The New Advantage in Leadership

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today, we're delighted to be speaking with Dr. Joelle Jay, who is a principal with a leadership research institute as well as an executive coach, keynote speaker, and the coauthor with Howard Morgan of The New Advantage. Joel specializes in the advancement of executive women and has helped a lot of women grow in a variety of very successful companies like MetLife, Adobe, and Microsoft. Joel, I know you're super busy. Thank you so much for making the time today.

Dr. Joelle Jay: Thank you for having me.

Anita Brick: Just so that we're all on the same page. The book you wrote is great. Thank you very much for writing about it. I think it's timely and important. We're all starting with the same definition. How are you defining the new advantage?

Dr. Joelle Jay: The new advantage to me is having women in positions of leadership for a company. Sometimes company leaders saw having women in positions of leadership as a nice to have or a goal, or maybe something they should do. But now we know from the research that has been coming out in the past several years that having women in leadership positions and actually having balanced leadership teams really is an advantage because businesses with more women in leadership do better.

There's another piece to that too, though, I think for women in particular, the new advantage that they have is the opportunity to take leadership roles. And it really takes leadership of their own careers to get those positions. So this really is a new way for leaders to think about owning their careers and advancing themselves. When women really get that message, they also have a new advantage that they didn't have before about being able to put themselves into those leadership positions.

Anita Brick: Got it. Now, questions came from both men and women. First one that was submitted by a student or alum was an executive MBA alum. And he said, what are the most important characteristics organizations look for when hiring people for senior leadership positions? And how can I position myself competitively for these kinds of roles?

Dr. Joelle Jay: Two words I would say are confidence and performance. And maybe if there's a third, it's being able to articulate your performance and contribution when it comes to performance. Howard, my coauthor and I really believe that it's the foundation for a successful career. And the number one thing to be thinking about all the time being very clear on what are the metrics you're expected to perform on and are you meeting those metrics?

Are you exceeding those metrics? If you are, that can give you great confidence that you deserve and have earned and are ready for the position you're applying for? So performance and confidence go hand in hand. And those are really important places to start.

Anita Brick: Well, it's interesting because one of the weekend students said I outperform my peers and this is not my opinion. I was the first of my peers to get promoted. That said, no matter how much I do or the quality of my work, I'm told again and again I expect more of you. How would you recommend that I better manage these expectations, which clearly I'm not managing all that well.

Dr. Joelle Jay: There might be a third leg to the stool of performance and confidence, and that it's being able to articulate your value. So one place to look is, are you able to gracefully, elegantly and clearly articulate the value that you bring, the contribution that you make? It may be a disconnect not between not meeting expectations, but not articulating and making it clear that you have met the expectations too.

Anita Brick: Follow along with that. Because there was a question about this that came from another executive MBA student and she said, I feel that I'm caught up between two conflicting experiences. My company says it. It likes to acknowledge people who do great work. However, if I leave it up to chance, my work rarely gets kudos unless I speak up. But when I do speak up, I'm labeled as bragging.

Dr. Joelle Jay: When we think about getting recognition the right way so that it's not perceived as bragging. What I have heard from the dozens, probably by now, hundreds of interviews that I've done with executive women and men, and they talk about how leaders are most effective in articulating their value. Number one, it's always aligning value to metrics and measures. So that's one piece.

Another piece is to tie that to the efforts that you've actually made. And this doesn't have to be bragging. It doesn't have to be puffed up. It can just be quite factual. What have you done to create those results? What role did you play? How do you feel about that? These are the kinds of questions that you can ask.

I actually can give you a quick exercise for this if you'd like. That could be helpful for all of you who are wanting to articulate your values specifically for the purpose of being recognized for the good work that you do, and the way you would articulate concrete, measurable results is to say something like, as a result of my efforts to do something, identify that something, I have achieved such and such results with this specific benefit to the company.

That doesn't have to be bragging. That's simply a fact put into context. It can actually be a real contribution to your organization, or you can help others see what's really working in a way that helps them make it work for the company in an even bigger way.

Anita Brick: How do you do it in a way that is finessed so it doesn't feel robotic.

Dr. Joelle Jay: Whenever you're learning a new skill? And I say this with my executive coach hat on, give yourself permission to be formulaic and to be robotic. First, just to get your words on paper. Then you can practice saying those words so that they become more and more natural. And then you look for the correct and appropriate context in which to layer them in.

So to give you an example, one of the clients that I've worked with was an executive vice president at a fortune 500 company, and she felt that she should have a seat on the executive committee. Many of her bosses and managers agreed, but she wasn't seen by everyone as having made a contribution. So we sat down and we identified what she had done to earn that C-level title, what she identified was that as a result of her efforts to think about the entire enterprise wide contribution of their team to the end goal result of their company, she was able to transform the organization and significantly improve their impact, including a figure that she could identify in real dollars in the seven figure range by being able to articulate the sentence. As a result of doing this, I've achieved these results with this specific benefit for the company. She got clearer and more confident about what she had actually to achieve and what she had led her team to do. Then she was able to look for appropriate ways to say to the executive committee members, here's something I think you should know.

This is a team that started here. These are some of the things we've accomplished. Here's what we've benefited from them. Here's how the company is moving forward. And I'd like to lead a discussion on where that actually takes us next. So now she's got a comfortable, natural positive way of adding to the value of the company and showing herself to be a leader so it becomes more natural over time.

Anita Brick: It totally makes sense. There was an evening student. This is something that a lot of people struggle with. So far in my career, I've had a series of great projects with solid accomplishments. That said, I haven't found a way to weave them into a solid promotion. Thank you in advance for your help. And by the way, I'm in the financial planning and analysis function. I find it really quite fascinating because the people who do really excellent work, and they end up being in a job for a long time because they aren't able to take that and extrapolate it into the next promotion. What advice would you give him?

Dr. Joelle Jay: Number one, I would start with the advantage of networking. So there's a great advantage to thinking about who's in your network, where are you connected? Where are people powerful? Where are the decision makers? Thinking about that can give you a great advantage for a new promotion, because now you have greater insight into where those promotions might lie, and the people who can help you get the promotion have greater insight into you.

So that's one advantage to take the opportunity to explore another. One of the advantages of sponsorship across your whole network. There may be 1 or 2 people who play the special role of being your sponsor. And so the advantage there is, you have somebody who knows you well enough to not only support you and mentor you, but actually open doors for you, put you into leadership positions. So you might look for a sponsor. And the last advantage I would suggest this leader take advantage of is feedback. I'm a huge advocate for feedback. It's amazing how much direction you can get just by asking the question clearly and transparently and sincerely. It would be a great idea for this leader to talk to powerful people in his or her network and his or her sponsor to say, I've had a number of great projects.

I've had a number of significant accomplishments. I'd like to leverage those into a promotion. Here's a promotion I'd like. Very important piece to add. What advice do you have for me? What feedback do you have? Where am I on track for that kind of a promotion? Where do you think I'm not with that bit of information? This leader and anyone in his or her shoes would be well positioned to move into a higher level of leadership.

Anita Brick: Very interesting. And I want to follow up on two points, but the first one is feedback. And Alan said, I have a manager who doesn't believe in regular feedback outside of my annual performance review. Since we don't work in the same city, it's hard to just drop into his office. How would you advise me to get the feedback that would help me accelerate my growth and advancement?

Dr. Joelle Jay: Getting that feedback is absolutely critical. So here's the breakthrough for this leader. Don't get the feedback from your manager or take the feedback he can give you, or she can give you, but that's only one person. Think about the people you work with every day. What about your clients? What about other senior managers? What about your peers? Who do you admire?

Who can get to know you better so they can give you feedback? So that's first is to really widen the circle of the people that can give you feedback. You can get feedback from all around you. You may have heard of or had a 360 degree profile. So this is something that we at LRC are often called upon to do for leaders, which is where we get feedback for one leader from the people all around him or her.

That may be 12 or 15 people, all commenting on the opportunities and the value and the potential of one leader. You can create that for yourself. So that's part one. Open the circle wider in terms of who gives you feedback. Part two is let's talk about what you do to get the feedback. It's a very simple conversation. It sounds something like this.

Hello senior manager, I am interested in developing myself as a leader. I would really like to get some feedback. I have a few questions I'm posing to people whose opinion I trust, and I would love to get your candid feedback and perspective so that I can understand myself better in terms of where I am now and what I can do to improve.

Would you be willing to have a conversation with me about that? And I can guarantee you the answer to that question is almost always going to be, yes, of course. I'd be happy to give you feedback. And by the way, when you do that now you've started to develop one of those sponsors. We talked about it earlier.

Anita Brick: Okay, this is a really good point. I love the fact that you talked about getting feedback from a broader audience. It's brilliant. The question though, every student who comes through the program goes through a 360 thing that's challenging sometimes because I will give feedback as part of what we do, and we'll sit down and I'll be really curious, how did you choose the people to rate you? And they're like, well, you know, I wasn't really sure what's some guidance that you could provide in terms of who to ask.

Dr. Joelle Jay: So there are some very objective measures and some very subjective measures to use when you're assessing feedback providers. I think on the objective side, imagine doing just what I described, finding 12 to 15 people whose names you need. Get out a blank sheet of paper. Usually when I draw this out with a client, we do it almost like an org chart.

Where is the most senior person who has insight into your leadership that could give you feedback? Identify them first. Are there other senior managers, maybe your direct manager or boss and his or her peers? Then think about next to you side by side, who are the peers and colleagues who know you best and below you in the standard org chart, who are your direct reports and who are their direct reports?

While you're at it, you may fill in the blanks with customers and clients or other people who you want to have feedback from. That's the objective side of the feedback process. The subjective side is which feedback would you like to have? Who would you like to get to know better? Who would you like to learn from? Where do you think you're going to get the best informed feedback?

Who will be the most honest with you? Who may have an impression? I don't know you very well, but they can tell you like nobody else, how they perceived you. And the little while that they've come to know you. These are all very valuable perspectives to have, so you can subjectively kind of canvass your list and say, do I have all of these bases covered? And if not, who can I add? Who will bring that perspective?

Anita Brick: I like that, I like the fact that you're thinking about it in terms of choosing the people who can give informed feedback today. Where are you standing today? Very, very important point. Good will. The other piece that you talked about was network. And there was a question from an alum and she said, I have an amazing booth network filled with people who I know could help me advance in my career.

That said, whether it's within boost or beyond, I'm not getting the traction I want and I haven't found anyone to champion me. What do you believe is the best approach to building senior relationships?

Dr. Joelle Jay: So here is a change in perspective that I would recommend to most people. It sounds like maybe this leader thinks who is in my network and how they can help me? I would recommend a different question, which sounds more like where do I want to go? Who can help me get there, and how can I get to know them so instantly that will break you out of your existing network and help you think in terms of where do you have the most to contribute and where can you make an impact, and also who can be most helpful to you and is actually going to be served by that impact? So that's the first thing I would suggest is to break out of the old network and start creating a new network with that specific purpose in mind.

Anita Brick: I like what you're saying, because it's not just what she is going to get out of this, right? It really is. Where can she make a contribution to add value to the network? Because sometimes people don't get traction because they're going with their handout, as opposed to seeing where they can add value to the other person as well?

Dr. Joelle Jay: Absolutely. To be honest, this is a place that I've evolved myself over the years as a leader, and growing my network is to understand, okay, wow. You know, you can really make an impact. And if you think about where do I want to contribute, what value do I bring, where do I want to have influence and power of my own? Again, it points you to a place where it's really going to matter that you're making some connections.

Anita Brick: That is so important. People view the other person that they want to reach out to as a conduit to resources, as opposed to a human being.

Dr. Joelle Jay: Let's explore that a little bit, because before we go too far down this road, let's remember that that is a traditional way of looking at networking. And I think a lot of people do expect it on both the giving and the receiving end. So let's call that one approach to networking, okay. Another. And they could both be really useful.

This is a difference in the research between how men and women have historically approached networking. I think there's something interesting for both men and women to learn here. Historically, stereotypically, men have approached networking with the point of view that results come first, then relationships come second. So that is a very pragmatic exchange of information and help of various kinds.

Women have historically, stereotypically approached networks as relationships first results. Second, women are known for making long lasting, great deep relationships, and so leveraging them for the sake of business is sort of a natural next step. And that's not usually as pragmatic and results oriented in terms of how can you help me? And by the way, I'll help you back.

So I think knowing that there were these two approaches, two doors into the same results can be helpful for both men and women to recognize that you can turn this relationship around. What really matters is who are you networking with and are you on the same page as far as that goes? So sometimes men can forget to develop relationships.

It really is about, can you help me or not? For women, sometimes they can forget about the results. Happy to have the relationship, but forget to actually take it somewhere to where they're asking for something and that exchange of resources. But it all comes back to where do you want to make a connection and why? And how can you do that in the most thoughtful, intentionally possible, even where you don't have an existing relationship?

Anita Brick: I would agree. In 2008 the financial markets imploded. It felt like there was a shift that people became more concerned, less open to actually helping someone else achieve a result. And I'll hear that someone reached out to me. Never heard from them again. I'm going to be less likely to help the next time. It's not even that they want a relationship with a person, but they want some feedback. They want to know what is worthwhile for you. And it seems like this very transactional approach derails actually getting what you want.

Dr. Joelle Jay: Well, it's offensive. It's insulting. Yeah, I think.

Anita Brick: I would agree with you. You're right here.

Dr. Joelle Jay: I gave you my time and my thoughts and my insight. You just kind of stole that and ran away. Was that even helpful? And so it can be demotivating if you want to build a network. There are steps, actual steps that I would recommend. Certainly following through is one of them.

Anita Brick: It leads to another question from an alum. And she said, I'm at a point in my career I want to sit on corporate boards. My experience has been one level below the C-suite, and sad to say that I'm not really getting anywhere. How can I use the fact that I am female to gain a sponsor who can actually help me land a physician? Because I know without a sponsor, it's never going to happen?

Dr. Joelle Jay: We can use this whole conversation we've just had about networking and reaching out to people to help this leader answer this question. There are no easy answers for women who want to get on board right now. I can tell you there's great interest and energy around having more women on boards. I have seen many women become successful in gaining access on to a board level position by doing some of the things that we'll be talking about now, my advice would be to start with the network we were just describing, and take the steps it takes to build strong relationships and ask there for advice for getting on to boards.

So if there aren't easy answers, then the answer is always to go get the answers. What that looks like is you think about okay, so this leader's outcome is I want to have the opportunity to sit on a board, okay. Who can help you with that? Make the list. Now reach out to them. And when you reach out to them, think very carefully about your message.

And again this goes back to what we were talking about before. What is something meaningful that describes the significant impact you want to make? Why do you want to be on a board? What do you think is going to be a positive outcome of you being successful? If you can express that authentically and sincerely, the people, they will be happy to have a conversation and hear more about your interest in boards and what kind of a role you'd like to play that can then develop into a relationship. So you follow through, follow through with a thank you note. Follow through with another conversation. Let them know what actions you've taken, ask them for more advice and take their advice. Go back and demonstrate that you've taken some new steps and how they're turning out. That's how you develop a real relationship that can absolutely help open some of those doors.

A couple of things I'll comment on though, before running out to follow those steps. Number one, you'll notice I didn't mention the fact that this leader is female to gain a sponsorship for a board position. It's a sensitive approach. Some people will react very positively because they want to see women on board. Some people will react negatively because they don't want the question to be, why don't you have enough women on boards?

I am a woman, therefore you need me on your board. All board members are going to want to know what you bring to the board? If they are looking for women, then that will be a positive for you that you are a woman. But if you lead with that, it can be misread even unfairly. That you only want the position. I think you deserve the position because of the gender you haphazardly were born with. What you really want to lead with is I have something to contribute. I have value to add to this board, and I want to be a member because this is somewhere where I can really make a difference.

Anita Brick: No question. You're so on target with that. I deserve this as opposed to here's the value I bring.

Dr. Joelle Jay: And you know, sometimes they do deserve it. Sometimes things are unfair and you do want to say you do have 100% men on your board, and you really do need a woman. And I really would like to do that. So let's go there. But it's not always received in the way that you would want it to be received. So that's why you need to be cautious.

Anita Brick: Got it I agree. Here's a question. It's a little bit of a tricky question. And it came from an evening MBA student and he said I am seen as very capable. And yet I'm told that I lack executive presence. The problem is I don't know what actions to take to get better at that and to have a greater executive president.

Dr. Joelle Jay: Please help. So this is one of the nine advantages. Let's add it to the list. Executive presence is one of those let's call it attributes that can make or break you. If you don't have executive presence, others won't see you as a leader. They won't see you at their level. They won't view you as being ready for promotion.

If you do have executive presence, it can really elevate you. People do see you as a leader. They want you to elevate and be part of a higher level position because they know you're going to succeed there. So how do you get from the former to the ladder? In part, I believe executive presence comes from within. There's a lot here to be said in terms of confidence, intention, value, impact.

There are also parts of executive presence that are more symbolic, like where you sit in a room. If you walk into a room and sit in the back in deference to everyone else in the room, that's going to communicate a different message than if you walk confidently into the room and sit next to the person chairing the meeting at the front of the table.

Other symbolic characteristics associated with executive presence have to do with the way you dress, the way you speak, how polished you are, how can, how much conviction you have, how much gravitas you are viewed as having, the degree to which other people respect you. These are all parts of executive presence, but that doesn't answer the question. Your leader wants to know.

What actions do I take to have greater executive presence? Let's circle back to some of the things we've talked about before. Ask for feedback. Use your network to ask for feedback. Use your sponsors to give you really transparent and honest, candid feedback about your executive presence, because that can't always be easy to get. On the other hand, there are some things you can do on your own.

One of the pieces of advice that I was originally given for executive presence was to act like you have the position that you want, and when you do that, it puts you in a frame of mind to step forward in a new way. So I thought that was good advice. That's great. Yeah. Let me tell you a quick story about how this looks.

One of the executives that I worked with was a woman on Wall Street who was extremely competent universally. She got positive feedback, but she wasn't seen as really C-level material, to use the words of someone in her 360. That alone is sort of a condescending phrase, but we asked the question and found out why, and the feedback she got told her that she was soft spoken, she was deferential.

She didn't always take up a lot of space in a room. She didn't necessarily speak up and contribute. She felt when she received that feedback that that was much more about her personality and her approach. She said, I am soft spoken. I don't talk just to fill up airtime. I do have something meaningful to contribute, but I'm not just going to hog airspace to get myself noticed.

She also recognized that other people saw her as not having executive presence because executives take that kind of authority. She started watching herself when she was leading a meeting versus when she was participating in meetings, and she started transferring power and authority. She felt that she was kind of master of her domain in terms of the settings, where she was a little intimidated, like talking to the CEO with a huge presence, and she started growing more and more into her skin as a leader.

She started watching what other leaders did, who were in the positions above her, and she started challenging herself little by little to express herself more. And when she did that, she was seen as more valuable and she was given greater opportunities when she acceded in meeting expectations on those opportunities, she was given more responsibilities. By the time we finished working together, she became the CEO of a large division of this international firm and was the first woman ever to do so. So you absolutely can take control of executive presence and grow yourself in that way.

Anita Brick: Very good advice and very practical. Do you have time for one more question? Okay, good. As you think about it, what are three things that a person could begin doing today to leverage women in leadership for the company's benefit, but also for the individual's benefit?

Dr. Joelle Jay: I love the question. It's very practical and there are so many things. Let's choose a few that are going to be appropriate for all of the leaders who are listening. First of all, I would strongly suggest becoming an explicit advocate for a balanced leadership team. Be the one who notices what's a balance in the room when you sit at a conference table, how many men are there and how many women?

By the way, this also applies to any kind of diversity, whether it's diversity of thought, diversity of ethnicity, diversity of photography, diversity of backgrounds, diversity of experience. The question is always do we have a powerful, well balanced, well represented environment mixed in this room of different perspectives? If not, you have a very narrow lens on what it will take to be successful.

That's my first suggestion. The second thing that anyone can do is to be cognizant of the degree to which leaders have sponsors. Whether you are the CEO, leading a company, or the head of HR, putting sponsorship into a place or a single leader who is trying to just make it in your career, you can always be looking at who has a sponsor.

The research on sponsorship shows that men historically have sponsors, and women have not. Just as in the question will point you in the direction of making sure that talented, upwardly mobile women who have the capacity to contribute to the organizations have sponsorship, someone championing them, educating them, opening doors for them. If someone's not looking out for that, including herself, the likelihood of men having sponsors but not women just continues.

The third thing I would suggest is specifically to address the issue of time. Melinda Gates this year and her letter with Bill Gates talked about a priority for all women and for all businesses, and really for all leaders to look at time and how important it is for women to have time. All the research shows that for reasons that are cultural, societal and historical, women spend more time in a day doing unpaid work. Oftentimes that's housework or child care, or even taking care of their parents and their in-laws. Men do not have the same amount of time taken by unpaid work. That is instantly a barrier that all leaders can look at and figure out. How can we make sure that we are being sensitive to the demands of time on all of our leaders, and making opportunities for everyone that helps them also succeed?

Anita Brick: Those are three good things. If we can do all of that, can you imagine what will happen in our workplaces?

Dr. Joelle Jay: It's so transformative. And, you know, I'll sort of finish with this. I mentioned earlier that I've interviewed over 100 senior level executives, presidents, vice presidents and C-level executives of fortune 500 companies for the new advantage. What I've found is when there are women in leadership positions, all of these questions, all of these challenges, all of these issues go away.

And what the women will tell you is the culture has changed now. We used to have all these challenges about imbalanced leadership teams. How do we take advantage of the talents of women at the senior levels? And now we don't have those challenges anymore? Company changed. They changed because we changed. And now we're able to focus on the business.

Anita Brick: That's exactly what we want. It sounds like there is much work to do, but that each of us can do a little bit of it, which could add up to a fairly significant shift in culture.

Dr. Joelle Jay: Absolutely.

Anita Brick: Thank you so much for writing this. The work you're doing is clearly very, very important. Please go to Joel's site and take a look. There's some great things there. It is TheNewAdvantageBooking.com. Joel, thanks again. Thanks for making the time and for writing the book and helping lead us into a really transformative, positively transformative mode and culture.

Dr. Joelle Jay: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Anita Brick: Thank you so much and thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.