New Year's Resolution Ideas for Women in Business

It has been gratifying to talk with and hear from women who attended the BYU Women in Business Conference last fall. I still find myself thinking about topics that were discussed, and hope the conference continues to have an impact as we consider our personal and professional goals for 2012.

A conversation with one attendee has stuck with me. I spoke with her just days after the conference. It was clear that the work/life balance discussions had had an impact on her; she went home and immediately began having discussions, both on the personal and the professional front, about the topic. She talked with her husband about concrete ways they could balance their work and family life better. (They are empty-nesters, both working full-time.) She also went right to work that next Monday, opening up dialogue with her colleagues about how she, as a manager, and they, working together, could help make their workplace more sensitive to and supportive of the issues surrounding work/life balance. (This topic has so much potential, on so many fronts, for resolution ideas.)

Another person whose clear goals have impressed me is Chrysula Winegar. She continues her work in the sphere of family and work life balance by taking a stand for stay-at-home motherhood, opening up conversations in multiple contexts about how to have motherhood be more respected, less punished, in the professional sphere...so that women who do choose to stay home can someday, if they then choose, have the ability to re-enter the workforce. (Resolution idea: Read articles that not only support women in the workplace, but talk about how to support professional women who choose to stay at home. Spoiler alert: Solutions lie not only in the professional sphere, but with those of us who are mothers. We have to deliberately and visibly value our motherhood if we want it valued in the professional sphere.)

I've loved seeing discussions on our Facebook page about these topics as well. Kudos to the women who are reaching out in our Facebook group for help and ideas with their new ventures (non-profit and for-profit). (If you are interested in the panel from the conference on starting your own business, you can listen to it here.) 

Speaking of Facebook, I'd love to see more discussions, on more topics, with more networking on Facebook. (Have you joined our Facebook group yet? There's a simple resolution idea -- to join and participate in our Women in Business Facebook discussions.)

Another example of real action that took place as a result of the conference was summed up in Stephanie's last post, Starting a Women's Group. (Resolution ideas: Join your local BYU Management Society chapter, and/or help start a women's group within your chapter. Listen to the panel discussion on this topic if you haven't already (or review it if you have). Connect with other women, like Stephanie and the panelists she mentions in her post. Brainstorm and share more ideas for helping facilitate networking and mentoring for women in business.)

Whitney Johnson's HBR and Dare to Dream posts contain great advice on the topic of mentoring. You can listen to her conference presentation here. (Resolution ideas are present in Whitney's ideas for both mentor and mentee. Also, have you signed up to be a mentor of business students? You can sign up to volunteer here. Read other great mentoring tips at the Marriott School website.)

For me, as a stay-at-home mom who values highly the notion of staying professionally connected and current, I left the conference both with a renewed determination to be focused in my efforts to keep my professional self alive, but to also be more focused, more centered, regarding home life. The combination of the work/life balance discussions, the mentoring equation advice (time and energy really are limited!), and the spiritual undercurrents of many of the talks (especially by Cathy Chamberlain) combined to have a significant impact on me.

I'll be exploring more of my own takeaways in a future post, so for now, I'd like to ask you: What professional goals are you focusing on this year? What talks/panels/discussions/contacts/experiences from the conference have had an impact on your goal-setting? Comment here or on our Facebook page, or write about it on your personal/business blog and let us know where to find your post!


[This post has been edited slightly from the original.]

Starting a Women in Business Group

One of the panels I attended at the Women in Business Conference was "Building Women's Networking Groups". As a panel organizer, this particular panel was my idea after reading this article in the Marriott School alumni magazine called "Women's Groups Growing for Management Society" (scroll to bottom of page). I have the task of starting the women's group for my local BYU Management Society chapter, so I was really interested to hear how the women on the panel suggested I get started.

The panelists were Jennifer Armitstead, head (and founder) of the Salt Lake Women's Group, Maria Pribyl, President of the Silicon Valley Women and President-Elect of the Silicon Valley chapter of the BYU Management Society, and Pat Bluth, who organized a women's group within a corporation she worked at. The panel was moderated by Rixa Oman, Executive Director of the BYU Management Society.

You can listen to a recording of the entire panel here on the Women in Business Conference website. The purpose of this blog post is to share some of my notes from the panel and how I have put them into action in starting my local group.

I summarized my notes into this action plan:

1. Just do it. If you decide you want a women's group, start it!

2. Send out a survey to women you think might be interested (you could start with all the women in your local chapter of the BYU Management Society). Ask them what they want from a networking group. What are their needs? When is most convenient for them to meet? Would they be interested in serving on the board?

3. Establish a purpose - Why are you going to get together? You could develop a motto or mission for the group. (Silicon Valley Women has one: Silicon Valley Women provides opportunities for all women to develop LEADERSHIP capabilities by...fostering mentoring relationships, creating educational experiences, and increasing networking skills and contacts.)

4. Set up a board (so you don't have to do everything!)

5. Don't reinvent the wheel. Piggyback on the BYU Management Society as much as possible.

6. Create a social media network so relationships can be developed online. The panelists suggested Linked-In.

7. Write a regular column in your local BYU Management Society's newsletter about the group.

8. Reach out to women one-on-one. But don't limit membership to women! Include men who care about women's issues.

9. Be okay with simple. It is easy to make it too complicated. One group had everyone bring soup and talk.

10. Make sure it is very professional. Some people think women's groups are an extension of Relief Society, so keep it professional.

11. Keep it inexpensive.


I took these notes (and help from Jennifer and Maria, who graciously offered their mentorship in getting me started) and went to work. I first approached the President-elect of my local chapter and suggested we start a women's group. She said, "Great" and put me on the Executive Committee of the chapter with the task of starting the group. Step 1 accomplished!

I then sent out a survey to all the women in the chapter and other women I know personally to ask for their feedback. The survey was very helpful. I was picturing meetings over lunch, but the feedback I received was that the women prefer to meet in the evenings at an event with little or no cost, so I adjusted the plan.

We are naming our group after the precedent established by the Silicon Valley and Salt Lake groups. Our name is the Dallas - Fort Worth Women of the BYU Management Society. Our focus will be on networking and discussing professional skills topics unique to women.

Our first event will be on Tuesday, January 31 at 7 p.m. Jennifer Armitstead (also a career coach!) will speak to us about networking and then lead us in a speed networking activity.

We have three more events planned throughout the year and plan to stay connected via our Linked-In group.

I hope this group will be a strength to women in any life stage who are interested in "ethical and moral leadership" in the DFW area. And I hope that any of you who are reading this and thinking, "Hmmm. I'd like to be a part of a women in business group in my area" will take the initiative and start with step 1 - just do it!

(If you would like help or assistance in starting your own women's group, please leave a comment. We'll get you in contact with people who can help!)

Developing a Career Path Despite Uncertainty - Casey Hurley

Casey Hurley, faculty member of Law and Communications in the BYU-Idaho Business School, was on the "Develop (and Determine) a Career Path Despite Uncertainty" Panel of the Women in Business Conference. Casey shared her Career/Life story on our blog in October. Part of the impetus for asking Casey to be on this panel was a fantastic article she wrote called "What if 'Plan A' Doesn't Work? Helping Female Students Navigate an Uncertain Life Course". For this post, we asked Casey to summarize her remarks on the panel as an introduction to her article.

I started thinking about the uncertainties of planning a career path particular to LDS women a few years ago when I noticed there were seldom many women in my business classes. Conversations with colleagues, students, and other women led me to conclude that many young LDS sisters continue to assume that traditional female careers are the most appropriate or "mom-friendly," and they make educational and career decisions based on that assumption, which is often false. I was shocked to hear about some of our married BYU-Idaho students dropping out of school because they "didn't need a degree anymore."

We all know women whose educational choices have either opened a range of possibilities for them or have limited their options. I think of a friend with a degree in information technology who married in her late 20s after working hard at her career during her single years. When she married, she had the option to transfer, then telecommute when her kids were born. Her education gave her flexibility at different stages of life. Now she is at home with her kids. On the other hand, I know a woman with a large family who did not have similar educational opportunities who went to work as a restaurant hostess when work got scarce for her husband.

I stared to lie awake at night worrying about our BYU-Idaho students faced with the difficulty of making important decisions that would either expand or limit their opportunities. Clearly some of the difficulty for them lies in addressing the uncertainty about when and how their training will be put to use in their future roles as wives and mothers. The difficulty and significance of the problem weighed on me until I decided to write something about the need to provide our students the type of guidance I wish I'd had as a student. When this article was published in our faculty journal, Perspective, I hoped it would ignite discussion and encourage better minds than mine to invent new ways to help our students. The article has had some circulation beyond Rexburg--in fact it connected me to some of the fabulous women behind the BYU Women in Business Conference. This conference is exactly the sort of exposure students need to examples of faithful LDS women applying their education in a variety of ways. There remains work to be done on this front--even at our Church schools we just don't do a good enough job of appropriately prioritizing, even sanctifying, motherhood while helping our female students prepare for a breadth of life possibilities.

"What If 'Plan A' Doesn’t Work? Helping Female Students Navigate an Uncertain Life Course," Perspective, Volume 7 Number 2, Autumn 2007

Doing Our Part to Champion Family-Friendly Workplaces

Elise Jones was one of the participants in the conference and has a particular interest in helping create family-friendly workplaces. She is a work/life consultant and founder and president of E Jones Consulting.  Most recently Elise led the diversity effort for Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business and served as a workplace flexibility advisor to several Microsoft executives. During her seven years at the company Elise founded a flexwork-focused employee affinity group and was instrumental in establishing flexwork initiatives in several business units companywide. Elise is the 2005 recipient of Microsoft's Business Empowered by Diversity Award.

In April 2011 General Conference, Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve addressed the decision facing many mothers of whether to work outside the home. Having confronted that choice under various conditions in my own life, I appreciated his urging to stand confident in decisions made under the influence of counsel, study, and prayer, whether they result in taking time away from paid work or whether they lead us into the workplace full or part time.

One comment Elder Cook made struck me with particular force: “I would hope that Latter-day Saints would be at the forefront in creating an environment in the workplace that is more receptive and accommodating to both women and men in their responsibilities as parents.”

All members of the Church have an opportunity to stand up for a workplace that honors the role of parents and caregivers. Whether that means joining with others to lobby for more flexible work options or simply stating our needs when tensions between work and family mount, each of us can make a difference in building a family-friendly workplace.

As part of my efforts to help employers build family-supportive environments, I’m conducting a study looking at factors that influence whether mothers and prospective mothers take advantage of work/life supports provided by their employers, and with what effects. The results will contribute to a text aimed at organizations wanting to support mothers as part of a multicultural workforce.

If you’ve been in the workplace while pregnant, caring for a child under age 18, or while undergoing fertility treatments or seeking adoption, I hope you’ll take my online survey and share your insights on how employers can positively influence mothers’ experiences in the workplace. If this profile doesn’t fit you, please consider passing the invitation on to someone who might appreciate the chance to participate. The survey takes 15-20 minutes to complete, and all qualifying participants will be entered to win a $25 Amazon.com gift card.

Having worked with groups to build and implement work/life supports, I have seen firsthand the impact workplace flexibility, part-time work, and other offerings can have on workgroups and on individual employees and their families. Such progress requires vision, dedication, and hard work from not only company leaders, but also each individual within the organization. If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll consider what your part might be in this important effort.

What are you or the people around you doing to create or support a family-friendly environment at work? How are those efforts received?

Using Skills for Service -- Kris Anne Gustavson's Remarks

Kris Anne Gustavson was on the "Using Skills for Service: Serving in the Church and Community" panel of the Women in Business Conference. Kris Anne and her husband, Paul, have a company called Organizational Planning & Design, founded in 1985. From 2007-2009, they used their professional skills as service missionaries for the Church. Below, Kris Anne summarizes some of her experiences and thoughts she shared on the panel. 


I went to BYU and majored in Recreation Education. While some were in their accounting classes, I was learning how to canoe. I’ve used my degree every day of my life since then. My husband and I got married after we both graduated. He went on to grad school, majoring in Organization Design, while I supported us financially. I regret that I didn’t enroll in the program and get my masters as well.


In 1985, we started our own company, Organization Planning and Design, Inc. I work part-time, using my recreation degree to create team building sessions and initiatives with some of our clients.


I also got certified in the Herrmann Brain Dominance Theory so I could do workshops helping organizations understand learning preferences and how to use that in communication, teaching, learning and problem solving effectively.


My husband and I were approached by the church Human Resource Department about using our skills to benefit the church. We suggested that we do it as a church service mission. We started in May 2007 and committed for 2 years. My husband committed half of his working time to give to the church. I did almost that much but not quite. He would go to Utah often, and I was able to do most of my work wherever I was at the time. He worked on redesigning some of the core services that the Temporal Affairs provides for the church, such as accounting, materials management, humanitarian, etc. I was involved in interviewing individuals who were applying for paying jobs at the church. It was a standardized telephone interview, so I could do it from anywhere. I also conducted Brain Dominance Workshops for organizations within Temporal Affairs. We traveled to Hawaii, England, Germany and Russia in our mission, but most of it was done in Utah. Our mission lasted for 2 years.


This is an example of my history in serving. I haven’t often gone out searching for service, but instead service opportunities have come to me.


One year at my children’s school, I went to the Room Mother’s meeting, thinking I would sign up for a small job for the year and discovered that I was the only mother that showed up, so I ended up heading all the Room Mothers.


Service seems to be in the DNA of women and we seem to be prone to serve. We relate more to the words, “compassionate service” than men do. When we serve we are doing that which comes natural for a lot of women. Even when service occurs that would not be described as “compassionate service” most people feel good when they serve. That is why I serve. It makes me feel good.


Once I was called to be the Stake Camp Director. I thought, now here is a chance to use my education to serve in the church. What I discovered is that although my recreation education certainly helped me in that calling, the most significant skill that was needed in that calling was the ability to deal with the adults in the stake. So, you may not think that you have the skills necessary for the service required, and may discover that a completely different set of skills are actually needed.


When asked what my advice would be to those who have young children in the home without much spare time, how they can serve I will tell you this. There is no greater service than what you can give to your family members. If that is all you have time to do, then you are providing the best service you can. Unfortunately, some individuals would say that caring and raising children is not as noble as working for pay. But if a person owned a daycare center or a laundromat or a chauffeur service for pay, they would be considered a professional. Just because we don’t get paid to do such things for our family, we might think that it is not important work. I would say to you, that it is a mistake to think that. It is the most important service you can ever do.


There are service opportunities right at your computer. The church has a site called Helping in the Vineyard. Quoting the website:

Helping in the Vineyard provides service opportunities that can be completed in minutes. Participants from around the world spend as much or as little time as they like completing the activities online. As a result of the thousands of acts of service, the Church is able to publish and share more resources worldwide. (http://vineyard.lds.org/).

There is also the name extraction program [Family Search Indexing] that one can do on the computer in little bits of time.


And of course, if we are active members of the church, then we have a church calling that would be considered service. Whether it be a primary teacher, a position in Young Women or Relief Society or in the nursery, we are serving.

Using Skills for Service - Neylan McBaine's Remarks

Neylan McBaine was on the "Using Skills for Service: Serving in the Church and Community" panel of the Women in Business Conference. Neylan founded the Mormon Women Project, which led to a position with the church working on the I'm A Mormon campaign. This is her summary of her remarks on the panel.

----

Although Becky Douglas came to our "Using Your Management Skills for Service" panel concerned that she hadn't brought management skills to her service but learned them on the job, I came with a different concern: My efforts at service had led directly to a paid job. As the founder of the Mormon Women Project (MWP), a digital library of interviews with LDS women from around the world at www.mormonwomen.com, I had been invited by the Church's advertising agency of choice, Bonneville Communications, to work on "I'm A Mormon" and other missionary-driven initiatives. Did the fact that I was now making money through my Church work discredit or devalue the service I had originally set out to offer through the MWP? Had I sold out for "filthy lucre"?

I answer a resounding no for several reasons. First, the MWP is still going strong and I am dedicated to continuing that effort in the face of professional constraints on my time. The goodness that results from those volunteer efforts has not diminished. In fact, it has only been strengthened by the support I receive from my professional workplace. Second, I believe it is a damaging fallacy that women in the Church cannot "serve" our communities through paid work. Although much of our people's heroic humanitarian efforts and local fellowshipping is done quietly and without reward, Mormon men with paid jobs are regularly recognized for the good examples they are in their work communities, the productivity or acclaim of their work, and the (mostly) positive attention they bring to us as a people. (Steve Young, Bill Marriott, or Brandon Flowers, anyone?) I am not comfortable with the assertion that men can be both paid workers and contributors to the betterment of our communities, while women have to choose between either work or service. My work at Bonneville, while paid, empowers me as a member missionary, offers me a productive outlet that makes use of my unique professional skills and allows me to be an ambassador for the church in a professional industry.

As I discussed in our panel, I had an ideal example growing up of a woman who's work seamlessly permeated the boundaries between profession and service. My mother sang for 18 years at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City as a professional opera singer. In this job, she served to pave the way for many future LDS opera singers who have sung from the Met stage since then, and, more importantly, she helped establish a culture of acceptance and recognition for LDS singers within her industry. In addition, she offered her skills liberally to the Church community, traveling the country as I was growing up and performing firesides, appearing in official Church videos, singing for prophets and apostles whenever asked. Although retired from professional singing for many years, my mother continues to stay busy performing in sacrament meetings, funerals, conferences, etc.

We are a volunteer church and that is one of our greatest strengths as an earthly organization. However, that doesn't have to mean that all goodness flows from efforts that are purely sacrificial. I know that the Lord prepared me for years and years before I got the call from Bonneville, building my skills, molding my heart, strengthening my family so that when the time came for me to work for the Church, I was ready.

Using Skills for Service - Becky Douglas' Remarks

Becky Douglas was on the "Using Your Skills for Service: Serving in the Church and Community" Panel of the Women in Business Conference. She is a co-founder of Rising Star Outreach, a non-profit working with leprosy colonies in India. These are her reconstructed notes of her remarks on the panel.

----

Unlike the others on the panel, I didn't bring any management skills to my area of service; instead I had the reverse formula: I gained Management Skills as a result of my service.

As a mother of ten children, I didn't have time to pursue and develop business management skills. When I started Rising Star Outreach, it was by inviting three friends (all homemakers) to join me around my kitchen table. I also pulled in my husband's secretary--mostly, because she didn't dare say no!

I quickly found out that I needed quite an array of Management Skills in order to run an international charity. Some of those included

• Raising millions of dollars to support the cause. That involves speaking at engagements across the United States, and sometimes in foreign countries.
• Obtaining government and legal licensing both in America and in India for the charity and to run schools.
• Running an overseas operation with 55 native employees in India.
• Putting together and leading two Boards of Directors; one in India, one in America.
• Overseeing accounting and auditing teams in both America and in India. (When I started Rising Star, I didn't even know what a spreadsheet was!)
• Creating and sustaining four thousand micro-businesses through micro-finance.
• Overseeing teams of doctors & nurses running mobile medical units to provide needed medical care to over 50 leprosy colonies in three very diverse States in India. Providing for hospitalizations and surgeries.
• Running elementary and secondary boarding schools, providing teacher training, and curriculum for schools in India. Also providing training for housemothers.
• Producing newsletters and keeping Sponsors communicating with children across the world.
• Running a volunteer program involving 250 volunteers a year; including travel arrangements and programs on the ground. Providing opportunities for interns. Providing study abroad opportunities for colleges.
• Setting up social networking campaigns including FaceBook pages, Twitter accounts, and blogs. Also create and maintain an international data bank.
• Running publicity campaigns including production and marketing of documentaries; creating a website, creating pamphlets, giving interviews for newspapers, television, and radio around the world.
• Overseeing personnel matters in organizations across two continents.
• Running arts programs, including a dance program involving dancers from Broadway and the top dance conservatories in America, as well as the creation of choruses, and supporting art schools for the leprosy-affected.
  

I had none of these skills when I helped to found Rising Star. I just felt that something needed to be done to help those affected by leprosy in India, so I took action.

The good news is that I've been able to slowly develop the needed skills. The skills that were beyond me, I was fortunate in that, in every instance, God provided someone who had the skills we needed. So I challenged the conference attendees not to hesitate to get involved in meeting needs out of fear that they didn't have the necessary management skills. At Rising Star Outreach, we frequently marvel that we seem to live the parable of the Fishes and the Loaves every day. We provide the two fishes and the five loaves of bread, then we marvel at how God makes it feed 5,000! God owns the universe, and my experience is that He brings it to those who lift their hands to help the disadvantaged and the the downtrodden. He knows how to do His work! We need to try to move ahead with faith in His promises.

Discussion ensued about the demands of home and family. A question was asked about a "time and a season for all things". I replied that I had spent 25 years raising my ten children before starting Rising Star Outreach. During that time there were many opportunities for service that helped prepare me for the work I'm doing today.

It seems that, as women, we almost all face times when we have to make decisions in balancing our homemaking duties and our outside interests. Like everyone else, I've also had these struggles. As a trained professional violinist, I earlier had to decide how best to pursue my career without compromising care of my children. At one point, with a number of children, it became an impossibility for me to continue performing at a professional level without seriously impacting their growth and my commitment to them. Each of us has to make these decisions based upon our own inspiration and personal revelation. What we don't have to do--thank goodness--is judge anyone else's decision!

I commented that I have to answer to a lot of people. I have to answer to my Boards of Directors, to my major donors, to government agencies, to sponsors, and to the parents of the children in our schools. However, the most serious accounting I will ever have to do will be to my Eternal Heavenly Father, for how I treated and trained His own children that He entrusted to me. I encouraged participants to follow the guidelines of the Proclamation on the Family. What a blessing it is to have prophets to guide and help us!