Struggling with Career Derailers? - Part 1
How Biz Savvy helps with confidence, speaking up, leadership presence and so much more.
Earlier I wrote a 3-part series on how to Make the Most of Mentoring. If you missed it, you can start with Part 1 here.
This mighty 8-part series will help you think differently and supercharge the flawed mainstream advice that comes at you (me and all women) like a tsunami.
And you’ll learn why Business Savvy flips advice from flawed to fabulous.
There are over 15 pieces of career advice that are commonly and repeatedly given to women. 9 of the most common are represented here. Advice is given because women are seen as being deficient in these skills/attributes and they are therefore considered “Career Derailers.”
But I call them “Career Enablers” because if we are “good enough” at these, we face fewer career hurdles and barriers.
Notice that I didn’t say that we have to be “perfect” at all of them. Perfection is unattainable and seeking it a waste of time and effort.
You’ll learn about several of them in this mini-series including.
Self Promote
Earn Sponsorship
Hone Your Leadership Brand
Network Strategically
Build Deep Confidence
Demo Executive Presence
I hope that one of these is a focus area for you! If not, let me know in the comments and I’ll address them in the future.
Groundbreaking Discovery
(Skip over this if you’ve already seen my TED Talk. or read No Ceiling, No Walls.)
I first stumbled upon the importance of The Missing 33% during my research to help prepare women to take on leadership roles in organizations. It’s described in detail in my book, No Ceiling, No Walls.
“Leadership is using the greatness in you to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes by engaging the greatness in others.” Therefore there are 3 components to leadership:
Using personal greatness (e.g. attributes and strengths)
To achieve and sustain outcomes (requiring business, strategic and financial acumen)
By engaging the greatness in others (e.g. interpersonal skills)
Conventional wisdom about leadership over-focuses on 2 of the 3 components: interpersonal and team skills to engage others and attributes of personal greatness.
Over decades, studies have reported that women outshine men in these two areas. In other (and in general – descriptive average, not individual prediction), we’ve nailed 66% of the components of leadership.
The same studies report that men outperform women in 1 of the 3 components – outcomes in other words, business, financial and strategic acumen or what I now call Business Savvy. This is The Missing 33% of the leadership success equation for women. Not because we can’t or don’t have Business Savvy (women CEOs disprove that assumption), but because we aren’t expected to have it.
How’s Your Business Savvy?
I discovered that decades of research reveals that managers perceive men as outperforming women on every one of the competences that relate to business, financial and strategic acumen (what I call Business Savvy). Things like:
Business “Smarts”
Strategic
Financial Understanding
Creating a vision
Understanding Big Picture
Decision Effectiveness
When I’ve explained this to women, they tell me that they either:
Don’t have sufficient Business Savvy and therefore don’t demonstrate it.
They have sufficient Business Savvy and do demonstrate it.
They have sufficient Business Savvy, but aren’t know for having it.
Most women say that they relate to number 1 or 3. My consistent experience is that women who relate to #2 are always the highest level women in the room.
Behind which of these 3 doors do you place yourself?
Conventional Advice is SO Flawed
It is so obvious once you look at career advice this way, but nearly no one does.
As a matter of fact, this series was borne out of extreme frustration that my message about the importance of Business Savvy was nowhere to be seen on AI’s lists of top career advice to women.
I discovered that almost NONE of the 10 billion pieces of advice crashing toward women like a tsunami was ever given based in the reality that we are working inside of organizations!
The advice coming from pundits and experts about how to earn sponsorship, hone our leadership brand, have executive presence, speak up, be confident, etc. THAT IS TOTALLY DISCONNECTED FROM THE BUSINESS.
I liken this advice to trying to teach someone to ride a horse without ever putting them in the saddle. (Yup that’s me riding in the Algarve in Portugal)
OR like trying to give someone advice about how to swim without ever getting them in the water.
IMAGINE how ridiculous that is!
So we’re told to
Speak up, but not what to speak up about.
Be confident, but on a platform of affirmations and power poses, not a platform of Business Savvy
Develop leadership presence in the guise of personal presence
And on and on.
From my frustration at not getting Be Business Savvy onto that “top 10 list”, I discovered that, in fact...The message to “Be Business Savvy” is the one key to rule them all when it comes to career advice to women.
I hope this is as crystal clear to you as it was to me.
In Part 2 we’’ll begin to explore how this is true for many of the career enablers and what you can do about it!
I’m Susan Colantuono, best known for my TED Talk, “The Career Advice You Probably Didn’t Get.”
I’ve devoted most of my working life to supporting the career advancement of women. Now my work is exclusively focused on offering women tools for developing and demonstrating Business Savvy - the business, financial and strategic acumen we need to succeed and to close The Missing 33% of the career success equation for women.
Now, I’m making my groundbreaking course available in a self-paced version with coaching support right here at Be Business Savvy. Check it out!
You will find other useful and actionable content in my books and other online resources:
No Ceiling, No Walls ebook
No Ceiling, No Walls soft cover
Make the Most of Mentoring soft cover
Coaching Executive Women (occasional) newsletter
Lead ON!
Susan