Tag Archives: Decision making

Ask for the Order (AFTO): One Secret to Women’s Success

Women In Leadership-AdvancingWomen.com

There currently are 12 women CEOs of Fortune 500 Companies heading up these giant enterprises from health care, to agriculture to food and beverages.

Considering that almost half the workforce consists of women, and half of management and professionals are women – Why so few? Leaving aside for the moment the systemic issues in our society which devalue women’s work, let’s look at an area we do control: ourselves.  At the heart of the matter may be the hesitation of women to sell themselves, to practice AFTO, “Ask for the order”. Even salespeople sometimes fail to directly “ask for the order” that they have worked hard to acquire. Women can make the same mistake. Women often wait to be invited to participate, whereas men, in general, seem to have a level of confidence in believing that others want to hear what they have to say. Women have often been trained in humility, but humility does not breed opportunity.

A workshop at a New Jersey campus offers seven tips for women leaders that can be categorized as wellbeing, networking, asking, negotiating, focusing, fitting, and announcing. These seven outliers define how asking for the order can help women become more outspoken about what they want. Examining these seven tips for women leaders from the perspective of having an “ask for the order” mentality can equal success. Let’s look at a couple of them:

Networking

Build a network of mentors and allies who will challenge and support you. Networking is the avenue to gaining knowledge and introductions, and it’s the time to make the best of what you’ve got. Because application of performance improvement is a very good way to demonstrate its benefits, strive to showcase what you have done to apply your knowledge. Apply a networking approach that includes attention, attitude, and attendance to help you realize your networking goals.

  • Maintain attention; stay alert to opportunities
  • Maintain attitude; stay motivated
  • Maintain attendance stay in the forefront

Asking

Know what you want and ask for it, whether it is a promotion or a new assignment. This is the key component in asking for the order. This mere act of doing in conjunction with the other tips for women leaders can bring about amazing results.

Negotiating

Rather than permit a NO to stop you, negotiate to an even better YES, but only when the time is right. We need to weigh the situation and determine if it is better to seek to change the condition, do nothing, or run away from the situation. There are times appropriate to each of these choices. Sometimes it is best to work through the issue. Other times you must run for your life. And other times it is best to do nothing when in doubt. So there is more than fight or flight in decision making, there is the option to freeze. Ask for the order when the time is right.

  • Fight means to battle or negotiate to solve the situation.
  • Freeze means to do nothing and tolerate the situation.
  • Flee means to run away or leave the situation.

Focusing

Define your unique leadership values that will contribute to the success of the organization or community. We are all unique and special, but we need to identify how that bears upon the leadership role we seek. Asking for the order in this area means to be able to identify what you bring to the role. It might help you to identify your strengths, opportunities, and restrictions, permitting you to focus upon those areas in which you excel, where you can find support, and where you have weaknesses or threats standing in your way. This can be a kind of self-evaluation process to determine readiness for the targeted endeavor.

  • Evaluate your strengths (Internal Environmental Factors)

Strengths are those internal assets you posses that will aid you in your ability to accomplish your objectives. Strengths are among your internal environmental factors.

  • Explore your opportunities (External Environmental Factors)

Opportunities are those external aids that can assist you in managing the problem at a particular time and enhance your ability to accomplish your objectives. Opportunities are among your external environmental factors.

  • Estimate your restrictions (Internal and External Environmental Factors)

Restrictions are those internal and external conditions such as weaknesses or threats that can impede your progress or your ability to accomplish your objectives. Weaknesses are those restrictions among your internal environmental factors and threats are those restrictions among your external environmental factors.

Fitting

Seek a match between you and the task or job. Do what you like. Chances are the job is one that best fits your personality and skills. In order to know this you might use some of the personality type indicators that can help you to assess where you might best fit into a leadership role. Once you are sure about your match for the job, you will have greater confidence in asking for the order.

Go ahead….ask for the Order

Sharon L. Bender, Ph.D. is an educator and author. She is also the inventor of a plethora of problem solving models. To contact Sharon, please visit sharonbender.com.

To read all of this go to Women In Leadership-AdvancingWomen.com

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Key to A Career Switch: Transferable Skills In Your CV/Resume

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Assess Your Transferable Skills -Advancingwomen.com
Assess Your Transferable Skills
One of the most important parts of a job search, and particularly if your goal is to switch careers,  is assessing your Transferable skills. These are skills which you can use in other jobs such as: Communication, Information Management, Human Services, Managerial, Manual/Physical Labor, Personal Attributes, Organization.

Often, when people have been working in the same job for a long time, they become so accustomed to performing their duties that they fail to recognize the skills they have.

It is beneficial to sit down and write out a list of all the things you do in a work day and all the things you do at home as well. It is easy to forget that skills such as problem-solving, decision-making, and organization which you use at home and in volunteering are skills that you can transfer and use on a new job.

A benefit to this recognition of your skills is that you can come up with a variety of Ideas for jobs or places that these skills may be used.

When making the necessary modifications and adjustments to your CV, in order to target a new job or a new industry, first analyze your work history then make the appropriate refinements in your CV/resume.

Producing A Good CV When Changing Career , a British blog makes some excellent points about this which are themselves transferable to the job market globally:

“The key thing here is to consider the job(s) you have already done and to see if you can identify any skills you were able to obtain within these job(s) that could easily be transferable and be considered of value to your new chosen career and to focus upon them.” As example, if you held any kind of position where you had to talk to clients and interact with them to pinpoint their needs, that is a transferable skill whether you’re behind the scenes trying to understand what a client wants in a website, or you’re trying to sell him or her a high tech document management system or a new computer.  You are still trying to relate and discover a customer’s needs.  That is a skill that will fit almost universally into any business and many careers.

“The key point when producing a CV when you’re looking to change career is not to try to erase all of the experience you have gained up until this point but to tailor it in such a way and in a particular order which is likely to give an overall impression that you possess the necessary skills, personal qualities and qualifications that will be relevant to the career you’re now looking to pursue.

What a well-tailored CV will do, however, is make the switch to your new career seem like a natural and logical progression to the person reading it.

Finally, always remember that a CV isn’t designed to get you the job – it’s designed to get you the interview. You can elaborate on the reasons behind your career switch once you get to the interview stage.”

Good luck with your search….. and please share your experience with us.  Let us know if this post was helpful and what you would suggest to improve it.  Thanks.

Producing A Good CV When Changing Career

Why You Only Really Need Four Sample Resumes -AdvancingWomen.com

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Women In The Workplace: We’re Here, Try To Get Used To Us

Women In The Workplace, AdvancingWomen.com

For some reason…who knows why…could  be generations of stereotyping ….plenty of things about women in the workplace still puzzle many a male manager.

As an HR leader and working woman for a generation, Liz Ryan has compiled a Top Ten list of tidbits that the women in your workplace would love for you to know. We’ve selected four to share with you but for the rest, go to Women In The Workplace, AdvancingWomen.com

  • Don’t assume that I don’t know what I’m doing.

It shouldn’t happen, after all these years, but female software engineers still report that their male colleagues say things like “Check her code again, just in case.” Because she’s a woman. And it shouldn’t happen, but when a woman gets promoted, someone is sure to say “Well, they must have needed more women in management.” What if she’s just, well, qualified? Can we assume that men and women are equally equipped to do their jobs?

  • Don’t worry about my family – they’re fine.

Working women report being caught in a vise – when they’re going great guns at work, their bosses still give them less challenging assignments or stall their career growth “for the sake of your kids.” They’re my kids, for Pete’s sake! I’m perfectly capable of deciding how many hours at the office, how much travel, and what size job I can manage while parenting them. You, as my boss, have nothing to do with it.

  • Don’t dismiss my non-linear judgment.

It’s well established that women’s and men’s brains operate differently. But there’s a great tendency in the corporate world to pooh-pooh and belittle the non-linear, intuitive decision-making that so many women are so good at. If I’m getting the right answer most of the time, I deserve to get airtime: even if I don’t lay out my argument in your favored Powerpoint-style, data-driven format.

  • Don’t make me your mother, or your child.

It happens every day: a working woman realizes that her male boss or co-worker has substituted her for his mom or daughter, to her utter dismay. If you’re treated with respect, kid gloves, deference and have no influence in decisions – and are “protected” from bad news – then you’re Mom. If you’re treated graciously and carefully and kept out of difficult or thorny situations, you’re somebody’s surrogate daughter. Women won’t tolerate that. We are just who we are – women that you hired, women who will make your company thrive and flourish, if you let us.

Liz Ryan is a former Fortune 500 HR executive, workplace expert , writer, consultant and speaker (http://www.asklizryan.com). Liz lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Let us know what you think, or comment and share your own workplace stories.

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Women’s Workplace Balancing Dilemma

I love her, with all my heart, and if ever I k...

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Changing Expectations and Strategies to Achieve Successful Career Integration

Society is sending women conflicting messages about which elements constitute success for a woman. Should she bake a perfect blueberry pie and chauffeur around kids with sparkling white socks, or should she aspire to be a corporate attorney for a Fortune 500 company and hire a nanny and a cook to shoulder some of the household duties.

In fact, both of those images conjure up a type of perfectionism women should aspire to, which, in itself, is a problem. The fact that both ideals are diametrically opposed makes a choice even more painful. To achieve great success in one area, almost certainly means giving up on great success in the other, at least, as both work and family are structured today.

Starkly put, this ambivalence about women’s role assumes that it is not possible to fulfill both roles as well as one should and, consciously or unconsciously, results in the “dumbing down” of women, who often choose less demanding careers, or avoid some career tracks altogether.

At times, women have taken it upon themselves to lower their expectations at work, in order to fulfill their obligations at home. A woman might choose to stay in a position in human resources, for example, rather than seek as job as a line executive, responsible for profits. Her career prospects would definitely be enhanced as a line executive but that career path might force her to travel, or subject her family to frequent moves.

This avoidance of career opportunities not only extracts an emotional as well as career price, hindering advancement but also affects the balance of power in the home, as the primary wage earner garners more prestige and respect and increasingly dominates the decision making. This unfortunate cycle leaves the woman with even fewer choices and increasingly less opportunity to grow and move along a successful career path.

Kim Babjak in StartupNation Blog writes Take me serious, or else!: “How do we get taken seriously about being sister-preneurs?  My husband, I love to death and have been with for 25 yrs… needs to be continually trained and educated on the principals of homemaker/entrepreneurism. I am sad to say that the topic of the current Sara Palin phenomenon that I do not understand; how can you be a mom and run the world?

Well we can! We just need to delegate well.

I will tell you that as a mother of FOUR boys, just last night I had to once again snap hubby back into the reality of mom-preneurism.

It was our fourth child’s birthday, I ran around all day gathering items for the birthday, plus clean house, and I took off work to be with them as mommy….

Then hubby gets off work, scott free from anything. At the end of the evening, me being tuckered out, asked hubby, who did -0- to help out with anything, complained when I asked him to rub my sore, tired feet……YIKES! (no matter how successful you are, or become, we all have the same problems, just on different days!)

Moral of the story….men will always see us, consciously or unconsciously, (depends on what PhD you ask)as the one who takes care of the home, kids, HIM, and oh yes your home office thing!

Girls….It is a matter of conditioning, reinforcement and firm commitment to ease/shift the home and kid responsibility to the family for help. Take care when doing this, do not cause tension, for that will ultimately cause more stress. Teach without them knowing they are being taught.

My solution…..first talk and make clear your requests….

Second….if not responding…..reiterate your needs…

Third…..start going to dinner by yourself and movies, giving the family time to fend for themselves….

If all else fails…STRIKE!

There has to be a balance of power and commitment for both sides, keep pressing until it is reached.”

Moving Towards Change : Strategies for Successful Career Integration

Communication With Their Peers

Women should seek to dialogue with other working women about these choices and challenges in order not to feel isolated or that the fault lies with them

Higher Aspirations by Women

Women sometimes do not “actively work toward promotion“. Women must reflect higher aspirations and never stop seeking to advance in their careers.

Financial Independence

Women must seek to achieve and maintain financial independence because of expected additional years in the workforce and because a realistic look at statistics shows that women are most at risk for financial hardship as they age.

Enhancement of Career Opportunities

To enhance career opportunities and remain current and viable in their careers, women must take advantage of diverse learning experiences, volunteer for opportunities or positions which lead to additional experiences and seek advice of mentors, experts or colleagues.

The Equal Partner Conundrum

Negotiate with your husband, before marriage, or now, if you are already married, on what responsibilities he is willing to share so you can continue to grow and advance.

In the final analysis, AdvancingWomen.com agrees with author Kim Babjak : “If all else fails…STRIKE!”

For more, go here:

Was that “Bring HomeThe Bacon” or “Bring Home The Baby”? Coping With The Conflicting Demands of Career & Family

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