“We’re coming into leadership [roles] at a time when we know we belong there and we know we need to help other women get there. We need to move that timeline up.”
That statement, from Maggie F. Maxwell, Vice President of Wine Sales at Allied Beverage Group, encapsulates many of the sentiments expressed by participants from wine and spirits wholesaler companies who recently completed the Women in Leadership (WIL) program at Columbia Business School:
We belong in leadership roles. We need to help more women get there too. Faster.
In that spirit, I’d like to highlight ten of the most salient (and in some cases the most eye-opening) takeaways I heard from the women I interviewed for this story, which I introduced earlier this week. A limited number of women from the industry participated in WIL but their idea is not to hoard the knowledge learned. Quite the opposite, in fact: Most interviewees described how they’ve already identified insights from the program that resonated with them most strongly, and are applying them to their everyday work lives with colleagues, managers and peers.
More women leaders. Faster.
Here are seven practices that WIL participants — and you too — can put into play to make that happen. The first two practices are below, on networking and strategies for voicing opinions effectively, with the remainder presented in Part Two.
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Network Like an Executive
“C-suite executives spend 70 percent of their time networking,” said Ankia Smith of Atlanta-based United Distributors. “So we learned to think of our networks very differently in terms of how that impacts our day-to-day, and the social capital that our network holds.” It isn’t that you’re having daily conversations with every person in your network, Smith said, but it is about keeping the ties warm. “You never know when you can pick someone’s brain.”
For Heather Alper, Vice President in Supplier Management at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits (SGWS), assessing her current network indicated a heavy reliance on her professional history. Making an effort to include more diverse connections in her network, however, better positions her for roles moving forward. “I’m working on a transformation team for digital enterprise, and they have a much different background than I do,” she said. “That’s helped tremendously.”
Participants used a network assessment tool called GLeaM — more information about it is here — that starts with identifying people who could help you most in a time of need, or when you’re looking for guidance and advice, or maneuvering through a difficult situation or job advancement, and then evaluating the strength of your relationship with them on a scale from one to five. Most are “ones,” but a well-rounded, highly effective network includes many more “twos,” “threes” and “fours.”
Voicing Opinions Effectively: Three Strategies
Several participants commented on the theme of voicing opinions effectively, noting how much women have to say when asked, but not necessarily looking for the opportunities to speak up.
A pointer from the program that resonated with Jennifer Kennedy, Vice President and Associate Counsel at SGWS, is to present the the idea and also ask for input from the listener. That way, she said, you get your point across and your voice heard, while still recognizing that you’re in a position of learning.
Giving and receiving feedback is another area for expressing opinions effectively. “Feedback should be done 52 times a year and not just during annual reviews,” said Romie Montpeirous, State Transportation Manager in Florida for SGWS. “Nothing should be a surprise.” The mechanics of that are to focus on the facts and the behavior rather than the character of the person.
Montpeirous also addressed communicating effectively in order to win buy-in for an end result. Chop the goal into bits and pieces, she said, so that we can get more “yes-es” than “no-s.” She used the example of wanting to start a weekly team meeting, broken into smaller steps of doing a Zoom call of her own, recording it, sending it to management and letting them approve it. “It’s much easier to say Yes to small things first,” she said.
September 04, 2020 at 09:00PM
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7 Takeaways For Women’s Success In The Business Of Wine And Spirits (Part One) - Forbes
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