Being a woman in business is challenging. Many women are concerned about being labeled if they speak up and share their opinions or if they’re too aggressive with their leadership style. Then there’s the`Boy’s Club’ culture that exists within many organizations where women often feel excluded.

Add to this the struggles of achieving a work-life balance and the guilt that many working mothers often feel about not devoting enough time to their children.

Further complicating the situation is that there are few groups in which for women to connect with each other and share their feelings and lessons learned. 

Lori Brown and her colleague, Andrea Maizes, decided to do something about it. Brown, who is the Chief Experience Officer at The Results Companies in Fort Lauderdale, banded together with Maizes, the company’s Chief Human Resources Officer, to form a mentorship group for women in the company. 

Brown, who is an Advisory Board member for HMG Strategy’s HMG Live! 2020 Florida CIO Virtual Summit on July 9, recently spoke with HMG Strategy to share the genesis for the Women of Results Leadership Consortium along with the challenges they’ve encountered, and the lessons learned along the way.

HMG Strategy: What was the genesis for creating a women’s leadership group at The Results Companies?

Lori Brown: I tend to travel and speak on behalf of the company and all of the things we have to offer and I noticed there were a lot of conferences where there were male speakers. I got to talking to Andrea Maizes about how we could develop a group for women to train for public speaking and it became a group for mentoring young women, including those straight out of college as well as new moms that have returned to the workforce where we could share our experiences.

How was this initially received by the CEO and the executive team?

LB: We had a couple of conversations. When we first started out, there were questions like `Why do you feel you need to do this?’ `Do you have time?’ `Aren’t the guys going to want a group?’ We want to build great leaders in the organization and we felt there are a lot of talented women who might not get the support that they need. The President, the COO and the CFO all agreed that we should go for it.

We had our first meeting in May 2019 with 12 women at a Happy Hour. A few men asked if they could come but we restricted it to the women. After all, it was a Women in Leadership meeting. 

Seventy-five of us now meet each month by videoconferencing since the pandemic, including female colleagues in The Phillipines, the U.S. and Mexico. We get a lot of great input for these 60-to-90-minute meetings.

What were the initial hurdles you encountered? 

LB: We wanted to be very deliberate in what we do. We focus on a topic to discuss. I would encourage other women to form similar groups and to have focus areas. We utilized the Harvard Business Review Women in Work podcasts to pick up topic ideas.

The challenge was that we’d pick a podcast for members to review but they didn’t always do the review ahead of a particular meeting, so we had to build up a candence to move the discussion forward. Some of the topics we’ve explored include how to make yourself heard. We picked very relevant topics and, over time, people listened to the podcasts and came with questions and also shared their experiences and advice, which is exactly why we formed this group – to help each other. 

What have been some of the focus areas for the group?

LB: Most recently, we discussed how we are doing in quarantine along with tips for working moms that are having to home school their children and achieving a work-life balance. That takes a discipline, and for many women, this is their first time working from home.

A couple of months ago, there was an opportunity for a few women to present to senior leadership and we wanted to hear the things that went well and those things that they could have prepped better for the next time. Again, sharing advice amongst each other. 

Did you encounter any issues gaining buy-in or participation from women in the company?

LB: No. But we did need to decide what management levels we wanted to invite into the group and we wanted to create a safe environment. With each meeting, our invite gets bigger as leaders are passing to others that they mentor. Feel safe and invite who you want that you feel will get value from this and deliver value.

Where does the group go from here? How do you expect it to evolve 

LB: We were talking about that before we went into quarantine and whether we should break off as we have different time zones that we’re working across. But because we’ve gotten so good with the technologies, I really just see us continuing on.

One of the topics we’re starting to see us touch on over the past few months and a topic for next month is reviewing our DiSC profiles (a model of behavior that’s somewhat similar to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which is an acronym for Dominance, inducement, Submission and Compliance). We’re going to talk about that and how we interact with new folks that come into the organization. For example, some people don’t like niceties in the first two minutes of a call – they like to get to the point. So, it’s about understanding those differences and how we can better communicate and be productive both at work and in our personal lives.

Any additional thoughts?

LB: When we first started this, it was about mentorship or empowering women. I’ve sent cartoons of Wonder Woman and other images of women in business and keeping it fun. I believe in postive affirmation – feel it and you will be it!

One of the things that we’ve seen come out of it is that people who never had opportunities to talk to each other across the organization now see they have similar struggles and work-life balance issues. It’s been a great to opportunity to build rapport and even more respect with each other.

To learn more about Lori Brown and the HMG Live! Florida CIO Virtual Summit, click here.