Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

  • 4 Tips for Succeeding as a Woman in Male Dominated Career Field

    4 Tips for Succeeding as a Woman in Male Dominated Career Field

    Today’s post comes from a guest blogger, Sara Beth Wilcox.  Sara Beth is Project Manager with a large construction company.

    With high aspirations to be an architect, I went to Auburn University and spent a year in the program before my professors told me what I already knew: I was not a good fit.  I switched to Building Science and found immediately that it had all the things that made me want to be an Architect and was a better fit for my interests and skills in organizing and scheduling activities in a sequence to reach a finished product.

    As a reflect on my work, there are four key observations and advice from my first ten years working as a female in a sea of males on construction sites:

     

    1. Shake it off.  People are going to assume, and usually will ask if you are the secretary when they walk into a construction jobsite trailer.  Once people are informed that you are not the secretary, they usually have additional comments about the fact that you are a female in construction. Sometimes these folks are genuinely interested in what got you interested in construction, sometimes their comments are mean and intended to be so. Work to learn how to discern between the two and when you encounter the latter, let it roll off your back then get in your car and turn on Taylor Swift’s “Shake it off”.  I find it impossible to remain angry after a good “haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate …” sing along.

    2. You can be a part of the team and still be you.  You can be a part of the team without having to be “one of the guys”.  About 99% of my coworkers hunt. I do not.  And I do not have to hunt for them to like me.  Support your team by sharing in their excitement when they kill the big buck or call in the turkey but do not try to tag along or fake interest unless you genuinely enjoy it.  Have your own interest and use those to your advantage.  In addition to already mentioning Taylor Swift, I am going to further perpetuate the female stereotype here: I really love to bake. And, I have found that my co-workers and field staff are usually more willing to help me when I bring homemade cookies to a meeting, this is known as the ultimate win-win.

    3. Be real.  I was at a conference recently speaking on a panel with other women in construction. A fellow female panelist advised the high school students we were talking to: ”NEVER let them see you cry”, the “them” referring to male counterparts. I was more than a little taken aback by this statement and disagree completely. We all deal with things differently. Unfortunately, when I am stressed I cry.  I wish it wasn’t true but I have tried my hardest and there’s just no getting around that knot in my throat when I experience a major disappointment or setback at work. This does not happen on a regular basis, but it has happened and will happen again. I try to seek privacy but sometimes it is just too late. I am not ashamed by the fact that I deal with stress differently than my male peers, it is who I am.

    4. Work hard; comparisons aren’t necessary.  Construction is hard work. It is physically and emotionally (see above) taxing on me. Do I have to work harder to prove myself because I am female? Do I make the same as my male co-workers? I honestly have no idea.  (I am able to focus less on fair wages because I trust the company I work for. I recognize not everyone has this luxury and am not suggesting that it should be overlooked if you think as a female you are making less than your male counterparts.) I work hard because I love what I do, I do not want to let my co-workers down, and because it is the right thing to do for my company. Someone smart once said “Comparison is the thief of Joy.” So true, and it’s also the thief of productivity. The less time you spend comparing yourself as a female to your male coworkers, the more time you have to give your job your all!

     

    Be Yourself. Work Hard. And don’t spend much time thinking about being a female in a male dominated industry. When you do come across something that distinguishes you from your male counterparts: recognize it, embrace it, then get back to work!

    Are you a female or a male in an industry dominated by the other gender?  What is the best advice you have for navigating in your role?

  • Being a Great Leader Is a Lot Like Being a Standout Salesperson

    Being a Great Leader Is a Lot Like Being a Standout Salesperson

    Through involvement in a community group, I had the opportunity (or drudgery, depends on how you look at it, I guess) to sit through six companies presenting their “solution” to a need. After they were all done, it was obvious which company was the best. And everyone, meaning about ten people, who had heard the presentations, agreed. When was the last time you had ten people agree on something easily? Yeah, that’s what I thought; hard to think of a time when you have, right?

    With this being said, the obvious winner knew what they were doing. But it wasn’t because the salesperson from the best company was the most dynamic or attractive. I think one company thought sending the most attractive and nicely dressed female was going to do it for them. They must have thought she was going to be able to distract us from realizing that their product was inferior… but I digress….

    We often think that winning the award for best leader also involves characteristics like charisma and attractiveness. However, what hit home for me in seeing the round robin of presentations was a clear comparison and contrast of what makes a good sales pitch versus what doesn’t. Turns out, many of these things that make a good salesperson can also be applied to cultivating a great leader:

    1. Know your audience. Who are your people and what makes them tick?  What are their pain points? Adapt your communication and style to address these things.  In other words, canned sales pitches usually aren’t that effective.
    2. To get to know people better, ask good questions to calibrate your audience.  Clarify expectations and needs.
    3. Shut up.  Ask good questions (#2) and then listen thoughtfully. Cater your responses to what you hear (back to #1).
    4. Think like a marketer. People pay attention more when you talk in the form of analogies and visuals that tell a story. Facts are needed, but they are boring.   Appeal to the heart first through storytelling to grab people’s attention and then back up what you are saying with facts to make sure the head gets it.
    5. Your facts should mostly be in the form of results achieved. I was blown away by how the best company framed their entire discussion around the key results factor the group was looking for (#1) and had multiple client examples to prove it.  Most of the others focused on the facts of how they would do what they do, not why to do it. The “what” doesn’t matter if you can’t capture the “why”.
    6. Be authentic. People can spot a phony from a mile away and they can see past the short skirts and the corporate jargon. Being authentic involves:
      • Developing a distinct personality and brand (see #4) that is true to who you are and the company you represent.
      • Telling the truth.The best company was honest upfront about the things about their systems and offerings that weren’t perfect, but provided details on how they are working to address those issues.
      • Believing wholeheartedly in what you do and wanting to tell people about it not to make a sale, but because you know you can meet a need and help.

    Are you a leader who thinks like a salesperson?

  • Why Communities Should Focus on Building Social Capital and How They Can Do It

    Why Communities Should Focus on Building Social Capital and How They Can Do It

    I drive within a 50-mile radius of my home quite often to meet with clients or potential clients. On one particular drive from one town to the next, the highway used to be lined with dozens of nursery wholesalers. Thousands upon thousands of trees, shrubs and plants used to grow along this stretch of the highway and many of the remnants of these nursery farms can still be seen.

    Why would all of these nurseries locate side by side? Wouldn’t that increase the proximity of their competition, thus decreasing their potential sales?

    This small, rural Alabama phenomenon about nurseries can also be said of Silicon Valley. While the companies in this region don’t necessarily compete for customers due to proximity- most of them have a global sales footprint- they most certainly compete for labor, as the nurseries did at one point in time as well. Wouldn’t the competition for labor (and real estate/land) in such close proximity to each other drive the prices on everything up leading to a diminished ability to remain competitive or produce as large a profit?

    Turns out, the opposite is true as The New Geography of Jobs  points out.  The proximity to the social capital of your industry leads to value and competitive advantage, not the other way around.   And it creates a snowball effect.  The more technology companies that locate in Silicon Valley, the higher likelihood that more will come because it creates a community that is desirable and attractive to similar companies and the talent who work for these types of companies.  It creates a “thick” labor market.

    While we’ve been talking a lot about individuals developing their social capital in order to grow their competitive advantage, communities can and should foster the growth of social capital as well.

    But what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Do the organizations that create the jobs, thus producing the demand side of the economic equation provide the key to community growth or does the supply side, the people, create the growth?

    Most economic stimulus policies focus on driving the demand or organizational side of the equation. Tax incentives focus on getting companies to locate in a community, and these packages continue to become more and more competitive. Some research even points to the fact that the ROI of many of packages isn’t there.

    By and large, communities do not focus on stimulating the supply side of the equation through stimulus-type measures. Yes, communities work to improve their educational infrastructure and outputs to improve supply, but this doesn’t guarantee an increased supply of labor, especially in high growth or in-demand areas.

    Because of the sheer power of social capital at a community level, stimulating supply side economics should be more of a focus for communities wanting to grow.

     

    Some ideas for doing this include:

    • Pay off the debt of students in high demand skill areas in exchange for them living and working in your community. This has been done for a while in rural communities and medical fields, but we are now seeing communities do this in technical fields like engineering and IT.
    • Pay the best to come to your community and others will follow. If you want a good example of this, check out the Washington University example in The New Geography of Jobs  on page 198-199.
    • Create hubs for collaboration or co-work spaces in your community. This “turns isolated innovators into a real community, a creative ecosystem designed to maximize knowledge spillovers.”
    • Incentivize entrepreneurs to come to your community through business incubation and accelerator programs. Although different, this can play quite nicely with creating hubs for innovation and co-work spaces.

     

    Basically, all of this comes down to bribing people instead of bribing business. Because social capital is the competitive advantage driving innovation today, communities would do well to begin bribing people, not just business. Just make sure you bribe the right people- those with the skill sets and connections to drive innovation and create a multiplier effect of job creation and community growth.

  • Career Assessments – The Key to Your Career

    Career Assessments – The Key to Your Career

    Career assessments are a great tool for determining your career path. Assessments can help build self-awareness and then link you with career options based on your talents, passions and values.Whether you are taking your first leap into the workforce, contemplating a college major or making a mid-career change, assessments are certainly a resource you should consider.

    If you do any research on career assessments, you will find there are a vast number ofoptions. There are formal ones that must be administeredby a professional as well as informal onesthat can be done by others or even self-administered.

    So, how do you know where to begin? Here is just a few types of assessments that are offered to individuals considering assessments:

    • Interest Inventories
    • Work Values Inventories
    • Personality Inventories

    Taking a combination of these types of assessments, along with consulting with someone skilled in career development,can help you create a clear picture for career direction.

    A couple of well-knownformalassessments you might have heard ofincludeMBTI and the STRONG Interest Inventory.

    Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a personality type inventory.”The purpose of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) personality inventory is to make the theory of psychological types described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful in people’s lives. The essence of the theory is that much seemingly random variation in the behavior is actually quite orderly and consistent, being due to basic differences in the ways individuals prefer to use their perception and judgment.
    Checkout this link to find your MBTI.

    STRONG Interest Inventory “The Strong Interest Inventory® assessment is one of the world’s most widely respected and frequently used career planning tools. It has helped both academic and business organizations develop the brightest talent and has guided thousands of individuals—from high school and college students to midcareer workers seeking a change—in their search for a rich and fulfilling career.”
    Click here to visit the website.

    Here are some of our favorite informal assessments that can be self-administered:

    • Who Do U Want 2B? – Great for high school students just beginning exploration
    • My Next Move – Ideal for high school, college or adults who are interested in making a career change
    • Values Card Sort – Ideal for individuals interested in determining what work values are priorities

    If you would like a more in-depth assessment administered by a professional, please contact us at Horizon Point Consulting for more information! We would love to assist you in navigating the next step in your career.

  • 6 People You Need to Build Social Capital With

    6 People You Need to Build Social Capital With

    “The moment you partner with somebody, you tap into something you never had access to before. You gain their knowledge, experience, influence, and potential. When you are already achieving at a highly efficient level, you don’t gain a great increase by getting significantly better yourself.  You gain it by partnering or connecting with other good people who bring something different to the table.  And that makes you better.” John Maxwell, Intentional Living

    John Maxwell points to a great truth in this quote.  We can only make ourselves exponentially better through partnerships with others.

    As we round out a focus on social capital, here are the key people I believe we need to collaborate with in order to build:

    1. People who share your values.

    John Maxwell goes on in Intentional Living to expand the quote above to say, “…If the partnerships you make are with like-valued people, there is no limit to the difference you can make.”   Are you surrounding yourself with people who share your values?

    However, being of like values doesn’t mean the people you build with have the same personality, demographics, or even opinions. Quite the contrary. Once values are shared,your social capital expands by capitalizing on differences.  Start by playing on the same field for the same purpose, and then make sure you have a winning team by involving:

    2. People who complement you. We’ve all got strengths and weaknesses in our skills, talents, and personality.   Are you building relationships with people who complement you in your challenge spots?  For example, when it comes to skills, one of my challenge spots is HR compliance and law.  I don’t like it, so I don’t take time to learn it.  You better believe I have a couple of good labor attorneys on speed dial.

    3. People who challenge you. I love this quote from Talent Anarchy, “In any group you are either going to have disagreement or dishonesty. Which one would you rather not have?” Make sure there are people around you who will challenge and disagree with you.  This is also quite often the person who won’t let you quit.

    4. People who the world would label as being able to do nothing for you. One of my favorite thoughts about leadership is to gauge a leader by when he/she first walks into a crowded room or group of people.  What does he/she do first?  How does he/she treat or seek out the people who the world would tell him/her can do nothing for him/her?  Do they look for the most “powerful” person in the room first or do they seek the “outcast”? I’ve watched my dad do this right for years.  He usually is the first to approach the most unlikely person in the room that no one else is talking to, and the person who oftentimes appears to be the most different from him.

    For more on this, check out: Leaders Notice the Unnoticed

    5. The person who you want to be. Who do you admire most? How much time are you spending with them?  If you don’t know them personally, why haven’t you made every effort to become a part of their circle and you a part of theirs?

    6. The people who are connectors by nature. Everyone has core strengths, and I’m finding more and more, that some people’s core strength is that they are connectors of people (People who have done StrengthsFinder know these people by the key strength of “Connectedness”). They have the social capital game down. They don’t need steps to know how to build it, they just do it naturally. If you don’t know who to call for help, I bet there are one or two people that come to mind that you know you can pick up the phone and call because they know whom you need to call for help. Check in with these connectors regularly because they can connect you to people when you need it, but more importantly, they will connect you to people of like values when you are needed.  And that is social capital at is finest.

    Who do you need to be connecting with to multiple your significance?

    Like this post? You may also like this one from Talent Anarchy: Social Capital HR’s Secret Weapon Party 3