The importance of mentors

May 15, 2013

In a recent newsletter I mentioned that I've never had a mentor (sniff), and asked people to tell me whether they'd had good experiences of mentorship. The more I read, the more importance mentorship seems to acquire in terms of our ability to have a successful career. And mentorship for women gets special attention, because traditionally women have been less likely than men to be able to find a mentor in the first place. I heard from a few people in response to that newsletter and am including some of what they said below. Everyone who wrote was writing from the perspective of being a mentee rather than a mentor, and they were very glad they'd had the chance to be mentored. I recently wrote a short piece on how to find a mentor for Metro, which came out earlier this week. Some of what I wrote was cut for space, and that missing stuff dealt with recommendations such as, as the mentee, not to expect the relationship to be all one-way (i.e. don't just suck everything up without giving anything back), and another tip from Sheryl Sandberg, which I thought was sensible: don't ask a mentor questions you could find the answers to online. I guess Sandberg herself gets asked a lot of repetitive questions. I can pretty much guarantee that Mrs. Moneypenny, who features in the latest show, would concur with that no-nonsense advice. For more on how to set up the mentor/mentee relationship so that it's effective, here are some tips from Careerstone Group.

And here are a couple of responses from listeners:

"I got involved heavily in Missouri state politics when I ran for office in 2010 and have been able to move up fairly quickly in the field ever since. I would not have been able to do it without many helpful mentors along the way. For me, it hasn't been just one person. Instead, it has been multiple individuals who I have come into contact with that have helped me learn new methods and have recommended me for higher positions. I could never have done it without them, on top of, of course, putting in a lot of hard work on my own in learning the field."

That speaks to something Tiffany Dufu of Levo League told me during our interview for Metro - that women need multiple mentors, partly because there may not be one person at work who fits the bill, so you have to look outside, and to have male and female mentors. You could easily argue the same for a man, but in general each sex sees their ideal mentor as someone of their own gender (and I suspect this is especially true for men). It's a lot harder for women to find female mentors than it is for men to find male ones, simply because there are fewer senior women to tap.

Here's a listener and friend of mine who works in a male-dominated industry - construction:

"Reading this reminded me of a female mentor I had at my first architecture job after grad school, and it's *also* reminded me that without her I doubt I would ever have been interested in going into construction...while I'm proud of being a female in construction, and I'd like to think that I got to this point because of talent and skill, I can't forget that a lot of my strength and faith that I could do something like this probably came from seeing this woman do it back in New Jersey ten years ago, very much in a man's world."

All of which sounds pretty inspiring. I must get to work on finding one myself. 

Tips for women entrepreneurs

May 8, 2013

I attended the Women Entrepreneurs Rock the World conference today in New York. Shortly after my arrival, as an inspriational, 'ra-ra' type of welcome ensued (far too 'you go girl' for my cynical, British-born soul) I was worried. Was this going to be too airy, not serious, and overly populated with women who have fashion brands? There is nothing wrong with fashion and beauty - I do my share to support the industry - but sometimes I get frustrated, thinking it's all anyone thinks women care about. Until today, anti-fashion snob that I am, I'd never heard of Heather Thomson of Yummie shapewear, former designer to such stars as P Diddy and Jennifer Lopez. But I got a lot out of her talk. Here are some takeaways. Below you'll find a few more from two other talks by Amanda Steinberg and Simon Sinek.

• "Luck and fate play a big role in success," she said. Thank God. I get sick of hearing that we all "make our own luck". It's true to a certain extent, but it doesn't cover the whole of that big, fat rollercoaster of life, with its major ups and downs. "Sometimes the timing is just off," she continued. "It'll come back around."
• She was adamant that entrepreneurs need to protect their ideas. That means legally. "Your ideas are your money and your future," and if you don't protect them, your luck will certainly be challenged. She has 11 patents out on her designs for women's shapewear. And she's fighting Spanx in court.
• She had terrible mentors (mentors being the holy grail for ambitious women, according to literature and anecdotal evidence), but she said they provided good lessons anyway. "My bad mentors became my what-not-to-do."
• She was not at ease with the numbers side of her business to begin with, never having run a business previously. She had someone help her write her business plan and then listed the top five people she wanted to finance the business and knew had the money to do so. One of them said yes.

Simon Sinek talked about the hormones that drive our behaviors, and the need for female leadership. But he didn't mean leaders who are female. He meant leaders, male or female, who choose to lead in a 'female' way, i.e. with more compassion, using more traditionally female values. We run the risk of wading into stereotype territory here. But that's never stopped me before.

• "[Business] shouldn't all be about short-term gains and competition," Sinek said, blaming men for the parlous state of the economy and the fact that so many people are hugely stressed in their jobs (due to bad, 'male' type management). "In business school we teach male leadership." That should change, he believes. There's actually a book out on the topic of female thinking right now, 'The Athena Doctrine'. The Daily Telegraph reviewer takes a fairly dim view of it. 

I think Sinek's ideas make sense in theory, but there hasn't been enough practice yet to enable us to know whether a more caring, sharing type of leadership style will produce a happier, more engaged workforce. I'd like to think it would, but sometimes the law of unintended consequences comes into play (did I mention I was cynical?)

Amanda Steinberg of Daily Worth is someone I've heard speak before and was keen to hear again. She's a no-nonsense breath of fresh air.

• She said women need to stop saying things like "I'm bad with money". Essentially she was saying that if that's the tape you play over and over, that's what you'll be. But if you change the record (sorry, mixing musical metaphors here) you can change your approach to money, your whole thought process around it. Women also need to "stop saying 'I just want to make enough'". Again, if you say 'enough', enough is all you'll make.
• Steinberg said women entrepreneurs tend to be unrealistic about what it takes to sell their business or idea, and that to close one deal, you start with 100 prospects, get that down to 20 leads, which leads to four opportunities, which in turn results in one deal. Maybe. Too many women come to her complaining about a lot of 'nos', only for her to find out 'a lot' means six rejections. 
• Advice to women on being told 'no': take two hours to be emotional about it if you need to, feel the intense rejection and then move on. 
• "Make sure you're serving a market that can afford to pay you," she said, citing the example of a woman who set herself up as a coach for the unemployed. 
• Steinberg also has this piece in the Wall Street Journal about women and their 'rescue fantasies', which I highly recommend. "I don't want my daughter to think boys are the bank," she writes. 

It's really good.

Appearance and power

April 30, 2013

I was listening to the BBC this morning when an item came on about how the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher's hairstyle has become popular in London since her death earlier this month. Hard to believe, I thought to myself, given that the bouffant style surely says, to everyone under a certain age 'older woman' (and depending on your political views, a lot of other things as well). I can't link you to the radio piece, but here's a Daily Mail article on the Thatcher hairstyle phenomenon. What struck me about the BBC segment was that the hairdresser who is apparently seeing this uptick in demand, one Maximilliano Centini, claims that some customers tell him they want the famous 'do' because their job is lousy but they can't quit because of the recession (which is very pronounced in the UK) and that a Thatcher hairstyle makes them feel more powerful. He's quoted in the Mail as saying this:

"What I like is that women are using it to give their lives and general attitudes a boost. Many of them tell me that they step out of the chair with more confidence."

Now, I should let non-Brits know that the Daily Mail is a Tory paper through and through (in other words they openly support the Conservative party and are natural Thatcher fans), so they would talk up a 'trend' like this. But I still think it's interesting for what it says about some women's perception of power and looks in the wake of Thatcher's death. An actress called Flora Raffles MacLoughlin, who is reputedly young (late 20s/early 30s according to Centini) and has assumed the famous do, is quoted thus:

"It is the perfect mix of feminine style with a hint of masculine power. I think for a modern woman that is now an ideal balance."

I'm still pondering that statement. Hairstyles are everything to many women - when our hair looks good, we feel good. It's as simple as that. And having a Thatcher do would certainly take care of my own hair's tendency to go wild at the merest hint of moisture. Still, I wouldn't be myself, which I think is another important element of style, and I'm not sure aping the coiffure of a famous and powerful world leader would, in my case, make me feel more like said leader. I'll take a slick blow dry over a Thatcher do any day. My confidence certainly soars after one of those.

My next show will focus on the importance, or not, of appearance to women's careers. We'll also touch on the part it plays in men's working lives. But no matter how you slice it, women seem to feel under more pressure than men to look good during the working day. I'll break that down with two guests who work in very different environments, one involving desks and computers, the other grease and machinery.

The pitfalls of undervaluing yourself

April 18, 2013

I was in an email exchange this week with a friend who has been interviewing for a new job. She's been quite busy meeting potential employers, and mentioned that in one recent first interview, she was not expecting the topic of money to come up. She thought it was too early. It wasn't. The interviewer suddently piped up with, "How much are you looking to make?" Here's what happened next.

"Caught off guard, I totally lowballed my answer. Right now I am kicking myself.  It's like someone totally takes over. I guess there's still time to negotiate once I actually get an offer. But still, why oh why do I keep doing that?"

I sympathize. Actually, I empathize. It's exactly the kind of thing I'd do. As I've said in my recent Metro column and on the show, women undervalue ourselves all the time. It's so ingrained in many of us that we're not worth much, and we have such trouble saying we deserve things, that unless we have strenuously prepared to talk about money and rehearsed what we're going to say, we revert to type. Meaning we go right back to that inner voice, passed down through milennia, that says, "Who the hell do you think you are asking for that kind of money? You know you're not worth that much." Our comfort level with our own worth is a comfort level with low worth.

Whether our pathetic sense of our worth comes down to centuries of doing unpaid work (household, maternal) and being expected to be happy with that, I don't know, but I'd say it's a decent possibility. Women are still largely expected to be givers, not takers. It offends both sexes' expectations when we put up a good fight for money, and sometimes the discussion or its aftermath doesn't go well (which leads some, such as writer and women's advocate Joan Williams, to say women are wise not to bother with this dance at all, a view I vehemently disagree with). The back story to the tale I told in my Metro column is that if my colleague had not told me to ask for that 25 percent raise, I would never have dared done so. I probably would have asked for 10 percent, but never 25. I did it because I thought, "If Kelly says I should ask for that, and she's been here 10 years, I bet she knows what she's talking about." Obviously I'm glad I followed her advice, because I got the raise.

Women's tendency to under-negotiate, or not do so at all, is one of the reasons for the pay gap. While this isn't a foolproof answer, I believe being aware of how much we undervalue ourselves can help to keep us on our mental toes when it comes to the kinds of unexpected discussion my friend found herself having. Money is such an uncomfortable topic for a lot of women that we avoid thinking about it whenever possible. I'm up against this myself as I attempt to work out a budget for the show and how much I, Ashley, am worth. Naturally my inner voice says, "You? Worth something? Are you mad?!" But I will press on, trying to train myself out of my appalling mental habits - exacerbated, I'm sure, by my English upbringing. 

The more we know about the subtle psychological hangups we have, and the more we learn about the art of negotiating - and it really is an art - the better. I highly recommend the book Ask For It, by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever. This is a great piece by Rachel Simmons and Jessica Bacal on why it's so important for young women to learn how to negotiate - and not just for money. 

And if you're interested in some radio, this is the first public radio story I did on women and negotating. The second is more of a 'how to' and follows up with one of the characters from the first piece. 

Good luck.