The Role that Leaders Play in Creating the New “Office” Experience

The Role that Leaders Play in Creating the New “Office” Experience

We are all experiencing a big shift in the way we work. Even prior to the pandemic, more people were working remotely than ever before. Now, 42 percent of the U.S. labor force is working from home full-time, according to new research from Stanford University. Most of the stigmas about working from home have eroded as we all adjust to this new reality. Although there are some who crave a return to office or want their teams to return to the office, I think leaders can and will play an important role in creating flexibility in where we work. I am hoping that in our post-COVID world, we will have a more flexible, work-from-home economy. 

I work at a place where most of the staff have been on site at the bedside or in exam rooms caring for patients. But, we still have more than 5,000 people working from home. I also sit on boards that have held all of their meetings remotely for the past 8 months. I could never have imagined this kind of shift. So how do leaders play a role in ensuring that we learn from this new normal and develop new and sustainable work habits?

It starts with modeling the right behaviors and ensuring that you don’t tolerate what I call “AWA (alternative work arrangement) shaming”. I do a combination of AWA and working on site, so that I am visible to those that need to be physically there. I believe that visibility goes a long way towards showing that I value and support their work. At the same time, I am trying to ensure that our leaders get much more comfortable with the idea that oftentimes their teams are more productive at home. 

I practice and get comfortable with my new normal. When I can, I take walks if I have a break during the day. Clearing my head is really important and gives me the opportunity to think and act more purposefully. Until recently, I would have never built that time into my day. I have also been trying to create some boundaries when I work at home. When you are working from home, it is easy to start working from the time you open your eyes until bedtime. I needed to stop that behavior by putting boundaries around my work time and I needed to express that to my leadership team. 

Now that 90% of my closet — the part that comprises my business attire — has been dormant for many months, I have gotten more comfortable with “dressing down”. In the past, I was much more formal at work and hence created a more formal dress code atmosphere with the people around me. That will change now that I have gotten more comfortable with a relaxed business attire at home and in the office. Today I actually wore black jeans and a cardigan sweater to work. I would have never done that in the past but I am committed to creating a new, more comfortable trend.

I do miss being able to grab a tea with a colleague or go to a happy hour networking event after work. But, virtual happy hours and cooking demonstrations have become a new evening event for me. While it is not the same as in-person connections, it is a way to meet our deep need for human connection during this isolating time.

My husband and I often remark about how lucky we are that our kids are grown and we are not homeschooling them while working from home. I’m fortunate to have a living situation that allows me to work from home successfully, but I know a lot of people who don’t have that same luxury of privacy or a designated workspace at home. I have seen some of my colleagues get very creative. One works from his garage to give him space from his children who are attending school virtually. I do worry about the long-term effects caused by the disparity in home offices, and women are disproportionately affected due to child care responsibilities.  

The separation between our work and personal lives can be hard to distinguish right now, so setting boundaries anyway we can is imperative to our success and wellbeing. I am committed to making sure that more flexible working arrangements are sustainable in the future. In the meantime, we are all learning as we go and doing our best to model an “it’s okay to work from home” mindset with our teams.

Avoiding Tokenism

Avoiding Tokenism

Tokenism: the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, especially by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce.

In my last post, I emphasized how good intentions are not enough in taking a stand against racism and injustice. However, too often CEOs and Corporate Boards take action by identifying a person of color, a woman or another minority, promoting them to a leadership role, and they believe that they are meeting the intent of inclusion. Whether intentionally or because they lack perspective, this is simply not enough to change corporate culture and truly create more equitable organizations. All organizations need to rapidly move towards having leadership that actually represents the people they serve. 

Finding diverse leaders is something I have long been passionate about. I have chaired our Diversity Council at my organization for the past 13 years and have learned a few things from many of my incredible colleagues. While I have a long way to go, I’d like to offer a few pieces of advice for leaders who want to move toward an inclusive environment and truly create a representative leadership team. 

  1. Build and open your network. Be deliberate about reaching out to leaders who identify as racial minorities and ask them to introduce you to their network. 
  2. If working with a search firm, ask them to start with a slate of diverse candidates first, not just give you a slate of candidates and include some diverse candidates. If you cannot find a candidate in the initial pool of diverse leaders, you can open that pool up over time.
  3. When hiring a leader, you should understand that we all have built-in biases and that many of us have the benefits of privilege. I strongly suggest that hiring managers take unconscious bias training and refresh what they have learned each time they are hiring a leader.
  4. Include panels of diverse leaders in the interview process. You will not attract diverse leaders if they are not able to see someone that looks like them. This means that you may need to call upon your diverse leaders to carry the burden of participating in many recruitments. But, this approach will ensure that the right questions are asked of the candidates and that the candidates will see visible signs that your organization is committed to diversity.

I want to leave you with some powerful numbers to think about. In her book, White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo highlights how our most powerful institutions are almost completely without the perspective and talents of people of color. As you read these statistics, I invite you to think about what effect having a handful of minorities in leadership positions actually has when confronted with this reality. We need a fundamental shift in how we think about leadership diversity in our organizations, not just checking the box with a few diverse leaders. 

  • Ten Richest Americans: 100% white 
  • US Congress: 90% white
  • US governors: 96% white
  • Top military advisors: 100% white
  • President and vice president: 100% white
  • US House Freedom Caucus: 99% white
  • Current US presidential cabinet: 91% white
  • People who decide which TV shows we see: 93% white
  • People who decide which books we read: 90% white
  • People who decide which news is covered: 85% white
  • People who decide which music is produced: 95% white 
  • People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95% white
  • Teachers: 82% white
  • Full-time college professors: 84% white
  • Owner’s of men’s professional football teams: 97% white
Leading During a Time of Crisis

Leading During a Time of Crisis

The COVID 19 pandemic is certainly giving us the opportunity to see how leaders perform during a time of crisis. It is also making us more aware than ever, the important role true leadership plays in supporting our society when uncertainty is the norm. We have all seen good and bad examples of leadership throughout the past month. If you are a leader, here are some of the guidelines that I am following to lead during this crisis that may also help inform your own leadership style:

Remain calm, continue to let your presence be known and reassure your teamyour team will look to you to gauge their anxiety.  Remember, during this difficult time team members will be hyper-focused on what you say and do. 

Be clear, concise and consistent with your communicationsDevelop a small group to tap into to see if your messages are getting across. I sometimes believe I am being clear, but then hear that people are reading different intent into my messages.

Be decisive during times of crisis, your teams are looking for a decisive leader. Have confidence in your decisions, but let them know that you will adjust as more data comes in that informs your decision making.

Be visiblehow can you be visible during a time of physical distancing? Hold virtual meetings using a video function, check in more frequently with people and if you have the opportunity, visit people in their workplace and thank them. Either way, take the time to show your gratitude.

Assess your team’s capacitymake sure you are giving people time to disconnect. 

Foster creativityI am always reminding people to practice progress over perfection. Put diverse teams together and give them space to come up with creative solutions to problems.

Don’t forget to spend time on planning for the future it is easy to get consumed during a crisis. You need to set aside time each day to think about the long term success and viability of your organization.

It is easy to lead when all is going well, it’s during times of crisis that you need to make the conscious decision to be a good leader. Learn from other leaders that you admire, your team is counting on you. What are some examples of strong leadership that you’ve notice since this crisis began? What challenges are you facing in your own organizations?

2019 Recap

2019 Recap

Happy New Year! 

As someone who takes goal-setting seriously, I enjoy looking back on the year, assessing progress I’ve made and looking ahead to all that I still want to do. While long lists of New Year’s resolutions often set you up for failure, I prefer to focus on one professional and one personal goal for the next year. I’m sharing mine below, but I’d also love to hear from you. Reading your comments helps me learn what’s important to you, and to get new ideas for topics to cover on this blog. 

My 2020 Goals:

  • Personal: Take a few minutes each day to meditate. 
  • Professional: Double my efforts to make connections with and listen to front-line staff.  

My Favorite Posts from 2019: 

  1. Knowing Your Bandwidth

I began thinking about this post a few weeks ago, on a typical Sunday evening. My husband Lou and I had been traveling and we’d just returned home. I intended to use the evening to get the kitchen ready for our remodel that was about to begin, pack up everything that needed to be moved, complete the rest of my New Years cards and get ready for the week ahead. As I began this work, he became frustrated; “Madeline, you have an endless supply of bandwidth, and you have to remember that I do not.” READ MORE

2. The Upside of Vulnerability

We live in a culture with an ever-increasing focus on perfection. Whether it’s at home or in the workplace, we put so much pressure on ourselves to do everything, and do it perfectly. At work, the idea of always being over-prepared, with no question you can’t answer and nothing you haven’t thought of is likely appealing. However, this masks one of our most powerful tools as a leader – vulnerability. READ MORE

3. Developing Our Successors, Millennial Women in the Workplace

I am passionate about sharing advice for young women looking to advance their careers, especially for those looking towards the C-Suite. I offer suggestions on everything from taking stretch assignments and negotiating raises, to adjusting bad speech habits and dressing like a leader. However, I sometimes wonder if we’re expecting younger generations to conform to our workplace norms at the expense of truly letting their unique priorities and values shine through? READ MORE

4. Unlearning the Lessons of Charm School

There is nothing more rejuvenating than spending an evening out with close female friends. The camaraderie, support and laughter that accompanies these types of friendships is, in my opinion, an essential part of mental health. I recently had dinner with my two closest friends; women I can share anything and everything with, and with whom I can truly be myself. We talk about our common experience of having our children get married and laugh about how men (and specifically, our husbands!) need to find “man friends” (why do women seem to be so much better at recognizing the essential nature of supportive friendships!?) READ

5. Developing Helping Relationships, Making the Most of Your Networks

With the growth of social media platforms such as LinkedIn and endless other networking groups, we’ve seen a significant increase in our personal and professional networks. Just think about your connections. Now, think about how many of those people you actually know. How many of them could you help you advance your career or make a meaningful business connections? How many of them could you truly ask for a favor or an introduction? Probably not many. I think it’s important to learn how to develop more “surface-level relationships” into more meaningful relationships that can help us meet our personal and professional goals. READ MORE

Wishing you all a happy and healthy 2020 – please leave me a comment below and tell me what you’d like to read on the blog on the next year.

Beat ‘Em With Your Brains

Beat ‘Em With Your Brains

An Interview with Dr. Eve J. Higginbotham on Diversity in Leadership

In the past few years, there has been much public discussion over gender equality. While not nearly enough progress has been made in the fight for equal pay or representation at the highest levels, we have seen some notable advances. For example, a record-breaking number of women CEO’s (33) appeared on the most recent Forbes 500 list. However, when we dig a little deeper we see that despite this progress, there is another story to be told. Only one of the 33 women listed was a woman of color, and she was holding an interim position. If you ask many women in the workplace, the advances we’re celebrating are clearly not benefitting all of us. 

I started Heels of Success with the goal of elevating women in the workplace, but it’s important to me that we are elevating ALL women. In my role as CEO of CHOP, increasing representation is a priority for me. I’ve spent considerable time focusing on diversity within our Board of Trustees, and CHOP’s Diversity Council, which I chair, is partnering with teams across the organization to implement our Diversity Strategic Plan. Seeing this Forbes list made me stop and think about how I could address this issue on the blog. I decided to speak with a woman who has made diversity and inclusion a core element of her personal and professional mission, Dr. Eve J. Higginbotham, Vice Dean and Professor of Ophthalmology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. A friend and professional colleague of mine, I’ve always admired Eve, and even more so after this interview. 

She’s had an extraordinary career, beginning with her undergraduate and graduate studies at MIT then attending Harvard Medical School. She’s served as the Dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Senior Vice President for Health Sciences at Howard University, and Professor and Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, a position she held for 12 years. Her resume reads like a masterclass in leadership – holding top positions of all kinds, often in male-dominated organizations and fields (you can read her full bio here). Her personal story also provides insights into how women of color, or those with mutiple intersects, as she puts it, rise above a lifetime of microaggressions, discrimination and bias, and how white women might become better allies in addressing the lack of racial diversity in leadership. 

Dr. Higgenbothom was kind enough to sit down with me recently for an interview. Below is a summary of our conversation. 

MB: Tell me about your upbringing. Was it always expected that you’d pursue a career? 

EH: My parents were both teachers and always raised me to focus on education and what I wanted to achieve, despite any discrimination I might face. And growing up in New Orleans in the 50’s and 60’s, there was discrimination – every day “microagessions” as we refer to them now. My mother would always say, “just beat ‘em with your brains” and my father was a Tuskegee Airman – both of them provided great examples and formed me in a way that I knew not to let the environment drag me down. But I did grow up being influenced by what was happening around me – and I learned that I only had control over how I reacted to the world around me, and how I let it shape me. 

MB: How have you dealt with discrimination in your career? 

EH: I remember noticing how the subjectivity in medical school illuminated discrimination in a new way. Growing up, I liked math and science because it was all about merit – there was a wrong or a right answer, so I thought MIT was a good place to start my higher education, and it was. The fact that engineering and science are much more data driven didn’t leave as much room for discrimination – if you got a problem right, you excelled. It wasn’t until medical school that I started to notice things like that fact that not everyone was being asked to give a report. In fact, one of the reasons I went into a surgical specialty is because there was a comfort level there that reminded me of my life at MIT; I was able to publish scientific papers in my speciality, and that really helped me have a rapid rise – allowing me to become a department chair in my early forties. 

MB: Why do you think there is still such a lack of representation at the highest levels of corporate leadership? Do you have any perspective on why we are we seeing an increase in white women holding these positions and not women of color? 

EH: There are more white women to begin with in the pipeline and more white women who are likely to have sponsors or even family members in positions of power who can serve as sponsors. The bottom line is that we do not have sufficient diversity at the highest levels, which is unfortunate given the power of cognitive diversity. Bringing together different perspectives produces more innovative and profitable organizations. I believe it is a matter of critical numbers of women who can help others succeed and demonstrate to others what is possible. 

MB: What are some concrete things leaders should be doing to ensure that the next generation of leaders they’re preparing represent a diverse group of women? 

EH: There are four things I would recommend to leaders:

  1. Recognize the barriers that exist within oneself, within the relationships where one spends most of one’s time, the micro and macro environments, and the national political context.
  2. Once one becomes self-aware, develop strategies within each of these domains that you can change and role model for others.
  3. Develop a plan to implement each of these strategies. For example, understand our own biases; expand your relationships within the professional workplace and include new perspectives in your research or work. Develop a plan related to at least one process within your workspace and optimize its objectivity, e.g. evaluation of your direct reports. 
  4. Finally, seek out others with a different perspective and have a constructive conversation about differing perspectives. Find common ground and seek to understand the differences. As leaders, we need to be coaches, mentors, and sponsors and seek out new future leaders to nurture and grow.  If everyone does these things, they we will have more diverse leadership that is developed and sustained.

MB: Alternatively, what mistakes are that those advocating for gender equity making that have led us to such under-representation for women of color? 

EH: In my opinion, many of us tend to gravitate to those who have shared experiences and one must be intentional in going beyond the immediate group of individuals with whom one spends time and mentor.  There has been an intentionality to going outside one’s usual group of collaborators.  

Thank you to Dr. Higginbotham for taking the time to talk with me, and for so candidly sharing her experiences and perspectives. As leaders, we know the most important way to achieve success in anything we do is to develop thoughtful strategies, set goals, and ensure there is accountability for achieving them. This applies directly to increasing diversity in our leadership teams. If you’re in a leadership position, I encourage you to develop a plan for creating a more diverse, inclusive and equitable environment in your organization through setting specific, measurable goals. At my organization, our diversity goals include improving the environment at CHOP by developing and modeling a culture of inclusion; increasing our focus on recruiting, developing and retaining diverse talent; providing more equitable care; and improving CHOP’s reputation in these important areas. I truly believe that our diversity is our greatest strength, and this work will make us even stronger. 

My Top 3

My Top 3

During my years at CHOP, I have received wonderful advice from managers and colleagues that has helped me advance my career in ways I never imagined possible when I was starting out as a young nurse. I strongly believe the most important part of my job is to develop future leaders. While many of these posts tackle specific challenges or topics, there are a few key lessons I’ve learned that stand out in my years of experience. Here are my top three pieces of advice no matter where you are in your career.

  1. Don’t take a job for the title. Many people think that a certain title will give them credibility. In fact, your influencing skills – that is, your ability to gain support and “followership” from the people who will be affected by a decision – are far more important than your title. Your influencing skills, not necessarily a title, will help you get things done. Start practicing this no matter what your current title is.
  1. Work for a place that you believe in. To be successful in your career, it’s important to work for a place that reflects your own values. One of CHOP’s biggest strengths is that we have a workforce that is inspired by our mission and values. Having a team made up of employees who share a sense of mission and purpose makes us much more effective as a team. Ask yourself some tough questions, and if you don’t truly believe in the mission, leaders, or goals of your company or organization, start looking for what might be a better fit.
  1. Take on “stretch” assignments. Ask to take on a project you don’t feel entirely prepared for – even if the idea scares you. You will find your biggest opportunities for growth when you step outside your comfort zone. Pay close attention in meetings – is there an issue that keeps coming up that no one seems to be tackling? Suggest to your boss that you work on solving it. Even if you don’t have an idea for a certain project, let your boss know that you’re looking for an extra challenge (just make sure you are doing A+ work in all of your current responsibilities!)

If you’ve received a particularly helpful piece of career advice from a friend, colleague or mentor, I would love to hear it!