According to the Harvard Business Review Journal Study in 2012, women occupy 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions, are outnumbered four to one in the C-suite, comprise less than 16 percent of all corporate officers and occupy only 7.6 percent of Fortune 500 top-earner positions. How many of these women are women? Take a guess. Most of us have been to countless leadership seminars. Some of us skim through several leadership books and pick up on tidbits of leadership strategies and knowledge from speeches at conferences like these. But, the question is, of all of the leadership advice, what is actually working? What are the top key strategies that we need to embrace to make the difference in the way we ensure our voices are heard? Top women leaders in STEM join together to share their success, roadblocks, and thoughts on new strategic moves to get into the C suite.
Learning Objective: Increase leadership, productivity and performance.
Outcomes-At the end of this seminar, participants will be able to:
a. Examine and study top women executives and Strategies(i.e. Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook)
b. Explore transformational leadership techniques for women
c. List Ineffective leadership habits and choices
d. Explore strategies to improve work/life balance
Walking in Her Shoes - Capitalizing on Instinct and Work Life Balance Strategies
1. October 17–19, 2013
WALKING IN HER SHOES!
CAPITALIZING ON INSTINCT
AND WORK/LIFE BALANCE
STRATEGIES FROM THE CSUITE
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According to the Harvard Business Review Journal Study in 2012, women, who occupy three percent of Fortune 500 CEO
positions, are outnumbered four to one in the C-suite, comprise less than 16 percent of all corporate officers and occupy only
7.6 percent of Fortune 500 top-earner positions. How many of these women are women? Take a guess. Most of us have been to
countless leadership seminars. Some of us skim through several leadership books and pick up on tidbits of leadership strategies
and knowledge from speeches at conferences like these. But, the question is, of all of the leadership advice, what is actually
working? What are the top key strategies that we need to embrace to make the difference in the way we ensure our voices are
heard? Top women leaders in STEM join to share their success, roadblocks, and thoughts on new strategic moves to get into the
C suite.
Learning Objective: Increase leadership, productivity and performance.
Outcomes- At the end of this seminar, participants will be able to:
a. Examine and study top women executives and strategies(i.e. Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook).
b. Explore transformational leadership techniques for women.
c. List Ineffective leadership habits and choices.
d. Explore strategies to improve work/life balance.
3. Trends
• A new report highlights the fact that of all the
Fortune 500 companies, there are now 20 female
CEOs heading up these companies. That's an
"impressive" 4%. Seem a little low? Maybe, but
Forbes points out that not only is it a record
number of women heading up these companies,
11 of the 20 were appointed in 2011 and 2012. Is
this a trend that is likely to continue?
4. The Notables
•
IBM, broke its 100-year tradition of male CEOs when it hired Ginni Rometty
as its CEO. Rometty started at IBM in 1981, and was appointed to a series
of leadership positions while working her way up through the ranks of IBM.
In 2012, she was named Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer.
In 2012, Yahoo! chose Marissa Mayer for its top spot. Mayer came to
Yahoo! from Google where she was employee #20 and the company's most
prominent female executive. Since her hiring, investors have supported
Mayer's vision for Yahoo!. The stock has seen a solid uptrend since her
hiring.
Hewlett Packard hired Meg Whitman just over a year ago. Whitman was
named HP's CEO in September 2011. Prior to that she served as the CEO
of eBay from 1998 to 2008, and held executive level positions with Hasbro
Inc., FTD Inc. and The Walt Disney Company.
5. Why Now?
• In another study, Catalyst, a nonprofit
advocating for more women in business, found
that from 2004 to 2008, Fortune 500 companies
with the largest percentage of female board
directors outperformed those with the least by
16% when measured by return on sales and
26% when measured by return on invested
capital.
6. Key Examples
•
Oprah Winfrey, Chairman of Harpo
From one television show, Winfrey has built a media empire that includes magazines, radio
channels and even television networks. In addition to being the first African-American female
billionaire, she has been called "arguably the world's most influential woman" by CNN.
Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett-Packard
Whitman was named CEO of Hewlett-Packard, topping off a resume that includes growing
eBay's revenues of roughly $4 million to about $8 billion, and running for governor of
California. Her career has had a few controversies, but there's no denying that Whitman has a
talent for the CEO's chair.
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook
In 2008, Mark Zuckerberg hired Sandberg from Google, where she was responsible for
onlineadvertising. She took a position with a company that was not profitable, and it was
under her leadership that the decision to rely on ads for generating revenue was made. It was
a decision that has led to the company's monumental growth and initial public offering.
7. Transformation of the workplace
• How does one become a chief executive officer
(CEO)? Is there a certain blueprint to follow in
order to attain this prestigious title? What
professional and personal traits are necessary for
the position? Technically, anyone can fill the chief
executive slot, but typically those who have
distinguished themselves in some manner and
have strong leadership characteristics end up
getting the job.
8. Characteristics of
Women Executives
• Drive a democratic and inclusive approach by building an
ecosystem and nurturing talent
• Intuitive crisis managers enabling fair and sound judgment
• Great negotiation skills
• Collaborative inclusive styles of leadership
• Setting higher benchmarks for ourselves, and our peers
• Initiative and make more rational decisions,
• Capacity to multi-task
9. Personality Traits
• Having a degree from a top-notch school and an exceptional
knowledge of the industry in which the company operates are great
qualities to have. However, those qualities in and of themselves don't
guarantee that a person will make it to the top of the corporate
ladder. Personality traits may also play a role in an individual's ability
to attain chief executive status. Typically, CEOs are: good
communicators, deal makers and managers
– extroverts who are eager to go out on the road and tell their
company's story
– able and willing to present a cohesive vision and strategy to
employees
– able to garner respect
10. 7 Unsuccessful Habits
• See themselves and their companies as dominating their
environment
• Identify so completely with the company that there is no clear
boundary between their personal interests and their
corporation’s interests
• Think they have all the answers
• Ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them
• Underestimate obstacles
• Stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past
11. Challenges
• Women in top management need to be perceived as serious
players
• Women leaders find it difficult to break into established maledominated corporate networks at the risk of balancing
work/home aspects
• Senior women executives find performance assessments
based on personal characteristics, ability to put in long hours
and visibility of effort rather, than on delivery or output as a
challenge
• At times the challenges faced by women leaders are industryspecific and cannot be measured or generalized
12. Experience
• Generally speaking, a person must have a great
deal of experience in the company's field in
order to become CEO. A chief executive's job is
to provide vision and a course for the company
to navigate, which is difficult to do without
extensive experience and a working knowledge
of the potential risks and opportunities that lie
ahead for the company.
13. Strategies for Work Life Balance
• What works for you might not work for the next
person?
• Don’t beat yourself up about the past!
14. Will the Trend Continue?
• 2012 was a giant leap forward for women in the
workplace, as large companies hired a record
number of female CEOs. While those
championing gender equality have cause for
celebration, many argue that the work is far from
over. Women are still underrepresented in
boardrooms and underpaid in most sectors of
the workforce.