“Practical and no-nonsense advice to young women interested in building a career. Also a very concrete guide to managers, male or female, interested in understanding the subtle challenges of building diversity in their teams.”
EEVA SIPILA
CFO and Deputy to CEO, Metso Outotec
Safeguarding a pipeline of managers
Advice To My Dear Daughter can be used to make sure a company captures the full breadth and depth of talent available. Both when recruiting and as part of ongoing development, as well as to safeguard the company’s pipeline of future managers. This is indeed a business-critical issue.
CIRCLES
One efficient way to share information and spark change is to sit together and discuss different advice in a Circle setting. The ideal group size is 6-8 people.
When you start using Circles in an organization, you should start at the very top with the executive team. Everyone is tasked with reading the book and underlining what he/she finds important (this could be one or several pieces of advice, a statement, or just a word). The executive team then meets for an open, straight-forward discussion based on what the individuals found important. Some conclusions are ideally written down to be disseminated later by one of the Circle members.
Each participant in the first Circle then initiates the same process within his or her own team. This process continues with subsequent Circles throughout the organization.
The idea is that a member of a Circle not just reads on his/her own, but also gains insights from the discussions. The overall conclusions should be summarized for the benefit of the entire company.
MENTORSHIP
A mentorship program has the mentee in focus. It is the mentees actual situation that should be discussed as a basis for finding the way forward. The mentor, with far more experience, should trigger this process. However, to really understand a mentee’s actual situation is not easy. Perhaps the situation is hard to describe, or the mentor isn’t asking the right questions. It is important to ensure that the mentor doesn’t end up in focus.
This book can be used to trigger fruitful discussions between mentors and mentees. By reading one or a couple of different advice prior to meeting the mentee can get insight into possible dilemmas which can facilitate a dialogue by providing objective exampes. The book contains 46 advice, and can lead to better discussions throughout a mentoring relationship.
ON YOUR OWN
Distribute the book into the organization and let the employees read for their own benefit.
Ask them to think of:
1) Which of the 46 advice would you give to a young adept?
2) Are any of the advice counterproductive?
3) What advice do you miss?
The book can inspire them by providing chance to reflect and to learn more about what characterizes a sound company culture, based on performance and development, as well as gender issues in business. It can also prompt conversations and opportunities to share and learn with others who are curious and open-minded, with the passion to create an environment in which people can flourish.