Radio Entrepreneurs | Jodi Detjen, February 3rd, 2015. “Jodi Detjen is the author of “The Orange Line: A Woman’s Guide to Integrating Career, Family and Life”. Listen as she discusses the book and the importance of women and business.” Watch Here…  

Boston Business Journal |  ViewPoint: Businesses should foster women’s leadership roles. Sandra looks like a rock star at her multinational company. She’s risen to middle management. She embodies the “ideal:” working long hours, managing multiple projects and a team of performers. She gets work done. Her manager says, “We couldn’t run the place without you.” But look underneath the sheen and it’s not so “perfect.” Sandra works all the time, feeling guilty if she has to leave early for something personal. She is a gatekeeper: She takes care of her direct reports, gives them work, but also doesn’t bring them to key meetings or delegate career expanding tasks. She is regularly overwhelmed. Sandra doesn’t spend a lot of time building her internal network. Her manager actually doubts her leadership skills. A colleague just got promoted around her. Sandra is burning out and her career is stalling. She is starting to blame her company. What should the organization do? Continue Reading…

Removing Self-Imposed Barriers to Success for High Potential Women in the Workplace For organizations to see talented women rise through the ranks at the same pace and numbers as men, significant attention must be paid to the role of unconscious bias in creating barriers for women. While much of the current research has uncovered unconscious bias in recruiting, rewards and recognition, talent management systems, and organizational culture, little has been done to recognize the role of unconscious bias in women themselves. The impetus for driving this change for organizations is twofold: First, women outnumber men in college graduation rates and in low to middle management roles but have little to no representation in senior management ranks1. The cost to companies of this talent leakage is high in terms of training spend, churn, and human capital underutilization. Second, pay equity legislation and overall public scrutiny are driving more wage transparency2. Women, more than ever before are becoming aware of their collective power and dissatisfaction with traditional workplace structures. The growing “rise of women” trend could create a significant legal risk and competitive threat to inflexible organizational structures. Merely highlighting unconscious bias is not enough. In fact, in some cases, calling people to task has further entrenched stereotypes, rather than removed them. Recognition of these biases is only the first step in the process. A structured approach to identifying and impartially analyzing these biases must be undertaken so that the underlying assumptions can be challenged and reframed. Only then will structural systems, and their participants, be free and flexible to create new thinking and innovative workplace solutions. Continue Reading…

Third Path Institute White Paper The Incredibles: Leading the Way to Having It All Meet Jane and Ted. Jane and Ted are successful partners at their law firms. They have families they see every night. They have employees who enjoy working for them. They feel on top of their workload – well at least some days. Other days, they don’t feel quite as successful; some days in fact are quite challenging. But Jane and Ted have figured out a different approach to get where they are today. Through trial and error, they have figured out the skills it takes to rethink how to accomplish both their personal and work goals. Jane and Ted are what we call integrated leaders. To achieve this required practice, vision, and skill. These skills are not necessarily simple, but as we’ll show below, the are doable. Continue Reading…

Managing Partner Vacation Article | February 2011 Be a Leader: Take a Vacation  In a world of a minimum of 2,000 billable hours annually, taking a vacation may seem like a luxury, impossible or simply irresponsible. However, taking a vacation can not only lead to fresh perspectives and effectiveness at work and home, stress reduction and enhanced creativity, but can also build the fundamental leadership skills needed after the vacation ends. Taking a vacation can feel like you are putting out your client and peers. It can raise internal doubts such as “I might not be indispensable”. It could even feel like you are fighting against the firm’s culture and peer pressure, since vacations are often informally discouraged. Continue Reading…

American Banker | May 2014 How Women In Banking Can Rise to the Top Women represent 54% of the labor pool in the finance and banking industries. But a precipitous drop occurs at the executive level. Just 11% of chief financial officers are women, while only 23% of all senior officer positions are held by women. The few women at the top with families typically have a stay-at-home spouse in support of their careers. The message is clear: women with families are not welcome. A number of factors have conspired to keep many women from reaching the top in banking and finance. Significant financial rewards go to those who prioritize face time and hours at work, making it difficult for women to achieve work-life balance. Meanwhile, systemic gender bias often forces women who want to stay in banking and finance to adapt to male-dominated, aggressive cultures. The result? Finance has the largest pay differential of any industry. Continue Reading…