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| I was participating in a high school event of promoting diferent careers for female students. I couldn't get even close to their interest in health/child/animal care. We at Centennial College are now starting programs in Health Informatics and Biomedical Electronics - maybe we will attract more female students. |
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| Reconciling professional standards of performance with other people's personal agendas that are not necessarily in the organization's best interests. This is not a gender related issue. Can't say a satisfactory solution was found.
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| The belief in my own abilities and articulating to others my strenghts. In other words selling myself.
While I have worked in these areas quite a bit I feel I still need further work on selling myself. |
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| it would have been nice to have a support network of professional women who were ahead of me (ie. executives already in tech) that could have been advisors. I guess I just muddled through on my own, although some of my male counterparts were good supporters. |
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| I achieved the level of CS-05 at the age of 29 in the federal government but quickly realized that my work/life balance were way off kilter, and it knew it would only get worse as I moved further and further up the chain. The challenge I faced was a work/life decision -- so I made the decision to quit the Federal public service and go into business for myself. Best decision I ever made for my life and my physical/emotional balance! |
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| A few:
1) Transitioned from a manager in a high tech company to CEO of a small entrepreneurial consulting company, and stewarding that company to survive through the ups and downs and then back ups of the high tech cycles of the last 10 years.
2) Working with different business partners - "surviving divorces". |
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| Financially and culturally restructuring a company that I founded in partnership with someone I know longer could work with or no longer shared business principals and vision.
Took many years of timing and patience to manage the company during very difficult times only to finally have a buy out offer accepted, a new business entity structured, new investors found and an acquisition of another company in same industry with staff who could immediately replace the management drain lost in the restructuring. |
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| My most difficult challenge was to overcome perceived preferential treatment I received because of being female. I had to work twice as hard as my male colleagues to prove that I belonged at the company alongside them. This was not from management but from the shop labourers who had to respond to my direction.
However, once I 'proved' myself to them, I had no problems at all.
At my current job, this didn't happen at all. Camosun College is an excellent equal opportunity employer. There just aren't a lot of positions to which I can advance. That I want, that it!! :) |
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| The most difficult challenge for me has come as my company moved from being a small corporation to ultimate purchase by a large multi-national corporation. As we have moved from small company to large company, the importance of individuals in the workplace has be decreased and ultimately been denied. Not surprisingly, innovation has gone downhill as company size has gone up. As a manager, ultimately all I can do is provide as much individual contact as possible.
I wish I had a better way to deal with the problem. |
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| My mos difficult challenge has always been with learning each new technology, and its impact on the business environment. I've always run small tech consulting firms, and we need to stay on top of these changes. Ensuring that new hires are savvy is important. Ensuring that current staff have access to continuous professional development is important. And ensuring that I stay aware of these areas too, as well as of the current business environments is crucial to my success, to our success.
The challenge? A lot of change. |
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| The most difficult challenge that I have faced thus far would be when people judge your ability or knowledge based on gender, looks or assumed aged. Through confidence building, I have learned to take those initial assumptions in stride. |
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| Workload overload. Recruiting high calibre individuals... |
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| 2001 when the "bubble burst" was a tremendous challenge both financially and emotionally. I had a good team and didn't want to lose them, but work was scarce and hard to come by. I had done well in the previous two years so I used my savings to maintain my team. Together we wrote a book to occupy the "quiet" months and the books is now a best seller in the high technology sector. |
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| Cross-cultural challenges of working overseas. I overcame these challenges by studying the local languages and working hard to be sensitive to local custom. |
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| Above (#12) mentioned was the most difficult challenge. Again, every challenges equally pose opportunities. Using common sense, making things (process) simple, delegating work to capable staff, and being genuine and encouraging harmony among staff...while clearly communicating the common goal of our team...and working towards together. Being a generalist (non-engineer) in a technology company can be a strength, not a weakness. |
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| Our company's most difficult challenge was winning the ABN Amro Bank in Amsterdam as a Customer in 1999. They had talked to the major vendors in our product space for several years and had even contracted with a major consulting company to build them a software solution, but nothing had worked successfully because of the Bank's complexity. An ABN Amro senior IT manager saw our presentation at a US conference and took a risk in licensing our product, which became a Bank success story. |
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| The biggest challenge I have run across in my career is knowing when you are in "over your head". To overcome this you have to learn to recognize the symptoms and then have a supportive manager to help turn the situation around. |
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| Obtaining "business know-how". Overcoming through research, persistence, educational oportunities, trial and error, a lot of self direction is required |
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| IT Managers were in great demand 5-10 years ago. Today certification is the biggest factor in career migration |
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| I switched career tracks at a critical time- moving out of academia (and a focus on Asia, international relations and trade), and into private sector and the technology industry- I then left policy focused work to enter into an investment advisory services firm (lured by the promise of riches during the dot com boom). I did not have the business or finance training for the job when I started, and had to climb the steep learning curve on my own, without a mentor and in a very competitive working environment. My solutions were to work exceptionally hard, and to get out and network in the industry as much as possible. The long hours did mean sacrificing social and family life. All this took place outside Canada in the UK. With the dot com 'crash' I opted to go back to school for a third degree- my MBA. I am now back in Canada and working to combine the policy and business experience in a new role. |
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| Helping management to recognize that with all decisions there are 'shades of grey' and that to fully understand the elements of a tough decision, they must get beyond the tendancy to see things in black-and-white. HR's role is to present all contributing factors while still being able to make an informed decision (while in merky waters). |
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| Finding a mentor who has strong business accumen in an HR field. Still working on it, although recent management changes within our organization may have an impact on success in this. |
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| The most difficult challenge I had was to learn how men do business, as the majority of my clients are male. It was thanks to a male mentor that I finally learned this critical success factor for my consulting practice. I never understood that decisions are not really made at meetings - they are often made in advance and orchestrated at the meeting. |
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| Career path |
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| I don't come from an IT background, bringing people and process expertise to the technology practice. Technology people value my skills, but I struggle to understand enough technical information. Being in the field for a number of years has helped me to acquire this knowledge over time. Forcing technology people to 'dumb down' their tech speak is good practice for them when they meet with clients. |
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| Working on a team where obstacles arise and there are to few resources to address them, yet higher level resources often tackle issues that others can manage. I finally said: I have never done this, but I am willing to learn how and to manage the process. From here, we were able to also say: Person X has never done this, but can learn and manage that process. Thereby, we have distributed responsibility that was previously bottlenecked at the top. |
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| Having an overbearing know-it-all women manager who everyone at the company was afraid of and who had a need to keep proving she was better than anyone else. I believe it was this woman's defensiveness as being a women manager. I worked to insulate staff from her worst excesses and picked my battles - only took issue with thing that were more important to the organizations success. I had to learn to "suck up" like the rest of the company and not always be sincere and up-front(not fun). The company did thrive and I was able to arrange it so my own staff did not have to interact with this person often. |
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| Breaking into the technology sector as a professional, without any real technical background. I was fortunate in that the person who hired me was hiring her replacement (she was retiring) saw an opportunity to develop the position from which she was retiring into an expanded role that was a good fit for my skills, and agreed to "groom" me for the position, for a three-month hand-over. While my background was helpful, this new role introduced me to areas I had never worked in before, and I essentially learned on the job, relying extensively on contacts, my new colleagues and external advisors at the outset to learn the ropes. |
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| The most difficult challenge was being promoted to National Sales Manager and having many of my male peers now reporting to me.
I overcame this by demonstrating my ability to get things done, listen to their issues/concerns, and maintain direct open communication. |
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| People management without training, while at the same time carrying a huge individual contributor portfolio. |
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| The most difficult was accepting that there a some situations where men strongly believe that a woman cannot do a particular job, because they are a woman.
I moved on - in recognition that there is a proper time for everything. |
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| To deal with a boss whose priority was the work amount (number of hours and availability 24 hours) and not enough the work quality. Our values and methods were opposite. After trying to find a compromise, I gave up and changed job! |
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| Was informed years later that some men in my organization actually believed I was having an affair with the boss to achieve my position rather than it being merit based - this was completely untrue,based on nothing, unchanageable and degrading to all. An outrageous assumption and one I have no idea how far reaching it was. It could not be overcome other than to ignore it - most unsatisfying. |
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| The hardest part of my work is to deal with human resources, their needs and their problems. I find it is the part that disturbs me more outside the work. Over the years, I have become a little less sensitive to these issues and I can now treat them more objectively and, more important, less personnally. But it is still challenging from time to time. |
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| The work I do involves connecting the dots between business people and information technology - I bridge the gap between these quite different cultures. It requires understanding the business very well and keeping an open mind about what technology can do and the challenges involved in introducing new processes.
My IT colleagues are perplexed about what I do - even the CIO isn't entirely clear but has allowed me to pursue several courses of action that have resulted in adoption of new technologies. However, the challenge is always the insular nature of IT and the tendency not to be interested in the business and not to value the "non-technical". This is a major failing in my mind because there's hardly any point in advanced systems if they aren't adopted. |
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| Discrimination on the basis of sex. How did I overcome it? I didn't... yet. Unfortuately, it is endemic to the practice of law and generally. Lots of chatter about promoting women goes on, but really, if we are still having to fight to promote women, then we haven't overcome the basic discrimination. |
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| Being forced out of a management position so they could put someone from the "old buddy network" in that spot. All I could do was move on without getting bitter about it. |
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| Dealing with men who were from another culture who were convinced my contribution in a technical role was going to be impossible.
Sometimes I had to learn to ignore this attitude, sometimes I had to fight it assertively and sometimes I simply had to play along in order to get the job done. It was often easier to ask for their help in some small way to ensure they felt needed and I knew it may have reinforced their notions but one has to choose their battles. Convincing a man from the "old country", I could do the job was not worth the effort sometimes. |
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| Lack of caring mentors and role models slowed my advancement. |
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| Obtaining new clients. Lots of networking! |
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| Risk taking and believing in myself. I just keep trying |
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| As a woman in IT security for 20 years I have had to overcome all of the normal "this is a mans world" issues. Work harder than men, which most of us do anyway, stay focused, and service your clients to the point that they won't go anywhere else and if they do, they beg to come back. |
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| If you are a woman and younger in age, it is in general difficult to be taken seriously. TO overcome it, I equipped myself with as much knowledge as you can. |
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| Dealing with a terminally ill mother while balancing work responsibilities as a newly promotoed CEO of a sizable company. I overcame the challenge by sharing issue with a seasoned mentor who coached me on how to better prioritize and delegate activities so that I could maximize time with my ill mother. |
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| The pace of change in the IT industry in large organizations, keeping up with the information needed to do my job. Overcome this by keeping close with talented, bright people and always asking questions. |
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| unable to progress into senior management within a company. Led to eventually leaving to higher level position. |
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| Constant challenge is to manage those people who would be considered more "senior" in terms of technology capability. I suspect one of the most difficult challenges for us as women is to make the personal iteration from technology-centric to management-centric, especially when confidence and comfort are gained from the former. Overcame it? Not totally sure I have... but I'm working on it. |
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| The most difficult challenge in my career was being a young, bright single parent without credentials other than job performance. In 1993, I decided to enroll in an Executive MBA program despite the odds and personal sacrifce. The achievement of this goal has allowed me to accelerate my career and gave me the personal confidence that I was not only bright but very determined. |
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| Overcoming internal politics and building effective communicaiton techniques - in a large organization often bureaucracy tends to influence the governance policies - in order to be effective in middle management you must understand and be able to tailor leadership behaviours to both upper and lower management - both can have very different expectations and demand different skill sets. By selecting key mentors in our executive team and taking time to observe how they handle situations - seeking guidance and transitioning your own behaviours to gain the confidence and become an effective influencer to the senior executive team. At the same time it is critical to involve and communicate effectively to peers and employees in terms they can respect and ensure that they feel valued in their positions and their contributions are promoted at a senior level. The challenge faced was adapting communications at the varying levels of management. The challenge was overcome by obtaining training and coaching one on one by an exeuctive communications consultant - the training provided presentation to large audiences through to the brief "elevator" interview with a senior executive to facilitation of effective working sessions and meetings. Learning the techniques to effective communication at all levels is a key leadership attribute for success. |
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| The most difficult challenge in my career has been promoting myself and moving up the corporate ladder. |
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| Making the transition from technology law to venture capital, and back again. I had been a dyed in the wool Bay Street lawyer - going from Bay Street (as well as time at a New York firm on Wall Street) to Nortel. It was only when I left Nortel to become general counsel fo a wireless data start up that I acquired some real operational skills and start-up "scar tissue" (we went from conept to sale for $470 M in 18 months. You don't want to know.). This experience was why I was recruited by BCE Capital as a principal in 2000. I had no experience with private equity and managing investments, nor did I have a network that would provide deal flow for me and my fund.
How did I overcome this? As a VC, I didn't - the market for venture capital went soft 1 year into my tenure. However, I used the opportunity to build out an extensive network in Canada and the US in venture capital, high tech and services so that, when I returned to law and set up my own firm after 2 years, I had a great referral base as well as a tremendous network that could assist my clients in channel and partner development, access to capital and the like. Because most of my clients are early stage (seed through to Series C or so), cost of legal services was a critical item for them. I knew I could not successfully build a significant amount of market share at a larger firm (where the overhead made pricing inelastic). I therefore had to strike out on my own, something we big firm lawyers just aren't condiitoned for. Had I not learned from the start up world and from my adventures in venture capital, I wouldn't have been able to succeed. At least, not without medication. |
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| Challenge One - achieving management status was not an issue. However, there is far more of a struggle on a day to day basis achieving respect from peer managers. THis situation occurs primarily in treatment from other male managers who have a primarily technical background and limited management training. I am not sure that this is a gender bias issue or if it is driven by lack of big picture management thinking - something which I beleive is a crisis in the technical world.
Dealing with work life balance was a struggle for me for a number of years. I beleive that I have it in hand now. |
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| My life challenges which leads to career challenges, is a long one and I would not be able to summarized it in one or two paragraph.
However, The most difficult one would be, having children and being in a fast grwoing environment that is unforgiving. No one to look after your family while you are not there. |
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| I started in a area of lower esteem in my field and it hampered my salary increases and my ability to move up the ladder. I have had to work very hard and been very verstile to overcome my entry point in the organization. |
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| My challenge right now that I am still working on would be that I am reporting to a female Manager who is not a good mentor/fit to my needs. I feel that I actually have to lead in order to achieve any goals for my future in the management group. |
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| The most difficult challenge is that of children. Most employers do not understand some of the challenges mothers have while balancing a career and children.To overcome this working out of the home has been the best thing to acheive a healthy balance for the two. |
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| Constantly being open to learning is extremely important in overcoming all of the ongoing career challenges. |
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| Had to tell a customer that the project could not go forward. Needed to first get agreement from my company's account team who did not want to recognize the facts (they created the problem) and wanted to shoot the messenger. Had to handle the more male bully type approach to this issue first with the account executive. Used the facts to prove my point and handled customer with ease after that. |
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| Dealing with a dishonest co-worker; being proactive, highly principled and courageous |
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| Working in a predominantly male environment, it was hard to move into the more senior ranks. Our organizational culture is bottom line oriented, so focusing on business results and designing solutions that deliver those results is crucial. I redesigned 2 workforce practices that allowed our company to leverage our resources across Canada and although the change was not welcomed by our employees, it did demonstrate that women can make tough business decisions. |
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| The most difficult challange was re-entering the workforce after a 9 year sabbotical to take care of my children. When I left the workforce desktop computers were just coming into the marketplace. Upon my re-entry Blackberries and laptops were the work mode of the masses.
I went to a few training programs on basic desktop software useage and eased my way back into the workforce by taking several low paying - skill building jobs in non related fields prior to joining this firm. Helped build my skills and credibility in this "new" work environment. I still find that I am behind my colleagues that worked through the office/communication changes but that gap is steadily diminishing.
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| Networking with industry engineers to receive mentoring - most are males and they seem to want to mentor other males.
How I overcame it? It is an ongoing battle. I absorb information in whatever way I can. I try to encourage others of the
importance of female engineers - I advocate wherever, whenever. |
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| The most difficult challenge is obtaining an employment position in which I can complete an apprencticeship. There are plenty of government assistance programs to educate us but no jobs and no incentives for employers to hire. I have yet to overcome this challenge and am currently teaching until I do. |
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| Being told that I was not suitable for the job with absolutely no supporting information and being able to overcome it and find a suitable position. Has occurred three times in my career. |
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| The biggest challenge is the self doubt. Despite the fact that I was promoted to a senior position in the company, it was difficult to convince myself that I was worthy of the position.
I overcame this by not being afraid to express my opinions. Overtime, I saw that my peers and boss respected me for that. |