Every year I make sure I have an annual physical so I can stay in the best health possible.  When my body is healthy then my mind is healthy – and that’s when I can accomplish the most at work and in my personal life. 

But at my last physical I noticed my cholesterol level was going up.  Not a lot, but enough that I took notice and began researching the topic of how to lower my cholesterol level naturally.  I found six foods that were recommended and have changed my diet to incorporate them more often into what I eat.  Which six foods are they?

According to the article by Joy Bauer, the six foods that can help you lower your cholesterol are:

• Oranges:  Not only do oranges contain vitamin C, folate, and potassium, they’re a great source of fiber which helps trap cholesterol and get it out of your body.
• Oats:  “Oatmeal is a proven winner when it comes to lowering cholesterol.”  My sister taught me a great trick for making a bowl of plain oatmeal taste great…stir in a teaspoon or two of your favorite jam, such as blackberry or raspberry.  Yummy!
• Beans and Lentils:  What most of us probably don’t realize is that not only are these items a good source of fiber, “they’re also great replacements for animal protein, which is often full of saturated fat.”  My husband and I have incorporated these into our diets by having my Mexican themed meals.  Salud!
• Sardines:  These are rich in omega-3 fatty acids but most of us have to get past the overly ‘fishy’ taste they leave in the mouth.  If you can’t stomach eating sardines (like me), try other fish high in omega-3 or nutritional supplements of omega-3 oil.
• Pistachio Nuts:  This has always been my Dad’s favorite nut.  Who knew these “little powerhouses are a great source of phytosterols, natural plant compounds that block absorption of dietary cholesterol.”  In addition, they also contain monounsaturated fat, fiber, and antioxidants.
• Chocolate:  I’ll take any reason to eat more chocolate, especially dark chocolate!  To obtain the best benefit, Ms. Bauer recommends choosing “brands that contain 70% or more cocoa solids and avoid those that contain partially hydrogenated oil, palm-kernel oil, and other unhealthy additives.”

Several months after incorporating these items into my diet, I’m feeling better and my cholesterol level has gone back down to where it was.  Success!  Try Ms. Bauer’s suggestions and see if they help you too.

~ Lisa Quast

 Source:  Article, “Six Foods That Lower Cholesterol”, by Joy Bauer

http://health.msn.com/health-topics/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100246097

Bradi and Terry pride themselves on providing a free resource for women, filled with expert content.  Their site includes a Job Board, Psychotherapy, Health/Fitness, Volunteerism, Eldercare, Travel, Work/Life, Nutrition, and Career Counseling, to name just a few.  As they stated during our interview, “We look to humanize moms, whether celebrity or otherwise, to let others know they’re not alone in facing work/life challenges.”

In their 1:1 feature interview, the two entrepreneurs provide advice for women who have been out of work (either due to unemployment or raising children) and are contemplating a return, including:

• “Don’t be afraid to return.  Face the fear.”
• You’ve gained wonderful skills during your time at home, such as “managing your household, managing the budget, perhaps you played a role in the PTA” – incorporate those skills into your résumé.
• “In terms of the ‘gap in your resume,’ make sure to incorporate some of the suggested items above and consider a resume that does not highlight your absence.  Be honest to the perspective employer.  Just make sure to highlight all of the skills you gained while outside of the workplace.”
• “Embrace a passion, hobby or interest and be sure not to lose a sense of self.”

Read their feature interview to find out more on how they started My Work Butterfly.com and the challenges they’ve identified that are specific to women.

~ Lisa Quast

As a recent Knowledge@Wharton article proclaimed, “Thanks to the Internet and other technological advancements, past misstatements have a much longer shelf life, and embellishments are more vulnerable to being detected.”

With the difficult economy continuing and many workers competing against each other for jobs, the temptation might be there to embellish your résumé, but think twice before doing so.  According to CareerBuilder.com’s latest survey in 2008, although only 8 percent of workers admitted to lying on their résumés, nearly half (49 percent) of hiring managers reported they caught a candidate in a lie. And of these employers, 57 percent said they automatically dismissed the applicant when they were caught in a lie or misstatement.

The most common lies discovered on a résumé, based on the CareerBuilder.com survey, included:

• Embellished responsibilities:  38%
• Skill set:  18%
• Dates of employment:  12%
• Academic degree:  10%
• Companies worked for:  7%
• Job title:  5%

And when CareerBuilder.com asked hiring managers to share the most memorable or outrageous lies they’d ever come across on résumés, the examples included:

• Claimed to be a member of the Kennedy family
• Invented a school that did not exist
• Submitted a résumé with someone else’s photo inserted into the document
• Claimed to be a member of MENSA (the international, high IQ society)
• Claimed to have worked for the hiring manager before, but never had

Clear-cut lying on résumés is now fairly easy to detect, such as stating a university degree you didn’t actually complete (degree status can be verified through the university), inventing a school that doesn’t exist (this can be easily verified), or stating a position you didn’t actually have at a previous company (which can be verified with that company). 

Unfortunately, what isn’t as easy to detect are the “more ambiguous embellishments that involve people taking sole credit for the work of a team, or misrepresenting the money saved through an efficiency process,” says Maurice Schweitzer, Wharton operations and information management professor.  But even in those cases, adept interviewers can determine your level of embellishment.

For example, whenever I interview someone I purposely spend time discussing their accomplishments in their various positions.  If someone stated on their résumé that they were able to save company XYZ $7 million last year, then I start digging deeper to find out more information.  What specifically did they do to save the company money?  Did they run the project or just participate in it?  How long did it take them?  With whom did they work to accomplish the cost savings?  Who specifically were their internal sponsors?  What barriers did they run into during while they were trying to accomplish the cost savings?  Etc., etc.  If someone is lying about their accomplishments, then they will have a difficult time answering these kinds of in-depth questions.

There is also the question of lying by omission.  After a recent seminar on résumé writing an older woman raised her hand and asked me if it was okay for her to leave part of her work history off her résumé.  When I asked her why she would want to do that she replied, “I’m applying and interviewing at a company where the average employee age is 30.  I’m 52 and would be working for someone much younger than me and I don’t want them to say I’ve got too much experience and then not hire me.  I really want to work at this start-up company but I’m worried they’ll think I’m too old.”  My advice in this situation is to be honest and include your entire work history, but, prepare the approach you will take during the interview. 

My suggestion to this woman was to consider how her vast knowledge and experience could help this start-up company filled with young people.  How, because she had already been through this same experience previously, she would be able to help them navigate the turbulent waters they were going to have to go through in order to grow their business and prosper.

I know it can be difficult to be completely honest when writing a résumé and that it’s human nature to embellish a bit, but as the old saying goes, “Honesty is the best policy”.  And after all, you’ll be the one who has to live with what you’ve written both in your heart as well as if the information gets out onto the Internet.

So instead of embellishing things on your resume, try these tips from Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources at CareerBuilder.com:

• Apply early:  “Get your foot in the door before other candidates by signing up for job alerts that automatically email job listings to you as they become available.”
• Stand out from the crowd:  “Make sure you are highlighting specific accomplishments, quantifying results whenever possible, to showcase how you put your skills into action and benefited previous employers.”
• Use keywords:  “The terms employers search for most often are:
  • Problem-solving and decision-making skills (50%)
  • Oral and written communications (44%)
  • Customer service or retention (34%)
  • Performance and productivity improvement (32%)
  • Leadership (30%)
  • Technology (27%)
  • Team-building (26%)
  • Project management (20%)
  • Bilingual (14%)”

 ~ Lisa Quast

Carol Hymowitz and Timothy D. Schellhardt were the first to use the term “glass ceiling” in their March 24, 1986 article in the Wall Street Journal, “The Glass Ceiling: Why Women Can’t Seem to Break the Invisible Barrier That Blocks Them from the Top Job.”  The term resonated with women around the world because it captured our frustrations – and the term “glass ceiling” has now become commonplace.

However, Eagly and Carli believe a better metaphor for what confronts women in their careers is the term “labyrinth” because it “conveys the idea of a complex journey toward a goal worth striving for. Passage through a labyrinth is not simple or direct, but requires persistence, awareness of one’s progress, and a careful analysis of the puzzles that lie ahead.”

How can you make your way through the career labyrinth?  According to Eagly and Carli, women need to better understand the barriers that make up the labyrinth, determine how successful women find ways around these barriers, and then attack all barriers to advancement simultaneously.

I like the idea of using the term “labyrinth” instead of “glass ceiling” because it helps me think of my career as a path to be traveled, rather than running up against an invisible barrier.  When I mentor or coach other women, here are the key tips I provide in regard to the “glass ceiling” discussion:

Don’t use the “glass ceiling” as an excuse:  Over my 20+ year career in corporate America, I’ve witnessed a lot of women using the glass ceiling comment as an excuse for why they aren’t progressing in their careers.  I have also seen a lot of women mentally creating their own barriers to success.  I’ve always tried to take a different approach by not believing in the concept of a glass ceiling and by never acting like a victim.

Create a career strategic plan:  I have had several positions over the last 10 years where I was the very first female in those positions.  I achieved the positions because I knew I wanted them, researched the requirements for success, then made sure I had the necessary qualifications to go after those jobs (and, I ALWAYS follow the process I describe in my book, “Your Career, Your Way”). 

Do your research:  What I’ve found with women I coach is that about 8 times out of 10, when they don’t get a job they want it’s because they haven’t done the requisite research to find out the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for the position, compared themselves against those requirements, and then gone out and gained the experience needed to successfully obtain the position.  It takes research, thought, and often times a lot of work to obtain the jobs you want.  No one ever said life was going to be easy and the same holds true about going after key positions throughout your career.  Always remember that old saying that the most important aspect is the journey and what we learn on the way.

Quit thinking about a glass ceiling:  My best advice to help females deal with a glass ceiling is to quit thinking one even exists.  I had a poster on my bedroom wall while I was going up that said, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.”  I truly believe in that saying and it’s been my mantra throughout my life.  That’s the approach women need to take with their careers.  They need to create a career strategic plan and then follow through with all the research, planning, and skills development necessary to go after the jobs they really want.  If they do that and they believe in themselves then nothing, not even a supposed “glass ceiling”, will hold them back from achieving their career dreams.

In this article for women in the workplace by Eagly and Carli, you’ll also find ‘call to actions’ for companies that want more women leaders:

• Evaluate and reward women’s productivity by objective results, not the number of hours at work.
• Make performance-evaluation criteria explicit and design evaluation processes to limit the influence of evaluators’ biases.
• Avoid having a sole female member on any team.  Outnumbered, women tend to be ignored by men.
• Encourage well-placed, widely esteemed individuals to mentor women.
• Give women demanding developmental job experiences to train them for leadership positions.

The Harvard Business Review Reprint number for this article is R0709C, September 2007.   Good luck and good climbing!

~ Lisa Quast

Link for HBR reprints of article:  http://hbr.org/product/women-and-the-labyrinth-of-leadership/an/R0709C-PDF-ENG

How do you make sure your change efforts won’t fail?  The key to successful organizational change is implementing a formal change management strategy that includes five key items.

“Change is the single most important element of successful business management today.  To remain competitive in increasingly aggressive markets, organizations (and individuals in them) have to adopt a positive attitude to change” (Heller, 1998, p. 5).  Decades ago, change was seen as something unusual and did not happen very often; now, change in business is seen as a constant, not the exception. 

Why has this occurred?  Because “increased global competition, startling breakthroughs in information technology, changes in consumer preferences, and calls for greater corporate ethics are forcing companies to change the way they do business” (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2008, p. 399).  How companies manage through the necessary changes can make the difference between success and failure.  According to the research of John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor of leadership and the author of several books on change (see my previous blog on “How to Apply John Kotter’s Eight Steps for Leading Organizational Change”), “Most attempts at organizational change fail” (2008, p. 54). 

What I have learned during my career is that the key to successful organizational change is implementing a formal change management strategy that includes:  1.) Stakeholder management; 2.) Communication; 3.) Training; 4.) Readiness Assessment; and 5.) Active senior management engagement, leadership, and support.

Stakeholder Management:  Identifying and involving key stakeholders is vital to the success of any organizational change initiative.  Stakeholders are all the individuals and/or groups that will be impacted by the change initiative, both inside and outside the organization.   By identifying their concerns, agendas and expectations, the project team can actively manage stakeholder expectations and ensure successful implementation of the change initiative.

Communication:  Communication is one of the most important elements of a change process.  It “helps reduce resistance, minimize uncertainty, and increase stakeholder involvement and commitment” (Carter, 2008, p. 23).  This step includes creating a communication plan for each stakeholder group, communicating roles and responsibilities, establishing bi-directional communication, and managing overall communication efforts.

Training:  Training must be conducted with each stakeholder group to help them fully understand the changes that will be taking place and to help move them from a previous way of doing things to a new way of doing things while alleviating their fear of change.  The training step should include drafting the training approach, conducting training needs assessment, developing the training courses and schedule, conducting the trainings, and completing a post training evaluation.

Readiness Assessment:  This pillar is all about ensuring the business is ready for the changes to go-live and making sure learning is captured and can be used in the future to positively support other change initiatives.  This step should include creating the organizational readiness assessment approach, conducting the readiness assessment, analyzing the results, incorporating the results and learning into additional follow-on activities to ensure readiness, and conducting follow-up assessments as needed.

Active senior management engagement, leadership, and support:  Active engagement by the senior leaders must be seen throughout the organization during the change initiative process.  ”Organizational change is more likely to succeed when top management is truly committed to the change process and the desired goals of the change program” (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2008, p. 409).

Ensuring you’ve worked through all five key areas listed above will help you greatly increase your odds of successfully implementing change.  These are key areas on which I have focused my efforts throughout my career and they’ve been tremendously helpful in implementing change.

~ Lisa Quast

Sources:

Heller, R. (1998). Managing Change. New York: DK Publishing, Inc.

Kinicki, A. & Kreitner, R. (2008). Organizational Behavior: key concepts, skills & best practices.  Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Kotter, J. (2008, September). Combating Complacency. Business Week, (4099), 54-55.  Retrieved June 24, 2010 from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1552996161).

Carter, E. (2008). Successful Change Requires More Than Change Management.  The Journal for Quality and Participation, 31(1), 20-23. Retrieved June 24, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID:  1475341461).

With all the changes continuing to occur in businesses around the world due to the economic environment it’s important to help yourself stand out from other employees so management will see you as a “must have employee”. 

One way to stand out from the rest of the crowd is to demonstrate your leadership abilities in the area of change management.  Check out my summary below and see how Mr. Kotter’s steps can help you lead change within your organization.

Establish a sense of urgency:  Create a compelling reason as to why the change is needed.  For example, I once led a pricing project and we demonstrated how the inefficiency and ineffectual existing pricing practices were causing us to leave 1-3% Return on Sales (ROS) on the table and showed the millions of dollars in Earnings Before Income, Taxes, and Amortization (EBITA) increase we could achieve if we could fix the pricing and commercial processes.  That definitely woke up senior management in the company and established a sense of urgency to help us accomplish the project goals and objectives.

Create a guiding coalition:  This step is all about establishing the team that has the right amount of knowledge, power and authority to accomplish the change.  For the pricing project, we broke it into three areas and created separate change management teams for each area.  Each team had a project leader, one or two sponsors with high-level authority and power, and each team was made up of a group of cross-functional, cross-level people including:  Sales, service, operations, IT, marketing, finance, etc.

Develop a vision and strategy:  This step is about organizing the change so everyone clearly understands the overall vision and the strategy that will be followed to achieve the vision.  For the pricing project, this entailed creating an overall project charter that included:  Business case; Opportunity statement; Goal statement; and Project scope.

Communicate the change vision:  This step is about determining how to effectively communicate the change within the organization.  For the pricing project, this entailed specifically mapping out all the key stakeholder groups, determining and understanding what change they would need to go through, and then creating a strategic communication plan for each of the groups.

Empowering broad-based action:  This step includes identifying all the barriers to change and working through them as well as determining ways to encourage people to take risks “and creative problem solving” (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2008, p. 406).  For the pricing project, we specifically tried to anticipate and manage barriers and risks on a weekly basis and implemented incentives that helped motivate behavior to increase company margin by the sales organization (improving price realization).

Generate short-term wins:  This step is about getting some quick wins completed that can then be publicized to generate excitement for the change and even might improve moral.  For the pricing project, we identified five quick win opportunities, worked through those and publicized them.  The key was to focus on communicating the positive benefits to the right target groups internally.

Consolidate gains and produce more change:  This step is about using the short-term quick wins and building off of them to create further change.  For the pricing project, the internal publicity we created helped get other country operational groups focused on improving their own pricing and commercial practices. 

Anchor new approaches in the culture:  This step is about reinforcing the change(s) so they are able to stick within the organization on a long-term basis.  For the pricing project, this step includes establishing key performance metrics for each area of the project with clearly defined roles and responsibilities and control charts to ensure tracking, measuring, and management of the new processes on an on-going basis by all the right groups/people.

Successful change management takes time and a lot of well-thought out efforts, but when handled appropriately, yields the best results.  What I’ve learned in my career is that when it comes to successful change management, there are no short-cuts!

~ Lisa Quast

Source:

Kinicki, A. & Kreitner, R. (2008). Organizational Behavior: key concepts, skills & best practices.  Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

For additional information about leading change, check out the John Kotter books at Amazon.com:  http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Change-John-P-Kotter/dp/0875847471/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277398390&sr=1-1

Do you remember those tests when you were in school?  I look back and fondly remember the fun and laughter of taking those tests and seeing what the results would tell me.  What those aptitude tests tried to do is determine what my strengths were and then match me to broad categories of careers, based on those strengths.

As a career coach (and someone who still loves taking those career aptitude tests!), I always have an eye out for the latest way to help people find a job that will best fit their skills and abilities so I was intrigued when I came across this recently published book titled, “Work Your Strengths:  A Scientific Process to Identify Your Skills and Match Them to the Best Career for You” by Chuck Martin, Richard Guare, PH.D., and Peg Dawson, ED.D.  I contacted Chuck and asked him to participate in a Q&A session in order to help the readers of my “Career Memos” blog.

Q&A with Chuck Martin

Q:  The idea of identifying your strongest career-building skills isn’t new, as we’ve seen in Markus Buckingham’s books, “Now Discover Your Strengths” and “Strength-Finder 2.0″, and other popular books, including your last book, “Smarts”.  What makes your new book, “Work Your Strengths” uniquely insightful and useful?

A:  The book is based on inherent cognitive strengths and weaknesses that are ‘hardwired’ into people at birth. This concept is based on decades of neuroscience brain research, so it is well based in clinical psychology – it is science based. While many books agree on identifying strengths and then playing to strengths, many use different methods to identify those strengths. Ours bases this on science, and how Executive Skills, located in the frontal lobes of the brain, develop all the way through adolescence into early adulthood, where psychologists believe they essentially mature. By that time, people generally have two or three Executive Skills that are their strongest and two or three that are their weakest. The other unique aspect of “Work Your Strengths” is that we measured these Executive Skills strengths in thousands of high performers around the world.

 * * *

Q:  I understand you based the information in your book on groundbreaking research and an original two-year study.  Would you share a little about that?

A:  We wanted to determine if there were common cognitive characteristics, specifically Executive Skills strengths and weaknesses, found in high performing individuals in business. Over the course of two years, we contacts hundreds of organizations of all types – financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, nonprofits, among many others – and these organizations identified their high performers. We then sent these individuals the Executive Skills Profile and we analyzed the results of profiles of thousands of high performers. We then broke them down by job function, industry, department, etc., and found that there were common characteristics or strengths based on each of these. The value is that once you know your own strengths you can go to the study results in the book and see where people with those same strengths are successful.

 * * *

Q:  Would you clarify the meaning of the term “Executive Skills”?  How can Executive Skills profiling help a woman not only choose the right career path, but also fulfill her potential for success?

A:  Executive Skills, which have nothing to do with skills of executives, were named by psychologists because they help people execute tasks. (Psychologists refer to the brain as the central executive). Also, these are not skills that can be learned since they are cognitive functions that are hardwired into the brain from birth, so the word skills here is somewhat misleading as well. The use in neuropsychology of the term Executive Skills dates back decades.

Each person, male or female, has a set of strongest and weakest of these cognitive functions in their makeup. Generally, they have two or three that are their strongest and two or three that are their weakest. Those in the middle are not likely to get women in trouble, though they can’t be dramatically improved either. In the book, we focus on the three strongest and the three weakest of the Executive Skills across all high performers. Everyone has this personal combination of strengths and weaknesses, and the mix varies from person to person.

Here are the names and brief descriptions of the 12 Executive Skills:

1.   Response Inhibition: The ability to think before you act.

2.   Working Memory: The ability to hold information in memory while performing complex tasks

3.   Emotional Control: The ability to manage emotions in order to achieve goals, complete tasks, or control and direct behavior.

4.   Sustained Attention: The capacity to maintain attention to a situation or task in spite of distractibility, fatigue, or boredom.

5.   Task Initiation: The ability to begin projects or tasks without undue procrastination.

6.   Planning/Prioritization: The capacity to develop a road map to arrive at a destination or goal, and knowing which are the most important signposts along the way.

7.   Organization: The ability to arrange or place according to a system.

8.   Time Management: The capacity to estimate how much time one has, to allocate it effectively.

9.   Goal-Directed Persistence: The capacity to have a goal and follow through to the completion of the goal.

10.  Flexibility: The ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, setbacks and new information.

11.  Metacognition: The capacity to stand back and take a bird’s-eye view of yourself.

12.  Stress Tolerance: The ability to thrive in stressful situations.

Once a woman knows her strengths, she can seek jobs, careers, and tasks that play to those strengths.

 * * *

Q:  Based on what you learned from business leaders, what characteristics set high-performing people in all fields apart?

A:  Our study found that it depends on which area of work a person is in. The good news is that there is a place, at least of high performers, for any combination of strengths. For example, in healthcare we found that Working Memory is a commonly found strength while in technology it is Planning/Prioritization.

 * * *

Q:  Are there differences in the strengths of high-performing men and high-performing women?

A:  We found that males and females commonly have two of the same three strengths. Commonly found strengths among both groups were Working Memory and Planning/Prioritization. However, the most frequent Executive Skills in males and females is totally different. In females, the most common strength is Organization, the ability to arrange according to a system. That was not commonly found in male high performers.

 * * *

Q:  Why is it important for aspiring high-performers to identify their weaknesses as well as their strengths?

A:  The key to knowing Executive Skills weaknesses is twofold. It allows a person to identify tasks or even careers that would not be suited to how the person’s brain is ‘wired.’ Tasks that require a person’s weaknesses may be doable, but they will be difficult. And under pressure, a person’s weakest Executive Skills fail first. Secondly, knowing a person’s Executive Skills weaknesses allows her to compensate for that weakness by making sure someone around her has it as a strength. For example, an executive weak in Time Management should make sure her assistant has that as a strength, so that the assistant can keep her on time.

 * * *

Q:  Of all the high-performing people you studied, what is the most common weakness?

A:  The most commonly found weaknesses in high performers overall is Task Initiation.

 * * *

Q:  Any final advice you’d like to offer to career women in particular?

A:  Yes, always try to seek and get into situations that play to your strengths. And when managing, work to get your subordinates into situations that play to their Executive Skills strengths as well.

 * * *

Thank you to Chuck Martin for taking time to answer our questions!  I think it’s very interesting that Chuck and his team’s research demonstrated there were common characteristics or strengths of high performers in various jobs, departments, and industries.  This will be helpful information for women as they seek to re-evaluate a current job or are looking at changing positions or even careers.

If you’d like to learn more about the book, “Work Your Strengths”, you can visit the book page at the publisher site by clicking here. 

~ Lisa Quast

As it relates to business, I think of a mentor as someone who helps another person grow, develop, or progress forward in their career.  Many women begin their careers as a mentee, seeking out others who are willing to help them.  But as we get older I believe it’s important to reach out and mentor younger women, not only to help them with their careers; we should become mentors because being a mentor can actually help our own careers!

Here are some of the key reasons for becoming a mentor:

• Better understand the business:  “My mentee helped me see issues in the company that I didn’t know existed.”
• Better understand how people perceive you:  “I was able to see the perception others held of me, through the eyes of my mentee.”
• Create a larger network:  “By helping others I’ve also created a network of allies I can rely upon when I need help.”
• Help solve issues:  “I’ve been able to step out of my own shoes and help my mentees see things from other perspectives.  This, in turn, has helped me in resolving issues within my own department.”
• Personal satisfaction:  “I have been able to watch and actively help younger women succeed in our industry – and it’s such a wonderful feeling to help another person succeed!”

Now that you’ve heard about the benefits of mentoring from other women, here are some very interesting stats that were compiled by the Human Resources department of Sun Microsystems, as quoted by Anne Fisher, Fortune senior writer, on March 12, 2007 on CNN Money online. 

Sun Microsystems compared the career progress of approximately 1,000 employees over a 5-year period and here’s what they found:

• Both mentors and mentees were approximately 20% more likely to get a raise than people who did not participate in the mentoring program.
• 25% of mentees and 28% of mentors received a raise – versus only 5% of managers who were not mentors.
• Employees who received mentoring were promoted FIVE times more often than people who didn’t have mentors.
• Mentors were SIX times more likely to have been promoted to a bigger job.

Mentoring another person is one of the greatest gifts you could give them.  And there’s almost no better feeling in the world than to help another person accomplish their dreams.  There’s an unexplained karma in the world that you get what you give and the more people you mentor the more the rewards come back to you, only multiplied.

Interested in becoming a mentor but not sure how to get started?  Then check out the Wing to Wing Women’s Mentoring Project website to download the free Mentoring Guide.  The Wing to Wing Women’s Mentoring Project is a global volunteer movement that aims to inspire women to reach out to other women and, through the simple act of offering guidance and insight, help them achieve their personal and professional aspirations.  I founded this volunteer movement because I envision a world where women actively reach out to other women and offer their professional and personal support; mentoring women to success. The goal of the program is to eliminate negative competitiveness and encourage positive assistance, woman to woman, one woman at a time.

Help a woman spread her wings and fly by becoming a volunteer mentor today! 

~ Lisa Quast

You can learn from their vast experience:  I once worked for a very large, global company that was very male-dominated.  One of my mentor’s was a woman several levels above me whom I greatly admired.  She helped me learn and then navigate through the layers of company politics so I could gain more support for my projects, prove myself, and then be considered for larger and more difficult jobs.  Navigating the political labyrinth at work would have been almost impossible to accomplish without the help of my mentor.

They will help you define your career goals:  As a career coach and mentor/trainer to more than 1,700 women over my 20+ year career, I’ve found women are much more successful when they have a mentor to help them define their career goals and objectives.  If you don’t know where you want to go, how will you determine how to get their?  A mentor will help you put a clear plan in place to ensure you achieve your career aspirations efficiently and quickly.  As one happy mentee commented, “My mentor helped me clarify my career aspirations and figure out the actions I needed to take to achieve my career goals.”

They improve your accountability:  A mentor brings accountability and this breeds responsibility.  I’ve found that within a very short period of time, my mentees fall into the habit of holding themselves accountable for completing their action items.  They learn from me, as their mentor (and I learn lots from them!), and then the excitement of completing tasks and seeing the results motivates them even more to hold themselves accountable and strive for achievements they previously thought were impossible.

They will keep private conversations confidential:  I once became a mentor to a woman who, previously, had never had mentors.  The problem she ran into is that because she had no one else to speak with, she had been discussing difficult issues with her manager and even with a colleague, whom she thought she could trust.  This backfired on her because some of the information she had discussed with her manager ended up in her annual performance appraisal.  In addition, the co-worker used some of the private information against her in order to gain a promotion.  This situation underscores the need to have mentors you trust and with whom you can discuss confidential information to gain different perspectives and ideas.

Want to learn more about how to be a good mentee?  Then check out the Wing to Wing Women’s Mentoring Project website for tips and to read about how women around the world have had mentors help them improve their careers and personal lives.  The Wing to Wing Women’s Mentoring Project is a global volunteer movement that aims to inspire women to reach out to other women and, through the simple act of offering guidance and insight, help them achieve their personal and professional aspirations.

The Wing to Wing Women’s Mentoring Project logo depicts a butterfly because it goes through metamorphosis, a series of developmental stages in order to become an adult. As it goes through these stages of life, it transforms to become one of the most beautiful insects on earth. And I truly believe if a caterpillar can transform into a beautiful butterfly, then a woman can transform herself into the person she wants to be.

So ladies, it’s time to reach out and ask other women for help in our careers!  Start cultivating mentors who will help you achieve your career aspirations!

~ Lisa Quast

BJ believes the steps are simpler than most would think.  First, women need to “choose to think about what you DO want in your life, not what you don’t want.  Then once you’re focused on what you want, start moving in that direction.”  And the movement doesn’t need to be by leaps and bounds.  It can be small, incremental baby steps forward, she advises. Her personal motto is, “inch by inch, it’s a cinch.”

In her interview BJ helps women learn how to overcome challenges to the corporate status quo, both as a woman and as an initiator of change as she explains her key steps, including:

• Start with yourself
• Start where you are
• Look around for kindred spirits and align yourself with them
• Don’t let what you can’t do stop you from what you can do
• Keep at it over the long haul

She is a former manager of training and development for the LA Times, who left the newspaper to share her positive messages to a broader audience of corporations, small businesses, professional conferences, and women’s groups.  BJ has written award-winning books, blogs regularly for the Huffington Post, and delivers keynote speeches around the country – motivating and teaching with empathy, warmth, and humor.  Read her feature interview to find out more about her positive message, ideas to tackle challenges, and how to live a life you love.

~ Lisa Quast