Celebrate International Women’s Day with SYS

Please join SYS, Support Your Sisters, a virtual celebration of International Women’s Day.

3Plus International has created a space to Support Your Sisters – SYS – and to be supported by them. The campaign is up and running now and will extend through the weekend of International Women’s Day, May 8.

This is your opportunity to actively cheer about, show your appreciation and be cheered for by important women in your life.

 

What We’ve Done

Briefly, we have created a Pinterest Account, and a Facebook Page, both powered by 3Plus International, where you can pin pictures with captions or quotes dedicated to:

• an identified woman, or women, you support in her professional endeavors
• an identified woman, or women, who support and/or inspire you in your professional endeavors

or you might choose to post a picture that illustrates

• an inspiring quote about, by and for women. You can identify the person(s) to whom you dedicate the quote, or not.

How You Can Participate

Pinterest

1. If you have a Pinterest account, go to step 2. If not, read how to create one here. It will take just a few minutes. When you click the link you will discover that you need to request an invitation before you can create your account. No worries. You’ll get one by email within a day or two, but do it NOW,or at least SOON so you can participate in the celebration.
2. Once you create your account, follow 3PlusInt on Pinterest. We will follow you back.
3. Create a board called SYS or Support Your Sisters
4. Start pinning according to the topics specified in the bulleted list above. We will copy your pins to the 3Plus SYS Board where all the sisters (and supporting brothers) can see all the supportive and inspiring things we have to show and say about the women in our lives.

Facebook

Like SYS. Add comment, pictures, etc. You can even link your Pinterest, FB, twitter and other social media account. You know the drill.

What Got Us Started

Kathie Kinde began a discussion on 3Plus LinkedIn Group about women not supporting other women, or worse yet, outright clawing at and blaming each other. Not inclined to sit on the sidelines and do nothing, we decided to engage the 3Plus International community to role model something different. As often happens when women start collaborating and throwing ideas around, a project emerged.

With your support, we want to make this the beginning of an annual SYS day until supporting you sisters becomes part of every day, and every week and every month such that we change the culture from one where too often women tear down and battle each other, to one where we support each other. Why? Because, when one woman makes it, we all make it – if she reaches back to support another deserving woman.

Just imagine the day you can say “Things changed and I helped make it happen.”

So let the pinning and the posting begin!!

 

(3 + 2) Sweet Secrets of Women at the C-Suite

 

 

Over the course of the past year, we’ve been interviewing women at the C-suite, the still-too-few who have made it there. The intent is to pay forward what they know and do differently, specifically in relation to power. You can access the full report (to date) by clicking here. It is co-authored with Jane Perdue.

Highlights of the findings are available to readers of 3Plus International’s eGazine by way of a series of posts. The first in this series features Vera, a woman whose career could easily be divided into two chapters.

Chapter 1 – The Era of My Naivety (Notes from Vera’s Interview)

Vera:  “When I started my career as a software engineer in a Fortune 500 company, I thought if I did an outstanding job, the recognition and promotions would follow. It took me way too long and too many lunches eaten alone at my desk, while working, to learn it was not going to happen that way. But first, let me be clear about why I wanted to be at the C-Suite. I had more to give. I wanted to solve bigger problems, the kind that make it to the C-suite, to make a difference – in a substantive way. I wanted to use and to grow my talents, then use anew what I had grown. I still do.

Chapter 2 – Out from Behind the Desk

After many years, I finally got frustrated, and then..

I found mentors to teach me the rules of the game, which included:

1. Get more mentors
2. Network with intention
3. Solve important problems – ask forgiveness not permission

PLUS

1. Take risks -
2. Develop thicker skin

I took it as my personal and professional mission to talk to as many people as possible and uncover opportunities, which are problems that no one has solved – yet. Then I chose one and solve it. Then I chose another and solved it, and then another, and so on. Recognition and promotions followed, in part due to what I achieved for the business, and in part due to the network of people who were paying attention and supporting me along the way.

One Itsy-Bitsy Problem

High-tech is a male dominated industry, so my mentors were male. As much as they wanted to help and were willing to teach me the rules, they did not see the possibility of women at the C-suite and they were, therefor, not encouraging me. Why? Too many were stuck in a belief system in which women  were bound to leave the workforce after having children, and there was no question that she (in this case I) would have children. After my second child was born, most of my male colleagues wondered, and one asked, why I was still there. So, eventually I left the Fortune world where there would not be women at the C-suite for many years to come, and I hit the road for the start-up world. There I earned a position as COO and was asked to become the CEO.

My children are in their late teens now, but my chapter two approach hasn’t changed. Network, discover opportunities (unsolved problems), take risks, keep that thick skin because it’s not personal, it’s business.”

 

Vera Tice, BEECE, MSECE is a Chief Strategist | Business and R&D Engineering Executive at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where Vera and her group are “Reinventing Healthcare Delivery for the Future“ extending beyond hospitals to homes and mobile healthcare delivery through technology and process innovation. You can read more about Vera on LinkedIn

 

INTELLECTUAL Men of Google+ and the VAPID Women of Pinterest

What The Stats and The “Experts” Say

Men prefer Google+ to Pinterest. Well, statistically speaking anyhow.

Google+ has 90 million users. Two-thirds of them are men.

Women, however, make up 70%–80% of Pinterest’s 10.4 million user base and comprise 97% of its fans on Facebook.

As often happens, with the appearance of gender preference, arrives the implication that the product/service preferred by men must be superior. So it is with the buzz around Google+.

Huffington Post reporter Bianca Bosker polled her Google+ followers and, based on their feedback, concluded the “service’s primary purpose is to deliver information, spark discovery and foster conversation between users scattered all over the world”.

Vapid Women? Intellectual Men?

(Oops. Is that a fifty cent word? Women don your dictionaries.)

But while some respondents focused on the service’s advantages, others made use of the opportunity to disparage social media sites more closely associated with women.

Bosker notes that users credited “higher quality discussion… to the design of the site and its population of early adopters”. One respondent said “FB [Facebook] is like a gossip place… But the content is the important thing here”. Another replied, “On Google+ I really do feel like the average IQ of my online experience has doubled”.

Pinterest comes in for some spiteful belittling as seen in following graph (reposted or liked 2047 times as of February 1) from the blog “I Love Charts.”

These stats and the subtle, and not-so-subtle, insinuations making the rounds are authored by: @Techland @HuffPostTech @NetworkWorld @techcrunch and Good Magazine (Hating on the Ladies: The Real Backlash Against Pinterest) among others.

The jist of it seems to be Pinterest is full of superficial and rather pointless activities enjoyed by vapid women with time to waste. Google+ on the other hand, is a site dedicated to more intellectual pursuits and “conversation hubs”.

Ironically, the United States Army has a Pinterest account which, among other things, “presents a great platform for recruiting new soldiers”.

What Are These Sites, Anyhow?

Google+ much like Facebook provides for conversation and interest sharing between old friends and/or new ones. Its two big advantages are: permitting users to categorize sharing, and indexing posts which can drive traffic to users’ websites.

Pinterest at its most basic is creative curating, a “social commerce cleverly disguised as an aspirational visual scrapbook”. See how the health care industry uses Pinterest.

Grant McCracken over at Harvard Business Review, notes it is also, inadvertently, a rich source of information. “A lot of anthropology, ethnography, and market research is a search for the categories in people’s heads, so this is research for free, and the scholarly and commercial applications are extraordinary”. Unnervingly this view is echoed by Brendan Gallagher of Digitalis Health, who can “see pharmaceutical brands keeping an eye on the ‘disease state’ category”.

In the numbers wars, Pinterest “now beats YouTube, Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace for percentage of total referral traffic in January according to a Shareaholic study.”  As of mid-Febraury 2012 Pinterest had over 10 million unique monthly users – which means it is growing faster than any other site.

And this while Google+ seems to have stalled.

Both sites have advantages for marketing; both have strong appeal for networking and social interaction. But, while Google+ may pick up more female users with time, the predictions are that large numbers of men will not be joining Pinterest, although the majority of users in the UK are men. Once a site becomes “tarred” with the feminine brush, men seldom look past the stereotype.

Hmmmm…

So, does this say more about social media in general, Pinterest, Google+, cultural stereotypes, real differences between intellectual men and vapid women, something else, or all of the above?

Your thoughts?

 

And on a related topic you might enjoy this little tongue in cheek, video about vapid women who need to know their limits.

 

 

 

The complexity of corporate cultural fit

Hi Dorothy – I have recently been turned down for a senior global business development position where I was one of the final 2 candidates who went through a rigorous process, including testing and pursuit of references. I asked for feedback from the headhunter who told me that it was about minimal skill set differences between candidates which finally counted, but she also referenced a better cultural fit. The position involved international relocation so there was a discussion about possible family repatriation, including the requirement of school fees in the package. I have been divorced 3 times, but had children with my third husband. He is a headmaster, so the kids are with him Monday to Friday, because they attend his school. Although nothing was said, I just sensed when we were discussing this part of the process with the VP HR (female), a certain coolness setting in and change in attitude and that I was discriminated against because of my personal circumstances. My sector is not huge and I found out afterwards that even though I have more experience, the successful candidate was male, married, with a family. This would never happen to a man . Angelina

Hi Angelina – thanks for your mail. This is indeed complex.

Corporate culture and cultural fit is hard to define and varies from one organisation to another. It involves clearly stated organisational values, very often found in their web site mission statements. But perhaps more significantly, it  also touches upon an infinite number of intangibles and unwritten value codes which are hard to pin point and decipher.  Hiring managers are human beings with a range of personal opinions and values, which even subconsciously impact the hiring process. One person’s confident is another’s arrogant. Leadership, decision- making and communication styles, as well conflict resolution skills all come under the microscope. Age demographics play a role as do religious and cultural perceptions. Sometimes these can be superficially ascertained by researching the senior management and whoever is involved in the hiring process. What do people say about them in your network which you mention is not huge? Do they leave any clues via professional online profiles or other social media or in the press?  Why did you think the fit would be good?

On one point I would tend to agree is that men whose ex wives have custody of their children Monday-Friday would not generally be perceived in a negative way. In fact this might even be seen as an asset. I have also been involved in expatriate transfers where accommodation for child visits in the school vacations has been factored in because of budgetary impact (flights, larger housing etc) either for a single man transferring, or with a new family.  It is also very common for children to go to boarding schools in their passport country to avoid disruption to their academic progress.

Whether discrimination happened in your case as a mother who was willing to relocate, it’s impossible to say. If your sector is quite small, your personal circumstances might be public knowledge,  or perhaps you declared them openly as you did to me. The fact you weren’t cut earlier in what seems to have been a thorough and therefore expensive process, would suggest they may not have been critical factors.  I have known male candidates with multiple divorces rejected because of the personal values of the hiring managers.   They were family run and owned business

Expatriate
Expatriate appointments are never straightforward. Some companies prefer to re-locate single people because of cost and also because the success of the transfer might hinge on the partner and children relocating successfully. This is especially true where high levels of employee travel are involved, leaving the family isolated in a new country. Others favour family units which they perceive rightly or wrongly, to provide an anchor for the transition.

Testing
If you haven’t already received it, most companies will give more detailed de-briefing from any testing procedures carried out. This might provide some useful insights as to what type of organisation you should be targeting your next application. It might also be a useful investment to go through a testing process yourself (MBTI for example) that may also provide some answers for the future.

I would focus more on not on what didn’t work in this particular instance – but what strategy do I need to move forward to be successful next time.

Good luck!

Rethinking Youth

I went to the eye specialist a while ago and came out with a clean bill of health and a new prescription for glasses to take care of the inevitable effects of “Mother Nature and Father Time”, as my ophthalmologist is so fond of saying. The good news is, I can see much better than before.

The bad news is …

I can see much better than before. With my old glasses, I could fool myself into believing that the ravages of time had left me unaffected, relative to my peers. They were showing their age. My reflection, on the other hand, showed less evidence of it. And, in my vanity, I was rather proud of how I had been able to preserve my youthful look.

Uh-huh. The application of new eyewear gave me cause to pause as I looked into my usually friendly make-up mirror and saw my face, warts and all. Well, okay, I didn’t see any warts. What I did see was a long white hair growing out of my chin. It had smaller companions sticking defiantly and coarsely out of a variety of other areas of my face too. There were little blue and plum coloured veins spidering their way over my cheeks, heading for a nose that contained cavernous, moon-cratered pores. And the lines on my forehead and around my eyes resembled cracked earth at five thousand feet.

Rethinking
This new knowledge of myself compelled me to rethink my perspective as a “person of youth” and to dive for my tweezers and cover-up make-up with renewed fervor. And, more seriously, (or perhaps desperately), it has obliged me to look differently upon the whole notion of what constitutes a youthful woman. Thinking more deeply about it, I recall having met some very young eighty-year-old women and some very old thirty-year-old women as well.

It really comes down to attitude.

In a youthful eighty year old, it is not difficult to look past the creases, blotches and saggy bits that typically adorn their faces, and notice the aliveness in their eyes; the curiosity they show about things and people; and the energy they put into every day. It is this aliveness that makes them compelling and attractive. Young, old people are always learning. They are not content to sit on the sidelines of life simply because their bodies are in decline. They get on with their lives and inject into them the balm of good humour and the gracious resignation that allows them to look in the mirror and see more than the spectre of the grim reaper looking back at them. They accept themselves, as is, without regret and I would guess that those close to them love and admire them all the more for it.

Maybe for me, there will always be some measure of vanity but I’d like to think that as I age, I’ll also be lucky enough, and wise enough, to retain an aura of youth simply by being less interested in me and more interested in the people and things around me.

Gwyn Teatro

Check out our Events Page!

Don’t miss…. the first European

3Plus International Mini-Mentoring Event   Thursday, March 22nd 2012,  18.00 – 20.30

Renaissance Brussels Hotel, 19 Rue du Parnasse, 1050 Brussels

Visit our Events Page to read all about it!

 

Recovered from a breakdown: Declare or not in job search?

Dear Dorothy - I saw a tweet that went out from 3Plus and also from you about Katrina Alcorn and how she took time off work because she had suffered a breakdown. She was very open about it.  Her story resonated with me because I have been in a similar situation and don’t know how to deal with presenting this in terms of my future career now I am recovered. Should I do the same, or should I follow the standard process and reposition this difficult period of my life in a more positive light.  Where do your thoughts lie?  Mary Lynne, New Jersey

 

Hi Mary Lynne  – thanks for your question.  I’m sorry you had a difficult time.  This is indeed a challenging question. I remember absolutely the blog and my thoughts when I re-tweeted. But remember, because I RT’d it,  or it came from the 3Plus account,  it doesn’t necessarily mean I, or we, endorse every word – just that it’s a point of view worth considering.

As with many situations that occur in career transition – it depends.  I’m based in Europe where as Katrina points out parental leave conditions tend to be more generous than in the US, related to the  conditions of the country in which the woman lives. Sick pay schemes I would say, are the norm rather than the exception,  unlike many other regions.

Katrina took a bold step in taking her issues public.  I don’t know the detail of her motivation. In doing so,  she perhaps took measured decisions regarding her long term professional and personal  goals, as well as her life values. Or maybe it was part of an unconscious therapeutic process to help her move forward. Her stance also became a campaign for better conditions for working mothers.

Katrina also points out the need to be authentic which is important,  because  there will still be a gap in your resumé that needs explaining.  If you try to cover up too deeply, then a seasoned interviewer will know something is amiss.

Future stability

The hiring process is expensive and time consuming.  Organisations want an indication of future stability from new hires. That is understandable and normal.  Only you can tell when the right time is to declare or re-position a health issue if you are choosing to return to corporate life.  There is nothing wrong in telling someone that you made a decision to spend time at home with your child or take a career break. That is becoming increasingly common.   What you have to exhibit that that you can be relied on in the future.  Any information about medication and pre-existing  conditions will be requested in a medical examination if one is required.  The  type of medication, dosage and length of time you took it, will indicate to any good doctor the severity of your condition and its implications.  I would definitely not lie or camouflage.

However a breakdown or any type of mental illness is a red flag that something in our lives is out of alignment. So before  considering a return to corporate life some deep refection is vital.  If the trigger was work related -  perhaps it is simply not for you. Sometimes the triggers are external factors, stresses such as divorce, a bereavement and accident or other issues which might suggest a different outcome.

In general, I am super cautious about sharing deeply personal experiences on the internet. It works for some as part of a moving forward process, but once posted, any detail is there forever,  so an action which should be considered carefully. If you want to campaign for a cause or use a public forum for catharsis, that’s fine. If not,  in 10 years time you may not want the minutiae of an experience you have put behind you lingering in cyberspace.

Hope this helps and good luck.

Shannon’s Personal Branding Diary

Dorothy starts..
I was delighted to ” meet” Shannon the 3Plus prize winner from our first mini- mentoring event in New York. In our introductory session I asked her to outline what goals she might want to achieve from the 3 coaching sessions that were now available to her.

Shannon started off by saying that she wasn’t really looking for career coaching or personal branding! She was happy in her job, didn’t want to leave and was also restricted by compliance regulations in her sector in the way in which she could promote herself on online platforms such as LinkedIn. OK – that was a good start!

She suggested therefore that as she was facing challenges in closing some deals in her current role, support in this area could be helpful. As an ex sales trainer I could certainly do that. However, as a career coach I wanted her to explore the possible connection between her need for support in her every day business life, with a reluctance to raise her visibility via a personal brand and to promote herself professionally.

Shannon continues…

“I had mixed feelings about the idea of personal coaching. It wasn’t something that I had really considered as a necessity to my career or mental attitude. Well let me say here, at the beginning, BOY was I wrong.

Before we had out first meeting over Skype, Dorothy had sent me an e-mail with a request that I spend some time reflecting on my career and life goals as well as the challenges I had encountered, the actions I had taken and the results which had ensued and the skills I needed to do all this.

First session!

No messing around….Dorothy jumped right into it. She said that although my CV was fine and that I had a lot to be proud of, what she felt was missing was that there was no real selling point in both my CV and LinkedIn profile. For full online disclosure, I am somewhat constrained by professional guidelines, so have a few personal hesitations, but my resume is something over which I obviously have full control. Dorothy explained to me that I was the “CEO of brand me” and I needed to consider how I wanted to be perceived by my professional network.  If my professional skills are my product, would I buy me?

Digging deep

The next challenge was to make a list of my professional attributes. Now this might seem easy to some people, but if you are anything like me, which I think many women are, stating professional/personal attributes and skills is not comfortable.  We all have different reasons for this.  One of my reasons is that I fear rejection,  I mentally separate myself from my accomplishments, so that way you can’t really judge me or reject me because they aren’t really me. Well, after a few very awkward, sometimes silent minutes, Dorothy proclaimed she was not going to do this exercise for me.

I listed a few words that I thought described me pretty well; persistent, empathetic, experienced financial professional, etc. Well, Dorothy went through every word I listed and challenged me again on the implications of each one and asked me to think about what I was really saying. I suggested that I was  “an experienced financial professional with 15 years of experience”. Ok.  Not bad. That’s  all true.

But  more to the point, when pushed I finally came up with  “  a dedicated professional with 15 years financial industry experience. Deep functional expertise in direct marketing with $1B in capital raised from institutional quality investors. Strong business acumen with broad based product knowledge and C level experience. Determined self-starter, skilled negotiator and effective communicator”

Honestly who would you pay attention to?

Owning accomplishments

Dorothy explained to me that I needed to “own” my accomplishments career. As she said “you are your business”.  This concept not only applies to networking profiles and resumes, but also to networking events,  how I am perceived in the office, conferences, etc.

We wrapped up the hour with some homework assignments, two simple exercises which I actually found to be quite helpful.  The first, The Brain Game shows your comfort zone and which areas of your multiple intelligences can use a ”work out”. The brainpower game had my strengths as logical-mathematical (makes sense), visual and intrapersonal and my weakness by far as verbal-linguistic.

The second game, wordle is a neat application where you can type in a bunch of words, hit a button and the application mixes those words into a fun design. Dorothy wanted me to list the skills and accomplishments we had worked on during our session. Being very visually oriented (see above), the wordle game hit home for me, it may sound simplistic to some of you out there but something about seeing your name and your accomplishments like this made me feel like it was more real to me and I felt proud of what I had done. If you get a chance it takes a few minutes and is a lot of fun.

Goal/ Action

As for something I needed to work on, my verbal-linguistic skills, I had thought about that for awhile. Now it was time to take action. I am terrible public speaker, but I don’t want to be. So my solution was to join a low cost group called Toastmasters. They have many chapters around the globe and who meet regularly, at least once or twice a month. It is a supportive environment where everyone is in the same boat and moving towards the same goals.”

Next time – Session 2!!!

Shannon Lewis is Senior Vice-President at R6 Capital G             

Women matter: Why gender balance is smart

Women matter.  Women in leadership matter. Women in leadership make companies better. And it isn’t that hard to get more women into leadership positions.

These statements convey the core message of four reports, all called Women matter, that were produced by McKinsey & co. between 2007 and 2010. These reports have become extremely influential, providing basic research for pushing the discussion about gender balance forward. The research results in Woman matter help us argue that creating the circumstances for women to advance is not just right, it’s also smart.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve written one entry each on about the four Women matter reports. An even briefer synopsis is given here, with links to the blog entries, which in turn lead you to the original reports.

Research

The first report, Gender diversity: a corporate performance driver, looks for a correlation between the organizational excellence a company achieves and the percentage of women on its leadership team. And it finds that correlation: a gender balanced leadership team enhances organizational excellence, which in turn enhances profitability.

The correlation is studied more carefully in the second report, Female leadership: a competitive edge for the future. Why would it be the case that the presence of more women in a leadership team gives better results? Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the correlation suggests a different causality, going the other direction: companies that perform well can afford to invest in gender balance, and therefore have the luxury of doing what is right, even if it isn’t necessarily smart.

But, fear not. Women matter 2 studies different types of leadership behaviors and establishes that women and men use different behaviors to different degrees. These different behaviors correlate with success factors, such that more success factors are achieved when the leadership collectively has a wider variety of behaviors. In other words, it is women in leadership that enhance profitability, not the other way around.

13 Initiatives

Women leaders: a competitive edge in and after the crisis looks at the kinds of actions that are taken by companies to enhance gender diversity. 13 different initiatives are identified. Several hundred companies are then surveyed and asked two questions. Which of these initiatives do you practice? Is gender diversity a strategic goal for your company?

The initiatives and the results of the survey are presented in this third report. We learn — not surprisingly — that companies which strategically prioritize gender diversity work implement more initiatives than those that don’t. And we also learn which of the initiatives they implement.

Finally, in Women at the top of corporations: making it happen, the 13 initiatives are studied for their effectiveness. This report identifies which of the initiatives correlate with a high number of women in leadership positions in a company. The single most important factor correlating with higher percentages of women in company leadership is the engagement of the CEO. Throughout all four of the Women matter reports, in fact, it becomes clear that without engagement at the top, results are going to be limited.

Initiatives that work

Nearly half of the initiatives are shown to be ineffective in increasing the number of women in leadership, as I discuss on my blog. This is important information because all of the initiatives seem reasonable and important. Here we learn which ones actually work.

If we are going to push organizations to step up their work on gender balance and to create fair workplaces for men and women, we must develop good arguments that this work is good for companies. The Women matter reports are a major contribution to this work; they raise questions for more research, and they inspire us to engage and convince those who lead our organizations.

Curt Rice

A 3Plus Mentor Pays It Forward

Dorothy Dalton, co-founder, and I, Anne Perschel, chief inspiration officer and vp mentoring & sponsorships, are deeply honored.

Why?

Gabriella Sanino, founder of Level343, an SEO and copywriting company, has decided she and her crew over at Level 343 will pay it forward by way of mentoring in 2012, and they’ve chosen 3Plus International as their platform for doing so. But for Ms. Sanino, hands up and down the most generous person I’ve encountered in the social media sphere, being a mentor is simply not enough. After attending 3Plus’ webinar, Everything You Need to Know About Being A Mentor (required to become a 3plus certified mentor), she has written a thoughtful post about her new found insights on mentoring. She goes on to encourage others to become and to seek a mentor.

You can read her post here.

and you can

Follow her on twitter here.

Engage. You will be grateful that you did.

And if you too are interested in being a mentor or finding one contact 3Plus here.

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