Are women's networking groups useless?

June 13, 2013

I'm a relative newcomer to networking. When I worked as a reporter for a public radio show, I was in the office almost every day, busy from 9.30 to 6ish, or 4a.m. to noon, and glad to go home at the end of the day having met my deadline and got on the air. I didn't think about networking. I was thoroughly engaged where I was, and the word had something unpleasant about it, something fake and schmooze-festy, a tinge of falseness I didn't associate with myself. 

Once I was out on my own, the word acquired a whole new meaning. Now I network whenever I can, within reason. Often, simply because of the nature of what I'm doing with this show, I'm at networking events with other women. That can be great - I think women let their hair down when they're with other women - but there have been several times when I've been at such events and wondered whether they are helping me in any way whatsoever. The whole point of networking is to meet people who can help you in some way with your career or business and who you may be able to help in return. When I interviewed an entrepreneur for a public radio story last year, she agreed that there's a tendency for a group of women to forget what they're there for:

"One of most infuriating things for me going out is when I attend certain women-in-business functions and it’s a social club." 

It turns out things may not be much better within large companies, although not because these networking groups function as social clubs. In this piece in the Harvard Business Review, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox (now there's a name for you) says most in-company women's groups are doing nothing to advance women within the company. I'll quote one of my favorite paragraphs:

"A group of men who decide (or are told by government) that they need more women in their teams turn to the few women in senior roles and task them with finding a solution. The women, delighted with this glimmer of interest in their fate, duly throw themselves (in their free time, on top of their day jobs) into launching usually unfunded corporate women's networks and draft a business case on the corporate advantages of gender balance. A senior woman is put in charge and sent to every external conference as a corporate representative. This results in a women's conference with lots of motivational speakers and a few male 'champions' to encourage the girls. Sound familiar?"

It does. I have a friend who works at a large global media company who describes her firm's efforts to advance women in just this way - she says the men at the firm see the women's networking groups, think, "The women are off doing their thing", and stay firmly in their own firmament. The result is that at the firm's conferences and events, it's still an all-white-male lineup. The men shrug, sure that they're making large efforts on their female colleagues' behalf, yet still they don't seem able to climb the ladder. I highly recommend Wittenberg-Cox's piece, in which she suggests ways this situation can be turned around, including instituting accountability for managers who are tasked with building more balanced teams, and instead of women's networks, having what she calls 'balance networks' with both sexes (if you heard the last show you'll know I can't stand the word 'gender', but here it is anyway, coming from Wittenberg-Cox).

"Their goal becomes skill- and bridge-building around gender understanding rather than segregation."

I'd love to hear from anyone in the comments who has strong views on women's networking groups - in-house or otherwise.

How to overcome guilt at work

June 12, 2013

(This post originally appeared on The Hired Guns blog.)

Recently I was at a conference for female entrepreneurs when a young business owner got up to ask one of the panelists a question: “How do you deal with Mommy guilt?” I wasn’t inspired by the answer, which consisted of the usual fudge along the lines of spending ‘quality time’ with the kids.

I wish she’d said what women need to hear, which is, essentially, “Don’t feel guilty.”

Guys don’t tend to have a problem with guilt – or if they do, they keep it to themselves. But women? We have a full-on, all consuming relationship with this wearying emotion. Most men are not constantly obsessing over something they may have said to upset someone at work, or worrying about a favor they didn’t do, and they’re certainly not tying themselves in knots over being away from their children during the working day. But because women are so geared towards relationships, we are excellent at feeling awful about anything that could harm those relationships.

I’m just as, well, guilty as any other woman on this front, but I am gradually training myself not to be. I’ve been inspired in this regard by some influential women, among them Financial Times columnist Mrs. Moneypenny, otherwise known as Heather McGregor. She runs her own headhunting business in London and is married with three sons. She’s also the author of a book called Mrs. Moneypenny’s Career Advice for Ambitious Women.

“I don’t do guilt,” McGregor told me recently. “It eats at your self-confidence and you feel terrible all the time. That drains you of energy to do anything useful, or to move forward in your life.”

And if there’s anything professional women need, it’s time, energy, and the ability to focus. Guilt eats into all three.

Guilt also comes in various flavors. Here’s how to avoid the worst of them:

‘I screwed up’ guilt
How often have you felt awful for unintentionally hurting someone’s feelings, or making a mistake at work? There’s a simple answer, according to McGregor. Accept the blame, apologize quickly, rectify things to the best of your ability, and then move on. Don’t wallow in your error, and don’t say ‘sorry’ multiple times. A female friend recently told me the story of a young man who works for her. He screwed up royally, she reprimanded him, he said sorry once, took the rap, and never referred to it again. She was half-envious, half-admiring. She knew if she’d been in the same situation, she’d have beaten herself up for days.

‘Saying no’ guilt
Women are really good at feeling bad about saying no. But if you want to achieve a lot at work, and in the rest of your life, and maintain some semblance of sanity, you’re going to have to say no to various requests, from taking on extra work to appearances at your children’s school.

Heather McGregor is pragmatic: “First, acknowledge that you can’t be everywhere. You will just be average at everything if you try to do too much…no one will get proper attention.” She’s missed plenty of parent/teacher conferences (her husband goes to those) and sports events. She points out that you can “say no in a positive way”. If a contact asks her for a favor she doesn’t consider worth her time, she always responds with a polite ‘no’, but also makes a few suggestions that could help the person with their request.

Mommy guilt
A friend of mine — an entrepreneur and mother of two — has heard comments like: “You’re probably too ambitious to have another baby” (she wasn’t). She also said that one of her young son’s friends recently mistook the family nanny for Mom, because he saw the nanny so much more often. This stuff used to bother her, but it no longer does, because she loves working. She also feels she’d be a lousy stay-at-home mom. She doesn’t feel guilty.

McGregor says one way around any creeping feelings of guilt is to communicate openly with your children (when they’re old enough to understand) about why you can’t always be there. Her honesty extends to explaining that she brings home the bacon and that if her business suffers, so will their ability to pay for their house, go on family vacations, and receive a good education. She says women need to look after themselves first, then their children, citing the airline oxygen mask example (put on your own mask first, then help your child). “If you are healthy and breathing and OK, if your career is going well, if you’re earning well and able to provide for your family, your family will be better off,” she says.

Also, remember there’s a whole industry out there to make women feel guilty. Playing on our emotions is what sells products. Don’t succumb.

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Men on men

June 6, 2013

It was so much easier in the old days!

“The fact that the only way you can spout off this misogynistic gunk is online, anonymously, because you’re actually afraid to say what you really think in front of other people, both men and women, I think this is a sign of progress!” - Michael Kimmel, sociolgist

I'm just putting the finishing touches on the next show, the so-called Man Show, which will consist of three men and me. As I've been working on it this week a slew of relevant articles has landed in my (virtual) lap. There's this short piece by Lisa Belkin on The Huffingon Post referencing this excellent Business Week article on 'alpha dads'. Both articles draw attention to the topic of men who seek to spend more time with their families, taking the kind of active part in their children's lives that for many men is confined to weekends. They also focus on guilt, something I'm about to post about, and the fact that men are not troubled by guilt the way women are. The Business Week piece refers to 'puddles' of the stuff accumulating at women's feet. So true. Perhaps some of this guilt is linked to our biology (after all, we do incubate these little creatures) but so much of it comes from society's expectations for women and the pressure we put on ourselves. I also enjoyed this blog post, 'Apparently I am Destroying Civilization' by female breadwinner Mama Unabridged - there's a lot in there, with a cameo appearance by Lou Dobbs, Juan Williams and a couple of other Fox News guys (all angry).

Back to my male guests for a minute. I took a few things away from the discussion with the three of them. They're all steeped in gender studies (hate that word) in one way or another. 

• Most men are well meaning and don't want to be jerks. They don't want to offend women at work - or anywhere else - by 'saying the wrong thing', but they're not necessarily sure what the wrong (and right) things are. Men are afraid to ask questions for fear of sounding stupid or sexist. They see President Obama get hauled over the coals for complimenting the California attorney general on her looks and think, 'See. Women are so sensitive these days. I'm keeping my mouth shut.'

• Very few people or companies are having honest conversations about equality at work and what that means. Men think of equality at work as a woman's issue, not something they need to involve themselves in. Which is crazy. Plus, because men and women tend not to discuss women's experiences at work together, men can easily remain clueless about aggravating things women may regularly be experiencing (and vice versa). Which in turn can lead to the 'women are all a bunch of whiners' retort, which I've heard a lot.


• A lot of men would love to escape what some feel is a societal straightjacket - the idea that they have to be the breadwinners, that they can't take paternity leave because it paints them as un-career-minded. But Michael Kimmel (quoted above) says a lot of the pressure to be a certain way comes not from women, but from other men. 

The new show will be out on Monday.

The importance of asking for help

May 31, 2013

"Me and other very successful entrepreneurs came from the school of, 'Don’t you dare ask for help, that would be admitting a weakness.' But boy is it liberating to say, 'I don’t have all the answers.'"

- Maureen Borzacchielo, CEO, Creative Display Solutions

I have a friend who sees asking for help as a weakness. Increasingly, I see it as a strength. He believes seeking and finding his own answers to problems is the way to go through life. Admittedly this came up in a conversation we had a couple of years ago about therapy. I thought he could benefit from it and was quite surprised when he said he'd been thinking about it. But the next time we spoke, he'd decided against it. He preferred, he said, to wrangle with any family issues and inner demons internally. 

I thought of this again when I read this excellent post by Henna Inam on The Glass Hammer this week. The piece is aimed at women. So why did I begin this by talking about a man? Because I believe that while men usually rely on themselves when it comes to personal issues and where their egos are involved (like asking for directions) they're much better about seeking help and asking for favors in business. Women are more like my friend when it comes to work - we tend to rely on ourselves, thinking we have to do everything alone. We fear people will judge us as somehow lacking if we ask for help. 

Not asking for help is one of the reasons, I believe, that women lag men's success in the workplace. I interviewed entrepreneur Maureen Borzacchielo for a Marketplace radio story last year, and one of the things she told me was that the female entrepreneurs she mentored did not ask other businesspeople for enough help. Maureen herself hadn't done enough of this at the start of her life as a small business owner. Heather McGregor, who I interviewed for the penultimate show on women's appearance at work, also feels strongly that the only way to excel at work is to ask for help both at work and at home.

Tips for the help-shy: 

• I wasn't that conscious of this until I interviewed Maureen and she articulated it: many women aspire to perfection. We feel we have to do everything ourselves, and do it perfectly. But that's just not possible, and the sooner we come to terms with this the better. 

• This point seems so obvious when you look at it on the page, but it isn't always when you're in the thick of things, as Maureen was when she was starting out: "I met Russell Simmons at an event Tory Burch hosted…and he said he learned by seeking out people who were more successful than him. That’s OK. When did we [women] decide it wasn’t OK?" 
   
• Don't think of it as bothering people. This is such a woman thing. Henna Inam puts this really well when she asks you to think of a time someone asked you for help - you probably felt flattered they'd chosen you.

• Give help to get help. Heather McGregor has asked for a lot of help with her children over the years because she has always worked. She's had nannies, but she has also relied on family, friends and neighbors to step in. "If you’re not helping others you are not building a team," she says. "You need a sustainable community – you may never need to call the favor back in, but that doesn’t matter. You may watch someone else’s children, and you may have grown children, but you may go away unexpectedly and need someone to feed the cat." Having this community of willing helpers, who she and her family help in return, has helped her concentrate on her business.
   
• I've just signed up for a series of coaching sessions with a digital marketing strategist, and the feeling of relief that came over me when I hung up the phone was huge. It was like the clichéd weight being lifted from my shoulders. I just cannot do it all when it comes to the gazillion things, digital and otherwise, I need to do for The Broad Experience and to 'get myself out there'. I need help.