Earlier this week I read “The price of saying no at work”, hoping to find practical suggestions for how to say no and still be successful. Instead I discovered the suggestion that for women, career ladders are revealed only for those who say yes and keep saying yes.

The women interviewed agree: you can say no at any time. If you don’t like the consequences of the ambitious “yes” life (which the women say include everything from forgetting birthdays to unleashing “untold brutality” on their marriages) you can opt out. But know that “ you will have narrowed the opportunities,” according to one woman.

Not only do I not agree with this kind of thinking, but if this is the approach older professional women take to career development, then I’m starting to understand why I have observed disconnects around mentoring.

Women’s history can be a guide for why this is happening. From the perspective of my generation: Our great-grandmothers could not vote for part of their lives, and our grandmothers could not work except within strict stereotypes. Our mothers were the first generation of women for which opportunity opened up. It still was not easy or freely given, but it was more than earlier generations had enjoyed. Our mothers’ civic influence was enhanced in the 1970s, their personal development was encouraged by measures like Title IX, their careers were fostered thanks to higher attendance in college (and the social understanding that they would or should have a career at all).

Many of the women who now run companies and mastered the career ladders the article refers to arrived on the professional scene at a time when women could finally attempt to have it all, yet they still had to do it all to make that possible. So it’s not surprising they feel they had to say yes to everything – was there really another option?

But I don’t think this approach is relevant anymore or healthy. Besides the personal turmoil the “yes” life can create, my generation has seen consequences that undermine the supposed rewards of this approach. We’re watching companies crumble, taking the assets and benefits promised to their longstanding employees down with them.

Based on these realities and other factors, I think young women in my generation tend to be more holistic when it comes to decision-making, priority-setting, and to assessing consequences of both. In general, I think  young professionals today are too entrepreneurial and open-minded to perceive “yes” and “no” opportunities. There is never truly a “narrowing” of opportunities. There is only a shifting of opportunities until we get to the life we want, and even the understanding of what we want may change over time.

And at least for me, that’s okay. I left a rewarding job with ample opportunity at a communications firm to work for my family business. I took a 50 percent cut in my pay to do it. Those yes-women would probably be ashamed of me and signed off on my career.

The problem was never the kind of work I was doing – it was how I was doing it and how it aligned with the life I wanted. So a year later, I’ve shifted again, working fewer hours at the family business and providing communications consulting to nonprofits. I’m financially consistent with where I was before despite working less, and I’m thinking of starting a business. These are not my most important indicators of success by any means, but they reassure me that I may have said no to one opportunity, but it was the most catalytic “no” decision I’ve ever made.

So I guess I’ll say what I expected the article to say:

• Knowing yourself well and identifying what you need to be personally happy and professionally fulfilled is a skill – develop it in that way. Self-knowledge will sharpen your intuition when decisions need to be made, and knowing your priorities will give you permission to say “no” when what seems like an opportunity is actually a misfit career or personal move.
• Identifying decision-making points and making intentional decisions is more important than whether your answer is yes or no. If you anticipate opportunities and evaluate them intentionally, you can’t make a bad decision. You can only make the decision that is best for you at that time.
• Our lives are more connected than we know, and our careers are more circular than we know. If you say no now, I believe there is still a chance that opportunity may return at a time when it is a better fit. What matters most are the relationships you keep. Opportunities don’t emerge from businesses or titles; they come from relationships and learning. Stay connected to those who relate to your career ambitions – chances are good they will be your conduits to knowledge or decisions affecting your career.

I’ve been meaning to post about my experience last month getting to know members of the Young Women for Change program, part of the Michigan Women’s Foundation. The program has grown a lot since I participated in high school, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the strength of the young women involved. Speaking to the group of young women was admittedly more exciting (and intimidating) than participating in the foundation’s board meetings… Young Women for Change members always remind me that being young and not yet very attached (politically, personally, and otherwise) affords an individual a kind of fierce authenticity that is thrilling and terrifying.

I’ve thought a lot about things like that lately, particularly as they relate to women of my generation. I’ve had conversations with friends who are frustrated with personal dissatisfaction. Some have bemoaned the overwhelming sense of having the power to do everything and having no idea where to get started. Others have told me they feel like maybe they are just “too picky” to work anywhere happily–maybe they just don’t fit in the box as well as others might. And another young woman looked at me and said quite directly, “You keep telling me to get out there and network. What does that even mean?”

These frustrations led me to wonder if typical language of empowerment and professional development are still relevant to my generation. As I prepared to speak at the Young Women for Change conference, I decided to tackle networking and mentoring, which is probably just one piece of this potential new territory. In lieu of telling the Young Women for Change members to simply get out there and network , I decided to rethink an approach for how an individual might learn and grow continuously. Because as my friend reminded me, it’s actually pretty meaningless, even intimidating, to suggest that you should just get out there and network to be successful.

So I boiled it down to the three steps: Identify, observe and connect. As I thought more about this, I realized that the whole time I thought Young Women for Change helped me network with others and discover my career path, it was actually simply providing me with space and people that helped me identify, observe and connect:

Identify
Something important happens when you identify, appreciate, and nurture what makes you great. We live in a world that would prefer to pick us apart flaw by flaw. We all need to create a safe place and a challenging environment where we have the opportunity to get to know ourselves and see ourselves in new ways.

I think each one of us is a leader in different ways—some are more visible and vocal, some are more quiet but influential. The only way we can benefit from this diversity of leadership is to start within ourselves and identify our strengths, our talents, and our dreams. To help Young Women for Change members think about this, I suggested the following:

Think of a moment when you felt like you were totally energized by a conversation or making a big contribution to some work. What were you talking about? What were you working on? How were you approaching it?

Observe
The process of identifying your strengths and passions is never-ending. That’s probably one of the most frustrating things for me… I’m impatient. I want to know what I have to offer and then attack a problem or seize a really good opportunity to create big change. One of the ways I’ve been able to manage my stubborn impatience is to take the time to observe others.

This reminds me of the phrase “learn by doing.” I am starting to think that phrase is focused too much on the self… autonomy is good, but when does it become isolation? When it comes to knowing what makes you who you are, I don’t think you can learn about that and act on it in isolation. I’d like to suggest that we all need to understand by observing:

Think of a time when one of your peers got really passionate about something she was talking about. Think about a time when she said something that surprised you or made you learn something new. What was she talking about? How did she approach the situation?

Connect
Finally, so many of the young women I meet have a penchant for action, and we have really high expectations about it. We believe that when you bring people together with different but complementary strengths and perspectives, incredible things can happen. And because we take the time to identify those strengths within ourselves and then observe them in others, we have real confidence in our ability to connect people and ideas in unexpected, powerful ways.

This is really the crux of it all for me. Forget what people tell you about networking—even, to some extent, forget what they say about mentoring. I think our generation of women realizes that while these things are still important in some ways, they can imply too much of a one-way street. They often put you, as the young person, in the position of simply receiving perspective, knowledge or help from another source.

I think our generation can be and wants to be co-creators and connectors. Especially when we identify our own strengths and observe what others offer, we have the potential to learn, grow, and achieve in new ways. And I think by starting with our mutual strengths, we may be able to bypass some of the traditional barriers to networking or mentoring… such as gender, cultural, or generational differences.

What if we refine the language of mentoring and networking with language that’s more focused on swapping strengths?

Identify one of your strengths and one you’d like to develop, learn from, or even apply to do something new. Think of your peers and colleagues. Who has that strength? Observe her in action. See how she responds in the group. Then, make the connection. Share what you’ve learned from her, and share what you’ve identified in yourself—swap your strengths and seek opportunities (e.g., collaborative projects, informal lunch dates, etc.) to continue learning from one another.

Originally posted at Upside Down Bananas (former blog)

The NP 2020 conference wrapped up today, and in our final open sessions, we were encouraged to reach some systemic recommendations regarding next steps.

An opportunity that surfaced again and again related to mentoring in the sector. As I’ve alluded to before, mentoring always gives me pause because of its varied interpretations. Those variations came through today both in terms of the problem-solving that groups did and in terms of the tension that could be sensed as we debriefed on key themes from our previous day’s work.

After Susan Morales-Barias (our facilitator from GVSU’s Johnson Center) shared key themes from Friday’s sessions, she invited participants to add comments. One participant, a Baby Boomer, asked that we all be more mindful of the language we use as we try to engage in conversations about mentoring, professional development, and transition in the sector. She said she felt that the tone of the group seemed to put the blame on another generation while also making large generalizations about the intentions of Boomer leadership.

Rather than dwelling on “Boomers do this to me…”, this attendee asked that we consider outside factors that affect Boomer and young leadership alike. Rather than relying on generalizations or assumptions about Boomers, she encouraged us to speak based on how we perceive Boomer leadership.

This comment provoked exactly the kind of fresh dialogue I was hoping to find at a conference like this. Some of the younger participants seemed to agree with the woman, but others argued that our generation needs the space to come together and put concerns on the table without semantics, politics, and feelings getting in the way. One participant went so far as to say that such interjections from Boomers had made her feel like she was being “scolded by a parent.”

I’ll be honest, the notion of being scolded by a Boomer hits home for me. I have definitely felt that way before, and tried hard not to feel that way at NP 2020 in a couple instances (like when one Boomer participant chided that we all “need to read our history”). At the same time, I count many Boomers as friends and mentors. I could never devalue or dismiss their role in getting me to where I am. But…I definitely feel that their approach to mentoring differs from the approaches of some of their Boomer peers.

So I say, yes, let’s propose mentoring as a solution. But let’s also clarify the language of intergenerational dialogue, which obviously needs attention based on exchanges like the one at NP 2020. If we fail to clarify this language, our generations will continue to merge haphazardly, perhaps even oblivious of one another.

With that clarification, I think mentoring itself will be strengthened. Mentoring is too often viewed as a transfer of knowledge—one person transferring a skill set, content expertise, etc. to a less-experienced person. In reality, it’s time for mentoring to be viewed as a vehicle for advancing the sector, not just an add-on for getting into the sector. One Boomer in my dinner group told me she’s participated in an approach called “appreciative inquiry”—I love that term and am going to look into it.

To set some sort of direction for all this, here’s my take: Mentoring needs to be as much an organizational development process as it is a talent development tool. As Susan pointed out, the leadership deficit is happening now—it’s not going to happen when 640,000 executive leaders leave their positions. We don’t simply mean people when we refer to a deficit. There is a deficit in meaningful exchange of knowledge and perspectives. There is a deficit in common understanding and common ground to voice concerns and celebrate progress. And if we don’t have candid conversations about that now, the changing of the guard could be the least of our worries…