💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 4928.gmi captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Chana R Schoenberger
Behind all the fraught discussions about women leaning in and opting out,
there s a bigger question: how do women who choose high-powered careers get
ahead and how do they beat male contenders to the top executive roles?
Even in cases where men and women adopt the same strategies for their careers,
the man achieves more success, said Deborah Gillis, the chief operating
officer of Catalyst, a New York-based non-profit that studies executive women
and leadership around the world.
Bigger Job, Bigger Salary
Get the assignments that bring you higher compensation with these five tips.
Always be closing: Remember that every conversation is a sale. Have a
five-second pitch ready on what you ve been up to at work in case a senior exec
gets in the coffee line with you.
Say yes at work: Even if you think you re not ready for a big assignment,
accept it anyway. Then prove you can do it well.
Be ready to move: Some of the best opportunities involve moving to another city
or overseas. Be flexible about your location, if you can.
Ask for more pay: Use data to show your results and prove you re worth a bigger
salary.
Be willing to walk away: If you don t get the salary you feel you deserve, be
prepared to switch companies.
Traditionally, women who wanted to climb the corporate ladder focused on
finding senior mentors and acting as much like male executives as possible. But
that career-success handbook is out of date, experts say. Today s executive
women are using better strategies to rise to the top.
They re jumping at every opportunity, expanding their networks and turning
their attention from mentors to sponsors. But these new approaches are not
without their challenges. Women have to do more and figure out how to get paid
more. They have to learn how to network differently. And they have to create a
personal board of advisors and try to find a senior executive to sponsor them
within their company.
Over the next several days, BBC Capital will explore the new art of getting
ahead for women. In this first instalment, we highlight women who have gone
after bigger assignments and successfully demanded higher salaries.
Always Say Yes
For Abbe Luersman, who worked as a top human-resources executive at consumer
products maker Unilever, the secret has been never saying no to an assignment.
Based in Rotterdam since 2009, Luersman, 45, left her role at Unilever Europe
on 1 November to become the chief human-resource officer at Royal Ahold, a
large grocery retailer.
I wasn t ever hesitant to take on a big global leadership project, she said.
When you consistently deliver on your commitments and you deliver results, the
outcomes are there, and people will ask you to do more.
Luersman, who is American, has also worked in the United Kingdom and Italy, and
has completed several one- to three-month stints in other countries for
specific projects. She started her career at appliance manufacturer Whirlpool,
where in her early 20s she organised the company s first live broadcast to
workers around the globe.
Pay gaps
The corollary to asking for bigger assignments is asking for more money. Linda
Babcock and Sara Laschever s book Women Don t Ask scrutinized the differences
between men and women s negotiating styles and examined how that difference
affects pay and career progression. Since women are less likely than men to ask
their managers for a pay rise, promotion, or other career moves, they place
themselves at a disadvantage compared to their male colleagues, the authors
asserted.
Chantal Glenisson, Sallie Krawcheck, Julia Hobsbawm.
Chantal Glenisson, Sallie Krawcheck, Julia Hobsbawm.
THE NEW ART OF GETTING AHEAD: Coming this week...
The way women should network now
Forget mentors, find sponsors and advisors instead
How one of Japan's few top female executives made it big
Over time, this disparity adds up, with men tending to climb higher in their
careers and earn bigger salaries.
Men ask for raises more than women do, because they feel they deserve
something more, said Laura Pincus Hartman, a professor of business ethics at
Chicago s DePaul University.
Hartman encourages her students to speak up for what they want. In her own
career, Hartman has learned to fight for herself at work, even threatening to
leave when necessary. Once people see how valuable you are, they ll give it to
you, she said.
Hartman came to DePaul in 1990 to teach business law at the business school.
She was running a business-ethics institute as well as teaching. But with a law
degree, not a doctorate, she felt underappreciated and underpaid.
The only way I could get a significant pay raise was to say to DePaul, I m
leaving , she recalled. The university called her bluff and she left in 1998,
accepting a very good high-paying job at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Moving to Madison involved relocating her family her husband at the time and
their two small daughters to another state, but Hartman was willing to do it
because she felt her career was stalled at DePaul if the university wouldn t
increase her salary. Two years later, DePaul lured her back with an associate
vice president title, matching her University of Wisconsin compensation.
If women the age of Hartman s students take these lessons to heart,
demographics and attitudes might make this sort of dilemma fade or resolve
without as much angst in the future. Younger women are increasingly savvy about
speaking up for what they want at work. At the University of Pennsylvania s
Wharton School of Business, where 42% of MBA students are female, the women
students group holds events and panels for members on how to avoid the
pitfalls Babcock and Laschever highlighted in their book.
It s a problem that could cost these students money. According to Catalyst,
female MBAs earn $4,600 less, on average, in their first job out of business
school than male MBAs, even accounting for differences in industry, work
experience, and other factors.
We talk a lot about the pay gap how women are different at work and some
concrete ways that we can start to change our behaviour, said Hee-won Kang,
30, a second-year student who is co-president of the group, Wharton Women in
Business. This September, the 700-member group s annual conference bore the
theme Own Your Career.