Recently I received an email about what advice I would give to today's young women. The young women asked me to answer a series of questions to help her learn and improve.
Here are my answers, which I hope can benefit our women readers and their male colleagues, too.
How do I maintain my "strength" in a still mostly male industry?
Having worked in many business settings throughout my career that were primarily male, I've found that it is easy for women to believe we have to be something we're not. We have to live up to standards that are put upon us and standards that we put upon ourselves. One common standard is "being strong."
Being strong to me is simply showing up exactly how you are each day. It's not being perfect. It's not always getting it right. It's not always saying the right thing at the right time.
But does mean being brave enough to let people see the true, imperfect you. Wear what you want to wear, talk the way you want to talk, but mainly, be kind and compassionate.
And, when things don't go your way, take it in stride and don't over react. There is little you can control.
Remember, it's not a failure if you learned something. Learning is how you become immeasurably strong. Let it all be … a learning process.
What advice would you give the younger version of yourself?
I would tell her two things:
First, getting to your dream is hard and it hurts. It's hard because it takes a lot of work. It hurts because it takes a lot of time.
As you go through the journey, have fun along the way. Don't work all the time. It will exhaust you to the point of not being able to keep working toward your goals, passion and purpose.
Second, I look back to my first article on the business, which was the cover story of Investment Advisor magazine. A reader (male) responded with the following letter to the editor:
