Apr 7, 2014 | Uncategorized
Congratulations to all the women— in 40 different markets —participating today in Mentoring Monday sponsored by the Business Journals. As a professional development expert who teaches and has consulted on mentoring strategies and programs, I will attest that mentoring relationships can shorten a learning curve, accelerate growth and provide the know-how necessary to successfully navigate the vagaries and complexities of our new global workplace. While there’s no doubt this initiative is fantastic, its real value today — given the one-off, quick fix mentoring minutes — is in the connections it can foster between and among the women attending. Ideally, there’s an arc to a mentoring relationship that starts with solidifying trust and rapport and then continues to build over time, increasingly addressing career issues of strategy, logistics and performance. Implicit in and essential to this arrangement are high levels of commitment (mentor and protege have to be equally committed) and the acknowledgment of accountability: mentoring is truly a two-way street, with the protege assuming at least as much responsibility as the mentor. So, with continuity, commitment and accountability, a well-managed mentoring relationship challenges thinking, inspires action and allows for course correction in real time. In the not too distant past, there’s been pushback in the research suggesting that women don’t benefit as much as men do from mentoring. Perhaps this event and other wide scale ones like it can bring new traction and breathe a vital spark into an age-old...
Jan 17, 2014 | critical thinking, gender roles in business, leadership, women
2015 Update: After reading this article below, take a peak at my updated article, “The ALL Gender Solution,” which you can find here. I refuse to allow the dtkunplugged digital presence to digress into a place of complaints absent solution, so I won’t go into how long I’ve been creating a blended leadership model to serve us well as we face the global realities of the 21st Century. However, it was in early 2013 when I started to hear my words return poignant echoes, with significant reach. And it has been gratifying to see the conversation finally getting out of the “yes, but” phase and into this “yes, and” phase, where progress can be made. While some may still be stuck in very old thinking and argue to the contrary, men and women are different. We have different wiring and different innate strengths, but the blending of the best of each will can only create something that’s better than the sum of the parts. This blended leadership model — which is an important part of what I call the Two-Gender Solution — has always been my objective in the work I do both individually and corporately. It’s what I believe will ultimately generate the best results all around. This new, men/women inclusive conversation is critical and it requires an inclusive vision from the top, especially in male-dominated industries and sectors. But, while engaging/recruiting evolved men in power is certainly key to initiating change, change will continue to be slow… Unless… We rightfully have trained a lot of attention on how we can better socialize our daughters to prepare them...
Aug 14, 2013 | coaching, critical thinking, leadership, Uncategorized
For my entire career, I have known that one of the most critical values I offer organizations is being able to marry the 10,000 foot, future-facing view with a boots on the ground approach. In a business world that works quarter to quarter, the larger, more contextual view is often lost, and with it — an organization’s ability to plan deliberately, work lean and succeed in the short and long term. So, I was relieved when I read Elaine Varelas’ article in Chief Learning Officer on June 3, 2013. She titled the article “How to Keep the Next Generation of Leaders“ and while I encourage you to read it at your leisure, her most applicable point — simplified — was the need for leaders who take a long-term view. I agree that this 10,000 foot view is critical for retaining talent, but it is equally critical for navigating change, shifting a culture, and maintaining (or building) profitability. I’ve included a snippet of my original comment to the author below, and would love your thoughts. What do you think businesses miss when they lead and manage by the quarter vs. taking this long-term approach? “We live in a time where the only thing that’s certain is uncertainty. Evolved leaders must know how to maintain and communicate vision and also be agile (and hubris-less) enough to course correct in real time, all while creating an engaged workforce.”–...
Jun 3, 2013 | critical thinking, entreprenuers
Everywhere you turned this past week, there was some article or another 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 war for independence which largely was about our mission as a new country to differentiate ourselves from the thinking and systems of Britain. While technically “rebels,” the Founding Fathers were not impetuous, anarchic or undisciplined in arriving at a decision and then acting: they were thinkers, and deep thinkers at that, reading, writing, discussing and debating until they were ready to do the real work of nation building. They studied all forms of government, sourcing the Ancients as well as the Enlightenment philosophers, to get their best understanding of the tensions between individual freedoms and protection of the collective good. Those particular tensions still exist in the political conversation but interestingly, they’re now coming to bear in the world of business. Same tensions but much different context: again citing Daniel Pink, we’ve progressed from the Knowledge Age to the Conceptual Age. At one time, not long ago, knowledge was proclaimed king and was the difference between business (and individual career) success and, well, the opposite. So much of that capital has since been automated or outsourced and open-sourced that it is no longer a determining factor: having knowledge is a given, the price of admission. Now it’s more about how we...
May 3, 2013 | Gen Y, Internship
Over the last few years, organizations have increasingly relied on college summer internships to help fill the new hire pipeline: 80 percent of companies surveyed by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) said that recruiting for full time hires was the primary purpose of companies’ internship programs. Summer internships aren’t new, but it’s only recently that they’ve taken on the full magnitude of what amounts to a summer-long job interview. Clearly, this works for companies, as it provides a cost-effective opportunity to kick the tires before purchasing, but it also provides a tremendous opportunity for the interns themselves to demonstrate value and convert their summer positions into full time job offers. But the anecdotal and empirical evidence suggest that summer interns are not maximizing the opportunity. For example, in a recent survey (Emily Bennington, Seriously Empowered Leadership) of more than 700 executives, approximately 75 percent believe that the recent crop of college interns and grads aren’t “cutting it.” In fact, of the 68 percent of respondents who work with or hire new grads, only 26 percent felt those grads were prepared for the rigors and requirements of the 21st Century workplace. While these aspiring professionals may emerge from college with some subject matter intelligence, they’re not arriving with a mastery, let alone understanding, of the critical skills needed to secure the job, demonstrate value…and then succeed. In some cases, companies — to see return on their summer investment — offer training to help interns enhance their performance and start taking ownership of their careers. With that said, make no mistake: this is not a one-way transaction. Instead,...
May 3, 2013 | leadership, women
One of the most common refrains I hear from my clients who are professional and executive women is that they aren’t being offered the proverbial “seat at the table.” In some cases, this is meant metaphorically and alludes to their wanting to be heard. Often, though, it’s meant quite literally, as they grouse about not being invited to meetings or other events they deem substantively or politically significant. This, they feel, is a huge roadblock to their being taken seriously, recognized for their contribution or given a try at the brass ring. That this is still an issue is remarkable, really, when you consider that women enter so many professions at parity with men and actually graduate college in greater numbers. Couple that with women’s enormous purchasing power, our core strengths now deemed critical for success in the 21st century and the demonstrated benefit companies derive from women’s serving on corporate boards. It’s astounding that we’re still waiting to be asked. The result: we occupy only 17 percent of the positions at the top. Seventeen percent, across industries and even in Congress. So, what’s happening? Women are either not putting themselves in the mix or are bailing, that’s what. For some, it’s to do the noble work of raising a family. Some go back, some don’t — their choice. But for many others, bailing represents a real and ready escape, just at the point in their careers when they should persevere. I know. I bailed. But why? After awhile, the frustration of not getting the seat, and more to the point, of not dealing with what’s really in the...
Jan 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
Timing, as they say, is everything. My last column — “And now a word from her sponsor” — discussed the appalling and persistent paucity of women in top leadership positions and questioned how, after all this time, we still can’t break through to gender parity in business (and academia and politics and science, etc, etc). Lots of time, resources and intellectual capital have been expended on all manner of interventions and yet we’re left with an ironic state of affairs: women are still struggling to attain professional critical mass, despite the facts that 1. more women are attending and graduating from college than men, and 2. their beneficial effect on business results (i.e. shareholder value, profitability, stability) is undeniable and well-documented. Clearly, significant roadblocks — some real, some imagined, some personal, some institutional and some sociological — still remain. Granted, and this is no small factor, professional women often leave a lot on the table themselves by not just taking their seat already instead of waiting for the invitation or worse, for permission. Contriving safety in numbers to fortify our resolve, we’ve created women’s networking groups, women’s empowerment groups, women’s leadership groups, women’s support groups — all great but, necessary (hopefully not in perpetuity) just not entirely sufficient. Why? First, because they’re stopgap measures, interventions of a sort, that occur at a way late juncture and therefore qualify as remediation, not real change. The women who continue to fight these battles in real time understand the need for legacy, that something needs to be better or at least different for the next generation of women, our daughters, from the...
May 3, 2011 | coaching, job security
The job outlook for our Spring, 2012 college graduates is looking up, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Apparently, the companies surveyed project they will hire 10.2 percent more graduates in 2012 than they did in 2011. Indeed, hiring is up overall, with this being the second consecutive year in which employers have adjusted their hiring expectations upward. As far as hopeful trends go, this one’s right up there; after four hideous years for job seekers, we’ll take even the most modest uptick. Finally, then, there’s reason for encouragement. In the spirit of the season, Hallelujah! But, if we know nothing else from the recent recession, we’ve learned that there are no guarantees. There was a time, in the not too distant past, when job security, generous benefits and funded retirement were practically birthrights and a college degree was the ticket in. Not so, anymore, on any of those counts. Now, despite the much ballyhooed upward trend in hiring, there simply won’t be enough jobs to satisfy the Class of 2012, as we still haven’t absorbed the class of 2011 and even the class of 2010. Plus, there are other realities that the little darlings of we-the-one percent have to recognize: there are tougher, more resilient, hungrier, harder working and, yes, more appreciative candidates also competing for the same jobs. As examples, I give you: * International students who are not only coming out of school with more desirable skills and degrees but also understand the notions of continual learning and betterment. These are the kids who go the extra mile to find out what it...
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. 