HR Professional - June/July 2008 - (Page 25)

leadership positions, the female students sometimes feel intimidated by the males. “Every year it’s the same thing,” says Konrad. “We have a conversation with our young women— strong, amazing women compared to 20 or 30 years ago. But many young men are in your face, aggressive, alpha male types. They can be pretty intimidating.” Suddaby, who helps failing executives get better at their jobs, recalls one such alpha male who had excellent business skills but couldn’t Not that the ofﬁce is a place for unbridled emotional outbursts. “If anyone needs to get their personal, emotional needs met at work, they’re in for trouble,” Bruno says. “Get your emotional needs met outside of work, and let your work live your values.” Still, no one disputes that leaders should show signs of being human. Rocca Morra Hodge, director of HR for Warner Bros. Entertainment Canada, has worked with CEOs who were anything but charismatic. “But boy did they ever Get your emotional needs met outside of work, and let your work live your values. get along with anyone. What that unpopular vice-president needed was to build relationships so his team wouldn’t see him as arrogant and standofﬁsh. With some coaching, the vice-president succeeded. People received him warmly, and he was able to get some buy-in for his ideas. Creating that connection, Suddaby says, is extremely valuable in business. “Because tomorrow I’m going to ask you to stay late and work and not see your family, and I won’t even have time to explain why.’” Marnee Bruno, a career coach with Co-Pilot Management Inc., is forever reminding female executives that leadership is not about trying to act male. “It’s counterintuitive,” she says. “You block yourself from the very thing that makes you a wonderful leader, which is your femininity. Merging that which is intrinsically you and allowing it to be part of the corporate world is a phenomenal feat in and of itself.” w w w.H RThought L eader. c om ‘‘ engage people when they spoke. They were compelling, but with a quiet energy, and people would go to the ends of the earth for them.” She recalls one particular CEO who hated addressing a large group. “Yet he was so good at it. He was always very clear and simple in his message, and people really felt comfortable going to him.” So if the leadership style traditionally seen as “female” has become a winning formula, what’s stopping more women from being CEOs? Don’t enough women want the job? ’’ DEFINING SUCCESS It’s not that women don’t want to contribute to an organization at the top level. It’s that they want to contribute to so much more. While many men have grown accustomed to dedicating most of their energy to their careers, Bruno says that type of imbalance—deﬁ ning personal success as only being achieved in the cor- porate arena—can be a dangerous scenario. “Women, on the other hand, might say success equals corporate achievement as well as the contribution and creation of loving, intimate relationships. They’d put energy into those things as well.” Being an executive is a different kind of work and a different kind of stress, says Rebecca Shambaugh, president and CEO of consulting ﬁrm Shambaugh Leadership and author of It’s Not A Glass Ceiling, It’s A Sticky Floor. “You have to be willing to put in the time and continue to expand, keep your knowledge up, be constantly mindful of the people who work for you, and take responsibility for all the things it takes to build, leverage and retain a team.” There’s another stereotype that just might be true: women want jobs that mean something to them on a personal level. That, Bruno says, “is how we avoid the sellingyour-soul part.” Roberts, after several leadership roles in male-dominated industries, found the marketing vice-president job at Sick Kids Foundation a particularly great ﬁt. Her duties have expanded to the point where she leads the hospital’s annual giving portfolio, which raises $24 million a year. Roberts also leads the foundation’s Ofﬁce of Innovation, works directly with the Sick Kids’ board of directors, and is the only woman on the board of another publicly traded company for which she chairs the governance committee and sits on the compensation committee. Does she aspire to a C-suite future? “If I was going to be the CEO of something,” she says, “it would matter to me what I was the CEO of.” J u n e / J u l y 2 0 0 8 25 http://www.HRThoughtLeader.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of HR Professional - June/July 2008

HR Professional - June/July 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Contributors Leadership Matters Upfront Legal Compensation The Broad Perspective Leading by Example On Message Strategy Talent Management HR 101 Case Study Interview with J.P. Pawliw-Fry Off the Shelf The Last Word HR Suppliers Guide 2008 Calendar of Events

HR Professional - June/July 2008

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