“I learned the importance of sponsorship along the way,” said Lisa Davis, Director and Global Product Manager at Citi Global Transaction Services. “And I didn’t realize what a sponsor was until I didn’t have one.”

She recalled a year when she didn’t get a promotion she was expecting. “I had the whole package – on paper – but when I asked why I wasn’t promoted, my manager said, ‘well, nobody knows you.’”

Davis was speaking at The Glass Hammer’s recent event for lesbian professionals on “being out at work.” Moderated by Jill Schlesinger, Editor-at-Large of CBSMoneyWatch.com, the panelists included Jennifer Barbetta, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, Alternative Investments & Manager Selection, Goldman Sachs; Lisa Davis, Director and Global Product Manager, Citi Global Transaction Services; Lee A. Merkle-Raymond, Strategic Solutions Executive, Bank of America Merrill Lynch; and Marion Regnier, Senior Associate, PwC. They discussed issues like coming out at work, the importance of sponsors and networking, and the value of top-level support for LGBT issues.

Davis, who is co-chair of Citi’s Metro NYC Pride network, said she spent the following year making sure everyone knew who she was.

Sponsorship and Networking

“A sponsor is someone who says, ‘I’m going to vouch for this person,’” Davis explained.

Merkle-Raymond continued, “As a sponsor, you have to put yourself on the line and it comes back to your own credibility.” If the person you vouched for fails, she explained, that makes you look bad too. So, she continued, if you’re seeking a sponsor, make sure you have the skills to follow through on your responsibilities. “It means building up your own credibility so that people want to sponsor you.”

Regnier said she has met sponsors by strengthening relationships with people she has worked with internally and externally. “I’ve found sponsors in different ways – by leveraging the networking relationships that I have outside the firm, and in the firm, leveraging relationships I have with the people I’ve worked with.”

“I’ve never sought out LGBT sponsors specifically,” interjected Barbetta. “But LGBT networking can only be additive to your career development. And as you get more senior, the network of relationships you build becomes increasingly important. Having those relationships enables me to draw upon the expertise of other people in the firm – to know who to call when a new challenge or opportunity arises.”

Merkle-Raymond agreed. “BAML has a significant number of networks. And, for me, they have been critical if I end up with a problem and need to know how to solve it.”

Davis added, “Affinity networks are absolutely important and key for the business. Especially in the financial services industry.”

Coming Out

Schlesinger asked the panelists to discuss how they came out at work. Regnier began, “For me, it was a decision. At my previous firm, I was in the closet for two years, and I kind of felt like I was lying, or just avoiding the truth. When I joined PwC, they had a great event on National Coming Out Day and I was like, ‘Wow – all of these senior people are out. What am I afraid of?’”

She continued, “Counting people who knew and didn’t know and keeping a list takes a lot of energy.”

Barbetta agreed. “Work is stressful enough. To expend any energy or effort on hiding who you are – at some point for me, it just wasn’t worth it.” She said she gradually came out to colleagues. “When I first joined the firm, I never lied about who I was, but I just sort of withheld information about my personal life. It was a process that took time. I think for me it was about becoming more comfortable with myself, becoming more confident and mature.”

Davis said she never had an actual “coming out” event either. “When we had events, I just thought it would be okay if I showed up with my partner. I never had the notion that I needed to be strategic about it. If people found out, they found out.”

Merkle-Raymond said she had been out since starting her career. She was initially warned against it, but, in fact, being out actually provided her a boost. “I came to orientation with a pink triangle pin on my lapel, and my senior manager said, ‘You’re never going to get promoted if you tell people you’re out.’ And I said, ‘What about the five other guys who are out in our group?’”

She decided to come out at work anyway. And in fact, she continued, working on a task force to secure partner benefits at the bank in the ‘90s enabled her to meet senior executives she never would have had access to. “I was even asked to drive our CEO to the airport as a junior person,” she recalled, explaining how she discussed LGBT issues with him in the car.

Working in a Supportive Culture

“Support in the financial services for LGBT is astounding – we have come so far,” said Schlesinger. “A long way since having my bra snapped on the floor of the Commodities Exchange of New York [COMEX],” added the former trader with a laugh.

For an example of meaningful support, Barbetta pointed to the new HRC television ad featuring Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein declaring his support for marriage equality. “It’s fantastic that he’s doing that and putting himself out there on a personal level.”

Barbetta also mentioned the importance of straight allies for building a culture of inclusion. “The Ally Program has had a huge impact. We started inviting straight allies to join the network, and now there are gay members and straight members and you don’t know who’s LGBT or who’s an Ally, which is the entire goal of this – that it shouldn’t matter – no one cares who’s straight or who’s gay.”

She added, “From the diversity office, Lloyd himself, and various other senior members at the Firm, the support has been amazing.”

Members of The Glass Hammer community will know that we hold extremely targeted and specific networking events with panel discussions (and articles) that tackle the toughest topics around career management for women in financial and professional services. This year will be no different as we thunder into 2012 with eight events lined up. We aim to encourage you to be well-equipped to succeed in the world of work and we hope to inform, inspire, and empower you every step of the journey.

We are hosting our first 2012 event on the 6th of February, which is part of our “Managing Identities at Work” series. This pioneering event addresses what it means to be an LGBT woman at work in the financial markets and professional services, and will be held here in NY in February and then in London in June. We will be also exploring what it means to be a multicultural women in the industry in New York in October. This work is an extension of our efforts over the past five years, including discussions and whitepapers around Women in Technology, Senior Women in Investment Management, and other issues like how women negotiate differently than men.

You might ask what are we talking about when we ask our readers to think about managing their “identity.” Most of us don’t get out of bed in the morning and think about ourselves in that way. Personal or social identity, and how we manage it, is not to be confused with personal branding. We have control over how we market ourselves. Managing our identities is different – but critical for success.

Managing Identities

Our “Managing Your Identity at Work” series is about recognizing differences in yourself and others to build better and honest working relationships with your coworkers, bosses, and clients. (This is different from “life-coach” style “being your authentic self” guidelines, which, when misconstrued, can mislead employees fully disclosing activities that don’t necessarily belong in the workplace… and encourage those of us with bold personalities to let rip with stories of our weekend adventures in intricate detail.)

Instead, we are referring to overcoming stereotype threat – and stereotyping is something that we all do (admit it!). Our brains are wired to take in information and organize it a way that makes it easier to analyze quickly. In the workplace, women have to think about how they are perceived in a much more deliberate way than men, since men belong to the group that has always “gone to the office.” As a women, you are likely already dealing with the 1st set of assumptions (which come come from both men AND women) about who you are, how you think, and what you are good at.

Then you may have one or more other outward identities such as being a different ethnicity other than white or a different nationality from the rest of the group (which means a 2nd or 3rd set of assumptions around who you are, what you are good at that you must contend with). Then you have to navigate your path in a way that enables coworkers understand you and your abilities clearly.

Sound familiar? Of course, sometimes it’s hardly noticeable. But other times the onus is on you to educate peers and bosses as you may represent a whole host of misconceptions to them.

For example, if you happen to be LGBT, you have to then experience some level of anxiety around dealing with another set of assumptions that people might have about you. Going back to our upcoming event, our purpose is to help LGBT women leverage all types of networks, find mentors and sponsors, and understand how to connect with senior people in the firm to advance without feeling the need to live with anxiety and hide their personal lives – for instance, by using neutral pronouns when talking about their significant other.

Why it Matters for Change Agents

Being yourself and knowing who are is a crucial part of being a change agent.

Many women say to me that being a woman hasn’t mattered in their career. Those women upon closer inspection have often assimilated to the dominant group’s leadership style.

But women aren’t men and so by trying to take on certain characteristics, they often create a lose/lose situation in which are often ranked as less popular bosses. And by denying that they may have been perceived as “different” at various points in their career, they often forfeit the opportunity to be a good mentor and sponsor to younger women and men.

This analogy can be applied to LGBT employees who feel they have to stay in the closet at work – particularly the senior ones. Believe me, I do understand the risk/reward paradigm of this decision. But if it is approached correctly, the rewards for the individual and their colleagues are great.

If only one group’s “way of being” is valued, then unproductive groupthink can kick in and clients may choose competitors who can better understand and represent that client’s constituency. Firms trying to recruit the best future talent will also struggle if they cannot support the complex and different needs of their employees.

Plus, everyone can benefit from diverse role models, and building critical mass in any group does change perceptions and increase awareness of the issues that group faces. As a result, progressive people in power advocate for all staff – for example, look at the recent success of change-agent catalyzed diversity at companies like Campbell Soup.

We encourage other LGBT individuals (including men) and straight allies of all stripes to join us for our upcoming event! Progressive thinkers welcome!

In the past, studies have revealed that those with more symmetrical faces are perceived to be more attractive and those considered beautiful or handsome are seen as intelligent and good. Those of course, are just general perceptions, but what happens when your physical appearance actually influences how competent others believe you to be at your job?

A recent controversial study paid for by Procter & Gamble (a manufacturer of popular makeup brands, a fact that should not be overlooked) revealed that wearing makeup increases people’s perceptions of a woman’s likability, her competence, and her trustworthiness.

The study featured 25 female subjects, aged 20 to 50, who were white, African-American, and Hispanic. Each was photographed barefaced and in three looks that researchers called natural, professional, and glamorous. One hundred forty-nine adults (including 61 men) judged the pictures for enough time to make a snap judgment. An additional 119 adults (including 30 men) were given unlimited time to look at the same faces. The participants judged women made up in varying “intensities of luminance contrast,” which means how much their eyes and lips stood out compared to their skin. The results revealed that participants viewed those wearing makeup as more competent than barefaced women, whether they had a quick glance or a longer inspection.

It seems our youth and beauty obsessed culture has reached an all-time low if judgments about attractiveness are spilling over into judgments about competence. But according to Marjorie Jolles, assistant professor of Roosevelt University’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program, this has always been the case.

Minds or Bodies?

According to a NEWSWEEK study that surveyed 202 corporate hiring managers, 57 percent revealed that qualified but unattractive candidates are likely to have a harder time landing a job and more than half of managers surveyed advised spending as much time and money on “making sure they look attractive” as on perfecting a résumé. Sixty-one percent of managers (the majority of which were men) also said it would be advantageous for a woman to wear form-fitting clothing at work. When asked to rank employee attributes in order of importance, managers placed looks above education. Of the nine character traits listed, looks came in third below experience (No. 1) and confidence (No. 2), but above “where a candidate went to school” (No. 4).  One New York recruiter who wanted to remain anonymous said, “This is the new reality of the job market. It’s better to be average and good-looking than brilliant and unattractive.”

If you’re under the impression that this is an issue that will only affect young women in the early stages of their career, think again. A recent profile of 55-year-old Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, began with a critique of her footwear, continued on with a list of her favorite clothing labels, and concluded with the admission that the “most encouraging thing of all” was the fact that Lagarde doesn’t have a personal stylist. No, this was not in a fashion magazine; it originally appeared in The Financial Times. This approach would never be taken when writing about a high profile man for a financial periodical and to add insult to injury, the profile was written by a woman. So, how do we overcome this beauty bias if it’s also being perpetrated by women?

Ever since women entered the workforce in large numbers in the 20^th century, they were held to a certain aesthetic and according to Jolles, to this day, we’re still struggling with the old mind/body dualism where men, primarily those who are white, heterosexual, and middle class, are the mind and women are the body. Because women are relegated to the body, it’s no surprise it’s the domain many of us invest in. After all, there’s a reason Sarah Palin paid her makeup artist more than any member of her staff in her run for the vice presidency.

“There’s no question that women have more power today than ever before, but social mechanisms still entrap them,” Jolles said. “American women occupy a rich cultural spot, one where freedom and constraints constantly co-exist. Take fashion, for example. It’s neither liberating nor oppressive; it’s both. Fashion enables a great deal of choice, but it’s limited. The Procter & Gamble study seems to suggest that women can use their sex appeal to get ahead, but not all bodies are sexually appealing to mainstream society.”

Similarly, one of the biggest problems with the Procter & Gamble study is that not all women feel more confident in makeup and if their competence and job performance is now being based on their appearance, some women may be forced to comply with something that feels completely unnatural to them. As Jolles pointed out, in women’s style there’s the common experience of “that’s so you,” but women can also have the experience of “that’s so not you.” Feeling obligated to wear makeup can be alienating and deciding to deviate from the norm by not wearing it can unfairly single you out.

There is no equivalent of this beauty bias for men. Once while speaking to other female academics, Jolles realized that it’s quite the opposite. In academia especially, if a male professor is particularly unkempt, disheveled, and altogether scattered, this for some reason suggests he’s brilliant. If, on the other hand, a female professor was missing papers and had soup stains on her cardigan, it would be a totally different story.

“The body says too much for women and it doesn’t say as much for men. An ‘ugly,’ out of shape, brilliant woman would be really difficult for most people to compute,” Jolles said.

The Million Dollar Question

How to overcome the beauty bias is the million dollar question. According to Jolles, one way to combat it is to introduce more aesthetic diversity by getting different types of people in positions of power. Theoretically, an aesthetically diverse workforce would lead to more political diversity where more ideologies are permitted. There is a Catch 22, however. Getting to the top usually requires that a person submit to the company culture, which can also mean falling in line with the aesthetics considered to be the norm.

But what if you want to push back against the beauty bias? What if you believe that hyper femininity shouldn’t be a necessity to succeed in the workplace or be seen as the competent woman you are? Throwing your hands up and choosing not to participate may not be the best strategy. This doesn’t mean that the beauty bias isn’t something that warrants anger, but from a strategic standpoint, norms don’t get changed by ignoring them, but by insisting they’re more expansive.

No workplace is free of norms and different workplaces have different standards. But if you find these norms oppressive, you’ll have to challenge them subtlety and thoughtfully by exploiting weak links.

For example, Jolles has a friend who is a female prosecutor and at her firm, women are required to wear skirts and dresses. Women can wear something as ridiculous to work as a long, flowing skirt and flip flops, but a tailored pantsuit would be out of the question. As a way of pushing back, Jolles would recommend showing up in a sundress and flip flops. “The best course of action is political agitation. By showing up in a sundress and flip flops you could show the limitations of the company culture by engaging with it,” Jolles said. Of course, political agitation may not necessarily be the best strategy for keeping your job.

Fighting Looks Discrimination

Deborah Rhode, a Stanford law professor and author of the book, The Beauty Bias, is actually proposing a legal regime in which discrimination on the basis of looks is as serious as discrimination based on gender or race. According to Rhode, discrimination against unattractive women and short men is as widespread as bias based on race, sex, age, ethnicity, religion, and disability. Her research also revealed that the more unattractive you are in America, the more likely you are to receive a longer prison sentence, a lower damage award, a lower salary, and poorer performance reviews.

There are already laws against appearance discrimination in Michigan and six other locales and according to Rhode, this hasn’t resulted in an explosion of frivolous lawsuits. In each jurisdiction, the new laws have generated between zero and nine cases annually and in Michigan, about 30 looks-discrimination suits are filed per year, with only one being litigated annually. Rhodes believes the unworthy cases will be weeded out by the cost and burden of litigation.

When the culture begins to get serious about discriminating based on looks, it will have an impact on discrimination based on gender and race. Jolles makes an important point: discrimination based on gender and race is discriminating based on looks. Cultural ideologies require that women be attractive based on heteronormative standards and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to be successful if your look violates unspoken codes of the workplace.

If you want to take Jolles’ advice and push back in a strategic way, you have to remember that there can be negative consequences. These are challenging economic times and if being a “political agitator” puts you at risk of losing your job, you’ll have to decide if it’s that important to you.

“There’s no right path for every woman, it’s just a matter of deciding how much risk you’re willing to take and what you can do to feel more like yourself in the workplace,” Jolles said. “Chances are you’ll find that pushing back isn’t easy, but it’s almost always worth it.”

This year on The Glass Hammer, a topic we’ve discussed frequently is passion – why uncovering your true passion about your work can help advance your career and can make you happier. The value of passion really comes down to being “authentic” – when you’re doing what you truly love, it shows, and helps influence others to follow you or pull you forward.

In his new book Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level, Joel A. Garfinkle explains why passion is so important for leaders – it’s a lot easier to get other people to follow you when they believe in you, than when they don’t. He writes:

“Be passionate and excited by your objectives, and share this excitement with others. This kind of enthusiasm propels people toward your point of view and prompts them to connect emotionally with your passion.

“Besides passion, you also need to display confidence. Even if others doubt your ideas, they embrace them because they trust your confidence.

Enthusiasm and confidence are two qualities that stem from passion, but there’s a lot more to it than that. According to a recent study, the wrong kind of passion can stand in your way, while the right kind can propel you forward. How can you manage your own passion and use it to gain more ground in 2012?

Two Kinds of Passion

In a recent Harvard Business Review blog post, NYU cognitive scientist Scott Barry Kaufman explained the findings of a recent University of Quebec study that explored two different kinds of passion: “harmonious” and “obsessive.”

He explained:

“Those with harmonious passion engage in their work because it brings them intrinsic joy. They have a sense of control of their work, and their work is in harmony with their other activities in life. At the same time, they know when to disengage, and are better at turning off the work switch when they wish to enjoy other activities or when further engagement becomes too risky. As a result, their work doesn’t conflict with the other areas of their lives.”

On the other hand, he continued, obsessive passion is detrimental to your career – people with this type of passion have an almost uncontrollable desire to work, and they report feeling emotionally dependent on working. Kauffman explains, “They report higher levels of negative affect during and after activity engagement; they can hardly ever stop thinking about their work, and they get quite frustrated when they are prevented from working.”

The big picture, he continues, is where this passion leads you. “People with harmonious passion come to work refreshed and ready to tackle new problems, whereas those with obsessive passion are at much higher risk of experiencing burnout.”

How to Better Leverage Your Passion

Where are you on the passion continuum? And what are you passionate about? Is your passion climbing to the top of your company? Is it pulling women up the ladder behind you by mentoring or sponsoring them? Is it doing your best every single day? Is it providing for your family? Is it engaging in the effort for gender equality?

Whatever you are passionate about, the University of Quebec study reveals how important it is that your passion comes with flexibility. This enables you to magnetically lead others, even through adversity, and keep coming back for more with a smile on your face.

As Sherrie Bourg Carter, Psy.D. wrote last week in Psychology Today:

“Pursuing a passion requires that you adopt a ‘journey’ mentality, not a ‘straight line to a destination or bust’ mentality. Simply embrace what you enjoy and create opportunities to explore these parts of yourself. Some may fit you well; others may not. That’s okay. Also, it’s important to be flexible in the sense that what excites and inspires you now may not necessarily be what excites and inspires you in years to come.”

Passionate leadership means being prepared for the long haul, despite the challenges you may come across. As we each pause at the end of the year to look back on our achievements (and reflect on the things we can do better), it would serve us well to consider where our passion comes from – and ensure us that it is leading us forward to a place of joy.

The Glass Hammer team is taking a week off to celebrate the holidays and renew our own passion for building this community of women leaders. In 2012, you can expect some energetic events, fantastic new research, profiles of women breaking the glass ceiling, career advice, and more. See you in January!

Why, after decades of work to advance and empower women, have we yet to close the gender leadership gap? According to Marie Wilson, founder of The White House Project, one reason could be the brain. “I was convinced so much that if we just didn’t the right things, trained women right – and I’m so tired of ‘fixing women’ – we could just make it work. When I met with Barbara Annis, we started to talk about what I had avoided my whole life – brain differences.”

She added, “Wiring doesn’t mean everything, but it means a lot.”

Wilson was speaking at the first ever Gender Intelligence Summit, a conference organized to discuss the neurobiology of gender. Held in Washington, DC, on Friday, the conference featured preeminent scientists on the subject of gender intelligence, as well as corporate diversity practitioners who have incorporated gender intelligence into diversity and inclusion work – and found success.

When companies take into account gender differences within the brain, and teach individuals and companies to appreciate and value those differences, diversity becomes more than a numbers game. Barbara Annis, Founder and CEO of Barbara Annis & Associates and Chair of the Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, is an expert on inclusive leadership. She said, “We thought that if we got enough women into the pipeline, some of them would float up.”

But, she continued, true inclusiveness isn’t merely about the numbers. It’s time to consider the neurological reasons women work and lead differently than men, and why companies can benefit from appreciating those differences.

For example, men generally perform better than women when it comes to spatial reasoning, while women usually perform better at reading facial expressions. Both are valuable skills for a business team to have in its toolbox. Learning to appreciate these kinds of distinctions can help instill corporate culture with a reverence for difference – which will drive gender inclusiveness on a more meaningful level than simply injecting more women into the pipeline with fingers crossed for success.

Focusing on the benefits of “unlikeness,” Annis said, is one way to encourage companies to change their game, refine processes to retain women, and, ultimately, make more money. “The business case is compelling. You can’t deny it anymore,” she explained.

Gender and Neurobiology

“Men and women are in so many ways similar, but it so many ways different,” began Dr. Ruben Gur, Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry and Director of the Brain Behavior Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gur gave a brief, but compelling, history of gender research when it comes to the brain. He was among the first scientists to study female brains – which didn’t happen until the ’70s (previously, women were considered too variable to be subjects of scientific research in most areas besides reproduction).

According to Dr. Gur, there are a several differences between male and female brains. First of all, he explained, “just when you sit and relax, women’s brains are idling at a higher rate.” This is because men have a higher proportion of fat in the brain – which insulates the nerve cells. Women’s nerve cells appear to have less insulation and are therefore more active. Additionally, he explained, the higher proportion of fat and fluid in the brain that men have makes them better able to withstand blows to the head – which could be the evolutionary reason behind the disparity.

Secondly, he continued, the brains of men and women tend to have differences when it comes to the amygdala or “reptile” brain. “The job of the amygdala is to detect threat and issue the alarm to the front of the brains,” Dr. Gur explained. Women tend to have a larger orbitofrontal area relative to the amygdala, compared to men, he said. “This is why women are better at modulating anger responses and physical aggression.”

A few more differences he described included females’ (on average) superior ability to detect and express emotion, and males’ (on average) superior spatial processing and motor skills. “Memory is better in women almost for any kind of material,” he added.

Next, Dr. Marianne Legato, Professor of Clinical Medicine and Founder and Director of the Partnership for Women’s Health at Columbia University, spoke about the impact of biological gender differences on society. Dr. Legato explained that it’s not just brains that differ between men and women.

For example, she was the first doctor to research differences between men’s and women’s hearts (which wasn’t even considered until the ‘90s). “After six months of research, it was clear to me that the hearts of men and women are completely different,” she said. This has significant implications for public health, pharmaceuticals and medical care, and the insurance industry.

“There are tremendous differences in every system of the body between men and women. The same genes in DNA are expressed differently if you are male or female,” explained Dr. Legato. What are the implications of this research on society, she asked. What are the implications in the workplace?

First of all, she said, while it is possible to compare gender differences in the biology of the brain, we don’t necessarily come out of the womb that way. “The brain is plastic,” she said.

Brains change and grow significantly, even in adults. Could societal gender expectations cause certain biological changes that are observed in the research that Dr. Gur discussed? Does women’s brain chemistry and structure change when they enter a new environment, with new expectations and structures – such as a male dominated and male structured workplace? “Are women becoming more like men in organizations where they have been successful?” she asked. “Are men learning from women?”

Gender Intelligence in the Workplace

As John Hart, Founder & CEO of the Impact Center, pointed out, women are more likely to leave a company not because of work/life issues, but because they don’t feel valued.

As Wilson said, “Gender is not just a matter of how people get along or how companies make money. It’s a matter of how decisions get made.” How can companies better take advantage of gender intelligence differences?

Jennifer Allyn, Managing Director in the Office of Diversity at PwC, said that the firm is working to ease those gender communication conflicts that lead women to feel less valued by companies.

For example, according to Allyn, PwC recently learned that, by and large, women didn’t feel like they were getting enough attention about their career paths and about career opportunities. But it came down to a difference in communication styles in an organization where leaders are predominantly male.

“The things we want to talk about are different than what men want to talk about,” she explained. “It turns out that we don’t agree on what constitutes a meaningful dialogue about career advancement.”

She suggested that while women may want to talk through challenges they could face in a new opportunity, men perceive that as uncertainty. Men, on the other hand, feel they are signaling loyalty when they don’t ask a lot of questions, she said.

To counteract this communication challenge, Allyn said PwC has implemented a sponsorship program called the Bold Initiative to ensure that individuals feel they are having the valuable conversations they need to advance their careers. By considering gender intelligence differences, the firm has been able to better work with women so they feel they are being valued in their careers, and stave off attrition caused by gender-based misunderstandings.

As founder and publisher of theglasshammer.com, I am proud to pen our 2000th article today and to share with you some of our latest thinking and around gender parity. We are proud to have spent the last four years creating a “must read” online publication designed to help professional women actively manage their careers. We have had the pleasure of covering the most progressive research on gender from well-known think tanks and attending events with fantastically inspirational speakers, as well as hosting our own panel discussions and networking events.

It seems appropriate to celebrate our 2000th article with a look at what components could play a major role in helping a critical mass of women to break the glass ceiling over the next few years. After all, if the last twenty years is closely examined, we would find only an incremental change in the number of women in leadership roles in major companies. (For example, as The Economist recently reported, while the proportion of working women has risen from risen from 48% to 64% since the ’70s, women still only make up three percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.) Similarly, the advice given to women since the 1980s hasn’t changed much either and has been predominantly to act more like men.

Is this strategy working for women? Whilst it definitely makes sense to provide women with a guidebook to how the game is played currently, I cannot help but feel this method ignores the elephant in the room. What might that be? Culture.

It means addressing the culture question and exploring tough topics around why macho works styles are still revered. Asking how culture is formed and maintained and who gets to most heavily influence it should be on every leader’s list of things to look at in 2012. This examination and honest diagnostic approach would enable senior management to look at the systemic issues that are preventing women and other minorities from advancing from middle management to senior management roles and onwards to the boardroom.

Behind the scenes here at theglasshammer.com, beyond creating empowering content for our readers and community members, we have begun to conduct research and write white papers on under-represented groups in the workplace. Our work explores topics  such as women in technology teams, LGBT women at work, and multicultural women in financial services. This work is conducted via our sister site Evolved Employer and is focused on helping companies understand how to architect their company culture to be inclusive and supportive of talented people who don’t necessary fit or want to be categorized into one box or other based on their outward appearance. (Hello Generation Y.)

Many companies and the people in them are still not clear on the business case for spending time developing talent as a business driver. “Smart people come in different packages” is the best way I can explain the need for dispelling myths around what a leader looks like. Diversity work is deeply personal and quite hard because it challenges every deeply held belief we’ve ever had. No one wants to admit to ourselves that we have biases. Often, unconscious bias, even those held by women, protects those who have historically held power, in order to uphold the status quo and maintain workplace traditions. Micro-inequities are often upheld by the very people who are most hindered by them.

What Does Meritocracy Really Mean?

The unpopularity of the proposal around workplace quotas for women by women themselves is possibly the one of the most interesting positions that I have seen this year. Those who believe that their workplace is a meritocracy question the need for quotas since they believe that merit alone will get women to the corner office and dismiss quotas as damaging tokenism.

Those who question meritocracy and look hard at the numbers and the slow growth of promotional rates for women at senior executive level are often still reluctant to endorse quotas for fear of creating perceived tokenism. I would offer up instead that currently, we are exactly perpetrating our own myths and setting up women to fail so that it in the end it looks like tokenism took place.

Many less-than-capable men have been promoted into roles that they cannot handle. The executive failure rates of men are just that – statistics of executive failure rates. We are telling our boys to go out and try, and telling our girls to pipe down and play it safe.

That is why sponsorship is such an interesting concept. It gives women much-needed access to exciting projects, and the chance to explore their abilities with someone on their side whether it turns out to be guts or glory. Men have always had this, and executive failure isn’t the end of the world as the company (mostly) recovers, the person (mostly) gets fired and life goes on. It is an expected fact that a young man will be promoted at some point in his career on promise and potential. Why then, must women only be promoted on past performance?

Then we go full circle, back to the argument that there quotas don’t work, because there isn’t a suitable women to promote as none have the experience, etc. This cycle gets old for me, very quickly, and is one of the reasons why we seemingly have been having the same conversation for the past 30 years (I joined it 5 years ago).

Leadership is Key to Culture

Executive management and leaders of teams and departments have the ability to create or destroy an inclusive environment and the ability to promote women equally. Leaders have the floor, and their tacit or vocal endorsement of norms, values, or behaviors around equality and fairness, as well as allowing inconsistent management practices, make micro-inequities a real issue, despite being invisible to the naked eye. As long as one set of beliefs is held as superior to all others, then no amount of programming and policy-making to create change will work as effectively as visible and genuine action from the leader that communicates change is happening for real. Hire women, start a sponsor program, measure your diversity work, and make it a business objective. In other words, take it seriously!

The numbers show that women are still very much relegated to middle management at best. Ilene Lang, President of Catalyst, drew grasps from the room last March at the annual Catalyst awards dinner when she announced that 72,000,000 women work in the USA and only 735 hold executive positions in the Fortune 500. Catalyst’s research also shows that women and men, all things being equal with the same experience and freshly minted MBA, are likely to earn different starting salaries.

While institutional change comes to the top, there are strategies that women can employ to break this cycle. Request an invite to our annual Navigating, Negotiating, and Building your Strategic Network event to learn more about how to get to the corner office. Some companies really are better than others.

Recently More Magazine released the results of a survey on ambition, work/life issues, and other topics. According to the survey of 500 college educated women over 35, 43% of respondents said they were less ambitious now than they were ten years ago.

The headline that many news outlets and websites ran with was along the lines of “Women are Losing Ambition.”

Well, not exactly.

In fact, the survey revealed quite the opposite. Because, while 43% of the survey respondents said they were less ambitious now than they were ten years ago, the majority (57%) said they were just as or more ambitious today.

I repeat: the majority of women in the survey said they were just as or more ambitious now than they were 10 years ago. Amazing what insight you can gain by shifting your perspective.

It is curious that so many ambitious women’s voices (the majority!) have been ignored. Why is it easier to pretend that ambitious women don’t exist?

Flexibility and Ambition – Not Mutually Exclusive

More reports that “92% consider flexibility to be important in a job – up from 73% in 2009.” The survey also revealed “65% of Women say it’s more important to have time in their lives than to make more money at their jobs.” And, “40% of women would take a pay cut for more flexibility.”

But calls for more flexibility do not mean that women are less driven by their careers.

We shouldn’t misconstrue a desire for flexibility with a lack of ambition. That’s just the kind of confusion that blockades career advancement and drives women out when workplaces can’t or won’t work around their needs. When we begin equating flex scheduling with a lack of ambition, we justify career-derailing mommy-track work cultures.

In fact, we should look at the growing desire for flexibility as an indication that women increasingly want to stay in the workforce. Rather than “opt out” when personal responsibilities demand time and attention, the women surveyed are looking to their employers to work with them and create a pathway for maintaining their career trajectory.

In an interview with Amy Levin-Epstein at CBS MoneyWatch, Jennifer Braunschweiger, deputy editor of More, said, “… [the results] also said that women who want a career and a life are ambitious in a different way. That’s what’s interesting – valuing time over money may signal a shift in ambition, and the beginning of a more nuanced definition of success, one that takes into account the many facets of a woman’s life.”

Women are looking to establish new ways to achieve their dreams, and that doesn’t mean obeying an antiquated “up or out” regimen. It also doesn’t mean they are any less ambitious than before.

Age and Ambition

At the same time, a study revealing that 43% of women say they have lost ambition over the course of a decade is notable and certainly worth discussing in a generational context. But should it really be surprising that individuals over 35 report being less ambitious than their starry-eyed 25-year-old selves?

Existing generational data around this issue may serve to clarify the More research. For example, a recent Kelly OGG study of 97,000 people from the Americas, APAC, and EMEA showed that Gen Y workers were significantly more ambitious than their more experienced colleagues. Based on their own data, Kelly’s researchers said we shouldn’t attribute this downward trend in ambition to particular generational groups (i.e. Gen Y, Gen X, Baby Boomers, etc.), as much as an outcome of general aging and gaining experience.

The report explains:

“While most people aspire to move up the organizational hierarchy and advance their careers, it’s clear that traditional ambition decreases with age.

“Although eight in ten Gen Y’s aspire to become executives, less than three-quarters of Gen X’ers and a little more than half of Baby Boomers feel the same desire to climb the corporate ladder.

“Juggling competing priorities, as well as gaining a better understanding of what is required to secure and maintain senior positions, are undoubtedly factors that contribute to this decrease as we age. Yet, it seems age could also be encouraging people to think more holistically about their careers.”

Age and experience play a huge role in how individuals feel about getting to the next level, as well as their strategies for getting there. Of course, there is gender pressure on women’s attitudes toward advancement potential. But implying that a loss of ambition is mainly the result of a desire for flexibility isn’t just wrong – it’s damaging.

Public interest in the topic of women in leadership has increased significantly in the past year in Europe – thanks, in part, to the UK’s Lord Davies report published in February, as well as EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding’s Women on Boards challenge issued in March.

Reding urged publicly listed companies to make a commitment to increase the representation of women on corporate boards to 30% by 2015 and 40% by 2020. She said, “For the next 12 months, I want to give self-regulation a last chance. I would like companies to be creative so that regulators do not have to become creative.”

The deadline for companies in the EU to set self-regulatory gender initiatives is International Women’s Day next year (March 8, 2012). As the deadline rapidly approaches with few companies making real progress, some countries (such as the UK and Germany) have stepped up their efforts to encourage boardroom gender diversity progress.

Public interest may be driving momentum when it comes to government intervention on the issue of boardroom gender diversity. But without real consequences for a failure to make progress, are these new rules anything more than a masquerade?

One Step Closer to Gender Quotas in the UK

According to a Grant Thornton review published in December of last year, companies in the UK largely ignored the issue leadership gender diversity until very recently. The report showed that 72% of FTSE 350 companies disregarded the issue of gender diversity in their annual reports, failing to disclose any information on their boardroom gender composition.

But that is about to change.

The Financial Reporting Council has mandated that public companies in the UK will have to report annually on their boardroom diversity policy, as well as set goals for improving boardroom gender balance. Additionally, board diversity will be a factor in when evaluating board effectiveness – beginning with financial years that start on or after October 1, 2012.

Baroness Hogg, chairman of the FRC, explained that the new regulation is a means for British companies to avoid the gender quotas that some countries across Europe have implemented. She said:

“We believe this gives a further opportunity to show that Britain’s ‘comply or explain’, Code-based approach can deliver a flexible and rapid response and is therefore preferable to detailed legal regulation, and we urge companies to demonstrate this as quickly as possible.”

The new rules come after last month’s Cranfield School of Management report that showed the self-regulatory approach was not really working. According the Cranfield report, the percentage of women on boards in the UK has only grown from 12.5 percent to 14.2 percent since February. Additionally, only 22.5 percent of new appointments have gone to women – less than the 33 percent of new appointments that Davies suggested to achieve the 25 percent target by 2015.

The move toward diversity reporting shows that the FRC believes the self-regulatory approach isn’t working, or at least isn’t working fast enough. Time will tell whether reporting on gender diversity targets will compel companies to make more significant progress and avoid a quota-system.

“Flexi-Quotas” Agreed by German Companies

Last Monday, Germany’s top 30 companies published individual gender targets for the next five years. For example, Allianz, Commerzbank, and Deutsche Telekom promised to reach the 30 percent mark by 2015. Adidas said it plans to increase the percentage of women to between 32 and 35 percent by 2015. BMW plans to double its percentage of women to between 15 and 17 percent by 2020.

Germany has been wrangling with the idea of gender quotas in recent months, and in March, the country’s family affairs minister Kristina Schroeder said she supported a “flexi-quota.” She told the Guardian, “Quotas are always a supporting crutch, but sometimes they are necessary, and that’s why I’m suggesting a flexible quota, which the companies agree among themselves, because that’s the way they take much more responsibility for the issue.”

The move by the DAX 30 to set individual, voluntary targets plays into the flexi-quota idea. In many ways it makes sense – different companies are in different places on the diversity journey.

But Labor Minister Ursula von der Leyen is taking a harder line. She said the efforts will fall short of the progress that is needed to impact board governance. She said, “The fact is that in the year 2011, we have 15 percent women represented on supervisory boards, and 3.7 percent in the executive boards.”

She continued, “That is not acceptable for an economy that competes on the global workplace such as Germany. We’ve got to improve.”

Last night, Deutsche Bank hosted its 17th annual Women on Wall Street conference at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. The event drew over 2,000 people, mainly women in the financial services industry.

Jeffrey Mayer, Managing Director and Head of the Corporate and Investment Bank in North America at Deutsche Bank, opened the evening by pointing out that although the industry is seeing a generational shift when it comes to gender diversity – roughly 20% of attendees were at the Managing Director level or above, while 80% of were either “fresh out of college” or at the director level – “the percentage of women in senior front office roles falls short.”

He continued, “We need to attract, develop, and retain more women who can punch through to the senior ranks.”

The theme of the evening was “Breaking Through to the C-Suite.” Keynote speaker Sharon Allen, Former Chairman of the Board of Deloitte LLP said she believes that the ability to get to the top really comes from within.

“I know what a difference the organization can make because Deloitte was really a trailblazer with our [women's] initiative.” But, she continued, “No matter what your organization may do to help promote your career, at the end of the day, it won’t matter unless you perform and watch out for your own career.”

She explained that to make it to the top, women must plan their own career, seize the opportunities that come along, and be willing to promote their own accomplishments.

Self Promotion, Asking for Help, and Seeking Feedback

Allen, the highest ranking woman in Deloitte LLP’s history, began her keynote by describing the importance of self promotion. She recalled how, earlier in her career, she had been passed over for a promotion. When she went to her manager’s office, fuming, to find out why, she counted off the things she’d done to deserve it. The manager had no idea she’d done any of them.

After that, she said, “I had to be sure everybody knew about all the good things I was doing in the organization. And you can do that without being a braggart.”

Following her keynote, Allen continued in a one-on-one conversation with Carolyn Buck-Luce, Principal and Global Life Sciences Leader at Ernst & Young.

Buck Luce explained how many women who work in traditionally male dominated fields find it difficult to ask for help. She said, “When you work so hard to show you can do it, you don’t necessarily know how to ask.”

Allen said that she had stumbled here as well – at one point in her career, she began to receive less than stellar feedback from some of her team. “I was doing so many things that I wasn’t doing all of them well,” she said. “I wasn’t leveraging enough – I wasn’t looking to others.”

Allen explained that by asking for help, you’re not only helping yourself, you’re also helping others gain experience.

She said that this feedback experience had been valuable to her career. “Seek feedback and receive it openly,” she said. “Identify some good, trusted [people] whom you know and won’t just tell you what you want to hear.”

She added, “I think people who have figured that out will be more successful than those who haven’t.”

Finally, she said, women should think about their legacy throughout their entire career – and that goes beyond a job title. “It’s not so much what you’re known as,” she said. “But it’s really more important about what you’re known for.”

What Makes a Good Leader?

Next, Buck Luce invited to the stage Ilene H. Lang, CEO, Catalyst; Donna Milrod, Deputy CEO, Deutsche Bank Americas; Ann Marie Petach, CFO, BlackRock; and Katherine Garrett-Cox, CEO, Alliance Trust.

She said that today’s institutions are not meeting the needs of society. What are the qualities that today’s companies need to see in their leaders in order to do so?

Garrett-Cox began, explaining that leaders need to be able to think carefully about how their own behavior. “Take all of the good things of people you’ve worked for and with, and discard all of the bad things.”

She added, “A job title gives you no rights but gives you enormous responsibilities.”

Lang continued Allen’s earlier discussion of legacy, explaining that leadership means understanding you can’t do everything yourself.

“I believe your network’s your reputation,” she said. “If you want to do something big, get a lot of people who want to do it too.”

Petach pointed out the importance of clarity. “One of the things that is critically important is a clear vision.” She explained that leadership is weakened when everybody has a different idea of what is to be accomplished. “At BlackRock [the vision] is so clear – that we act in the fiduciary interests of our clients.” And, she continued, that makes it easier to get the job done. “We can compromise on everything… except our vision.”

Finally, Milrod pointed out the importance of boldness. “Part of good leadership is being brave,” she said. And that means understanding that you have followers. “Don’t leave people behind in that leadership role you are taking.”

Depending on whom you ask, the UK’s recent foray into the issue of gender equality on boards has produced big results – or results that are not big enough.

According to the Guardian, in the past six months since the Lord Davies Report was released, FTSE 100 boards have appointed 18 women (or 31% of the total appointments since February 24). Eighteen women might not seem like a lot, but this is more than double the number of women appointed in years past. But is it enough?

Meanwhile, it seems that Norway isn’t satisfied with the results of its current gender quota law, which mandates that 40 percent of board seats at every publicly traded company be held by women. Boards have upheld the law since 2008, when it went into full effect.

Now the progressive Nordic country is eying private companies’ boards as well. It seems that without compulsory quotas, firms by and large don’t elect to promote large numbers of women on their own.

Disappointing Numbers

Norway is considering applying its 40% law to large AS (privately held) companies, and the law will most likely focus on companies with over 500 employees. According to the FT, Norway initially hoped that the original legislation on ASA (publicly traded) companies would influence businesses and encourage them to place more women on their boards.

But this hasn’t happened – or at least the effect hasn’t been strong enough. Currently, private company boards are made up of 17% women.

Interestingly, this is not much more than the 13.3% of total board appointments that went to women in the UK in 2010, before leadership gender became a large focus for top companies. And, according to Guardian writer Tom Bawden, “Even with the surge in female appointments, only about 14% of FTSE 100 board positions are held by women. That’s an improvement on 12.5% in December but short of Davies’s 25% target.”

Additionally, as Aamina Zafar pointed out in Financial Times Adviser:

“Women currently make up 30 per cent of new appointments in FTSE 100’s and high-profile companies. However, there has been much less change in the composition of FTSE 350 and Alternative Investment Market companies, with little evidence to suggest that this trend is changing.”

Similar to the Norway case, encouraging more gender parity in one area of business didn’t have much of an impact on another.

Optional Targets are Not Effective

The Norway and UK numbers seem to show that encouraging companies to hire more female directors does have some effect – but not nearly as much as is needed.

Initially, Norway was aiming for about half of the country’s board seats to go to women – and settled on 40% to provide a little wiggle room. Most of Norway’s public boards are made up of 5 people – so the framers had at least a 2/5 ratio in mind.

We aren’t seeing that on the boards that aren’t subject to the legislation. As Rikke Lind, secretary of trade and industry told the FT, “It’s not going fast enough… During 2012 we must be finished and prepared from the government [side], I hope.”

Meanwhile the UK has another few years to meet the 25% goal set by the Lord Davies report. But, as Anna Sofat, director of Addidi Wealth, pointed out to the FT’s Zafar, change is happening too slowly to meet the goal on time.

She said:

“There is progress but it is slow.

“I would be in favour of a progress report next year and, if we have not hit at least 15 per cent representation, then I would favour a quota system.

“Quotas will fast-track more women and bring about a change – it worked in Norway so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work here.”

Top level dedication to women on boards is important for bolstering public support for gender equality and raising the issue in society at large. But that’s only one part of a movement toward leadership gender parity. Without effective policy to match government calls for more women on boards, initiatives aimed at getting more women to the top will ultimately be seen as toothless.