Yesterday I attended a session called “Flexing the Workplace: New Ways to Get Work Done and Build Careers” spearheaded by Deborah Epstein Henry of Flex-time Lawyers and sponsored by the National Association of Women Lawyers. 

As you can probably guess from the title, the speakers discussed both research and recommendations for the ways that law firms can adapt and change to meet the demands of both men and women who don’t want to do things in the same way that they’ve always been done.

The issues are complicated.  And to make it even more challenging, law firms are culturally steeped in precedent and tradition so that change can be very painful. Patricia Gillette, co-founder of the Opt In Project and a wonderful speaker, quoted Carly Fiorina: “Change is like heaven; everyone wants to go there but nobody wants to die.”  So policies that allow for flexible work schedules don’t come easy.

But even if you work in a company that has managed to establish such policies, they don’t help unless you can actually use them without damaging your career.  The senior leadership in your firm has undoubtedly supported these policies because they make smart business sense.  But those below in the pecking order may not have the “big picture” in mind - these “frozen middle” people can make actually using flexible work policies difficult if not impossible.

That’s where negotiation comes in - it’s the way you can melt the ice. Three tips:

1. Be prepared. 
   The conversation you will have with your manager should help him or her to wholeheartedly support your decision. You have to be very clear about how you will continue to meet business objectives under the new arrangement.
2. Be aware. 
   Think about how your decision will affect your colleagues.  Will anyone be disaffected?  If so, how can you proactively manage the situation before resentment starts to fester?
3. Be firm. 
   While an occasional emergency may require that you respond immediately, think about how you can manage things so that the flexible schedule that you have designed doesn’t get eroded.

TAGS: Building workplace relationships, career derailment, Fairness at work, flexibility, Negotiation, negotiation skills, The National Association of Women Lawyers, The Opt In Project, Women In the Professions, work life balance

Last week I worked with a client who will be on vacation this week. She’ll be at the beach with her family — and her Blackberry.  We talked a little bit about her plans to manage the amount of work she does while on vacation.  Her habit is to check e-mail once in the morning and then again late afternoon.  She does not take her Blackberry out with her during the day so she is not tempted to check it more often.

What’s your vacation workload management strategy?  I’m of the opinion that there is no right answer, only one that is right for you. Some people have no problem escaping the grip of email - if you are one of them this post is not for you!

Some ideas for those who do struggle: (more…)

TAGS: business communication, Communication Skills, coping skills, simplifying

While the food at the Chinese take-out restaurant we’ve been patronizing lately isn’t all that great, their fortune cookies are terrific.  My fortune the other night:

Doing what you like is freedom.  Liking what you do is happiness.

This bit of philosophy made me think of how very important it is to periodically reflect upon how happy you are with the work you do.  Of course, we all have bad days but, overall, you should be able to say that you enjoy the work you do - that, yes, it makes you happy.

If you can’t, perhaps it is a good time to figure out why - and then to change the situation.  Sometimes, you can negotiate for things that will increase your satisfaction, for example, a more challenging assignment or more resources to get the job done.  Or, if the problem is deeper, perhaps it’s time to make a different employment decision…

The main thing to keep in mind is that your career satisfaction matters most to you - nobody else, except perhaps your mom, cares that much.  Don’t let yourself down!

TAGS: career change, career goals, dealing with family expectations, Gratefulness, Leaving a bad boss or a job you hate, negotiation skills, personal brand building, personal development, ways to work healthy

As I listened to Barack Omaba denounce Jeremiah Wright last week, I was reminded of how difficult it is to walk away from a relationship that was once good and is now bad.

Thankfully, when most of us face the decision about cutting someone loose, we have the luxury to grapple privately with the “when” and “how” to do it yet the “if” is still a struggle.  How do you know when a relationship has become toxic? Is there an acid test? I think there is - when the other person doesn’t consider your interests, only her own, even when you have made it clear that your needs are not being met. 

Consider these situations: (more…)

TAGS: career derailments, communication, gaining confidence, Leaving a bad boss or a job you hate, politics at work, relationship chips, self-help, Self-trust

I have such mixed feelings about this true story. Two college women’s softball teams were competing this week in Oregon when one player hit the ball out of the park but couldn’t make it around the bases.  Apparently her leg gave out from under her and she couldn’t run.  It’s against the rules for one of her teammates to run for her.  When a member of the opposing team realized what was happening she opted to carry the young woman around the bases so that her run would count (and as it turned out it was the winning run).  When asked why she did such a generous thing, she said she always learned it wasnt’ about winning or losing but about how you play the game.  On the one hand, I love the fact that the young woman who came to the rescue showed compassion for her opponent.  On the other hand, I know that this exact same behavior in the workplace causes adult women to miss out on their fair share of pay, benefits, opportunities, etc.  As women, we must differentiate when compassion is called for and when it’s OK to compete to win.  Relying only on behaviors taught in childhood to the exclusion of having other “tricks up your sleeve” is a receipe for ultimate failure.  Be compassionate.  Be generous of spirit.  But also know when — and how — to play hardball. 

TAGS: competition, girls and sports, playing hardball, playing to win, sportsmanship

Don’t you just love pesky neighbors?  We’ve got one who wants us to trim our trees because they block the view from her kitchen window while she’s washing dishes.  It’s not like she has a panorama of the city or anything.  It’s just one small window and the trees only bother her when she does the dishes (which can’t be all that often since she lives alone and travels a lot).  We’ve told her several times that we want the fullness of the trees throughout the summer because they shade the house but that when we trim them in the Fall we’ll take her needs into consideration.  In an effort to get us to do what she wants she says things like, “I thought I had nice neighbors” and ”I thought I was buying a home with a view” (right - it’s Pasadena not Malibu).  She even told another neighbor that I was hostile to her.  This is typical passive aggressive behavior.  If you listen to only the words they seem benign, but at the heart of it there’s no interest in the other person’s viewpoint or needs.  So how do you handle a passive aggressive person?  It’s not easy, but here are a few tips:

1. Don’t go for their bait.  They want to engage you in an argument where you wind up as the bad person and they wind up as the victim.  This can’t happen if you don’t respond to nonsensical statements such as, “I thought I had nice neighbors.”
2. Stay neutral by acknowledging without agreeing.  To keep the conversation on an even, objective keel use statements like, “I can understand your concern” or “I understand why it’s important to you.”  This usually soothes the passive aggressive personality. 
3. Be clear about your intentions.   Passive aggressive people often take your words and twist them to suit their needs.  That’s harder to do if you are crystal clear about the actions you intend to take (eg. “My plan is to trim the trees in the Fall…”). 
4. Get/put as much as you can in writing.  When dealing with passive aggressive people at work it helps to get things in writing so that you can refer back to it when they conveniently forget what was agreed to or renege on their commitments. 

TAGS: assertive skills, assertiveness, dealing with passive aggressive people, pesky neighbors

A friend sent me an article, Why Are So Many Women Depressed, by Dennis Prager.  She wanted to know what I thought of it.  My first thought was why would anyone with half a brain put his name to this absurd nonsense.  The net-net of the piece is that feminism unrealistically raised the expectations of women and failed to deliver.  Hence, feminism is at the core of a high incidence of depression among women.  Prager then has the audacity to claim, “ For most women — of course, not all — careers are not nearly as fulfilling as are a good marriage and family.”  Dennis… from where did you pull these numbers? Or, to paraphrase Jerry Maquire, “Show me the study.”  Psychologist Anna Freud had it right when she said, “It’s the good, capable, conscientious woman who is more likely to be depressed than her counterparts.” Maybe if we lived in a society where women weren’t forced to choose between a career and family they wouldn’t be so depressed.  Maybe if the full range of a woman’s capabilities were acknowledged and utilized without her having to dumb down so as not to offend male bosses, colleagues, brothers, or husbands women wouldn’t be so depressed.  And maybe — just maybe — if people like Dennis Prager spent less time focusing on what’s wrong with women and more time focused on what’s right with them despite the choices they make, women wouldn’t be so depressed.  Now you know what I think about the article.  What do YOU think? 

TAGS: Dennis Prager, Feminism, women and careers, Women and Depression, women and families

One of the things I like best about weekends is more time to enjoy the New York Times. Lots of interesting items this weekend:

1. Paul Brown (What’s Offline) reports that Paula Spencer (writing in Women’s Day) opines that there is no way for one to actually achieve work life balance. Her advice is to accept it and move on. I agree - especially since the guilt many women feel about not being able to do it all, all at the same time takes time we just don’t have.

2. M. P. Dunleavey writes that new research by Tahira K. Hira and Cazilla Loibl shows that women often abdicate responsibly for financial planning. It seems that the majority of women they studied find making decisions about saving and investing stressful. If you didn’t find yourself in the minority of women who stay engaged in making decisions about money before now, hopefully, the sorry sordid mess that Eliot Spitzer made will remind that no matter how theoretically able your partner is to take the reigns, you still need to pay attention.
3. In much more encouraging news, Norway’s law requiring companies to fill 40 percent of corporate board seats with women by 2008 worked. In 1993, women held only 3% of board seats, in 2002, the number was 6%. Now, the goal’s been met and the value of board diversity is spreading to other parts of Europe. While chances are we won’t benefit from a law requiring more women on boards of US companies, we can choose to exert our economic power by keeping an eye on how well the companies in which we invest accept women. Read more about how you can take action

TAGS: corporate boards, economic power, New York Times, where are the women?, work life balance

The Philadelphia Bulletin reported that Elena Kagan, Dean of Harvard Law School recently expressed her view that women don’t enter law school for the same reasons that men do: “Many women think of a law degree as a way to do good for others, and are far less likely to think of law in terms of private interests,” Ms. Kagan said.

Debra Cassens Weiss, writing for The American Bar Association Journal reminded me that Kagan’s remark expanded last week on comments she had originally made in 2006 in an address to the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.  At that time, Kagan refererred to a 2006 study by the Center for Work-Life Policy finding that only 20 percent of highly qualified female lawyers said having “a powerful position” was an important career goal.

Kagan thinks that it is not that women eschew power; rather that they feel that being “powerful” is inconsistent with a goal many have - to leave the world a better place than they found it.

Do women feel that way? Do you feel that way?

If so, I’d offer this - you can do more good when you have power than when you don’t. With power (and don’t forget that money often accompanies power), you can help more people than you can without it.

You can do well and do good too.

TAGS: Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Elena Kagan, Harvard Law School, power, The American Bar Association

Mary Ann Chory, an executive at Northrop Grumman, sent this article: http://www.latimes.com/… about women having male friends at work and asked what I thought. I think it’s tricky. Just ask Senator McCain. When I did my psychology internship at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (which was years ago) the wives of male officers often complained about having their husbands ride with female officers. Although they said it was because they didn’t think another woman could keep their husbands safe, I think it was a little too close for comfort.

Some of my best professional colleagues are men — but I know that I have to walk The Thin Pink Line to make it work. Not developing relationships with male colleagues for fear of what others will say isn’t the answer. You miss out on too many opportunities by doing that. Here are some coaching tips for making male/female workplace relationships work for you:

1. Avoid even the appearance of impropriety. I once coached a woman who had lunch with her boss every day in a very expensive restaurant. They were gone for hours and, as you might imagine, the rumors began to fly. She swore to me that nothing improper was going on but, as I told her, perception is reality. If she wanted to protect her career and that of her boss she needed to limit the number and amount of time spent at those lunches (and I told her boss the same thing).

2. Get to know spouses or significant others. This allows them to get to know you on a personal basis and become more comfortable with you and the relationship you have with their significant other. If possible, socialize as families outside the workplace rather than you having dinner alone with the male co-worker all of the time.

3. Avoid “in” jokes, comments, or looks. You may have discussed something one day and sure enough it comes up at a meeting you’re both at the next day — this doesn’t mean you can shoot each other a knowing glance. That’s the “self-regulation” part of being emotionally intelligent.

4. Warm feelings don’t have to be taken to the next level. This is something I learned in my therapeutic training. When two people share ideas, close physical proximity, a certain degree of intimacy, or secrets they often think a physical relationship is the next logical step. It doesn’t have to be. Acknowledge warm feelings but recognize that taking it further will likely have disasterous consequences for you both.

5. Know when it’s time to set clearer boundaries. If it becomes apparent that being friends isn’t really possible, take steps to change the dynamic. That may mean that you no longer have lunch together, although you still confer on projects. Or that when traveling together on business you don’t explore a new city together on your free time but do present a seamless front to clients you’re there to visit.

TAGS: how to be friends with a male co-worker, John McCain, Los Angeles Times, male/female workplace relationships; avoiding the appea