Archive for month: May, 2013

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Bev’s Tips on Stiletto Networks

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Hey, women professionals:

Want career synchronicity?

Network with other women!

“Synchronicity” is the term psychologist Karl Jung coined to describe those times when meaningful coincidences seem to bring you what you need. When synchronistic events pile up, Jung said, it’s as though you’re being supported by an unseen helper.

I can roughly graph the times in my career when synchronicity was in full flow.  From my early job as Ohio University’s director of women’s affairs, through my years as a Washington lawyer, lobbyist and executive, to my decade as coach and consultant, I’ve enjoyed periods of peak synchronicity. In these times opportunities abound, resources appear when I need them, and life feels abundant. 

I also can create another graph of my 40+ career years.  This one measures the intensity of my networking with other women.  If I compare the two lines – one for career synchronicity and the other for Old Girl networking – they seem to match.  My graphs illustrate that the most exciting, productive years aren’t necessarily the ones when I’ve worked the hardest or been the most disciplined.  What often seems to trigger the times of great flow is the energy I put into networking, particularly with other women.

Journalist Pamela Ryckman started noticing women of all ages harnessing the power of a new breed of professional networks.  Intrigued by the trend, she began writing about a wide mix of women’s dining clubs and other groups, particularly in New York and California.  She followed the trail to more cities and the result is her new book, Stiletto Network: Inside the Women’s Power Circles That Are Changing the Face of Business.

“I started to discover dinner groups and salons and coworking and networking circles in major cities across the United States,” Ryckman says.  “In almost every case, the women thought they were alone in assembling clusters of dear, smart girlfriends who met regularly to learn and share.”  But in fact there are so many groups it’s starting to look like a movement.

I don’t think the phenomenon of women’s support circles is as new as Ryckman suggests, but I enjoyed her description of how the tide of female power groups is rising.  “They talk nonstop about business.  And while their companies span the industries – from finance to real estate to fashion to art – they’re almost all Web-based.” But “it’s not like they’re all work and no play…Never has the Women’s Movement felt less like a jaundiced faction and more like a party.”

Tens of thousands of professional women are meeting regularly, reaching across generational and institutional lines, and sharing information, advice and contacts.  And the energy and excitement they share seems contagious.  Ryckman describes woman after woman whose career takes off, with one synchronistic opportunity after another, as a result of her Stiletto Network.

It’s worth noting that these groups are not anti-man.  “Networks are meant to extend one’s scope, not restrict it,” Ryckman says.  “Savvy gals may unite on occasion, but they don’t cut themselves off from the dudes.” Women want to help each other build rich networks, including with powerful men.

The circles exist to provide peer-to-peer support and don’t welcome just anybody.  Some mentioned by Ryckman have membership policies sounding perhaps too much like the restrictive clubs that served the Old Boy Network.  “For Stiletto Networks to be relevant and desirable, they must be rooted in shared experience and true sympathy – which means they must have some form of exclusivity.”

What makes the new groups particularly interesting is the absence of hierarchy and emphasis on collaboration across industries and skills sets.  “The horizontal networks women have built over time just happen to be the same networks society now wants and needs,” Ryckman says. They are about being “collegial, collaborative, checking your ego at the door, and trying to work on solutions.”

The circles are so varied that your experience may not align with Ryckman’s account of how the women’s network works.  But if you’re a woman, I bet her book will make you want to start a group, or tweak the one you already love so it can foster even more career synchronicity. 

Ryckman’s tips for starting a Stiletto Network include:

  • Think diversity.  Don’t just round up your best buddies. Draw women with diverse skills, in different fields.
  • Believe in magic.  Don’t worry much about the goals or agendas.  “If you get dynamic ladies talking or walking or drinking, exciting things will happen.”
  • Use technology to facilitate.  After the event, share information and continue the conversation through email and social media.
  • Systemize “asks and offers.”  Women may have trouble asking for help.  A process for making requests or offering assistance makes groups more effective.

If you’re part of a Stiletto Network, or want to create one, I’d love to hear about it.

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Bev’s Tips have been arriving as a zine on Tuesday mornings about 20 times a year since 2004. For more Tips, sign up for the zine, go to the zine archive or visit Bev’s blog. We’d love to hear your comments here on threejoy.com, or email Bev at: coach@clearwaysconsulting.com.

Follow Bev on Twitter. Connect with Bev on LinkedIn.

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5 Times in a Career When Academics Should Hire a Coach

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The use of executive or leadership coaches has become an accepted and widespread practice in private corporations, non-profits, and government, and the reasons are becoming clearer (here). When individuals are coached, they become more effective at work and at home with notable improvements in both their task & relationship orientation; organizations become more productive with coaching returning $5-$7 for every $1 spent.  

By counter distinction, the use of coaches in academic life–for that matter, the use of any kind of systematic organizational development (OD)–is virtually unknown inside the university.  With the many pressures for change that universities are now facing, both economically and technologically, there are good reasons to believe that this is about to change.  While universities and colleges come to grips with changes enveloping them, individual staff, professors, and administrators may want to consider the why and when of hiring a personal coach to help advance their careers and their lives.

Coaching, It’s Not What You Think

Those unfamiliar with coaching sometimes think that coaching is a form of consulting, mentoring, or advice giving, but at it’s best, coaching is a form of one-on-one inquiry and reflection in which the client is aided by the coaches listening and asking questions in ways that help the client find and overcome obstacles and then identify and realize possibilities.  

The coach works to support only the client’s agenda, starting wherever he or she is; the coach comes to the engagement without judgment or any ideal sense of what the client should or should not be doing. In this way, the client can safely explore his or her own authentic path, style, and career in a safe, supportive environment.  

Compared to other kinds of OD interventions such as training and group facilitation, coaching is especially well suited to the highly competitive and  individualistic nature of the academy.  The confidentiality of the coaching relationship creates a safe haven for sharing hopes and concerns, successes and breakdowns, and possibilities and aspirations.

5 Times Coaching May Be Helpful in an Academic Career

There are at least five times in an academic career, when hiring a coach might be beneficial to an academic:

You’re thinking about becoming an academic.  Getting a PhD or other terminal graduate degree is a major commitment, and academic life is not for everyone. Consulting a career coach at the onset of the academic journey can both avoid a potentially costly and emotionally devastating decision and set sail with clear, aligned, and realistic expectations, intentions, and aspirations.

You’ve taken your first academic job.  Congratulations, you’re a newly minted assistant prof and you’re eager to get started on your teaching and research, but the road to tenure is filled with many difficulty decisions. Moreover, your dean, department head, and colleagues will offer you much well intentioned advice, but how do you maximize your chances of succeeding and still stay true to your original aspirations and intentions?  Consulting a coach at this stage in your career gives you a safe means of exploring your challenges and opportunities with someone who has only your interest at heart. 

You’ve been promoted or received tenure (or denied promotion or tenure).  The career ladder as a professor only has three rungs, and each promotion can be a major life transition.  The transition from assistant to associate prof is usually accompanied by tenure, and the moment of getting to tenure can be disorienting.  Should you continue on the same trajectory?  Is it time to think about an adminstrative role?  What’s next?  These are some of the questions that beg answers upon receiving tenure, and a coach can be helpful to asking those pertinent to your circumstances and to finding your own answers.  Denial of tenure is a difficult transition, and universities and colleagues provide little or no support.  A coach can help you put the event in proper perspective and find a path aligned with where you now are.  Denial of promotion to full professor is another difficult case, and a coach can be especially helpful in finding perspective and next steps.

You’ve taken a new administrative post. Transitioning into administration can be quite a shock to the system, and even transitioning up the ranks from head or chair, to dean, to provost, and president can be challenging as each new post is quite different from the one vacated.  Administrative postings and promotions are opportune times to hire a coach to help with the challenges of the new position and to prepare for subsequent advancement by building skill and developing in ways that align with the new post and the next.

You’re preparing to leave the university.  Perhaps you’ve decided that it’s time to move on, start a company, become a consultant, take a position in the private sector, or retire.  These transitions are to get the good questions and listening of a coach to help draw out the best in what comes next.

These five times are good ones to think about finding and using the services of a coach.  The next section puts forward a number of open-ended questions to help in your quest for your coach.

Finding Your Coach

So perhaps you’re at an academic transition when a coach might be useful to you.  How do you find one aligned with your needs?  Here are some questions to consider in hiring a coach:

  1. What training and qualifications does the person bring to their coaching?
  2. To what extent does the person have academic experience and understand academic culture?
  3. To what extent is the potential coach curious about you, your obstacles, your opportunities & to what extent do they seem to have a method or an answer?
  4. To what extend do you feel comfortable with the potential coach, and to what extent is it easy or hard to share private information with him or her?
  5. To what extent does the coach ask questions that engage your reflection and are both hard and interesting to answer?
  6. To what extent does the coach seem to listen to you and “get you” through that listening?
  7. Given that universities do not yet pay for coaching, to what extent does the coach accommodate those who are paying out of their own pockets?

A good source of information about coaching and coaches is International Coach Federation, and these days there is much other information online.  If you’d like to learn more about coaching with ThreeJoy, write to Dave Goldberg at deg@threejoy.com.