You won’t hear many women say this, but I had an unfair advantage early in life that helped me later in my career working with men and in male-dominated environments.

Here’s why:

  • I grew up in a neighborhood comprised of very few girls my age. Playing sports in this environment gave me the opportunity to exploit my athletic talent from a young age and compete against the neighborhood boys throughout elementary and high school. The experiences that ensued helped me build confidence, become comfortable early on competing with men, and gave me entry and acceptance into a sacred domain that rarely afforded girls.   
  • In contrast to the acceptance into boys sports, I was one of the first 200 freshman girls (of 5,400 students) accepted into what had previously been an all-boys Chicago magnate school for decades – Lane Tech. In every academic class, I was the lone female. The administration, teachers, and male students were so unwelcoming, that close to 50% of the girls transferred out that first year. Yet, this high school experience of being in a predominately male environment continued to help build my resilience. 
  • After college, I entered the male-dominated industry of finance. Within three years, I joined the 10,000 male traders to become one of the first five female commodities traders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. While the competition was much fiercer and the stakes much higher, I was once again in a familiar environment – the lone women in a sea of men. My prior experiences allowed me to enter this extremely stressful opportunity with both comfort and excitement.

Most women do not have experiences like I had, that set the stage to parlay their careers forward comfortably while surrounded by men and deeply understanding the rules of the game were not quite the same. So, I’d like to share ten strategies that women leaders can use to thrive in today’s corporate world.

Elevate Your Success with these 10 Key Strategies

  1. While I coach every executive in elevating their emotional intelligence, it’s even more important for women. That’s because even today, the playing field is different and a bit narrower for them. Women continue to be  assessed differently than men, and it’s often unconsciously. And while everyone needs to level up their EQ (emotional intelligence), women need it in spades.
  2. Women need to understand their company’s culture deeply, not just the over-arching culture, but the cultural implications for women: what’s acceptable and what’s not. Decades later, I continue to observe women leaders treated differently than their male counterparts for behaving in similar manners. What’s most important is to uncover and understand the unspoken “rules of the game.” For example, just like what was appropriate for your first corporate job may not be acceptable for your first position in the C-suite, what was appropriate at your last company, may be assessed very differently in your new company. You need to become an astute observer of your environment. You must develop the nuance and finesse to avoid faux pas as you are learning the ropes in a new position or at a new company because people will begin forming assessments of you on day one. You must also be able to identify who the key peers and company influencers are, who navigates the culture elegantly and who can potentially help you quickly learn the unspoken rules. Observe. Listen. Build mutually beneficial relationships. 
  3. Build mindfulness. This skill is especially important to catch yourself in the moment if you find you are coming off as too aggressive or too opinionated. If you can notice it, you can soften it immediately. You can sincerely invite other opinions and potentially be able to minimize any damage done. 
  4. Lose the mentality that you need to work harder than everyone else. This is a common error women tend to make. It’s their strategy to get noticed, and some women are promoted repeatedly with this model but at a tremendous cost. The cost is they often do not learn to effectively leverage themselves because their driver is the need to prove themselves. All that time they are working with their heads down is valuable time lost building social capital with others. That’s a steep price to pay because building meaningful relationships matters. In fact, it matters deeply. Instead, what happens is that you simply get more work. The more extreme your work ethic is, the more work you will be handed, and it’s a vicious cycle. These women work longer hours, often while juggling caring for children and spouses, and are less rested. Eventually, that will lead to diminished productivity.
  5. Women need to take more risks. You need to learn to trust yourself in your decision-making power. If you have solid data to support your decision, have requisite experience and it feels intuitively right, go for it. Start with lower stake risks. If you are nervous, play a game. Practice making decisions privately and then watch to see how your supervisor makes the decision. Keep score. Your confidence will grow as you gain more wins. Then begin to bring well-thought-out decisions proactively to your supervisor to get their approval. As your confidence grows, start to proactively make these decisions on your own and then report back to your supervisor the results. You will be seen as a more powerful leader when you lean into making decisions.
  6. Teach yourself not to take things personally. Rather than taking something someone said and ruminating on it, look at the situation from multiple perspectives. Assume positive intent that they did not mean to hurt you and learn how to have constructive crucial conversations to repair the relationship and move forward positively. 
  7. Train yourself to minimize your fight or flight responses so you can respond instead of reacting. When you react, you are out of control: you may not choose the right words, potentially use tone ineffectively or become emotional. Women must be particularly careful on the emotional component. 
  8. Learn to ask for help. Women don’t like to ask for help even when they are feeling overwhelmed. Decades ago, I realized that I could outsource help at home so that my free time is spent relaxing and playing rather than cleaning the house or running errands. I meet women who make seven figures and still don’t outsource help. I urge them to calculate their hourly rate and ask themselves: would you ever pay anyone that amount of money to clean your house? The answer is always a resounding “NO!” 
  9. Look for opportunities to mentor, support, and actively champion women. Women are often challenged with this and can over-index on competing with women.  I’d love to see more widespread generosity, lending a targeted hand to help pull other women up in their growth and development. We’re already doing it (see research below) – it’s just not strategic and targeted. Our culture has indoctrinated in women to compete against one another, and it’s a strategy that hinders the creation of safer, more supportive environments for women. In the words of Mahatma Ghandi, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” 
  10. Become a more powerful communicator. Stop asking for permission. Start using compelling narratives to get your position or project approved. Stop leading conversations with “I feel” and start using “I assess” when you are bringing your position forward. Last, if you receive resistance to your ideas, don’t be defensive, instead seek to understand, get more clarity, adjust, pivot, and move forward.

Research shows that women demonstrate a higher likelihood than their male counterparts to invest in the success of their fellow co-workers. It’s no secret that women excel in people pleasing, but women leaders need to use that superpower strategically and start to employ some of the above strategies for their own success.

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