4

Big Bold Moves

We all want to work somewhere that treats people fairly and where we feel that our voice matters equally without our being dismissed because of our age, gender, or race. But where and how do you actually start chipping away at companies that have been operating in a different mode for decades or more? How can you take the first steps to disrupt the current culture dynamics and help your organization pivot to become a more inclusive, equitable environment? Where do you start? How do you find the time to be a catalyst for all of this and still do your day job?

The Playbook

Here is your playbook for pulling together the key insights into how you can design the career you desire and, through your actions, transform your company to be the one you deserve. Keep each of the following eight big bold moves in mind as you go through your days, identifying which action is appropriate to take when, within the context of your life and professional situation.

Model inclusive leadership

Take control of your growth and development

Engage your women’s network

Lift as you climb

Ignite an industry-wide conversation

Accelerate toward equal representation

Get pay straight

Advocate behind closed doors

Model Inclusive Leadership

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Start local, grow global”? The same goes for corporate culture and the employee behaviors that reinforce what is valued and what is not. Let’s “start local” by taking a hard look at your relationship behaviors at work and those of the teams you are a part of, whether as a leader or an individual contributor. The most influential strategy to improve inclusion across your team is to model how certain behaviors deliver better results for everyone. Someone has to connect the dots; this is your opportunity. Your commitment to seeing this through will test you at times, but it will be worth the effort to improve your environment day by day.

If you can help your team evolve to a place where everyone feels included and engaged and is performing at the top of her or his game, then you become a center for excellence and an influential North Star for others. That all starts with your commitment to be at your best and leverage strengths that are both inclusive of those around you and true to what energizes you.

Use the diagram here to guide your exploration of how you interact with your team and how your interactions impact on your own engagement and performance. Devote time to thinking about the situations you encounter, the people you meet, and the feedback you receive. Think about a one-on-one you had last week with a team member, a conversation with a colleague, or a recent team meeting where your own boss was present. Force yourself to think about how others impact on you, and how you impact on them. Take notes somewhere private so that you can cite specific individuals, attributes, and feelings to clearly identify key situations and behaviors that lift you up versus those that may let you down.

The goal here is to gain an understanding of how you experience those with whom you interact most often. This is why the figure encourages you to reflect on interactions with the various people whom you see at work the most. You could even add clients or suppliers to the mix as well to really evaluate how daily interactions fuel or deplete your energy. As you begin to discover areas where you experience challenges and feel the most in conflict with being your authentic self, you can develop a plan to strengthen your own presence. You may not be able to change other people overnight but you can send a clear message about authenticity and inclusion when you are able to role-model your values for appreciating diverse perspectives and people. You will be able to get clear on where and how you can best lead by example with positive, inclusive behaviors such as the ones listed here.¹

Inclusive Leadership Model

Inclusive Behaviors to Model

Demonstrates high self-awareness

Exhibits high humility

Demonstrates an openness to difference

Shares power

Is accessible

Exhibits strong cross-cultural competence

Displays courage

Is cooperative

Is flexible

Leads constructive conflict (ensures that task conflicts are resolved in ways that leave all team members feeling respected and heard) Note: This tends to be the most challenging trait for leaders to embody.

Empowers team members to make decisions

Takes advice from those on the ground

Deploys empathy to ensure that everyone gets heard

Shares credit for team success

Gives actionable feedback

Builds trust, makes risk-taking safe and celebrated

Displays interpersonal integrity (makes decisions and interacts with people in a consistent manner; solicits feedback and honest discussion despite its being inconvenient or uncomfortable for self)

Supports team growth

Fosters team accountability

How to Start Modeling Inclusive Leadership²

Focus on people you work with who have responsibilities and tasks that are largely independent

Check in on them to better understand how connected they feel and whether they feel that their voices are valued

Offer support by sharing a story of how you are trying to leverage a strength from the previous list for the betterment of the team and to achieve your shared goals

Try to help them make a connection to one of the listed strengths that is important for them to feel included and engaged with the team

You may encounter situations with individuals who act in complete contrast to these inclusive behaviors and they will be the most challenging. Yet, this is an important test of your ability to transform the organization, because people who do desire the same equality and inclusivity as you are watching to see who will back down and who will strive to take steps forward.

As you build allies in this effort to grow the team’s appreciation for working in an inclusive environment that values all perspectives and backgrounds, you will start to feel momentum for the changes you want to ignite. Warning: Leading transformation has the power to become infectious!

Take Control of Your Growth and Development

Preparing yourself to lead others while remaining focused on your own goals is filled with many challenges and opportunities for personal growth. Your career in your twenties and early thirties is a roller coaster, particularly as you navigate what you really want out of work AND life. You make mistakes, you shake them off, you try again, and you keep putting yourself out there for the next opportunity, building toward the chance to formally lead. Then, all of a sudden, you are a manager accountable for others’ performance.

In the United States, the average age we become managers is thirty years old, but the average age we receive leadership training is forty-five. So guess what? There won’t be a play-book waiting for you when you arrive. How do you handle challenges with a direct report? How do you hold conversations about pay raises or the lack thereof, develop yourself while you are accountable for developing others, or master your own calendar while making time for regular check-ins with your team? The following real-world advice about how to take control of your growth and development derives from the thirteen years I spent in the pharmaceutical industry, and my experiences as an entrepreneur and as a coach and mentor to thousands of women at every stage in their career.

In my previous book, Misunderstood Millennial Talent: The Other 91%, I unveiled the deficit of investment in millennial employees, citing about $1,200 per person. Companies in many cases spend more money on an employee’s computer than on her growth and development! Motherhood is not the primary reason women around thirty are leaving organizations. These women rank pay, lack of learning and development, and a shortage of meaningful work as the primary reasons why they leave organizations. For women in the first decade of their career, I see a critical opportunity to pursue developmental roles and experiences that will stretch their skills, knowledge, and context so that they can thrive in the next decade instead of opting out. In the majority of research studies I audited and led, women reported having a weaker external network than their male colleagues. And, quite often and disturbingly, companies discourage women and younger employees from attending external conferences where they could broaden their network within their industry and beyond. I once tried to pursue membership for my company with an industry-sponsored women’s organization, only to be told by both a female and a male executive that “we don’t pay for our women to network and seek out better job opportunities elsewhere.” Wow, that said it all to me. I knew firsthand this was not a common sentiment by leaders, since my previous employer had consistently offered and sponsored external learning and networking opportunities. This illustrates the difference between leaders and companies who understand the power of developing positive ambassadors versus those who operate in fear of supporting their employee’s growth.

If you’re going to dig your heels in, you have to be proactive about your own growth and development. Every year, organizations carve out a finite piece of their budgets to invest in high-potential training and development programs aimed at “building the bench” of future leaders. A high potential (HiPo) is an individual with the ability, aspiration, and engagement to rise to and succeed in more senior, critical positions. Savvy corporate leaders support early-career HiPos by giving them opportunities to move among different company divisions and by offering enhanced training and development, executive coaching, and senior executive sponsorship. Many programs focused solely on women are on the rise, but the nomination and selection process can feel elusive.

I do want to emphasize that budgets for training are not always available for everyone and not every company will offer it. You must be your number one career advocate and take responsibility for growing your knowledge and skills independent of company resources. Managing oneself as overall process was presented to us by Peter F. Drucker in his study “Managing Oneself,” which was published in Harvard Business Review in 1999. We have to place ourselves where we can make the greatest contribution to our organizations and communities. And we have to stay mentally alert and engaged, which means knowing how and when to change the work that we do. Drucker raised the most important questions you have to answer. “What are my strengths?” “How do I perform?” “What are my values?” “Where do I belong?” This is a great place to start your own reflections.³

I suggest learning as much as you can about how your company invests in leadership development (for nonmanagers and managers), then setting up coffee meetings with someone in HR and potential mentors in various parts of the organization who have advanced to higher leadership levels. The goal is to ask questions and express your interest in and dedication to growing as a leader within the organization. You do want to make sure you have this proactive and ongoing discussion with your manager but gathering insight and ideas from various perspectives will help you identify the training pathways and development you want to pursue.

Depending on the size of your company, HR may not have formal programs in-house, but you can hope that it will be willing to sponsor the fee or be flexible with your hours in order for you to attend a conference or local training program, or to participate in an external professional group. Come prepared for your meeting with HR to discuss these options, focusing on the “what’s in it for the company” angle.

The one approach I always recommend to young women is to volunteer and devote time on nonprofit boards because, for one thing, these boards need and are hugely appreciative of your service, and, for another, you will have the chance to lead and take on broader responsibilities than are typically available to you at that early stage of your career and that will stretch and grow your skills.

When I was twenty-one years old, I earned a junior board position with Girls Hope of Pittsburgh, an organization that helps young women build a foundation for success by providing them a nurturing home, quality education, and opportunities through college. It was a meaningful and rewarding experience for me because I was exposed to women and men who were senior leaders in industries outside my own (health care). More important, the volunteer work with girls was inspiring on many levels.

But I made one huge mistake that haunted me for quite some time. I had a big idea for a Girls Hope fundraiser that was completely out of the box and would require a pretty significant effort to pull off (resources, staffing, and sponsorship). The senior board approved my idea and gave me the reins to make it happen. I was thrilled to share this opportunity back at my job with my then manager, but was completely devastated when he dismissed it as something unrelated to my day job that could distract from my work goals.

At that point, I felt that I was giving my all to my job, working from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. most days of the week and taking on evening and weekend client events, as I was the only person on my team who was single and without children. Despite my frustration, I soldiered on, putting a ton of energy into pulling off this huge fundraiser, burning the candle at both ends. In the process of building and launching my dream event, I made a big administrative mistake at work that caused a chain reaction of negative events.

Ultimately, my company acknowledged that I had always had good intentions and that it was a genuine mistake. But it cast a negative light on my external commitments, which I perceived as instrumental to my engagement and advancement. As a result of my error, my manager discouraged me from taking on these external time commitments as well as from pursuing my MBA with company sponsorship.

Looking back, I wish I had approached the conversation with my manager about this community leadership role as a negotiation, with a timeline, a plan for how I would stay on top of my responsibilities, and a clear connection to how this volunteer role would improve my performance at work and benefit the company overall. I could have pressed for a broader discussion comparing this area of focus to those of others on the team. Maybe then my boss would have gotten on board and helped me evaluate options for time management and sharing responsibilities with my colleagues. (This approach also could have saved me a great deal of money, considering that once I did decide to pursue my MBA, I had to attend at night, paid for it predominantly on my own, and it took six years to earn my degree.)

So here’s my advice to you: Map out the developmental opportunities you believe are worth your time, and proactively discuss them with your direct leaders so that they understand what the benefit will be both to you and to the company. I would even set up meetings with a contact in HR to keep her or him in the loop on the progress of your initiative for self-development. Learn from my mistake and be prepared in advance to prove your ability to handle multiple commitments, and keep everyone updated along the way.

The following are a number of other self-led areas of growth and development that I believe are critical for young women to explore:

Stretch assignments outside your core pathway and direct responsibilities

360 feedback assessments with constructive and actionable feedback (more on this in chapter 6)

Increase your knowledge and awareness of stakeholder management (aim to understand who’s who across all leadership roles and business functions to get a stronger understanding of how everyone works together to achieve the larger business goals)

Profit and loss (P&L) responsibility

Overseas assignments

Global business responsibilities

Board of director experience (nonprofit, alumni/academic, or at start-ups)

Internal early-career professional networks or local organizations focused on connecting young professionals (join, or launch your own)

Negotiation skills (for yourself and as an advocate for the employees you lead)

Shadow experiences (shadowing senior executives to increase your exposure, raise your visibility, and expand your context)

During the last year of my MBA program at Rutgers University, I gained approval from my company to attend a two-week educational immersion program in China. This was the year of the Beijing Olympics, and because I had not had the opportunity to study abroad during my undergraduate years, I was very excited about this experience. I also saw this as a chance to increase exposure for my company’s global business operations and connect with the affiliate leaders in Shanghai and Beijing.

There was no clear pathway for me to pursue this idea of connecting with my company’s Shanghai office, and my direct leadership didn’t have any connections. So I started sending emails to colleagues in different departments in hopes that someone could make me an introduction to someone in the Shanghai office. Finally, I struck gold: A marketing peer knew two senior leaders there. I reviewed the organization chart for our internal network and familiarized myself with their background so that I could craft a more personalized note. Fast forward: I was able to visit the office for the day and meet with several counterparts in sales and marketing who shared a similar area of business priorities, so we could exchange ideas and experiences.

What was most memorable was going to lunch with a woman my age who was also completing her MBA and had similar career aspirations. We talked about work and life goals, and it was truly remarkable how much we had in common, from challenges and disappointments to results and rewards.

My takeaway: Don’t expect someone else to take your career growth by the reins. Think outside the box and leverage any and every opportunity you have to develop yourself, your network, and your exposure to potential pathways.

Engage Your Employee Women’s Network

Women’s employee resource groups or networks are an underestimated engine for fueling wide-scale change and tangible momentum in our mission for equality. Employee resource groups (ERGs)—voluntary, employee-led groups made up of individuals who join based on common interests, backgrounds, or demographic factors such as gender, race, or ethnicity—have been around for decades and currently exist at 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies.⁴ They aim to foster a diverse, inclusive workplace aligned to a company’s mission, values, goals, business practices, and objectives. The benefits include the development of future leaders, increased employee engagement, and expanded marketplace reach stemming from the efforts to leverage diverse employee insights.

In recent years, ERGs have been proven to enable change at all levels, complementing senior leadership–driven diversity and inclusion strategies within organizations. A 2017 study found that 86 percent of female respondents believe that participating in their corporate women’s ERGs specifically benefited them and their career.⁵ Over two-thirds of those respondents said that their women’s ERG had actually helped create policy changes at work.

Let’s assume you are already involved in your women’s network, so now the big bold move is to determine how you can add value to lead the charge for change within your organization. In the introduction, I mentioned the engagement that had the greatest impact on me, the Women’s Employee Journey commissioned by Lilly. It explored the experiences of female employees of all ages and levels in the organization to better support them and achieve gender parity. The Lilly Women’s Employee Journey identified real and tangible barriers that inhibit women from bringing their whole selves to work, from being heard, from realizing their full potential, and from advancing in their careers and into key decision-making roles.

Your network can seek out a more intimate understanding of the experiences of women working at your company to better identify where you can begin to remove barriers and formulate your own solutions.

I can’t emphasize enough how critical it is for your network to ensure that colleagues do not perceive it as an exclusive club. Your women’s network must be a true community that works together (with women and men) to make an organization evolve to the level we all deserve. We need you to look out for one another, to build this community of true support and alliance knowing that first we must overcome these barriers for ourselves, and then we can do it for our colleagues, our friends, our protégés, our daughters, and our sons.

Amanda Apodaca has been a leader in the Women’s Initiative for Leading at Lilly (WILL, mentioned in the introduction) since its inception; she leads WILL’s company-wide advocacy program, a multilevel development initiative created to embolden women and men to speak up and lead change in their respective business divisions. Amanda’s “why” for leading WILL and advocating for gender equality is very personal. It stems from the journey her son has been on since he was diagnosed at age three with apraxia, a neurological condition similar to what a stroke victim deals with. For people with apraxia, their brain can’t tell their mouths the right shapes to make in order to form intelligible speech.

Amanda proactively shares with her colleagues and others how her family’s emotional and educational experience has strengthened her convictions about the power of a women’s network. The efforts she leads to develop advocates who help others connect their personal experiences to their day-to-day interactions (with colleagues, customers, and executives) result in extraordinary business outcomes and elevated employee engagement.

Early on, WILL realized that advocacy would be an essential component of driving change. It is critical that each of us has a clear understanding of what fuels our passion for achieving gender equality at our company and the personal role that we’re willing to play in advocating more boldly and more often than we have in the past. Because here is the thing: I don’t just have a son; I also have a daughter who at some point will be entering the workforce and was put on this earth to accomplish amazing things.

The keys to the success of a women’s network in driving change are its principles and its people. You need to agree on guiding principles around which you can organize your people, processes, and programs. Creating a governance structure that is inclusive but also flexible gives you the space to adapt as the organization’s goals expand and you learn more about what women at your company need. You have to be clear about short-term or year 1 goals as well as long-term, three-plus-year goals to demonstrate a solid intention to impact on your organization’s systems and leadership practices.

I learned a great deal from WILL’s founding chair, Laurie Kowalevsky, about conceiving the network’s strategy in the way one would a global brand launch (for example, the logo, the internal and external messages, the various stakeholder engagement strategies, thinking big about resources, and the collective ability to scale to be available to women in all parts of the organization), to help you develop highly specific plans and determine how much help you will need. A clear brand and strategy for your women’s network will illustrate the broad impact for the organization and increase support by executive leadership so it can be seen as a top-three business priority.

The biggest takeaway for me was to secure the highest level of executive sponsorship. It’s not typical for the CEO to be an ERG sponsor, but a member of the executive committee (those directly reporting to the CEO) should be. This sponsor should be visible, actively involved, and heavily invested in the impact and outcomes. He or she should have regular interaction with your leadership team and be present at key events. For a more detailed guide on launching, reinventing, and mobilizing your women’s network for its greatest impact, see the Resources section in the chapter 4 summary at the end of the book.

ERGs are not just good for business; they are essential to your company’s future. Commit to growing the impact of your women’s network. You can help build up the talent pipeline of women and foster relationships and a stronger sense of belonging and community, while also demonstrating the clear alignment of diversity initiatives with business interests.

Lift as You Climb

Paying it forward by intentionally devoting time to mentoring younger women is absolutely critical to creating change within the business world. Even in the earliest stages of your career, it is possible (and beneficial) for you to be a strong role model for girls and women who will follow in your footsteps. Making time for mentoring will nourish your spirit and remind you of the larger impact made possible through your individual success.

We women tend to underestimate our own abilities and attribute our success to external factors such as “getting lucky” or “help from others.” We must change this pattern by modeling the ability to take credit for our own efforts and hard work; as a role model and mentor, you can proudly share your accomplishments to help our next generation internalize their own dreams and to inspire their self-confidence. When girls see that it is okay to own their success, they will feel more comfortable pursuing it. For the leaders reading this chapter, it is important to inform yourself about models for formal mentoring across the company and forge successful partnerships with community organizations where female leaders can extend their impact to students.

One of the many significant memories of my experiences as a mentor to younger women through community-based organizations was participating in “Hot Jobs, Cool Women”, a program targeted at the Young Women’s Leadership Schools. Whenever I showed up to speak to a class of high school girls (usually all girls of color from underserved communities), I remember being intimidated by their confidence and tremendously inspired by who they were determined to be in their lives. They were so brave and focused, which in turn helped me find my own courage to dream bigger. The impact was not one way; it was mutually beneficial for all of us. Talking about my career and life path with these young women—not to draw insignificant parallels but to share the insights I had gathered in my journey that could help them grow faster and become something bigger than they could imagine—was a humbling experience.

Mentorship is critically important. Too many working professionals feel that they don’t have the time to be a mentor, but you have to make the time. Treat mentoring as a vital activity in your life because if you don’t, you are not only missing out on an opportunity to help yourself but also denying the next generation an opportunity to help them be better and do better.

I’m proud to be a board member for Girls Inc. of New York City. Girls Inc. is a national nonprofit organization that focuses on empowering, coaching, and building mentoring relationships with girls across the US. We offer in-school and after-school intentional programming that covers a wide range of topics that affect girls today and inspires them to be strong, smart, and bold. Our newest initiative, Teen Leadership Circles, provides an intensive, gender-specific training and development program for high school girls. Young women are trained to become peer leaders who can educate and support their peers by creating girls-only safe spaces and facilitating workshops. Our goal is to inspire young women to become advocates who positively influence their peers and ultimately change the world.

It’s important to note that your role in uplifting other women isn’t limited only to working with those who are more junior than you. Champion your peers and the women leaders who inspire you! Strive to be the type of leader who provides honest feedback in a way that is intended to empower and help someone achieve her potential. Be an advocate for the women on your team, in your department, and in the executive offices to demonstrate the pride you have in their work.

Ignite an Industry-Wide Conversation

The conversation about achieving gender parity and building a more inclusive workplace culture is one that everyone in your organization (and industry) needs to be having, not just women. Make your voice heard about the importance of different styles of leadership, flexible work options, and diverse paths up the corporate ladder that can contribute to the success of the company. Arm yourself with The Business Case for Change (see the end of the book) to encourage employees from different levels and backgrounds and with diverse work and life needs to get on board. That’s what Ashley Batson, executive director of the South Carolina (SC) Asphalt Pavement Association, is doing for the male-dominated asphalt industry through the group she cofounded, Women of Asphalt.

The stated goals of Women of Asphalt are to foster and promote mentoring and networking opportunities; create professional development opportunities through education and training; advocate for women; and encourage other women to join the asphalt industry. Ashley and Women of Asphalt have ignited an industry-wide conversation around the importance of women to the asphalt industry and the issues they face in the field, such as being taken seriously when dealing with a crew of men, how not to come on too strong but also assert their authority, portraying themselves strongly, communicating well, and being respected.

The first big Women of Asphalt event was held with a packed house of almost 150 men and women who participated in in-depth discussions about the status of the industry in terms of workforce and the need to recruit women. The members of Women of Asphalt are adamant that both men and women need to be on board with the changes the group is pushing forward—everyone must bring in all the talent he or she can. The group understands that industry-wide awareness is the first step to acknowledging there is a problem and then solving it.

Find ways to bring up the case for change in a positive, benefits-driven way whenever possible. Seek out the people who are on board with effecting change, to amplify your voice and spark a movement toward creating a more inclusive workplace. Reach out to peers in different teams or to colleagues with whom you have personal relationships, to involve them in this broader conversation. Together you can establish shared goals, experiment with intentional behaviors, and prescribe ways to keep each other accountable.

You can begin by scheduling a meeting with someone in one of the following key stakeholder groups who should be invested in this discussion:

D&I team

HR analytics team

HR recruitment team

The individuals in these roles have access to information from employees and about employees that sheds light on the urgency of improving gender representation and the inclusion of diverse voices. Share with them your own example of how you diagnosed your behavior (first big bold move) and the impact that those who model inclusive behaviors have on your team. Be candid about the successes or challenges you have encountered and come prepared with ideas for where you see an opportunity for the company to grow. Your work in the “Diagnosing Your Company Culture” section in chapter 2 is a strong start in breaking down the culture dynamics that hold women back from advancing. Maybe there is a need for training in identifying and dismantling unconscious bias, an internal communication campaign around stronger standards for inclusive behaviors at work, or resources to guide team building that clearly address gender bias.

As you work to expand the number of allies in this effort, some big questions will arise:

How can we hold leaders accountable and improve the communication skills of managers, particularly those who exhibit gender bias and use language derogatory to women?

How can our company integrate inclusive leadership practice into learning and development plans and performance management processes? How do we reward and recognize success, and even penalize actions that don’t measure up?

How important is this effort to your senior leadership team?

These are the key questions that Laura Gentile and Alison Overholt, two of the leading female executives at ESPN, considered as they embarked on a mission to transform the beloved brand and traditional employer into one that could attract women and diverse talent of all ages. They are responsible for creating lasting change in a male-dominated industry. Laura ideated and launched espnW and now holds the position of senior vice president for business operations and content strategy. Alison serves as vice president of espnW as well as editor-in-chief of ESPN The Magazine—the first woman in this role at a major US sports magazine.

Women make up 49 percent of all sports fans, and eighty million women consume ESPN every month. Laura and Alison understand that women are a key demographic for the success and growth of the sports industry. Research shows that 45 percent of millennial sports fans are women, yet the sports industry continues to be a male-dominated arena that creates barriers for women entering the industry and advancing to leadership positions.⁶ In spring 2016, espnW visited twelve colleges and met with two thousand female student-athletes. These “campus conversations” gave young female athletes a forum to discuss their unique issues and built a bridge for the industry to strengthen its female numbers and increase funding for more female-centered initiatives.

Holly Lindvall is the vice president for human resources and diversity at the New York Mets baseball organization and a passionate champion for women in the sports industry. Holly supports the Women’s Sports Foundation, which was founded by tennis legend Billie Jean King. The foundation is dedicated to creating leaders by ensuring all girls have access to sports. Using her insider perspective in the industry and role in human resources, she devotes time to mentor and advise female athletes as they are transitioning from playing sports to the world of work—whether graduating or retiring.

Through workshops at various college campuses all across the country, I have been able to connect with strong women and talk about openings in my company. I have to fit this in outside of my daily responsibilities but the women we have hired inspire me to keep going! They are outside of our traditional recruiting networks but I know that they broaden the range of diversity in gender, age, race, and skill set for our business. In my first workshop for the Women’s Sports Foundation, I met Sydni. She was finishing her last year in her graduate program while continuing to compete on the basketball court. She did not have time to do traditional internships outside of the demands of her sports schedule and therefore [felt] insecure about the next steps in her career journey as she approached graduation. I stayed after my presentation to talk to her one-on-one and we made an immediate connection. I admired her drive. We continued the conversation throughout her last year of school on the phone and regular emails. We hired her as an intern and then a full-time employee into our community engagement department. She brings her teamwork, ability to take feedback, and time management skills from the court to the office.

You need to make time for networking to help generate positive momentum for recruiting and engaging women in any industry. Focus on the quality of the connections over the quantity and connect with woman at all stages throughout their journey from campus to career. Reach out through networks that exist or initiate your own. Start by building awareness and creating a company-wide conversation. Then you can expand industry wide to share the commitment to a more diverse workforce and an equal voice for women at every intersection where women in your business can connect.

Accelerate toward Equal Representation

When you can see women who look like you in positions you aspire to hold—in your field of work, at your company’s highest levels, and in your community, daily communications, and yes, your country—your confidence that you can reach those heights yourself grows. This message is a thread throughout this book and everything I believe we need to work toward. It’s not enough that women make up more than half the workforce; we need to have access to and hold positions at the highest levels of every organization, community, and nation. So what can you do? Start with your own team and create specific goals for achieving 50-50 representation of women.

JP Morgan Chase Women on the Move is a global, firm-wide initiative that empowers female employees, clients, and consumers to build their careers, grow their businesses, and improve their financial health. Women on the Move is led by Samantha Saperstein and backed by the firm’s leadership team and operating committee—half of whom are women. One of the three focus areas is to propel women into leadership positions across the firm. This example and several others, such as EY Fast Forward and The CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion, are global programs that are worth looking into as models to inspire your own efforts within your company. Reach out to the individuals leading these efforts and mentioned in their press releases to learn more and how to collaborate.

If you are the team leader, become more intentional about succession planning and recruiting. Discuss this goal with your team and engage their support and accountability. If you are an individual contributor, meet with your manager and explicitly state that equal representation is an important value to you (citing all the stats I provide in The Business Case for Change section at the end of the book), and offer to help. Ask your manager where he or she sees the opportunity to involve more women in your direct work and how you can help leadership expose more women to your team, department, and company. You can also play a huge role in the recruitment and outreach to qualified women who could join your company.

Through the consulting work I have led with our clients at Columbia Business School and the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School, we’ve learned that women must be engaged much earlier in their lives to expose them to the benefits of an MBA. These efforts are critical to helping women believe that business school is a viable, accessible opportunity for them. The goals are to increase the female application pool and enrollment to grow the number of female MBA graduates ready to lead organizations around the world.

Get Pay Straight

Shonda Rhimes, producer, screenwriter, and author, shared the following:

I am the highest-paid showrunner in television . . . The other day I came to this conclusion that men brag and women hide. Even when they don’t deserve to brag, men brag . . . and when men do deserve to brag, they are good at it. When Ryan [Murphy] made his amazing deal with Netflix, what did he do? He shouted his salary to the world and he did this gorgeous cover shoot and photo for The Hollywood Reporter and he deserved every minute of it. I applaud him. . . . When I made a deal with Netflix, I let them report my salary wrong in the press, and then I did as few interviews as possible and I put my head down and worked. In other words, I hid. I’m getting this award [Elle Magazine’s twenty-fifth annual women in Hollywood celebration] for inspiring other women–how can I inspire anyone if I’m hiding?

One of the most high-impact areas for change in US companies is gender wage equity. In the United States, the average woman still makes just 77 cents to the male dollar over their lifetimes—and even less if she’s a woman of color. There is controversy around these numbers, yet even when you compare apples to apples—for example, MBA grads one year out of business school and working in the same jobs—women still earn just 93 percent of what men do.⁷ So how do you know whether gender pay equity is affecting you personally, and what can you do about it?

It is a fact that when women negotiate for better pay, they’re often perceived as “pushy” and are less likely to get the raise than men doing the same thing. In the 2017 McKinsey and Lean In study of top firms in the US, researchers found that women who negotiated were 67 percent more likely to receive feedback that their personal style was “intimidating” or “too aggressive.”⁸ Yet we can’t let this hold us back from asking for more. We need to encourage women to speak up and keep asking for what they are worth on being hired and every step along their career journey. We must research an employer and the industry to try to uncover the pay ranges for the skills and expertise women could bring to the role. If we come to these discussions well informed and prepared to be as specific as possible, we can more clearly advocate for what we want and deserve.

Let’s begin with assessing your true worth and market value. Please know that this is not the salary.com way, which you can use as a starting point but which will not give you a thorough assessment of your breadth of experience, education, and role responsibilities. You must map out all these pieces yourself and list out your pay along with benefits to be firm in preparing to negotiate tactfully and effectively.

The typical advice for negotiation is not at all relevant for individuals in a corporate setting where there are annual reviews, pay scales, and department caps on wage increases. You need to do some legwork to understand how financial rewards are calculated and distributed in your company. This requires reading anything made available to you at your current level, scheduling an appointment with HR, and engaging in open discussions with your manager. You may find the thought of such efforts stressful or frightening, but you have to break the cycle and initiate these conversations.

If it makes you feel more comfortable, think about these initial discussions as regarding company compensation processes and not your specific situation. To gain a stronger understanding of how your chosen career path will affect your pay, you want to learn as much as you can about the impact of level, department, and tenure on pay and benefits. Putting together all the facts about your own compensation (what you are paid and what you believe the compensation should be for your level and productivity, given your company’s policies) will put you in the driver’s seat for a direct conversation about pursuing an increase.

Advocate Behind Closed Doors

When are key decisions made about “who has potential,” “who gets promoted,” and “who is not ready”? In talent management discussions and formal performance reviews. Typically, HR and the management team are present with a senior leader, and these meetings are a regular occurrence at the larger, more traditional organizations.

Our big goal as women is to get in that room. Earn a seat at the table by becoming a manager or a key maker of talent decisions in your organization. Then you can be a strong advocate for ensuring that these discussions are conducted with a balance of men and women with equal voice in decisions having to do with promotions and people’s potential.

A challenging aspect of these company meetings is that they can focus too much on past performance and technical skills and are based solely on manager nominations (which can be contaminated by politics and vague arm’s-length observations). As a result, the typical HiPo assessment of who has what it takes to advance looks a lot like a popularity contest. You need to have an advocate behind closed doors because that’s where the fate of your career may matter most.

Our second goal is to help our employers recognize that traditional gender stereotypes that over-associate career ambition with men, and flexibility and work-life balance with women are starkly out of date and detrimental to a diverse talent pool.

The third goal, a more personal one, is for you to gain clarity and gather details on your company’s approach to talent identification overall. Do you know the process and timeline for these types of discussions at your company? Do they change as you rise in the ranks or by department? A CEO once shared with me that over the course of one month, all the one-on-one discussions he had with male employees centered around the knowledge they had about upcoming talent sessions. Each man who met with the CEO was positioning himself, providing accounts of all his results and career interests in advance. Not one of the female employees who came into his office for a one-on-one even had a clue that these sessions were approaching, nor did they come prepared to advocate for their own potential. He was in disbelief that the men seemed more informed and aware of the talent process than any of the women. As a result, he was determined to address it company wide and ensure the talent management system overall was transparent and accessible to all employees. That’s advocacy in action from the very top.

You must understand the talent process, the timeline, and the “who’s who” in the room. The impact of those decisions and discussions will help you identify the people who need to get to know you, your performance, and your potential. This knowledge of the entire ecosystem that affects advancement and promotion will become an important asset in your career planning and your road map for whom you must build relationships with.

Being brave and pursuing bold moves is core to the “Dig Your Heels In” philosophy. I encourage you to use them however they serve your life and career goals. It doesn’t matter which move you make or in which order; what matters is that you do something. Right now, choose one move that you will invest time in over the next month. Once you begin to follow the advice and put the ideas into action, I suspect that the momentum will take over, and you will feel the urgency to continue digging.