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Everyone could use an older, wiser adviser at least some of the time on his or her career journey. Someone to show them the ropes. Someone to explain, behind closed doors, the subtext of a particularly rancorous meeting. Someone to keep an eye out for promising assignments that would benefit the younger colleague's need for more challenging work experiences and the need to grow professionally.
So why aim a mentoring book just at women?
According to the authors of Be Your Own Mentor: Strategies From Top Women on the Secrets of Success (Random House 2001), it's still harder for women to get career assistance than it is for men. Due to the long tradition of apprentice-mentor relationships in corporate life, men at the upper levels are more likely to feel comfortable proffering help to male colleagues below them than are women. Young male employees with ambition stand a better chance of attracting career guidance from experienced executives.
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As for women, the picture is more complicated. When women look upward in the organization, the authors write, "they often see no one in senior management who looks like them."
"Even in organizations that have made women's advancement a priority," they continue, "there aren't enough women mentors to go around. The few women near the top tell us that they mentor happily and often, but they just don't have time for everyone."
What's the solution for ambitious women, then? One temporary solution is to check out the advice in Be Your Own Mentor. The effort of Catalyst, a nonprofit based in New York City, and spearheaded by Catalyst's president Sheila Wellington (along with co-author Betty Spence), the book provides sharp advice backed up by Catalyst's specialty: impressive research on women in the workplace. Founded in 1962, Catalyst is dedicated to helping women in business and professional life realize their full potential. It also plays an advisory role with companies that want to make sure talented women get a fair chance to succeed in the organization.
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| You can't have career-life balance every day. It's a day-to-day decision. | |
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| —Judith A. Sprieser |
For Be Your Own Mentor, the authors draw on their own observations, Catalyst's empirical surveys, focus groups, and interviews with top female business leaders as well as male executives. Several of the women featured in the book sit on Catalyst's board of directors, including Ann Mulcahy, Chief Executive Officer of Xerox Corporation, and Judith Rodin, President of the University of Pennsylvania.
'It won't matter that I'm a woman'
A great part of the book's strength is its candor. The statistics here are sadly recognizable: only 7.3 percent of "line" or revenue-generating positions are held by women; 6.2 percent of top managers in Fortune 500 companies are women; 4.1 percent of top earners in the same group are women. Be Your Own Mentor strikes a positive note without ignoring or obsessing over these realities. In the opening section, "The Truth About the Workplace," the authors lay out five typical misconceptions, such as "It won't matter that I'm a woman" and "As soon as I prove myself, they'll forget the gender thing." Then they calmly demolish them.
For the first misconception, ("It won't matter that I'm a woman"), they present a comprehensive survey of Fortune 1000 executives that proves otherwise. The survey revealed that chief executives tend to believe that women are held back from the highest ranks because they lack line experience (which women agreed with) and also because they "haven't been in the pipeline long enough" (which women disagreed with).
"In fact," the authors add, "women were more than twice as likely as CEOs to consider factors in the culture of the job itself as barriers to advancement. The men at the top rarely see this; it hasn't been part of their experience."
Recognizing the culture at hand and succeeding in spite of it is the focus of the next several chapters: "You Can If You Plan," "Get-Ahead Basics," "Style Matters," and "Become Known." Successful women executives are risk-takers who learn to be savvy about when and how to take the leap.
Trade-offs that work
One of the hardest self-mentoring tasks is figuring out how to balance your work and your life. Be Your Own Mentor offers a series of so-called "life strategies" for everyone as well as a separate but related set geared toward working mothers.
"Set priorities and make trade-offs" is one such recommendation. Businesswomen make many trade-offs, the authors write; and "what they trade differs as much as the individuals themselves." Each woman on her own has to decide what she can and can't do at work, what really matters to her, and if, when, and where compromises need to be made. According to one interviewee, Judith A. Sprieser, the CEO of Transora Inc., a business-to-business site for consumer products, "You can't have career-life balance every day. It's a day-to-day decision. You do first things first."
Echoes Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, "I always laugh when I have to write a resume of any type, in terms of hobbies and special interests. How does none sound? ... I'm a big believer in personal comes first. Kids come first. That doesn't mean that you don't work hard; I think it's about making choices."
Of course, no one book supplies what a flesh-and-blood adviser and career companion can. (Be Your Own Mentor agrees, including a good chapter called "Find a Mentor/Be a Mentor.") Mentors are crucial throughout your career, the authors insist. But until you find the right one for you, Be Your Own Mentor is not a bad place to begin.
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