Note from Susan and Lynn

Happy Spring!

For most of our readers, this winter has been a rough one and we are relishing spring. With spring comes fresh perspectives, which is showing up in the women we work with. We are observing how women are transformed in how they communicate their accomplishments; we’ve received feedback from a manager about the positive developments in his employees; and one woman has just received a new job and promotion in her company after putting into action what she has learned!

It is these success stories that inspire us to continue helping you develop in your career. Our desire is not simply to teach the principles of career development; our purpose in our work is to see the strategies we teach put into successful action.

If you’ve gained insight or had a success from what you’ve learned or read from Women Leading Together, please share that with us here.

Warm regards,

Lynn and Susan

Feature Article

Advocates: The Life Support System for Your Career

Women are good at seeking out mentors. But mentoring has been getting a bad rap of late. Some are questioning whether mentoring works. There’s a lot of talk about the importance of sponsorship. In fact there’s a book out there called “Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor” by economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett. At Women Leading Together we believe there is a place both for mentors and sponsors. We teach it differently. Our principle is “Women need multiple advocates”.

Advocates are people who can influence on your behalf. They are often decision makers, but they may also be people who have influence over key decision makers in your career. Advocates know you well enough to speak on your behalf in the many formal and informal situations where talent discussions take place – a side conversation in a meeting, a discussion over lunch, a performance ranking meeting.

In our coaching work, we find women can be very strategic in how they think about business, but they don’t always apply the same strategic thinking to their careers. One of the five strategies we teach in our program 5 Strategies to Own Your Career. is “Build Your Circle of Advocates”. Let’s look at one woman’s story about how her advocates saved her career.

Annette had a plan for her career. Her plan was to achieve certain financial goals then transition out of the corporate workplace into a new entrepreneurial career. To build up the funds for the next stage of her career, it was important that she work for her current employer two more years. She had been strategic in her plans, aligning herself with the leaders who were making decisions on significant organizational changes. She stayed close to the decision process and strategically planned to exit the company at a time when her department was to be impacted.

In so doing, Annette had worked closely with two key influencers in the change process, both of whom had come to know her and her capabilities. She had provided good work, ideas to their thought processes and support for their initiatives, at a time when others were resisting the changes. She was confident that she had their support.

The surprise came when one of these advocates called to let her know that the timing had accelerated and her department would be one of the first to make changes, putting her job at risk immediately. Ironically, Annette’s ideas and cooperation had seemingly backfired because she was supportive of the organizational changes.

Exiting her job earlier than planned would be devastating to her financial plan and her dream. Annette felt betrayed by the two people whom she had considered key advocates. Now she would have to find another job in another company and work in the corporate environment for a longer period of time before pursuing her dream of owning her own company.

What Annette didn’t know, was that while she was in shock over the accelerated timing, things were happening behind the scenes. Very shortly she got a phone call. Both of the key influencers that Annette had worked to develop as advocates (the same people she felt had betrayed her) were recommending her for a role – one that matched her unique capabilities and that would bridge the gap to her targeted exit date. No longer betrayed, Annette realized in the end it was the relationships she had forged with these two people that helped her achieve her goals.

Advocates that will support your career have these characteristics:

1. They have worked with you or are familiar with your work.
2. They know your unique capabilities.
3. They know that you respect them and their time.
4. They know something about you personally and like you.

In the strategy “Build Your Circle of Advocates” we go deeper with tools and strategies to teach women how to identify and develop multiple advocates to support their career. If you’d like to know more about bringing the 5 Strategies to Own Your Career. to your company or organization, click here.

Resource Corner

“Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor” by Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Since we mentioned this book above, here’s how you can check it out.

5 Tips for Women Who Want to Advance Their Careers by Dr. Bernice Ledbetter

Dr. Ledbetter’s comments are subsets of several of our 5 Strategies, and they are good points. There is so much more that women can do to break down the barriers to advance their career. That’s why we work with women more comprehensively on the 5 Strategies to Advance Your Career. But this will at least give you food for thought in a minute’s reading.

About Susan and Lynn

Susan Hodge and Lynn Rousseau created Women Leading Together in order to provide seminars, workshops, and coaching circles to help career women move forward to create fulfilling careers. Visit our website at www.WomenLeadingTogether.com.

Copyright © 2014 Women Leading Together, LLC

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