Her Place at the Table E-Book

Deborah M. Kolb

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 388

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Thoroughly revised and updated and with a new Introduction by the authors, this paperback edition of Her Place at the Table draws on extensive interviews with women leaders to help all women negotiate their path to leadership success. A Woman's Guide to Taking Her Place at the Leadership Table "It's time for women to take their places at the leadership tables alongside men. Why? Because the skills we developed at the foot of the table--bringing people together, building bridges across differences, and thinking outside the box--are in great demand. But to use this time and these skills to the greatest advantage, read this book. The authors have set a great meal for you...just devour it." --Marie C. Wilson, president and founder, The White House Project "Does she have the right stuff? That question follows women whenever they are promoted to visible leadership positions. Her Place at the Table lays out the pragmatic moves that can help any woman in business show she has the right stuff. I encourage all women with leadership aspirations to use this book as a guide." --Patricia Fili-Krushel, executive vice president, Time Warner "Women roar--they are the leaders we need in corporations today, but there are still some barriers. This book will help individual women negotiate what they need to succeed as leaders and help their firms support them in their efforts. That way we all win!" --Tom Peters, management consultant and author, Reimagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age For more information about Her Place at the Table or a group discussion guide, visit http://www.herplaceatthetable.com. Completely Updated with a New Introduction by the Authors

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Praise

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction

IT’S NOT BECAUSE WOMEN LACK TALENT

IT’S NOT BECAUSE THERE AREN’T ENOUGH WOMEN IN THE PIPELINE

IT’S NOT BECAUSE WOMEN AREN’T INTERESTED

IT’S NOT BECAUSE WOMEN DON’T ASK

ABOUT THIS BOOK

CHAPTER 1 - DRILL DEEP

COMMON TRAPS

STRATEGIC MOVES

KEEP ON PROBING

GET READY TO DRILL DEEP: STRATEGIZING TO NEGOTIATE FOR INTELLIGENCE

CHAPTER 2 - MOBILIZE BACKERS

COMMON TRAPS

STRATEGIC MOVES

GET READY TO MOBILIZE BACKERS: STRATEGIZING TO NEGOTIATE CRITICAL SUPPORT

CHAPTER 3 - GARNER RESOURCES

COMMON TRAPS

STRATEGIC MOVES

GET READY TO GARNER RESOURCES: STRATEGIZING TO NEGOTIATE KEY ALLOCATIONS

CHAPTER 4 - BRING PEOPLE ON BOARD

COMMON TRAPS

STRATEGIC MOVES

GET READY TO BUILD MOMENTUM: STRATEGIZING TO CREATE BUY-IN

CHAPTER 5 - MAKE A DIFFERENCE

COMMON TRAPS

STRATEGIC MOVES

GET READY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE: STRATEGIZING TO CREATE VISIBILITY AND CLAIM VALUE

APPENDIX A - A ROAD MAP TO NEGOTIATING THE FIVE CHALLENGES

APPENDIX B - WHAT ORGANIZATIONS CAN LEARN FROM HOW WOMEN LEADERS NEGOTIATE THE ...

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acknowledgments

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

INDEX

Praise for the Previous Edition of Her Place at the Table

“More than ever before, negotiation is a critical competency for success in business. Her Place at the Table offers valuable approaches for any woman hungry to make the most of her career potential.”

—Barbara Desoer, president, Consumer Products, Bank of America

“More women are stepping into senior leadership positions and facing the day-to-day challenges and resistance to their leadership. Her Place at the Table provides excellent advice to these new women leaders. Here is a guide to help all women executives maneuver the corporate landscape and avoid the pitfalls that could impact their success as leaders.”

—Lynn Martin, former Secretary of Labor and chair of Deloitte & Touche’s Council on the Advancement of Women; and Sue Molina, retired partner and former national director of the Initiative for the Retention and Advancement of Women, Deloitte & Touche

“New leadership assignments are fraught with challenges. In this engaging and useful book, the authors analyze the leadership experiences of over one hundred women and develop a plan for negotiating a ‘place at the [leadership] table.’ Anyone trying to navigate today’s organizational landscape will learn from the insights in Her Place at the Table.”

—Patricia O’Brien, deputy dean, Harvard College

“Her Place at the Table provides key practical advice for women leaders who must navigate the ‘organizational minefields.’ The questions alone are an essential part of any leader’s toolkit!”

—Rayona Sharpnack, president, Institute for Women’s Leadership, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 by Deborah M. Kolb, Judith Williams, and Carol Frohlinger. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741—www.josseybass.com

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kolb, Deborah M.

Her place at the table : a woman’s guide to negotiating five key challenges to leadership success / Deborah M. Kolb, Judith Williams, Carol Frohlinger.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-63375-5 (pbk); ISBN 978-0-470-94466-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-0-470-94467-7 (ebk); ISBN 978-0-470-94468-4 (ebk)

1. Women executives. 2. Leadership. 3. Leadership in women. 4. Management. I. Williams, Judith, 1942- II. Frohlinger, Carol, 1953- III. Title HD6054.3 .K65 2010 658.4′09208—dc22

2010023110

INTRODUCTION

TAKING YOUR PLACE AT THE LEADERSHIP TABLE

Questions Will Be Asked

We are experiencing a historic shift in the workplace. For the first time in U.S. history, women comprise the majority of the workforce. In medium-sized and large corporations women hold 50 percent of middle management jobs. The number of women who have started their own businesses has grown exponentially.1 And more women than ever before are serving as their family’s primary breadwinner.2

Yet leadership roles in major institutions still elude women. According to Catalyst, women hold less than 3 percent of the chief executive jobs in the Fortune 500 (and that is the highest number ever) and less than 16 percent of corporate officer jobs (a number that has remained static since 2002). Another recent Catalyst study of the top two thousand global companies indicated only twenty-nine CEOs were women.3 It was not supposed to be this way.

During the past decade, we heard so much about new models of leadership—post-heroic and servant leadership styles were heralded as the new paradigm. Organizations were supposedly abandoning archaic command-and-control hierarchies in favor of flatter, more collaborative organizational structures. These new and enlightened organizations would favor teamwork and cooperation over superstars and competition. Management consultants, researchers, and academics predicted this shift would be a boon for women.4 In the post-heroic era, the “female advantage” in leadership seemed admirably suited to meet the global challenges of the new economy.5

Indeed, a series of research studies give credence to this theory. The “female advantage” produces better results. Companies with higher percentages of women directors and senior managers deliver better returns to shareholders and outperform competitors.6 Why? Well, for starters, companies with higher percentages of women at the top are choosing the best leaders from a broader, more diverse talent pool than other companies. A gender-diverse leadership team is better equipped to relate to its customer base. (Eighty-five percent of all consumer purchasing decisions are made by women.7 ) And then there is the theory that women are more likely to lead in a participative manner that promotes teamwork—and teamwork leads to better firm performance.8

It is obvious that it is more than just the proportion of women in leadership that accounts for these results. Certain firms have organizational cultures and work practices that make it possible for women to move into leadership roles and these women in turn contribute to their organization’s success.

Given these impressive results, why are women still finding it so difficult to get to the top of an organization?

IT’S NOT BECAUSE WOMEN LACK TALENT

Much research has been done to assess the performance of women in the workplace. The data reveals both bosses and subordinates rate women highly on leadership skills, including goal setting and aggressively pursuing those goals.9 And women hold their own when compared with men, not only on the attributes we associate with women—teamwork, rewarding, and giving feedback, but also on such critical characteristics as emotional intelligence, outside orientation, designing and aligning structures, and tenacity. The theory that women are risk-averse has been debunked.10 Finally, a new report finds the general public believes women have what it takes to be leaders in today’s world. The only trait on which men were rated higher than women was decisiveness.11

And yet the same research that shows the strengths of women at work also supports the adage that women are judged on their performance while men are judged on their potential. Despite strong showing on leadership skills, it is men, rather than women, who are more likely to be seen as strong leaders.

IT’S NOT BECAUSE THERE AREN’T ENOUGH WOMEN IN THE PIPELINE

The pipeline—the number of available women in the pool of those “promotable”—is often singled out by corporate executives as a key reason why more women don’t hold leadership positions. However, statistics suggest the pipeline is well supplied with women in business and the professions. Women constitute 39.4 percent of MBA graduates in 2009, up from 34 percent in 2005.12 And women have graduated from law school for the past twenty years at roughly the same rate as men—yet they remain very poorly represented in law firm leadership.13

IT’S NOT BECAUSE WOMEN AREN’T INTERESTED

More recently, it has become common to look to women, and the choices they make, to explain their meager representation in leadership. That women voluntarily withdraw from the workplace—the so-called opt-out revolution—to have families and seek more balance in their lives—has become a common refrain among corporate leadership and the mainstream media.14 In reality, between 1984 and 2004 the number of college-educated women with children who opted out of careers did not change very much at all—the number of women working outside the home remained stable at 70 percent.15 In fact, when women do leave the workplace—when the pipeline leaks—it is often because of organizational issues—lack of challenge, inflexible work arrangements, and blocked careers—not because they opt out for family.16

IT’S NOT BECAUSE WOMEN DON’T ASK

Just as the women who leave corporations are blamed for the poor representation of women at the top, so are the women who stay. “They don’t ask” is the other common excuse for why women don’t get promoted.17 If they don’t have the requisite line experience it is because they have not stepped up and asked for it. If they have gotten stuck in undesirable corporate backwaters, it is because they didn’t negotiate for something else. Yet we know that women do ask when issues matter to them—and when they can connect what is good for them to what is good for their organizations.18

So if women do have the talent, do remain in the game, and are interested in moving up, then what is the problem?

It’s complicated. From what we know about organizations and how they function, it turns out women face a number of challenges that require them to negotiate a host of issues that their male colleagues rarely face. We, and others, call them “second-generation” gender issues.19

While first-generation issues involve clear-cut acts of bias, blatant discrimination, and perhaps harassment—the stuff of class action lawsuits—second-generation issues are more subtle—and in many ways more difficult to address because they are an inherent part of an organization’s culture and work practices. These practices may look gender neutral—“we promote based solely on merit” or “our best employees are willing to do what it takes, 24/7”—but in fact they are likely to have differential impacts on men and women.

Professing to promote based “on merit” overlooks the intrinsic biases that often favor male leadership qualities. This practice also dismisses just how critical it is for leadership candidates to have networks that include the right people to act as sponsors.20 These sponsorships tend to fall along gender lines, meaning there are more men sponsoring men, and this is true for both men of color and white men.21 And being available 24/7 has a differential impact on people who have outside commitments.22 The reality is women still shoulder much of the household responsibilities.23 Research by Shelley Correll and her colleagues show mothers pay a penalty. Even with comparable credentials and experience, mothers were seen as less competent and promotable.24

These biases are deep-seated and rooted in firmly held beliefs. Even when a woman does not serve as a primary caregiver, her employer might make that assumption. For a woman to establish herself at the leadership table, she must answer questions that often are not even asked out loud.

Of course, all new leaders are tested and face challenges to some degree. People do not automatically throw their support to a new leader; they are more likely to adopt a wait-and-see attitude, but women leaders may face hyper scrutiny.25 And this hyper scrutiny can be traced to some of the second-generation gender issues women face.

We have identified four questions that will almost certainly surround the appointment of a woman to a leadership role. Before she can get on with the business of leading, she has to address and deal with them. This can be tricky because often the women and her employer aren’t even aware that some or all of these questions are in play.

• Is she a good fit for the role?

• Can she be both a woman and a leader?

• Has she demonstrated leadership capability?

• Will her personal life get in the way?

Is She a Good Fit for the Role?

Some jobs or roles are seen to fit one sex or the other. For example, helping professions like nursing and social work are often seen as feminine because they fit society’s ideas of female nurturing, whereas firefighting and truck driving are labeled masculine because they emphasize brawn.26 Many roles are conceived as masculine and then come to be seen as more suitable and attractive for men, reinforcing the perception that only men are suited for them.27 Leadership has been labeled one of those roles.28 Because leadership is perceived to reflect more masculine values, women are less likely to be seen as having leadership potential—not everyone has read the studies we cited earlier!

In one financial services firm, for example, promotion of partners into leadership roles was based on selling skills—rainmaking—something male partners were more successful at than their female counterparts.29 Whether this was a result of different skill sets or merely differential access to client decision makers is not clear, but the outcome was that women were not put forth for leadership roles because leaders at this firm were the ones who developed business. To be considered for these top roles, women needed to negotiate for them. They had to reframe the decision-making process and even perhaps challenge the existing criteria for aspiring leaders—was selling really the most important leadership skill? What other skills would add value? How?

Firmly held assumptions that the work men have traditionally done is more important than so-called women’s work position men as superior and more suited to leadership roles.30 These beliefs can become self-fulfilling prophecies and can affect a woman’s perception of herself. They can adversely impact how able she is to advocate for her own career. Not only must she convince herself that she can make the role into one that fits her skills and needs so she can succeed in it, she must also be prepared to make others comfortable with a reconfigured view of what that leadership role will look like.

This can also create challenges when she has to deal with opportunities she has not sought and does not particularly want. Aspiring leaders are expected to willingly take on developmental opportunities—to refuse may preclude other offers. This norm may work well for males, who are likely to be offered developmental opportunities in key strategic positions, but it does not necessarily work as effectively for women. The late Ellen Gabriel, who launched the Women’s Initiative at Deloitte & Touche, observed that when the CEO approached her to take on the project, it was but just another example of a woman being offered a “human resource” assignment.31 While male colleagues were challenged with strategic assignments that promised direct benefits to the bottom line, women were routinely asked to help with recruiting or to serve on diversity or performance management task forces. Women, after all, were good at these assignments. They are good at being strong number twos, chiefs of staff, where their contributions are likely to be invisible. They are, in one organization, asked to take on acting leadership roles. Once the women have succeeded in these roles, however, the positions somehow go to somebody else. Often women are asked to help out another leader who is having difficulty and so see their own work suffer.

There is another wrinkle to this. Generally, it is unwise politically to say no when presented with these so-called opportunities. Refusing to help clean up a department or assist a colleague can damage an aspiring leader’s team-player status. As a result, under an unstated obligation to accept assignments, women can be channeled into roles that proffer fewer chances of enhancing their careers and do not answer the question of whether or not they are “leadership material.” This is more than just a question of asking; it requires negotiating the fit—how a role will be defined and assessed, its duration as well as what follows from it—all topics we address in this book.

Can She Be Both a Woman and a Leader?

There is no better example of this question than what we witnessed during the 2008 presidential election. Hillary Clinton, in particular, was both chastised for being too masculine—“Hillary Clinton Is a Man and I Won’t Vote for Him”—and then questioned about her toughness when she became emotional. Similarly, Margaret Thatcher was called “Attila the Hen”; Golda Meir, Israel’s first female prime minister, was “the only man in the Cabinet”; and Angela Merkel, the current chancellor of Germany, has been dubbed “the iron frau.”32 Invoking these contradictory messages in the political arena reflects what researchers have found consistently when it comes to leadership. The attributes we value in male leaders—being assertive, authoritative, and decisive—tend not be seen as either attractive or typical of women. We expect men to take charge and women to take care.33 It is the classic double bind.

When women do assert themselves, they face a likeability versus competence challenge.34 Frank Flynn and Cameron Mitchell conducted an experiment with their MBA students at Columbia University.35 Using “Heidi Roizen,” a Harvard Business School case about an entrepreneur, they gave one section of their students the “Heidi” case and the other students the “Howard Roizen” case. Howard’s was the same case as Heidi’s but with a different name. Students were asked to evaluate the style, likeability, and competence of both Howard and Heidi and to decide whether they would hire them. Both entrepreneurs were found equally competent and effective. Howard, however, was seen as more genuine and likable and more likely to be hired. Heidi, on the other hand, was seen as self-promoting, power hungry, and aggressive. A huge volume of other research reinforces these findings—when women are seen as competent leaders, they are not liked; when they are liked, they are not respected.36 It is worth noting that the more women in leadership roles in an organization, the less pronounced this double bind becomes.37

All new leaders need to negotiate to create legitimacy in their role, but the question of femininity puts additional issues on the table for women leaders.38 In this book, we help women answer it by connecting their interests to what is good for the organization. If a woman can clearly articulate that connection, she is more secure in asking for what she needs and others in the organization begin to get more comfortable with the idea that a “feminine” woman can indeed be a leader.39

Has She Demonstrated Leadership Capability?

All four of the questions about women leaders we discuss here are in some sense tests of legitimacy and credibility. But this question gets to the core of demonstrating whether or not women can truly have what it takes to be a leader. Establishing credibility as a leader can be an uphill campaign for women for a number of reasons.

As noted, study after study has shown that women are seen to have the strategic, organizational, and interpersonal skills that leaders need and are often rated higher on these skills than their male counterparts.40 But Joyce Fletcher suggests there is a disconnect between the leadership skills women are seen to have and the credit they get for them.41 That may be caused by the ways that women display these skills. Women tend to do so in a more relational way and so their skills are not credited as evidence of leadership competence but just “what women do.”42

It also may be that a woman’s leadership accomplishments are not as generally recognized because they take place under the radar, in the quiet accomplishment of an organization’s goals. Joyce Fletcher calls this “invisible work.”43 In her study of engineers, she shows how some of the women engineers—the ones who try to anticipate problems before they happen, seek to integrate the work of others, and try to build a team—have their work disappear. While these actions could be seen as leading and signaling innovation, instead they may be discounted as women “just being nice” or wanting to be liked. Joanne Martin, in reflecting on her own experiences as a faculty member at Stanford Business School, also describes the invisible work women and minority faculty members perform—representing diversity viewpoints on a committee or task force, and advising and counseling graduate students and junior faculty. This work, while expected and definitely time-consuming—reducing time available for teaching and scholarship—doesn’t count toward the all-important tenure and promotion decisions.44

A third explanation is that a woman’s track record, like a man’s, may be marred by some mistakes and failures. The difference, and therefore the problem, may be that a woman may have more of these mistakes than her male colleagues for two reasons. As we discuss in detail in Chapters One and Four, a woman may have been offered more turnaround challenges, which are inherently riskier. In their study of the “glass cliff,” Ryan and Haslam show that when a firm’s performance is on the decline, those in charge are more likely to appoint a woman to a board position or the C-suite.45 And more often than not, women leaders are recruited from the outside, a position that makes it more difficult to deliver on performance.46

The glass cliff phenomenon can also be seen at levels below the most senior where women are tapped to make change. In one organization, for example, managers, especially women, were routinely asked to help fix situations where there were problems. Often this involved taking a job with a lesser title, say an “acting” role, for which they might not get credit, or being denied compensation for saving a major client. In one situation, a star female professional at a software solutions firm was asked to save a relationship with the firm’s largest client. Three months and over a half million dollars of additional orders later, the relationship was secured, but the woman received no commission on the additional sales she had secured, nor did she receive a promotion. Instead, she went back to the job she’d been slated for before turning the client relationship around.47

While success may not be recognized and rewarded, failure is often quite visible. In yet another organization, mistakes tended to follow women more, in part because their male colleagues had strong networks and key sponsors high up in the organization who helped them recover—a situation that was less true for women.48

Finally, the evaluation of whether a woman has demonstrated leadership competence may reflect a more widely based phenomenon—an inherent bias against women and their credentials and performance. Virginia Valian summarizes the research that shows that in professional work settings men tend to be overrated and women underrated.49 Résumé studies reveal that with the exact same experiences and skills, men are judged more favorably than women for both hiring and promotion.50 Recent work suggests that organizations with strong merit-based systems are even more likely to reflect this bias.51 When gender is rendered invisible, these biases disappear.

Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse reviewed the results of auditions for symphony orchestras when the musician auditioned behind a screen so that their gender not revealed. Using the screen increased the probability that a woman would get a position in the orchestra by 250 percent!52 Because most of us will never have a screen masking our gender, in this book we show how women can claim value for their experiences and expertise and how they can enlist the support of others to overcome bias.

Will Her Personal Life Get in the Way?

In many cultures, up until quite recently, paid employment was seen as the domain of men while family responsibilities belonged to women. As women have joined the workforce in equal numbers, not surprisingly the issue of whether it is possible to hold leadership jobs and integrate them with a full family life has become a significant issue for women and the organizations that employ them. In 1990 Joan Acker coined the term “the ideal worker” to designate the person who is willing to put work before all else, whose time to spend at work is unlimited, and for whom the demands of family, community, and personal life are secondary or at least rendered invisible in the workplace.53 Crisis-oriented work patterns, unbounded meeting times and places, and the need to put in face time impact who is seen as an ideal worker and who is not.54 While this model—often called masculine—does not suit either men or women very well, it persists. Indeed, with the advent of extreme jobs and 24/7 expectations, the conflict between responsibilities for family and success at work have been exacerbated.55

Women, because they can become or are mothers, are particularly disadvantaged by the “ideal worker” paradigm. Motherhood is presumed to interfere with a women’s commitment and willingness to put in the time and work necessary to accomplish the job even if there is no evidence for any particular woman to prove this so.56 In one organization, for example, assignments to large, important clients were based on the belief that professionals would be able to stick with that client for the long haul. Concerns about future maternity and child care leaves had the effect of precluding women from consideration in these roles, which were critical to becoming leaders in the firm.57 The assumption is typically made that, faced with the demands of her work and family, a woman will chose the latter. The reality, however, is that it is the inflexibility of the workplace , and unresponsive bosses, that causes some women to leave and others to tone down their ambitions.58

A woman will confront the “ideal worker” conundrum at many stages of her career, a fact that impacts the kinds of experiences she accrues on her route to leadership. Defined promotion schedules, such as tenure decisions in universities and admission to partnerships in financial service and law firms, create a well-articulated clash between a biological window for childbirth and child rearing with “up or out” career decisions.59 Mothers are routinely offered less desirable assignments and lower compensation than women without children.60 That makes high-achieving women less likely to make use of flexible work policies.61 And if they do take advantage of flex options, they are often confronted with resistant bosses who, all things being equal, prefer the “ideal worker.” Women push back on these assumptions by negotiating time commitments and flexibility, issues that matter to them.62

This book does not presume to provide a total solution to this question, for it really requires organizations to abandon the ideal worker hurdle for both women and men.63 However, it does provide creative examples of how successful women have answered this question as they have taken on leadership roles.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The idea for this book began germinating as we coached senior women to negotiate their places at the leadership table. Right from the start we were struck by the recurring questions they had to answer—first to secure leadership positions and then to establish their legitimacy in the role. It is critical for women to recognize these second-generation issues as they compete for and take on demanding and visible new assignments. If a woman ignores these questions, it can undercut her authority with others and undermine the self-confidence she needs to establish her place at the leadership table.

In this book we chart how women leaders—people who may not make the headlines but are making real differences in their organizations—understand and respond to these often unarticulated yet persistent questions. We interviewed more than a hundred women. The group was evenly divided between women embarking on their first leadership positions and those who were assuming assignments with increased responsibility. Our sample was by no means scientific, nor did it reflect the distribution of women within the leadership population generally. The majority of our sample held line positions or were moving into key staff jobs after significant experience on the line. They covered the spectrum of opportunities—small companies, large corporations, foundations. They came from the public and the private sectors. The highest concentration was in professional services (including banking, accounting, and law), health care, and technology, where software sales and marketing and biotechnology predominated.

What our interviews told us was that—contrary to laboratory research findings that women don’t ask—the women portrayed in this book did ask. They knew what they needed to succeed and they negotiated for those things. They asked because these issues mattered to them.

These findings were reinforced in a complementary study. In that study, we surveyed more than five hundred women about their experiences negotiating for what they needed to be successful in a leadership role. More than 50 percent of this sample had a high proclivity to negotiate and those who did reported higher performance reviews and were more likely to be developed as leaders than those who did not. Interestingly, the negotiators were also more satisfied with their jobs and less likely to express an interest in leaving their organizations.64 We found that what was critical for them in their negotiations was knowing exactly what to ask for.65 Knowing what to ask enables a woman to confidently negotiate what she needs to succeed. We have organized these critical “asks” around five major challenges that require negotiation when a woman takes on any leadership role:

• Intelligence

• Backing of key players

• Resources

• Buy-in

• Making a difference

Intelligence: To successfully negotiate, one needs good information. That information runs the gamut from understanding what the requirements of a role are to knowing why you are the one tapped for it and identifying where the barriers to your success might lie. In the process of gathering this information, the women could test what kind of fit they would be for the role they were considering. Information also helped them figure out exactly what they needed to negotiate for, so that the role would be a good fit for them in both the near and longer term. Gathering intelligence also gave them helpful insights about the organization’s culture so that they could anticipate the kinds of questions that might come up about their leadership competence and even about their personal commitments and then prepare to handle them.

Backing of key players: Legitimacy in a leadership role is not something that can be assumed. All leadership roles are in some sense a stretch—and additional questions will be asked about any woman who takes on such a role. That is why negotiating to have key sponsors support and then make the strategic case for their appointment is necessary but not sufficient. The women we interviewed understood that this kind of support is not a one-time thing but must be negotiated again and again over time as different challenges present themselves.

Resources: In the best of times, securing resources for innovation can be a challenge. In a constricted economy, it becomes a major hurdle. The important point about resources is not just that we need them to get things done but that they are important symbolically. Perceptions of the power and influence of a new leader is often judged by the leader’s ability to secure resources. The women understood this and showed creativity in how they aligned their needs with those of strategic objectives of their organizations, built coalitions to partner in getting resources, and figured out ways to build support for their requests over time. Connecting what they needed to what was good for their organization was a guiding principle for all of the women. In doing this, they felt more confident asking for resources and were less likely to suffer backlash for asking.

Buy-in: Gaining support for an agenda is a negotiation that occurs at the individual, team, and systemic levels. A leader will most likely face resistance when trying to enact any change—big or small. Negotiating around this resistance involves understanding people’s legitimate reasons for disagreeing and finding ways to address them through creative problem solving. Enlisting others in collaborative problem solving requires demonstrating the potential benefits of change and the costs associated with failing to get on board. In orchestrating buy-in, the leader needs to build a winning coalition of stakeholders and block opposing coalitions from forming. This is key for women if they are going to succeed in moving their agendas forward.

Making a difference: All the women we interviewed wanted to have a positive impact on their organizations. And indeed, many of them did. The challenge for women may not be making a difference. Instead, it may be getting credit for what they do. The invisible work of team building and integration can go unnoticed, but claiming value can unleash a challenge for women. Women who take credit invite backlash for being unfeminine and self-promoting. To claim their value, the women we interviewed focused on what needed to be done to meet the strategic and unmet needs of different groups in their organizations. When they claimed value, they did so in a currency that had value to others in the organization. Once the value they created was visible to others, it provided a platform to build on—within their own teams and across the organization.

In structuring this book, we have devoted a chapter to each of the five challenges. After exploring some of the traps that can undermine a leader’s efforts, we lay out a set of strategic moves that document the ways in which the women we interviewed negotiated around these challenges. We focus on the stories they told of what they did and how they did it. In this way, the book provides a clear road map for what a woman leader needs to negotiate for if she wants to succeed. Each chapter is anchored by an ongoing case that shows the ways in which strategic moves can be mobilized over time and in concert with one another. Finally, we provide a guide to help you get ready to negotiate your own situation at work.a

Her Place at the Table builds upon the principles of the “shadow negotiation” that we describe in Everyday Negotiation: Managing the Hidden Agendas of Bargaining. As people bargain over the substantive issues that matter to them (the terms of an agreement to revise the job description to one that fits or to secure the resources they need, for example) a parallel discussion—or shadow negotiation—is taking place simultaneously. The shadow negotiation is where parties tacitly negotiate over how in fact they will negotiate. Dealing successfully in the shadow negotiation requires the use of three other major types of strategic moves:

• Positioning moves are the steps a negotiator takes to get into a good negotiating position, something especially important for those with a tendency to get in their own way. These moves include taking stock of one’s value in a negotiation and recognizing where one is vulnerable, benchmarking to get good information (closely related to gathering intelligence as we describe in Chapter One) in order to feel more confident about asking for what one needs, and developing alternatives should the negotiation not succeed.

• Power moves are the steps a negotiator takes to get reluctant or more powerful parties to deal seriously with issues. These entail making one’s value visible and finding ways to raise the costs of the status quo either alone or by enlisting allies to help.

• Appreciative moves are actions a negotiator takes to enlist the other party to join in the problem-solving process. It involves understanding and respecting others’ good reasons for disagreement and finding ways to build on their ideas as well as yours.

In addition, Everyday Negotiation equips you with ways to manage the situation when others use power moves to put you on the defensive. The book covers the use of turns that reframe the situation, such as interrupting the move, naming it, correcting it, questioning it, or diverting it. Turns enable negotiators to continue to advocate for their needs when the other party pushes back.

Joining the principles of the shadow negotiation with the insights about what leaders need to negotiate for, the stories in this book carry substantial lessons for anyone—male or female—trying to puzzle through the changing landscape of today’s organizations. The women in this book had a good idea of where they wanted to go when they took on new leadership roles. But they remained flexible regarding the ways to get there. Often the game plan evolved as they drew others—top management, peers, and reports alike—into a dialogue. In significant ways the stories reported here demonstrate the importance of relational work—soliciting different perspectives, inviting others to join the decision-making process, but clearly articulating the end goal throughout. What started out as their initial problems—the target of their change agendas—became a collective enterprise. And in these ways, they negotiated their place at the leadership table.

CHAPTER 1

DRILL DEEP

Negotiating the Intelligence for Informed Decisions

It is a truism that information is a prized asset in today’s complex, often matrixed organizations. Few leaders would launch any new project without careful preparation, yet they frequently take on high-profile assignments optimistic that they can make them work once on the job. By contrast, in overwhelming numbers, the women we talked to who successfully navigated difficult and visible new assignments counted good preliminary intelligence among their most valuable tools. Drilling deep not only enabled them to determine whether the role was a good fit for them, it also helped them negotiate the conditions of success before they set foot in their new offices.

Moreover, these leaders went after a particular kind of intelligence. By and large they took for granted their command of market trends or the competitive landscape, the technological edge a new product would enjoy, or the distribution channels the company needed to develop. That expertise they counted as part and parcel of any leadership position. As the head of procurement for a Fortune 500 manufacturing company put it: “The hardest part in a leadership role is not the work. That’s easy if you are halfway smart. It’s the ability to read the political tea leaves.”

Good intelligence allows the new leader to put those tea leaves to work. Seldom did the successful women in our sample approach new roles confident that they were a perfect fit for the job. Rather, they assumed that the role itself was negotiable and probed for what would tip the odds of success in their favor. Sometimes they tested the breadth of support behind the initiatives they would be charged with spearheading. Other times they used their intelligence gathering to get past the rhetoric and identify future obstacles.

The successful leaders moved quickly to get a handle on the problem they were charged with solving and the expectations circling round its resolution. A high-tech executive offered a promotion to straighten out the company’s back-office operations used her networks and one-on-one interviews to discover how deep the troubles went.

The order process had broken down. Receivables were in awful shape. Salespeople were having a fit because no one could figure out their commissions. Financial controls weren’t working. It was a disaster.

Armed with that intelligence, she could approach the CEO and accept the assignment—subject to one condition. She would need time to do the job he wanted done. “When things are in that much of a mess in finance, it’s usually because processes have gone amok. There aren’t quick fixes.”

Most of all, the women who seamlessly managed the transition to new roles focused on unspoken codes of behavior and the personal dynamics at work in key relationships. Many new leaders are promoted from within or recruited from outside because something needs to be fixed. Indeed, this is more likely to be the case for women.1 Not everyone in the organization, however, will be ready to accept the need for new leadership. No matter how elegant a proposed plan for, say, turning around a faltering division, gaining competitive advantage, or revamping outworn systems, it will find its way to the circular file if it rubs against the organizational grain or fails to garner critical support.

Early intelligence can flag how deep the resistance to change goes and where potential alliances might be formed. When, for example, a human resource executive contemplated joining a rapidly growing construction firm, she had no doubts about her ability to transform an organization that was essentially still run as a mom-and-pop operation. Even though the culture no longer correlated with where the company was on the growth cycle, many of the old guard liked things the way they were. The key to her success lay in determining whether she would have the space to make the changes necessary. Discussions with the president about his vision for the future provided that key. Growth on the scale that he anticipated demanded major restructuring.

It is clear that good intelligence puts a leader in a better position when negotiating the parameters of a new role. Yet women do not always operate with good intelligence. With limited access to the process that led to their appointment, they might not even know why they were chosen for the job. Without that information, they may make assumptions about the fit that influence not only their decision about accepting but also their perspective on what it would take to thrive in the new role.

Good informants are hard to come by when you’re being recruited from outside, but even being a current employee does not always provide easy access to information nor guarantee its reliability. Women frequently find themselves excluded from key decision-making networks within their own firms.2 Simultaneously insider and outsider, their perspective on any new assignment is inevitably colored by past experiences and past relationships. While a true outsider may be positioned for greater objectivity, being an outsider means facing the formidable task of developing reliable sources of information. Whatever the circumstances, the more you know about a new role before taking it on, the greater your chances of success.

COMMON TRAPS

Access to intelligence can be a challenge for women, yet sometimes unwitting steps prevent them from learning as much as they can about a prospective role. From the stories women told us we have isolated four key mistakes that can lead women (and men) to narrow the range of issues they consider when assessing a new position—with unfortunate results. In different ways, the traps short-circuit the search for additional intelligence. By casting an opportunity in black-or-white terms, they reduce the incentive to search out the nuanced information or multiple perspectives that lead to an informed decision about whether to take on the role. They tempt the unsuspecting to leave unexplored issues that should be put on the table for negotiation. The power of these traps shows up in the frequent refrain: “If I’d only known then what I know now . . .”

• “Fit doesn’t matter; it’s performance that counts.”

Some people underestimate the difficulties that can be encountered during transitions into new roles.3 Casually assuming that they will fit in once on the job, they can downplay the impact of the organization’s culture and fail to appreciate the inextricable link between their eventual success and perceptions of their suitability. Others in the organization have to feel that the new leader’s style is in sync with organizational norms, and they judge qualifications through that filter. This maxim holds whether the new leader is promoted from within or recruited from outside. New leaders run into trouble when they screen out signals of a bad cultural fit as noise.

Kelly, attracted to a strategic marketing firm because of its cutting-edge methodology and its span across industries, took over a struggling account in the automotive industry. A self-taught marketer, she casually assumed that if she delivered results nobody would care that she did not have the proper pedigree. With a great deal of sweat and little support, Kelly turned the account around and the client into a staunch supporter. “Then they brought in a strategy person from Harvard who had worked at one of the premier consulting firms to take over.” The company wanted the account turned around; she was right on that score. But it was also inordinately concerned with its image. That preoccupation surfaced early in the ever-so-slight condescension and patronizing tone Kelly detected during the interviewing process. But she never pursued these signs and never negotiated a safety net tied to performance. “I didn’t have a big school name or the proper consulting credentials... He’s now running a well-oiled machine that is churning out revenue that I developed.”

New leaders are not always judged solely on their performance. Intelligence about the strategic business needs driving a particular assignment may not be enough. You have to probe deeper into the organization’s underlying norms and values. Ignoring dissonance on this front can prove costly.

• “This is such a wonderful job; I’d be a fool not to take it.”