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Take a look at stories from our Women Who Can to learn from their experiences in
common situations. If there's a situation we should cover in future interviews tell us about it. |
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Her situation |
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I’m well known for doing a particular project type well, but I want to move forwards and demonstrate I can do other things.
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I put together a program to get execs closer to the customer experience. It was incredibly successful and won a national customer engagement award. The problem was the program required a lot of project management, which is something that I don’t like, and I wanted to hire someone to help run the program so I could return to my broader role of customer experience. My boss came back to me, and said they didn’t want anyone else to manage the program as I’d be the motivator of the work. I told them I didn’t want to be a victim of my own success, I asked them to get someone else in that I could train. They couldn’t afford to do it, and it had to be me. So I got stuck there, but looked for other opportunities and eventually moved on.
Director of Experience and Insight
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A GM asked me to assist in preparing for a Senior VP review, he was thinking I’d do slide production as his directors were doing the content. In the end I provided the structure and reframed the content to make sense. Then I worked with another team similarly. I liked the work and it was valuable to the teams but people only saw the ‘visual’ output as my contribution and not the strategic content creation. Then I got pigeon holed as a production ‘pretty-graphics’ person. I was concerned the GM had not seen the value I’d brought. I started pushing back on such projects even though there was value to company and I liked doing it as I wasn’t being recognized for the value I was bringing.
This year in a new position, I got pulled into prep for VP presentation and before I engaged I made sure my manager understood what my contribution was going to be. You’ll pour in the work, heart and soul, and it won’t always be something valued by others, not because they’re mean but there is blindness to it. If you’re not up front about the value of the work and have a shared sense of value of the contribution you can just get frustrated in the end. Senior Program Manager
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I want to ask for a flexible work arrangement but don't know how to approach it.
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We have to negotiate differently to men. The basic advice is that men can negotiate for themselves and pay no penalities, but women when we negotiate we have to justify it and be communal and say things like 'we', and smile and explain what we want and justify it. I HATE this advice but as a pragmatist we have to negotiate in a smart way. Even if you don't like the system we have to do this to get ahead, and then we can set the rules and change the dynamics. But as women we need to negotiate carefully, that's what the data shows.
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I have a vision for how the group I’m part of can contribute to the business that hasn’t been done before, but no one will listen to me.
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I had a problem getting promoted from manager to senior manager. My motivation to was I had a lot of great ideas and it was hard to get people to buy-in because I was not senior. At a grass root level I would tell anyone my ideas who I could get time with. I would get people talking about the ideas and in meetings I’d hear them talking about them, eventually becoming tribal
knowledge. The good part for the company was the ideas were making inroads but the bad pat was nobody was remembering they were my ideas. Before I left the company I developed a comprehensive customer strategy and hired a graphic designer with my own money to create an awesome presentation. People who saw it would say, ‘This is brilliant’ but then say, ‘Who can we get to drive this?’ overlooking me as they wanted a ‘Senior’ manager to drive it. Director of Experience and Insight
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My boss asks me to prepare a bunch of work, and then presents it to senior management as his own.
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This situation isn’t about my boss presenting my work as his own, but the challenge of recognition for collaboration contributions being recognized. I create conceptual frameworks, but people forget that that skill is a critical contribution because the contributors often think it always existed. I’ve created them from the ground up, and provided structure used for planning and decision making, and looking at inter-relationships. I mold everyone’s ideas into a single cohesive and comprehensible model and it takes skill. I should announce, ‘Now I’m going to provide the conceptual framework to help make sense of it all’ but I don’t as it takes time to create. When I get it right it really moves te conversation for the projects to another level but getting recognition for this contribution remains challenging. Sometimes others think they would eventually get to the concept model without me, but if they haven’t been able to do it in a year, I’m not sure why they think they would have figured it out now.
Senior Program Manager
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I am frustrated at being given one direction from my boss this week, and a different direction from him the next week.
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As a manager I’ve been learning to not take on extra work load burdens, such as taking on extra work to balance the load, or sheltering the team so they don’t get distracted, or spreading them too thin. So for example if someone on my team leaves rather than taking on that persons work myself I’m trying to figure out how to balance it across the team. I’ve learned to talk with management to let them know the world may have changed around us and that means resetting expectations about what we can do. Saying ‘No’ can be hard as you want to please and show you can do everything. I feel over the years I have learned to do fewer things and do them really well rather than be spread so thin that everything is only getting mediocre attention. In my one-on-one
meetings with my manager I show him in an informal way (whiteboard) what are all the big areas we could work on, and then offer a solution (rather than a problem) about how to reset the work based on business justification. One question I use to get feedback is, ‘Is there something that I’m not considering with respect to how I’m prioritizing?’ I find doing the upfront work and coming in with a proposal works as first of all I know the space better than he does. Principal UX Manager
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I think the company has a lot to offer me but am struggling as people aren't giving me the opportunities I deserve
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I'm looking for someone who is talking about what are they going to give to the organization not what is it going to do for them. "What's your biggest problem and can I solve it?". When you look for a job it's not about you it's about them. If you've done your home work you can articulate what you can offer, how are you going to help the organization succeed.
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My boss keeps piling more work on my plate. I don’t have bandwidth to do a good job on all the work I’m given.
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Earlier in my career I always had a full plate, and that was mostly because I took on more and more projects, mostly because I was enthusiastic and highly motivated. I didn’t want to say no because I wanted to do it all. However it got crazy and I couldn’t do it when I managed a team. To manage the boss-piling-on work problem, I got better at keeping my boss informed with workload, priorities and deadlines so when new work items came up, I could slot in the new item, but also knew something else was getting moved. I also learned about the trade-off of quality-date-resources and made my boss listen. I remember one day when I was at home working at the kitchen table, my daughter wanted me and I told her I had to finish my homework first, she then asked, ‘Mommy, who gives you your homework?’, I realized what I was working on wasn’t core to my job, or something my boss even knew I was working on. It made me aware of my choices.
Consultant
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I'm getting swamped with too much to do and never getting anything done
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A Facebook mantra is 'Done is better than perfect'. I try to answer my emails quickly as I read them. Two sentences rather than three paragraphs. I keep focused on prioritizing - what's most important for Facebook. I'm proactive in deciding what's important to get done this week. I have a note book and pencil (strange technology for Facebook) and I write down what I want to get done that week and try to keep to it. It keeps me focused.
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I have just received my appraisal and I don't agree with it.
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My appraisal was very good, but I had been expecting a promotion and was shocked at not receiving it. I was lucky my new boss was great and listened to my expectations and realized the ask was justified. She went to bat and got me the promotion. The biggest learning for me was that I had not clearly communicated early enough that I was expecting a promotion (or thought I was ready for promotion). It still shocks me that I had not done something that everybody always tells you –have early conversations about performance and ask for what you want, and feedback on what it’s going to take to get there. I had assumed because of verbal positive feedback I was on track for promotion without having asked the specific question, ‘is there something more I can be doing to be ready for promotion in August?’
Consultant
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I value my teams contribution to projects and have a hard time talking about my contribution
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"There's a strange dynamic of credit deflection that takes place with women" says Terrell, CIO for Walmart. Even when she asks women directly about their contributions to a project or other initiative, they'll default to discussing the team. "There's a feeling of dirtiness that exists with women about taking credit even when directly asked about it." She says it can make managers conclude you may be only facilitated the work. She suggests asking your people to to fill in the blank: I'm really proud of ____________"
Karenaan Terrell, CIO, Walmart, from Women in Tech: Career Advice
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Hammonds, gives advice that its not a good career move to keep your head down while doing a job and then not tell the story of what they and their team achieved.
Kim Hammonds, CIO, Boeing, from Women in Tech: Career Advice
Success is "both about our work output, and how you're seen as collaborating and
leading". Women need to know how to showcase their capabilities Bridget van Kralingen, Senior VP, IBM from Women in Tech: Career Advice
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