Читать книгу Words of Wisdom from Women to Watch - Insurance Business - Страница 9

I was employed in a senior role at one company, and it was suggested to me that I meet with one of the most senior women in human resources. She was one of the only other women on the executive team, and she was incredibly powerful. I was told she’d be a phenomenal mentor.

I’ll never forget my meeting with her. I set up some time based on her schedule, but clearly I wasn’t a priority – as a new, young, female executive. She kept moving our appointment time and time again. This went on for months.

Finally, almost a quarter later, we both found ourselves at an offsite board meeting. I approached her later in the day, after we’d both completed our presentations. I sat down and we started chatting. It was all very amiable. At one point I paused, and with a significant amount of deference in my tone asked her for advice on navigating the company. It was a high school boy’s locker room for sure… I commented on how successful she had clearly been at doing so, and I asked her if she’d be willing to work with me.

She paused and said, “No one helped me. Why should I help you?”

I’d asked for help and been denied. It was a moment of having to find a whole new layer of inner strength. I decided at that moment that it was up to me to do something to change the game, to try and make sure that no one else received that same answer.

Years later, I read an article that described what I’d experienced: second-generation bias. One of the components of second-generation bias is the bidirectional feeling that there is limited worth. That means that younger women may have a bias against older women in the workplace – that they may not be the people to go to for networking, career help, and so on, and that older women may have a bias against the upcoming generation.

That whole notion of “No one helped me. Why should I help you?”

I refused to believe that was an appropriate response. I have made it my mission to help younger women. As word spread, I had a constant stream of requests for mentoring. It got to the point that I had to structure my weeks with very specific rules. There were only so many hours that I could spend with women who were in search of guidance – in and outside of work. One happy hour a week, two lunches.

Still, I knew I wasn’t helping everyone that I could, so I started creating informal women’s networks. I’d connect women who were more senior and with a mentoring mind-set with women who were newer in their careers. I opened up a night a month to a women’s happy hour where women from all sorts of industries came together for networking opportunities. Women formed bonds. Women gave and received advice. Women shared and created job opportunities for other women.

I worked at another company where I asked the senior human resources leader if I could start a women’s network. She told me that she didn’t think that was a good idea. After all, if we organized women, other groups would organize, too. I did it anyway. It was underground, but I created it.

I have continued to create those networks, both formally and informally, at every company I have worked for.

I’ll never forget the day I left one firm. The announcement went out, and I was stunned by how many e-mails I received. There were thousands. The woman in charge of my life, my executive assistant, made copies of several of them for me. The two piles that were important were the ones from people she knew were important to me. The other pile, from women who I’d never met, writing to tell me that they’d seen me speak in an all-employee meeting, or that they’d heard about how I’d helped a friend of a friend and how I was a role model to them. That they felt more confident in their ability to speak up because of me. There were hundreds of those. I still have that pile of printed e-mails.