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#CareerAdvice : The Essential Career Advice No One Tells You. A #MustRead !

When it comes to career advice, the more you can get, the better. However, some pieces of advice are more critical than others. That’s why I’ve gathered some of the best career takeaways from successful creative female powerhouses.

In honor of Women’s History Month, I asked a group of powerful women entrepreneurs to share some unconventional advice they have for other women looking to advance in their career. Here’s what they had to say:

1- Jaclyn Johnson, Create & Cultivate CEO & Founder and WorkParty author 

Networking is one of the most crucial parts of building a career or business. One tip I always share on networking is to network horizontally. Networking doesn’t always mean attending events or trying to connect with someone you admire. Networking can also mean getting close with the people in the trenches with you as you evolve in your career. Over the years, those people will move on to other positions and you never know how you can help each other in the future.

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What Skill Sets do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

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2- Ginger Siegel, North America Small Business Lead for Mastercard

You don’t need to do it alone. Access to mentorship programs and supportive communities are critical to career advancement.”

Paige Adams-Geller, Founder & Creative Director of PAIGE

“I believe the most important quality to have to move ahead in your career is to show passion in every job you have. Even if you are not in your dream job, you need to put your best foot forward.  You never know who you will meet or who will end up shaping your future. I would never be where I am today by taking my jobs for granted. I was able to build my dream team when I started PAIGE. Everyone I asked to come on the adventure with me said yes. I believe it is because I gave my best always.

“Remember that your career or business is a marathon, not a sprint.  Do not try to be an overnight success or a one-hit wonder. Slow and steady wins the race. Take your time to develop the skills you need. No one expects you to know everything out of the gate.”

3- Sophie Kelly, SVP North America Whiskey

“Be audacious!  Treat your career as an exciting story, one you want to tell, each chapter adding new experiences and capabilities to your professional and life journey.  Be passionate, show up and do what you love. Push  other women forward, too.”

4- Julie Smolyansky, President and CEO of Lifeway Foods

Go with your gut. Never doubt it. Nurture it. Make it stronger. Make listening to it part of your self-care routine. It will never lead you astray. Even if it tells you something you don’t want to hear, trust that voice; it will guide you to the right destination . If it recommends a career transition, a new job or circle of friends, trust it blindly.  Make that a foundation you can always turn to in moments of doubt or on hard days.”

5- Bruna Schmitz, Professional Surfer, Model, and Roxy Brand Ambassador

“Make realistic goals and surround yourself with people you admire. Learn to work hard and embrace setbacks as part of the process. Accept constructive criticism, but most of all, stay open to new ideas and different ways of doing things. Exploring the unknown and welcoming change is an enriching experience.”

6- Sami Fishbein, Cofounder & COO, Betches Media & Ship

“One of the most important career choices a woman can make is actually the type of life partner she chooses. It’s critical to have supportive relationships when chasing your dreams, so that you can feel confident and strong enough to move past obstacles.”

Author: Shelcy V. Joseph

I am what you could call a multipotentialite—someone with different passions and interests. I dabble in different things, but at the core of everything I do is creative …

Forbes.com | March 10, 2019

 

#Leadership : #WomenOlderWorkers – Let’s Stop Letting #Women Age Out of the #Workforce Worse Off than Men…We try to prepare girls to be successful women by plotting their career paths early. But women heading toward retirement get little support and often pay the price.

When your father or grandfather retired, his company might’ve thrown a little get-together, complete with toasts by backslapping colleagues, a cake, and an engraved watch. If he was lucky, he walked into retirement knowing he had a company pension or ample retirement savings to see him through the rest of his life.

Today? Not so much. Especially not for women.

Women who are approaching retirement in the U.S. today face a trifecta of challenges: They’re living longer (an average of 20 years past age 65), have significantly less money saved (an average of just $34,000), and face ever-increasing costs, especially for health care (an average of $5,503 a year out-of-pocket). This adds up to far greater economic insecurity among women as they age. In fact, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security, women aged 65 and older have incomes that are 25% lower than men’s, and they are 80% more likely than men to be impoverished past age 65.

Women of color face even deeper disparities as they age. African American and Latina women earn less from Social Security, assets, and pensions than do white women, and they rely on Social Security for a larger portion of their income, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The good news is that employers have a unique opportunity to turn these numbers around, by thinking proactively about supporting working women today so they can age well later. Here are three ideas.

CLOSE THE PAY GAP AND EXPAND MENTORING

Women begin retirement with a hurdle that’s followed them their entire careers: the gender pay gap. Labor Department statistics show the gap is as stubborn as ever, with women earning 21% less than men, a disparity that worsens among women of color and in certain industries more than others. Lower pay means less money saved, both in personal retirement accounts and Social Security benefits. Overall, women receive nearly $4,000 a year less in Social Security than men.

Employers can level the playing field by eliminating the gender wage gap among their employees now, so their women employees don’t leave the workforce already disadvantaged once they retire. This is not an impossible goal. Starbucks, for example, has reached100% pay equity among its employees. One part of the solution is to widen women’s participation in STEM fields; another is for employers to offer more flexible schedules and remote-work opportunities.

Companies also need to do a better job of nurturing and mentoring women to move up into leadership positions that offer greater opportunities and more pay. Staff development and performance management are critical to ensuring that women keep learning and developing over the entire course of their careers–this way they can retire from them on a more secure financial footing.

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LET WOMEN PHASE INTO LIFE AFTER WORK

Few women today want to work one day and stop the next. They want and need to continue working, but other responsibilities may be tugging at them. By one recent estimate, for example, up to 20% of working women are also caring for an elderly loved one.

Employers need to create organizational climates where women approaching retirement don’t feel it’s risky to have conversations about phased retirement options. Working part-time or moving to a position that requires less responsibility can be a solution–and employers should be game to offer that. In the latest Transamerica Retirement Survey, only 23% of workers said they plan to immediately stop working at a specific point in time. However, 25% also said that their employers do nothing to help employees enter retirement. Organizations need to step up and change that.

ARM WOMEN WITH KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT’S AHEAD

As a society, we try to prepare girls to grow into successful women; think Girl Scouts, STEM initiatives, and Girls on the Run. But how do we help women prepare to age well? We don’t teach them how their bodies are going to change as they age, or how to manage their savings so it will last an extra 20 years.

Just as we counsel younger women to make informed decisions about their education and careers, we need to support older women in planning for a successful third phase of life. My organization, the National Council on Aging, created an “Aging Mastery Program”to provide this kind of unbiased guidance, complete with small steps people can take to chart their own paths toward aging well.

While the days of engraved watches and pension plans may be over for most (and were never equitably available to all to begin with), a secure retirement should be a right for every person who has put in a lifetime of work–especially women. Forward-thinking employers need to help women plan not just for successful careers but for successful lives after work. And they need to start right now.


Anna Maria Chávez is Executive Vice President and Chief Growth Officer at the National Council on Aging.

Rich Bellis is Associate Editor of Fast Company’s Leadership section.

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FastCompany.com | July 27, 2018

#Leadership : Actually, Women Do Ask For Raises As Often As Men—They Just Don’t Get Them…A Recent Study Shows that Women Know What they’re Worth and Aren’t Afraid to Ask for It. It’s Their Employers that Don’t.

free- women at meeting

But a new study by researchers at London’s Cass Business School, the University of Warwick, and the University of Wisconsin analyzed a random sample of just over 4,500 workers across 800 employers in Australia and found something surprising: Women aren’t afraid of asking for raises and promotions. Women ask as often as their male counterparts, but they get what they want less often—25% less often, in fact.

NEW RESEARCH, NEW REACTIONS

Using a detailed series of questions, the researchers tackled two stubborn yet widespread beliefs surrounding the gender pay gap. The first—that women aren’t as ambitious or pushy as men—was found to have no basis in the study (which focused on Australia, because it’s the only country that gathers data on employees’ raise requests). The second—that women are more afraid of upsetting their bosses or hurting their relationships with their employers—was also thrown out.

These findings shift the burden from professional women to the companies that employ them. These days, it appears that closing the pay gap may be less about changing the ways women have been raised to understand the value of their work and more about how their employers react to women’s improving negotiating skills.

Social and political climates may have something to do with that shift. Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) issued its annual report on the gender gap, and it didn’t just fall into the void. Just last month, in Iceland, where women earn an average of 14% less than men, women left their desks at 2:38 p.m., leaving their workdays 14% unfinished—right at the point where that pay discrepancy kicked in.

Taking to the streets and leaving desktops unwatched might not catch on in the U.S., but the metaphor is instructive. The WEF report looked at 144 countries and measured the gaps not only in economic opportunities but also in access to education, health care, and political representation. The U.S. ranked 45th on the list. At the current rate, researchers believe, women worldwide are not going to see these gaps close completely in their lifetimes—it will take 170 years at the current rates of progress worldwide.

 

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But as one of the coauthors of the Cass School study points out, that research “potentially has an upside. Young women today are negotiating their pay and conditions more successfully than older females,” says Amanda Goodall, “and perhaps that will continue as they become more senior.” Women aren’t just negotiating more aggressively than in the past. They’re now more aware that they aren’t being rewarded equitably for doing so.

Knowledge is power, in other words, and it spreads almost exponentially over time. It’s findings like Goodall’s and her fellow researchers’ that don’t just document a problem but empower those who are hurt by it to demand change in the right places.

WHAT WORKING WOMEN CAN DO STARTING NOW

With that in mind, there are a few steps women can take right away to begin pressing to earn what they’re worth.

Know your own value. Do the research and honestly assess your talents, skills, and experiences—because your boss won’t do this for you. Get the data on pay for the same or comparable jobs in your community, so you have objective (or at least less subjective) information with which to build a case for yourself.

I was so proud when a former intern of mine was offered a position at a major tech company and asked me what to do before accepting. She’d done her research, and the firm’s salary offer was toward the top for comparable positions. Still, she said, “I know I should negotiate something.” She was right; I advised her to think about non-salary compensation that she’d value, and she ended up getting her new employer to pay for her move.

Be your own advocate. Investigate the culture of your company, how decisions are made, and what’s valued most (and least). It’s one thing to do the “hard” research—salary benchmarks and so on—and another to get a “softer,” qualitative feel for an employer’s mind-set around compensation. This holds true as much for a company you’re considering working for as one you already do work for.

Go on Glassbreakers to get or become a mentor, and LinkedIn to connect with others in your field. Read reviews on Fairygodboss. Talk to trusted coworkers. Reach out to past employees who’ve since moved on, and ask their experiences. Then use your research to help you speak up—not just about your salary offer or about that promotion coming up, but about ways in which women’s leadership can add value to their bottom line.

Outside of work, too, it’s important for professional women to understand policymakers’ priorities; change happens in both big and incremental ways. The keys to more opportunities and important social shifts can often be found in the details of all kinds of bills, from the municipal to the federal level.

Face the chaos with courage. When I left my first CEO position, a member of the board asked me what I thought was one of most important qualifications for the job. Courage was the answer that came out of my mouth before I had a chance to think. I still believe that courage is what it takes to act in the midst of chaos and against long odds that you shouldn’t have to surmount but are forced to. It takes courage, too, to own the responsibility for fixing something, even if you don’t have total authority to—and to make decisions even when you can’t guarantee the outcomes.

It’s possible to see the latest research as different fragments of the same picture. Women have changed—even in the past decade—but the world at large has not, and 170 years is too long to wait for parity. The U.S. has just fallen short of electing its first female president, but it’s worth remembering that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. That means that a majority of American voters still wanted a woman to represent them, and that desire doesn’t vanish.

Whatever the next four years turn out to look like, it’s clear that the social tide is turning. Younger women are asking for their due when their older colleagues didn’t dare to (often as a result of wholly valid fears). It’s heartening to know that the data confirms what many of us have long hoped: Finally, women know their worth. Now it’s time for everyone else to catch up. Don’t worry—we’ll show you the way.

 

FastCompany.com | GLORIA FELDT |  11.10.16 5:00 AM

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#Leadership : How Women Leaders Emerge From Leaderless Groups…Women are More Likely to Take Command in Collaborative Work Environments—Including Those that are Predominantly Male.

smileprofessionalwork

The findings fly in the face of the reality of the U.S. workforce, where many fail to recognize the extent of the female leadership gap. Women represent just 3% of new CEOs in the U.S., 5.1% of Fortune 1000 CEOs, and 4% of Standard and Poor’s 500 CEOs. A recent survey by the Rockefeller Foundation also found that nine in 10 respondents thought there were more female business leaders than there really are, and further research by the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University found that those women are more likely to be targeted by shareholder activism.

“We tend to see the man as more leader-like than the woman,” says lead author Jim Lemoine, in a video interview by UB School of Management. “What we were interested in in this research were exceptions to the rule.”

In the study, researchers assigned nearly 1,000 participants to small groups and asked them to complete a series of tasks, later polling them on who emerged as the natural leader of their group. The study was replicated with participants of varying ages over both long and short-term periods.

 

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When the groups communicated a lot, or were more “extroverted” in Lemoine’s words, women were more likely to emerge as leaders. They were also more likely to emerge as leaders when the groups were predominantly male.

“When a group is composed of lots of extroverted people, they talk more,” he says. “They’re actually getting to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses and who may be the better leader beyond this diversity demographics stuff.”

 

This getting-to-know-each-other phase is key to gender leadership balance, says Lemoine. “It makes the environment less masculine, more balanced, and gives everyone a chance to play on equal footing,” he says.

Lemoine adds that when he advises companies, he often encourages them to ignore strategy talk at first and instead spend some time getting to know the other people in the room.

“When we think of men, we think independent, aggressive, competitive risk takers, which is for a lot of people a stereotypical view of a leader,” he says. “When we think of women, we tend to think—true or not—more helpful, more cooperative, more caring.”

Lemoine explains that in spite of centuries of gender imbalance, he finally sees the tide beginning to turn in favor of female leaders. That is because when people are asked what kind of leader they want to work for today, the typical answer has evolved to describe stereotypically female characteristics. As he puts it:

People tend to answer this more now, ‘I would like to work for someone who is ethical,’ ‘I would like to work for someone who really cares about me, who understands me, who trains me, who puts me first, who’s very authentic. As our ideas of what a leader is changes, so do our ideas change of who a leader can be, so really the future is looking bright for more gender equality for who becomes a leader.

In other words, one of the key strategies for breaking the gender leadership gap in the workplace could be simple conversation between team members, in a setting that gives every member of the team a level playing field.

 

FastCompany.com | JARED LINDZON  | 09.12.16 5:25 AM