March is National Women's Month. Unfortunately, when you
look at the overall statistics, things are not improving.
In the last large-scale census done by Catalyst, most
numbers either went down (such as the % of women corporate
officers) or held stagnant (% of women on board of
directors). This is not good! However, if I look at it on
a smaller scale and see all the amazing women clients that
I have worked with, I see a lot of progress and success. I
choose to look at the positive and hopefully the micro will
become the macro. Some of my own stats...The graduates of
the first 9 month Professional Women's Dream Team class (a
leadership development class for women) set goals at the
beginning of those 9 months—95% of them achieved their
goals. Of those who wanted to get promoted, 100% did!
Individual success stories from my female clients include
the following:
One client was feeling very stagnant in her current role
and wanted to play a bigger role in her organization. We
developed a plan in her coaching session as to how she
could get a promotion. Our coaching included role-playing
talking about her accomplishments and coming up with a
strategy as to whom she needed to network with to let them
know her achievements. It also included helping her gain
the confidence to go for jobs she would not have formerly
pursued. She ended up getting a double-promotion and loves
what she is doing!
In doing a networking assessment, one woman realized that
while she was a good networker, she needed to follow more
of the networking tips. She did and attributes much of her
promotion to that.
Another woman was very skilled at what she was doing, but
was not able to get senior management's approval for her
promotion. Through our coaching, she realized how she was
projecting herself to others. The way she communicated,
both in what she said and in how she carried herself
signified a lack of confidence, and therefore a lack of
credibility to senior management. She became aware of
those things, learned to correct them, and gained the
credibility she deserved...and got the promotion!
Finally, one client had been told by her manager that she
was doing all the right things in her job, but some people
in the organization didn't have the confidence in her that
was needed for her to be promoted. During our coaching
sessions, we set a strategy which included gathering more
specific feedback, figuring out the "WIIFM" (what's in it
for me) for those individuals and how she could prove to
those individuals that she had it in her to be promoted.
After implementing her strategy...she got promoted!
When you are looking at women's progress in Corporate
America, it's easy to get discouraged...however; I look at
the individual successes and choose to be optimistic. Here
are some other things you can do...whether you are a woman
or a man:
1. Acknowledge and highlight the successes of the women in
your organization.
2. Reach out and find a woman to mentor.
3. Understand some of the obstacles that hold women back
(for example, not networking enough, communicating in a way
that decreases their credibility, lacking the confidence to
try for promotions, etc.)
Hopefully, the next statistics will be more positive! With
the women I've met continuing to succeed in the workplace,
they will be!
----------------------------------------------------
Kerrie Halmi of Halmi Performance Consulting specializes in
increasing women's success in business through speaking,
coaching and facilitation. Kerrie has over fifteen years
of experience in the Human Resources field with such
clients as eBay, Wells Fargo and Kaiser. She received her
MBA from the University of Michigan and is certified in
coaching with Corporate Coach University International. See
http://www.halmiperformance.com
No comments:
Post a Comment