At one time or another, almost all organizations hold planning conferences or summit meetings. These sessions are usually highly interactive ones during which ideas about where the organization is going and how it might get there arc freely exchanged. They often produce good preliminary plans and a strong feeling of unity among participants. It shouldn't have to be necessary to make a point of including women in these meetings. Since sometimes only one or two women are qualified to attend, however, they are often excluded on such archaic grounds as "There'll be a smoker one night and they won't fit." This can be so limiting" to women's career progress that top management ought not only include those qualified but find certain roles that other women might fill at the meetings. These should be not merely secretarial or administrative, but rather some special work with direct bearing on organization plans on which a knowledgeable woman might report. Or a woman might be appointed to a special preplanning committee, attending the meeting in order to follow through on its initial efforts. Or she could chair a discussion group whose work she is especially interested in or qualified to lead. This sort of participation underwrites the professional woman's involvement in company- or organization-wide matters, begins to enlist her contribution on a different plane, improves her professional image, and prepares her directly for later managerial roles.
Respond with Adequate Feedback
The need for full, frank, rapid feedback exists for women as well as for other employee groups. The woman has a special problem, however. The typical male manager does not want to hurt her feelings. He may, in fact, be afraid she'll cry, so he avoids this serious responsibility. (Former female employees have of course helped condition him to feel this way, a point to be discussed later.) The issue here is that if feedback is too light, too severe, too general, or nonexistent, it misleads the woman, keeps her from making necessary adaptations and adjustments, and hampers her development in a most unfair fashion.
Of course, feedback to women, as for all other individuals, needs to be given with a helpful, supportive attitude if it is to be accepted and used. As in the case of minority employees, most women probably need more encouragement, more support, and more prodding to try new things and explore new areas. The career-woman image may not be well defined in the working woman's mind. She needs to develop it for herself. This means experimenting and testing reality, which she is likely to do only if her boss gives her positive encouragement and remains open in discussing the results of her probes.
Provide Career Models
Just like the male minority employee, the woman embarking on a career needs a model to look to, someone to emulate. A combination Cleopatra, Madame Curie, and Aimee Semple McPherson is not a particularly good one. Far better that she have a more typical woman, closer in age and obviously on her way up the ladder. It would probably be even more helpful if the progressing woman were married. The idea that a career woman must remain single, that a choice must be made between husband and work, has kept many qualified women out of the workforce except to take the most casual, short-lived jobs.
If a firm has a married couple, both professional, both working (perhaps not together but at least in the same company), it demonstrates far better than written words, persuasions, and exhortations that a happy marriage and a happy career can be worked out for both parties.
The suggestions given here imply that management should not merely permit these actions but rather go out of its way to affect them. Nothing recommended is expensive. Each activity requires only interest, positive attention, and relatively little effort to accomplish.
Make Her a Trainee, Not a Typist
Everyone has to start somewhere, and the beginning is often a breaking-in activity in which the employee functions at a level somewhat below that of his training. In several discussions, it is always suggested that the time allotted to this be shortened and a person's professional training put to use sooner. In the case of women, this has special significance. Many professionally trained women are told in employment offices that the way to a better future is the clerical or secretarial route. This is nonsense. There is seldom a relationship between secretarial work and a desired profession. Moreover, while a woman is functioning at the clerical level, losing her professional know-how, she is also being trained implicitly not to take responsibility for her decisions. It's true that she may have considerable latitude in her job and may frequently use her judgment in her boss's absence. She is still, however, functioning in his name. He backs up her decisions, perhaps criticizing her for wrong ones but nonetheless taking the ultimate responsibility. Most women who have filled this role over a long period find the transition to self-reliance and personal decision making very difficult. They have learned to rely on the support of the boss's office. In face-to-face competition with associates, bosses, or even those lower in the organization, there lies a whole area of persuasive negotiation in which they have never had experience. This lack places them at a grave disadvantage. For these reasons, if professional work is the goal and the requisite training and skills are there, a woman should be started as would a man-in an intern or apprentice role, not with the typing and shorthand routine.
