How Women Lead

More results of email archaeology...

How Women Lead by Sharon Hadary and Laura Henderson should be required reading for all female managers, although the name is rather misleading. This book is not so much about how women lead (although the first chapter does pay tribute to their strengths as managers), but about how they should lead. It is chockfull of practical advice about things that male managers seem to know instinctively, but most female managers either don’t know, or are too diffident to put into practice, for fear of seeming too forward.

It’s time to throw off the shackles, the authors, say. Learn to promote and position yourself. Always be aware of your worth to the company (in fact, calculate it, and if you don’t know how, learn!).  Keep a stock of all your contributions, put a dollar value on it and during your annual review, have it at hand when you’re discussing your progress and promotion and exactly what kind of raise you are looking for.

Even if you’re very good at doing the technical stuff, upskill to learning how to handle other people doing the technical stuff. And above all, don’t micro-manage. …and …point out that for most female managers, micro managing ends up being the killer:

One of women’s strengths is their commitment to providing quality products and services. Conversely, one of the things that can hold them back is believing that the best way to ensure this level of quality is to stay personally involved in every aspect of the day-to-day operations, they point out. Resist the temptation.

“When you stay involved at that level, you end up doing so many things that you are not doing any of them well and no one is leading the integration of all parts. The result is that you become the greatest barrier to the growth and success of your project or function,” they say.

And while literature may be rife with the “fickleness” of women, according to this book, one of their main drawbacks in career advancement, is being too loyal to a company, because it’s been good to them. They stay even when there’s nothing more to be learned or nowhere to grow into. Know when to leave, is a crucial piece of advice. But, when leaving, you should not just be looking at your new renumeration package. You should investigate the new company’s culture to see if it’s a fit.

And as for remuneration, here’ the two authors say a little bit of outside help never hurt. If you don’t know what the industry average is for your new position, or what kind of value you will be bringing into the new company, get the help of an expert to calculate it.

Another thing is personal branding. Many women toss off emails lightly without bothering to check or edit, not realizing that a little mistake goes a long way towards branding them. Or their phone manner. Did you know that your physical appearance and voice account for 93% of that first impression, and that first impressions stick? Which means your content is only worth 7% of what people think of you. Sad, but true.

The authors recommend that you spend as much as you can possibly afford on quality clothes. Men understand this and dress for the part. It’s a lot harder for women, as there are too many choices available. Go for a balance between sexy and dowdy, if you expect to be taken seriously. Too sexy, they will be looking at you but not listening, and too dowdy, well, they will neither look nor listen. And invest in the services of a really good hairdresser.

Basically the book is divided into eight chapters, each with a crucial pointer for women in their journey as managers. At first you will be tempted to think that it is just another wishy-washy tome, advocating woo woo strengths like “intuition” and bringing “motherhood” to bear on the job.

 But it doesn’t. The advice comes straight from the gut from women who have made it to the top and it’s very practical. For instance in the chapter on self promotion, it tells women to push themselves forward for awards (feminine modesty be damned), put themselves out there to make speeches (even detailing the four core speeches that can be prepared and adapted to the four main audiences they will be called to give speeches to), get a sponsor within the company (who knows your strengths and will bear you in mind the next time there is an opening higher up), several mentors…the list goes on.

 It points out that doing the best work that you can, and expecting to get recognized based on merit, is old hat and frankly, it doesn’t work. You’ve got to put yourself forward. Men, by some strange instinct, or maybe old boy’s club mentoring, seem to understand that. Women don’t. It’s time they did.

 Many of the suggestions will feel uncomfortable, but the more uncomfortable, apparently, the better. One of the main suggestions in the book is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. This is not a book for the fainthearted. If you’re contented with being where you are and moving up the corporate ladder, slowly if at all, don’t bother with it.

 But if you’re determined to make it up there, this book will help you. Note that it does not advocate sleeping your way to the top (advice on inter-office affairs? Don't!), backstabbing or office politics. Every suggestion will require a great deal of homework, and work. But if you’re tired of being overlooked,), watching your male colleagues trip up that ladder gaily, while you stay behind and make their coffee, this is the book for you.

How to sell financial services to women

 I have left my old job. And as I am clearing out the trash (actually and metaphorically and doing some email archaeology) I came across old articles which I would like to put some place because I thought them interesting. And useful.

So here:

If you read “How to give financial advice to women” by Kathleen Burns Kingsbury you will be left with the irrepressible notion that women have finally arrived. For such a book to be written, delving deeply into the psychology of women and how they communicate and how they prefer to be served and sold to, one can only assume that it must finally be worth the trouble.

It is. Kingsbury prefaces the book by making the business case. She is not going to tell male (or female) financial advisors, that they’d better bone up on “attentive listening”, an art in itself, if she doesn’t have the numbers to justify the effort.

Over the next 40 years in the US, she says women are due to inherit 70% of the US$41 trillion in intergenerational wealth transfers, or approximately US$28.7 trillion in assets. And the first thing they will do when they have inherited this wealth, is fire their present advisor. Why? Because most advisors have neither taken the time to know them or to study how best to reach out/relate to them.

Men, she says, are competitive by nature. Show them a bunch of charts to prove how your investment outperforms the index and they’re happy. Whip out the same bunch of charts with a woman at the start, and you may lose her as a client.

Her definition of success is not about winning and losing against the market, but on how well her portfolio performed in conjunction with her long-term life goals and objectives. He wants to win. She wants to survive and thrive.

Recently the Boston Consulting Group surveyed 12,000 women from 21 countries for its Global Inquiry into Women and Consumerism study and discovered women are most dissatisfied with the financial services industry, of all industries, on both a service and product level.

The financial services industry, Kingsbury points out, was created by men to serve the male wealth creator; therefore it is no wonder that women feel left out. They were and still are.

Approximately 80% of financial advisors, 90% of brokers and 84% of financial corporate officers are men. The industry’s best practices, marketing strategies, selling tactics, and investing protocols were and still are developed primarily using a male’s brain which thinks, acts and behaves differently than the female’s brain.

This misconception leads advisors to miss the boat when prospecting and advising women. The traditional transaction business model commonly used in financial services does not meet a woman’s social or neurological need for connection. Instead, a woman wants an ongoing coaching relationship with her financial advisor.

“She wants a professional who understands her first and sells to her second,” Kingsbury emphasizes.

Women are looking for female-friendly advisors to help them receive, build and pass on wealth. These advisors need to be knowledgeable, credentialed and competent. They must possess communication and relationship-building skills specifically designed for working with female clients. In addition, they must understand a woman’s need to build trust slowly, to be emotionally validated by her advisor and to be able to share her story as part of the financial planning process.

Sound like a tall order? Not if you think about what you, as a financial advisor, stand to gain. Or lose. Some fun facts: Women control the majority of personal wealth in the US. They make approximately 80% of family household buying decisions, including those related to banking and financial services. Of affluent women, 88% are moderately or highly involved in the oversight and management of their assets, one in five firms with revenue of US$1 million or more is woman-owned, the economic impact from women-owned businesses is US$2.8 trillion annually.

Kingsbury goes to lengths to spell out the psychology of women, how they think, feel and operate. She even maps out the differences in how the male and female brains work. If you think about it, the discovery of the differences is pretty recent, as late as the 1980s. Before that, male and female brains were thought to operate in the same way. Just like pre-Rousseau, children were considered miniature adults and childhood was not recognised as a separate state.

At the end of each chapter, she provides, little exercises for you to assess how female-friendly your practice is, how you define wealth, how you can use/adapt your present strengths for this market.

She even provides dialogues, a kind of what to do, and what not to do. Some of the conversations may appear tedious, and overly careful and I can imagine men rolling their eyes – no, you don’t whip out a solution when she presents a problem; first you listen, then you affirm her feelings without belittling her or her concerns, and then you both put your heads together and try to figure out a solution. It takes about five times longer than dealing with a man. And she is very detail-oriented. A desk without photographs, for instance, may raise eyebrows because it stays something about you.

When I shared ideas from this book with my colleagues, most of them said women here (in Malaysia) want to be treated the same as men. They want the charts, the “let’s not waste time making small talk but get on with it” attitude, but I wondered, for how much longer.

If men and women relate differently naturally and as women become more economically empowered, they will start asking for services that are skewed towards their natural predilections. And as Kingsbury says, don’t make the mistake of thinking that packaging will do the trick.

What are the rules for navigating the female world? They are many and complicated. But Kingsbury gives you six.

Firstly, women need to tell their story. If you want her as a client, you are going to have to learn to listen, ask curious, open-ended questions. Second, women tend to get personal quickly. Three, women communicate using feeling words. (“She will do most of the talking and emoting; you just need to listen, validate her feelings and show empathy.”) Women define success as being “indispensable”. They love to help and be seen as the go-to person for assistance. Men typically prefer to be independent and define success in terms of doing it alone.

The fifth rule is that women tend to remember details and read body language. Making eye contact, communicating interest through nonverbal communication and paying attention to details are very important in the female culture.  And finally, the last rule is that women are loyal. If you have secured her as a client, she is likely to not only stay with you, but refer you to more friends, family members and colleagues than your male clients.

The second half of the book takes you through actual conversations and exercises. If you don’t think the female market is worth your while, here’s where you would stop reading. But if you are looking to capture this not-so-niche market, you would probably do well to study this book carefully, read it several times, take notes.

Oh yes, and for crying out loud, put some photographs on your desk.