Mar 19, 2015 | coaching, critical thinking, gender roles in business, leadership, personal development, women
Earlier this month, I read an article entitled, “Breaking the Glass Ceiling by Ignoring It.” It was a fabulous title and a decent article, but it left a lot still left unsaid. You can read it for yourself here Following are my comments on the topic of “Ignoring The Glass Ceiling”: The numbers are clear about the dearth of women in top leadership spots and the discussion on this can get quite complex from a policy point of view (e.g. to quota or not to quota) but what’s also clear is that there’s much women can do ON THEIR OWN to improve career progression and management. The problem with interviewing women who have ‘made it’ is that they’ve often been impervious to the metaphoric slings and arrows that side-track many many more women who don’t have the same innate resilience. (I prefer resilience to toughness, as resilience allows women to endure without impact while also retaining the ‘soft’ skills that make us so perfect for leadership in a complex global 21st Century marketplace.) So, for the majority of women, it’s true we don’t ask, have difficulty being heard, struggle with being recognized and in the end, haven’t deliberately gone about the essential practice of building influence. In response, I’ve created a program called “Picking Up Where ‘Lean In’ Leaves Off,” designed to help the atrophying pipeline of women to equip themselves for ANY obstacle, glass ceiling, sticky floor, whatever. I do this by focusing on 3 tentpole skills essential for career success: 1. Effective communication (replete with how to avoid ‘girl traps’ that make us less than effective – or respected – communicators) 2. Developing...
Jan 28, 2015 | coaching, confidence, critical thinking, gender roles in business, leadership, personal development, women
Recently, I received a thank you note from an executive in response to the professional development series she invited me to deliver to women in her industry. The note excitedly championed the “dtkMindset” I imparted to the group — a dtkSignature and a perfect term which I thank her for coining. What did she mean by the “dtkMindSet,” especially as it pertains to professional women? In a nutshell, it’s decidedly NOT a palliative fix, road map, template or formula — there are plenty of those around for the undiscriminating consumer — but rather it’s a way of thinking that deploys the power of and desirability of women’s innate brain wiring. ‘Getting’ the MindSet was already exciting but what was exciting to me was witnessing participants’ making the leap from MindSet to MindShift. And it’s that shift in women’s thinking that is so critical to improving women’s professional experience as well as their progress. The fact is the number of women in leadership positions — 17% — is dismal and the needle has been stuck there since I started tracking this in 2005. Between 2005 and 2015, smart people have tried to crack this but the problem is that sadly, their institutional or male-reliant remedies only address the externalities. Instead, it’s the shifting to a dtkMindset that’s critical especially for professional women interested in advancing through the ranks and into leadership positions. In addition to women’s more actively managing their own careers, the dtkMindset shows women that it’s the inside-out work that will ultimately make the difference. Women and confidence Confidence is a recurrent theme with women and with those...
Oct 20, 2014 | confidence, gender roles in business, leadership, women
In late June, the Boston Business Journal published an article titled, “There’s Light on the Horizon for Increasing Women on Boards“. The article highlighted a conference in Boston at which Mayor Marty Walsh and Gov. Deval Patrick were in attendance — along with 125 CEO’s, business people and other people of influence — all coming together to discuss how to get more women on corporate boards. Not a new initiative, of course. In fact, the article mentioned that The Boston Club had been “at this for 35-plus years.” I’ve been shouting the business case for increasing women on boards for years in my own practice. The good news is that people, men and women in varying levels of leadership, understand the business imperative for gender parity. Bottom line: Women leaders are good for business. If anyone’s still arguing that point, I trust they are only doing so in 1950 sitcom re-runs. However, understanding of and visibility for an initiative are just the first hurdles to jump. Implementation, follow through and action are what move the needle. The article mentions that “the momentum is shifting.” And, in the end, this meeting of the minds had created some resolutions and action plans that leave me hopeful. Those leading this conference impressed me with their willingness to expose the dynamic inherent in the challenge of legislating change. They noted that this would be a dual commitment between what leaders do individually and what they do in conjunction. What they left off, however is what women themselves must do in order for American companies to see what the author and I agree are “long overdue results.” It’s not just a top down enterprise, it’s also bottom up. There are, indeed, ‘binders full of qualified women’ but they need to be vocal and give us the full benefit of their wisdom...
Sep 30, 2014 | critical thinking, leadership
In a recent Ceo2ceos.com forum, the CEO of a small company sought advice on how to delegate tasks to his team in a way that increased their buy-in, generated predictable (and favorable) results and demonstrated (or created) a renewed sense of urgency among his employees. CEOs must, of course, focus on execution and immediate results but they must also understand how best to challenge and develop their workforce not just for maximum engagement but for retention too. In working with CEOs on leadership and management effectiveness, I see this issue often — in any size firm — as the race is on to not only attract but more importantly, to retain talent that can solve the problems of today while also anticipating and innovating ahead of tomorrow. Retention comes from engagement but engagement comes from being invested in the work. Delegation is one tactic but delegating without clear expectations and without also cultivating critical thinking and problem solving skills will likely result in incomplete or misguided results. In a complex, fast-paced, ever-changing, uber competitive global marketplace, misfires are costly in terms of time, resources, morale and then engagement. So, just telling others what to do is not going to get it done. Instead — and this is a dtkDistinction — I always ask clients to take a more systemic view which gives us a three dimensional look at not only the issue but the context, the current reality, the alternatives and the eventual options. Okay, then what? As a CEO coach and professional development expert, it’s imperative that leaders challenge their employees on two levels: first, from the boots on...
Jul 7, 2014 | critical thinking, entreprenuers, leadership
I posted this on a previous July 4th and I’m happy to report that it remains relevant today. Sure, circumstances change and context shifts but the essence of the conversation — the central truths — still pertain. As far as the shifts go, I’m very encouraged that the cross-pollination I advocate at the end of the original post has started to happen, with established businesses — and even corporations — coming to value a more entrepreneurial, innovative and questioning mindset. Similarly, entrepreneurship is attracting many former corporate types who are tired of toiling in someone else’s mine but who can bring some structure and a bit of process to the often unruly state of early entrepreneurship. Our culture highly values independence and self-reliance and it’s taken the economic reverses to remind people that companies are no longer the secure, paternalistic guarantees of yesteryear. The caution now is that nothing is a magic bullet so it’s critical that those who abandon one for the other must understand the realities of both. Neither is a haven, both require hard work and in the end, it’s about the choices we make … and the freedom we have to make them. That’s independence! Independent Day Everywhere you turned this past week, there was some article or other discussing the significance of and reverence for July 4. And rightly so, as it’s been said that the collaborative work product of our Founding Fathers formed the basis of a most compelling political system. Plus, it’s an inclusive celebration – definitely not a contrived Hallmark event — shared by all Americans. So, we again celebrated our...
Jun 6, 2014 | coaching, confidence, critical thinking, gender roles in business, leadership, women
Lots of recent discussion about what I’ve long referred to as the confidence conundrum — how much is enough, how much is too much, how do we get it, why does he/she have it and I don’t— particularly as it pertains to women in leadership. While this is certainly not a new topic, two national journalists have written a book hoping to “crack” the “confidence code”…once and for all. See an overview here: Journalists Kay and Shipman urge women to close the confidence gap. Not that simple. Despite ongoing efforts to capture it, achieving a state of balanced confidence continues to elude even the smartest and most successful. Which is why hot and cold running trainers and coaches have created a self-perpetuating industry of quick fix offerings that a) capitalize on fear and b) never get at the more fundamental issues, the true drivers of authentic and sustainable confidence. In fact, their approach is merely palliative and therefore short-lived: they drill women on using bolder verbiage, on deploying more assertive body language, on acting ‘as if;’ indeed, all are legitimate interventions and confidence boosters** but are also wholly insufficient. The problem and why it persists, I submit, is that we’ve been thinking and going about this all wrong. In 2013, I was asked to address the East Tennessee Women’s Leadership Summit on this very topic and had the distinct privilege of shaking up the status quo with an original and innovative paradigm: basically, confidence isn’t a commodity to be bought, sold, borrowed, loaned or lusted after and there simply is no code to break. Instead, it’s a constellation of...
Dani Ticktin Koplik —
Leadership consultant, executive coach, change agent and passionate professional development expert and speaker. You can learn more about Dani and her clients by visiting dtkBio page. 