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 <strong>The</strong> 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 ■ <strong>For</strong> <strong>The</strong> <strong>Defense</strong> ■ <strong>February</strong> <strong>2012</strong> 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. <strong>The</strong>se 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. <strong>The</strong>se 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. <strong>The</strong>se 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.
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