine that reviewed different franchises, how to investigate them and carry out due diligence.

I read it all, spent time on the Franchise New Zealand website and then began my investigations. Simon and I discussed my findings over a beer and this helped me select a shortlist of two.

I met with both franchisors and decided on the one that interested me most. Then began my due diligence, talking to my lawyer, my accountant, franchisees already in the business and, most importantly, discussing it with my family. This was not a decision to be taken lightly: it required a substantial investment. Finally, my wife and I agreed this was the best option open to us. I signed the agreement in early March.

My new future: Expense Reduction Analysts (ERA) is a business dedicated to helping businesses cut non-core expenses. Its unique business model operates on a contingency basis: no savings, no fees. This seemed to me an ideal value proposition for the current market.

The next ERA training course was only ten days away and I saw no reason to delay. I frantically set about registering a company, organising phones, and setting up a home office. On top of this, a courier arrived from the USA with pre-training preparation work. Boy, what a hectic ten days!

The First Sales Calls

In early April, I landed back in Auckland, my two weeks of training complete. My pre-Carlsbad preparation had required me to identify prospect companies, and my first task was to phone them. I revised my training notes, mentally steeled myself and picked up the phone.

The first person I chose to call was an old acquaintance, reasoning this would be the easiest way to launch in. He hadn't arrived in the office yet. Bugger! Eventually, I started calling people I didn’t know. To my surprise, I found it wasn't that difficult: the training worked! Most people were polite and some even quite chatty. On my last call of the day, I got an appointment. What a buzz that was!

On subsequent days I did get refusals, which was to be expected. After two weeks of training and two weeks of calling, though, I fixed three appointments. After Easter, I would be sitting in front of potential clients and, hopefully, convincing them I was worth engaging.

A friend described the first year of your own business as like being on a rollercoaster. I'm going to remember that!

Working from home

On the Easter Monday public holiday, I prepared for these first meetings. As an employee, I wouldn’t have been at my desk on a public holiday. It made me reflect on some of the realities of a business based from home, and the different style of working it entails.

I don’t have to get up early, but of course I could very easily waste a lot of time lying in bed daydreaming. I’d soon realised this wasn’t going to win me any customers, so I began getting up at 7 am, just before the family left for work and school. And guess what? I can throw on a T-shirt and jeans and no one’s any the wiser! My goal is to be at my desk by 8 am but it wouldn’t be difficult to make it earlier. After all, I used to be in the car by 7.30am when I was an employee. Boy, it’s been wonderful not having to fight the morning traffic! By the time I head to meetings, the traffic has largely abated.

It’s not that simple, though. Since being made redundant and with my wife now working full-time, I’ve taken on running the house. This carries a whole lot of other responsibilities. For example, my first morning task is to feed the cats, following which our ginger tom likes to settle on my lap, purring furiously. Then there’s the grocery shopping, laundry and other chores. I could say “no” and leave them for the weekend but I’ve found it easier to fit the chores in as a break from work. Without the social aspect of a ‘normal’ business, taking a break can be a nice offset to the monotony of my very quiet workplace.

The reality is that working from home gives me enormous flexibility. I can structure my day any damn way I want and I don’t have to ask a soul! An article by Simon Young on the excellent HomeBizBuzz website describes the sensation.

What has become abundantly clear is that time management is critical when you're a lone operator. You can't ignore anything. Balancing phone calls, meetings, research, accounts (and the cats, laundry, shopping...) takes some planning. I have to be careful to build a flow of potential business yet still keep on top of the day-to-day mundane matters. Get this wrong, and I can see my business will be like a high swinging pendulum.

One cold, hard fact remains – my success, or failure, will be directly related to how many companies I call and how quickly I call them. I constantly remind myself of this fact. I know I haven’t found the balance yet, but it’ll come, and I’m excited because I am now the master of my destiny!

The value of networks

In the week after Easter I went along to my three appointments. My first reality-check: two postponements and one no-show! They were all genuine mistakes, but still frustrating. On the positive side, the rescheduled meetings went well and the potential clients were interested in my business model. I’ll hear soon if they want to engage my services.

The nice thing about ERA is the camaraderie between the associates and the support from the national office. Even though we're operating alone, we're not alone. My March group of trainees (we've called ourselves the March Maniacs) are all racing to see who'll be the first to sign up a client. This kind of friendly rivalry makes the business fun.

A common thread that emerged from our international conference call was that networking is probably one of the most powerful tools for success in this business. For the rest of that day I got back on the phone calling more potential customers and firing up my network. By business close, I had secured another four appointments, all from my network. Guess where a lot of my efforts will be focused?

Oh yes! The rollercoaster is climbing and I think I’m upside down, but I'm not really sure! And you know what? It doesn't feel that bad! Maybe fear is being replaced by exhilaration?!

About Mike

Mike has over 25 years’ experience in industry and wide ranging technical, operational and business management skills. He has project managed the development of million dollar, groundbreaking technology in underwater mining equipment and taken products from the drawing board to production in the fields of electronics, gas detection and gas measurement. He gained experience in supply and logistics in the international lift industry and general management skills in the local building industry. Mike holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Engineering Management.

T 64 9 444 8827
M 027 260 9900
msmart@expensereduction.com
Smart Moves blog

ack to Top

To Advise and to Govern

(A Peek Inside the Corporate Boardroom)

By Nicola Rowe

April 2009

The boardroom! The name conjures up a circle of grave-faced, silver-haired businesspeople in suits, meeting in exclusive conclave to exercise two broad sets of functions: to advise and to govern. Elsewhere, Professionelle has looked at how women can take a seat at the boardroom table. Now, we’re going to look at exactly what happens once you’ve taken your seat.

The informal board of advisors

Perhaps a firm is just starting out, and is run by a sole trader. Or maybe the owner runs it in partnership with others. In general, these arrangements won’t need a formal board unless the owner/s want to list the company, but, unless they’re bent on making all their mistakes alone, they’ll still need the advice – and the Rolodex – that a board can provide.

New Zealand entrepreneur and doctor Miriam Martin founded her hugely successful medical personnel recruitment agency Kiwisstat/Ausstat in 1999. As a private company, hers doesn’t need a formal board, but Miriam has found it invaluable to have an informal board of advisors, whom she pays by the hour. She says:

It’s been really good to have people critique our decisions every couple of months. It’s added a dimension of robustness to the business.

How do companies choose advisors? James Currier, who founded the social networking company Tickle (and sold it to Monster Worldwide for $US100m) said:

My selection criteria were based on several factors. Number one was personality fit - meaning can we get along. Number two was does he or she have relevant experience…. Number three was can this person introduce me to people I want to work with and/or do business with. That is a sub category of personality because if your personalities match, it is likely that the people they introduce you to will also match. But, it is also a matter of how big their Rolodex is. 1

The formal board of directors

A listed company needs a formal board of directors. When going public, the company’s founders need to decide who should be on the board, where they should come from, and how many appointees there should be.

1. Executive directors and non-executive directors

Ideally, the board will comprise both directors who are executives in the company (for example, the chief finance officer) and directors who come from outside its ranks. The former type are referred to as executive directors; the latter are called non-executive directors, external directors or outside directors. If you’re intent on becoming a director, the route you take will depend on whether you intend to be an executive director or an independent. If the former, you’ll be aiming for a C-level role with board representation; if the latter, you won’t necessarily be on a corporate track, but may, for example, be an accounting or legal professional.

There is an increasing trend towards non-executive directors. Their presence is perceived to strengthen the board: while no director should be beholden to a particular constituency, non-executive directors are seen as less likely to bow to anyone’s will. Venture capitalists, who represent investors with a particular time horizon, and executive directors, who tend to side with their boss, the CEO, can be seen as less independent.

Research has found that the incidence of fraud decreases as the number of non-executive directors rises 2, and the New Zealand Securities Commission recommends an “appropriate balance” of executive and non-executive directors for New Zealand companies 3.

2. No one size fits all

It’s not just who sits on your board, but how many you have alongside you at the table that counts. In the US, the size of boards has shrunk from an average of 16 in the 1980s to a mean of ten last year, while a recent Egon Zehnder survey of North American and European directors determined that 14 seats at the table were thought ideal. No one size fits all, and any decision on size means weighing competing considerations: too small a group, and you foster group-think and close off a wider range of opinion; too large, and discussions become unwieldy and factions form.

3. The chairman of the board

The CEO will always be on the company’s board; should he or she also be that board’s chair? National practice varies widely. In the US, the roles are usually occupied by a single person; in the UK, the reverse is the case. Here, the Securities Commission takes a dim view of joint responsibility, stating that “[n]o director of a publicly owned entity should simultaneously hold the roles of board chairperson and chief executive (or equivalent).” 4

Structure of the board

To discharge its functions effectively, the board should have at least three committees. Check the sidebar for more detail on these:

audit committee: responsible for liaising with the internal and external auditors and promoting integrity in financial reporting
compensation commitee: responsible for setting and reviewing the CEO’s total compensation package
nomination committee: responsible for nominating new directors to the board

Further committees may also be adopted as appropriate to enable the board to work effectively.

Board Committees

The Securities Commission recommends that the audit committee consist only of non-executive directors, that at least one member be “a chartered accountant or [have] another recognized form of financial expertise”, and that its chairman be an independent director who is not also chair of the board itself.

The compensation committee’s remit is simple: set and review the CEO’s total compensation package. That package has up to six components: base salary, salary bonus, stock grants, stock options, pensions and perks (such as the Gulfstream jet that Apple gave CEO Steve Jobs). The last quarter-century has seen a breathtaking rise in the package value, especially in the US. A CEO's earnings as a multiple of an average factory worker's rose from 42 times in 1980, to a whopping 531 in 2000. Much of that increase came through stock options – paper pay, perhaps, but pay nonetheless.

The compensation committee typically sets the CEO’s goals for coming year, with compensation tied to them. As the review period approaches, it asks the CEO for a written self-appraisal and list of desired compensation changes. In parallel, the committee reviews the CEO’s performance against past goals and researches CEO market salaries. It then presents its findings to the wider board. Finally, it meets with the CEO to share the performance and salary review outcomes.

Not all boards have a nomination committee, but research has found that formalising the selection of directors through a nomination committee, rather than informal shoulder-tapping, increases the chance that the board will appoint foreign and independent directors. This does not, alas, make it more likely that women will be appointed to the board... 5

To advise and to govern

The board has one advisory function: it offers expert advice to management, enabling management to run the company better than it could on its own.

Next, it exercises four governance functions.

First, it hires top management, especially the CEO. When Hewlett Packard was searching for its penultimate CEO, it was looking for a change manager who could make the numbers. Carly Fiorina, who had been just that at Lucent, fit the bill. But hiring the CEO is only part of the task: the board must evaluate the CEO and, if necessary, fire her – and you can read about Carly Fiorina’s perspective on that aspect of her tenure at HP in her autobiography, Tough Choices.

Secondly, the board votes on major operating proposals – capital expenditures, for example, or mergers and acquisitions. If you’re familiar with Carly Fiorina’s tenure at HP, you’ll remember that her board split over her proposal to merge with Compaq in 2002.

Thirdly, the board must vote on major financial decisions, such as issuing stocks and bonds, and determining dividend payments and stock repurchases.

Finally, and importantly, the board must ensure that the firm’s activities and financial condition are accurately reported to its shareholders.

First days

There's no one answer to what you, as a new director, might find on your first agenda. In part, it depends where in the year you come in and also on what issues the board happens to be examining. One thing you should not see are topics and tasks that should be carried out by management. The distinction between governance and management is a vital one for any new Director to grasp, but it’s too wide a topic to cover here.

It will have to be the subject of a future article!

Sources:

Michael Roberts, William Sahlmann, Sasha Novakovich, How Serial Entrepreneurs Build and Manage a Board of Directors in a Venture-Backed Start Up, HBS Case 9-808-163, Rev. July 1, 2008.
Board Composition and Corporate Fraud”, Hatice Uzun, Samuel H Szewczyk, Raj Varma. Financial Analysts Journal. Charlottesville: May/Jun 2004. Vol. 60, Iss. 3; pp. 33 ff.
Corporate Governance in New Zealand – Principles and Guidelines. A Handbook for Directors, Executives and Advisers. Securities Commission, March 2004, section 2.1.
Ibid, section 2.5.
The Determinants and Effects of Board Nomination Committees” Winfried Ruigrok, Simon Peck, Sabina Tacheva, Peder Greve, Yan Hu. Journal of Management & Governance. Dordrecht: 2006. Vol. 10, Iss. 2.

Acknowledgement

Nicola Rowe currently divides her time between the UK, where she is a director of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in London, England, and New Zealand, where she has a business strategy consulting practice. She worked for many years for The Boston Consulting Group in Germany and Switzerland, advising clients in the pharmaceutical and media industries in Europe and North America. In 2008, she lectured courses in international business strategy and in corporate governance on the MBA programme at the University of Canterbury. Visit Nicola at her Strategynut blog where she comments on business strategy and governance topics.

Mamma Mia! A Woman's Way in the Working World

by Jennifer Mills, Partner, & Bridget Fleming, Senior Associate, Minter Ellison Rudd Watts

March 2009

We have all heard about the “glass ceiling”, read statistics about the large number of female graduates produced by universities around the country, but also seen the practical reality - that those figures still do not correlate to large numbers of female executives at the top of New Zealand companies or at Board tables around the country. Now don’t get me wrong – there are certainly women who are at the top and taking their place at those Board tables, but the point is, not in the numbers you might hope for, or expect, given the number of female graduates.

Having it All

And the reason? Like everything, there is no one single reason. Theories abound, but at least one contributing factor is undoubtedly the dual role many women try to balance as employee and primary caregiver. So is it an impossible dream? Is it the elusive “having it all”? And is it any easier now, than it has been previously?
The challenges facing working women appear to have been made easier by recent amendments to employment law. These amendments include the introduction of the Employment Relations (Breaks, Infant Feeding & Other Matters) Amendment Act 2008, which will, when enacted, provide a statutory right to breaks and, where practicable, facilities for breastfeeding. As well as the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Arrangements) Amendment Act, which provides employees with the right to request flexible working arrangements to accommodate the care of any person.

New Mothers

Looking first at the breastfeeding legislation, this legislation, which is significant for new mothers wanting to return to the workforce, has been somewhat overlooked. Perhaps due to the fact that was passed at the same time as the more controversial amendments to the Employment Relations Act regarding KiwiSaver.
The Amendment Act, which will take effect from 1 April 2009, requires employers to provide breaks for employees, as well as appropriate facilities for those who wish to breastfeed or to express breast milk at work, where it is “reasonable and practicable in the circumstances”. In deciding what is practicable, employers are entitled to take into account their operational environment and available resources.

The limitation that the facilities for breastfeeding or expressing milk are to be provided “where reasonable and practicable” will be a welcome inclusion for many employers, as the reality is that many existing businesses will not have the resources to provide separate facilities for breastfeeding. For example, many small employers will not have a separate room, other than the bathroom, which could be used for such a purpose. For larger employers, with more resources (and more room), it is likely to be both reasonable and practicable for such facilities to be provided.

Notwithstanding that “limitation”, in terms of the potential benefits of this legislation for mothers returning to the workforce, the fact remains that there is now a statutory requirement for employers to provide employees not only with rostered breaks, but also, where appropriate, additional breaks for breastfeeding, where it is reasonable and practicable to do so. So at least in theory, the interests of female employees returning to the workforce following maternity leave are being improved.
The other significant legislative change is the introduction of the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Arrangements) Amendment Act, which took effect on 1 July 2008.

Flexible Working

While it is correct that this legislation applies to all employees who have the care of “any person”, in reality the Amendment Act is likely to be highly utilised by female employees who are, at least traditionally, more likely to occupy the primary caregiver role or to assume care for dependent family members.
The Amendment Act provides that an employee who has been working for their employer for the immediately preceding six months, and who has the care of any person, may make one statutory request, per 12 month period, for fixed term or permanent flexible working arrangements.

Employees can request a change to their hours of work, days of work or place of work and the employer must consider whether the request can be accommodated. While there are limited grounds for an employer to decline a request, the Act arguably lacks “teeth” in that an employee’s right to challenge an employer’s refusal to grant a request for flexible working hours is limited to challenging the employer’s compliance with the statutory procedure for considering the request, not the employer’s actual decision. But again, this is a law, mandating a change, which at least in theory if not in practice, will have benefits for employees - including female employees - where they are responsible for the care of any person.

Practical Realities

As highlighted above, while there may be practical issues with both new pieces of legislation, one which is in force already, and one which will take effect very soon, their inclusion indicates a government focus on the practical realities of the need for employees to balance commitments outside of the workplace. While the legislation doesn’t apply only to female employees, and while it may not be enough to make it more attractive to return to the workplace following parental leave (and that is an issue for individual employers), what it does mean is that for those who do elect to return, the transition may just be that little bit easier. So that women can say – Mamma Mia – here I go again – only this time, it is going back to the workforce.

Acknowledgement

Minter Ellison Rudd Watt’s Employment Team has extensive experience in all matters relating to employment law, including industrial relations, human resource management, corporate governance and dispute resolution. They provide practical advice to clients regarding all areas of employment legislation such as parental leave, KiwiSaver and flexible working arrangements. They also develop, and regularly conduct, training courses for employers and line managers on the practical application of employment legislation.

Jennifer Mills leads Minter Ellison’s Auckland employment practice. Jennifer is an extremely well regarded employment law expert who has acted for a large number of national and international companies and Jennifer was recently recognised as a leading individual in Chambers Global. Jennifer and the team advise clients on the full range of employment issues including corporate restructuring, employment agreements, disciplinary and termination procedures, ACC, privacy, restraints of trade, industrial action (including strikes and lockouts), health and safety (including workplace stress), good faith, collective bargaining issues and superannuation.

For more information and to go on the team’s employment update mailing list, please contact Jennifer Mills or her secretary on 09 3539885.

Intuition

by Supriya Rathod, a Professionelle member based in Wellington.

22 February 2009

Supriya, author of a recent piece on Spirituality published on Professionelle, here turns her attention to intuition. It's full of great examples and challenging thoughts. We loved it and hope you will too. Please send in your comments and feedback.

What is intuition?

Intuition is defined as the act of knowing or sensing without the use of any rational processes. It is often replaced with words like insight, instinct or perception. We all have it and we all use it to varying degrees. Nature has enabled women to develop their intuitive skills to a greater degree than most men. I like to believe that it is due to the fact that women are more closely connected to the cycle of life.

Philosophers consider intuition to be the power of obtaining knowledge that cannot be acquired either by inference or observation, by reason or experience. As such, intuition is thought of as an original, independent source of knowledge, since it is designed to account for just those kinds of knowledge that other sources do not provide. Knowledge of necessary truths and of moral principles is sometimes explained in this way.

In psychology, sensing and intuition are the information-gathering (perceiving) functions. They describe how new information is understood and interpreted. Individuals who prefer sensing are more likely to trust information that is in the present, tangible and concrete, that is, information that can be understood by the five senses. They look for details and facts. The meaning is in the data. Those who prefer intuition tend to trust information that is more abstract. They trust the unconscious mind. The meaning is in how the data relates to the pattern or theory.

In spirituality, it is about keeping yourself open and part of the stream of wider consciousness. It entails being attuned to yourself and receiving information from all channels, seen and unseen. One way of explaining would be that the world is a giant TV tower that broadcasts numerous frequencies and transmits audio and video waves which we receive as signals. Our soul receives these signals much in the same way the television’s antenna does. The more attuned you are, the clearer the message.

Logically, intuition can and often is a combination of physical, emotional and mental processes and takes place in a context of space, time and consciousness. If one is attuned to one’s surrounding, any change will often be immediately noted and catalogued. If one has a decision to make, one will often feel stronger about one option than the other. It can be sense of wrongness or rightness or a strong sense of action that needs to be taken. As mothers the world over can attest, it can be anything from knowing when your child is up to no good to when your child needs help.

We prefer facts, thank you!

As children our intuition is strong and we tend to depend very highly on it to sense what is going on around us. As we grow older, we are trained to be more ‘rational’ and ‘logical’ with a reliance on facts and science and less on ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions’. Our education and training all are generally focused on developing the intellect and understanding the world around as we see it/know it physically. We are taught to get our facts before we make our decisions. Our communications are based on presenting a perspective and backing it up with supporting evidence. A huge number of people refuse to believe in anything that cannot be explained by science and is intangible. In business, executives pay attention to what they refer to as ‘gut instinct’ but a huge number of decisions are based on recommendations backed up with facts even if you ‘know’ that it is not necessarily the right thing to do.

Recent studies

According to a team led by Professor Gerard Hodgkinson of the Centre for Organisational Strategy, Learning and Change at Leeds University Business School, intuition is the result of the way our brains store, process and retrieve information on a subconscious level and so is a real psychological phenomenon which needs further study to help us harness its potential.

Through analysis of a wide range of research papers examining the phenomenon, the researchers concluded that intuition is the brain drawing on past experiences and external cues to make a decision – but one that happens so fast the reaction is at a non-conscious level. All we’re aware of is a general feeling that something is right or wrong.

Professor Hodgkinson cites the recorded case of a Formula One driver who braked sharply when nearing a hairpin bend without knowing why – and as a result avoided hitting a pile-up of cars on the track ahead, which undoubtedly saved his life.

“The driver couldn’t explain why he felt he should stop, but the urge was much stronger than his desire to win the race,” explains Professor Hodgkinson. “The driver underwent forensic analysis by psychologists afterwards, where he was shown a video to mentally relive the event. In hindsight he realised that the crowd, which would have normally been cheering him on, wasn’t looking at him coming up to the bend but was looking the other way in a static, frozen way. That was the cue. He didn’t consciously process this, but he knew something was wrong and stopped in time.”

Some other examples of intuition in action

Masaru Ibuka, founder and chairman of Japan's Sony Corp was asked in an interview, "What is the secret of your success?" He said he had a ritual. Preceding a business decision, he would drink herbal tea. Before he drank, he asked himself, "Should I make this deal or not?" If the tea gave him indigestion, he wouldn't make the deal. "I trust my gut, and I know how it works," he said. "My mind is not that smart, but my body is."

Tom Peters, management consultant and best selling author, says,

Leaders trust their guts. 'Intuition' is one of those good words that has gotten a bad rap. For some reason, intuition has become a "soft" notion. Garbage! Intuition is the new physics. It's an Einsteinian, seven-sense, practical way to make tough decisions. Bottom line, circa 2001 to 2010: The crazier the times are, the more important it is for leaders to develop and to trust their intuition

Intuitive information or impulse?

Some people may have trouble differentiating impulse from intuition. How do you know the difference? Intuition is often a knowing as opposed to a strong urge which characterizes most impulses. Impulses are often of a short duration as opposed to intuitive information which is persistent and has an accompanying sense of rightness or warning. Intuition is also often accompanied by a sense of clarity, of knowledge and direction.

Tips on honing intuitive skills

We are surrounded by a multitude of stimuli of varying nature today, all of which along with emotional clutter and stress that seems a part of our everyday lives, makes it difficult for a lot of us to connect and use our intuitive skills, the same way we do with our other senses and skills. The focus on rational and logical thinking pushes us further away from developing our innate intuitive skills and a lot of us, by the time we are adults, pay absolutely no heed to the flashes of intuition we get time to time, much to our detriment. How often have we heard people saying, “I felt it was not the right thing to do, but I did it anyways. I wished I had paid attention.”

I rely highly on intuition and have found that staying calm and not getting overtly emotional or stressed really helps. Knowing that I can’t do much about a given situation but I can control my reaction, at least most times, helps me retain control and stay connected to what I sense. Also, I pay attention to what I sense and feel.

It is often the case that the knowledge rests within us and just needs us to focus and pay attention to it.

And trust it!

Your Feedback

Intuition is possibly quite a deep part of us. I read a book by a Chinese man called Watchman Nee. He reckons our souls consist of mind, emotion and will and our spirits consist of intuition, conscience and communion (with God). So when we use our intuition we are functioning from our spirit, not just our soul. Deep stuff!!

Thank you for that. I use intuition a lot ie: how I feel about the situation rather than simply how the facts stack up. There is a fine balance and it is often confusing as the facts and feelings often conflict. There 'has' to be a reason why it doesn't feel right but I feel it is important to analyse further why it doesn't feel right eg: if you decide that what you feel is fear of risk and the facts say the risk is justified and/or rational then that feeling may need to be overlooked. If however I have really bad feelings about a person or product particularly when the deal appears good then I'd certainly steer clear.

Writing to congratulate you on an extremely well written article on ''Intuition' on the Professionelle website. Your explanation on Intuition and Impulse struck a chord. During a recent restructure at the workplace, I opted for redundancy because it felt like the right thing to do (I did have the option of staying on in a somewhat similar role). Some people close to me think I must be out of my mind to have given up the security of a job in these uncertain times. Now that the deed is done, I must admit that there are times when I doubt myself and wonder whether my decision was guided by intuition or based on an impulse. Only time will tell!

About Supriya

Altris’s Seven Top Tips for Mothers returning to the workforce

By Jayne Muller, Executive Coach/Director at Altris Ltd

February 9 2009

At this time, when many mothers are thinking about going back to work, we turned to Jayne Muller, Executive Coach/Director, at Altris Ltd. Altris are a group of Executive Coaches who specialise in transition coaching. Altris conducted a New Zealand-based Women in Transition survey on this exact issue and have kindly provided Professionelle readers with their top seven tips and a successful case study.

So, if you’re thinking of returning to the workforce and feel apprehensive about the unknown,or a little unsure about how to move forward – this article is for you!

1. PLAN Plan the transition early and work out what needs to happen with childcare and the transition of your child into that childcare facility/kindergarten.

I would have done better planning in regards to childcare, organising a crèche nearby

2. ALLOW ENOUGH TIME Remember it takes time for you to transition so naturally it will take time for your child to transition too. Ensure you allow enough time to help your child get used to her new routine. Can they start preschool or childcare two weeks prior to you returning to the workforce? This gives you and your child time to get used to the new format of your days. Remember, a happy child means a happy mum!

3. TALK ABOUT EXPECTATIONS Talk to your partner/husband and manager/colleagues about expectations on you and on them. For example, you may be able to start work late, or finish work early – especially in the early months of your return. Work out which of you is going to be doing the dropping off and picking up of your child – perhaps this can be shared? Working out just what is expected of you and what is expected of others will ensure your transition is as smooth as possible for all involved. The key is to keep communicating with your managers so they are not left in the lurch.

Get details in writing about break times and expectations in the office before you leave to go on maternity leave

4. BE REALISTIC Work out your priorities from a scale of one to five, and be realistic about the things that can slide for a while. Does it really matter if your house misses a week of being cleaned? Can you really continue volunteering for your local group right now?

5. TAKE TIME FOR YOU It’s like the oxygen theory; if you don’t look after yourself, then how can you look after your children and family? Is there an hour a day that can be purely for you? If so, carve it out and schedule it into your diary so that it happens.

6. BUILD SUPPORT Is it possible to have a cleaner for a few weeks while you get your routine sorted? Can you divvy up jobs so your partner can help out more at home? Perhaps you can share the load with another working Mum, taking turns to make meals for the freezer for each other? Build strong relationships within the organisation you work with and remember to keep communicating with them. Your work would rather know you cannot make that client cocktail evening sooner rather than later!

I would suggest talking with others who have preceded you, so you can access tips and share practical information to make your transition easier. In my case I am encouraging mums to be a part of my newly formed (working mother’s)

7. RE-ASSESS Things change all the time and it’s important to keep re-assessing if what we are doing is still working for us, and our families. It’s OK to change our mind about our situation or our children’s situation. If it’s not working, change something and start again. Don’t be afraid to talk the problems over with someone you trust at work. With more and more mothers returning to work, most forward-thinking organisations are prepared to offer flexible working arrangements to hold onto good talent.

Women in Transition (WIT) Case Study

When Shannon relocated back to New Zealand from the UK, the one key factor that helped to ensure her successful transition back was “planning”. She spent a lot of time online, researching where she would like to live, what the rent was going to cost prior to buying, nearby public transportation, potential roles for career development and their location, nearby tennis clubs etc. All the things that were important in Shannon’s life, she researched in the UK to help her rediscover what life and the living environment would be like once she returned. Shannon also talked a lot with her partner, friends’ family and old colleagues who could offer information and thoughts to help her narrow her decisions.

When Shannon was pregnant with her first child, she applied the same planning technique. Through her Women in Transition (WIT) coaching programme, Shannon and her coach met prior to her leaving her workplace to plan and set expectations with her manager, her team and her partner. This incorporated what was important to her, what her timelines were, and what her contingencies were, depending on how the new baby impacted her life.

During her break from corporate life, Shannon’s priorities changed. She not only had a career to manage but a new baby, new family and her role as a mother, let alone making time for herself. It was during this time that Shannon realised she wanted to return to the workplace earlier than planned and transition over a longer period working shorter weeks.

Meanwhile Shannon’s manager not only delivered on the monthly communications they pre-agreed but also personally phoned Shannon to see how she was doing and how could he help to support her whilst on leave. This certainly helped Shannon feel like she was still a valued team member. A team she wanted to continue being part of.

When she returned to the workforce, Shannon and her coach put into place a fast track transition plan for 12 weeks, to enable her to get up to speed as quickly as possible. This involved putting strategies into place to manage her workload; her team’s, manager’s and partner’s expectations; her energy, both physical and emotional and her role as a career women, mother, partner and manager. She found having a coach external to the company gave her the confidential outlet she needed to work through her own frustrations and limitations while learning to manage her new situation.

With expectations set up front and the support of her manager, Shannon transitioned very successfully and continues to be a valued member of the senior management team, working four days per week.

A Springboard to Success (and Sanity)

by Julie Mulcahy and Debbie Knowles

They say what doesn’t break you makes you stronger, but how many of us turn the lessons from our own tough times into a business? Julie Mulcahy and Debbie Knowles took their challenging experiences as the inspiration for Springboardnz, a broadly-targeted educational referral service. The satisfaction it brings them is evident and sustains them as they juggle other jobs while developing their nearly-two-year-old business. Below, they share their story and explain how Springboardnz guides parents towards help for children who no longer seem to “fit” their schools, their families, and their lives.

Julie begins:

Springboardnz grew out of a growing awareness that while parents could often identify the problems, they didn’t know where to go or who to see for the right kind of help. Our brochures say that Springboardnz is a referral company for learning or behavior problems, but the reality is that people come to us with a very wide range of problems.

Listening to Lives

The first thing we do is listen. We need to hear exactly what the changes are that our clients want to see for their children and in their own lives. It is a real privilege to be allowed this insight; every story is so different and has its own pathway to take. Often, the longer we listen, the more other issues emerge. The child with a learning disorder may be being bullied at school, or grieving her parents’ marriage break up. Lives begin to open up.

The next stage is to think about what kinds of support will work; small groups, people coming into their home, a mentor, hands-on learning or maybe a series of workshops? Do they prefer a holistic approach or a highly trained specialist instead?

Pinpointing Providers

We meet clients wherever they are comfy – their own homes or places we consult from, like Parents Inc in Greenlane. We aim to produce a tailored support plan. There are many providers to choose from but our task is to find the one who will work for that particular individual. We also consider how well the services will fit with what they’ve told us about their budget or lifestyle.

The only way to find out is for us to get on the phone and talk to potential providers. We explore exactly what each offers, what they charge, and if they have a waiting list. Even if they are not the answer, they nearly always tell us about someone else who may be. We often feel like detectives! One link leads us to the next, and so our database grows.

The Other Side

Occasionally, we remember why we love doing what we do. We have both experienced what it’s like to be on the ‘other side’. You know? That ghastly place where everyone else’s lives seem to run smoothly and your own feels immensely complex, with no-one able to help. Memories and lessons from these times go deep for both of us.

My first hand experience began when one of my daughters suffered a head injury. Sylvia was twelve years old. My laid back little socialite disappeared and left behind a girl who couldn’t sleep, had a permanent headache and flew into frightening rages. Troubles rarely come singly, and on top of this, I was recovering from a back operation and battling erratic ACC payments that left us scrabbling to cover bills. Then my parents had a terrible car accident that left them in hospital for long months.

No sooner did I return to my job as a Resource Teacher for students with Learning & Behaviour problems than my swollen leg turned out to be caused not by a blood clot but by… child number four who was on his way to join his three teenage siblings – ready or not!

Over the next seven years I often felt pushed to the limit. Sylvia was not coping at school and was deeply unhappy.

Finding Help That Fits

My work as a Resource Teacher made me aware of the many services available, but now, as a parent, I was to find out how important it was to find the right people for our daughter.

We had a crash course in neurologists, psychologists, psycho neurologists, doctors and specialists of all kinds, not forgetting a wide range of alternative practitioners. I learnt that second to the actual skills the specialists possessed, was their ability to connect to our girl. We had to find people who worked in a way she liked, otherwise it was a waste of everyone’s time. Thankfully, the services that did work for us saved our sanity: they gave us hope, help and a life to look forward to.

I bring that hard earned knowledge and skill into my work with clients at Springboardnz. I truly know what’s at stake for them.

Buried Problems Mean Deferred Solutions

Debbie picks up the thread:

Springboardnz means so much to me personally because my life has taught me the importance of talking about things and trying to bring about changes in your life, no matter how small. As a child of a Holocaust refugee, I was brought up in the 1950s when almost everyone was ‘starting again’ and ‘forgetting the past’. But in the end, the terrible events in Europe had terrible consequences within many survivor families out here. I know from my own family that if problems aren’t talked about, they go underground, disguise themselves and often become something much worse.

In 2003, I edited a book called Mixed Blessings, a collection of memories and favourite family recipes from other children of Holocaust survivors. One of the most rewarding things about this book was the many comments I received from people with apparently very different backgrounds to mine. These individuals had, however, suffered some trauma in their childhood. Our book spoke to them: they recognized the silences and the toxic results of the unspoken problem on their family dynamics. It seems to be something many people have to deal with.

I believe the first step is to acknowledge the problem and then to believe that change can happen. This is one of the most important ideas that motivates me to commit wholeheartedly to our business.

A Guide to Secondary Schools

As well as their referral service, Debbie and Julie wrote a book described as “an easy read book on how NZ secondary schools actually work” to share their knowledge and experience with as wide an audience as possible. What You Need to Know Before Your Child Starts Secondary School offers practical advice and support on topics from choosing a suitable secondary school through how the assessment systems work and on to issues like pastoral care and support for special needs. Julie says she loves the book because it can change peoples’ ability to support their children effectively in the complex world of secondary school.

A Meaningful Life

“Do we make a huge amount of money?” asks Debbie. “That’s another matter! However, I was hugely inspired by Supriya Rathod’s article for Professionelle, called ‘Spiritual Journeys’. I especially loved her quotation: “Money is incidental to doing what you are meant to do.” That about sums us up… as yet the money is “incidental” but certainly we both feel we are doing what we are meant to be doing, and that’s hard to beat.”

Julie echoes this theme of Springboardnz bringing meaning to her life:

I see life as a journey of self awareness and a process of change. Everything that happens is an opportunity to grow and know yourself a little more.

I know that it is the little things that really matter – good intent, a smile, a genuine interest in the life of another. It’s important to be willing to walk alongside another, to offer practical support and to really listen to their story. I hope this is what we achieve in Springboardnz.

Acknowledgement

Debbie Knowles and Julie Mulcahy are the consultants for Springboardnz, a referral agency. Springboardnz offers personal consultations in the Auckland region and consults by email throughout New Zealand. After an initial interview, clients receive a personalised plan detailing the relevant services available to them. We personally contact all recommended services and set up appointments on request.

Spiritual Journeys

by Supriya Rathod, a Professionelle member based in Wellington.

Supriya sent in feedback on Sarah's recent piece Why I Like My Many Hats, saying that she did not see her 'hats' as separate areas of learning, instead seeing holistic opportunities for spiritual growth and meaningful connection with other people. When she then commented that one aspect she has missed reading about is the spiritual side of work and life, we immediately invited her to contribute on this theme - and were delighted when she readily agreed. Read on...

I have always thought of life as a school, a place of learning and of growth. Everything that I have done, from the choices I have made, to the experiences I have had, has been about experimenting, learning and growing. Intuition has made it easy for me to make choices that have been right for me in my spiritual journey, be it the friends I make or the work I do. I learnt very early in life that if I did something I loved, success would follow. Money is incidental to doing what you are meant to do.

What is spirituality?

People often confuse spirituality with religion. A life of prayer and piety is often considered to be synonymous with spiritual living. This may be the case for a few who though prayer and religion have found a pathway that is right for them but for many of us this is not the case. So what do I mean when I say spirituality?

Spirituality for me is about growth, whether we lead one life or many. I believe that we are all a part of a larger fabric and a rip in one part does affect and weaken the whole. While we all have our paths to walk, connecting with other travellers along the way is a way to accelerate the learning. This may take the form of a dominating mother in law or a chauvinistic boss. I know that I have learnt more about myself from people who have given me a hard time than from people who like me.

Another aspect of spirituality for me is the level and degree of connections I make with other people. I think of my loved ones and I like to believe that we are souls who are in the class together to do our own learning and to use our connection as a means of support and stability. The people I work with and connect with professionally are teachers, catalysts and fellow students.

I very rarely take people at face value. Without trying, I am able to get a sense of where they are in their own journeys and how closely connected they are to themselves and others. This has helped me form strong relationships and helped me with work. I am able to communicate with people in a manner that resonates with them. The conversations and connections that come out of this have a higher degree of impact and are more meaningful.

No Man is an Island

I once read something which made a profound impact on my thinking. I think it was by an Indian poet who said, “I am human because I have the ability to cry for my neighbour’s sorrow”. I truly believe this helps us as individuals, professionals and societies to rise above our differences but I think this is all but forgotten in the rush to earn a living and make one’s mark in world today.

I did a professional degree which was very competitive and it was a struggle for me to stay true to myself. I spent the three years feeling lost and unable to connect with any of my fellow classmates. I understood where they were coming from but it was not who and where I wanted to be. It taught me that everyone has their reality depending on where they were at and that it was more important to continue on my journey than belong to a particular mindset or reality.

Meaningful connections

I have been watching the American elections with great interest. It was neither the race or the issues discussed that got my attention. What gripped me was the fact that Barack Obama was connected. It didn’t matter what colour he was, what religion and where he came from. He understood himself and he understood people needed to connect to something that was meaningful for them. His language, his commitments, his vision all reflected hope and promise. He was able to connect with people on many levels including the spiritual.

This gives me hope that as we go through difficulty and strife for one reason or the other, we will stop crying ‘why me?’ and use it as an opportunity the same way a goldsmith does when he uses fire to clean the impurities out of gold. I believe that with an open mind, an open heart and open will, the possibilities are endless.

Acknowledgement

Supriya Rathod works in the in the corporate responsibility area of a major New Zealand bank, managing community programmes.

She says, "I love it. I am able to use my communications and relationship management skills in a meaningful way to do something that I feel really passionate about. I love writing and I enjoy public speaking both of which are an extension of a lifelong interest in people and human behaviour. I am based in Wellington."

Supriya can be contacted by email.

Your Feedback

[taken from an article submitted by two other members] But do we make a huge amount of money? That is another question, however I was hugely inspired by Supriya Rathod’s article on this site, called Spiritual Journeys, I especially loved her quotation: "Money is incidental to doing what you are meant to do." That about sums us up, as yet the money is “incidental” but certainly we both feel we are doing what we are meant to be doing, and that’s hard to beat.

Thoroughly enjoyed reading your article on spirituality.It was very interesting and it’s something I have saved as I am sure I would enjoy reading it again as it was refreshingly different.I am sure each one of us has the potential to do so much to make the world a better place.Sometimes , when I look back , I realise that I have let certain opportunities slip by and there are times when I am pleased , knowing that I have made a difference , however small to someone.All of us are travellers , journeying through life , sometimes we may looe track of our destination and if we are there for each other while we climb uphill , it makes life easier. My children are young teenagers and I have constantly have talks with them on values and tell them that while it is easy to do your best when things go well for you , the true test would be - to be able to do the same when the going gets tough. Your example of Obama was one which I hope to keep in mind always. Not once did he attack any of his opponents even when they kept hurling abuses and questioning his character.He was dignified throughout and always so graceful and that’s what won the American people and the whole world over. Hope we continue hearing from you , Supriya and it’s nice to be reminded of things that matter.There are times when we lose perspective of our goals and reading these articles helps.

Professional Migrants: A Tale of Two Women

By Kit Peebles and Eli Nana, edited by Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes for Professionelle

The following is edited from part of Kit’s 2007 Master’s dissertation. He and Eli approached Professionelle for introductions to recently arrived Professionelle members to round out the piece with interviews. Kit and Eli have just launched FiveAM, a recruiting business that places postgraduates.

The international movement of skilled migrants has assumed increased importance in recent years. The drivers are familiar: globalisation, a return to growth in the world’s economy, and the explosive growth in information and communications technology. A number of developed countries have liberalised their policies for admitting highly skilled migrants. In New Zealand, the trend is no different. Our Prime Minister, Helen Clark, has asserted that “it is skilled, creative and enterprising people who are going to drive New Zealand’s future as a nation.”

Immigrants with the ability to contribute to New Zealand’s social and economic development have been specifically targeted under the General Business Immigration category. This policy requires new migrants who apply for permanent residency to provide proof of their recognised qualification, working experience and good command of English.

But what do these skilled migrants add to New Zealand’s economy? Are they being used to their full potential? How smoothly does the integration process work? We explore these issues through the experiences of two skilled women who migrated to New Zealand in the last couple of years.

A Recent British Migrant

When Sarah first answered an advertisement in a British newspaper two years ago, she admits she knew nothing about New Zealand apart from Queenstown. However, within four weeks of her first enquiry she had been offered the job, and all of a sudden was faced with the prospect of moving to a new country. Sarah found the process of gaining residency very straightforward, although, upon arrival, she quickly discovered that the official information about New Zealand that she had read on the internet was quite outdated.

Sarah is quick to point out coming to New Zealand for herself and her husband will provide great opportunities for their infant son as he grows up. These reasons included the potential for more real life experiences and a perception of more opportunities in the schooling system. As well as this, New Zealand’s lack of class system and its political landscape were great reasons to come.

In theory, migration inflows transfer qualities from where they are abundant to where they are in short supply, thus maximising opportunity and enriching the host nation. In addition, immigrants typically bring positive entrepreneurial attitudes and a strong work ethic with them, as well as valuable links to markets and business networks outside thehost country. From a social point of view, immigration also injects diversity, adding new perspectives from other cultures and new ways of doing things.

Success Factors

How well migrants integrate on arrival depends on several factors. These include

the skills they possess
the capacity of the labour market to place migrants in appropriate jobs
the attitudes of the business community to the inflow of skilled migrants
being able to retain migrants in their established professional areas

This leads to the question - how will employers respond when faced by different qualifications, cultures, and expectations? Again, Sarah, our native English-speaking immigrant:

Within the workplace Sarah has had a pleasant experience. At first, as the new person in the office, not many people knew who she was. This meant she went through an initial period of proving herself – which she fully expected. As a migrant in a new work environment, she says she has not experienced any workplace political resistance nor has she been subjected to any cultural or gender issues.

The Power of Networks

The literature on migration indicates that new migrants are often disadvantaged on arrival because they are unaware of existing business networks in the pre-departure stage or are unable to access them once they have landed. Sarah is interesting in this respect because from her first days in her Auckland job she has actively cultivated new business contacts. She began a local business women’s network, which meets monthly and, thanks to her energy and drive, continues to grow. Sarah has also contributed significantly inside her firm to networking and professional development for her female colleagues. Little wonder then, that:

With an enjoyable experience behind her, and with a rapidly growing network of supportive business contacts she has cultivated, Sarah now relishes the opportunity to climb the corporate ladder.

With a high level of cultural congruence with New Zealand, coupled with her efforts to build her own network, Sarah is an example of a migrant who has been able to put her skills to use quickly and effectively.

Migration Challenges

Other migrants have experienced more challenging receptions. There are several issues at play.

Language is an obvious one and employers’ willingness to embrace the new is another. Cultural norms and expectations appear to have a profound impact on migrants’ success in accessing, and succeeding within, the existing business community.

Another issue that is particularly relevant to professional migrants relates to qualifications. A survey carried out by The Department of Internal Affairs noted that many recent immigrants experienced great difficulties securing jobs at a level commensurate with their qualifications and experience. There are serious concerns as to what constitutes an equivalent qualification in the New Zealand context. Often there is discord between the recommendations of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) and the final outcome for the professional standing of the migrant. Consequently, despite their high qualifications and abundant work experience, many new migrants are under-utilised.

Qualification Quagmire

It’s time to meet Juliette, another well qualified woman with two professional degrees, from leading universities. She moved to New Zealand with her Kiwi husband who wanted to return home. In order to work here, Juliette required a work visa, a process that she found very straightforward and easy. However, she also had to have all her qualifications from her non-English-speaking home country validated and matched to New Zealand qualifications. That process was far more difficult and stressful in New Zealand than in the other English speaking countries she had worked in prior to arriving here:

To find out about the validation process for her degrees Juliette first turned to the internet. The information she found instructed her to obtain translated copies of all her qualifications; this turned out to be an issue as some of her paperwork was hard to trace. After Juliette had spent a lot of time and money, her first “attempted” application was not processed because the information provided (based on the guidelines from one of the official websites that explained how to validate her degree) was incomplete. After making the necessary changes, her application was still not processed, this time because of the difference between her maiden and married names in the documentation. A few months later, she finally got a letter telling her that her application was being processed. She is still waiting to hear back with more news.

While she was making an application to get her qualifications recognised, Juliette was placed in a senior job in her industry that did not require any New Zealand specific qualification. However, to progress in her chosen profession, she will still need to re-qualify in New Zealand. She also finds it somewhat frustrating to be regarded as having a lesser professional standing than others in her organisation with local degrees simply because her qualifications are from overseas. In order to rectify this she decided to find out if she could cross credit some of her qualifications into a degree from the University of Auckland.

With her current qualifications, that include a high distinction from an internationally prestigious university in her home country and a masters degree from a leading US university, she expected that she would only have to complete a few New Zealand specific courses and get the rest of the degree course credited. However, the university has told her that if she wishes to obtain a degree from them she must apply to the admission’s committee to seek a waiver from the requirement of completing the whole degree regardless of her ten years’ experience and other foreign qualifications.

On Balance...

For many migrants, time is a positive factor. 1996 census data shows an overall unemployment rate of 35% for immigrants in their first year in New Zealand. This number increases to 59% for migrants from South Asia. However, the unemployment does decrease with time here.

Overall, research suggests that despite net migration adding numbers to the New Zealand population and despite their skill sets being apparently higher than those leaving, they may, in fact, not be a complete replacement for New Zealand’s emigrants.

We’ll leave the last thought to Juliette:

From her experience in New Zealand Juliette believes that the information out there makes moving to New Zealand look easier than it really is. She found that generally people and business are supportive, but all the paper work including qualification recognition in New Zealand may discourage good people from wanting to stay in New Zealand.

Acknowledgement

Kit Peebles and Eli Nana are newly graduated Masters of Commerce students from the University of Auckland. Having completed their degrees they now have turned their interest to running their own business – FiveAM. FiveAM is a recruitment agency that focuses on placing postgraduate commerce graduates into forward thinking businesses. If you are looking for that new star for your business please check them out.

What do you think?

A while back, we had a quite a discussion going on this topic on our message board, which started as a thread on recruitment. You can read it here.
We’d love to hear from any of you who have immigrated herehow you have found it, and also if you have any other thoughts to share with Juliette and Sarah.

It is very accurate - I am also a migrant, and although I held a Masters’ Degree from a New Zealand University I started my career in NZ "temping", doing data entry. From there I got a job as an administrator, still well below my qualifications. I kept my eyes out for good job opportunities and from there things got easier as I had some NZ work experience. Three years after I started my first job in NZ, I got a position that reflected the level of qualifications, and I have been very happy ever since. The key is having that first work experience with a NZ employer. After you’ve been through work experience in NZ and got good NZ referees, employers are much more likely to hire you for higher positions. Climbing the corporate ladder is somewhat a lot slower for non-English speaking migrants, but definitely possible. And that’s what I like about NZ – it is really a land of opportunities.

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!"

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

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.

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