emPOWERing
women TOgetHER
Dr. Berri O’Neal
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Universities Center at Dallas
SACRAO – February 2016
Ethnic
Mental/
Physical Ability
Continuing style
First Language
“Ginger Rogers did
everything that Fred
Astaire did. She
just did it
backwards and in
high heels.”
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Ask a man (husband, etc.) about
investing in their career.
(Find a female mentor.)
Wavering on decisions.
Being a “yes woman”
Never joining in the team effort.
Striving for perfect.
Getting stuck in a rut.
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According to the White House, full-time working
women earn 77% of what their male counterparts earn.
This means that women have to work approximately 60
extra days, or about three months, to earn what men did
by the end of the previous year.
Women earn 84 percent of what men earn. It would take
approximately 40 days, or until the end of February, for
women to earn what men had by the end of last year.
But for young women, the wage gap is even smaller – at
93 percent – meaning they caught up to their same-aged
male counterparts by roughly the
last week in January of this year.
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We are a diverse group of individuals.
Because of our different characteristics, we
must all know we all react to different
motivators, different personalities, different
workplace environments, different leadership
styles!
We must embrace each other so that we can
learn from each other!
We all will have failures.
We all will face challenges in
our careers.
The important thing is what
we gain from the challenges
& failures.
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For every “no,” there is a “yes.”
And through failures, you will find
success.
1. Which of these individuals has held all of these
positions?
Powdered milk salesman
Carpet layer
Short order cook
Waiter
Is it:? Brad Pitt
Matt Damon
Bill Gates
Mark Cuban
Before Oprah hosted a talk show that dominated
daytime TV for 25 years and became the queen of
her own media empire, she was demoted at one of
her early jobs.
After working as a news co-anchor on Baltimore's
WJZ-TV for seven and a half months in her early
twenties, Oprah was put on morning TV (the
"morning cut-ins" as she recalls) -- a significant step
down from her original role.
But the experience wasn't all bad: Oprah met her
best friend Gayle while working in Baltimore,
and her initial failure arguably launched
her on her path to incredible
career success.
 Self-awareness
 Managing
Emotions
 Motivating Self
 Empathy
 Social Skills
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Emotional Intelligence has been found to be a
SIGNIFICANT predictor of managerial success.
Both men and women have Emotional Intelligence,
according to EQ developers, but each gender has a
significantly different profile.
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74% of successful managers had E.I. as their
most salient characteristic, and only 24% of
the failures.
At PepsiCo, company units headed by
managers with well-developed E.I. scores,
outperformed yearly revenue targets by 15 to
20%.
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Research states that women have much stronger
interpersonal skills than their male counterparts,
but men have significantly higher sense of self and
independence.
Women are much more aware of their own
feelings as well as those of others and relate much
better interpersonally then men. However, men
have higher self regard and also deal better with
immediately stressful work situations.
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Catch Them Doing Something Right.
Set the Bar High.
Communicate, Communicate,
Communicate.
Trust Your Employees.
Help Employees Grow.
Create and Maintain a Productive
Environment.
Build a Community.
Teach a dying trait to younger
women in the workplace ~
Open Communication through
the written and spoken word.
Open or Self-Contained
 Direct or Indirect
Styles:
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-
Socializer
Director
- Thinker
- Relater
Socializer – if you are more open
and direct, you are an assertive
and relationship-oriented
Socializer.
 Director – if you are self-contained
and direct, you are an assertive
and task-oriented Director.
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Thinker – If you are indirect and
self-contained, you are a taskoriented and low assertive
Thinker.
 Relater – If you are indirect and
open, you are a low assertive and
relationship oriented Relater.
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Your Communication Style can come into play
every day as you interact with co-workers,
students, prospective students, parents,
supervisors and employees.
By understanding your own style, you will
learn to more effectively communicate in a
variety of interactions.
By understanding OTHERS’ styles, you will be
able to glean more from them.
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Send Cards for Occasions: Happy
Birthday/Work Anniversary/Congrats on
the Promotion
Post “Way to Go Girl” Notes on Social
Media Sites
Write Thank You Notes
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Follow Rule of 3s:
 Write Three Lines
 Mention Three Specific Things
 Send it within Three Weeks
Eliminate Time-Wasters
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Pareto’s Principle
 80% of your time is spent doing
20% of the most important/vital
tasks. That means 20% of your
time is potentially wasted doing
the 80% of trivial tasks.
 What are some of your timewasters today?
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In 2000, Ebay auctions were one of the main
distractions on the World Wide Web. Blogs
had started garnering attention, and social
networking had not even appeared yet to the
mainstream audience….yet already just with
these simple distractions, the typical
American worker spent 3 hours a workday
doing something OTHER than work.
We can only imagine how the distractions of
today’s social networking sites, online
shopping, Skype and Facetime long-distance
communication and other inventions have
added to the possibility of work distractions.
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The American Time Use Survey states that Americans
spend 8.7 hours at work on an average work day. Each
year, Americans work roughly 1,790 hours, which is just
slightly higher than the OECD average.
A new survey from AtTask conducted by Harris Poll
found that U.S. employees at large-sized companies
(1000 employees or more) only spend 45 percent of their
time on primary job duties. So what about the other 55
percent of the time?
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14 percent of their workweek on email (which is
believable, as 91 percent reported that they use email to
communicate with their team).
 The other 40 percent of their working hours
were spent on meetings, administrative
tasks, and "interruptions."
 20%
of your employees do 80%
of the work!
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How can I be more productive today?
Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself….
 There are numerous ways to improve your
work functionality AND your work attitude,
even if you’ve been a pro for 20 years…
 Test your knowledge of yourself!
 By knowing yourself,
you will learn how to better
interact with others!
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Burnout can be described as
“the extinction of motivation or
incentive, especially where
one's devotion to a cause or
relationship fails to produce
the desired results,” and is a
stress-related state.
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About one half of Americans say that
stress has a negative impact on both their
personal and professional lives.
About one-third (31%) of employed
adults have difficulty managing work
and family responsibilities.
Over one third (35%) cite jobs interfering
with their family or personal time as a
significant source of stress.
Stress causes more than half of
Americans (54 percent) to fight with
people close to them.
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Source: American Psychological Association study, 2007.
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Northwestern National Life Insurance study found
that one in three Americans seriously thought
about quitting work because they were afraid they
would burn out if they did not.
1/3 more women than men felt
“constantly under pressure for
trying to accomplish more than
they can handle.”
About half of Americans (48%) feel that their stress
has increased over the past five years.
Money and work are the leading causes of stress
(mentioned by three quarters of Americans).
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Source: American Psychological Association study
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Unclear Requirements
Impossible Requirements
High-Stress Times with No “Down-Time”
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Fall Admission Deadlines
Last Day of the Semester
Recruiting Season Begins
Commencement
Big Consequences for Failure
Lack of Personal Control in Duties
Lack of Recognition
Poor Leadership
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Workplace stress costs more than $300 billion
each year in health care, missed work and stressreduction (American Institute of Stress, NY).
Workers who report that they are stressed incur
health care costs that are 46 percent higher per
person, than other employees.
(Organizational Science and Human
Factors Branch of the National Institute
for Occupational Safety and Health)
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Workers in the United States already
put in more than 1,800 hours on the job
a year: 350 hours more than the
Germans and slightly more than the
Japanese (International Labor Office).
More than 30 percent of workers say
they are "always" or "often" under
stress at work. A quarter of those
surveyed said there often were not
enough co-workers to get the job done
(National Opinion Research Center at the
University of Chicago).
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So how can we keep our
stress in check at our
workplace??
 Do something you are
passionate about and that
excites you most mornings
to go to work!
 Know what job
characteristics are going to
motivate you to be the best
employee!
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Five core job dimensions according to the JCM:
Skill variety – the degree to which a job requires
a variety of activities so you can employ different
skills and talents.
 Task identity – the degree to which a job requires
completion of a whole/identifiable piece of work.
 Task significance – the degree to which your job
has a substantial impact on lives of other people.
 Autonomy – the degree to which your job
provides substantial freedom and discretion in
determining tasks and how/when tasks are
completed.
 Feedback – the degree to which you receive
direct and clear information about the
effectiveness
of your performance.
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Skill Variety
 Task Identity
 Task Significance
 Autonomy
 Feedback
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In an employee satisfaction survey, the question about
whether the company cared about the welfare and
happiness of its employees drew divergent views.
Some people agreed; others disagreed.
So, the Culture and Communications team put out a
second survey asking what would make the
employees feel as if the company cared about them….
Fifty-five percent of the respondents said that praise
and attention from their supervisor would make them
feel as if the company cared about them and their
well-being. As you might also expect, money, benefits,
and events such as company lunches ranked high, too.
But recognition from the supervisor
ranked above all other choices.
Susan Heatherfield HR Specialist, About.Com
Remember – You are building bridges for others.
Always build bridges. You don’t know when
someone will one day build a bridge for you.
“To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”
The Bridge Builder, Will Allen Droomgoole
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Pew, Nielsen, and Burst Media data depict some other
impressive stats about male vs. female use of social media.
In checking out their sources and data points, we
discovered that women are more likely to interact with
brands via social media than men.
More than half of women use social media to show support
and access deals or promotions from brands, compared to
just 36% of the men online.
Not only do women use social media to stay up to
date with brands, they also comment on their favorite
brands more than men do.
The fact that women are more active on social media than
men has held true for at least the last five years. However,
it is important to note that women interact in different way
and are leading the shift from desktop to mobile where
social media is concerned, which is a huge concern for
social networking sites launching in the next few years.
For every “no,” there is a “yes.”
And through failures, you will find
success.
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Make concessions when it doesn’t
prohibit your teams’ work.
Find ways to offer flextime to enable
women to balance work and home
duties.
Promote other women.
Offer advice to women at other stages
in their careers.
Seek advice from mentors.
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Join Networking Opportunities for
Women
Serve on Chamber of Commerce
Committees, University
Committees, Association
Committees
Remember – The more we serve,
the more we empower!
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Advancing Women
BellaOnline
DinnerGrrls.org
wearethecityjobs.com (jobsite for women/UK)
Business Women’s Network (BWN)
Gateway to Associations Online (search engine
enables you to select “women” as a search criteria)
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American Association of University Women (AAUW)
American Business Women’s Association (ABWA)
Association for Women in Communications
Federally Employed Women