Advice to women
Introduction
The previous chapter on ‘advice to men’ focused on recommendations given to men already on the top rung of organisations by the women in our study. In this parallel chapter, we seek to learn from the experiences of high-achieving women and to pass on to others the women’s reflections on their own careers. This chapter summarises a number of themes that emerged when we asked our interviewees what advice they would give to women in the process of moving towards senior positions.
Context
Given that there are continuing gender-based inequalities in the workplace, it is particularly important that women wishing to reach the top of their profession are made aware of all that a ‘successful’ career might entail and that they are offered advice from women who have already trodden that path. Elsewhere in the book we cover some of the positive and negative feelings women shared with us about their career progression, within the broader context of their lives outside work. Here, we conclude by examining the advice these women would give to other women.
It is possible to group our interviewees’ advice into four broad areas. The first covers issues around self-confidence and acting in a manner true to oneself. The second includes the subject of mentors and role models, while the third area focuses on issues of ambition and risk- taking. These three areas showed a high degree of consistency in their responses. Finally, a number of women picked on a mixture of wider issues including home/life balance, appreciating the advantages that being a woman at work could have, along with pointing out the advantages of a senior position.
Being yourself – with confidence
One of the most frequently proposed pieces of advice our interviewees gave to other women was to be more confident. A number of them spoke about this in relation to the level of confidence they had (or had not) recognised in themselves. In earlier parts of the interviews, some respondents told us that they had always believed in themselves and that they had grown up with a fundamental confidence that they could succeed. Others talked of how their confidence had grown over time. In contrast, some of the interviewees told us they had had problems with their self-confidence, or gave examples of a lack of confidence displayed by other women. Confidence, however experienced, was clearly of major importance to these women. It is unsurprising then that almost all our interviewees highlighted aspects of confidence as the number one focus of advice to others. A typical example came from Gill who said:
The critical thing is confidence. I wasn’t very confident as a youngster of 20, 21 … and I used to pretend that I was confident … sort of act it and then you gradually become confident. To really accept the fact that the world isn’t full of people cleverer than you or better than you and that you’re just as good as the next person, you can go for it as well as anybody … So don’t run yourself down, don’t feel other people are better than you, which is what women tend to do.
In a related vein, Bella talked of times when not being confident enough had led to a ‘weaker decision’ being made. Her advice to other women was to be bolder:
Be more confident. Whenever I think I’ve done something wrong, or that I could’ve done it better, it’s normally because I’ve made the slightly weaker decision, the slightly less confident decision. Whereas … invariably when I’ve gone out and been really bold it’s been good.
Diane had similar advice to impart:
Have confidence in your own ability … You’ve got to be your own best friend and you’ve got to be your number one supporter, so if you don’t believe in yourself nobody in their right mind is going to take you seriously … You’ve got to have self-belief. You’ve got to have confidence in your own ability and you’ve simply not got to use male role models as your role model because you’ve got to show how you are different and how you would do that differently. But show confidence, make the most of your ability and don’t be put off by thinking that you can’t do something – you can, you can do it and if you learn quickly, you can do it, but admit, you’ve got to admit and be open that ‘this is all new to me’ or ‘I’m going to need some time for this’ – you’re not superwoman – so confidence, but not pretend that you can do everything, nobody can.
Lillian talked about confidence in a comparative way, noting that women’s confidence is often easier to knock than that of men:
Do you know it’s very difficult to give advice? … I do believe that it’s easier to shake a woman’s confidence than a man’s. You are more willing to accept criticism; you are more willing to accept that you couldn’t do that job. My advice would be factor that in, not that you can do anything, but recognise that you will absorb other people’s views in a way that men may not. Just understand that, when you perceive that, if you like, a male colleague may have less doubts than you do. Just make sure that you’ve taken that into account.
The question of confidence can be seen as related to issues of self-belief and of ‘being yourself’ or recognising one’s own strengths. Nuala’s advice was to ‘recognise your own interests and strengths and be persistent’, whereas Maggie made a connection between being yourself and understanding yourself – though not necessarily easy advice to take for women, perhaps more so than men (Eagly, 2005):
The first thing I would say is be yourself. The second thing I would say is understand what makes you tick in terms of your underlying values as to why you work in the organisation that you do.
Almost the same point was made by Isobel:
One of the things is be yourself and be true to yourself and don’t try and copy a man, or someone else.
The same advice was developed further by Jessica, who focused on potential gender differences in interaction and language:
Be yourself; don’t try to be a pseudo male. Don’t think that all men are against women either. I don’t think the younger women do these days. The way women speak is different to the way men speak and it can be misinterpreted so look into that a bit more, read up and see how that might be the case. Be brave.
It is extraordinary how much overlap is exhibited in the above extracts from Jessica, Olivia, Isobel and Maggie – who use almost identical words. Indeed most of the women we spoke to had something to say about the importance of self-confidence and self-belief to a successful career, something discussed more broadly by Eagly (Eagly, 2005). Eliza provided a similar sentiment when she focused on the link between self- belief and learning:
I would say not to give up, to believe in yourself; it’s taken me years to believe in myself. I didn’t believe in myself and I didn’t think I was worthy. It’s taken a partner to actually show me that. So basically learn as much as you can experience-wise, out in the field.
A final quotation comes from Ruth, whose advice on self-confidence touched on the difficult balance between assertiveness and aggression:
There’s something about being assertive, being aware of your own strengths and areas for development. I think the thing that can hold women back more than men, although that doesn’t discount men, is lack of self-confidence, lack of assertiveness. It’s about being assertive without moving then directly into aggression and developing those self-confidence skills, learning about organisational behaviour and being aware of power that isn’t just positional power that I think women can be a bit more naive about than men.
Mentors and role models
As part of the process of becoming more confident, a popular piece of advice was for women to make the most of their own potential by allowing others to help them on their way. Some of the interviewees had already described valuable experiences with a mentor and this formed the basis for further advice. For Gill, having a mentor was ‘a great thing for anybody to have’. She added:
I think … recognising how much other people can provide ladders or scaffolding for you to climb up. And making relationships, networking I suppose. I’ve not thought about it until this conversation actually but it’s quite clear to me looking back that various people at various times can make a huge difference.
Ruth advised both women and men to make the most of any role models, mentors and networks they were connected to, as the following quote illustrates:
I would say, this is pertinent to men as well, any sort of learning and development, I think networks, peer networks, role models, learning from people, from other women in particular […] the sense of being prepared to listen to people with more experience and making use of the female networks that do exist.
Kate had earlier reported very positive benefits from working with a coach and her advice was to take advantage of an outsider’s view of your career trajectory from time to time:
Because it was so important to me and subsequently I’ve done it for other people … You might not need that person all the time but just every so often you need someone … being prepared to think differently about stuff is important as well.
Akin to the previous advice from Kate, Andrea particularly recommended a mentor and, interestingly, suggested that a male mentor could be especially useful. She had previously talked about how, in her own line of work, a paucity of women in senior posts meant that she had been unable to access female role models. Maggie provided her own take on the same point when she urged women ‘don’t be afraid to ask for help and be supportive of others’.
Though several women mentioned the advantages of role models and mentors, one or two were more circumspect about being over-associated with a specific ‘sponsor’ and cautioned others against this. Nuala told us: ‘Don’t seek long-term role models to follow – who has seen replica careers?’ And in a similar way, Olivia advised:
I think if your career is dependent on your sponsor then you have to consider what happens when your sponsor is no longer flavour of the month, what happens to you. If everybody associates you with that sponsor and something happens to that sponsor does that then mean that you’re not seen as an individual that’s adding value in your own right but that you’re only doing it on behalf of somebody else … Don’t follow your sponsor, have your own career and career path. If the sponsor helps you get further up the ladder then all well and good but don’t be tied to his or her coat tails in case somebody chops them off.
Taking risks and making mistakes
We saw above how Jessica urged women to ‘be brave’ in being themselves. This theme was introduced in a variety of ways by some of the other women giving advice. For instance, Fiona noted:
It is about taking some risks, because you won’t get anywhere unless you do, wherever you want to get. Risking stepping above what you think or someone’s told you is your place in life … it’s about having a view about the kinds of things you want to achieve in life, that you want to do.
Maggie echoed Fiona in some respects:
Be prepared to learn and see every day as a learning opportunity and don’t be afraid of new challenges. Go outside your comfort zone, try new things. Don’t be scared to make mistakes, you’ll learn from them. You’ll learn about yourself, you’ll learn about the role.
Lillian offered the view that top women, being a scarce commodity, have fewer expectations placed upon them and that this can work to one’s advantage, provided women are prepared to work less conventionally:
Be as clear as you can about yourself, be open to opportunities, because you can have very interesting careers if you are prepared to be a little unconventional. Often being a woman enables that a bit more than being a man … I think the less people expect of you the more you can do, if you take into account the first thing, which is don’t underestimate yourself.
Taking a somewhat different tack, Carrie reminded women that ‘it’s not all about you’, noting that they should put aside individual interests in favour of the organisation:
My advice is to keep yourself real; it’s not all about you. Because when you’re successful as a leader, it’s about those that you lead, it’s not all about you. And you will reap the rewards from that. So ego, get rid of it, try to toss it away a little, unless it’s healthy and it’s motivating you to do good things for the organisation, for the good of the cause.
Women at the top – the broader picture
As we noted at the start of this chapter, there was some consistency and repetition in the advice given to women by our interviewees. Nonetheless, it is worth looking at advice that fits less easily into a defined category, since it provides thoughtful consideration of the wider aspects of life at the top of the career ladder. A number of the interviewees were keen to tell others of the benefits of senior positions. Gill summed it up well when she said:
It’s a great job, it’s really, really rewarding and I think we should stop seeing these leadership jobs as kind of headache jobs and start seeing them as really, really rewarding to lead an organisation … People are tremendously rewarding. So for us all, if you like, to emphasise the pluses of going up the ladder rather than the minuses, and you get paid more. And also this sense of continuing to grow and I do have colleagues here who say to me, ‘I love this sense of beginning to grow into a new job’; it’s very challenging, but it’s refreshing.
Jessica focused on the advantages of having a good gender mix on the top table:
I like whole brain management teams … don’t have all women or all men on a management team. We do think differently, we do act differently, we do bring different things to the party. So this isn’t men versus women, this is actually taking the best of all worlds and recognising that they bring different things and if you’re the boss try and tease that out.
In a slightly different way, Olivia stressed the need to focus on being constructive rather than concentrating on gender issues when she advised:
Don’t take criticism personally. You should be focused on the constructive in terms of what you need to do better rather than say, ‘oh that’s because I’m a woman’ or something of that nature. Be flexible and learn from opportunities and I also say develop general and specific skills. One of the things that I think I’ve benefited from is the fact that I’ve got some specialism skills and I’ve got good general skills and I think that helps you to be flexible and contribute to areas outside your own functional area.
Carrie, on the other hand, was at pains to emphasise the importance of maintaining some personal space and time and suggested delegation as a useful aid:
If you don’t prioritise and balance and things get out of whack, someone’s going to be annoyed and you’ll suffer for it. So I would say you have to look for a balance between professional and personal and that means you may have to rely on other people. Now some … women think they have to do it all, but sometimes somebody can do it for you. You have to learn how to delegate responsibility.
While Carrie’s concern was about the danger of work life predominating to an unhealthy extent, Kate wanted to look at how women might limit themselves. She combined advice to work hard with a consideration of how women sometimes place restrictions on themselves unnecessarily: ‘building your own cage’. She suggested that the decision to progress up the career ladder is in some respects a matter of choice. If women make that choice, then they need to be aware of the hard work involved. In her words:
The first one is about building your own cage, and I think that is quite an important thing. That’s absolutely fine if that’s where you want to stay, but you have to take some ownership and responsibility for it. There are always ways of doing this differently; it’s just whether you choose to do them. The second thing I think is … it’s important to do stuff that you value and you enjoy and then money and all the rest of it, status, will flow. But if you’re going to achieve and be successful you have to realise you have to put some effort into it.
In addition to the above points, there were several pieces of advice centred on communication and personal style, elements that might impact on women in different ways from men. For example, Ruth argued:
It’s about thinking about how you communicate. I do think women still need to be aware about how they dress, which is a really naff thing to say, but I think it’s really true. How you communicate, how you look, it’s almost about getting in there. I think in my early career I was a bit too strident and it’s about moderating that stridency and changing things from the inside.
This question of presentation, dress and style of communication was raised by some respondents in the interviews, and is still a major issue for women (Hakim, 2010), including Fiona, who said:
I think there is something really interesting to sort out really early … about image, how you’re going to look, [because] you can give signals by how you dress and I think often you’re too busy. And it’s that thing about which world do you join, how you dress, how you present, how you behave, how you mix, carefully of course. You do have to respect boundaries, people’s boundaries and other people’s boundaries, but how you mix widely with people – all gives a message about the kind of person you are and what your values are. And for me that’s the root of success, taking those values.
Conclusion
Overall, the message from women in senior positions to those aspiring to the same heights was to have confidence, work hard, be yourself and be careful how you communicate. It also included advice to balance different aspects of your life, to accept help where possible and to be adventurous in making decisions.
These women, as noted elsewhere, were speaking from a position of achievement, gained by a whole host of factors and circumstances that may be in some ways atypical. We must be careful therefore not to assume that all aspiring women would experience the same progression. Nonetheless, it is both interesting and useful to reflect on the attitudes and opinions of women such as these, who though quite different from each other in some respects, appear to share a positive attitude towards women’s career progression. The last word thus goes to Maggie, who was eager to advise others about the potential joy in a satisfying senior position: