The Career Success Doctor

The Career Success Doctor guides talented professional women to career success

Do Leadership Models Stop Authenticity?

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We are all, in one way or another, leaders.  Whether it’s running your own business, being a role-model for your kids (or other peoples’ kids), being a ‘thought leader’ or a senior manager in an organisation, it’s all leadership.  In recent years, there’s been a call for more authentic leadership, led by Bill George and others.

In the Authentic Leadership model, the leader aspires to be true to themselves and their values, to walk their talk.  Leadership models are generally the antithesis of authenticity.  Yet this doesn’t stop the ‘Leadership’ market from producing new models of  ‘best practice’.

In a recent article produced by researchers at the London School of Economics, one of the key conclusions is that leaders are more successful when they adopt a more participative style:  ‘…while leaders who exhibit a powerful demeanor may boost their appearance of competence, they also risk stifling follower voice precisely because they appear more competent.’

But what happens if your own, authentic style leans more towards command and control?  One of the authors of the LSE report observed that when leaders deliberately try to be more influential, for example by increasing eye contact and thinking about their body language, they often come unstuck.  We have very good inbuilt b/s detectors: we tend to intuitively know when someone is trying to fool us, and we push back against it.

As a coach, I have worked with some really excellent leaders: their people enjoyed working for them, and they got excellent results.  I have also worked with some real ‘one trick ponies’.  People who got results by sheer force of personality, but managed to demotivate their staff, who would have performed even better if the boss had behaved differently.  And there are those who still think that command and control is the order of the day, and don’t even manage to get the results.

Most observers agree that the days of ‘you’ll do what I tell you, and you’ll do it like I tell you, otherwise I’ll…..’ are over, even though there are still some dinosaurs out there.  What they don’t agree on is whether we should apply the more prescriptive models (which don’t agree with each other anyway) or go the authenticity route.

I believe there is a case for a middle ground.  If you read or listen to Bill George, it’s clear that he changed his style over time. He admits that he had to!  He also figured out who he was and became comfortable with his own identity.  In too many models, the concept of knowing who you really are and what you stand for and being comfortable with it doesn’t seem to have much place.

As an individual, you can’t be all things to all people all of the time.  It’s too exhausting.  When leaders really start to understand their strengths and weaknesses, and figure out strategies for dealing with their weaknesses (being honest about what these are is a good start), then they can step into their own power.  It’s what most leaders want to do anyway, if they only knew how.

The less successful ones often go about it the wrong way, either seeing ‘power’ as a game of me versus you, or believing if they deliberately apply every trick in the leadership handbook, they will have people lining up to follow them.

The most comforting thought in all of this, as a recent article in The Director identified, is that leaders are made not born.  You can work at becoming a leader, and ‘those who’ve worked at it have more to offer the modern workplace.’  So if you dream of leading from the top of a great organisation, but secretly wonder if you have what it takes, take cheer. You can still be authentic AND develop the skills to become a successful leader.

Why Society Should Worry About Lay Offs And Redundancy

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We all know that when people are laid off, or made redundant, it can be pretty stressful for the individuals concerned.  But it’s all too easy to forget that it’s not just these individuals who are affected.

Some while ago I was talking about this to a coach in the USA.  ‘What is this “made redundant”you are talking about?’ he asked me.  Somewhere in the back of my brain I remembered that the common US expression is ‘being laid off’.  I translated.  He was shocked.  ‘Made redundant! How can you say that about people?  They’re not on the scrap heap!’

No, they are not, but when you are made redundant, it can feel like that.  I’ve been made redundant twice, and the first time I felt terrible, even though I hated the job in question and was actively looking for something different.  The second time, though…that was life-changing, life-affirming and totally brilliant!

When one person is laid off, the effect is generally limited to them, their families and perhaps a few friends and colleagues.  But when a whole group are being made redundant, the situation changes.

For many people, work offers not just a source of income, but a social network.  Colleagues may also be friends, and for some people their colleagues are their family too.  In some industries, these bonds are very tight – as the story of the 33 Chilean miners reminds us.  In others, they are looser, but they are still there.

So when some people are laid off, but others are kept on, there’s a double, or even a treble, whammy.  The individuals are stressed, and anxious about their financial future, their families are stressed, for similar reasons and because the loved one is stressed.  Meantime, people who haven’t been laid off experience a kind of survivor’s guilt, which can also be deeply stressful.  And that stress spills over into the survivors’ families as well…

For the managers who have to deliver the bad news, it is deeply stressful too  It can be a profoundly distressing experience to tell someone that you can’t keep them on, no matter how much you want to, particularly when you have little control in the matter, or  they happen to be friends as well as colleagues  – and so the managers’  families and freidns are affected too.

In organisations where big redundancy programmes are taking place, you often see an increase in overall absenteeism and time spent down the pub or in the bar.  Lunches get longer, working time gets shorter, and only the fear of getting put on the ‘list’ drags the survivors into the work place.  Productivity goes down.  Yet these costs are rarely factored into the costs of a ‘downsizing programme’.  There seems to be an assumption that the survivors will be so grateful they have kept their jobs, they will magically redouble their efforts to make up for the loss of colleagues.

Eventually it turns round, for the survivors at least.  But even for them it can take many months to recover.

So I foresee an increase in stress in our society overall, at least here in UK, and the consequences of that in terms of an increase in stress-related diseases and incidences of anger and anti-social behaviour.  I’ve resisted the general pessimism about the economic downturn, but right now, I have to confess, I do feel pessimistic about how our society is going to react to the latest austerity programme.

Do recruitment processes discriminate against senior women?

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According to The Independent on Sunday, the way to shatter the glass ceiling is to change it.  They quote ongoing research by Egon Zehnder International (EZI) which looks set to confirm that the selection processes used to find senior executives, particularly board directors, discriminate against women.

To be fair, the article doesn’t actually say ‘discriminate’, using the more diplomatic ‘works against promoting women’, but you get the thrust.

The argument runs that the tools and techniques companies use to measure, assess and evaluate candidates for senior posts are out of date.  It is claimed they are based on experience-based competencies in a world where a lot of women lose out on experience because they tend to take time out in their 30s to have families.  Talent management programmes tend to focus on precisely that age group to groom the top directors of the future.  And women in their 30s with young families often buy into the idea of flexible working, which EZI describes as the ‘mummy trap’.

Other European countries who offer flexible working do a lot better than the UK as far as numbers of women on company boards are concerned – particularly the Scandinavian countries.  So I find myself wondering why UK companies don’t look at how the Finns, Danes and Norwegians do it.  Is it the infamous English old-boys’ network getting in the way of progress?  Or are  men unaware of the problem?  Certainly many men I talk to, including some fairly high powered coaches, question the existence of a glass ceiling (to which I am inclined to respond: ‘ welcome to OUR world, mate’.)  As long as that view of things prevails, it’s going to be hard to budge that glass ceiling.

One of the challenges we are going to have to deal with is the loss of opportunity which is likely to come in the current economic climate.  As a coach and trainer I have seen companies and government organisations alike cutting back on people development.  Secondments and other good career development tactics don’t come cheap (although I can see a great future for intern programmes for people fresh out of college or university).  Cut-backs are likely to affect promotability, so if  things are difficult for women now, they are likely to get worse in the next couple of years.  There are likely to be fewer opportunities to gain experience, more intense competition from both men and women for the opportunities that are available, and higher levels of stress for all concerned, and there’s likely to be a knock-on effect in the private sector as more people chase fewer opportunities across the board.

However, redundancy (or lay offs) bring opportunity: if you can’t break through the glass ceiling, why not create your own compay, where there IS no glass ceiling.  According to the CEO of the Small Business Task Force, speaking in 2005, a pound invested in developing women’s enterprise provides a greater return on investment that a pound invested in developing male owned enterprise.  A nice little tit-bit of information when you’re building the business case for that elusive bank loan!

And, hey, who said your boss had to pay for your training and development?  Some of the most successful women I know have put their hands in their own pockets and invested in themselves, for example by gaining additional qualifications or deliberately taking a pay-cut to get a job which offers valuable experience.

Now, more than ever, is the time to be thinking laterally about your career success.


Parent-Care Can Impact Your Career

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In UK, at least, there’s a growing acceptance that people need time for their child-care responsibilities, but what about parent-care responsibilities?

The Yummy Mummy brigade are giving us great examples of women who juggle career and family (i.e. kids), but when it comes to care of elder family members, it seems to me there is still a veil of silence, or even embarrassment.  Yet caring for an elderly relative, especially a parent, can be draining – and expensive!  And it can impact on your career, particularly if the relative in question lives some distance away.

Time and again I hear of women (and so often the care responsibilities seem to fall on daughters, or daughters-in-law) who have made 6 hour round trips to deal with some crisis facing a parent with dementia.  My own mother spent 10 years trundling back and forth between UK and Brazil to support my grandparents – her parents-in-law.

From a career perspective, parent-care is potentially a real career killer.  It tends to come when we are in our late 40s or 50s.  The likelihood is that you have greater responsibilities at work. You have probably worked hard to get where you are, and are looking forward to the fruits of your labours.  The last thing you want is to be distracted by one or both of your parents becoming your children.  Most of the people I know want their parents to be independent and living in their own homes for as long as possible. They don’t want to put them in a home.  But sometimes that is the only option, and it can lead to feelings of guilt and shame.

One of the things that has supported me in dealing with my mother’s dementia (and current sojourn in a psychiatric unit) has been the Hawaiian practice of Ho’oponopono – forgiveness. Forgiving my mother, in my heart, for the things she is saying to me, and forgiving myself for my reactions to her situation and the actions I have taken to keep her safe.

If you want to know more about the Hawaiian practices for dealing with the emotions that can come up when you face issues such as parental demetia, take a look at The Empowerment Partnership‘s website.  You can get a free MP3 download to start you on your way.

Keys to Career Success: Mastermind Groups

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One of the challenges in creating success in anything in life, including your career, is the pain of doing it on your own.  It can be hard to stay focused, motivated and self-disciplined.  It can also be very lonely.  One solution is to create a Mastermind Group – a mutual support group of people who come together from time to time to help one another achieve their dreams.

The idea goes back to Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich.  Bill George, the Authentic Leadership man, talks about a group that he has been in for years.  The great things nowadays is that you can meet your mastermind buddies virtually – you don’t have to all be in the same city at the same time.

Different people run their groups in different ways.  I was a member of a Mastermind Group for a number of years.  (We called it an Action Learning Set, but to be honest the purpose is the same).  It was so helpful for me in developing my coaching business, particularly the way I think about what I do, how to deal with challenging issues, and how to market my business.  In this case all the members of the group were coaches, but we could have had a mix of small business people.

Here’s a really excellent article I came across which cover the topic in some depth.   How To Run a Mastermind Group  Says it all, really.