Do you believe you are underneath a glass ceiling, looking up and wishing you could break through?

This is an area that seems to have contradictory evidence both supporting and denying that such a ceiling still exists. A news report published back in 2003 stated that women were beginning to gain equal pay. But another survey that was performed only last month (February 2011) indicated that a full 73% of female managers still believed in the glass ceiling.

In truth, the idea of a glass ceiling may or may not be true depending on certain circumstances:

• The specific company a woman works in
• The sector of business a woman works in
• The colleagues and bosses she is surrounded by
• And perhaps even the thoughts and beliefs of the female manager herself

Cataylst’s March 2011 research confirms the lack of progress with only 14.4% of executive officers of Fortune 500 companies are women, and an even more dismal 2.2% are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

It may seem bleak in the progress of business equality, but there are signs that businesses are now recognising the importance and need for their executive teams to be comprised of or even lead by women.

The concept of the glass ceiling seems to be very much in the news at the moment. It will be interesting to see if any other surveys are published on the topic in the near future.

Does marriage impede your chances of becoming a manager?

Apparently they could do if you are a woman. According to figures released towards the end of 2010, it seems that almost three quarters of male managers were married at the time they were surveyed. In contrast, just under sixty per cent of women were married if they were in a manager’s job.

This is an interesting statistic, revealing that there is perhaps a bigger gap between male managers who are married and female managers who are married. A similar picture was revealed when it came to whether or not there were children in the family.

But is this to do with the actual workplace being less amenable to female managers? Or is it perhaps due to the fact that it is more often down to the woman to look after the children?

Either way it provides some interesting food for thought – both for female managers and for those who wish to ascend the ladder.

Tip one – Focus on dividing your work and home life

For anyone to be a successful manager it is vital that they can divide their work and home life effectively. This is particularly true for women though, where they may have kids to think about as well.

It may help to get a diary or chart so that you can block out your time each day. Block out your working hours and then add in the specific tasks around it that form part of your home life.

Think about how to delegate better – particularly at work, but also at home – so you can enjoy a more balanced life on the whole.

Tip two – Learn how to cope in a male orientated workplace

Some jobs and sectors have done more to introduce more female managers than others. If you are one of the first in your workplace, don’t be surprised if you meet with some hostility or even just a cool reception.

Learn how you can interact with different people in different ways. Men act and react differently to situations than women do – it’s in all our genetics and DNA. Finding out how to cope with men as well as women could mean you are able to handle the job more successfully and manage your team better as well. See our Women as Manager and Women as Leader programs.

Tip three – Learn how to de-stress – what works for you?

We all need to de-stress. But female managers may come up against more stressors than men do in certain situations.

Find ways to de-stress that really appeal to you. Take advantage of some downtime each and every day that is just for YOU. What would you do to feel better and more relaxed each day?

Enquire about our Understanding and Managing Stress Program.

Visit us at www.bfsdglobal.com

Bruna Martinuzzi has offered the following tips on how you can become a successful accountable leader.

1. Taking time to reflect on how your actions are viewed by all stakeholders: your direct reports, your peers, your clients. Go through a formal 360 Leadership Assessment process or simply get hold of a leadership assessment form and use it to reflect on how others in your team would rate you on each dimension.

2. At the end of each day, take the time to go over your day.
Think about the significant activities in your day. Are you proud of the way you conducted yourself? Could you improve?  This will inspire you to plan your next day around your highest purpose. Getting into this habit of introspection will pay dividends in the long run.

3. Decide to hold yourself accountable for developing other leaders. By mentoring a protégé to enhance their personal and professional growth, you strengthen your own leadership skills and reinforce your determination to be self-accountable as you become the model.

4. When something goes wrong, look inwardly for solutions. It is especially in difficult times that our self-accountability is challenged. Ensure you are well equipped to deal with challenges and controversy.

5. When a mistake is made, do you ask: “Whose fault is it?” or do you say: “What can we learn from this?” It is important to move away from the blame game and take ownership of issues.

6. Think about promises you make to new hires during the interviewing courtship period. In our zeal to want to attract the brightest and most talented, we can easily over promise. Keep a record of your interview notes and what you promised to candidates. If subsequent events make it impossible to keep the promises, at least you can address them with the individual. This is better than forgetting about them altogether.

7. What about promises you made to yourself? Write out your personal and professional goals with clear targets. Read them once a week. Use these to spur you into action.

8. Think about what you are avoiding doing. Is there anything that you are avoiding doing that needs to be done? For example, are you putting off a difficult conversation? Are you delaying any important decisions? Are you delegating away responsibilities that should stay in your court?

Self-accountability, then, is staying true to ourselves despite difficult circumstances. It’s doing the right thing even when we are tempted to bend a few rules for expediency’s sake.

Despite the increase of popularity many still don’t understand the full value of e-learning. Articulate.com have provided the following factors as to why e-learning is a great new way to learn.

• Real-time access. Elearning eliminates allows courses to be accessed anytime, anywhere.  This can also happen without Internet access.
• Freedom to fail.  Let’s face it, real learning requires some failure.  But no one likes to fail in a classroom full of other people.  Elearning lets you fail without fear.  This encourages exploration and testing of ideas.  With the right feedback you create a great learning environment.  Worst case, you can always start over.  Something you can’t always do in class.
• Improved retention.  The combination of multimedia and instructional design can produce a very rich learning experience that is repeatable.  Throw in some good practice activities with feedback and you have a learning environment that’s going to help your learners retain the course content which will produce results.
• Personalised learning. Let’s think about cars, they all do the same thing yet we all have personal opinions about what we want to drive.  The same goes for learning.  Learners want control.  Elearning allows you to offer control to the learners in a way that classroom learning doesn’t.

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Whatever the reason behind the change, most people within organisations seem to resist change even if they agree it is needed. Often, employees may not be resistant to change, but rather, the process or transition that change requires. It is therefore important for managers to understand employee’s natural negative feelings about change and how to best manage these to ensure a smooth transition period for all.

Here are five steps to help you manage change and transitions in your organisation.

1. Assess and address employees concerns
Many organisations claim to put their employees first, however the reality is, most don’t. Take the time to live up to this claim when employees are concerned. Listen to their fears and communicate strategies that will be implemented to keep the impact to a minimum.

2. Demonstrate strong leadership
The reality is that without strong leadership, positive change is unlikely to happen. Leaders and managers throughout the organisation need to show their commitment to the change and work hard to make it happen. This commitment will inspire and motivate everyone to take a role in implementing change.

3. Build trust in the leadership
Having the trust of employees in times of change is crucial as employees feel especially vulnerable. Those implementing the change need to display absolute integrity, reliability, openness, and fairness – always behaving in ethically and socially responsible ways. They need to communicate that they care about both the people and the organisation.

4. Clearly articulate the vision to all
Many organisations struggle in implementing change because people fail to grasp the vision and understand its implications. The key to the successful implementation of change is to communicating the reason behind the change and why it is necessary. Employees need to understand the purpose of the change and the outcome that is expected. Without you telling them they will not know.

5. Celebrate success
Celebration recognises accomplishment, motivates everyone involved, and sends a positive message. Don’t wait until the mission is accomplished and change has occurred; celebrate milestones and short-term wins on the way to the goal.

Tony Schwartz has offered an additional six pointers to help you achieve excellence:

1. Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.
2. Do the hardest work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. Most great performers have found it best to take on difficult work in the mornings, before they do anything else. That’s when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.
3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.
4. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses. The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much feedback, too continuously can create cognitive overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.
5. Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolise and embed learning. It’s also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.
6. Ritualise practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. The best way to insure you’ll take on difficult tasks is to build rituals — specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.

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The research found that the key to delivering both operational excellence and innovation is having networks of informal collaboration. Innovative solutions often emerge unpredictably through informal and unplanned interactions between individuals who see problems from different perspectives.  These networks often help employees handle situations that don’t fit into pre-established processes and structures.

Business leaders and CIOs who learn to harness and balance both formal and informal structures are better equipped to create more efficient and innovative organisations. When working to capitalise on these networks, business leaders and CIOs need to let go of some traditional management methods and adopt collaborative management models.

The MIT Sloan Management Review offered the following advice for companies trying to build more collaborative and innovative organisations:

• Executives should analyse employee contribution networks to discover how high-performing individuals and teams connect.
• Networks should be designed to optimise the flow of good ideas across function, distance and technical specialty.
• Network analysis can show where too much connectivity slows decision making.

CEO Online has included an article on their website that says “Change champions don’t QUIT and don’t SETTLE.” They have provided 5 tips to help you become a successful change champion.

1. Overcome the fear of the unknown

Tip: “Choose growth”

2. Eliminate the fear of failure

Tip: “Get a healthier understanding of how change works”

3. Fight the fear of commitment

Tip: “Focus on what needs to be changed and keep the rest”

4. Dismiss the fear of disapproval

Tip: “Take in the disapproval with a grain of salt and an ounce of discernment”

5.  Discard the fear of success

Tip: “Relish your success instead of settling for mediocrity”

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1. Two-speed economy

Australia weathered the financial storm better than most, but there are still areas of risk and reward, known as the two-speed economy.

Tip: Concentrate on staff retention and diversification to reduce risk in an uncertain climate.

2. Global economic health

The biggest issue for Australian companies in terms of global economic health is business confidence.

Tip: For a full economic recovery a change in thought processes is required: from ‘glass is half empty’ to ‘glass is half full’.

3. Development and training

As managers look to increase levels of innovation and agility within their organisations, the need for staff development and training becomes greater.

Tip: Formalise the implementation of mentoring, coaching and training procedures in order to increase agility and improve staff retention.

4. Export opportunities

There are amazing opportunities on offer to Australian exporters in the near term.

Tip: Whether you’re currently exporting or looking to begin, look to the markets in our own region of the world for great growth opportunities.

5. Sustainability issues

Despite the shelving of the Emissions Trading Scheme organisations have plenty to be concerned about in terms of sustainability.

Tip: Make sustainability a serious issue in your business – as important as the bottom line – because it is to many stakeholders.

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To make an effective decision you need to: create a constructive environment, generate good alternatives, explore these alternatives, choose the best alternative, check your decisions, communicate this and take action.

A recent survey of more than 3,000 leaders conducted by Leadership Management Australia and reported on by the HR Daily found that the number-one characteristic today’s employees value in a manager is trustworthiness.

Trustworthiness has moved from seventh position in 2009 to number one replacing clear communication of direction. This shows that employee expectations have changed significantly in the past year calling for all managers to review their leadership style.

The survey found the top ten characteristics of a good manager to be:

1. Being trustworthy and open in approach
2. Clearly communicating where the company is going
3. Giving employees the “space” to do their work, but supporting them
4. Listening to and respecting employees’ input into decisions
5. Giving employees regular and honest feedback on how they are going
6. Being fair and even-handed/making reasonable demands
7. Providing the resources employees need to do their job
8. Recognising employees for extra efforts/results;
9. Coaching and developing employees
10. Trusting employees with challenging work.

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