For The Defense, February 2012 - DRI Today

Women in the Law
Two of these suggestions bear discussing
in greater detail: creating a plan with
objectives to align your career and building
your network.
Create a Plan and Set Objectives
to Align Your Career
Write a plan that targets set goals and plans
how to get there. You’re responsible for
The irony of the glass ceiling
is that we have some evidence
that women actually make
better leaders than men.
determining your own career direction.
Proactively go after what you want because
probably no one will hand it to you.
Do the following:
• Determine what skills you need to develop
to achieve it, discussed a bit above.
• Have well- defined goals for both your
personal and business life to keep your
career on course. This allows constant
growth and improvement throughout
your career.
• Work with your advocate and mentor to
set these goals and objectives. Mentors
play a crucial role in leadership development
by providing advice and access
to opportunities. Monitor and measure
your performance toward your plan’s
goals and objectives.
Build Your Network
As mentioned, you should also build relationships
with other people in your organization
to establish advocates and mentors.
You never know who can help you, advance
your career, or provide you with valuable
information.
It’s important to network in all areas and
on all levels of your organization. You need
the support of colleagues at every level. Try
these tips:
• Reach out to new people on a regular
basis and communicate your value.
• Expand your professional network outside
of your organization and market
yourself. Look for opportunities to grow
14 ■ For The Defense ■ February 2012
both inside and outside of your organization.
Seek high profile projects.
What Can a Business Do
A business can do a lot to break the class
ceiling.
Start by visibly and continually communicating
commitment to workplace diversity.
Create a workplace that is welcoming
and open to all. Doing both will influence
the culture of an organization by creating
an atmosphere that fully supports and
uses a talented workforce. Include diversity
efforts as an integral part of corporate strategic
business plans. Creating systems that
monitor and include rewards for diversity,
mentoring, and advancement of women
is very valuable. Consider implementing
systems that link pay, bonuses, and promotions
to accomplishing diversity and
advancing women within your company.
Demonstrate commitment with the significant
presence of women in visible leadership
positions within the organization.
Encourage and promote mentoring
opportunities. Organizations can change
norms by requiring leaders to mentor
women with high potential and junior
leaders by assessing this mentoring in formal
leader performance reviews and by
publically rewarding such efforts. Mentors
and advocates can increase the visibility of
women and the value of relational skills.
Transparency is a must regarding the criteria
required for and timing of promotion.
Create a formal process for the distribution
of assignments, and offer accurate and effective
feedback on career development,
leadership training, and advancement.
Expand recruitment networks by seeking
candidates outside of customary backgrounds
and experiences. Go beyond the
old-school networks and talent pools.
Adopt work-life and family friendly policies,
including flexible hours, daycare,
and elder care programs. These policies
improve productivity and reduce costs
by relieving workers of worries that can
impede performance, which allows them
to focus on business objectives.
To enact appropriate changes that lessen
inequitable barriers to women leadership
positions, it is essential to address fundamental
questions about the norms and
values that are still commonly found in organizations.
These include policies and practices
that favor behaviors and attitudes that
were created under different societal norms,
when men were expected to dedicate themselves
solely to careers and women were
expected to be homemakers. It behooves
businesses to dig beneath the surface and
consider unintended consequences of supposedly
gender- neutral policies. What is
clear is that unless specific interventions are
undertaken, the glass ceiling will remain.
Conclusion
It’s apparent that glass barriers still exist.
Businesses must take care to level the playing
field for women. At a minimum, organizations
should develop checks and balances
that root out unconscious biases. Conduct
a self assessment to collect and review the
advancement and growth of women within
your organization to ensure that you walk
the talk and provide advancement opportunities,
access to leadership, and development
prospects to women across all levels.
We all understand the many challenges
that are inherent in organizations due to
the structures that can make retaining
and advancing women difficult generally.
Law firms have a revenue system based on
billable hours, and the difficulty of maintaining
a work-life balance in the face of
pressures to meet official or unofficial billable
hour commitments makes promoting
valued women challenging. In corporations,
a relatively flat structure with little
attrition limits opportunities to advance
women. These structural challenges make
it essential that employers recruit, retain,
and promote the best employees, regardless
of race, ethnicity, or gender. Viewing this
as imperative will help organizations to
achieve goals and overall business success.
Women have achieved substantial gains
in the workplace in the last decade. However,
we still have immense challenges to
overcome such as rationalizing poor leadership
rates as innate to human relationships
or due to external circumstances. As
apparent from the discrepancy between the
percentage of women holding business leadership
positions and on corporate boards,
the glass ceiling remains firmly in place as
an obstacle to advancement for women, and
we still have work to do. We hope that employers
will double their efforts and continue
to break the barriers that block upward mobility
for women in the workplace.