Pathways to Power: What Men, Women, and Companies Need to Do Together

1. Pathways to Power: What Men, Women, and Companies Need to Do Together Kathleen M. O’Connor Associate Professor of Management Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University June 19, 2014

2. What’s The Problem? CEOs Top Earners Board Seats Executive Officers Management, Professional, and Related Occupations U.S. Labor Force * Catalyst Research (2013) and Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, “Table 18: Employed Persons by detailed industry, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, 2012” (2013)

3. What’s The Problem? CEOs Board Directors Executive Officers Industry Labor Force

4. What’s The Problem? CEOs Board Directors Executive Officers Industry Labor Force

5. Second-Generation Bias* • Paucity of role models for women • Gendered career paths and gendered work • Double binds • Women’s lack of access to networks and sponsors * Ibarra, Ely & Kolb, 2013. Women rising: The unseen barriers. HBR.

6. Roadmap • Identify effective pathways to power. • Highlight what we know can work for women to make us more powerful and more helpful to other women seeking power and success. • Take away concrete tactics for building and leveraging power.

7. Pathways to Power • Gaining Sponsorship • Developing an Effective Network • Negotiating Resources

8. Gaining Sponsorship

9. Is Mentorship Helping Women? 2008 Catalyst survey of 4000 men and women from top MBA programs (1996-2007) • Women occupying lower-level mgt positions and receiving lower pay • Women reported lower career satisfaction • A follow-up survey showed that men were 15% more likely to have been promoted, but had had the same number of lateral moves as women • Men were receiving promotions after the lateral move, and women were getting lateral moves in lieu of promotion • Women were more likely to report having a mentor Maybe being mentored is the problem • Mentorship—giving feedback, advice • Sponsorship—using influence with senior execs to advocate for mentee

10. A sponsor is someone who: Uses chips on my behalf Advocates for my next promotion and does at least two of the following: Expands my perception of what I can do Gives career advice Makes connections outside the company Makes connections to senior leaders Promotes my visibility Advises me on my appearance Connects me to career opportunities

11. The Sponsorship Effect Both women and men who are sponsored • are relatively more satisfied with their rates of advancement • are relatively more likely to ask a manager for a stretch assignment • are relatively more likely to ask a manager for a pay raise Backing is a springboard

12. What Sponsors do for Proteges

13. Benefits of Sponsoring

14. How To Gain Sponsorship Find a Sponsor • Pick The Right Ones • Look Inside, Look Outside • Take Charge Earn Sponsorship • Get Results • Get Noticed • Build Rapport • Broaden Your Scope • Give More Than You Get

15. Developing an Effective Network

16. Features of Useful Networks • Diversity in membership • Levels, functions, experience, industry, sex, race • The strength of weak ties • Deep, trusting relationships (strong ties) help provide social support and with facilitating sensitive information exchange • Acquaintances (weak ties) help access unique information • Mind the gap • Structural holes gives you power * Burt, 1996

17. Figure depicts the networks of two people—Robert and James The structural hole between clusters A and C enable Robert to broker this space, as well as act as a conduit between C and B

18. Key Features of Effective Networks

19. Recap: Key Features of Effective Networks • Weak ties and structural holes enable you to have valuable contacts to people (other functions, at higher levels) • These contacts provide you with • Access to information • Access to resources • Access to career sponsorship • All three positively determine promotions and career satisfaction, but career sponsorship directly determines salary

20. Women’s Networks • Because ‘birds of a feather flock together,’ women’s networks have more women, and men’s have more men • Because men are more likely to hold powerful positions • women have a smaller pool of high-status, same gender contacts on which to draw, and • women have fewer ties to powerful, high-status men Consequently, • women’s networks tend to • yield fewer leadership opportunities, • provide less visibility for their leadership claims, and • generate less recognition and endorsement

21. Successful Women’sNetwork Strategies Comparisons of high-potential women and other women (Ibarra, 1997) • Hi-po women (formally designated) had more heterogeneous ties when compared to high-potential men and low-potential women. They had a larger set of both strong and weak ties, and more ties to both men and women. • Women were promoted earlier when they included highly placed men who were not their bosses in their networks (sponsors), and when their networks included people both within and outside their workgroups.

22. Consider Your Network • How powerful are the people in your network? • Do you have a sponsor? • To what extent are you connected to people who are members of different groups? • What is your strategy for developing contacts in other functions, at different levels? • How will you maintain the weak ties in your network?

23. Building an Effective Network • Develop a personal ‘board of directors’ that includes mentors, sponsors, and friends. • Because people like to provide information, ASK. • Focus on the give. • Reactivate dormant ties. Send an article, offer useful information, ask a favor, congratulate. • Develop homophilous & heterogeneous ties.

24. Negotiating Resources

25. Women’s Entitlement Problem • Men & women participated in a task evaluating applications of incoming freshmen and were asked to evaluate their likely success. They paid themselves what they thought was fair for their labor. Men paid themselves 63% more than women. • Men & women were given $4 and asked to count dots in a series of pictures. They were told to keep working until they had earned the $4. Women worked 22% longer than men, and counted 32% more of the dots. Even though women worked longer & faster, the men and women were equally satisfied with their pay. • How often do you just accept what you are offered?

26. Eliminating the Entitlement Problem • …In a follow-up to the “pay yourself” study - when participants saw a list of the rates that previous participants had paid themselves, the gender pay differential disappeared. • When clear information is available – gender differences tend to be much smaller, or even disappear. But for more ambiguous issues the gap can still be very large. • Answer? Get information! (How? Through mentors, sponsors, and other network connections)

27. Getting What You Deserve Women tend to work hard and hope that their work alone will earn them the recognition and rewards they deserve (tiara syndrome). • Do you have the information you need to put all the issues on the table and know what is possible? • Are you comparing yourself to the right people? • Do you have a sponsor who helps you set goals, gain visibility, develop your talent and skills, and advocates for you to help you get what you deserve?

28. The Negotiation Sweet Spot

29. What Matters? • Smart? • Extraverted? • Confident? • Attractive? • Prepared? • Inventive?

30. Elfenbein, Curhan, Eisenkraft, Shirako ,Baccaro (2008)

31. Powerful drivers of how well one does (economic ally) are not fixed and out of our control. Rather, they are mutable, with confidence topping the list.

32. Tactics for Better Negotiated Outcomes • Separate interests from positions • Hear the other side • Invest in the relationship • Focus on your goals • Think creatively

33. Separate Interests from Positions • What you really want and care about? Your interests. • What you demand, offer, and reject? Your positions. • Get beyond positions to discover what the other side really wants/cares about • Ask questions • Give a little to kickstart reciprocity

34. Hear the Other Side • Asking questions is important, but you must listen to the answers they provide • Why do you need that? • What do you like about the offer? • What absolutely will not work? • What do you need to make this deal work? • What could I give you to make this deal work?

35. Invest in the Relationship • To elicit information • Build rapport • Encourage trust • Listen to answers

36. Yes, fine, but HOW? • Strategy of interest-based bargaining • To learn about interests, must gain trust, access information, use information wisely • How to gain trust to access information? • Schmooze to build rapport • Mirroring

37. Build rapport through schmooze Morris, Nadler, Kurtzberg, & Thompson, 2002 * Have a 5-min get-to-know-you conversation

38. Mirroring delivers gains Maddux, Mullen, Galinsky, 2008

39. The Payoff The more the other side likes, trusts, and respects you, the more information the other side will share with you. Greenhalgh & Chapman, 1998

40. Frame the Negotiation • Anticipating a negotiation can be stressful (O’Connor & Arnold, 2011). • Describing a problem solving situation as a negotiation versus a chance to solve a problem shapes the interaction and affects outcomes (O’Connor & Adams, 1997). • Relative to those in the problem solving condition, those in the negotiation condition: • Cared less about helping the other side achieve his/her goals • Did not expect to like the other person as much • Had a less accurate understanding of the other side’s priorities • Did worse

41. Think Creatively • A key to getting the other side to accept is to consider “what’s in it for them.” • The more issues there are, the more possibilities there can be to give them what they want (at low cost to you), allowing you to strike a mutually acceptable deal. • Does creativity matter? • YES. Having just one highly creative individual in the negotiating pair is sufficient for both sides to do well (by making profitable trades between issues) (Kurtzberg, 2010).

42. Recap Negotiation • Negotiation is a set of skills you need to hone to get access to resources for yourself, your reports, your unit. • Willingness to initiate a negotiation is half the battle. • Prepare by getting information through your network. • Sharpen your skills to get what you are entitled to.

43. Pathways to Power • Gaining Sponsorship • Developing an Effective Network • Negotiating Resources

44. Putting it Together • Identify sponsors who will provide you with information, opportunity and advocacy. • Build effective networks by • Reconnecting with dormant ties, • Finding ways to bridge people at the edges of structural holes, • Cultivating weak ties. • Rely on your networks to negotiate. • Negotiate.

45. The Last Word(s) Developing and exploiting pathways to power require: • Persistence • Ask early and often. You will be told no, but sometimes you will be told yes. Play the odds (men have known this for centuries) • Focus • Be deliberate and thoughtful about identifying potential sponsors and network connections • Time • Dig your well before you’re thirsty. It will take time to build and exploit new pathways