I am still glowing with pride that I ran the London Marathon last week. Yes, I was very slow — 5 hours and 8 minutes to be precise! However, it is 19 years since I last ran a marathon, I am over 60 and have had three major operations since 2019, so I am actually thrilled with my result.
According to the CIPD, women over 50 are the fastest growing group in the workplace. With the average age of menopause being 51, more and more employees and employers are having to deal with this transition in the workplace. According to a recent survey of 2,000 women aged 45 to 67, conducted by Koru Kids; nearly 1 million women in the UK are considering leaving the workforce due to lack of support around the menopause.
Once again in 2019, we’ve been supporting International Women’s Day with a variety of new blogs on women’s development and mentoring. However, there are some previous very relevant women’s mentoring articles that you might have missed. So here’s a summary of some of our favourites. Enjoy! Continue reading
In the last two decades, many employers have shown enthusiastic commitment to gender diversity. Women have made enormous strides in being able to compete on the same playing field as men at work. This is where initiatives such as mentoring and sponsor programmes have been really successful in helping erode this gender imbalance and create more gender equity. Gender equity means fairness of treatment for women and men, according to their respective needs. All the research strongly confirms this as being an important factor in developing more women leaders. So let us consider:
Organisations may face a higher risk of losing female employees who experience female instigated rudeness as they report less satisfaction at work and increased intentions to quit their current jobs in response to these unpleasant experiences. This is according to a new study to be published shortly in the Journal of Applied Psychology by a team led by Allison Gabriel of the University of Arizona.
Queen Bee Syndrome has always been with us, women can be terribly cruel to those underneath them in the hierarchy and pull the ladder up behind them, rather than extend it down to support them in their career progression. If women have had a tough time becoming successful in their career, some women, rather than become the great role model and mentor they could be, feel other junior women coming up behind them are a threat and deciding to either be unpleasant to them or deliberately block their career path.
So how much of an issue is Queen Bee Syndrome in organisations and is it impacting the increase in numbers of women into the Board Room? Continue reading
At Coach Mentoring Ltd we are passionate about supporting women in the workplace and helping them not only to survive but thrive through mentoring and coaching solutions. We specialise in designing and developing support on an individual, programme and organisational level for women. To celebrate International Women’s Day on the 8th March 2018, we are offering three free webinars. These focus on supporting women specifically through mentoring and perhaps some sponsorship too! Continue reading
Tiara Syndrome is a term originally developed by Carol Grohlinger and Deborah Kolb and then used by Sheryl Sandberg in her book ‘Lean in’. Sandberg feels that women often think they can be crowned with the tiara of success by keeping their heads down, working hard, over-preparing and passing all of their exams. Continue reading
Barriers to women’s ambitionIn my second article leading up to International Women’s Day on the 8th March 2017 I am considering how despite all the time, money and great intentions which have been put into building a more diverse talent pipeline in many organisations, there are still some basic barriers, which have not been removed and get in the way of women feeling and being more upwardly mobile. A Bain Study in 2015 illustrates that an employee’s early employment experience influences their confidence in whether to actively pursue a C-suite career or not. Some of the erosion of or challenges facing ambition come down to factors such as whether women are perceived as ‘ideal workers’, whether they are getting sufficient support from their own direct supervisor, the organisation’s leadership development process and the dearth of real role models. These types of barriers can be explored and supported through coaching and mentoring relationships. Continue reading
