The National Association for Female Executives (NAFE) recently published their list of Top 50 Companies for Executive Women. These companies are putting advancement programs and inclusive cultures to work to foster advancement of strong female talent. Here’s a list of the top 10 companies and highlights of each.
Bank of America – Prospective leaders are able to take advantage of executive coaching and mentoring. They may also qualify to attend the Greater Returns women’s leadership program.
Cisco – Members of Connected Women employee resource group attend events that address a range of business topics, from office politics to online networking. Some women also participate in executive shadowing, in which they observe executives in action.
General Mills – Women leaders can participate in an external program, MENTTIUM 100, in which they benefit from the wisdom of leaders outside of their own business, offering them a different perspective and fresh insights into their work.
IBM – Virginia Rometty, new President and CEO, serves as an inspiration to women. Those women seeking executive positions may attend a leadership course called Building Relationships and Influencing.
Johnson & Johnson – This company’s forward-thinking Women’s Leadership Initiative affinity group boasts more than 100 chapters worldwide.
KPMG – Each business offers support for women in line for partnership and managing director jobs, which has resulted in the number of female partners growing by 48% since 2003.
The New York Times Company – This media giant made news last year by appointing Jill Abramson as The New York Time’s first female executive editor. To help others follow in her footsteps, it offers a leadership succession initiative with mentoring, executive coaching and training courses.
Procter & Gamble – P&G’s succession planning program spotlights high potential women from middle-management and gives them increasingly large assignments that include profit-and-loss responsibility.
Prudential Financial – Those who belong to the Women in Finance network forge alliances and interact with leadership. Top women bond at Networking Encourages Women’s Success initiative meetings.
State Farm Insurance – Many women participate in the company’s Leadership Development Acceleration Program. Those in line for senior executive positions attend the Executive Assistant Program, which improves their ability to strategize, innovate and collaborate.
Does this sound familiar? You dial a phone number. While the phone is ringing, you read an email message. Then when someone answers the phone, you haven’t got a clue as to who you called! How about this? What do you do during a teleconference call? Are you intently listening to the caller, or are you checking stock prices on your computer? If you’re like most professionals, you’re probably multi-tasking. With so much to do, it’s tempting to try to do multiple things at once.
Professionals use multi-tasking as a way to get more done. They believe it increases their productivity and efficiency. But does it really? This may surprise you, but there’s no such thing as multi-tasking. The brain cannot focus on more than one thing at a time. In reality, it’s actually switching back and forth very quickly between tasks.
Recent studies show that multi-tasking, in fact, reduces productivity. That’s because people lose time when they switch back-and-forth from one task to another. Each time you’re interrupted, it takes time to switch gears and get back your train of thought. For example, you’re working on a report, the phone rings and you answer it. When you hang up, you return to your report, and ask yourself, “Where was I?”, and then collect your thoughts.
When you multi-task, not only does it take longer, but you’re not as effective. Think about it. If you’re reading an email while trying to listen to someone speak, are you really hearing them? No! You’re only hearing about half of what they’ve said. Then that leads to miscommunication, which can cause further issues.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re more productive when you multi-task. If you really want to be productive, focus on one task at a time, complete it, and then move on to the next task.
Do you try to do it all – the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and caring for children? In two-career families, women still take on the primary responsibility of home and child care. Studies show that women do 75% of the household chores – even when they hold jobs outside the home. You may feel compelled to do it all, because of a combination of a need for control, guilt, and self importance. However, the more you do for your husbands and kids, the more they depend upon you and the more entitled they feel, which keeps you running around serving them. The result is that you hit a wall of exhaustion!
If this describes you, then you need to delegate. Remember, you don’t need to do it all! Share the load. Can your husband and kids take on more responsibility? Our goal as parents is to raise responsible, self-reliant children. The best way for them to learn is by doing. We also want to model teamwork and collaboration – that is, mommy and daddy sharing the domestic load.
Here are steps to delegate at home.
Decide what to delegate. Analyze the job or task, and ask yourself, “Can anyone else do it?” Learn to let go and allow someone else to dust or vacuum.
Decide who to delegate to. Balance the challenge and types of tasks with the person’s interests and skills. Even young children can empty wastebaskets or fold laundry. Hold a family meeting and find out what chores family members prefer.
Assign the task. Give clear, specific instructions with a deadline. With specific instructions, it’s more likely to get done correctly. You may need to train children to do the household task. Share how the task will contribute to the household. For example, “If you clean the cat litter box regularly, then we’ll avoid the nasty smell in the house”.
Follow up. Check in to see how it’s going. Offer support if needed. Most importantly, say thank you and recognize success. For example, “Thank you for mopping the floor. Look how it sparkles!”
The challenge with delegating, however, is that you don’t have control over the outcome. Others may not do the task as well as you. You need to let go, and stop being a perfectionist. The benefit is that your kids learn responsibility and feel respected. Not only that, but you’ll feel less exhausted and have more energy at the end of the day.