I spent the last week in Seattle working with clients, doing presentations, and staying dry. In between sessions in person, I had clients on the phone and two in particular came to mind when writing this post. Both are women, both are partners, and both have a male counterpart (or counterparts) that are not following rules stipulated in partnership agreements. In both cases, the situation relates to money derived from originating work. Men feel as though they are the breadwinners of the family, both when they have wives that stay at home or wives that work, but make considerable less than they do. Because of this pre-set mindset, men will look at female counterparts and if they have husbands that work, will assume that the husband makes more. They will justify taking more in the partnership because they ‘need to feed their families’ and their female counterpart has a ‘husband paying the bills‘.

First of all, in both cases, the women make more than their husbands, but aside from that, it doesn’t matter if she has a husband, how much he makes, or if she has to work or not. It comes down to fairness. Equal work for equal pay. This might not happen in the employment arena as it should, but it MUST happen in the business world between partners. This is why we have partnership agreements. To set the rules of the relationship BEFORE money taints things. When money gets involved, people get greedy. I don’t care who you poll, money changes the dynamic. If a female partner is making less, but doing equal work, how do you think this plays for her being committed to her partners and growing the business. Why grow it if she isn’t being fairly treated. This separation in pay is the old model of business. The new model is everyone gets taken care of and you treat each other fairly. An interesting point is when I asked how they felt about their partners, both said that they thought they were ‘great guys’, but weren’t being fair in remuneration.

Okay, tough love time. These guys are not ‘good guys’ because ‘good guys’ don’t take more than their share from their partners. Good guys take care of their partners, their staffs, and their clients. Good guys respect partnership agreements and follow them because they have given their word to do so. Guys will take advantage if you let them so you need to be clear with expectations and not back down. That 4000 lb elephant in the room in ‘inequity’ and needs to be addressed rather than learning to ‘live with it’. It isn’t about going on the attack, becoming emotional, or striking out. It’s about objectively identifying the inequity, stating what needs to happen to bring things back in line and settling for nothing less than what is fair. Do not ignore the elephant or it will trample you in the long term. When dealing with this situation, I’d recommend the following recourse:

1. Clearing state what the situation is
2. Define how it has deviated from what would be commonly considered fair and in line with previous agreements
3. Invite the person involved in the discrepancy into dialogue
4. Explain the situation and what you want the outcome to be
5. Come to a new agreement or if the other side isn’t agreeable, explore options to come to agreement (without giving up your position)
6. If you are in an employment setting, suggest a third (non-biased) party to come in and give objective opinion
7. First seek to understand and then to be understood. In most cases, the other side is driven by fear. Identify what the fear is so you can better understand what is driving them.

Situations like this left unaddressed create nothing but negativity in the work environment. You’ll see yourself starting to sabotage the relationship, deals, and opportunities out of spite. Professionals put on their professional face, deal objectively (as possible) with the situation, and seek resolution. Do not roll over on things like this that are important. It is better to die on your legs than to live on your knees. Stand up for yourself, what you feel is fair, and ask for what you want.

As always, I welcome your comments and or related stories.

C/

p.s. Interesting point, an additional three clients after the two on the phone came forward with similar situations. Must be the new year! Theme of 2011: “Fairness to all involved.”

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. –John F. Kennedy

Well, for some reason, I’m digging the blogging all of a sudden. Seems like with a new year, I’m having these long stints of clarity by reviewing the big picture and reflecting on the past 24 months. Last week, I delivered a seminar through Skype Video (very cool) to the Women President’s Organization of Albany NY. Although I covered much of the “What Men Don’t Tell Women About Business” content, we strayed off a bit as we discussed the honor code that man have with each other (as it pertains to business).

As a young man, I learned that there were rules that men had between each other. Agreements might be a better description. There are certain things that you do and certain things you don’t do, depending on the situation. When I got interested in Judo in university, I started reading more on martial art philosophy and learning the true meaning of bushido (the way of the warrior) and a lot of it resonated with me. Upon this conversation with the group in Albany, something become immediately apparent to me. The women (and men) I know that are extremely successful in business reflect the seven fundamentals of bushido which leads to their continued success. I thought I’d share these characteristics with you as they are things I think about on a daily basis. Consider them guiding principles, a personal mission statement, even the ‘focus’. Bushido isn’t something attained, it’s something practiced. The kanji looks like this:

武士道

Characteristic 1: Rectitude: morally correct behavior or thinking. This in it’s truest form is being righteous

Characteristic 2: Courage: Knowing what scares you and stepping into it. Fear has no power when you face it.

Characteristic 3: Benevolence: Being well meaning and kind

Characteristic 4: Respect: Having appreciation for others skills, talents, and unique contributions

Characteristic 5: Honesty: Acting in a truthful manner with those you engage with. The second part of this is being honest with yourself.

Characteristic 6: Honor: Doing what you say and saying what you do.

Characteristic 7: Loyalty: Staying true to those you pledge alliance with.

Last year, a long-term participant in one of my models exemplified counter actions to bushido. She did not conduct herself morally; she lived in fear;  she was mean spirited; she lacked respect for herself, colleagues, and clients; she was dishonest; she lacked honor in how she conducted herself; and she was disloyal. What troubled me more than anything is that she was an expert at ‘talking the talk’, but when I got a chance to look behind the scenes, I realized that myself and her clients had been duped. Her colleagues were well aware of most of this, but chose to hold themselves to a higher standard and not throw her under the bus. In retrospect, she is one of the most vile people I have met in business and I’m curious how long it will take for her actions to catch up with her.

Recently a colleague of mine had a long term friend start doing something shady in business behind her back. As she told me, it was apparent to her that I was getting angry. She stopped the conversation and said to me, “you are getting noticeably agitated with the situation.” I took a second and told her that there are few things that I can handle less than disloyalty and someone taking the kindness of someone and using it selfishly for themselves. Long story short, both women in these examples have been deep sixed and at some point will realize that Karma really can be a bitch.

For you (and me), the practice is in working on each of the seven principals of Bushido. The biggest step is to commit to doing your best and trying to do business in a righteous way. This isn’t always easy to do, but with practice it can become easier. You can’t control how people act, but you can control their interaction with you . I still find myself slipping into wanting to be mean, angry, aggressive, and manipulative, but I know that it will come back to bite me in the ass. The people you step on when making your way up the ladder are the same people you pass on the way down. Good people do good business in a profitable and sustainable way. You’re job is not to convince people to be decent. It’s your responsibility to set your own code of conduct and then follow it.

When thinking about Bushido, honor codes, women in business (and women scorned), I always pop back to the scene in Pulp Fiction when Samual Jackson gets biblical:

Ezekiel 25:17. “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is The Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

Choose your path wisely. At the end of the day, it will determine your outcome and remember that you have no one to answer to but yourself.

I look forward to your comments…

I think it takes a certain type of person to be successful as a business adviser/coach. You have to have the right mix of experience, success, empathy, and discipline. It is too easy for clients to come in, throw up their hands and want you to ‘fix’ their business. Same goes for all relationships in your business. From clients to employees, and vendors to alliances, you will come across people that want you to do it for them rather than learn how to do it on their own. Where this becomes an issue is when you start to do it for them, rather than with them. We have some new coaches joining the Ghost CEO, and the first thing I say to them is, “you must learn the difference between a consultant and a coach. A consultant creates dependency by doing the work for a client; a coach teaches the client how to do the work and empowers them to make it happen.

Clients are explained the difference when they start, but more times than not, they want the coach to fix it for them. I used to be this type of coach. I’d know that I could do it quicker then the client could, so I’d get in there and do the fixing. What I realized is that they weren’t getting the tools. Instead, they were becoming more and more dependent on me, knowing that I could get them out of most messes they get themselves into. Then one day, an advisor of mine told me that I was life guarding rather than swim instructing. She said that clients would ‘swim into deep water’ knowing that I would rescue them if they got into trouble. What I should be doing is swimming out when they are in trouble, and asking them if they wanted me to ‘show’ them how to swim back. It wasn’t about ‘dragging’ them back to shore. Rather it was about teaching them how to get back on their own. They would either A) follow my instruction and swim back, or B) drown.

That might sound a bit cold, but all of us need to realize that we must only take responsibility for our own path. We can leverage the knowledge of others to guide us the right way, but in the end, we should live or die on the decisions we make. I see women trying to ‘fix’ those in their lives. “Help their husband find a job he likes better”, “Re-write a friend’s resume who is looking for a job”, etc. The problem with this is you are dis-empowering those that you are trying to help. If they don’t want the change bad enough to take action, then leave them alone. If they come looking for help, offer them support by pointing them to resources. Husband to a recruiter; friend to a website on how to write a good resume. I find that with partners, I have to hold myself back from trying to wrangle the reins away from them to run the company. That’s not my job. My job is to be the adviser plotting course for the company. Their job is to run it. When I step into this role, one of two things happen. The partner steps up and leads or the company sits idol waiting for a driver. It kills me to watch this happen, but it is something I now can deal with. If I want it worse than the partner wants it, it’s a bad deal for me. If I wanted to do all the work, why would I share in the revenues?

Look to the areas in your life where you are supporting something and ask yourself, “Am I trying to drag this person somewhere with my horsepower, or am I empowering them to do it on their own with the right tools.” If you are doing the former, you aren’t doing them any favours; if doing the latter, you are giving them a gift that keeps on giving.

Female managers more likely to underestimate how their work is valued

(From the Associated Press)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A new study shows female managers are more than three times as likely as their male counterparts to underrate their bosses’ opinions of their job performance.

The discrepancy increases with women older than 50, the study states.

“Women have imposed their own glass ceiling, and the question is why,” said Scott Taylor, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico Anderson School of Management who conducted the study.

Taylor will present his findings Tuesday in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, a 19,000-member organization devoted to research and teaching.

“It’s pretty fascinating, actually. It’s a different take on it,” said Leanne Atwater, a management professor at the University of Houston.

Atwater has researched the standard management assessment tool that Taylor was examining when he discovered the gender difference.

In the study, 251 male and female managers from different industries nationwide rated themselves and requested ratings from supervisors, peers and subordinates. Each subject also was asked to predict the ratings made by others.

Taylor collected the data for the study in 2005 while a doctoral student at Cleveland-based Case Western Reserve University.

The ratings measured nine elements of emotional and social competence essential to leadership: communication ability, initiative, self-awareness, self-control, empathy, bond-building, teamwork, conflict management and trustworthiness.

The men who were studied slightly overestimated how their bosses would rate them, while the female respondents underestimated their ratings on average by about 11 percent.

Chelsea Walker, 52, an administrator for UNM’s College of Pharmacy, participated in a similar exercise while taking Taylor’s class and was shocked to find her results matched her professor’s findings.

“I was very, very surprised by his responses,” she said. “I guess that I just didn’t think that he thought that highly of me, even though I thought pretty highly of myself.”

The exercise was a confidence booster, Walker said. Now, she takes five minutes during weekly meetings with her supervisor to discuss what she’s done on the job, something she thinks men do more easily than women.

“To me it’s still uncomfortable to a certain degree,” she said. “We’re not out for the glory kind of thing. We’re just out to get the job done.”

Walker said her experience also reflected the generational difference found in the study.

“Younger women tended not to be as off-base in their predictions than middle-aged or senior women,” Taylor said.

Taylor said managers may need to learn better ways to communicate to female employees that they are valued. Women may need to learn how to better seek positive and critical feedback, he said.

Taylor says the findings could indicate why many women don’t rise to head companies or why there is a wage disparity between men and women.

In 2008, the Census Bureau estimated women receive only about 78 cents for every dollar that men get for doing equivalent jobs.

Bonnie Coffey, president of the National Association of Commissions for Women, said women are unable to predict their bosses’ assessments because of media images, particularly those of older women, that show them as silver-haired beauties or grandmothers in dumpy dresses.

“If you recognize that society doesn’t really value older women, then you say, ‘Gee, this isn’t where I belong. Maybe I shouldn’t be asking for a raise. Maybe I shouldn’t be speaking up at meetings,” Coffey said.

Cara Waymire, vice president for human resources at insurance brokerage Hub International in Albuquerque, said when she works with female employees on getting raises or promotions, she notices they are more likely to focus on shortcomings rather than accomplishments.

“They think the boss needs to think they hung the moon in order for them to ask for anything,” Waymire said.

It is common to feel like fraud when you are stretching into bigger things in business. The Alpha Male gets into games much bigger than he has experience with and ‘stretches’ to earn his space. Women on the other hand wait until they have everything in place and then go for the opportunity. Unfortunately the opportunity is gone to an Alpha who has already claimed it.

I have clients who are targeting big accounts and they say to me, “How the hell am I going to handle all this business? I don’t have a big enough team, the right contractors, or even a business model that can support this right now.” They start thinking about all the reasons why they can’t service an account before they even get the work. Alphas have a little saying (which I share with clients in this state), “Money buys solutions“. When you get the contract, you’ll have the money to acquire the assets required to do the work. It’s a bit chicken and egg, but it works.

I have spent much of my professional life having people ask me if I can do something. My response is almost always, “YES“.

“Chris can you put a team in the UK?” - YES.

“Chris can you do a community profile for the City of Kelowna in three weeks?” - YES

“Chris we need 60 consultants in the field by the end of the month. Can you do that?” – YES

I’ve always found that figuring out how to do something once you get the work is much easier than learning how to do the work before you have it. At times you can feel like a fraud, but if you know that you can figure things out quickly and will have the resources (through the work) to hire experts, well, what’s the challenge? I think being successful and stretching yourself is good for you and humbling.

When I was on the Today Show, I thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing on this show. I’m not a great writer, a decade ago I was a bouncer. Shouldn’t this show be for big names like James Patterson or Malcolm Gladwell?” Then the Alpha kicked in. Why NOT me? Why shouldn’t I be on this show. I have something unique to say and with a unique way of saying it. I’m going to shake up this show and its viewers. That’s what I did.

The only person that thinks you are a fraud is you. If you can deliver, you aren’t a fraud. If you lie about delivering and then duff the ball when you are under the gun…well you are a fraud. Find advisers, experts, and those with experience to support you as you stretch. It will make things easier, give you a safety net, and remind you that things aren’t as hard as you make them out to be.

Every successful person you ever meet will think themselves a fraud on some level. It’s just part of the game.

The reason why women get paid less then their male counterparts is because the accept less pay. I spent the better part of six year working with women in the not-for-profit markets as well as those in traditional business models. Time and time again, I would see that they made anywhere from 10%- 30% less than their male counterparts. They would be paid less and do at least 1.5 – 2x more work then those same male counterparts. This always confused me and after inquiring, I asked both women and men why women made less. Here were their responses:

Women:

• They didn’t have the same experience (of 43 women polled, 39 had more experience than a male colleagues they worked with).
• They needed to prove themselves (noted by women with at least 5 years experience).
• They didn’t have a degree (nor did their male counterparts).
• The board/boss would never go for it (they didn’t know for sure as none had asked for a raise).
• They believed the organization would give a raise if there was more money (again, they never asked for a raise during reviews).
• Their organization could find someone who would work for that wage (likely another woman).
• It wasn’t all about the money for them (most struggled to make ends meet).
• Men were considered the breadwinners so they made more (majority of women I asked with single mothers).
• They were worried that if they got paid more, there would be less money for programming (putting others before themselves).
• They felt they were paid fairly (but not at the same level of a male colleague doing less).

Men:

• Women got paid less because they likely had a boyfriend/husband covering the major living costs (of 43 women, 31 weren’t in a relationship).
• Women need to spend more time with family and can’t focus on the job as much (on average, the women worked 47 hours a week to the men’s 39 hours a week).
• Women didn’t have as much experience (as above, 39 had more experience than their counterparts).
• Women don’t understand how to show their value (men brag about what they bring to the table; women wait to be noticed).
• Women don’t ask for what they want (they ask for what they think they can get).
• Women don’t want to make their bosses/boards uncomfortable by asking for more money.
• Women don’t want to be rejected so they don’t ask in case the boss says ‘no’.
• Women won’t quit if they don’t get what they want (of the 28 men asked, every one of them said they would quit and find something else if they weren’t paid enough).

With capable workforces dwindling, now is the time for the female workforce to get clear on what fair pay is for their position. The gender gap in pay will continue as long as women choose to work for less. If women start selecting employers who pay for the contribution, rather than by gender, they will start to bridge the gap of their male counterparts. Why would an employer pay more if he or she doesn’t have to?

A negotiations coach in Vancouver shared a story of working for a government agency. This agency was in place to ensure that men and women were paid fairly. She, another woman and a man were all hired at the same time. Over a period of time, it came out that the man was making the top of the pay scale whereas the women were at the bottom of the pay-scale. The employer had stated to all three that the starting wage for the job was “X”. The two women gratefully accepted their positions while the man said that “he couldn’t possibly work for that wage.” He had a family to support after all. The employer started him at the top of the scale ( a difference, if I remember correctly, of about $10,000 a year).

Why did the women accept less? Because they felt they had to prove themselves, where the man was focused on the bottom line and would have happily declined the job to find something that paid better. Consider what you are being paid and if it is what you should be making, or what you are willing to make. If you are making $40,000 a year and your male colleague is making $50,000 a year, ask yourself if you are 20% less valuable then him. If you aren’t then ask for more; if you are less valuable, increase your professional value so that you can ask for more. Anyone who says money doesn’t matter, likely doesn’t have any.

Earn what you are worth and bridge the gap for you and every other woman in business. When you stop settling for second best, you’ll start getting paid what you deserve, but it is up for you to ask.