DM Coaching and Development

How Much Do Your Male Colleagues Earn? Bring on the Compulsory Pay Audits

Traditionally, companies have had gag clauses on employees discussing how much they earned with colleagues. It has been a highly secretive way of keeping employees in the dark when it comes to negotiating their packages - useful to companies - but rife for abuse and gender disparities. As discussed in a recent article in Australia's The Age magazine "Women Still Trail in Pay Stakes" : "Many Australians believe women won equal pay in the `70s — but they are wrong," ACTU president Sharan Burrow said. Among the union demands are compulsory "pay equity audits" which would require companies to disclose what male and female employees are paid — including bonuses — at all levels of the corporation. It would be a simple way of changing the corporate culture if people knew what it was that men and women were earning up through the pay scale. Making them part of the reporting cycle for companies would make a huge difference." I think there is a long way to go, but I suspect compulsory pay audits would split the City assunder for all that they would unearth. 

Female Managers More Likely than Office Juniors to be Sexually Harassed

I found this new research about women in leadership positions from the National Institute for Mental Health in Washington  DC, which was quite surprising. It seems I had not been alone in thinking that the most low-ranking women within an organisation would be most vulnerable to sexual harassment. Well, it seems that quite the opposite is true - it is women with supervisory responsibilities who are up to 137% more likely to be harassed than junior women. As explained in by the main researcher, Heather McLauglin in the article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: " When sexual harassment was first exposed as a workplace issue in the 1970s, the assumption was that women in lower positions, who were more economically vulnerable and had fewer options for walking away, were most at risk of being harassed...." Instead it would seem "Men are using harassment as a workplace equalizer, to strip women in these positions of their power, prestige in the workplace. Harassment isn't about sexual desire or wanting to establish a romantic relationship, but more about control and domination."

Are Women Better Bosses?

I am often asked about this question in panel discussions on professional women in managment, and while I believe you can have a great boss who is either female or male, it is interesting how we love to see the debate hashed out with one gender being deemed as the inherently the "best managers". It also hugely depends on your version of what "best" is. I was leading a mixed group at the University of Cambridge on the topic of gender difference in teams, and some of the male participants said their preferred style was to "be left alone" receiving no feedback unless their was a problem - virtually the opposite of any of the women in attendance, or indeed that I know. I recently saw the New York Times article which pits some of the most credible experts from both academic and the corporate sector to weigh in on the big question. For their opinions, read "Do Women Make Better Bosses?"

Career Women as Workplace Bullies?

This article in The Australian caught my eye, as some of female coaching clients mention that they prefer all male workplaces. The reason? Woman on woman bullying. As detailed in the article by Shelley Gare: "When adult women bully each other, they are mostly indirect. They use weapons that are hard to detect and that leave wounds invisible to the eye. The adjectives psychologists and bullying experts use to describe such shadowy methods are “covert”, “subtle” and “manipulative”. The tactics are ostracism, exclusion, spreading rumours and playing favourites. Information is withheld; secrets are kept; a victim’s contributions – to either a conversation or a workplace – are ignored. It’s bullying by stealth. “Aggression in men tends to be worn much more clearly,” says Dan Auerbach, a Sydney-based analytic psychotherapist. “But those subtle expressions of dislike between women make it much harder to fight back, and harder for other people to see what’s going on.” Have you seen this in your workplace?

Women More Tech Savvy than Men

While I consider myself the biggest technophobe, I should give myself more credit for what I do know how to do on a computer ( I blog and update my own website - things I never thought I would do!) - and new research reported by Reuters shows that perhaps other career women underestimate their abilities! According The latest GadgetologyTM study from Retrevo, shows that women know more about consumer electronics products and men don't know as much as they think they know. Women are not only displaying a new affinity for electronics but their knowledge rivals, and often surpasses their male counterparts. The study found 79% of men felt "extremely tech savvy," compared to only 55% of women. However, a greater percentage of women actually knew that "MB" stands for megabytes.  The study also found that women are more attached to their gadgets. When asked to choose between giving up a Computer or Caffeine, 82% of women wanted their computer compared to 75% of men. Vipin Jain, CEO of Retrevo said "Not only are women buying and using more CE than ever before, but they`re also becoming savvier, something that the industry has yet to, but needs to, reflect. Every single component of the CE industry has been affected by the recession and is trying to figure out how to make money in the new economy. Our Gadgetology report suggests that women might be the answer."  Amen to that! 

Women Face More Redundancies but Men More Stressed by Unemployment

New research from the University of Cambridge suggests that men are hit harder by credit crunch stress. Earlier polls suggested that more women say they are worried about the possibility of losing their jobs than men, and indeed there has been a sharper decline in women’s jobs than men’s. However, the research suggests men may put on a braver face, as job insecurity causes more symptoms of anxiety and depression in men than in women. Dr. Brendan Burchell's team looked at thousands of people since 1991 and found that while men claim to be less concerned about job insecurity than women, they show more signs of being stressed, anxious and depressed. “In part there is a macho issue about men being the breadwinner,” Dr Burchell said. “Men, unlike women, have few positive ways of defining themselves outside of the workplace between when they leave school and when they retire. Despite several decades of more equal employment opportunities for men and women, men retain traditional beliefs that their masculinity is threatened if their employment is threatened.”

Women Less Tolerant of Women's Mistakes than Men's

  Women often tell me they prefer to work with male bosses than for other women. While I don't think one gender make better managers than the other, I did come across some research from the US journal Psychological Science and summarised in The Telegraph which goes some way to explaining why some women may have this preference. "The research team from Emmanuel College in Boston asked male and female college students to rate their room-mates under different scenarios. When asked to judge how they would rate their room-mates if they carried out a single fictional act of negative behaviour, after they had been otherwise completely trustworthy, women were far more likely to be critical of them. Men, on the other hand, were much more tolerant. Women were also more likely to switch to a new room-mate than men were, and were much quicker to form negative impressions of the other woman. The authors, led by associate professor of psychology Joyce Benenson, concluded that women were harsher on their peers because they expected more from their same-sex relationships than men did. While the study did not take place in the workplace itself, it would appear to back up previous surveys that have found women prefer to work for a male boss."  Sound familiar? We can be our own worst enemies.

Asking for a Pay Rise in a Bad Economy

I don't doubt you have worked hard and that you deserve it, but now is a difficult time to ask for a pay rise. The poor economy can make even the most productive of workers unsure how to ask for a rise. There are three main things to focus on if you are coming up to an annual appraisal. 1. Find out what competitors pay - you have to do your homework first on sites like www.monster.co.uk  so you have the ammunition you need before negotiating. 2. Think about the money you make your organisation - document all your accomplishments based on how much revenue the projects you worked on earned saved the company, quantify everything you can! 3. Don't give an ultimatum - this economy makes it easy for an employer to show you the door, so if you don't get what you want, ask what exactly you need to do to be earning more, then get a date to revisit those goals with your boss - before you leave the negotiating table. 

New Power Girls on Huffington Post

 For those of you who haven't seen The Huffington Post, it's a blog I highly recommend, not only did it keep me up to date with the recent American election, it has great pieces of social commentary, including the one written by Patricia Handschiegel, on the The New Power Girls. She writes: "Perhaps a hybrid of Baby Boomer work ethic, 70s freedom, and the great women in business boom of the 80s and 90s, they're a deadly concoction of drive, ambition and an anything-is-possible mindset. What's interesting is that it goes beyond the business world into every corner of their lives. They have rich social lives and good friends, husbands, great families, and live comfortably. They love style, looking good, support social change, and most of all, are happy." Sounds like my clients who enjoy their life, but want to get and give more from it. Sound familiar?

Write it Down, Reap the Rewards

In my sessions with clients, we often make time to write down achievements or what is going well for them. This at first seems antithetical to them as they are there to talk about their problems right? But often one of the best ways to unravel a problem and put it in perspective is to shift the focus and think about what is actually going well. It is not a skill most people, especially women, exercise frequently. We tend to focus on our weaknesses and the challenges ahead rather than give ourselves credit for what we are actually good at or what is working well for us. At a recent speech I gave at Microsoft, I asked the audience to name their key strength...the silence was deafening :) Hence, I knew that getting them to stretch themselves and write down a strength was the first step towards a more positive outlook.

Positivity Boosters

1. Write down ten strengths you possess. If you get stuck, think about the positive feedback you get from others in your team or friends... you know the compliments you have previously disregarded as false or ignored altogether? What are they? What are some of your best qualities.
2. Write down ten successes you have achieved in the last year. It may be that you were given a direct report to manage, submitted a project on time or under budget, took a belly dancing class, climbed Ben Nevis, started investing in an ISA, threw a fabulous party for some girlfriends, started a book club, created a website....okay now I am starting to talk about me. Just write yours down!
3. Record 5 good things that happened today. People who focus on the good aspects of any given day, even if they are relatively small (got a compliment on my shirt) or out of our control (enjoyed the first sunny day of spring) are much more likely to be happier overall and bounce back from negatives.