How to Thrive and Survive as a Working Woman: The Coach-Yourself Toolkit

‘A book written for those seeking to thrive and survive in pursuit of their career. It will resonate with women, whatever their personal stage of life and career. By drawing on extensive research, experience of working alongside many women, theory and history, the authors have created a rich treasure trove that stimulates interest, personal reflection and provides a sound practical toolkit. Pick it up as a good read or take up the challenges of raising your self-awareness to explore your life and career from different perspectives. Whatever your purpose, engage with the conclusion and go for it.’

– Dr Mary Holmes. Director. Development Solutions (Headspace). Ltd.

‘The book makes significant leaps in women’s development with rather less attention given to surviving as so many books offer, and instead a far greater focus on thriving with an ethical core to the authors’ messages – to be true to yourself, believe in yourself and pay attention to how you work. The tools and tips stay true to this theme; it’s a book written for women by career women who have observed, researched and experienced much of what they write about, so their advice is practical and, importantly, kind.’

– Kate Cooper, Head of Research & Policy, Institute of Leadership & Management

‘Reflecting the real life experiences of many contributors to their research, Dent and Holton present a critical appraisal of ongoing challenges for women in the workplaces of the 21st century. In its chapter-by-chapter steps through a range of essential skills and qualities, the book provides a practical toolkit combining techniques of self-analysis, useful strategies, and constructive tips on how women of all ages and at any stage of their working life can manage and overcome such challenges.

Although aimed at working women, this is a book which many will find invaluable in their lives. For men, it provides a perspective which will allow them to play their part in making the workplace more inclusive and fairer for all. Like all truly helpful how to books, it’s not a once-only read: it’s a book to keep using over lifetime.’

– Tony Montes, Senior Advisor for Talent Management in ADCO UAE

‘The main lesson I have taken from reading this book is the importance of strategizing my own personal development. As a full time working mum I often put aside my own development needs, but these tools have given me the direction I needed to invest the time and focus to achieve the executive positon I am aiming for. The hints and tips given, in particular utilising the career coaching model, have been invaluable. Through the book, I realised the importance of taking ownership of my career and to have the confidence to challenge and understand the nuances of business development at senior levels. I feel now I have the tools and motivation to concentrate on my own career trajectory and balance work and home life by more productive means. I have been inspired to re-think my own coaching principles to relay onto my staff and I would highly recommend this book to any women who is currently career planning for senior roles.’

– Jo Di Cristofaro, Regional Skills Manager, Ingeus

‘This book is excellent; it provides a great insight into others’ experiences, as well as how they managed and adapted to those experiences. I’d recommend this to anyone thinking about their career – whether first, intermediary or final steps!’

– Nicola Denegri, Senior Consultant, Kissing With Confidence Ltd

How to Thrive and Survive as a Working Woman

How to Thrive and Survive as a Working Woman

The Coach-Yourself Toolkit

Fiona Elsa Dent and Viki Holton

Bloomsbury Information

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Contents

About the authors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Career audit

2 Women’s experiences: What they say

3 Where are you in your career?

4 Essential skills and qualities for career success

5 Essential personal skills and qualities

6 Essential relationship skills and qualities

7 Essential strategic skills and qualities

8 Essential career skills and qualities

9 Making it happen!

10 The current landscape for working women

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

About the authors

Fiona Elsa Dent is a management trainer, leadership coach, associate faculty at Ashridge, mother and grandmother. Fiona now has a portfolio career, having worked full time for more than thirty-five years. She was a faculty member at Ashridge for twenty-four years, and during her last ten years on the full-time staff held a role on the management team as director of executive education, in which she managed a faculty group and contributed to the strategic operation of the organization.

Fiona now enjoys a mixed portfolio of teaching, coaching, researching, writing and grandma duties. She still contributes to a variety of programmes at Ashridge, and also works for a range of clients as a management trainer and coach. She enjoys researching and writing, and since moving to a portfolio role has published two books in addition to this one. These are The Leader’s Guide to Managing People and The Leader’s Guide to Coaching and Mentoring, both with her co-author Mike Brent.

Viki Holton is a research fellow at Ashridge Executive Education, Hult International Business School. She has a degree in Psychology and is a regular speaker at international and national conferences such as the British Academy of Management. She was involved with the Ashridge Centre for Business and Society for over eight years, and her special interests currently are leadership, HR and influence, team coaching, and diversity, as well as issues around women’s careers and women as leaders. Viki is on the editorial board of the journals Gender in Management and Career Development International. For a number of years, she was a member of the board of the European Women’s Management Development network and editor of the network’s newsletter.

In addition to research, Viki also enjoys writing. She has written many articles, book chapters and research reports, as well as an earlier book on women’s careers written in partnership with Fiona, and she has co-authored a book on team coaching. In her personal life, Viki enjoys gardening, travel and occasional trips to Caithness.

Acknowledgements

Many people have contributed to the writing of this book, not least the women who have taken the time to tell us their stories – the 1,400+ women who completed our questionnaire and the women we interviewed. To all of them, a heartfelt thanks.

We also appreciated Kate Cooper at the Institute of Leadership and Management and Kate Kinninmont at Women in Film and TV, www.wftv.org.uk, for their support in circulating and promoting our survey within their networks.

We would also like to thank our colleagues at Ashridge, and in particular Jan Rabbetts, Carol Long, Sharon West and Mike Dell.

Introduction

Over recent years, we have worked with, and coached, a number of working women across many different sectors, jobs and levels. We hear many good stories about how things have improved for women at work, and there are still many ‘firsts’ where a woman has stepped into a role that had previously only ever been held by a man. However, it is also clear that women sometimes do not thrive and survive at work because of the challenges and barriers that they continue to face. There is not yet equality in every organization, and women’s career opportunities and development are often not as good as for their male colleagues. This book offers a coaching toolkit to help overcome such problems – it is focused on the individual and essentially is about ‘how to’ be your own career coach!

So, let’s take a look at some of the good news. For working women in the twenty-first century, things have never been better! There is no doubt that the opportunities and choices available to women have never been greater. Today (2015), there are some seriously impressive women in all walks of life – business, technology, politics, the voluntary sector, sport and the media, to name a few. Some examples of key appointments for which it is the first time a woman has held the role include:

Chief medical officer – Professor Dame Sally Davies

Chief executive of General Motors – Mary Barra

Chief executive of the Crown Estate – Alison Nimmo

Bishop of Gloucester – Rachel Treweek

German chancellor – Angela Merkel

Chief operating officer at Facebook – Sheryl Sandberg

Chief executive of EasyJet – Carolyn McCall

Managing director of the International Monetary Fund – Christine Lagarde

However, based on current research about working women, commentary in the media and general anecdotes, it is also true that these women, and others like them, remain a small, select group. It is also true to say that many women are on track already, and we believe that even they could take lessons from some of the ideas in this book. So, how can we help more women to fully achieve their career potential, fulfil their ambitions and have equality in the workplace? We believe that by being more strategic and organized about your career you could achieve more, realize your ambitions and, in general, have a more satisfying working life. We do, however, want to make it clear from the start that this book is not all about getting to the top and breaking glass ceilings; it is about YOU achieving your goals and dreams in whatever area you choose.

We offer ideas, tools and techniques to help readers to reflect, review, assess and plan for success and satisfaction in their working life. We define career success in the broadest possible terms, which for us means being satisfied, fulfilled and appreciated in whatever your career or work may be. We want this book to be useful for women at all levels in organizations, in any job and at any age or career stage.

We think the recipe for a successful and rewarding working life is finding a job you enjoy that suits your particular needs at your stage in life. To do this, it is beneficial to understand yourself fully, how you have travelled the route so far and what your future dreams and ambitions are in order to be able to make the right choices. Many women do not strategize and plan their career. This is a mistake – you need a plan. Not the sort of plan that is rigid and inflexible, but one that can be adapted and flexed as you progress. The plan gives you something to aim for rather than drifting aimlessly.

When we wrote our earlier book Women in Business: Navigating Career Success, we learnt from the women we interviewed and surveyed that there is still much to be done to ensure true equality for women in work. We also recognized that women have amazing talent and huge ambition, and are sometimes surprised by their own success. Many of the women in our previous research were already at middle and senior levels in their career, and talked a lot about what they could have done differently and earlier to achieve this success.

Based on feedback from the previous book, and at various events we have taken part in since its publication, women have indicated to us that there is a need for a practical and individually focused ‘how to’ book that will provide ideas, tools and techniques to help navigate the challenges and difficulties and to plan for a successful working life.

One of the biggest lessons we learnt from all the events and workshops and our current research is that sometimes women are so focused on doing a good job and proving themselves that they rarely take time out to reflect and think about their current situation, their achievements so far, and how they are going to develop, progress further and move forward.

This book is the result of these conversations, our research and our continued interest in helping to address the need to help women reach their true potential and take an equal role in society at every level. It is essentially about awareness and practical skills to help you understand and realize who you are, what you have achieved and how you can build on that.

And, for those of you who are content in your current role and workplace, we also think this book will be helpful to you. It’s not solely about moving onwards and upwards – the insights offered will help you better understand your own values and belief systems so that when you do have to make decisions they are better informed.

Our key aim in writing this book is to provide ideas, tools and practical suggestions that will help any working woman to thrive and survive.

Chapter 1

Career audit

If women are to reach their full potential and become an even more powerful force in the world, we believe that one area that will actively contribute to this is for women to adopt a more structured and strategic approach to career management. This involves being more planful, analytical, organized and systematic in managing their career progress and path.

Our research has indicated that for many women, the process of planning and actively managing a career path proves to be a challenge. Many cite issues such as:

no time to do this

I will do it but not yet

no point in doing this

lucky to have a job

lucky to be able to work part-time

limited possibilities due to partner’s career situation

happy where I am

I simply don’t believe in making plans

In this chapter we will introduce you to processes for self-analysis and career audit. We will encourage you to examine and review your career so far by posing a range of questions. These questions will all be supported with practical exercises to assist your analysis and to help you explore your skills, capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, ambitions and dreams. The questions that will contribute to your analysis and audit are illustrated in the model on the next page.

In order for any person to thrive and survive in today’s complex and uncertain business environment, having good knowledge of yourself and an understanding of what you want from a career are prerequisites. This will help you navigate a path towards achieving ambitions and being prepared and confident enough to make and take opportunities as they arise. Lack of confidence and self-belief are huge challenges for women. Even Helen Mirren admitted to lack of confidence in a recent feature in the magazine Woman and Home: ‘I wish I’d told my younger self to be more confident.’ And in the same feature classical violinist Nicola Benedetti said: ‘I’d tell my younger self to read more, study more – and be more serious.’ We know that one of the causes of this lack of confidence is a lack of awareness of current skills, strengths and capabilities as well as not appreciating what they have achieved so far in their lives and work. By conducting a structured review of these, women are often surprised by what they find out about themselves. Of course, the earlier you do this the better, but doing it at any age will undoubtedly be beneficial for your future.

Self-analysis and career audit questions.

In one workshop we ran at Ashridge, we encouraged the participants, who ranged in age from late 20s to mid-50s, to adopt an analytical approach to review their career. Many were pleasantly surprised by the knowledge they gained when they thought and talked about themselves and their career so far. In this chapter, we will take you through a similar process of analysis by posing the five self-analysis and career audit questions mentioned earlier. We will also suggest a range of practical reviews and exercises that will help you to learn more about yourself and will encourage you to think about your career future in a more confident and strategic way.

Before we begin the career audit, we suggest you complete a ‘skills and qualities audit’. The purpose of this is to enable you to clarify and understand your strengths, weaknesses and development needs in a range of key skills. These skills and qualities have been selected to enable you to comprehensively review four key areas:

personal skills and qualities

relationship skills and qualities

strategic skills and qualities

career skills and qualities

The skills and qualities have been selected based on what we hear from women