Discover Your WOW! Factor on March 27

Happy Saturday! I wanted to let you know that I'll be leading a teleclass on Thursday, March 27 at 12:00 noon EST for Downtown Women's Club members and friends. The focus of Discover Your WOW! Factor, will be on how to leverage your strengths and "create a buzz" about your accomplishments.

Why are these things important to your career advancement? The more you know about what you do well, the better you can position yourself for new opportunities. Tune into this teleclass to learn how to create and manage the brand called "you," an integral component to achieving your goals.

This teleclass is free to paid DWC Faces Online members. Or, to invest just $29.99 in your professional development -- register HERE. Registration for this teleclass will end on March 24th.

If you're interested in becoming a DWC Faces Online member, visit: www.downtownwomensclub.com.

I'm looking forward to chatting with you on March 27th!

Ask and You Shall Receive ...

Thank you, Nina, for sharing your thoughts on the gender earnings gap.

I wanted to bring to the forefront the Harvard Business Review findings you shared on career and salary negotiation -- if we don't ask for something, how can we legitimately expect to receive it?

Relevant to your comment "the squeaky wheel gets oiled, and the ones doing the squeaking are not women:"

In the Competent Advantage workshop, we help people identify ways to document, promote and leverage their accomplishments.

• Documenting accomplishments is important -- how will you know what (or how much) to ask for during a performance management meeting if you don't have a full sense of what you've achieved?
• Promoting accomplishments is crucial -- you can't presume that your manager knows all that you've accomplished in a given month or quarter (let alone a full year!). Use the documentation you gather to provide him/her a regular "heads-up" on what you're doing.
• Leveraging accomplishments pulls it all together. Once you've documented what you've done and told others about it, how can you use these accomplishments to your advantage?

1. Asking for a role with more visibility?
2. Bidding for a new project or committee?
3. Developing a new relationship with a key stakeholder?

I'd suggest that these strategies are relevant for both genders. However, the reasons you mentioned from the Babcock study ("socialization, penalization and frustration") could erode a woman's confidence to make the request.

Thoughts? Experiences?