Posts Tagged ‘unwritten rules’
Take 5: Mentorship and Sponsorship
January is National Mentoring Month in the United States, an initiative geared for individuals, schools, and businesses to foster relationships between mentors and mentees and increase the number of mentors nationwide. When young people are mentored, they are less likely to drop out of school, use illegal drugs, or abuse alcohol. And in the workplace, mentoring is vital for employee development and advancement so that employees gain skills, feedback, and knowledge about important unwritten workplace rules that are often left for employees to decipher on their own.
In today’s Take 5, we look at the impact of workplace mentorship and its high-powered variant, sponsorship:
- Mentorship benefits pay. Catalyst found that pipeline women who had active mentors in 2008 had achieved 27 percent higher salary growth than pipeline women without mentors.
- Formal mentorship programs are common worldwide. 59 percent of the companies surveyed in the 2010 World Economic Forum report on corporate practices said they offer internally led mentoring and networking programs and 28 percent said they had women-specific programs.
- While formal programs are important, most women and men find their mentors independently. Mentoring: Necessary But Insufficient for Advancement reported that 67 percent of high potential women and men found their mentors on their own.
- Men and women are mentored at equal rates, but men’s mentors are more senior. 62 percent of men had a mentor at the CEO or senior executive level, versus only 52 percent of women with mentors at senior levels. We found that men’s mentors are more senior even after controlling for the level of the mentee.
- High-level mentors are well positioned to act as sponsors—leaders who advocate for their protégés and ensure they’re visible when opportunities arise. Sponsorship can make all the difference: women who had mentors at the top got promoted at the same rate as men who had high-level mentors.
Want to find out more? Check out previous Catalyzing coverage of mentorship and sponsorship, and visit the official website for National Mentoring Month, where you can find out 10 things to do this month to foster mentorship—right now.
C This
In European companies, face time still rules. While half of the women surveyed in our latest report, Unwritten Rules: Why Doing a Good Job Might Not Be Enough Europe, didn’t think working long hours was important, more than 83% said doing so was still key to advancement. “Workers may be told that you can work from wherever, but when they see that those advancing are in the office a lot, then there is a disconnect,” said Laura Sabattini, Director, Research, and author of the new report. Read about one novel solution to managing a culture of presentism—plus news from Australia and Canada—in this edition of C This.
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Use ‘Em or Lose ‘Em
Is it ethical for multinational corporations to swoop into foreign countries and hire talented women who are underutilized in the workforce? Yes! “Any time you can recruit talent it offers a company a competitive advantage,” said Lee E. Miller, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. “If a country is not using its local female talent then it is in the women’s interest and the multinational’s interest to put that talent to use.”
READ: “The Gender Advantage for Multicultural Firms,” by Elizabeth Harrin, The Glass Hammer, 1/27/11
Can a well-placed jacket earn you respect in an office that over-values face time? It couldn’t hurt, insists Eleanor Tabi Haller-Jorden, Catalyst’s General Manager in Europe. Haller-Jorden told The New York Times about a little experiment conducted by a senior-level female executive in Europe. “She put her jacket on a chair and started leaving at a reasonable hour,” she said. “Yet people started coming up to her and saying she was putting in a fabulous amount of hours. She said the jacket was the best investment of €250 that she had ever made.”
READ: “The Codes That Need To Be Broken,” by Doreen Carvajal, The New York Times, 1/26/11
A 2010 World Economic Forum survey found that managers from 600 large companies believed that a “lack of role models” and “masculine or patriarchal corporate culture” were the chief obstacles women face at work. Companies across Europe have responded by shifting away from leadership and assertiveness training to instituting formal sponsorship and mentorship programs that pair women with powerful company leaders. “European companies are waking up,” said INSEAD’s Herminia Ibarra. “They are realizing that it’s really about changing the culture.”
READ: “For Women in the Workplace, an ‘Upgrade Problem,’” by Nicola Clark, The New York Times, 1/26/11
Only 3.8% of the CEOs in Canada’s top 500 businesses are women. Are quotas one possible solution? In this wide-ranging discussion featuring background information from Catalyst’s Deborah Gillis, Canadian Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette outlines a proposed bill that would force all publicly traded Canadian companies, banks, insurance companies and trust companies to ensure that at least 5% of their directors are women. Hervieux-Payette was also joined by Dave Gregory, former CEO of First Calgary Credit Union, and Amy Dittmar, Associate Professor of Finance at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
LISTEN: “Women in Boardrooms,” The Current, CBC Radio, 1/14/11
The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) now requires member companies to set and report on targets for gender diversity at board and senior management level, add diversity indicators to senior management accountabilities, and establish programs to increase the pool of female candidates. With representation of women on ASX boards now roughly only 10%, the new rules are an important step to increasing awareness and transparency. “This year will tell whether rising awareness will force more assertive leadership,” wrote Steve Harris executive director of the Centre for Leadership and Public Interest at Swinburne University.
READ: “Find Room at the Top for Women,” by Steve Harris, The Australian, 1/27/11
Edit This!
New research into who creates and consumes content on Wikipedia raises more questions than it answers. A recent study found that barely 13% of Wikipedia’s articles are written by women. The site boasts more than 3.5 million articles in English and 17 million across all languages—each written and edited anonymously. Interestingly, women and men look for information on the site at similar rates. So why do fewer women contribute? Critics allege that women are less willing to assert their opinions in public, but if you ask me, I think women are simply too busy to spend their time anonymously updating the site without receiving any credit for their hard work. What do you think is behind the wiki-gap?
Be Somebody—Get Sponsored
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
–Emily Dickenson
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How does a nobody become a somebody? By being sponsored.
Sponsors are like mentors—except they advocate for advancement. The latest Catalyst research on the careers of more than 4,000 M.B.A. graduates shows that more women than men have mentors, but these mentoring relationships are less likely to lead to promotions for women. A lack of sponsorship may help explain why women lag behind men in pay and promotions.
Sponsors combine power, influence, and a willingness to promote you—and they have the clout to do something concrete. The results can be dramatic.
Newly minted Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan had a powerful sponsor, Abner J. Mikva. Mikva learned the value of sponsorship early on. During his first year of law school, he tried to volunteer with the Democratic Party. “Who sent you?” asked the man behind the desk of local party office.
“Nobody,” Mikva replied.
“We don’t want nobody nobody sent,” the man huffed.
The experience, noted The New York Times, spurred his interest in public service and in “being the somebody who sent future somebodies.”
And that’s what he did for Kagan. According to the Times, he hired her as a clerk when he was a federal appeals judge in Washington DC. Mikva then recommended Kagan for a Supreme Court clerkship for Justice Thurgood Marshall. He promoted her for a professor’s job at the University of Chicago. Then he pulled her into a role in the Clinton White House. The rest, as they say, is history.
Sponsors stick with you—they don’t ditch you at your first promotion. They protect you from enemies. They push the right buttons. They understand the Unwritten Rules. And they ensure you’re visible. In short, they shape your career.
Of course, sponsorship is not an entitlement—you have to “earn it” by being a top performer. Your sponsor won’t take care of all the heavy lifting.
Companies are starting to realize the importance of sponsorship, and so should you. Mentors are important, but a good sponsor is gold. Seek one out. Become a somebody.
C This
This week’s roundup includes a video promoting the Toronto-based 2010 G(irls)20 Summit, plus articles about the upcoming Equal Pay Day, Justice John Paul Stevens’ exit from the Supreme Court, boardrooms Down Under, and the unwritten rules that still hold women back. Oh, and a word to the wise: beware of the glass floor…
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Putting the ‘G’ in G20
This video vividly captures the impact every girl can have on their family, community, and the world. Inspired by the clip? Then apply by May 7th to take part in the 2010 G(irls)20 Summit. From June 16th – 18th, 2010, a girl from each G20 country will meet in Toronto to craft recommendations for G20 leaders on issues that impact girls and women. Let your voice be heard— you can represent the world’s 3.3 billion girls and women.
Watch: “The Girl Effect,” GirlEffect.org/GirlsandWomen.com
Mind the Gap
Equal Pay Day is just around the corner. April 20, 2010 symbolizes just how far into 2010 women must work to earn what men earned last year. On average, American women earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man—and the gap has barely budged since 2001.
Read: “Not All Differences in Earnings Are Created Equal,” by Carl Bialik, The Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2010
Supreme Parity
Columnist Charles M. Blow calls on Obama to replace Justice John Paul Stevens with a female justice. “The question isn’t why more women,” he writes, “but rather why not?”
Read: “O’Connor on the Court,” by Charles M. Blow, The New York Times, April 9, 2010
Dropping Down Under
Companies with a higher percentage of women on their boards do better, on average, than those with fewer. So why is the number of women in ASX200 boardrooms dropping?
Read: “The Fairest Board of All,” by Suzanne Daniel, WA Today, April 9, 2010
The Glass Floor
Channeling the message of our 2010 Awards Dinner Video, Larke Riemer, head of women’s markets at Westpac, said: “You’ve not only got a glass ceiling, you’ve got a glass floor. Who actually falls through the glass floor because they don’t get the support and the opportunities, so they leave?”
Read: “Time for Women to Tackle the ‘Hour-Glass’ Ceiling,” by Anneli Knight, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 8, 2010
Exposing Unwritten Rules
Catalyst research has found that unwritten rules play a major role in career advancement. Here are some tips on navigating these invisible, yet powerful forces.
Read: “6 Steps to Take On the Unwritten Rules Keeping Women out of Leadership Roles,” by Lynn Harris, The Glass Hammer, April 9, 2010
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